MBA1197 Dealing with Email While Traveling + Free Ride Friday!

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It's our way to say thanks for leaving us love on itunes. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Helping your business move forward one step at a time every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson, you will learn dealing with email while traveling. If you're like me, you do a bit of traveling for business and for pleasure. And when you do, your biggest headache is catching up on email. If you're on vacation, for example, you don't even open your inbox. But what happens is that when you get back from vacation, you have an incredible amount of inbox debt. You have tons of emails you have to reply to that you're super late to reply to. I mean, if you take two Weeks off, people are not getting a reply for two weeks. But what's the alternative? I mean, even if I'm traveling for business, I'm so busy while traveling, I can't reply to email at the same efficiency. In today's lesson, I'm gonna break down some options you have when it comes to dealing with your inbox when you're away. I'm going to use some strategies to take the pressure off and minimize the amount of work you're going to have to do when you get back from traveling. These are some strategies that I picked up through trial and error, as well as some things I learned from some of my contemporaries in business. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Typically, when you're about to go on a trip, whether it's for business, whether you're going on vacation, you do what it's called a vacation mode or a vacation autoresponder on your email. This is very easy to set up on Gmail, but all that does is really send a message to the sender. The person that sends you an email, they get a message, an email back that says whatever you told them, you're a vacation responder. It could be something like, hey, I'm away for a couple weeks. I will not be able to reply to your email until this date. And that's usually what we do. And that's kind of where it ends. And what happens is that we get back from our break, we get back from our travels, and we have a sea of emails to reply to. And what if you get emails during that time that are urgent, that are applied two weeks from now, really is not going to make a difference. So what do you do? You have some options. Okay, if you travel frequently, like you travel once every two months, then this option is going to be worth your while. And it's hiring an assistant. Hiring a virtual assistant is just as good and much more cost effective. And this assistant or virtual assistant will be in charge of your inbox while you're gone. You're literally gonna give them access to your inbox. These are business email. There's nothing personal in there. So you can just give them access with your, you know, your username and password, you're fine, and you're gonna have them reply on your behalf. I know a lot of people do this, and it's fantastic. Why? Because what happens is, say, for example, you get an email, then your assistant replies and says, hey, this is Jeffrey, I'm Omar's assistant. Omar's currently away or is traveling or whatever you want to tell them. Is there anything I can help you with while he's gone? What happens here is it throws the ball back in their court. They get a response from an actual person, not an autoresponder. So the email gets dealt with. Number two, it tells them, hey, is this urgent? Is this something that is a code red that you need help with immediately? What can I do for you? Either they're gonna respond with, yes, you can help me. And it's something simple like, hey, can you book an appointment for me on his calendar? And your assistant can have access to your calendar and that can be done. And that email is dealt with and you don't have to deal with it when you come back, or they say, no, there's nothing you can help me with. No problem. I will email Omar when he gets back. And as long as your assistant knows your dates of travel, they'll know when you're coming back. And they could tell the sender, hey, Omar's coming back this date. Feel free to email and get in touch with him then. Done. That email is taken care of and you don't have to deal with it. And then they'll email you when you're back in action. This is the most efficient way to do it. Somebody in your inbox. It's going to cost you four or five hundred dollars a month for a va. Totally worth it. Think of the peace of mind you're going to get every time you go on vacation. When you travel on business, even you can have this taken care of during the weekend. If that's not an option, no problem. We got some other strategies for you. Here's the second strategy in your autoresponder, your vacation mode, autoresponder. Give them an opportunity to. To speak to somebody. So you could say, hey, I'm on vacation right now. If this is an urgent matter, please call or email my customer service manager. Anybody else on the team, anybody else other than you, your co founder. If they're not on vacation, whatever it is, give them somebody else to talk to. Say, hey, I'm not away. If this is an urgent matter, speak to this person. If it's not an urgent matter, please email me when I get back on this date. What this responder does is it tells the sender, you have two options here. Either send this message to somebody else or message me after I come back. Don't expect a reply. You can even say, I'll be deleting all messages I received during these dates. And that's exactly what you do. You come back and you delete all the emails that you get. I know people that do this and they do this with confidence and maybe they take a quick look and make sure there's nothing urgent there. But essentially they delete every email they get when they're away because hey, if it was urgent, somebody else dealt with it. If it's not urgent, then they're going to email them again while they're in action. Third option, have your emails forward to somebody else. So you can set up in Gmail where you can have forwarding, where any email that you get gets forwarded to another email address. And this could be again, a co founder, somebody that works there, your head of customer service. And they deal with your email while you're gone. And then you could do the same when they go away. And again they'll get the email and say, hey, I got this email. Omar's away right now. How can I help you? They're either gonna say, here's what I need help with or that's okay, I'll email Omar when he gets back, no problem. And again, you can delete all the emails when you come back. Thy ticket lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.

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Options to deal with email while you're away. What if all three options are not for you? The other option is you edit your autoresponder, your vacation autoresponder to say, hey, this is when I'm away and when I come back on this date, I'm going to be slow to reply. Maybe it's going to take me up to a week. To reply to your email after I come back. This sets up expectations so they know that hey, you're away and it's going to take even longer to get back. They might reply and say, hey, no worries Omar, I'll hit you up later. And from there you don't have to reply to that email when you see it or they'll say, no problem, I'll contact support. And you can even suggest that in your autoresponder. The point is, is that you want to minimize the pressure on you to reply when you get back as well as you set up expectations for those who send you emails and get that autoresponder guys and gals. I hope that helped. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. But today's episode is not over because it's Free Ride Friday. I got to give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. It's a $500 value over at EasyCourse Co. Let's see who won this week's Free ride. And the winner is Joe Especial. Joe Especial says 5 stars. Stupid, simple and amazingly useful. I just started listening to this podcast a week ago and it's filled with great actionable episodes. I feel like every episode clears up some sort of misconception I have and reminds me of the things I've learned the hard way. I'm finishing up my BS in business right now and this is a great way to brush up on my skills. So thanks Joe Special, for that great review. You are a winner. Your mission is to email me at omar100mba.net so I can hook you up with that free ride. If you want to win a free ride and you're listening, you're like, hey, this is cool. How can I win? Just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you automatically enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday and see if you want. All right, before I go, I want to leave you with this. Taking breaks is really important. Taking time to rest your brain, your mind, your body is very important. You got to recharge your batteries so you can go at it stronger when you come back. So make sure you handle this noisy, annoying thing called email, right? Make sure you lower the pressure on yourself and you allow people to know what the expectations are. This is gonna allow you to rest even better when you're away. This actually applies to when you're going away for business. It's like a sort of a mini break of your routine. If you wanna experiment with this, you can go ahead and do this. Even with a short business trip, you might be surprised with the results. All right, I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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