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Dan Martell
Welcome to the Growth Stacking Podcast. This is Dan Martell. The top 1% make millions a year without ever checking their email. They don't worry about unread emails like you do because they follow these five specific principles that anyone can use. Whether you're a student or working 9 to 5 or running your own business, to go from inbox overwhelm to no inbox at all. Number one is clone yourself. If you have hundreds of unread emails in your inbox right now, there's just no way you're going to become the top 1% performer in your industry. When I was building my company Clarity, I had the privilege of being invited to spend a week with Richard Branson at his house in Verbier, Switzerland. I went there for one reason. To see how the billionaire that every other billionaire wants to be like operates in his day to day life. The answer? Before putting on his skis and bombing down the hill with us, he sat down with his assistant, Helen, and and she brought to him only the things she didn't know how to deal with. Everyone asking for Branson's time had to go through Helen, and she took care of almost all requests. So here's the core philosophy. You don't hire to add capacity. You hire to buy back your time. In my book, Buy Back youk Time, I have this thing called the replacement ladder. It shows the sequence of hiring you should make in the order and what they take off of your plate to get the most time. But this video is is only focus on the first rung. The key is to find the yin to your yang. You want to find somebody that is your opposite. Someone who can take all those crazy open loops, grab them and close them so you can keep running as fast as you want and growing your business. Number two is the no go zone. I remember a long time ago, my brother hired an executive assistant and I was asking him like, dude, how's it going? And he's like, I don't really see what the point is. I mean, they're great, they're helping me out, but it's not transforming my life the way you've been talking about it. And I knew immediately when he shared that feedback that the issue was that he had not given up control of his inbox. Instead of delegating his inbox, he was ccing his assistant on those emails. Newsflash, your inbox is not your boss. Make a rule for yourself. I am no longer, ever, ever allowed to touch an email that, that my assistant hasn't processed. I know what you're thinking, I can't give over all of that control. Don't think of this as losing power, but as gaining control of your time. To give up the keys to your inbox, you need a system that routes every email exactly where it needs to go. And this next step will help you. Number three is email GPS. This folder structure will help your assistant route 90% of your email without you getting involved. The first one is your name. This is essentially a folder or a label where your assistant will put emails in your inbox for you to process. These might be personal things you've asked them. The second folder, super important, is the review. It's where my assistant will put things that we need to discuss on our daily meeting. More on that in a bit. So that I never feel like they're making decisions without my involvement. The third area is to respond. If something goes in my inbox and I'm like oh no, no. I want my assistant to process. I just put to respond. It gets put in their to do list. It's a very lightweight way for me to give a to do to my assistant without ever having to get them on a phone. The fourth is responded. This one is where I can go check. Anytime my assistant responds on my behalf, they tag that email as responded. Easy way for me to review how they've responded to things. Number five is waiting on. This is a great place to put emails where we've sent a message to somebody and we're waiting on them to get back to us. The second sixth is financials. All of my daily cash reporting, financial receipts, transactions, anything financially related goes into this label. So I always know there's one spot where I can go look. And number seven is newsletters. Take anything that doesn't require immediate attention, put it in the newsletter folder. And once a week you have a calendar entry where you sit down and you review those emails so you don't get distracted on a day to day basis to keep yourself moving forward. So, so that's the overall folder structure. But here's what you do with that review folder. Number four is the daily admin review and it is one of my favorite. To do it right, you need to understand these five key areas. Just like Branson, you need to sit down with your assistant once a day and review only the things that need your attention. The first item is your list. This is a list I have on my phone. Anytime I have any ideas for my assistant, I write it down and the first prompt when I'm on the call with my assistant is what is on your list? I never forget to review something I might have put there the day before or the morning of so that it's always taken care of. Number two is the calendar review. Now here's what's different. Most people don't do this. First off, if it's the beginning of the week, I review six weeks out. Any conflicts, opportunities, synergy, things we have to clear out gets figured out. After that we do a two week schedule. The key is everything in the calendar has to be complete. If somebody's been invited to the meeting, they've accepted the invite. If not, my assistant has to call to confirm. All the details for the meeting is in the description of the calendar invite. So that everything I need from a context point of view is right there. And that rhythm works great for the calendar. The third is the review folder, my favorite folder in my email GPS system. These are areas of learning or coaching or teaching that I can share with my assistant. Everything from contracts that I might need to sign for investments to people that I've never gotten an email from before. Is this somebody you know? Did you meet them at an event? And here's one of the tricks. If I'm traveling for a little bit and I want to wake up in the morning and feel super productive, I'll just jump in that review folder and just leave notes for my assistant as a draft. So that creates a feedback and a communication loop so that they can oftentimes open move those emails forward without ever having to review them anymore. Then we go to past meetings. Sometimes I'll have 13, 15 meetings in a day. And when I get on the call, that agenda item is literally is there anything to follow up with this person? Anything follow up with this person So I never have to worry about closing the loops that are open. I know that I'll be prompted after the fact. And then the last one, number five is project updates. And this is for me to get updates and feedback on anything that our priorities or projects. I always feel like I'm in the loop, but I'm also supporting moving these projects forward. Now if you get through these five items really quick and there's some bonus time, these are some questions I would invite you to have your assistant ask you. Number one is how's your daily energy doing right now based on your calendar, how you feel at the end of the day? Are you feeling depleted? Are you feeling good? Do you feel like the workload's good? Number two, what frustrations do you have in your life right now? To me, this is A beautiful question to be asked, because that'll allow me to scheme and go, like, you know, what? This area or this person or this situation doesn't feel great. Can we maybe clean it up? And then the third one, is there anything that we can change to make this easier for you? If you just ask yourself that question and give yourself permission to do that, it would change everything for you. So that's the admin review process. So now the key is to take all of that and to make sure that we do it in a way where we don't feel like we're losing touch. The last point is number five, and it's closing the loop. Here's a funny story. A few months ago, I was at my friend's house and he was telling me about an investment opportunity. And I was like, dude, I'm in. Get your buddy to email me the paperwork. I want to make this investment. And then like, three weeks later, I remember I was on my road bike training for an ironman, and I go, whatever happened to that investment? So I text my buddy and I was like, hey, did you ever make that email intro? And he's like, yeah, let me check with my friend. And he checks with them and he says. He said, you passed. And my heart said sank because I knew what happened. My assistant, based on our processes and protocols, didn't have any context for this person. It looked like an unsolicited investment. And she used the templated response, letting the person know that we reviewed the information and we do not want to move forward, which was crazy embarrassing. So I immediately got in my inbox and I replied and I said, sorry, sorry, sorry. I would love to do the deal now. This is what I change. These are the four things that your assistant needs to close the loop on every day before they wrap up. Number one is meetings scheduled. I just need to know it got scheduled. What's the date? So in my mind, I start to put together kind of a calendar context that's being created. Number two is purchases. If there was money spent, I just want to know what those purchases are. Number three is project updates. So if there's big, meaningful work that's being managed, it could be legal stuff, financial stuff. Just make sure that they also include some updates on the projects. And number four is decisions made. Just ask them is like, are there any big decisions you made that I should know about so I can feel like I'm informed. So that's how CEOs manage their inbox. If you like this week's episode, be sure to visit itunes, leave a review that'll help us get in front of other founders just like you. And if you're looking for more resources and video trainings, be sure to check out Dan Martell. Two L's to Martel to subscribe. Keep up the hustle, keep stacking your growth, and I'll see you next Monday's episode. Peace. Grow Peace. Bye Bye.