Is email flushing your time and
money down the toilet?
 No
doubt about it – email is a huge time-sucker!
It’s easy to spend most of your day checking email,
replying to what comes in, visiting links you’ve received,
etc.
Remember: as a direct seller or solopreneur, your
time = your money. Waste your time and you don’t
make money. You have to use your time well in order to make
money.
In general, time spent building relationships
and connecting with people is what leads to money.
Email is not a great relationship-building tool. Is that
true for your business? If so, it means the time you spend
on email is NOT time that leads to more clients or team
members.
How can you make this potentially giant time sink
work FOR you instead of against you?
1. Minimize what arrives in your work Inbox,
by using multiple email addresses and rules/filters.
Use 3 different email addresses (or more).
One is for personal use only, one is for ezines/programs/web
sites you subscribe to (like my ezine or Oprah.com) and
one is for your business. If you own your domain name, you
can use a different prefix (personal@myname.com or info@myname.com).
If not, then you can quickly create additional Yahoo or
gmail accounts. Once that’s in place, either you periodically
check those email accounts, or you can automatically forward
them to your preferred email address and use a rule to funnel
all those emails into one folder.
Set up rules or filters in your email package.
For example, emails from clients or your team goes into
their specific folder. All the ezines I subscribe to –
I use a specific email address for that purpose only. My
email rule then becomes: If “To” is “external@myaddress”,
then transfer it into “ToBeRead” folder. Don’t
worry about missing filtered emails; your email package
will highlight the folders containing new or unread email.
Periodically unsubscribe from emails you
no longer enjoy or find useful to your business.
2. What’s the minimum number of times/day
you need to check your email? Note that I said
“need to”, not “want to”. Make a
conscious decision about how often you choose to check your
emails. The fewer times, the more productive you’ll
be.
If I want to be highly productive and it’s a non-client
day, then I do my most pressing task BEFORE I even check
my email. Once I start checking email, I can lose my focus
and lose track of time really easily.
Tim Ferriss, author of the The 4-Hour Workweek,
recommends checking your email once in the morning and once
in the evening, and letting everyone know that’s your
policy. If they need something urgently, they’ll call
you on the phone. Remember the phone?
3. Deal with what’s important first.
Ideally, you can reply as soon as you’ve read the
email. If it’s something you need to come back to,
highlight it for yourself in a particular way. You can transfer
it into your Action folder, or add a label/tag to it, or
change its color, depending on your email program’s
features.
If it’s not important, then delete it. How many
emails do you need to read about today’s deals or
what other people in your industry are doing?
4. Periodically purge your Inbox. I am
doing this now. Today, I have 1298 emails in my Inbox, dating
back to 1/1/11. Either I can save them all into a folder
or just delete them outright. I’ve saved them before
(starting back in 2005!), and I have NEVER gone back into
those files to search for something. Maybe my future biographers
will find them useful, but those saved emails aren’t
helping me now.
You have my permission to purge anything more than 3 months
old.
If people truly needed your input ASAP, they would have
already emailed you or called you by now.
Those of you who remember the pre-PC days – remember
how computers were supposed to save us time and increase
our productivity? What a double-edged sword this technology
has turned out to be! I love being seconds away from all
the info on the Internet, yet I hate feeling like I’m
constantly falling behind on email. The truth is email,
like my to-do list, is never DONE. It just keeps rolling
along. And most of the time, I don’t need to move
to its rhythms, I need to stick to my own priorities.
CALL TO ACTION
To get out of the email trap:
1. Figure out which emails actually matter to your
business. And which ones don’t. Once you
know that, you’ll be able to unsubscribe, create rules,
and delete.
2. Take a couple minutes to learn the features
that your email software (or browser) offers. Rules
and color-coding can help you A LOT. It takes a minute to
set up, and saves you many minutes down the road.
3. Turn off the sound of arriving email. That
ding gets your attention, when you should probably be paying
attention to something else. Something that will actually
make you money!
4. Consciously decide how often you need to check
your email. Use a timer to help you stick to that.
You can manage this flow, so that it supports
your business, instead of being a time-sucking parasite.
Feeling overwhelmed by email and all your other
work, and underwhelmed by your income? Then it’s
time for an experienced mentor and coach. Contact
me and we’ll easily set up your complimentary
Success Session, where we'll cover your goals, what's getting
the way, and how you can end 2011 and enter 2012 on a high
note, with more clients and more abundance. I'm happy to
support your business growth.
Testimonial
 "When
I started working with Marcy, I had a myriad of limiting
beliefs, lack of confidence and fears of presentations in
sales. Through our work together, I have shed all those
negatives and have more clarity and confidence in my professional
life. Marcy is a great listener and provides wonderful suggestions
that make sense. I owe much of my success in my most transformational
year to the direction, support and encouragement that Marcy
provided me!"
Nancy T. Ferrari
Radio Show and Media Personality
www.nancyferrari.com
Orange County, CA
© 2011 Marcy Stahl
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You
can, as long as you include this complete description with
it:
Marcy Stahl motivates women entrepreneurs to move from
having only a trickle of clients to an abundant full flow
of more clients, more money, and more decision-making power.
If you're ready to empower yourself AND boost your business,
if you want to share YOUR passion with more people, schedule
your free 45-minute Marcy Stahl Success Solutions Session
by clicking here http://www.marcystahl.com/contact-marcy.html |
What
a busy, fun & beautiful fall! I get extra energy this
time of year, even with the shorter days, due to the clear
blue sky, brisk yet mild temperatures, and the beautiful
leaf color all around me. 
My
name is Hobie Hare, and I help people deepen their connection
with nature through workshops, guiding, photography and
writing. 
