Outsource Your Inbox And Never Check Email Again - PixlFeed Radio #101 - Yaro Starak

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Speaker A: I cashed out my entire 401k thinking

Speaker B: someone stole my identity.

Speaker A: A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen. When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem, it's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Moneylion. See it in action@gendigital.com foreign uh, uh, uh. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Pixel Feed Radio. I'm here with my friend Yaro Starak. Yaro, how are you doing today, man?

Speaker B: I'm good, Christian. Happy to be here.

Speaker A: Absolutely man. I'm super excited to have you here. Uh, for those of you that don't know, Yarrow is the co founder of Inboxdone.com, which is an email management company, uh, with a team of 25 plus, so it's not a small company. Uh, and then, uh, he's made multiple, multiple angel investments in tech startups including Steezy, Lead IQ and uh, Fluent Forever. So, um, yeah, I'm super excited to have you here. So before we get into uh, inboxdone.com and what is it that it does and the technology behind it, uh, let's go back to where it all started because you have quite the resume I should say. So I was asked this question at the beginning. Like when you were a kid, were you always trying to come up with an idea for a business or doing something on the side? How did it all started?

Speaker B: Yeah, not as a kid. Um, I love this question too. I often ask it on my podcast and yeah, we didn't have lemonade stands as far as I remember in Australia actually where I grew up or anything like that. It definitely was into baseball cards. When they hit, um, Australia, there was a brief sort of basketball card, baseball card run and there'd be like flea markets I don't know if you have flea markets in the States, actually, but. Yeah, you know.

Speaker A: No, we do. Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. And you'd sell them there and buy them there. And, you know, I was into that and trading them a little bit, but honestly, it wasn't until probably 18, 19, when I was like, okay, I'm an adult, got to figure out some kind of way to make an income, that business became clearly the best choice. Uh, before that, I wanted money, don't get me wrong. But there wasn't any kind of obvious entrepreneurial streak, especially because there weren't any role models in my family for it either. I didn't see it as a path. You know, my dad was an academic, my mom was quite academic as well and had sort of odd jobs here and there, but no one had really built something that they'd call even like, you know, a local mom and pop store kind of situation. So they didn't have those examples, really.

Speaker A: That's interesting. Like, I grew up in a family entrepreneur, so for somebody to take that path after not having that, I just, like, growing up, I didn't know any different, if that makes sense. And then for somebody to come from a completely different background and still go forward, that takes a lot of guts and a lot of, uh, you know, because it's not an easy path. Right. It never is. Um, so what was the moment that you decided, hey, you know what? I don't want to work for somebody else. Like, I just want to do my own thing. Like, what was it that set off that idea in your head? Like, were you, I don't know, at school or working at a job, and you're like, this is not for me. I want to do my own thing. How did that happen?

Speaker B: I think it's totally because of school, honestly. The fact that I had to get up, uh, 6:00am, 6:30, alarm clock, to catch two buses and a train to get to school, to study stuff that I didn't choose to study, to spend my life basically five days a week there without the choice. I know ultimately I could have quit, but it just. I didn't know where to go afterwards. So my orientation around life was, let's never do that again, therefore, let's never get a job. Let's never have a boss. Um, plus there's also that I understand, to make money. Like, I did at least pay attention to who was wealthy. Um, my dad talked about other wealthy people a lot. Often, like, this person won the lotto or this, like, you would hear now, someone who doesn't Understand business, talks about Bill Gates or whatever, Jeff Bezos today, they just kind of mention them like these rich people, but don't really understand what they did to get there. But I was interested in it. So I read a book by Richard Branson. It's a lot of people's intro to that kind of entrepreneurial spirit with Losing um, My Virginity, I think was his first book and is a sequel more recently. Um, and then there are a few other kind of specific money books like the Richest man in Babylon, um, the One Minute Millionaire, kind of traditional wealth creation mindset, obviously. Uh, what is it? Um, the most famous one, um, Think and Grow Rich. All those, they had an influence on me. And then really though, the practical influence, those are more money mindset. Let's focus on controlling my income and building assets. So I was starting to read that 18, 19, 20, 21, not sure what to do. There was a case of just good luck because I entered university when I was 18 in 1998. And if people know their Internet history, there was something going on in the late 90s with the Internet. It was like the Internet was, um, becoming an adult for business.com bubble period. So I was totally exposed to the idea of Internet business. I was 18, so, 18 in 1998. So it was perfect timing. I mean, I was getting to see the dawn of a new form of electronic commerce while I was trying to figure out what kind of business, uh, I might one day start. So automatically I gravitated towards the Internet because of that. Plus, let's keep it simple. My first Internet account that was on, um, broadband came from being enrolled in university. You got a free first, it was dial up and then you got a faster account. So I wouldn't have necessarily played with the Internet as much if it wasn't for being at university, which is the only thing I'm really grateful for. University, not my studies, it's the access to the Internet that it gave me.

Speaker A: 98, 98 was my last year of high school. So like I was, you know, we're in the same pretty much the same age, I guess. So, uh, yeah, I remember that like it was yesterday. I remember, uh, you know, how I was becoming popular and uh, I remember saying, like, I got to do something with this. I have to do something with this. And then I went away to school, started partying, and Napster came along. So that's what I did. I downloaded a bunch of music. But I always wanted to start a website. I just didn't at the time because again, I was too Distracted with everything else. But you did it, right? I mean, back then it was super complicated and expensive too. So what was the first website?

Speaker B: So I got my start in a card game. I played a game called Magic the Gathering, which because we're the same age, you probably know. Um, yeah, so it was going through its first renaissance around then. It was professional tournaments were being played. I got into it at 16 years old when a body brought to high school hit my wheelhouse. I love competition and I love fantasy, so dragons, elves. But you can also win poker. Perfect. Uh, got into it and then the Internet became sort of the first.

Speaker A: My friend tried to teach me how to play magic and I was just like, I don't get it, I don't get it. But I mean, people loved it.

Speaker B: I mean, it still is huge. Yeah, it's still huge right now. It's online and there's like a professional tournament series that's way bigger than when I played, so. But I did get interested. In fact, I was the first person in my friendship circle that decided to go to a tournament and play competitively. And then because of that, um, and it's funny, I actually came third in the amateur division in that tournament. So obviously it's like lit a fire on me competitively. Um, there was a huge scene in this little date, this conversation in newsgroups, uh, so kind of like bulletin boards.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So a lot of the card talk, so the strategy and the putting together decks for tournaments, the talk happened on those news groups. So that's where I first got into, I guess, a serious hobby online. And then naturally I built a website about the card game as my first website as well. And again, this will date us, but GeoCities was that first version of the website. So, you know, very free website builder.

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Speaker A: I cashed out my entire 401k thinking

Speaker B: someone stole my identity.

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Speaker B: eventually got a domain name, bought a proper website and coded uh, HTML myself. Bought myself a textbook and teach yourself HTML in 24 hours and coded it up.

Speaker A: Yeah, a course on HTML in college. Yeah I remember that.

Speaker B: It's hard. I wasn't a coder, um, but I learned enough to do a Fairly a good 1990s level kind of website. And then it turned into a little, not like a full time business but certainly a side hustle. So I sold my own cards there. I started buying cards at wholesale and selling them at retail. So I had an E commerce store, had some advertisers, some sponsors of the site and then the smartest thing I ever did was I added a forum, um, figured out how to install some software and then these other guys were just coming in there every day and they were trading and talking and it became kind of like the main trading site for, for the Australian, New Zealand kind of community of the gathering players. I made maybe 500 bucks a month um, during its peak so it was pretty good. While I was in university as a side hustle income, that's pretty awesome.

Speaker A: I always joke around like man, if I could go back in time with the knowledge that I have now, oh

Speaker B: my God, I would just buy domain names. I would be buying every domain name I could get. That's the first thing I would do.

Speaker A: It's just there's so many opportunities back then. It's just. Yeah, with me it was, I was just distracted man. I was distracted because um, one, my dad still had his business so in my head I was always going to work for him and it was already a huge company.

Speaker B: Uh, what was it, what was the business?

Speaker A: It was an oil. Oil and construction and steel. Like it was, it's been a family business for like, like two generations so.

Speaker B: But um, very offline.

Speaker A: Yeah, very offline. So my mind, I, I just liked the whole world about being online. I knew it was going to be something but I never took the time to actually concentrate on it because again I had like I talked about this before on here like in my head I was like something happens, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to work for him and whatever take over the company or whatever at some point and that was not the case because that didn't happen. He retired. So, uh, but even, honestly, even if you want, it's not something I'm into whatsoever. So I would have said no. Like, it was just like, I can't do this. Um, and then. But back then I was just. I was just distracted, man. I was distracted with the partying, I was distracted, uh, with cars. That was my m. Thing, cars. I was obsessed with cars and wanted to do, uh, some. And my first business was around cars, cars restoration and stuff like that. So I enjoyed that a lot. But, you know, back then I had no idea the potential of it like we do now. You know, I mean, I just didn't see it.

Speaker B: Funny you mentioned cars, because the same time I started my blog, my first one, which is a few years after the story we've been talking about, a friend of mine started a car blog, uh, and he was just really into cars. He started getting free test drives to review the cars, all the way to the point where he got to drive a Bugatti in Europe on this amazing trip with his buddies.

Speaker A: That's awesome.

Speaker B: And it became a real business. In fact, they got venture capital, um, they ended up selling, uh, 10 years later for $65 million in Australia. So it was like, hu. That was a great niche. A great niche.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's so cool, man. No, I love hearing stories like this because it really gives you a different perspective that it all comes down to where you're at mentally. Like, you can see it. If you're paying attention, you'll see it. And if you have that, um, if you're on top of your game, I should say, if you're on top of your game and your goal is to succeed and do whatever it takes and that's your sole focus, then every time you see an opportunity, like now, you know, now it's obvious. Like, if I see. Like when TikTok came out, I called it right away, I'm like, this is it, let's go.

Speaker B: What's next? What are you calling right now?

Speaker A: Yeah, what's next? Right? But back then I was so distracted by a million other things that it just like, literally flew past me. And, uh, you know, people say it's like, oh, man, if I would have been back then I would have started, you know, I could have started Facebook because I knew how to write code and all that. I'm like, that's not how it works. You know, it's like crypto. How many people are going to be. Look back at crypto and I'll be like, I wish I was there. You know, like, you know how many people pass on Bitcoin? Uh, I passed on it in 2010. I didn't start buying it until, like, I think it was like 2016 or something like that.

Speaker B: Still a good time.

Speaker A: Yeah, but you. Because, you know, it's easy to say when you know what's going to happen, but when you're in the middle of it and, you know, you don't have tons of disposable income to throw around, you know, because you got to live real life. Yeah. You can't just go back. It's like, oh, yeah, I would have put all my money on bitcoin. Like, no, I mean, very few people had the bulge to do that, you

Speaker B: know, and it's such a good point. I remember, like a few times I've done interviews now versus say 15 years ago, 10 years ago. I didn't have capital to just throw into things. Ah. Whether it's a gamble like cryptocurrency, or even if it's like starting some kind of software company. Um, I'm not a developer myself too, so I want to start a SaaS company. I have to hire someone. So. Yeah, you might have the idea for Facebook, but unless I went the venture capital route to build that, and we know how many other Facebooks have we never heard about that were started and failed, and there's only one winner in the space right now. It's Facebook. Of, uh, course there's Instagram and then there's TikTok and Snapchat and so on. But really, unless you have either the skill set yourself to sit there and code it, you're in the right place at the right time. Like you're in Stanford or something.

Speaker A: Takes luck, too.

Speaker B: Yeah, or money.

Speaker A: Part of it is luck.

Speaker B: So. Yeah, it's not a guarantee. Um, I think one of the better examples, though is like, oh, yeah, if I just bought, I don't know, like all these dot com domain names in the 90s, then sure, they appreciated in value. Yes. If you bought Bitcoin and then Ethereum, there was all these opportunities. You could have bought Google. And Google floated on the stock market, just constant. There's always something like that happening.

Speaker A: In my defense, I did tell my dad to buy Google and Yahoo back in the day. He did not listen to me, so I still throw that one around the Thanksgiving dinner. Uh, so, okay, so you did the. The gathering, the website. You were making some money on it. And what was after that? What came after?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I was getting close to graduating. I think I had about a year to go. And I was still totally following the dot com boom, which I think then turned the dot com bust as we know, like around 2001. Uh, but I was still totally interested in tech. And one of the books I read was the story of ebay, uh, the founder Pierre Omidyar and sort of that background story. And what I loved about the story was it was a marketplace model. You've got buyers, you've got sellers, and you've got a person or company in the middle that takes a transaction fee to bring people together. What I didn't like about my card game business was these tiny profit margins and tiny audience, niche product that I sold, niche topics. So I was like, I need to get in something where there's a better profit margin. And I was excited about this middleman potential business. I called it like the many to many business model. Same time as that idea came to me, I was studying a few different things and this is going to sound funny, but Yahoo had a print magazine back then, so. They did. They did, yeah. Um, it was in Australia. They're called news agencies. I don't know, um, here in Canada we don't have them. It's like where you buy a newspaper from, right. Remember back in the day when you bought magazines and newspapers in the store? So Yahoo had a print one and I picked up often just read it and there was an article in there about this guy who was running a company called, I think it was SA Edge. And uh, basically as you know, to get into university in the States, you often have to write an entrance essay as part of your submission to go to that university. His company was an editing service for people writing those entry essays. And it was doing amazing. And it was like a dot com story. A young kid in his Harvard dorm running a company doing phone calls. He was taking ad bookings as well as selling his services. So I liked the idea and I thought I could apply this to Australia a little differently though. What I noticed in Australia we had a lot of international students. Their English wasn't great. I was experiencing this doing papers in a group environment in my studies. And uh, the English wasn't great. If we had to combine four people's writing together, you had to edit so much. So I thought let's put together, um, essentially an editing company. And obviously I'm shrinking the story. It started as a language translation service. At one point it was something else, but eventually became an essay editing company called Betteredit. And I connected contract university professors and PhD grads. They provided an editing service to often international students studying at Australia or Canada or America. And it wasn't writing of papers, it was proofreading and then a critique of feedback just helping them to express their ideas better. And, and it was so niche. Uh, I went to university campuses and put up posters. I did a bit of Google optimization and slowly but surely, uh, in university and then in the years after it, as my main business it grew to like a full time income. Like during the peak we do about 100 grand a year, uh, in revenue. But the best.

Speaker A: That's so awesome. And I love hearing these stories from like, you know, from somebody who went through it, actually did stuff with it. Like I mean think about it like when people say like you know, everything's saturated, like who like else thinks about this? You know what I'm saying? I mean now you see it but back then you know, it was fairly new man. And it's like that. This is the kind of thinking, I don't want to really say critical thinking but this is a kind of a. Hey everybody, lady luck here. And we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now all summer long I'm going to be celebrating by playing on Spinfoil, which is an American owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble crafts. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

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Speaker A: I cashed out my entire 401k thinking

Speaker B: someone stole my identity.

Speaker A: A uh, fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen. When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem, it's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Money Lion. See it in action@gendigital.com um, mindset that you have to have, especially when you know, when you're talking crypto big now obviously, but it's nothing yet. Trust me when I tell you that like, and you got to think about people, all most people, 99% of people, I would say 95% of people, what they see is crypto because of the currency. But if you start thinking of the blockchain and what can be done with the blockchain? That's when some amazing ideas, you know, can come out of. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. I'm loving the defi space right now, just looking at the projects.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so you came up, uh, you called the blog that changed your life, which I love.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: Okay, so what happened? What happened? You did you keep growing it? What happened? How much did it grow?

Speaker B: So, yeah, uh, it was a lifestyle business, I guess the best way to put it. It was completely digital, so I was able to travel with it. That was my ultimate goal, I guess when I was in 1819, I wanted an income stream that I could traveled with around the world that didn't have an alarm clock. Um, and it took a while. I had to build a team. I had to hire someone to manage email for that company, which kind of connects to my story today.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I was going to say, here we go.

Speaker B: That was day one when I first experienced it. And it's a long time ago, but that broke me free from running it because that person who I trained to do my email, they were doing customer service and they connected my contract editors with my clients. So I wasn't in the inbox processing email all day long, which was a big job for that company. Uh, and I found myself with a lot of spare time once I completely delegated that company, um, to the email manager. And, uh, it wasn't like I was rich, but I had enough to pay for rent and food. So that's when I started exploring other things. And it was again, just timing. This is like 2004. And this buddy of mine says, hey, have you heard of blogs? They're great for getting search traffic from Google. Maybe you should make one for your editing company. I didn't know what a blog was. Um, bearing in mind no social media. This was the first piece of social media technology ever invented. This idea of writing a blog and then having someone leave a comment and interacting with you. So I went and found some blogs. I looked at them. I go, this looks like a website. I understand the difference. Ended, uh, up installing some software to run a blog on my editing company. I tried to write about editing and proofreading to attract my target customer. But I really hated writing about how to get good grades and essays and stuff like that. It was really dry and boring. I lasted about three months. And then I said, you know what? I now know what a blog is. It's kind of like a journal. People can leave comments. And I know why it's good for search engines, because Google is just eating them up. They're really optimized for search and it's natural for one blogger to link to another, uh, just to share each other's ideas when they write posts. At least it was back then. It's not so much nowadays. Um, so I decided to start what was then called Entrepreneur's Journey. The domain name is Terrible Entrepreneurs journey dot com. You can tell I was not seeing that as a business. It was meant to be this kind of hobby where I'd play around with the blog and I told stories. I basically wrote these articles explaining how I built this card game business, how I was growing and built this editing business. And, uh, an audience started to show up and follow it as one of the very early entrepreneurial blogs at the time. And I didn't intend for this to happen, but I didn't call myself this at the time, but I became like a micro influencer in the entrepreneurial blogging space. To this day, I still have people come up to me and say, hey, I read your blog or listened to your podcast back then. I started a podcast at the same time. And, you know, that's kind of what was my gateway to getting along.

Speaker A: That's when you started it.

Speaker B: Wow. 05 was my first podcast episode as well. So it's a long time ago.

Speaker A: Man. That is so awesome. That is so cool.

Speaker B: I actually called it audio blogging. That's, uh, how long ago it was.

Speaker A: But that's cool. I mean, that's that you had the vision, man, from the get go. And see, that's what happens when you get in and have a little bit of success. That's when you go deep. And it's pretty much the same type of journey that I had in terms of like going deep. I call it going deep because, uh, what happened with me was I was in brick and mortar with the restoration business I just told you about. And I made some bad decisions again because I was having too much of a good time. And, um, you know, the economy crashed. That was 2009. So I was like, you know what, Shutting it down. I mean, I have people that have made money all over the place. And I knew I was, I was never going to see those checks. So I was like, I'm done. I'm taking some time off, figure out what I want to do. And then at the same time, you know, my best friends, their careers are taking off. And when I was in, you know, I'm a very competitive person and I was the one they looked up to. And all of a Sudden I'm just like, on the ground. And then, um, that's when the whole thing, it's like, I gotta get this. I gotta go online. I have to figure. Because I need a. The thing that I always tell people is like, I always had it in my head. The only thing that was in my head is like, I need to start a website. I need to do something online. I know I can make money online. I just have to figure it out because I'm a computer guy, so I was a kid, you know, I built my own computers and all that.

Speaker B: Did you feel, uh, like you were late to the game starting around 2010?

Speaker A: I still, I still, I still feel like I'm late to the game, even though that I know I'm not. But it feels that way because again, now that I have the knowledge that I've gained in the past, you know, what has it been a decade now and a little bit over. It's, you know, what I've learned in the past decade is times. I call it times five than going to college and getting a doctorate. I mean, the amount of books and money that I put my own money that I put into it, and successes and failures and just going super deep. I, um, mean, you can't replace that education with anything else. So it's a matter of, like, whatever comes our way, I can take advantage of one way and another if I really want to. So that right there is priceless. But back then I felt like I was super late, you know, so, you know, I took some time off. And I've told the story here before. I, uh, was. I was. I actually got a job with a company, helping them with the marketing, uh, here in South Florida. And they screwed me over because I just got tired of doing nothing. And I wasn't just going to start a business just to start a business. Uh, I was just burning through cash. And living in Fort Lauderdale is not cheap downtown. It's like. And a person like me who likes to go out all the time, yeah, you gotta pay for that. So I was like, I'll do something for now. And it just so happened that I started working with this company and they own two websites. Um, and that's how I got my little tape again luck. It just so happened that they specialize only online. And I got a job with them with marketing, uh, and sales. And, um, that's when I got a little taste of like, oh, so this is how this works. And then they screwed me over. And that was like the fire that I needed inside of Me till I was like, you know what now? Uh, I know, like, boom. And I just went head in first, and then again comes back to luck. I would have never. I mean, maybe I would have learned Facebook ads at some point, but after that happened, I think it was like, not even a week or two after it happened, I came across a post from one of my friends who did their first Facebook ads course. And I was like, I like Facebook. I'm on Facebook all the time. Like, if I can make money with Facebook, sign me up. And I found, uh, the person who created the course, which is. His name is Dom Wilson. We're friends now, and I paid $300 for it, and the rest is history, man. I went deeper from that. I went into, you know, learning marketing from obviously, Russell Brunson, Dan Kennedy, um, Ugly, you know, all the big copywriting guys. Um, and that's. I just kept learning. It went perfect with sales because I was always good at sales. And once I put two and two together and then me knowing how to develop brands and all that, I was like, all right, I need to start. I have. I want to have my own fashion line. At one point, I started. You know, that's when I launched my first Shopify store. And then that's when I learned not to detach emotionally from everything. And that's when it really started clicking that, listen, you don't have to be passionate about it. You just got to love what you do. And then it didn't take me long to figure out that I loved building it, the brands and building the whole business around it and running it and making it successful and, you know, helping others while I was on that track. And it wasn't so much about the product. Uh, uh, the only thing I care about is, like, quality products. I didn't care if it was, you know, a pair of leggings or, uh, I don't know, something for your car. You know what I mean? It was just like, as long as the product was quality and I will get those emails and those reviews about how much people love them. That just made my day. That made my whole day worth it. And it just kept going from there. And it's, you know, build multiple brands and it's fun, man. It's really cool. Oh, I have, um, had no luck, uh, lately.

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Speaker A: But it's again, it's a mixture of going deep, like focusing and keeping that fire alive, that burning inside of you alive. Because what happens is I noticed this with a lot of my, uh, not so much my friends, but I want to say, like, people that I know that, you know, they go to school, they graduate and they become, I don't know, financial advisor. Just, I'm just throwing something out there because my best friend's won. So that's the first one that came to my head. Or a doctor, you know. Well, doctors are always learning, but you know what I'm saying, Like, they stop learning new things. It's like, okay, I have my career. I'm, um, the VP of, I don't know, sales or whatever. And it's like, unless they, they're forced to do some training from the corporation in house, they never pick up a book again on sales. You know what I mean? Like, most people just drop it. And it's like, if there's one thing I'm going to teach my kids from day one and I already have like the library, you know, that accumulated from all the books that have changed my life. It's like, here's the basics, here's this, here's that. I just want you to read them. What you do in a knowledge is up to you, but I want you to have the foundation that you will never have to rely on, on anyone to make a penny. Because if you read these books, uh, you know they're going to help you for the rest of your life. That's the way I look at it. So it's like you, you kept learning, you kept evolving with your businesses and then one idea led to another. For all I know. I don't know what could happen with me, you know, 15 years from now. Who knows? Man, technology moves so quickly. Like, we don't know what's going to happen with you.

Speaker B: But yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm interested in crypto like you. I not having the development skill is always a challenge. Like the beauty of the early days that we were talking about before, it's like, I want to build a website. I could buy a book, teach yourself HTML. And that was probably the extent of my programming skill set. I tried to learn JavaScript and it was too much.

Speaker A: But think about it this way, you know what I admire that you completely went out of your way to. To make it happen because it wasn't as accessible as it is nowadays.

Speaker B: No, it was definitely harder for me,

Speaker A: you know, to learn this world. It was just a coincidence and luck that I just happened to work with that company. I left them, um, and I saw. Literally, I saw the post. Like, I think it was the same week. It just happened to cross my newsfeed from m. A friend that's in the other side of the country. I mean, it's just some things I just meant to happen. You know what I mean? It's just like, who knows? Maybe if I was doing something else that day, if I was the beach, I would have missed the post that time. There was no Facebook on my phone. It was on my desktop.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Definitely A lot of luck in all of this, that's for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, m. All right, so I know we got sidetracked there. So inboxdone.com you just said that you had the assistant running all your emails and all that stuff. So the light bulb went off at some point, I'm assuming.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it sort of connect the dots of the story. That blog I started became an education business that I probably ran full time, going deep, like you said, for a good decade, ten years. Uh, and that's also when I studied some of the stuff you're talking about. I started studying Jay Abraham and Rich Sheffrin and Eben Pagan and Jeff Walker. Uh, Russell Brunson probably had a book in there somewhere too. I was just learning direct response marketing and copywriting and funnel building and all that. And I wanted to take that into my information marketing business. So selling courses and then a membership site, ebooks, that sort of thing. And yeah, you know, did like $2 million in sales over a decade. All my own content, all my own courses and things like that. So it was just a really fun business to run. Completely digital. I sat in cafes and wrote most of the time. That was like my day job. So I loved it. Had a small team. Uh, at one point, I had three people on my email and customer service. So there was always that connection to this idea that you shouldn't be the one doing your email. But it didn't turn into a business. I had to really fully complete this coaching business and feel like I taught everything I wanted to teach and create everything I wanted to create. Um, really realize you probably do this too. You learn, ah, a new idea like, oh, I've never tested that upsell before. Or that upsell, downsell combination or this sense of urgency or. I've never done a product launch with affiliates. I was like, I want to do all these things and see how it all goes.

Speaker A: That's all I am. I have a. I literally have a whiteboard with like either a new idea or new thought or whatever just goes on that whiteboard and it stays there forever until I get around that actually do it.

Speaker B: I've done the same thing. So I haven't done everything that's on that whiteboard, so to speak, but I still.

Speaker A: Me neither. Absolutely not.

Speaker B: I did a lot of things.

Speaker A: There's tons in there.

Speaker B: A lot. A lot were tested. You know, some worked.

Speaker A: Sorry, do you do the thing, like. I know I do this thing where like, some of them will, will hit me and I'll write on the, on the board. And then like, I don't know, three days later, four days later, I walk by and I'm like, that is stupid. So, like, you think it's the greatest idea ever. And then like four days later I'm like, no, that's dumb. And then just delete it right away.

Speaker B: I think the, the more common thing I would do is I'd go and buy a domain name for an idea. You know, sometimes it was just like, for a new product. Yeah. So I've definitely gone through a number of domain names. And then a year later I'm like, why, why am I, you know, not renewing? Not renewing. Um, but, you know, I did feel like I. And I still have that coaching business, but it's not really my main project. So about five years ago or so, um, I'm kind of winding down coaching. I'd moved to Canada, I traveled through San Francisco and Asia, left Australia and really said, I'm leaving Australia now, I'm moving away. And I didn't necessarily know what I was going to do next, but I always had that idea in the back of my head that people spend too much time in email. I haven't had this problem for so long. For some reason, it's not something that people decide to outsource. They kind of need to be told that it's available. Um, you know, more advanced marketers, bigger companies, they have executive assistance, they have customer support teams. But it's so uncommon for a founder, CEO, C suite manager type person or like, you know, someone running an accountancy practice or a dentistry. They still have email and they still spend a lot of time in there. So I wanted to test the idea properly and I had this opportunity to start a new business. That combined with one other key thing. One of my email assistants, her name was Claire, she was showing a lot of signs of leadership and I was like, this person is hungry for more and she's good at this job. So this is the perfect co founder because she can deliver the service. I have the audience to find. The first customer approached her, she said, yes, I'm totally up for a test. I know it's just a test. Let's see if we can get one or two customers. Which, uh, we did. So we ended up promoting to my own audience. Basically, simple message wrote an email saying, hey, would you like the people who manage Yarrow's email to manage yours? Uh, about five people showed interest. Two of them ended up being a good fit. We signed them on and then we learned like, can we charge money for this at a profitable rate? Um, can the system that works for my email be applied to different business emails and different people? Uh, is it scalable? Can we hire more people? You, uh, know, run an agency sort of model around that? The short answer is yes. It worked for the two test people. And then we started hiring more assistants, ramping up our marketing. And then it's been actually very surprising because I thought we'd end up getting a lot of online coach, information marketer type people. And we did initially because that was my audience. But then once we kind of exhausted that audience and we started reaching out and getting some word of mouth, we had accountants sign up and then angel investment, venture capitalists, real estate agents, uh, owner of restaurants, owner of a car sales lot. Not any consistent industry, but all the same type of person, super busy, wants to get their time back, spends the morning all day at work and then at night in the inbox, using it as a to do list. They need an executive assistant as well for calendar management, you know, admin, task invoicing, data entry, all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, we just started rolling it out and a lot of it's become. The growth has come from word of mouth. Uh, and thankfully, you know, once you've broken free from email, it's like flying first class. You never want to go back. So a lot of our clients.

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Speaker A: Yeah, like, a lot of my stuff is out of my automated, you know, and I have people who manage a lot of stuff, like systems and processes in place and all that stuff. But, um, um, I'm still the one who handles my email. Um, but to be honest with you, my, my personal. My email, it's, ah, I guess it's because we use Slack a lot too, and then other, you know, other tools. But believe it or not, my personal email is mostly like stuff that I want to read, you know, like newsletters that I subscribe to and stuff like that. Of course, the usual stuff that you got to take care of. So let me ask you something. Like, for somebody like me, it'll be really hard to let go of my email. So what is that? How do you guys make that transition easy for somebody to let it go? Like, is it a hard transition? Like, what's the process behind that? Uh, I mean, if you can talk about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it depends on the personality. Like, some people just can't deal with the idea of not seeing their email. They'll never let go. They'll have to be that person. Um, we have one of our earliest clients. Uh, you might know him, Justin Brook. He's big in the. Yeah, right. So he's one of our first clients. Um, he came to us and said, I hear you manage email.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know Justin. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: And he came to us and he said, I never want to go into my inbox again, but I do want to know.

Speaker A: Oh, this is when he wanted to disconnect. When he went to his disconnect, uh, phase where I was like, I'm going to disconnect from everything maybe.

Speaker B: Yeah. Ah, I don't really. I didn't know his. I know he was doing the RV life. Like that was the early start of that, where he was traveling around with the rv.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's what. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, so that's funny that he came to you to, uh. So how did that go?

Speaker B: Well, he was fun because a, he was totally ready to let go. Um, he was like you, though. He said, I got to still see my newsletter content. There's, um, certain people I follow I want to read, but I don't have to read it in my email. If someone could just collect it, drop a document into Slack once a week and I can just batch process that content. That'll make it even. I'll save 10 minutes, just going from one email to the next, plus all the other stuff. We started, um, doing anything and everything that was going through his inbox because he said never want to go into the inbox again. So that meant what we had to build a system for replying to every email that he doesn't need to reply to, getting the information that he needs to get, and still getting some replies from him, because there still would be a need to get him to an answer, a question. So he might write a, uh, quick Slack message with an answer, and then his assistant will take that and write it an email and customize it and send it. But what we always do for our clients, like we did for Justin, is we build a system, like a knowledge base around it. So the idea is we step in and we try and learn as much as we can about you and we try and clone you. So if this was, like, for you, Christian, we'd assign you two assistants. So we always assign two for every client because we want to offer redundancy. It's horrible if someone gets sick or someone quits and you have to go retrain them, you have to take over doing all that work again while they're learning. So we always provide two so we can have that backup. And what they would do together is duplicate you, clone you. So learn everything they can about you. Learn your communication style, understand your business, all the roles you perform, all the key players that you connect with, other team members, partners, affiliates, whatever it is, and, uh, just understand the whole ecosystem of what it is to be you. Plus, of course, they'll just study your inbox and your sent folder for what you're dealing with on a daily basis, how you reply. They'll build templates, they'll build folders, they'll build rules, they'll build reminders, and then the fun starts. They'll actually start replying to your emails for you, but they'll write drafts first so you can take a look. Because it's uncomfortable to have someone write emails for you if you've never done it before. It's something you got to get used to. So you go through that experience. But usually it takes about a week, and then you get comfortable with them writing drafts, and then they can start sending them without you being involved. Then that's pretty much it from that point forward. You might speak to them once a day or once a week on Slack or a phone call, but they're in there Every day being your frontline defense so, you know, you don't have to have that mental stress about, am I missing something in the inbox? Am I not replying fast enough? Um, all that.

Speaker A: I just, I'm just like, I'm smiling here because I'm just trying to think of somebody going through my sent folder of, like, my favorite's. Like, people freak out because my emails are literally straight to the point. One line or two lines. Like, I don't do the whole like, hey, so and so, I hope you're having a fantastic day as per our last email. You know, that corporate speech. My, uh, the way I write emails, it's like literally like, hey, what do we do here? Do this. That's it. And then if you know me, you know my personality, you know, like, I mean that with a smile and I'm in a good mood. It's not that I don't want to be, you know, it's just funny. I feel like people sometimes, like when I. When they don't know me, they're like, is everything okay? I'm like, yeah, everything's cool. Like, that's just me. Just one line. That's it. That's how I talk. You know what I mean?

Speaker B: I've had the same problem.

Speaker A: There's no need to drag it out for three paragraphs, and you don't need to do the same for me. Um, but I'm very disciplined, though, when it comes to my email too. Like, uh, I learned from one of my mentors a long time ago to not be glued to my inbox all day long. So I'll check it, you know, twice a day, maybe three if it's like a crazy day. But it's just like, everything's in folders and it's like, you know, here's important, people. You know, it's all. At least I think it's, you know, it's for efficiency for me. So I go in there and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But, you know, a lot of the stuff that we do, if anything, I can tell right now that one that's the killer. Uh, it's Slack. Slack can get out of control with, like, multiple partnerships and all that stuff. It can be really time consuming. So maybe you should extend your services to that too.

Speaker B: Well, it sounds like you've just taken what used to happen in email and you've moved it into slack pretty much.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So. But that's really cool, man. That's really cool. Listen, we're out of time already. I joke around. Like I love podcasts like this because they fly by. So, um, uh, obviously the service is there. So if you're one of those people that are super busy and you want to take control because literally, like you don't know how much time you're spending until you're in your email, until you actually start tracking it. And then add the phone time on it too, because people forget that they check it on their phone too. Uh, so I'm sure you've done studies on that. But, uh, for those of you guys that are interested in this, go to, uh, inboxdone.com um, Yara, what else, man? Where can people find you?

Speaker B: The blog is the best place. So Y a r o blog and all my content's there around my coaching business. Um, my angel investments are listed there. Inbox done is listed there. All the stories are there. My uh, newsletter is there as well. And of course it links to all the social and so on.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I will have all the links in the description as well. But Remember, go to inboxdon, uh.com and if you want a team behind you to take care of your, all your email and all that stuff so you can concentrate on things that matter, go for it, man. Aaron's an amazing guy, as you guys can tell from this episode. And uh, I hope to have you again, man. Until next time, thank you.

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