Today, Den talks about how #Inboxzero is the first step to creating space and clarity. Make this a habit and become more focused. Listen up and start #inboxzero today!
Episode Transcription
Den Lennie (2s):
Howdy, guys! Den Lennie here host of the How to scale a Video Business Podcast, creeping up here on week 51 of 2020. Time for today’s shorty. And today we’re going to be talking about, are you brave enough to go inbox zero? This topic we have been there digging into the last couple of weeks’ inside the mastermind. And ah, it’s interesting. Actually just how much resistance that it can be. Something that is actually very, very simple. I want to tell you why I believe Inbox zero is such a powerful tool for productivity in your business.
Den Lennie (49s):
So, you know, I used to be someone who had like 20,000 emails and my inbox, and it was almost like a badge of honor that, you know, I don’t know why it was just it’s it’s like kind of a comfort blanket, isn’t it. But what I’ve learned is that other people’s emails coming in to your inbox are other people’s to do lists. And if you are looking to scale your video bus as a business, then you have to get a handle on that. And there’s probably going to be some resistance to this because, you know, everyone’s got an excuse or a reason why they’ve got to have all these inbox emails. And then a lot of people who use email or instant messenger, which is just not healthy, but we’ve been rolling out inboxzero to all of our members recently.
Den Lennie (1m 37s):
And for the most part, everyone was really on board with it and discovering some incredible clarity as a result. But there’s a few people who are needing a little bit of a gentle persuasion, but you know, very, a very successful friend of mine, Ben Simkin who has been on this podcast, you know, he said at one of our mastermind, he said, just recently, he said, you know, you can make money or you can make excuses, but you can’t meet both. And so inboxzero is really the first step in creating quite space, creating clarity, you know? So here’s some benefits of why you should keep in boxes.
Den Lennie (2m 18s):
Let me explain it because I’ll explain what inbox zero is. It is going into your inbox, right? As soon as you’ve listened to this, selecting every email that your inbox, an archiving into a folder, cold, you know, archive emails, you know, 15 to December, 2020. So that what you’re left with is white space in your email inbox, nothing to deal with. No, what this does is several things. So first of all, why should you keep your email inbox empty? Well, there are many benefits, but first is you won’t miss an important email ever again when you use the inbox zero or method, because the stuff won’t lost and you want to leave people hanging because you would respond to each e-mail in a timely manner.
Den Lennie (3m 6s):
You certainly won’t become the bottleneck in your business. And you want to feel stressed about thousands of emails and your inbox, and you end up respecting others by responding to them promptly. And you’re able to feel great knowing that you have nothing else to do so you can get on with a more creative, fulfilling, and strategic tasks that the trouble with having a lot of email is in your inbox. It’s that you end up overwhelmed with just like a pile of things to do. And, and so what we typically do is we go to our inbox and go, right, I’ll just check my email. And then you spend time responding to are dealing with emails.
Den Lennie (3m 47s):
And I would say probably 90% of your inbox is crap. It’s just mailing lists. Now I was talking to my guys this morning on the first coaching call that we did, you know, and Quantas here in Australia, you know, I’m on an email list of Quantas But, they’ve got about eight sub list. So I get the Quantas emails about Wayne. I get the Quantas emails about spending my points. I’ll get the Quantus emails about booking flights. I get the Quantas emails about partner offers and you know, I get it, you know what, Quantas aren’t able to fly as much. So they are, they maximizing their assets, which is the email list, totally support that. But I don’t need an email every day from Quantas offering me something. So I’ve unsubscribed from everything.
Den Lennie (4m 29s):
Now, what I’ve done is I every day and I’m just clearing up more and more, and I’ve gone through this process as a number of times, but, you know, human behavior habits or such that, you know, sometimes you slip back into all way habits. We are all human, but, and I was reminded of the power of Inboxzero and I’d been running a pretty, a pretty lean email inbox for a while, but you know, a few days go by and suddenly the bill caught back up. So we, we, we kind of all committed to doing it in the group. And one of the great advantages of the, the mastermind is that we hold each other to account and, and the power of this is so important because it’s the discomfort of, of letting go of that security blanket of our emails.
Den Lennie (5m 9s):
Now, if you want to take it a step further, I’ve actually gone and taken all the apps off my home screen on my phone, apart from finance and banking. And so that’s something that my mentor will Wang from growth lab setting. And if you really want to go like next level focus. So I have a zero inbox and nothing on my form. So what this means, and it’s pretty weird at first. What means is that whenever they look at my form, there was nothing to distract me and looking at my finance numbers and looking at my banking numbers. So I’m monitoring cashflow and revenue and then go to my desk and I had no emails to look it up. So I just go to my new strategic plan and work at what’s next on the list, or I’m working directly with my clients.
Den Lennie (5m 52s):
And so my focus is entirely on my clients and my business, and nothing else gets in the way. So if you are feeling like, you know, overwhelmed by, you know, just the sheer volume of stuff in your inbox, try this, delete everything, put it all in a folder. I mean, you don’t need to delete it. You can just move all to an archive folder. And from there, you will be amazed to have much time in space. You get back in and Jethro or one of my clients this morning, we were seeing, man, this really highlighted how, how reliant I was on, on dealing with that inbox. And it raised a lot of questions for him and self-awareness and his wife, Trudy actually said to him, he said, you know, if, if you are struggling to make a decision on something that is costing you $0, how you’re going to make a decision on the million dollar decision.
Den Lennie (6m 42s):
So he was really open about sharing these insights and it was all because we’d created some space and we are big advocates of creating space in your inbox, creating a white space in your calendar and white space on your form. We have become so addicted to our devices and to our inboxes that its actually a problem and it’s a productivity problem. So if you have a very clear strategic plan and you have no distractions, you can actually achieve an enormous amount more than you perhaps could have done even a couple of weeks ago by just clearing your inbox, clearing the apps off your phone and, and, and click creating white space in your calendar and the white space.
Den Lennie (7m 28s):
And the calendar is all about being very clear about what you want your strategic outcomes to be for the day. And look, I get it. You know, if you are on location and you’re shooting, you are in production. That’s everything was at the window. I’m talking about the days that when you are not on production and you are able to then start being very strategic and, and you’ll find yourself just not wasting time in the back in the early days was running my business. I could spend hours and hours doing nothing. You know, it just literally ours in the edit suite, you know, just browsing something, looking at something on VNH, you know, a tweak in a project, learning how to do something on YouTube and playing with that. And, it wasn’t necessarily productive for my business.
Den Lennie (8m 10s):
And so what I, what I wanted to share with you today is that if you’re not being as productive as you could be, or you feel like you, like, you know, you’re not getting the results you want, then, you know, you got to ask yourself, are you making excuses because you can’t make excuses and make money. You’ve got to you that that is one of the other. And so this, this process of, of email inboxzero is the starting point to creating more space. And then you have more space. The first few days are going to seem really weird, but once you’ve gotten over it, you’ll find yourself just getting into this deleting habit. And, and the feeling of clarity, the feeling of space is unbelievable.
Den Lennie (8m 53s):
It’s like, it’s like going from a busy city center and to the countryside or onto the beach. And it, it just gives you a brain time to think, and your you’re certainly not missing anything. And, and, you know, just to confirm that you don’t delete anything, it just all goes into a folder, which means that you are immediate folder. Your inbox is at zero. Try it guys. Honestly, it will change your life. But the question is, are you brave enough? You’ve been listening to the How to scale of Video business podcast with me, your host, Den Lennie. If you’re a Video business owner, it’s a hit the ceiling. We’ve been at it for mentorship, support and coaching and check out how you can work with me over at denlennie.com.
Den Lennie (9m 35s):
Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the shore over on iTunes. And we really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review and don’t forget to share if you feel you’ve gotten value from this episode, when you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, and please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.
