How to create your inbox management system so you don’t have to check email again with Yaro Starak

Co-founder at InboxDone, Angel Investor and Digital Nomad – Yaro Starak

I’m excited to have the amazing Yaro Starak back on the show. Yaro runs an awesome blog called Entrepreneurs-journey.com and also has a lot of companies under his belt.

In this episode, he talks about his new business InboxDone.com, which is a white label email management service for busy entrepreneurs and professionals!

InboxDone was designed to help other people break free from managing their own email, using their proven customer service and sales processes, developed over years of email management.

Few things you will learn from this episode:

• The email management system that no longer requires you!
• How to perfect your inbox management system.
• How to free up several hours during the week by doing this one thing.
• How to set up timeline, testers, and price for a new business.

Yaro’s Websites:

InboxDone.com
Yaro.blog

View Yaro’s profile on LinkedIn

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime Masters:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire! I am Jaime Masters, and I am so excited to have Yaro Starak back on the show. Back from 2012, he now has a brand new business called InboxDone, which I?m super excited to talk to you about. Thanks so much for coming back on the show!

Yaro Starak:	Thanks for having me, Jaime. Happy to be here.  

Jaime Masters:	We were just talking about number one, 2012, very long time, right? And you?ve had a few different businesses along the way, but tell me about Inbox and then we?ll maybe go back to those in just a second. 

Yaro Starak:	Certainly. Yeah, so InboxDone was born out of my own history of having someone else handle my email. It was kind of like the final step in the breaking free from being trapped to a computer and being able to travel and all that. And I had someone on my email for like 10 years. It was just something I thought everyone did, but I started having conversations with a lot of entrepreneurs, and it?s surprising how that is often something that people don?t seem to let go of. I guess it?s a very personal aspect. They don?t think about outsourcing their email. 

People do it for tech, people do it for design, that sort of thing, but email yet we seem to spend like two hours in the morning and two hours at night clearing the inbox and it?s very rarely super productive time. So my cofounder and I who, her name is Claire, she actually has managed my own inbox for the past two years, and we thought let?s see if there is a business here, and if people want this service. That was late last year, and yeah we launched InboxDone.com with our first two trial clients initially just to see if people liked it, how we could go entering someone?s inbox. 

It does kind of feel like you?re walking into someone?s personal space and making sure you can communicate and sound in a way that they?re happy with. And yeah, so far it?s going great. So it?s turned out to be something that?s very old, yet is something most people don?t actually have a solution for, so we?re happy to step in and offer that. 

Jaime Masters:	Isn?t that silly? Everyone?s like oh email it sucks, we spend so much time on it. And yet there has not really been anything besides hiring a VA and trying to train them yourself, which is also a pain in the butt. No offense, because I hope people do that too. Just in terms of get a VA and train them, and they?re like, I don?t know what to tell them and what. Okay, so these are all the questions I typically get, so I?m gonna ask them to you and you can enlighten everyone, right? 

	So do they keep the same personal email address or are you creating a separate customer service box for them or how does that work? 

Yaro Starak:	It?s fairly tailored, so everyone?s email is different, and it?s like some people it?s a customer service role, some people it?s an organizational role, doing your calendar, just responding, sometimes it?s just collecting information and summarizing it, like collecting email newsletters and giving people a digest. Most of the time the ultimate goal is to get you not doing email, so I personally only do my own email once a month, and on a day-to-day basis, all the customer service is done by my email people. There?s a folder in my email with the arrow on it. That?s the folder I check once a month, which might have 10 emails built up after a month long ?

Jaime Masters:	10 emails. I love it. Everyone?s like we hate you right now. No, but okay so question, where do you ? do you have a separate personal inbox for yourself and then you have a business inbox? 

Yaro Starak:	I?ve always had a family and friends email account, obviously, but there?s no need to even outsource that. It doesn?t get a lot of messages. It?s more like a doctor appointment, that sort of stuff. The business one though, it?s getting 50 emails a day sometimes, so that ? basically a person steps in, they get access to your account, they go in there ? obviously the first step is coming up with filters and folders, if you haven?t got that in place. Communication wise, to answer your question, some of our clients do have a separate email, and they just want only the things that they have to deal with forwarded to them. 

Others say I never wanna go into my inbox ever again, so just post in Slack what I need to know about. So if you have a question for me, ?How do I answer this?? do it in Slack. There are other options. You can do like a voicemail or a phone call. You can have a ? other text based communications. We have a client with What?s App as kind of their preferred method, so it?s very flexible. I mean in the day it?s like the goal again, get you out of your inbox. It?s actually one of the hardest things, is the letting go process and being okay with someone replying to your messages. 

That?s why we have kind of a transition period where we?re doing drafts first, and then you?re approving them, and then once you?re comfortable with us doing this, we can reply directly and you?re out, ideally. 

Jaime Masters:	We?re like addicted ? or I should say I, not we, I am addicted. I went to my parent?s camp that has no internet, and I was still checking Gmail. There was no ? it would fail every time, and I automatically would do it, which is not good. And I don?t even ? I have somebody that does my email, and I still check my email way too much. So tell me more about how I can actually let go of it? Is it the processes, I feel comfortable with the filters or how do I actually like know? 

Yaro Starak:	I mean this is a process I went through myself. I was obviously in charge of my own business, and I was like can I first of all come up with some systems, then can I hire someone? How can I do this? So I actually went straight and hired someone, and I thought the best way to do this would be to hand over my email to a person, and they create the systems for me based on the ? how they?re gonna deal with my email. So that?s kind of what we do nowadays, like some people already have their own filters. Most people have some kind of folder structure in place. But to be honest, that?s not the hard part, really. 

That?s just the structure, that?s not the ? like the human element is that ? the empathy, the communication skills, the ability to kind of tailor the way you reply to a message. That?s something you kinda have to learn, like we have a mandatory 30 day training period where we?re learning how does Jaime write? What does she normally reply to her messages? 

Jaime Masters:	Lots of exclamation points and really bad grammar. That?s ? and smiley faces is what I do.   

Yaro Starak:	Right, like grammar. 

Jaime Masters:	So let me ask you that though, because that ? I have a ve ? I don?t care, so I have a very unique style, right? And so, the issue that I?ve come up with is my assistant doesn?t write like that, and that?s fine because I don?t know that I want somebody to pretend they?re me. So what she does is she?ll forward me the ones that I need to reply to, and I just send it to her and then she sends it to them. So, they still don?t have my email, but Jaime said this, and not always, but I get a lot of email as you know. So how do you ? are you just trying to get the tonality of what the business is like and then you say that you?re someone else or you?re pretending to be that person? 

Yaro Starak:	I mean I do ? I think most people just see it as like a front line. It?s not an attempt to replicate them. I mean we did have one client who wanted us to actually be them and sign off as them. That requires learning through voice, but I mean in my case ? going back on my history, I wanted someone to step in and first deal with the incoming messages, which can be templated. Once you?ve built up a structure, there are very little common questions. How do I find this download? How much is your product? What do I get in the product? Where is this resource? 

All those kinds of everyday questions. Those can be templated, a little bit of tailoring when you send it, but away you go. For me though the really important thing was what can we do with the person beyond the reactive emails to the more proactive stuff? Because I don?t know about you Jaime, I often get people asking me about my products, and I was like, I reply to them, but I feel like I should reply to them seven times over the next three weeks. 

[Crosstalk]

Jaime Masters:	Remember how you wanted this thing? Yeah that?s prospects, those are amazing. 

Yaro Starak:	Oh yeah [inaudible] [00:07:40] process, so I wanted the people that handled my email to do that and come up with systems. So, yeah they obviously needed to learn about my products and know how to sell it. But then it was a case of actually coming up with seven to 10 part follow-up sequence that actually will be triggered based on time to chase out people. So, it can be very active, that should be step one. Proactive is I think also where you can potentially make more money and actually pay for itself in a lot of ways. 

Dealing with refunds, we came up with a system for that to sort of minimize refunds, avoid cancellations on membership sites, things like that. So, it?s a very organic process because your business no doubt?s complicated and you have to kind of learn what works: What people expect? What are their trigger points? What are their emotional needs and that sort of thing? And that takes a bit of learning. 

Jaime Masters:	I love it. Okay, so this is ? I?m infatuated with systems because I think every ? especially because I work with so many different types of clients, they have almost the same systems people. I mean the canned responses might be a little bit tweaked, but most everything is quite similar, surprisingly. So what other systems do you have? You have like the refund, but isn?t that like technically the way that the business owner should be doing it, not necessarily the customer service? Like you guys are bringing the systems to them and going, ?Hey, we have one.? Is that how it works? 

Yaro Starak:	We have the capability of building one for people. I wouldn?t say we have one because like you said everyone?s kind of the same, but at the end of the day you?re dealing with a different need. So, I?m selling how to make money blogging courses, something like that where one of our clients for example is helping people with dissociative disorder, which is multiple personality disorders, so very ? 

Jaime Masters:	Interesting.    

Yaro Starak:	Different need in that area, right? So in that case we need to be very sensitive to the emotional needs of that person. We have to kind of learn what?s appropriate, what?s not appropriate. So, the systems in that case are still necessary. You will get people asking about can I book this person in for a coaching call? Should I buy this digital product they sell? So the structure is the same, but the topic is different. But to answer your question about systems, yeah I mean it?s the case of let?s say you came to us and said we?ve got this new product, it?s on podcasting. 

We know that people always ask about, ?How much does it cost?? How quickly will I make money from it? What technical tools do I need to get started? Every answer there is probably something that you already have an EtQ for somewhere which could then be turned into an email and templated. So it?s a case of learning about what works in your market, using the information and knowledge you probably already have, and then building out the system from there, yeah. 

Jaime Masters:	And the canned responses can get massive, right? Because I used to do this a long, long time ago and I?d be like saying the same thing over and over again, right? So then you create a bunch of canned responses. Then I had so many canned responses I forgot which canned responses I had canned responses to. Right? And they weren?t organized in the way that I wanted them to and thankfully I now have somebody else to do it, so I never have to worry about that piece. 

I definitely have canned responses, but I only have a handful right now. So how do you decide where to put all those canned ? are you guys using Gmail or ? the tech side, it starts to get cumbersome with all of this, so how do you guys deal with that? 

Yaro Starak:	You?re getting beyond my knowledge here because I?m not the one doing my email.  

Jaime Masters:	You?re not the operations person either. 

Yaro Starak:	I know we use Yesware, and I know for example from my current business, the other one not InboxDone, we have over a hundred canned responses, a hundred templates that we use, but I?m pretty sure like you it?s probably 10 that go out on a regular basis. But yeah, Yesware is the sort of the tool we currently use to kind of make and control the canned responses, but you can do it in Gmail. 

Most systems have something like that. I really think it?s ? as helpful as the tools and the technology is for the systemization, I think it?s the personal touch with knowing how to slightly alter that template to deal with whatever that person?s unique needs are based on what they?re doing. So that?s why this can?t be like a software solution. It really is a human being need. I?ve been thinking will AI replace my business one day? I don?t think it will. Maybe they?ll prove me wrong if they come up with some pretty amazing human level consciousness, but I?m pretty sure we?ll ? well I?ll always need a human to reply to another human on email, so. 

Jaime Masters:	They?ll have to learn my bad grammar and then implement my bad grammar, right? On the AI side. How do you deal with ? I get introductions. I get asked for introductions all the time. And so, I had no idea ? I had canned responses for them, but oh my gosh, that?s something that I get asked and I definitely want to do, so I kind of feel like I have to be involved in my email anyway because I?m not gonna have ? even my assistant was like I?ll do it. And I?m like that?s weird. Right? So what do you do in regards to that? 

Yaro Starak:	You know Jaimie, my desire for travel and freedom was much stronger that my desire to feel in control of every little interaction on my email, so I think this is a letting go ?

Jaime Masters:	Ouch! Oh. Thanks, Yaro. Right on the air. Great ? no keep talking. I think it?s really really important because I keep going well, I care about these people. They?re friends of mine. It?s a little weird. 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah, I mean it really depends on what level of interaction you need to have. Is it a client that?s worth a hundred thousand dollars to your company? Probably Jaimie needs to step in and have a phone call with that person. But in my case, I sold up to $2000 courses and there was almost never ? in fact once I handed it over and we were doing things like clarity calls as well, I never did any of the sales process. And for me it was ? so I was like, well this person will probably do a better job because they?ll reply quicker. They will have been interacting with more people over time, so they?ll actually get a better background knowledge than I have. So I?ll probably actually mess it up more likely. 

Sure they?ll be excited to hear from Yaro. I?m the coach, so that?s nice. But there?s no reason why you can?t even sign off an email Jaimie and team. We do that a lot too, so it?s ambiguous whether it is you or is it your team, so you can get the benefits of both. It depends how you wanna do ? how far you wanna go with that, but so far like almost all of our clients, it?s a case of us signing off, but I think it?s the psychological challenge of letting go that is actually potentially the biggest hurdle here for someone who?s addicted to doing their email at the end of the ?

Jaime Masters:	Darn it, he brought it back up again! Okay, so question though. So I?m out of my sales process completely. We even have a ? what I call a robot qualification form, but it?s like online qualification. Right? And then the human qualification. So [inaudible] [00:14:25] talks to everybody ever before they talk to me. Because we had people like lying on the applications just to talk to me, and that was really weird. 

The interesting thing though is that a lot of my introductions are with millionaires. So they?re like, ?Oh I saw so and so on the show? or ?Oh? ? so it?s a networking thing. I liked that Jaimie and team though because then they won?t totally know if ? but nobody?s in my Inbox ? ok never mind. So this is what gets annoying. Right? It?s way too confusing for people to do this. 

Yaro Starak:	Well that?s why it?s good if you have someone who?s done it before. Not to plug my own team here, but they?re in people?s inboxes every day, and they already know how to deal with all these kinds of situations. So I think some ? like in your situation maybe every single guest who?s a multi-millionaire, you at some point want to speak to or you?re gonna speak to in the podcast anyway. I kinda argue the organizational process were probably with your email person and their email person. Right? 

Jaime Masters:	Definitely. That?s what happens all the time. Yeah, I go and here?s Milone, she?s amazing, she?ll take care of you. Right? But I do that one initial touchpoint to be like, can?t wait to chat. Right? But she could probably say, ?Can?t wait to chat.? Right? I appreciate this though too because it is ? I love getting to inbox zero. I?m one of those people. I have all of ? I have canned responses. I try to do it as efficiently as I can. But because I?ve been doing it for so long, I forget that I could probably let go of even more than I really am. Right? I need to time myself and see how much I?m in the Inbox again this week. 

Yaro Starak:	Everyone should go into their inbox, and as they?re typing in the email going should I be the one doing this or should I be creating a new product right now? Or doing a new marketing campaign? Or writing my book? Or spending time with my kids? Because this email is probably something someone else could write. And just ask yourself that question. 

That?s what I did. I looked at my inbox the first time I ever did this, and I was like a 100% of this, someone else could do. We have our pricing structure. We have all the sales material. All someone needs to know is a bit more background knowledge of what we actually sell. And once they have that, after a bit of training period, they?re me. They?re probably a better version of me. So I guess that psychology, letting go ?

Jaime Masters:	Wait, wait! So if I ? your friend emails you at Yaro@ whatever InboxDone.com or whatever the email is, right, will it go into your folder and then just sit there for a month, and then you might respond to me? Is that how that works? Or will she respond to me and be like I?ll send it over? Right?

Yaro Starak:	Well you know I have several business, so if you go into my blog teaching business, which I?ve been doing for over a decade, that business, yeah it will disappear into a folder and I probably won?t see it for a month. That?s how that works. InboxDone is so ? it?s my main focus right now. It?s my growth company. So I?m actually loving being in the Inbox. I?m the one going after the interviews, like I?m doing right now because I wanna promote this company, but yeah I guarantee you at some point in the future there will be an InboxDone manager. I mean Claire already kinda is. She manages most of the email. I just manage the Podcast requests and so on like that, so. 

Jaime Masters:	See, I love this because that was a perfect segue. Because I wanted to talk about how you start a new business, especially after you?ve been successful already. Because, no offense, you?re like oh I?m successful, you start a new business and you?re like oh crap. I still have to get the positioning. I still have to get the cut ? everything is all on you. How do we get the sales to work the way they ?should?? Right? And it can be annoying as heck. So walk me through the sort of like steps that you went through and any pitfalls or successes that you found along the way.

Yaro Starak:	You know I?ve done this four or five times now, so for me it?s gotten better every time too. I think your first business, you?re just shooting in the dark. Your second business, you kinda know how the basics work, and you usually ? that one works a bit better. My teaching blog business was my third, which was a successful company. By then I knew the internet and I knew internet marketing, so that was a leg up there. With InboxDone, sort of like the fourth successful business I would call, it really leveraged everything I?ve done beforehand. I think this is something I guess people underestimate is the power body is building. 

You know not every company naturally builds an audience, but if you?re a blogger, podcaster, YouTuber, any kind of personal brand, like I am, like you are, it?s such an opportunity to bounce to another business idea as you are doing, as I have done in the last year. So in my case it was using that audience to do what I call an MVS ? it?s an MVP, minimal viable product. But I?m selling a service, so it?s a minimal viable service. So, last year when we decided we were actually gonna go after this idea and test it, it wasn?t like well let?s build the whole website. Let?s go and do marketing campaigns. 

It was literally let?s write an email to my current email list and say, ?Hey, we?re thinking about doing this. Are you interested?? We have space for two test clients. We?ll take over your email. We want to see if this works for you, and this is how it works. And that was just an email. And then a sign up form. And that was basically it, so that was everything. That was about okay, is there demand? Would people pay for this? Learning about how to work with people. And then after that proved successful, it was about building the website. A bit more marketing to get our third, fourth, fifth, sixth client and so on. 

So, I think that?s huge and from a personal standpoint, it?s like yourself maybe, I want to do something new as well. I?ve been kind of talking about the same subject for a long time in the blogging and marketing space, so the irony of this for me my sort of first full time income business was also a service based company. It was SA Editing, so it?s kind of come full circle for me. I?ve gone back into service delivery kind of businesses, so yeah. 

Jaime Masters:	Digital courses were too easy when you weren?t in your Inbox at all. Now you?re in your Inbox ? no. I love service companies, and I think they?re given a bad rap from all the super sexy new digital stuff that comes out. Right? But tell me your timeline because this is exactly what we did. We did betas; we did, done for you betas beforehand to figure out all the problems where no one could see. Right? Like let?s try and figure out what the problems might be. They were gonna come up again. Give me your timeline. Like how long did you work with those two testers before you?re like okay I think we?ve gotten good enough to sell it? How do you price it? Because ? give me that sort of sequence. 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah, that?s a good question. So and obviously I have the advantage too of my cofounder Claire having done the job, so we married a person who was operations. She?d been doing it for me for two years. She knew how to take over an Inbox, manage an Inbox, the systems, the processes, how to run the company. And of course I brought the audience, so we had the potential to find our first clients. 

So, from there though, I?ll be honest with you, we were shooting a little bit in the dark. It?s like well we?re thinking $1000.00 a month is a good price point as a guess. We don?t wanna be targeting like the sort of $6.00 an hour, Filipino outsourcing virtual assistant market because this is kind of too important to go into someone?s inbox with someone who?s only getting paid $6.00 an hour, who doesn?t speak English as a first language. No offense to that kind of outsources. They?re great for like ?

Jaime Masters:	Been there, done that, tried it many times. Did not work at the beginning, oh my goodness. 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah I had about 12 people that have gone through it in that kind of area. So we want to make sure, as we grow we?re gonna be hiring and we already have hired English as a first language. It?s actually been all Americans so far. People with that kind of bit of sales background. So it?s a person we?re paying more to deliver the service, so we?re gonna charge more. But also as a client base we weren?t looking for beginners. We want the Jaimie Masters of the world. You?re already successful, you have a company. You?re not so huge that you?ve already got a whole department of executive assistants and customer service. 

You really just need one person to step in, take over email, and take over customer service email maybe as well. Maybe just your personal email. That was our theory. So that was what we went out there going ? and we had two people sign up who were Yaro fans. They already had bought my other products, so it wasn?t a case of convincing them to trust us. They already trusted us. It was a lesson on okay how many hours does it take to manage someone?s inbox? So that?s what we had to learn during the first ? as it ended up being three months. 

So to answer your time frame question from the point where we went from sending an email, getting the application form, having a phone call, agreeing to start at the $2000.00 price point, being upfront with them saying we don?t know if this is the right price. You can give us feedback too if this is the right price. So we stepped in how long does it take us to manage their email? We sort of expected the learning period to be more than the running of the day-to-day once we learn everything, which has proven to be true. So, even though it might cost us a bit more at the start, it usually kind of balances out. Some people?s businesses like [inaudible] [00:23:15], we go through peaks and troughs. 

You do a product launch, you get a ton more email, and then during normal weeks you?re not getting as much. So we kind of put that into consideration with our pricing. And also in terms of what we actually do for people, we didn?t know is this gonna be a full blown customer support replacement service? Is it really just all the kind of calendar managing, dealing with newsletters, dealing with basic day-to-day questions for an individual rather than a company? And so far it?s actually been both. I mean for some of ? for some of our clients, we?re doing a bit more sales oriented. For some we?re just like they?re assistant on email. But yeah that?s kind of how it all kind of began the process. 

Jaime Masters:	Well I love it. It?s exactly what we did too. I sold the ? while Milani was on vacation, which is not good. I sold two of them. She was like, ?Oh, crap what did you do??, and I?m like we?ll figure it out as we go. And she?s an operator, she?s an operations person, so she came back and was like, ?Oh, no!? Right? I am, let?s just do it, we?re great, we?re fine. Most people are not like that, which is amazing. And the people that are listening right now who are going, how do you just go and just sell it, and you don?t even know what it is? It?s like well, you get really, really used to it because it?s not that scary. 

You know you can always give them money back at the end, if it?s sucks. Right? When your people probably already trusted you anyway, so I?m sure that if you give a trustworthy smile and go don?t worry, I?ve got you on this one.  Right? Even if you have no idea what it is. 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah I think in your case too, you already knew the need because you had it yourself, right? 

 
Jaime Masters:	Yes, a million times over. So then when you take that and you go okay, I sold six or something like that more, do you then work on the marketing? Like tell me more about how the rest of the pieces go and what you start focusing on? 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah it?s a bit of a learning curve as it always is. This is a little different. It?s not a digital product, like I can sell a copy of it without needing to increase my costs. This is ? we carefully tailor the needs of a new customer, so in fact Claire said to me, can you just not mark it too much because I can?t handle suddenly getting five new clients in one week, for example? We wanna keep the quality high and that means really the training period is pretty important. So we kind of aim for about two new clients a month, so even though it sounds like a marketing ploy and we really say we?ve only got room for two. We really do only have room for kinda two. 

Otherwise you go on the waiting list for the next month. And that?s also because we have to hire people and make sure we?re getting really good people, so we learned all that in the first sort of six months of growing. I did start marketing once we kind of had those first three months. These clients are happy, the pricing model is working, there?s a profit margin to run a company here. Claire was busy. She was definitely kind of overrun with this new need. She was still running my inbox. Suddenly there?s two more inboxes. So then we hired our first inbox manager to join on our team, so that kind of was also a learning curve. We have to learn how to teach people our systems, our process, and so forth. 

And then I started ? well we started with the website. So we built a website. Then we?ve been doing a little bit of Facebook ads. That?s more recent. Podcast interviews, obviously like what we?re doing right now. But the very first things were use my existing contacts, so it?s kind of ironic. I?ve had like a bunch of friends sign up for the service, often from Facebook and they?ve been friends ? like I?ve got friends back in Australia, so one of my Australian friends is on the service. One of my Australian friends who?s actually living in Kenya ? he?s really from Kenya, he uses the service. So it?s been kinda weird I guess. 

There?s an element of trust plus I?ve seen Yaro talk about how he doesn?t have to do his email so many times over the years, now he?s offering the service. It makes sense to hire him and his team to do it. So, we ? not everyone is my friend. Well, they?re all my friend to a degree. But in terms of like I haven?t had a prior relationship with all of our customers, let?s put it that way. But a lot of them we?ve had, which is very different from every other business I?ve run, so yeah.  

Jaime Masters:	Well I really appreciate that too because your list was more beginners, and if you were like okay, well we want people that are already more established, you don?t want to send them a billion emails to your list because they?re not gonna be like, that?s not ? I?d love to do it but I don?t have that much money or whatever. And you?d be like oh this doesn?t go the way I want just because the numbers weren?t there. 

So how do you decide ? and I wanna break this down a little bit because I find this really interesting, especially for somebody that?s done this so many times before. Right? So, podcast interviews, how do you decide what to go on or Facebook ? I know you have two in applications, so are the marketing pieces different, but the same funnel exists for all of them? How does that work? 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah I mean this is a different business model, and this is also, it?s not like a ? I love it actually, I don?t have to do this crazy long educational process to get people to trust me enough to buy my course and how to learn how to make money with a blog as I?ve done for a decade, which was fun, and I loved creating that content. I loved teaching. This is like, do you have this pain? Are you in your inbox too much? We have this headache tablet that will make that pain go away. So it?s been uncanny how often on the discovery calls we do with the potential new client there?s a certain person who?s like I need this right now, and let?s just do it. 

Right? And there?s a few who are probably a little too small. They just haven?t got the cash flow in their business yet to justify a $1000.00 a month kind of person. When you get that right client, it?s great. So for us the marketing has been more about awareness raising, less about funnels. I?m sure eventually we will look at more robust email systems like ? this is my bread and butter from the past, so I certainly know how to do it. [Audio cuts out] [00:28:52] webinar talking about this, but I?ve been way more interesting in telling people we exist because frankly it?s not something people look for. 

I do have a blog post and a podcast on this topic that ranks very well for hiring someone to do my email, so we?ve had a few people show up from that. SEO has also been my bread and butter. So, thankfully I have an old blog that I can write anything, and in fact I was checking how ? I was trying to find our interview, and I was like well okay it was Jaimie Tardy back then. Right? 

Jaime Masters:	Yes 

Yaro Starak:	I googled Jaimie Masters, and that interview still showed up on the first page for that. And I was like, yeah, this is SEO. So yeah, that?s helpful, but I think as I said the surprising factor ? you?re quite right, my list got us our first two customers, did not get us anymore. They were ? everyone was just sort of too beginner-ish. Facebook having more established network contacts, not people who need to be in my list because they?re not learning the beginner things, they?re successful marketers. 

So I?ve been kind of fairly consistent with my Facebook posts, one a week, two a week sort of thing. Just saying little marketing pieces about what we do and how it can change your life and all that. And yeah, that?s what led to some clients just kind of, they just ? one sentence, ?I don?t do my email.? ?I check my email once a month.? That is often all you have to write, and people are like what do you mean?  

Jaime Masters:	Wait that exists in reality? Wait a minute. Well and that?s ? because you got the premise right. Right? You?ve got that hook or the offer or whatever you wanna call it right so it peaks peoples? interests because I was gonna go down the whole ? when somebody starts a business that doesn?t know what they?re doing, they start going in and going I have to do Facebook ads, and I?m just gonna randomly do this. 

And they overcomplicate things. And I do too. I can?t see forest for the trees sometimes when you?re in it, and so what?s interesting is you didn?t run out and like go start your own podcast called InboxDone or a whole new thing. Right? You didn?t try and build up a whole new brand. You just used whatever assets you could that you already have, but that?s all you?re really doing right now, so far is what it sounds like still. 

Yaro Starak:	I?m holding back. When Claire said to me we can?t get five new clients a month, suddenly I?m like okay. I mean to be fair, I was also and have been spending quite a bit of time this year not closing down, but taking off the market most of my training products. They?re reaching their fifth year. I wanna focus on InboxDone, so I spent a bit of time with that business and just kind of closing things down, letting a couple of my contractors go, things like that. So I haven?t had necessarily the space to jump in and do a podcast every second day on this subject.

I probably would still do that, like if I could do an Eventual Millionaire podcast episode twice a week, I would certainly say yes to that. There?s no problem with that. And will be very much tapping a lot of some of the old contacts we have. I?ve already sent a message to Pat Flynn, trying to get on his show, and I was on Chris Boccard?s show not too long ago, so ?

Jaime Masters:	Perfect. 

Yaro Starak:	All the contacts. But I think I?m very curious about Facebook ads because that?s like I said more of an awareness raising thing, not necessarily a long sales cycle educational process. It?s more about this is what we do, now you know we exits, which is kind of funny because again it goes back to my first business with essay editing. I had the same problem because students didn?t think to go looking for essay editing; I had to put it in front of their face with posters on their campuses, and with SEO or paid ads, and things like that. 

This is the same story because not a lot of people go and search, I need to get someone to handle my email. We have to have a Facebook ad in front of their face or hear the interview on Eventual Millionaire or ? see whatever it could be probably, no doubt in the future it will be yes there will probably be a podcast. Yes, there will probably be YouTube videos. There will be more educational, how to do your email and things like that. 

Jaime Masters:	It?s just really interesting to see the slice that you took because most people ? I have tons of clients that are like I hire a VA or I hire an admin or I hire a whatever. And not knowing that this as it?s ?own category? exists. Right? So do people ask about that, like how much do you do? You were talking about you even do scheduling. So part of me is like, well that is an admin, so how does ? the roles start to get a little squishy.

Yaro Starak:	Yeah and I will say it?s in the early days enough still that that?s not super clearly defined. We had this kind of basic rule, if it goes into your inbox, we can do it. And that?s ?

Jaime Masters:	Oh just you wait and see mine. No, I?m kidding. 

Yaro Starak:	You slowly turn everything into your inbox, right? But that?s lead to a question like do you do Facebook Instant Messaging as well because people get that as a second inbox, right? So we had one client, we were in their Facebook messaging ? I don?t know if that?s gonna be like a thing we do forever or for a lot of people. So far it hasn?t been a need beyond that one person. But yeah it?s scheduling going into your inbox because it?s kind timely or whatever you use and then it?s just your Gmail calendar with this link to your inbox. Most of the time it?s newsletters, it?s queries from customers, it?s chasing up leads. 

That?s the kind of thing that most of, at the current time goes into people?s inbox and we deal with. But I think a lot of it is learning because if we get for example, I?ve been talking to real estate agents, I?ve been here in Montreal possibly looking to buy an investment property, and I?m so used to this entrepreneur small business world, but I know real estate agents, for example get a ton of email. Right? So I keep ? as I?m meeting my real estate agents, saying so I actually run this business, and I?m kinda curious would you need someone to handle your email for you? Right? 

So I?m getting a lot of these kind of face to face opportunities to talk about InboxDone and that?s proving I think actually may become quite a good source of new customers through the word of mouth network thing because for example, the last potential call we had with a client, they said a person at their co-working space mentioned us. 

And I?m like what do you mean? Did they talk to me or did they see some kind of ad? You?re just so curious to see how that happens. So yeah, going back to your question, if it goes into your inbox, we?re sticking with that. Right? It is a slice of that sort of virtual assistant outsourcing market. I was surprised because it is such an old technology that this is what we?re focusing on in 2018.  

Jaime Masters:	Right?!

Yaro Starak:	Not 2001 because that?s when email became a thing or even earlier than that. But yeah, it?s still the everyday tool everyone uses probably more than anything else. Maybe they?re scrolling Facebook more than anything, but in terms of direct dialogue, it?s the big part of most businesses and most professionals, right? And yeah we?re kind of learning what people need. 
So I still think we?ll ? that answer I gave you, if it goes in the inbox, it?s kind of gonna be our sweet spot. Because it?s a skill set, which we?ve been developing for ? well me it?s been 12 years I?ve had someone do email. So I know what the benefit is, and that?s always been a dedicated individual. They haven?t been doing tech work. They haven?t been doing design. It?s been email and nothing but email. 

Jaime Masters:	See but we have so many inboxes now too. I just had Andrew Warren on the show, and he was talking about messenger bots and what?s interesting is my Facebook inbox is so messy. Right? I have personal stuff, I have professional, I have random people sending me notes, and I don?t want to have to curate another inbox, so I kind of let it not go that well. But my email I?m like inbox zero, I?m very militant about that. Right? So it?s interesting that you talk about this because on LinkedIn, I do my own. On Facebook, personally I do my own. 

On Facebook Business, I don?t. It starts to get really interesting, especially when I have clients that do new product launches, and they?re trying to do new customer service stuff, but they have messenger bots now. So they?re getting so many messages for customer service back, right? And their people are going crazy because there are too many ways of coming in. Right? So you guys, you mentioned before, and I just wanna clarify this, you guys actually work on the launch model also. So you understand what it?s like to have highs and lows. Do you charge the same either way and you just do more hours? 

Because that?s what we?re dealing with with a couple of clients right now. Do we hire somebody? Do we not? What does that look like? 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah I mean it?s one of those things where we kind of learn as we go along. So right now it was kind of funny, I had to transition my teaching launch based business from working with Claire as a contractor to hiring my own company to handle the email. So InboxDone currently manages the Yaro coaching business email account. Right? And one of our new team members is actually taking over my email, learning it. 

So we just did a closing down campaign for my main flagship course, and yes suddenly we went from maybe an hour a day worth of email to six hours a day, so the answer to that would be if six hours a day was five days a week, then the $1000 a month pricing point doesn?t work, and we would go saying to you we need to increase the prices if you want us to keep doing this. But what we find happens, it?s kind of like a ? it?s an average over time, so you?re four hours on Monday, but you?re only 30 minutes on Friday, so we?d learn that. But we did have one client who just wanted us to do more sales stuff, so we ended up actually coming up with a custom plan. 

It?s 2000 a month instead of 1000 a month. So there?s that kind of need to also be ? change  things, but it?s really a 30-60 days training and that?s a case of just looking at your inbox and seeing what comes in. So if in 60 days you?ve got a launch happening, that?s great because then we learn that?s what that looks like. That?s how much volume there is, but it only happens once every three months or something like that. So it probably won?t change anything. 

Jaime Masters:	See but we have so many inboxes now too. I just had Andrew Warren on the show, and he was talking about messenger bots and what?s interesting is my Facebook inbox is so messy. Right? I have personal stuff, I have professional, I have random people sending me notes, and I don?t want to have to curate another inbox, so I kind of let it not go that well. But my email I?m like inbox zero, I?m very militant about that. Right? So it?s interesting that you talk about this because on LinkedIn, I do my own. On Facebook, personally I do my own. 

On Facebook Business, I don?t. It starts to get really interesting, especially when I have clients that do new product launches, and they?re trying to do new customer service stuff, but they have messenger bots now. So they?re getting so many messages for customer service back, right? And their people are going crazy because there are too many ways of coming in. Right? 

So you guys, you mentioned before, and I just wanna clarify this, you guys actually work on the launch model also. So you understand what it?s like to have highs and lows. Do you charge the same either way and you just do more hours? Because that?s what we?re dealing with with a couple of clients right now. Do we hire somebody? Do we not? What does that look like? 

Yaro Starak:	Yeah I mean it?s one of those things where we kind of learn as we go along. So right now it was kind of funny, I had to transition my teaching launch based business from working with Claire as a contractor to hiring my own company to handle the email. So InboxDone currently manages the Yaro coaching business email account. Right? And one of our new team members is actually taking over my email, learning it. 

So we just did a closing down campaign for my main flagship course, and yes suddenly we went from maybe an hour a day worth of email to six hours a day, so the answer to that would be if six hours a day was five days a week, then the $1000 a month pricing point doesn?t work, and we would go saying to you we need to increase the prices if you want us to keep doing this. But what we find happens, it?s kind of like a ? it?s an average over time, so you?re four hours on Monday, but you?re only 30 minutes on Friday, so we?d learn that. But we did have one client who just wanted us to do more sales stuff, so we ended up actually coming up with a custom plan. It?s 2000 a month instead of 1000 a month.

So there?s that kind of need to also be ? change  things, but it?s really a 30-60 days training and that?s a case of just looking at your inbox and seeing what comes in. So if in 60 days you?ve got a launch happening, that?s great because then we learn that?s what that looks like. That?s how much volume there is, but it only happens once every three months or something like that. So it probably won?t change anything. 

Jaime Masters:	That?s really, it?s interesting. It reminds me of like in accounting and going this is how many transaction volume we typically do per month. But for you if somebody?s mentioned on CNN, totally different. Right? Not even on launch. I know there?s lot of emails that you get random crazy ones, but still you?ve got lots of emails, so it?s really cool to see how you navigate through like profitability vs what you?re willing to dedicate for your clients. It?s very impressive and fun, right? 

Yaro Starak:	The good thing is if you?re on CNN or you?re doing a launch campaign that probably means you?re actually making more money and succeeding, which means you can move forward to hire someone to do more work. So it?s all kind of like a win-win overall, right? 

Jaime Masters:	You?re like, ?Yes! We can charge more money.? That is amazing though. It?s really cool to hear how serial entrepreneurs go about doing business. Right? Because everybody goes oh, when you?re at the beginning you?re just figuring stuff out. There?s so many things that you learn from step one. Right? When now you can just go, okay learning curve. Way shorter. Though it is interesting that you picked a service business from before. So I know we have to start wrapping up, but I wanna ? I love talking about the marketing nuances and stuff like that. So do you think you would ever go into the F ? do you think messenger bot, like inbox messenger is gonna be like the new email? That?s what everyone keeps talking about. 

Yaro Starak:	I remember when I started blogging everyone said RSS was going to ?
 
Jaime Masters:	RSS 

Yaro Starak:	Remember RSS?

Jaime Masters:	Yes. Wow! Sorry continue. 

Yaro Starak:	It was supposed to replace email, and I was kind of on that bandwagon being a cutting edge blogger and all that. And then it disappeared and email was still an email. Being that social media came up and it?s gonna replace email. And yeah, sure open rates have become less from a marketing standpoint. It?s hard to get a click, hard to get it open. There are more distractions, and that?s just been a trend that?s been going on forever in email, in internet years anyway. So, I don?t think the Facebook messenger or the Facebook inbox or even ? I really should clarify because I actually feel perhaps, not that I?m Chinese, that I feel like Weibo for the Chinese market has replaced possibly everything. 

It seems like everything happens there. It?s all electronic shopping. Their content and their communication goes there, so I am cognizant of that will ? maybe not messenger, but is it gonna be WhatsApp for the United States. But I don?t think it will because email is still, like you said, why do you go in there and do inbox zero for your email every day, but you don?t do that for your Facebook messenger, right? Because probably Facebook messenger is full of a bunch of stuff that probably isn?t that important. It?s probably like the random Facebook person you don?t know from across the planet who?s saying hey Jaimie, I want you to be my guru. 

Can you help me ? take a look at my blog, take a look at my podcast. I get those too. Right? So, but I feel from the standpoint of us running a company, it?s not a big jump to start looking at someone?s inbox messenger and deal with Facebook as well. It probably can be linked to email quite well too in the sense that send an email every time you get a message from Facebook, and go in and reply to the Facebook message. So it?s only a ? it?s like an extension of what we are already doing an email. I think the bigger question though, you?re right, is what happens when you do have a bot having 1000 conversations a day with potential customers and each one of those triggers a Facebook message. 

And that?s what?s you really need, summaries. Have someone to go in there and do that. I think that?s actually where we step in, and we perform a great function. So I actually am like pro Facebook doing really well for people because it just creates something that we probably could manage and help people with. 

Jaime Masters:	See and I want like an aggregator for all of the things that way it goes into one spot and then you can manage it all. And I wish you guys spoke Spanish. This was a vegan chef that did all the messenger bots and we sort of had to pull it down a little because we were just getting ? we were getting lots of sales. We were getting so much that we were not able to deal with the customer service. It was just the customer service side because it was ? the bots were so ? like 50,000 people in the thing is like oh, hmm I?m a human. We have a couple of people on our team, but wow.   

Yaro Starak:	See that?s like what can you do as an individual? You can pretend to be this massive company. It?s incredible. 
Jaime Masters:	Thankfully. And if you have a Spanish speaking inbox person, let me know because I?ll hire you for her right now.   

Yaro Starak:	I won?t say no. I?d have to ask Claire, but we might be able to provide that.  

Jaime Masters:	We?ll talk later. Awesome, I love it. So I have to start wrapping up. I?m going to ask the same last question that you probably don?t remember from 2012. We don?t remember your answer anyway, so it?s totally cool. What?s one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?    

Yaro Starak:	I wonder what I said back then. Hmm. Probably take action, everyone says that, take action. I know like as a person who just recently started another new business, the most important thing we ever did was to get that first customer, and the learning you get from that ? it?s not a $1 million, it?s your first $1000 a month income stream. But it?s not far from ? it?s like you 10 x that, you?re already in six figures. You 10 x that, you?re already in a million. So it?s just a stepping stone to get there. I know because my blogging business, my essay editing business, I had electronic corner store selling cards, everything was about reaching people, and then having somebody want it. 

So I think ? I?ve made a $1 million from several businesses and some investments now, and I?ve kind of seen that it all comes down to either having the spare cash to invest, which frankly most people don?t, so it kind of like comes down to your capabilities of generating that, and as an entrepreneur a customer is the first source of revenue you have. So I would forget about like we said earlier, don?t go and plan this amazing website, launching a podcast, a YouTube channel, and Instagram feed. Yeah those are all potential marketing channels for the future, and I say this actually to my coaching clients as well. Is there a lowest hanging fruit opportunity to get a client as a learning experience right now?

Whether it?s through a networking event, through a ? one of my clients came from Facebook friends. You can sometimes even post, hey I?m thinking of launching a service to offer customer service for people who speak Spanish. Woah, there?s an idea. Especially focused on the food industry. I hear Jaime might have a client who needs that service. So maybe I can run a test service there. And away you go; you?ve got an opportunity to test the business idea.  

Jaime Masters:	I love it, especially because I don?t even think I?ve even posted on my personal Facebook about any of the new business stuff, and I probably should have done that a while ago. So, thank you. Really, really appreciate it. Everybody make sure you check out InboxDone. Can you tell us a little bit more? Do you have any email ? like somebody can sign up? I know you have a video on there where they can know more about it, but I want them to check it out, so tell us what to do when we get there. 

Yaro Starak:	Go to InboxDone.com and read the front page. That?s all you really need to do. And then register to do a discovery call. You?d be really speaking to me most likely for that and then we would talk about your specific email needs. So what does your inbox look like and how do you want that to be handled by someone else, so yeah a discovery call is the next step. 

Jaime Masters:	I love it. And make sure you?re qualified before you just want to talk to the famous Yaro, just so you know. Make sure you actually ?

Yaro Starak:	[Inaudible] [00:45:50]

Jaime Masters:	Haha, right? You?re doing like six figures or so. Is that what you advertise to people or does it not matter? 

Yaro Starak:	I mean the answer is does spending a $1000 a month to not handle your email make sense from a cash flow point of view, a time saving point of view? And you use that time to be happier or to make more money. Be with your family or to make new products, to make new businesses. Write a book. That?s the question. So maybe you?ve just got savings, or maybe you?re already successful. It?s really up to you. 

Jaime Masters:	That was an amazing pitch. I love that at the end. So go if you are one of those people that want one of those things. Make sure you can sign up with Yaro so you can chat with him. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Again, I really appreciate it. 

Yaro Starak:	Thank you so much for having me Jaimie. I love being a repeat podcast guest. I think you?re the first person I repeated on, so I love that. So thank you very much. 

Jaime Masters:	Anytime. Come back again.

Tags: Business Owner, email assistant, email management, entrepreneur podcast, eventual millionaire, Inbox Management, inbox zero, jaime masters, millionaire entrepreneurs, outsourcing email management, podcast, start-ups / startups, startup entrepreneur, top entrepreneurs, Yaro Starak

Categories: All, Featured Millionaire Interview, Millionaire Interviews, Productivity, Systems/Processes, Time Management

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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