Episode 55: Small Business Tips - One way to reduce inbox overwhelm while still being able to up-skill and learn from others
In this short quick tip episode, Fiona talks about setting a time each week to learn something new to upskill. One of the things she gets the resources is from opt-ins from somebody else’s emails. Listen now as she shares her simple technique to avoid getting too many unnecessary emails and how it helps her set intentions on learning for her education.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
New business coaching slots open for 2021
Opting in for freebies
Creating a new email for freebies
Scheduling a specific time to learn something new
Conclusion
Get in touch with Fiona if you’re interested to get her as your business coach for 2021:
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 55 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Thank you to every single person who has gotten in touch with me about this podcast. I absolutely love hearing what you like, what you're learning from, who you're inspired by. So please definitely get in touch. If you haven't already, I'm just on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach, or you can email us hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. I also wanted to mention that I am actually booking in new coaching clients for 2021. So if you're interested in up leveling your business, you're interested in having accountability and working with a business coach, then definitely get in touch.
Again the best way to do that is either through Instagram, DM at @mydailybusiness coach or email, hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Okay, so today we are doing a quick tip episode and this is a tactic and I found it super helpful, particularly for keeping me focused, removing distractions, and also just allowing me to really map out time in the week for education and up-skilling. So what is it let's get into today's episode.
All right. So I know that a lot of you like to learn. Obviously that's why you're probably listening to this podcast or why you might be on my email list or all sorts of things you'd like to learn. And I'm somebody who shares that as well. I love to learn.
And one thing I found that I was doing though, was saying, I might be opting in for somebody's email about, I don't know, X, Y, Z, or I might be opting in, which is, if you haven't heard of that term, it's basically putting your email address in, in order for something of value. So it might be that you're doing a quiz online. It could be that you're getting a checklist. It could be you're getting a free e-book, any sort of thing like that is an opt-in. What I was finding, especially when I first started back in 2015, I was really, you know, signing up to a lot of this kind of stuff.
And what was happening was that my email inbox was kind of getting flooded with not just the freebie, but all this other stuff, some of which was useful, some of which was not. And so I went through, you know, processes of unsubscribing and using different software. But there was all different software to try and get rid of these things that I didn't use, but some of them were useful, but I was like, I don't want to read it right now. And I don't want to necessarily just put it into a folder in my inbox, but it's just kind of crowding my inbox right now.
And so what I actually went and did was I created eight another email. So I just created, I just use Gmail. You can use any kind of free email tool there is. And I just created another email address. And I basically now only ever use that if I'm going to opt into emails that are kind of more in the educational space, or if I want to download a freebie or I'm signing up to a webinar or anything like that, I'll use that other email address. And that not only means that my main email address is not getting clogged up with emails that I didn't really necessarily always sign up to, but it also means that I've got a dedicated Gmail to log into when I want to be dedicated and focused about education. So I try and dedicate Wednesday evenings to my education. And I've talked about that before. Just sort of time-blocking a section of the week that is just for working on the business or educating or upskilling or all sorts of stuff.
And so I'm always doing that, but Wednesday is my dedicated time. And so sometimes on a Wednesday, I'll, you know, re-watch a webinar replay or I'll read something, but I'll also sometimes log into this email address. Now, one thing that I've found really useful is that that email address is not on my phone, so I have to log in on a desktop. And so that makes me really conscientious about, okay, I want to learn this week. So I'm going to log in, I'm going to download that thing that I got or that webinar or whatever it was, and I'm going to work through that in the allocated hour. So instead of it just being a distraction that comes into my inbox and I'm in the middle of work, and then I'd be like, Oh yeah, I wanted to have a look at that thing.
And now I'm suddenly off doing XYZ instead of my work for the day. Now I have a dedicated inbox that I'm only ever tapping into intentionally. So I'm getting that information that I've downloaded or the checklist or the quiz results or whatever at a time that suits me rather than being inundated with that stuff as a distraction on my main email inbox.
So I hope that makes sense, but yeah, that's my tip for today. If you're someone who downloads things and a lot of us are. You know, that's often how people learn or upskill these days, or even just to have a look at, you know, what people are doing and ideas for your own opt-ins if that's what you do, if you sell things online and you're nurturing people into email sequences, one of the greatest things that I've done is to have a separate email address.
So when I sign up for that stuff, I'm not letting it come into my main email address and I'm going there intentionally at a specific time that suits me. So I hope that really helps you this week. If you're somebody that is finding emails, you know, inundating your inbox, definitely consider creating a separate email address, do not link it on your phone and be really intentional about your education as a small business owner. None of us have loads and loads and loads of extra time. So you want to make really conscious effort that you're time blocking and that you're also utilizing that time efficiently. And I find having that separate email address is helpful to do that.
Anyway, that is my tip for today. So I hope you find it useful. If you did. I would absolutely love it. If you could share this with a business friend or leave a review on iTunes, it really helps small business owners like you discover this podcast. Thank you so much. Make sure you hit subscribe and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
