Uncover User Pain: "The Tax

The founders we been talking to, they’ve built and run multiple companies. There’s a pattern we keep seeing. They are not just running one thing, they’ve always got a few things going on at the same time. Maybe it’s a SaaS product, a consulting gig, some advisory work, a bit of mentoring, maybe even a couple of angel investments. Some even run a non-profit on the side. And honestly, kudos to them. That’s awesome. But with that level of success, it comes a lot of clutter and a ton of noise.

Email is the first place to show it.

First, it’s just a few customer emails. Then it’s signing up for different tools and services, organization newsletters, trade shows, and conferences. Not a big deal, until it all starts stacking up.

Filters and labels help for a while. But then, a few VIP customer emails get buried between all the junk and marketing emails. More important conversations with customers, partners, and ongoing projects start getting pushed down.

You skim. You star the emails. You promise you will come back. Repeat. Maybe batch it over the weekend. Cuts into family time. But it piles up again. Every single day.

Email just becomes a chore to clean up. You scan, you read, and then you forget. You multitask, you get disorganized, and you start to dread opening your inbox at all.

These are really sharp, focused people. They just hit a volume where the old, manual inbox strategies (sorting, folders, flags) just stop working.

Nobody wants to reach inbox zero. That’s a lot of work.

They still want to stay on top of things and be thoughtful with their replies. They know their name in an email is their brand. But the daily grind of sorting, filtering, catching up, it’s draining.

The cost is time and energy. Or the anxiety of dropping the ball. That’s the real inbox tax. 

Is this you?

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I am Gary Yau Chan. 3x Head of Growth. Product Growth specialist. 26x hackathon winner. Building ClarityInbox. I write about #PLG and #BuildInPublic. Please follow me on LinkedIn, or read about what you can hire me for on my Notion page.