Nathan Pettijohn and Nic De Castro: Episode 169

Transcript

[0:00:20] CH: Author Hour is about answering one question; how can you get the best ideas from great books without spending so much time reading? Every week, we take you behind the scenes with a new author, about the most important points in their book. If you love to learn while you’re on the go, you’re in the right place. All of our book summaries are 100% free and we do more than a 100 episodes every year. Please subscribe to and review Author Hour on iTunes. Today’s episode is with Nathan Pettijohn and Nic De Castro, the co-authors of Zen and the Art of Admin Tasks. Have you ever felt you were wasting so much of your life in your e-mail? Like you just want to escape your inbox because it gets so tiring dealing with scheduling and back and forth messages? Well, that’s what this episode is all about. Nathan and Nic are going to be your guides to help you outsource your administrative work to an administrative assistant, so that you can focus on driving value in your personal and professional life. In this episode, we talk about the automated and outsourced systems that they created that have saved them enormous amounts of time and energy, and how you can implement those systems yourself. By the end of this episode, you will find yourself with a system to save you dozens of hours of white space time per week that you previously did not have. If you want to fill your life with more productive, valuable activities, like ideation and deep thinking and creative play, this episode is for you. Now, here is our conversation with Nathan and Nic.

[0:02:37] NDC: I had accepted a new job back in March and a fairly good-sized company, about a 100 employees and I found myself – I worked in a sales role, so I was being onboarded onto a bunch of accounts that were existing and being introduced to a bunch of relationships that I’ve been taking over from somebody who is on their way out, just the usual stuff, along with internal meetings and intros, all of that. Very quickly, I have had a background in like, I do take a lot of my influences from Tim Ferris in The 4-Hour Workweek that I had read back in 2010, 2011, it’s influenced a lot of the, obviously the ideas here. I wanted to automate a lot of that administrative work. I mean, it’s work that has to happen. It’s not where I’m creating value for this new organization. Of course, I’ve got to attend meetings, I’ve got to reply to e-mails and introductions and schedule meetings, but me personally doing that work isn’t what they’re paying me to do. They’re paying me to go in and meet and have strategic conversations and find opportunities to work together and add value to our partners. Quickly, I went in and started to develop this framework where I went and put a job rec up on Upwork, interviewed an administrative assistant and who actually is now my inmate’s administrative assistant, and started to create a bunch of rules on how to process my inbox and work like me. It went from me basically trying to keep up with a bunch of the exact same literally copy-pasted introductions to existing clients and partners, to me being able to have really like I said, strategic conversations, more time to focus on working with prospective customers that would drive a lot of value who are now currently three months, four months in, driving millions of dollars of revenue for my company. I truly think that if I had maintained trying to manage all of those things myself, I would be much further behind where I am in the business than I am today. The CEO has told me it was one of the fastest people to significant revenue he's ever seen, and I don't take credit from a personal perspective. It's just, I think it’s a testament to the system.

[0:05:00] CH: Yeah, you freed yourself from the confines of what pretty much everyone else does, right?

[0:05:07] NDC: Correct, correct. I consider all this stuff hygiene and it has to happen, but no hygiene techniques or whatever, lead to breakthroughs.

[0:05:16] CH: Exactly. What about you Nate? Where were you?

[0:05:22] NP: Well, so as Nic said, this all came together pretty quickly just over the last couple months. The first time we met was over the phone and we did a screen share, because I have my own little company and we do social media strategy and content strategy for digital, and I work with Strike Social, which is where Nic works. Anyway, I wanted to show him some of the tools that I was using for LinkedIn messages and social media and how I've automated things on my end, and so that was our first conversation. Whenever he came out to LA, we got together here in Hermosa Beach and he showed me this rule system he had written out for his e-mails, because I'm running this small company and I was managing all my own e-mails and scheduling and setting up ads and responding to tweets and all these small things that similarly is not driving the revenue, or success of my company, just keeping the wheels on. He handed me these rules, which I was able to pretty easily copy and paste and then adjust a little bit for my own purposes. Within a week or two, it’s like, “Hey, we need to put this out as a book so that other people can copy and paste this, entrepreneurs, or small business owners, or sales people could use this same method.” In just the last few months of having it on, I've gone to a couple countries, written this book, written several new articles for my Forbes column, and business is growing, it’s sustaining through all of that, so it's not even when I leave town that nothing stops. It’s like, let’s keep everything automated and just the process of delegating it in itself, you have to write out these rules and really think clearly, “Is this necessary? Can I get rid of this, or automate it, or delegate it?” Just the process itself is really helpful.

[0:07:10] CH: You said within a week or two Nate, take me back to that week or two. What was an aha moment, or what were some of the things that happened during that time that made you say, “We have to make this into a book”?

[0:07:26] NP: Yeah. I mean, I was excited about it when Nic first showed me the rules, but I'd had it in place for a few days and it's scary at first because like I mentioned, I do a lot of social media stuff so you get used to staring at a screen all day, or just monitoring the likes come in, and whatever at a certain point you're used to responding to your own e-mails quickly and it's coming from you and people think you're being prompt and paying attention. Just by able to do this the first few days, you've got to teach the admin how – this is how I do it, and there's a learning curve, you've got to let your e-mails pile up a little bit so that they can respond to them. My admin’s in a different time zone, so there's headaches at first to say like, “Oh, I want to make sure that this is happening, or that is happening.” The first few days was a little stressful, but put our rules each in a Google Doc that's editable and every time that there's a new rule that pops up you say, “Hey, add this to the rules.” It's not really about stepping in and saying, “No, do it this way.” It's really just like, “Next time, let's do it this way,” and continually refining it. I mean, the aha moment was just, the amount of time I had. Instead of doing all these other things, we knocked out a book and all these other projects.

[0:08:45] CH: Yeah. I mean, you got your life back. You got a significant chunk of your life and your attention back. A lot of people I'd imagine are familiar with the concepts that you're talking about. Maybe they've read The 4-Hour Workweek, but who is your book really for?

[0:09:02] NDC: Yeah. We obviously do want a tip a cap. It's definitely an inspiration, where I've learned a lot of these things and the frameworks for sure. I'd say our books for – as Nate mentioned earlier, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, so people working at other people's companies, sales people, small business people, artists, whoever. If you find yourself managing your own inbox and spending time doing administrative, non-real value creation work, I think that's who this is for.

[0:09:38] CH: You're definitely preaching to me. I'm very interested in your book, okay.

[0:09:45] NDC: Yeah. I think that's what it really comes down to, right? If you were to sit and look at yourself and take like, “Okay, I'm going to observe myself this morning, tomorrow morning at how I spend my time from when I show up to the office, to a lunch.” How much of that work that you're doing living in your inbox, how much of the – how many of those e-mails are truly value creating, versus administrative hygiene? I think, if you're honest with yourself, most people spend a lot of their time doing hygiene. The interesting thing about it is living in your inbox and doing a lot of hygiene tasks, administrative tasks, setting up a meeting. There's three or four e-mails that go back and forth in order to schedule a meeting. We all know it, or the standard, “Hey, nice to meet you John. When do you want to chat? Or this is what we do.”

[0:10:33] CH: Or e-mail introductions; somebody introduces you to somebody and you're like, “Where is this coming from? Why do I have to respond to this?” Yeah.

[0:10:40] NDC: Yup. That stuff. The perverse thing about it is when you're replying to those e-mails, or sending those scheduling e-mails, or doing these basic administrative tasks – not saying they don't need to be done, but doing them doesn't create value, it makes you feel like you're getting work done when you're really not.

[0:11:00] CH: Oh, yeah. It's the illusion of productivity. It's funny that I'm doing this interview now, because no more than two hours ago I was talking to a gal I work with and we were both saying, like how we both have had the vision of one day being able to just hand off our inbox and just let it go. My wife and I have joked about how a modern-day fantasy is to have your partner change your e-mail password and lock it, and so that you can never access it again and have somebody else take care of it. It's a huge problem. It takes up a huge chunk of people's attention.

[0:11:43] NDC: Totally.

[0:11:44] CH: I'm all on board for this. I'll tell you though, in my experience, I've tested this and I wasn't – I don't think I did it right, because I hired a VA, or an admin and they just didn't do a very good job, they weren't proactive. They were more sorting stuff, rather than being proactive and responding. How do we choose our admin? How do we make a good hire?

[0:12:10] NP: Well, I mean, before that 90% of it’s not who you hire. It's going to be the rules you –

[0:12:16] CH: It’s about the rules?

[0:12:17] NP: Yeah, it's because – I mean, you can hire – that's the problem everybody has, right? There's a lot of people that'll read 4-hour Workweek, or like some of these ideas and think they're clever, but it's like, “All right, where do I start? Am I going to hire someone and just start sending them things off the cuff?” When Nic and I met and I was showing him, it's like I don't schedule my own Instagrams, I don't respond to DMs there, I don't send my own DMs from Twitter, or LinkedIn. I have all that automated already for the same reason that I don't want to sit here and watch the likes roll in all day. On the other hand, Nic and I are both very ambitious people that like being creative. It's not like we're having this phone call from a golf course. We're still getting work done each day. It's just the kind of work that we're focused on is not something that's repeatable, or something that we can delegate. I think that the problem a lot of people have is they’ll want an admin, they want to utilize some of these processes, but they don't have the rule system. By putting a really specific rules in place and say, “If this then that,” it's the same thing on my social medias; if someone reaches out about this, respond with this. We share the same admin. She responds as Nate or as Nic and says the exact same phrasing that we would say. Why does it matter if it's coming from us or not? Things are still moving, things are moving forward and that's the whole point.

[0:13:38] NDC: To add to that, I think when people maybe first delve into this delegation of their inbox, which is terrifying to a lot of people, the expectation that that person will be you in every way, that's an unrealistic measure. Part of the rules is, “Hey, certain people are VIPs.” When you receive e-mails from this type of person, or this person specifically, I get a text immediately when my CEO e-mails me. I know the moment it comes in my inbox, it's left there and it's not responded to, but there's about 70 e-mails that come to my inbox that are processed based on my rules that our admin can take care of, or process in the correct manner that I didn't see. My inbox, I have four e-mails in my inbox and they're all things that I need to do, because then, I call it like thought work, or strategic input, where that's this stuff that really, I bring the value to the business. Don't expect your admin to be out there being you from a strategic perspective, or from a truly value-driving perspective. They're just handling all blocking and tackling all the other stuff that has to happen, so that you can take those four e-mails a day that are really where you need to put your time and effort into. I experienced this too first time I tried to outsource in 2011. I read The 4-hour Workweek, which is a fantastic book, super pumped on it, tried outsourced to India using some of those services and I've tried to outsource in the Philippines in the past as well, regardless of the outsourcing company's reputation, it really comes down to the individual. Of course, the person, the individual that you end up selecting is important, and you can do some quick tests with time tasks where you can get an idea of how they operate. More importantly, Nate said, I think some people get into, “Okay, I'm interested in doing the admin idea,” but they don't really spend the time upfront to put process in place. The interesting thing about process is that it really makes you put the way you work and the way you think on a daily basis under a microscope. A process that might take you 60 seconds to do, could take you a couple minutes at least to put into a process. Now with newer stuff, we like to use Loom, which is a screen sharing – screen sharing is great. It makes things seamless, videos, sight, sound, emotion, so it's a lot easier than writing out processes like I used to do in 2011. Still, before you press record, need to have a very consistent flow and it really requires you to examine the way you work and do things. A lot of times, you find inefficiencies before you even end up creating that process.

[0:16:22] CH: What was it like creating your guys’ process for the first time? I know, was it Nate, you copied Nic's process, or was it the other way around?

[0:16:35] NP: Yeah. Nic had written his version and shared it with me.

[0:16:38] CH: Nic, how long did that take to really get to a point where you felt confident you'd nailed your process?

[0:16:45] NDC: Yeah, great question. A couple parts to that answer actually. Again, this is lending or borrowing from 4-Hour Workweek, but let your inbox build up a little bit and then process it, and then understand through going through processing your inbox, you'll understand okay, I basically receive whatever, five, seven types of e-mails. When I see this, I take this action with it, and why do I do that? It's really thinking through how you process your inbox. Now you have to be comfortable with the idea that there will be small mistakes made, right? I went through a chunk of this, probably took me a couple hours, because I've done this before so it wasn't a completely new idea to me. Going back through and doing this at my new job probably took me an hour, two hours to go through and do this exercise. I'll let my inbox build to 100 e-mails, or 50 e-mails, went through and created rules, right? I’ve designated VIPs, gave access to some of my own accounts, etc. It's an ever-growing process. I mean, today I've added two new processes to my rules, because roles are ever-changing and growing. Now Nate got to benefit from my work, because I had put that stuff onto Google Docs, and actually when he asked me if he could have access to my rules I said, “Sure. Send an e-mail to me and my admin will reply to you and give you all the context you need in a cover and she'll attach the documents.” I didn't even ever personally give Nate access to these documents, or give him any of the framework. My admin did. It's the proof point.

[0:18:23] NP: Yeah, neither one of us scheduled today's podcast. Not in my calendar.

[0:18:27] CH: Wow. I didn't schedule it either. Are we even talking to each other right now? That's great. Tell me what type of tools beyond Google Docs did you use? I know that's a tactical question and maybe it's not very significant to some, but I think a lot of people want to know that they're using the right thing on the first time.

[0:18:53] NDC: That's a great question and actually it's incredibly relevant, because this is really a tactical guide. This is not theory. I think 4-Hour Workweek does a good job at theory and got me personally to buy-in. Tim at that time had put tactics in place, but technology has progressed, so many new apps have come out, etc. We really just wanted to focus on the tactical side of it. The services, or the apps that we use I think are incredibly relevant. Most startups those people who are doing their own thing are using the G-suite, right? Gmail and Google Docs, etc., definitely a big piece of it. Not essential, but it's what we use. We use some recording. For us, we use an artificial intelligence assistant, which sounds funny, because we have an admin as well. All of our calls, we have an AI assistant called EVA. It's created by a company called Voicera. A friend of mine is actually the CMO over there. For all of the calls and meetings I have, I add EVA who is the AI sent to the call. She'll listen in to the conversation and record it. That's one of those things that I can go back and reference for all the meetings that I have, because I mean, meetings are non-stop as someone who's a client-facing business development person. Nate actually introduced Loom to me. Loom is a screen sharing, screen recording, really simple to use software. It's free. Great way to do process. I was writing out all my processes in Google Docs and taking screenshots and Loom is by far a better way to do it. Nate brought that to the table. Obviously, the depending on the company there's a CRM, we use SalesForce, so that's part of the thing that I have to do.

[0:20:40] NP: Well there's just – it's how they plug together. You can use different kinds of – we use Uber Conference for conference calls, we use EVA to record the calls, we use it to track tasks and delegate tasks and also –

[0:20:53] NDC: To do this is a real linchpin. Great point. I can't believe I forgot that. To-Do-Lists is really the command center between ourselves and our admins, so it's where we go in and assign tasks to our admins and it's where admin comes and assigns tasks to us for things that we need to handle. I love it. I've been a productivity nerd for years, so I was someone who used software like OmniFocus, which is literally the most comprehensive personal database you could ever build for doing things, essentially. We've used things like Asana and a whole suite of project management or to-do lists. I love To-Do-Lists. One of the main things is really simple to use, the interface is great, but also voice notes, something that I know I use a ton of and I think Nate does as well. One of the workflows that I do is after every meeting, I do it again. In sales, business development, I take a lot of meetings. The thing is taking notes and follow-up and all that stuff has to happen. Again, is it really worth my time? It's one of those things that a lot of people will put off like, “Oh, I got to go over write an e-mail, follow-up or take notes and share with people,” definitely needs to happen. However, so the process that I put in place is when I walk out of a meeting, I hop on to notes and I leave a voice note for my admin and she has a pre-formatted Google Doc that she'll put this in. I basically summarize all the different points that I want from that meeting, I leave next steps, which a lot of times she'll assign me tasks like, “Hey Nic, you need to follow up with this proposal for that client.” She'll attach the EVA voice recording of that meeting to that document as well. Voice notes is amazing. You capture all your thoughts, they dictate them down and it's being done. Again, the hygiene work and stuff that needs to be done is being done, but it's not by me, it's me walking around after a meeting, and everything's just happening.

[0:22:58] NP: Yeah. We'll use that too for drafting e-mails, like “Draft an e-mail to so-and-so that says X, Y and Z,” and then later on when you're processing your e-mails, you go through on all these drafts and review and hit send. It's a just a smarter way, like my first job in Los Angeles was as a development assistant for a producer named Robert Lawrence. I would send e-mails that he would dictate and it would say, “Dictated and read by Robert Lawrence, or dictated but not read.” That's a very old style, impersonal way to approach this. Whereas, we’re dictating and it's being sent by us. Half of my job when I did that was all these admin tasks and scheduling and stuff that had nothing to do with my film degree, whereas the other half of the stuff was really interesting and creative. The admin stuff, there's no reason it has to be you specifically, or that you need someone in-person. It's like you can document these and with the right tools in place with the right workflow, you can be highly effective, like a couple of the other tools. Before meetings, I'll look at someone on CrystalKnows and Detective to see their company info. There's this list of tools that if, this then that, it goes in a process. The bottom line with the tools is that there's a lot of tools out there. Sometimes it's too many tools, sometimes it's the wrong tool, or you can use the right tool in the wrong way. I got an e-mail earlier from somebody that was like, “Yeah, just book a time with me. Click this link, then I can click in there and find a time that works for me and just book it that way,” but I see that, and I just think like, “Well, this person's time is not valuable if anyone can just grab the link from their e-mail, signature and book a time with them. It's like they're at the mercy of whoever's scheduling for them.” Whereas you can have rules and –

[0:24:46] CH: What are you saying about me Nate? What are you saying?

[0:24:50] NP: I think it's pretty clear. Also, anybody that's – I e-mail a lot of different CEOs that they're slow at responding, or they send the calendar invite wrong, or there's just a million different things that why are they doing that themselves? It doesn't usually make sense. There's a lot of people that would be prototypical customer for this and you just copy and paste it. Based on the amount of hours you need, it's like we pay our admin 500 or 600 bucks a month each, and that's eight hours a week at $16 dollars an hour. You might need $200 worth of work a month. Even if you have a small company and all their processing are invoices and updating your SalesForce, that's still hugely valuable and you should still do it. Obviously, I would love people can download this, copy and paste it and be off and running with at least a few of the rules, like scheduling or follow-ups, but I put some specific ones for, like I'm a talent manager and I have to book clients to speak at events, or go on a podcast or whatever, so there was already a process in place. First it goes to the assistant, she confirms a time, then it goes to the publicist, they confirm with the interviewer, the dial-in info gets sent with the background info, that goes to the calendar. There's already a process, why should I be the one clicking send? Whatever your business is, if it’s like you have six types of clients and you have a template response for each one, just type those up and then send it off to the admin. Whatever business you're in, I'm sure there's a way to document and delegate. For ours, it's digital, sales, stuff like that, so some of our tools like Loom might be more relevant, because we're recording stuff on a computer all the time. In any case, there's a way to type up the processes and then really refine what you're doing each day.

[0:26:40] CH: The big value in your book that I can see, which is amazing is like you said, you paste it in your exact rules that you follow, your e-mail rules, your calendar rules, your follow-ups. This is something I haven't really seen in this much depth in any book. I think anybody who's struggled to do this in the past, or has wanted to do this in the past, but the processing has been the thing that stopped them, this is the book for them.

[0:27:14] NDC: Yeah. Again, that was the intention here. It's not theory so much. It's really just ground-level tactics. I've worked on automation beyond this before as well. It's funny. I’ve done a lot of sales consulting over the years, and no matter what, every single company, every business owner thinks that their product, or service offering is different. You can never add sales automation to it. I've worked with companies in the consumer app space, a lot of advertising and marketing clients. Even my dad's business, it’s in general contracting for residences. Each time they said, “Oh, you could never do inside sales automation for my company, my product, my service. Not this industry. No one would ever – it wouldn't work.” Lo and behold, it worked for all those companies. I think the same goes for people's inboxes. Everyone's very convinced that no one can ever handle their inbox. Why we just counter with it, like well Fortune 50 CEOs, they rarely handle their own inboxes, right? These guys have figured out the fact that admins are extremely powerful, and they leverage them in the ways, a lot of the ways that we're talking about. Maybe not using the different technologies and stuff, but your inbox is not special. The way you process an inbox is not special. Everyone's inbox is processed, and that's the entire – when you log in and you go into your e-mail, what you're doing is processing. The difference is you're not paying attention to why you're doing what you're doing, you're just doing it. What we're suggesting is that you pay attention to what you're doing when you're in your inbox and why you're doing it, and then document it and then give it to somebody else. Save yourself time. Focus on the value-driving activities that you can only do.

[0:29:09] CH: I want to wrap this up with maybe a quick story. You two both told your story of how this has impacted your lives and how it's impacted your productivity, your ability to live on your terms, have more of your time back. What about anybody else you've helped? Do you have a particular favorite success story?

[0:29:28] NP: I would say just in general, the average person spends in America four hours a day looking at their e-mails. I don't know how much they spend looking at their phone or at Instagram, but the more you're just staring at these screens that's not driving any value to your life, I don't see how you're being effective. 20 hours a week, what else could you be doing with that? There's other processes and things to delegate and automate, improve your workflows. First, you got to start with your e-mail and your calendar. Giving up your e-mail is key, and so that's why we started with this. It’s like, this is step one. No matter how many of the rules you put in place, or how many of the tools, if you gain back one hour a day, I think that's huge.

[0:30:11] NDC: It's funny, another friend of mine who's an entrepreneur based out of Austin, I gave Nate my original set of rules, again my admin did, I didn't. Then I was also talking with my other friend who's got a search engine marketing company out of Austin that's growing and he was telling me how busy he was and stressed out and how much he's working. I started to ask him what kind of work, like what was the work he was doing. Was it –

[0:30:37] NP: Sorry to interrupt, but he even said that he wanted someone in person too, right?

[0:30:40] NDC: Yeah, he did. He was very reticent to give up his inbox and was very reticent to do it especially to somebody who's not in person. He actually came on the Cuba trip with Nate and myself. Nate and I were very relaxed, and some of our other entrepreneurial friends were a little less so and they were searching for internet and frantically e-mailing when they got internet while Nate and I smoke cigars. When he started to delve into the work that was taking a majority of his time up and making him really stressed, I told him I said, “Look you're doing a lot of work that you can easily delegate this stuff. This is all process work. It's not really knowledge work, it's just process work.” He finally took my advice and actually Nate, myself and him all share the same admin. He has in that time on boarded an admin, this has only been weeks, right? This isn't months, this is weeks. On boarded the admin, delegated a lot of the stuff that he was working on that was keeping him 16-hour days, landed huge new clients, bought a new apartment in Austin and is traveling quite a bit more. It really is not just about productivity and focusing on the things that are highly effective in your work life, but it also gets you to the point where you can start enjoying your personal life a lot more too. It's really about just being effective with your time personally and professionally.

[0:32:09] CH: Absolutely. Two more questions you guys. The first is how can our listeners connect with you, follow you? I mean, given that you have admins answering everything, if it makes sense? What are the scenarios actually in which you would like listeners to potentially reach out or follow you?

[0:32:29] NDC: This is the funny thing. I work as a professional and social media world and social advertising world, I actually don't participate in social much.

[0:32:38] CH: Totally got it –

[0:32:40] NDC: It’s how I make my living, but I don't really do it. Nate is a little bit different.

[0:32:44] NP: Well, I'm on the other end of the spectrum.

[0:32:45] NDC: He is, he is. I have LinkedIn. Connecting with me, again, if it meets my requirements that my admin knows to notify me about, then that's great. I'll see it and will most likely connect. Buying the book, that's great, it's a great way to connect with us. It’s a way to get the full conversation that we've had here but written down and actionable. I think it's a value-driving thing.

[0:33:10] NP: I'm @nrpettijohn. I have social media and you can message me there, but I won’t necessarily be the one responding. I've cut all my accounts and they're all automated, or have bots on them. Just so many hours in the day and staring at your own social media isn't necessarily driving a whole lot of value for you, but they do get scrubbed and read as well on my end. In certain cases, it would be forwarded to me.

[0:33:34] CH: Well, you two are preaching to the choir a lot of this stuff again is stuff that so many people, millions of people I think want to do, are eager to do, they just haven't figured out how, or it's just too complicated. I'm really glad you made this book. The final question is can you give our listeners a challenge, something they can do this week from your book that will make a positive impact?

[0:34:01] NDC: Okay, so one, buy the book. I mean, I think it's probably going to go on sale, so it's –

[0:34:07] CH: Apart from that.

[0:34:08] NDC: I think it’s 99 cents and $4. That would be step one. I think in order to really take the leap here, why don't you just process your inbox? Set aside 30 minutes to an hour, let your inbox build up to 25, 50 e-mails and then write down why you're doing what you're doing with each e-mail that you have there, because that's the biggest piece of work really, because once you process that and start to say, “Okay, look. I basically receive these many types of e-mails. It's an introduction e-mail, it’s a scheduling e-mail, it's an automated e-mail from SalesForce or something else, it's a marketing e-mail that I don't even really need to see.” Just become aware of why you're doing what you're doing when you're in your inbox and start to record that. Once you realize that this work is not bespoke, it's not this thing that only you could do, I think that's the aha moment that, “Oh, okay. Yeah, I can pass this off. Every time I get an e-mail regarding this, I do the same thing and someone else could do that for me.”

[0:35:11] CH: Perfect.

[0:35:12] NP: I would say, how many hours a day are you doing those tasks? Because if $500 a month is worth 20 hours a week of your time back, I think the decisions made for you, it's like, I definitely was spending 20 hours a week way more that I'm now able to put in other parts of my business.

[0:35:30] CH: Yeah. For any listeners who might be feeling uncomfortable with this idea, consider the fact that this may feel like a threat to your identity. E-mail, it's become so intertwined in our lives, but man, what a great thing to free yourself from. I'm stoked that you guys wrote this book, it's Zen and the art of Admin Tasks. Nic, Nathan, thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:35:54] NDC: Yeah, thanks Charlie. We appreciate it.

[0:35:56] NP: Thank you.

[0:35:57] CH: Many thanks to Nathan and Nic for being on the show. You can buy their book, Zen and the Art of Admin Tasks on amazon.com. Thanks for tuning in on today’s show. If you liked what you heard, here is what I want you to do next. Open up the podcast app on your phone or iTunes on your computer and search for “Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn” and then click “ratings and reviews.” Take 10 seconds to rate this show or leave a review. It is a small favor but it’s really the best way to show your support and give me feedback and if you know someone else who’d love Author Hour, take another three seconds to text them a link to this episode. We’ll see you next time.