AI Your Inbox: Get to Inbox Zero Every Day with 3 Tools that Do the Work for You - Kate Kordsmeier

Website: successwithsoul.co

successwithsoul.co/everything,

[00:00:00]: Well, hey there fellow introverts. If you've ever opened your inbox and immediately felt the urge to set your laptop on fire, well, same. I know email can feel like an energy sucking black hole, especially when it's flooded with promotions and endless back and forths and those just following up messages that haunt your soul. But today I'm going to show you how to let AI do the heavy lifting for you so you can spend less time drowning in emails and more time actually running your business. Or, let's be honest, taking a nap because your girl is tired. I'll walk you through three game changing AI tools that help me reach Inbox zero every single day without spending hours manually sorting, responding or stressing. Sound good? Okay, let's dive in. So the first things first, before we automate, we need to declutter.  

[00:00:52]: My favorite tool for this is something called Leave Me Alone. And if you go to successfulsoul Co LMA for Leave Me Alone, you can try it out for yourself. So you can't organize chaos. And if your inbox is a hot mess of spam promotions and that one newsletter you signed up for in 2017 and never read, we need to fix that. That's where Leave Me Alone comes in. It's basically the Marie Kondo of your inbox. It lets you instantly unsubscribe from unwanted emails in bulk rather than playing Whack a mole every time another sales email pops up. So I'm going to show you how it works here.  

[00:01:30]: And let's see, I've got a couple screenshots to start with. So one of the first things you can do is you can screen all of your mail. And so you can see here, this is a screenshot of my Leave Me Alone account. I've blurred out the senders so to protect their privacy, but every time an email comes in, you're either going to keep it in your regular inbox, you're going to add it to a roll up, which we'll talk about in just a second or you're going to block forever. And, and a lot of these you can see, some of them are even marked as spam. They also mark it if it's the first time somebody is reaching out to you. Sometimes that can be a flag. Not always, of course.  

[00:02:08]: Sometimes there's just new emails from new people, but that kind of gives you a little bit of an indication and so you can decide what you want to do with every email that comes in. So as you can see as part of the screened and shielded emails, this is my dashboard now. And, and there's all different kinds of screeners that you can set up even before you get to that screened mail tab. So in this case, this is my inbox screener. I have 10 emails that need my attention. So those are the ones that I just showed you there. There's 154 new emails that were screened out of my inbox this week. So that means that they literally do not show up in my inbox until I allow them to.  

[00:02:51]: Until I allow them to. So I've gotten 24 new senders this week. There's over 1500 emails that were previously blocked that were screened this week. So that's 1500 emails that I have screened out of my inbox just in one week. And I have this set up for all of my emails. So I have a family email, I've got a personal email, I've got my work email, I've got my customer service work email. And all of them come into Leave Me alone into the same account. And I can manage them all in one place.

[00:03:23]: So that's why this number is so high. And then I also, you can see that I've rolled up 563 emails this week. It saved me 17.6 hours this week. I have a block list where I've chosen certain senders that I always want to block. And you can see 31 emails have been blocked so far this week. I have 27 senders that will skip those block list rollups and schedules. That is priority senders. So these are people like if you know your kids, teacher, for example, what their email address is, I want to make sure I always get those emails and that they always land in my inbox.  

[00:04:02]: So I have set up priority senders here. And Now I have 27 people who I always make sure I get their emails. And then I've got 60 emails that have been prioritized. So this just goes to show you some of the cool things that you can do with Leave me alone and what some of the block list looks like. So some of them you can manually add specific emails like I showed you in this. If I click block forever now, that's going to be put on my block list. You can also unsubscribe directly in Leave Me Alone and so you can do that in bulk. And any emails that you unsubscribe from are automatically added to that list.  

[00:04:39]: These are all features you can turn on, of course, or you can turn them off so, so you can have your custom block list, which I mentioned if you just know like I have unsubscribed from this email a thousand times and it keeps coming into my inbox, you can put that on your custom block list and now you'll never see it again. There's a spam blocker that's kind of like a built in spam filter. Cold emails, you can have it enabled so that they always go through your screened mail first rather than landing in your inbox automatically. And then they have some new features like they have this Black Friday one. I don't have this turned on because I personally like Black Friday email emails. But if I didn't want to see Black Friday emails, any emails that mentioned Black Friday would be put on my block list. So this is the first step in just decluttering your inbox. The next thing that I do with Leave Me Alone is I create roll ups.
[00:05:30]: So this is just a screenshot of several of the roll ups that I've created. I have 30 senders that go into a subscription roll up. So these are things like I might have a wine subscription, I might have um, a grocery delivery subscription. I might have, you know, an Amazon subscribe and save whatever it is. Those emails I want to make sure that I get and I but I don't need to them cluttering up my inbox all the time. I'm just going to get a roll up which means I'm going to get one email at a specific date and time and that email is going to. Those emails are going to include all of the subscription emails that I have there. I likewise have 86 work senders.  

[00:06:10]: So these are usually things that are more like software or tools or things that I'm using that I just don't need in my inbox all the time. I have retailers, so we all know you subscribe to a retailer so that you can get the coupon code on your next order. And so now those retailers, I have a weekly email. Once a week I get an email with all of those emails in them. And to be honest, I don't ever even open this roll up. I just archive it. But then it's there if I ever need to go, hey, I'm buying something at Old Navy. I won.  

[00:06:39]: If they have a coupon code, I can now search my email and it will still be there. I have bundles for rollups rather for bundles. So sometimes I've signed up for bundles or summits or other speakers, email addresses or email lists. And so I have roll ups for that. I have a kids and family roll up and then I have a favorite. So it's hard to believe there's 89 people on my favorites list. But I want to make sure that these are the emails who I love opening. Like Laura Belgray is one of my favorite emails to open.  

[00:07:09]: So. So she is in my favorites list. And every day at 8am I get an email roll up with my favorites. Here's an example of what it looks like. So this hits my inbox. It says favorites issue number 420. So I've been doing this for a long time. And in that email you get two different kind of views.  

[00:07:27]: So this is all the same email, but I broke it up so we can see it a little clearly. So you have a preview of what's in the email. So here's an example of some of the people that are in my favorites. And then there's also. It will do just kind of like a summary. So here's other people that are in my favorites. And I can see. Okay, I want to make sure that I open Tara Reid's email today.  

[00:07:47]: And so I can just click on this and it'll show me all the emails that Tara sent that day. You can choose the cadence, you can choose, you can see. Some of these I have every day. Some I have weekly. I choose like I want my retailer's email on Sundays, but I want the people I follow email on Fridays. You can choose the time, all of those things, and you can choose where it sends the roll up. So even though my favorites email is mostly people I follow for work, I have it being sent to my personal email. So that that's just something that I know that I'll check every day and it won't get buried somewhere else.

[00:08:20]: So I absolutely love doing the roll up. So that is leave me alone again. You can try it out at SuccessWithSoul Co LMA. And all you have to do is just connect your inbox. It's going to scan, scan your inbox, show you everything you're subscribed to. You can quickly unsubscribe with a single click. No hunting for unsubscribe links or going through annoying like are you sure pop ups. You can see which senders email you the most.  

[00:08:43]: You can mute them if needed. And I recommend checking in with your screened mail a few times a week and maybe reviewing your entire leave me alone account once a month or so just for maintenance. It's just like clearing out your closet, but with emails instead of jeans that don't fit anymore. Okay, up next is AI Powered replies with Ellie. So we've cleaned out the junk, but what about the emails that actually require a response? And that's where Ellie AI comes in. So Ellie is an AI email assistant that drafts thoughtful on brand replies for you so you don't have to spend forever figuring out what you want to say. So Ellie is another Google Chrome extension that integrates with Gmail and it learns your writing style. So I'm going to show you how this works in real time.

[00:09:33]: But basically what I want you to know is that it's going to create responses that sound like you, maybe a politer, more professional version of you and without the energy drain. So you can tweak the message and send it as if if you're happy with it, or you can tweak the message. And for introverts this is just such a game changer because it just eliminates all of the oh no, I have to reply to this dread. You still get to have thoughtful communication with clients and customers without spending hours agonizing over worry. So let me show you how this works in real time. Okay, so the way that Ellie AI works is let's say you come into your Gmail and you've got an email that you need to respond to. So here's an email from my friend Kat and now that I've installed the Ellie Chrome extension, I see these showing up in the email itself. So I can now choose from here.

[00:10:25]: Okay, let's say I want to respond respectful, casual or annoyed, I'm interested or I'm not interested, I want a short reply or not. And then I can just choose what I want here and just click right. So we'll see here. You'll click right, it's going to think and then it's going to create a response based on your knowledge base. So I'm going to show that in just a second. But you can train your, you can train your Ellie to respond like you by training it on your previous emails and giving it custom instructions. You can see here that you can choose if you want it to be a customer support role. I also have a trained Ellie for when I'm responding to some of my clients as a coach or a consultant to help me answer there.  

[00:11:11]: Or sometimes if it's just like a friend and I don't need a role, I might choose no role. So you choose the role as well. And so here it's now crafted a response. Thanks for the heads up on all these events. Definitely interested. Sounds fantastic. Let's say you don't like this let's say you need something different. You can either click revise or let's say you want to change it to say I'm only interested in.  

[00:11:35]: Let's see, come back to her email here. The $1 pick and mix event. So I'm going to put that in the extra context and then I'm going to click Revise. Now it's going to do the same thing again. Okay, now it's saying, I'm really intrigued by this. Sounds like a fantastic way. Let me know some details. So you could change it to be anything.  Kate Cordmeier [00:11:55]: Maybe you want to say respectfully, you're not interested. Right. So you can come here and change that and then let's just have it right again. Okay, so now it's just putting it right on top. So I'm going to delete these. Okay, so now thanks for reaching out. Appreciate the offer. My schedule is packed.  

[00:12:14]: I'm not able to participate. So this is all written like I would write the email. And of course you can always customize it as I showed you, change how you want it to be. But I want to show you the roles where you train your AI. So the first thing that you can do is come to email training. It's going to give you an email address that you can forward your emails to. And so I have, I've sent 70 emails to my Ellie to train it on how I've responded to emails in the past. So now it knows my voice and how I normally answer specific questions, all of that kind of stuff.  

[00:12:49]: So that's been really helpful. They also have a knowledge base where you can upload your website so it can be trained on your website. So even if you haven't told it certain things, it will be able to pull some information from your website and then you can also train the role. So for example, I have this customer support role. So I always say, always be polite, respectful, make them feel seen and heard and valued. And then I answer some other things like if they're asking about how to work with me, here are some options and here are the links. Don't mention these programs. When somebody asks this question, respond this way.  

[00:13:24]: If someone wants help with this, share that. And then I give it some context about who I am. What I do. Remember, we don't use social media, so, et cetera. You have 4,000 characters that you can use to train it. And I can tell you that not only has this saved me so much time, but it has also helped me provide much better customer service because I know as an introvert I am drained by having to be on and talk and all of that stuff a lot. So now I can say, let's say I get an email from a customer who is asking me a question and sometimes what I want to write back is just like, yeah, it's in the portal here, send it off. No greeting, no, you know, no politeness, no like great customer service.  

[00:14:09]: But now when I just click reply, for me it's going to add something that's like, hey Kat, thanks so much for reaching out. I'm so sorry that you're having trouble finding this. Why don't you try going here but here, here. So I'm able to provide a level of support that I wasn't personally, I didn't have the capacity to provide myself before. And that has been so powerful for me. Okay, so that is how I use Ellie and it has been, like I said, such a game changer. I also recommend using Ellie to set boundaries. So if you get, if you get customer service emails where you feel like you want to say one thing but you feel badly or you are a people pleaser, Ellie can really help you with that and maintain your boundaries without requiring a whole lot of energy from you to, to do that.  

[00:14:59]: So that's been really helpful as well, especially as an introvert. If you want to try out Ellie, go to successwithsoul Co Ellie and there's a free gift for you there as well. Now, never miss a follow up with Boomerang. Boomerang is another free tool that I use. It's a Google Chrome extension as well and you can check it out at Success with Soul co Boomerang. It's a scheduling and reminder tool for Gmail that makes sure no important email ever falls through the cracks. So I'm going to show you in real time how I use this. But what I'll say first is just it is an absolute lifesaver for keeping your inbox organized without relying on your your memory, which, let's be real, is already overloaded with your own to do list and remembering to drink enough water.

[00:15:45]: Okay, so now I want to show you another tool called Boomerang that I use to help me automate more of my inbox. So one way that I use Boomerang, we're just going to come back here into the same email example from before and I have my, my le is writing my response. So I've got that generated. But let's say I don't want to send this just yet for some reason reason maybe I want to delay the set. So one thing you can do is click Send later and then you can choose when you want the email to send. Another option is let's say you have sent this, but now you need to follow up and you want to remember to follow up. So another thing you can do is click this Boomerang. Again, this is just a Google Chrome extension, it's free and so you can click this and once it's installed into your Gmail you can return the conversation to your inbox.  

[00:16:35]: If there's no reply, you can choose how long you want or if there's a specific date and time. You can add a note if you want. And now this will show back up in your inbox. And if sometimes you maybe just want it to show back up, even if you do get a reply, you don't have to check that, but it'll show back up whenever you need it to. So it will remind you that it's time to follow up with whatever this email was about. Another Boomerang feature that I use is their calendar and this has replaced Calendly or Acuity or any of those other paid tools. And what you can do is let's say in this email, let's say I do want to schedule a call so I can choose. I've got, Sorry, this is going to log me into my Boomerang for a second so I can choose.

[00:17:16]: I've created a bookable schedule so one thing I can do is just share this. So let's say I want to ask her to get on a 30 minute one on one call with me. So I'll just click insert. And now it's adding my calendar. It's got my availability and now it's just adding this to say here's some upcoming times I'm available. Click a time below and they can click right within the their Gmail like the email itself to schedule something. And you could also overlay your calendar. So it's this isn't going to work because I'm on this is my account.  Kate Cordmeier [00:17:46]: But they could overlay their own calendar to see where there's overlap where both of you are available. If they want more options, it's going to give them a page that they can go to. And now here's the link. It's telling them where they're going to meet. And Boomerang has it all set up too to send them reminders. They can reschedule and cancel console. It's all right within there. So that's one option for using the Boomerang calendar feature.  

[00:18:09]: Another option is you can suggest times. So let's just say you can click Suggest times to meet and now it's going to let you choose sometimes. So let's say I want to. I want to choose. It's because this is in the past. So let's say I want to choose this time and this time and now it's going to insert those into the email. And now it says here's some times that I'm available and you know, click and they can choose one of those two times and if they can't then they can have a link to schedule somewhere else. Same thing you can share when you're busy.  

[00:18:39]: Let's say you're trying to meet within the next three days. So now it's going to say here's my live view of my availability. Let me know what works for you. So a very cool feature that also helps cut down on back and forth with scheduling emails and saves you more time in your okay, one last pro tip about Boomerang is they also have an inbox pause feature to temporarily stop incoming emails during deep work hours. So if you're somebody who is easily distracted, of course I always recommend having notifications turned off. But if you're like me, sometimes I just keep my Gmail window open all the time. And if in this case it's going to keep you focused and productive and eliminate all of those distractions okay, so we're coming up on the end here. Now that you've got your AI inbox assistance working for you, let's talk about email boundaries because the real goal here isn't just a clean inbox, it's reclaiming your time and energy.  

[00:19:34]: So a couple quick tips. Set specific times for checking email instead of keeping it open 24 7. This has been really important for me and I really try to just check my email at two or three specific times throughout the day rather again than keeping it open 24 7. Another thing that I've recently implemented is an autoresponder for FAQs or common questions. So this is a screenshot of what my autoresponder looks like. Currently I'm a one woman show. It tells people that I can get back to them within 48 hours of the next business day. I do practice a four day workweek, so I let them know that if they reach out to me Friday through Sunday, they're not going to get a reply until the next business day.

[00:20:17]: And then I answer a lot of the common questions that I get. So what I did actually was I exported A ton of emails from customers and I imported it into ChatGPT and I asked ChatGPT what are the most common questions that people are emailing me about. And it analyzed, gave me a bunch of insights and it also analyzed the sentiment and all of that stuff, which was incredibly helpful. So one of the things that I saw was that people were having trouble figuring out how to log in. So I give them the instructions right here. Sometimes people want to cancel or manage a subscription that they have, so I give them that information right here. I was getting so many emails from people asking, I can't make it to the live call. Is there going to be a replay? So I added that into the, into the autoresponder and I cannot tell you how much this has cut down on my customer service emails since implementing this just a few months ago.  

[00:21:09]: It has been a godsend and I have a lot of people who write back to this autoresponder and say, thanks, ignore my previous email. This answered it and then I don't have to do anything. It's been amazing. Also, email boundary Unsubscribe ruthlessly. No guilt. Don't feel pressured to be on anybody's list for any reason. And if you need to just put it into a roll up and move it out of your inbox for a while, you can always do that as well. And lastly, don't feel pressured to respond immediately.  

[00:21:38]: Not every email is urgent and somebody else's emergency is not your emergency. So that's it for me today. I saved my bio for the end because I love at these summits when people just get right into the meat. But I do want to just tell you a quick little bit about who I am and who's been talking to you this whole time. So, hello, I'm Kate Cordmeier. I'm the founder and CEO of Success with Soul and I am a highly sensitive introvert with OCD and chronic illness, two small kids, and limited capacity and energy to work all day. So I rely on tools like the three that I shared with you constantly to help me increase my capacity and get more things done in less time. I've made 2.5 million since I went online in 2015.  

[00:22:24]: And yeah, that's basically my story. I'm an introvert and I still have been able to create a really profitable, sustainable business. I'm not even on social media. I quit in 2021. I only work 20 hours a week and I've made over 265 plus days of daily sales, averaging over 500 a day given all of that. So if I can do it, you can too. If you have any questions or you want to reach out about anything else, you can always email me at hi@successwithsoul co and I will rely on the tools I share today to make sure that you get the best customer service and the quickest reply without draining my energy. So I'll be excited to test it out with you.  

[00:23:03]: Thanks everybody.