Cathy Curtis has a lot on her plate.
As the Founder and CEO of Curtis Financial Planning, Inc, a 20-year-old independent financial advisory firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she wears lots of different hats and consistently juggles competing priorities. Her firm helps individuals, primarily women and their families, with financial planning and investment management, and their mission is to partner with their clients to help them make smart decisions with their money so that they reach their goals and live a life free of money worries.
The Day-To-Day
Cathy’s day-to-day includes running both the business side of her financial planning practice, as well as taking care of each of her client’s needs. The business side involves choosing and investing in software, running the finances of the company, hiring independent contractors to help with business functions, and more. She also needs to manage client relationships, which involves scheduling meetings and being there for them when they need help with a financial issue. So yes, you could say she’s a little busy!
When it comes down to it, Cathy knows that if she doesn’t manage her time well, she won’t be productive. There are just too many things on her to-do list to get done in a finite amount of time. She didn’t need yet another obstacle to hinder her productivity, so she turned to SaneBox to help her manage one of work’s biggest challenges – her inbox.
The Email Struggle Before SaneBox
Cathy admits that managing her email before SaneBox was a constant struggle. “I didn’t manage my email very well before SaneBox,” Cathy said. “Email was driving me crazy.”
One of Cathy’s main problems when trying to tackle her inbox was the fact that her highly visible online presence made her end up on multiple vendor’s email lists. So while she found herself constantly unsubscribing from those unwanted emails, the high-priority emails she actually wanted to see got lost in all the junk. She attempted to set up rules so that emails would go to specific folders and not clutter up the main inbox, but the rules didn’t always work, which caused consistent frustration.
SaneBox Steps In
Cathy knew she needed an easier way to organize and keep on top of her inbox. She’s the type of person who uses email as a filing system, and rarely ever gets to inbox zero, so finding a way to manage her workflow more productively was essential.
So she fired up SaneBox, and once she got the hang of it after watching a few tutorial videos, she was hooked and so happy to have found a system of managing emails. “SaneBox has very good tutorials and offers a ton of help to set everything up correctly, so there is no excuse for not making it work,” Cathy said.
After a short time of consistent use, she found that SaneBox helped her actually get to inbox zero by moving emails into folders that make sense so that she could work on the priority messages and then dive into the other folders when necessary. Exactly what she was looking for!
The Aha Moment of Email
Since Cathy implemented SaneBox into her daily workflow, she’s found that she spends much less time on email and much more time working on important client or business projects.
Cathy knew just how much of a boon SaneBox was to her productivity when she accidentally disconnected the tool. Her inbox was quickly flooded with emails she never wanted to read – and that’s when she knew she could never go back. She feels a sense of calm when she opens her inbox and sees only the important emails, which is always a nice surprise and a huge relief to her. She enjoys the fact that SaneBox is easy to train, and all the emails go to the right folders. Plus, now she can send annoying emails from vendors straight to SaneBlackHole!
Inbox Relief On All Accounts
Working on email is no longer the gigantic stressor and time-waster it was for Cathy before implementing SaneBox. She originally only had SaneBox working on her business email account, but after seeing how much it helped her at work, she’s now added it to her personal Gmail account as well. Now, she can’t imagine not using SaneBox to organize all of her email accounts.
The days of dreading logging in to the inbox are thankfully over, and Cathy is thrilled to be on a more productive path.
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