I’m in Email Debt.  Deep, deep email debt.  Anyone out there know what I’m talking about? If you’re a friend of mine, I’m certain you do.  Because chances are good that you sent me a lovely, thoughtful email in the recent past (this millennium), and I failed to respond in a timely manner. Or ever. I am truly sorry.

I have the feeling I’m not alone. The other day I heard Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He said a lot that was interesting to me, but one comment stood out in particular:  ”I get so many emails per day, I’ll occasionally do what’s called declaring email bankruptcy, which is I just delete everything in my email and I tell people if you had anything important, please resend. I just give up because I see hundreds and hundreds of emails – some of them stretching back a month and I know that it’s too late to do whatever that person needed me to do.”

I just haven’t mastered dealing with email.  I read every single one that comes from a genuine human.  (I do not read all my spam.  That would be silly.)  I have 3 main categories of emails – my inbox, active business and active personal.  My inbox contains what I received in the past few days.  I try not to use my inbox as a to do list. Instead I try to respond to all emails the same day I get them and then move the received emails to “processed”.  As of this moment, my inbox is completely empty.  But then again, it’s 1:46 AM where I live.  It won’t be long before they start streaming in again.

My “active” folders are messages I haven’t dealt with but want to take action on.  I’m embarrassed to tell you how many messages are in there.  But this blog is all about telling my truth, so I’ll share:  337 business and 514 personal.  Horrifying.  (If you are represented in one of these categories, please refer back to my apology from the first paragraph).

For the past month I’ve been trying to handle 10 “active” messages a day.  My thought was that in a month and a half I would have worked my way out of email debt, at least in the business category.  Then I could start tackling personal.  But with all the new emails coming in constantly, I’ve only eliminated around 50 active messages.

As bothered as I am about this situation, I’m unwilling to make email a higher priority than family, client service, marketing or self-care.  Is it time for me to declare email bankruptcy?  Anyone have any other suggestions about how to deal with email backlog?  Anyone else struggling with this one?  I’d really appreciate your comments below.  (Please, please don’t send your suggestions via email).  :)

This week I had the honor of participating on a career panel for a special non-profit organization.  Strong Women, Strong Girls utilizes lessons learned from strong women throughout history to encourage girls and young women to become strong women themselves. By building communities of women committed to supporting positive social change, Strong Women, Strong Girls works to create cycles of mutual empowerment for women and girls. Their mission is dear to my heart!

Along with the professional women who mentor them, college-aged women who mentor school-aged girls gathered to hear Subhadra England, Lee Pina, Betty Breuhaus, Brooke Botello, and I share our stories and perspectives, with Rachel Spekman moderating.  Most of these women are currently brilliance-based entrepreneurs, and I’d put money down that 100% will be at some point in their careers.  I felt inspired to be in their presence.

When I finally crawled into bed that night, I took a few minutes before I fell asleep to jot down some of the themes I heard during the panel.  I hope these positive messages will spark something in you, too!

1. Take risks.
2. Have confidence in your hustle.
3. Build your soft skills from any work experience.
4. Expect things to work out for the best.
5. Believe in yourself/ what you know to be true.
6. Advocate for yourself.
7. Listen for what each individual values.
8. Network, network, network.
9. Shift your perspective.
10. Seek strong mentors.
11. Prioritize rigorously.
12. Accept there will be tradeoffs.
13. Grow by giving.
14. Follow your passion.
15. Laugh whenever possible!

Speaking of integrating work and family (which we talked about quite a bit that night), I’m sending a big shout-out to Heather Hurd and Piña Madera for their willingness to step in when my babysitter cancelled at the last minute.  My kids and I are grateful to have friends as wonderful as you!

From time to time I share tools to help you run your Brilliance-Based Business with more joy and ease.  This one is all about the ease. Which gives me joy. My awesome Joint Ventures & Operations Manager Jessica Zambarano discovered EchoSign a few months ago.  She recommended it for connect2, and we’ve been using it ever since. You know how you make an agreement with someone and you want to get it signed and get them a copy with your signature too?  So you use mail, or fax, or a scanner, or some combination, all of which seems to take too long?

Well, Echosign takes all the hassle out of it.  There’s no printing, faxing, or scanning (unless you want there to be).

Here’s how it works for us. We send a document (W-9, non-disclosure agreement, independent contractor agreement, client agreement, credit card approval, love note, or whatever) from the Echosign site to one or more intended recipients.  They receive an email from us and “sign” it digitally, at no cost to them.  Then they receive a copy signed by us. Echosign automatically files .pdfs for us both.  And the digital signature is as legally binding as a paper signature.  Easy-peasy!

Also, they just started integrating with DropBox, another favorite tool of mine, so we can grab contracts from there and send them out for signature right from the Send page.

EchoSign has a free option, which is where we started.  Full disclosure: if you choose a paid account, connect2 will get a small fee for referring you.  If you try it, let me know what you think!

What is your favorite tool for your Brilliance-Based business?  Please share in via comments below.