What the last 24 hours have been like without my personal email address…
So my first thing I decided to do was I needed to kill my email address, which was crazy. I set up a new email address, and then I was like, "Well, I don't want to just tell everyone my new email address, because I'm going to start getting a million emails." So what I did is I set up an auto-responder thing on my old email address, and I'm still going to have Kelsey, my assistant, go in each day and just browse, and make sure that I'm not missing anything super important like bills or things like that, who knows, whatever could come through.
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Hey everyone. This is Russell, and welcome to "Marketing in Your Car."
Hi, everyone. Late night, just got back from the grocery store, heading home, and I want to tell you about something cool that I think I'm doing that I want to recommend to you guys to do, I think. [laughs] I'm pretty sure I am. I'm kind of stressing out about it right now, but I think that after I get through the withdrawal symptoms, this process is going to be awesome.
As some of you guys know, we just had our book launch, Click Funnels launch, a baby, we have our live event coming up. We just moved offices, and we're about to move our house. All this change, and all these things, and it's been insane keeping up with everything.
On top of that, we have all the normal things that we have to do, right? And for me, as some of you guys know through our coaching program, I give our higher-end clients access to me through Vox, so I get Voxers all the time. There's just all these things that are pressing on me, and it's like it's getting to the point where it's hard to bear, all of it, and so I've been trying to think, "How do I structure things differently so that I can get out from under this pressure?"
I remember Dan Gable, who, those of you guys who know wrestling, he's like the Michael Jordan of wrestling. One time someone asked him about pressure, "How do you deal with all this pressure that's on your life?", or they asked him if he believed in pressure, and he said, "Well I believe in it. It's there. I just don't choose to put myself underneath it."
I was thinking about that. I feel like I've been putting myself under enormous pressure, [laughs] and I have this horrible problem where I just say "Yes" to everything. I want to do all these things, because it's completely exciting to me. So I've been trying to weave things out and trying to simplify my life and everything.
Anyway, over the last 24 hours or so, I've made some big jumps, like some crazy huge leaps, and I want to walk you through them, because again, I'm in the withdrawal process right now, and it's stressing me out, but I think it's going to be really good, long term.
First off, the first step was email. I had to get control of my email. I have had the same email address for like 12 years. Everyone in the world has it. I'm on a million newsletters, a million different things, and right now, on average, I was trying to measure between that. I use a service called Sane Box, which takes all your junk and tries to filter it out and get rid of it before it gets to your inbox.
But even with that, I get over a thousand emails a day hit my inbox, and between that and Sane Box, it's about 3,500 emails a day. It's insane. I don't even know how...if you ever emailed me and I didn't write back, that's probably why I didn't. It just gets so overwhelming, and every time I walk in, I'm just sick to my stomach. I don't even know what to do, and it just never goes away. It just keeps growing and growing and growing.[laughs]
I've been so scared to not have it, like, "What happens if I miss an email? What if I don't see something?", and so because I'm checking my phone a million times a day because email's coming in so fast that it's pushing emails off the screen, and I don't want to miss anything. Anyway, there's all this stress that comes from it.
So my first thing I decided to do was I needed to kill my email address, which was crazy. I set up a new email address, and then I was like, "Well, I don't want to just tell everyone my new email address, because I'm going to start getting a million emails." So what I did is I set up an auto-responder thing on my old email address, and I'm still going to have Kelsey, my assistant, go in each day and just browse, and make sure that I'm not missing anything super important like bills or things like that, who knows, whatever could come through.
But now there's an auto-responder for emails on my old email address that pops up and says, "New email address — how to contact me inside." You open it up, and it basically says, "Hey, I was getting 3,500 emails a day. I can't keep up with it. But if you're awesome, and I'm assuming you are, and you want to contact me, then this is how you can do it," and I push them to a form to fill out. I push them to a Wufoo form, and basically the Wufoo form says, "What's your name, your email address, your Skype number, and what's your question?"
When someone goes to that form, they don't have my new email address, but they can fill it out, and then I get that. Wufoo emails me the form that they got, so the form pops into my email address that says Name, Email Address, Skype, and their question. I look at that question. If it's something for me, I can respond if I want to, or if I don't, I can forward it to Kelsey or to Brent or to someone on my team to take care of it, and that person never gets to me.
If it is someone that I want to hear from, then I can respond back to them, and then that person's got access to my inbox. I did that on Friday, before I left. It's Saturday night. It's been 24 hours, and it's been stressing me out because my email inbox only has three emails from people who've actually got the thing, filled it out. Two of them I didn't want to respond to, so I forwarded them to someone else, and then one of them was someone I wanted to. I responded to them, and that was it, and it's crazy.
I even went back to my old email box, scanning through to make sure I'm not missing anything, but for the most part it's really refreshing. There's no one contacting me, and it's kind of stressing me out because of that, which is kind of cool.
The next thing was Voxers. I've got my high-end clients on Voxer, which used to be really, really easy, but as we've grown, it's gotten more and more, and so I always try to get back to people really, really fast, and the problem is that means I'm answering Voxers all day long, all night long, all the time, and I just needed to get more control over that.
So what I did is one of my friends from our Mastermind group — his name's Joe McCall — he bought me a new iPhone while we were there, which was super cool. He gave me this brand new iPhone, and so I turned this into my new iPhone. I've got a new install of Voxer on it, and I just gave this one to close people that I really needed to communicate with, people that I want instantly, like I need to have the contact with my wife, my team, things like that.
The other phone, I kept on my Voxer conversations, and I kept it at my office. I didn’t even bring it home this weekend. I don’t even have it. People are probably Voxing me, and I don’t have the ability to respond back to them. I’m going to respond back to them on Monday when I get to the office, and then I’ll just have that at the office, and I’ll do client work there, and then when I’m home, I don’t do client work there anymore, which is kind of cool.
That was the next barrier that I put up, and then the next thing is, my assistant Kelsey's been my assistant for four or five years. She's been doing the support role and assistant and things like that. Now I'm trying to make her more of an assistant. Each day, she comes in to my office, and the day, gives me a write-up of what's happening the next day, tells me what's in my inbox, who I've got calls with, what's happening. She's been kind of controlling my whole life. She's been checking my emails. She's trying to put up as many barriers around me and take care of me, so I don't have to stress out.
She gets my lunches now, all these kind of things, so I can focus on what I do best, which is what brings the money in. The next thing I'm going to try to start doing is I'm going to try to start — because I don't know about you guys, but at the beginning of the year, I set a goal. One of my goals was to spend more time with my kids than I do at the office. So far, I haven't done that yet, but these are the first steps to get me to that point. Next, I'm going to start trying to spend more time in the mornings with my wife, maybe take her to the movies once or twice a week in the mornings. Spending more time with my kids — coming home a little earlier.
Anyway, I'm trying to get this under control, and it's hard for me. I don't know if you guys are like me, serial entrepreneurs. This has been a hard, painful process. I totally keep checking my phone, and there's nothing there for me. There's no one to talk to, which is good. I've got to focus on who I love the most.
As I said, I'm going through withdrawals right now, but I think, hopefully, in a couple of days I'll realize that nobody really needs to talk to me, that I'm going to be okay, and I will go have a chance to be more present with the people that I love and that I care about, and things like that.
Anyways, it's kind of cool. I'm excited for it. It's painful right now, but I think it's going to be good, and I just want to recommend for you to do the same thing, to start putting up some barriers. Start making some rules. I remember Alex Mendosian, one of my first mentors, and one of the smartest dudes — just an amazing guy. I remember him telling me probably five or six times over the last 12 years, I've heard him speak about retiring your email. Once a year, he'll offer you an email address. I've never done it. I've been so scared, and I finally am doing it. I'm finally getting out from under that pressure, like Dan Gable said.
So I can focus, and I can create better. I can be better, and be more, and I'm excited for it. I hope that this gives you guys permission to do that, to turn off your email. It took me a while to figure out the right way to do that, and I think that that way that I figured out works. It's really smart, and I think it's working really good. Again, we're basically vacation auto-responder messages back to them. It tells them to fill out a form. The form gets sent to me, and I decide if I want to respond or forward it to somebody else, and it's really simple and easy to do, and something that I recommend for you guys to test out and to try.
Anyway, hope that helps. I am home with the groceries. I’m going to go in and be with my wife and my baby, Nora, who’s probably still awake. Everyone else had better be asleep. [laughs] I appreciate you guys for listening. I hope things are awesome, and if you don’t have your tickets to the Funnel Hacking Event, go and get them. It’s going to be amazing. FunnelHacking.com is where you can get them at, and outside of that, I appreciate you guys, and we’ll talk soon.
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