Focus for People Who Move Fast
~10 min.
Brandon Bussey is a RevOps leader with a lot on his plate. As a VP at Lucid, he oversees everything related to revenue strategy and operations - providing the marketing, sales, and customer teams with the strategy and systems they need to be successful. He’s got no time for unsolicited, unwanted emails.
A relatively new discipline, RevOps is the connective tissue between many traditional teams at B2B companies. Brandon observes, “I'm probably one of the individuals at Lucid that interacts most broadly with others and is regularly liaising between multiple groups.
Because of that critical central function, RevOps leaders like Brandon often find themselves overwhelmed with sales pitches that sell various martech, revtech, and sales tech products.
“We've all seen those slides where it shows the logos of the vendors. Right? Well, at any given time, I am the target persona for every single one of those tools.”
That means he gets a jaw-dropping amount of email. It pours in daily and “probably 50% of my emails are sales emails or some sort of drip campaign to grab my attention." Email filtering was taking up too much valuable time.
With so much noise in his inbox, it had become impossible for Brandon to see the messages that required his attention. “With so much noise, it was hard for me to find the important things I need to review and act on.”
He’d certainly tried to solve the problem before.
“I had tried anything and everything. I tried the zero inbox method at one point but spent so much time filtering email that it wasn’t worth it. I even had my EA help try to make my inbox more manageable."
When Brandon heard about Gated from founder CEO Andy Mowat, he wanted to test it out right away. Up and running in his inbox within minutes, the value became immediately clear.
“Important messages don't get lost in the clutter and I can respond in a much more timely fashion. Now I know who is actually trying to engage with me and not just dropping me into an email campaign."
Though many people unsubscribe to reduce inbox volume, Brandon has a clear reason why he doesn’t do that. “I want to keep many of the emails that come in, but I don't want to see them every day. I just want to be able to engage with that content when I want rather than having it force my attention in the inbox.”
By using Gated, Brandon keeps distractions out of his inbox and retains the ability to search for information in those emails at any time. “I think of it like an archive, like a data repository. With Gated, I know there’s a folder where it’s all going and I can go explore it when I need to.”
Though many of the internal projects he works on at Lucid use Slack for communication, Brandon still highly values the clarity and searchability of email.
“Most of what ends up sitting in my Gated folder is stuff that I do want… but I want to consume it in an intentional way. I want to engage with it on my own time, when I’m in control of what I’m seeing.”
As a leader constantly thinking about how to empower and free up his team, it’s a bonus that he no longer needs his Executive Assistant to keep his inbox clean. "Before, my EA managed my inbox to filter through all the automated email outreach I received. With Gated, I now manage my own inbox, which allows my EA to focus on much higher-value projects.”
Brandon uses Gated to take care of his personal inbox as well: “I didn't think I'd find a ton of value [using Gated for personal email], but I actually get just as much value as I do with my work email.”
With both inboxes, Brandon supports Wounded Warrior Project. He shares, “It’s just one more small thing I can do to help those folks that have served our country, have given up so much, and often go unrecognized.”
No matter how busy he gets, Brandon is always focused on what matters most. Gated is a solution that empowers him to prioritize the messages that are of highest value - in his personal life, at work, and for his team.
Published March 2022
Updated December 2022
