Many small businesses struggle with email and how it’s used to collaborate. But there is an easy, dare I say it, lazy email workflow that might work for you too.

Watch the video on Odysee or YouTube


Transcript

Recently, I did a project with one of my clients. He's been actually quite a long-term client. And the first time he called me, he said that his email got hacked.

So we both sprung into action to try to figure out, well, firstly, we had to limit his account so no one else could log in. And secondly, we found out that all his emails were deleted, everything on the server.

Now, he runs a small business. There were seven people working in that business, including himself. And they lost everything because everything was on the server as in IMAP.

So when the server dies, gets hacked. Everything gets lost.

He was really distraught.

We locked it down. We've actually moved over to another service. And the other service is what I want to talk about.

Well, firstly, I want to talk about making sure that your email. provider has got really good security and make sure that you have really good security with your account and your staff account.

If you're not working with staff, your own account.

But if you're working in a small business, make sure your staff have good passwords, not password one, two, three, or whatever, because I have seen that and it blows my mind that people still do that.

But what I actually want to talk about is the system that we moved to.

Because one of the issues that he had, while we were working together to try to find a good solution for his email, was that they weren't really using a project management tool.

And they were forwarding emails backwards and forwards. Yeah, to try to get the information.

Now, I tried to tell them to use a project management tool, but for what they were doing, it wasn't worth it for them.

I still don't understand why, but it wasn't.

So they lived in their email. And they wanted to kind of carry on with their email because everyone was distributed, ec.

I still think it's best to use a project management tool. Like Basecamp, obviously I'm The Basecamp Guy. But they didn't want to do that. And they wanted everything in a simple form.

But the one thing that they were really struggling with is not necessarily communication between them, even though, again, that would be fixed with Basecamp.

But all the emails going backwards and forwards, and there's actually an easy, lazy fix for that.

And this video is actually called lazy email workflow, mainly because there is actually a way of doing what they wanted to do with email.

Now, as we know, email is quite simple. It's a text format. Obviously, you can put pictures in it, but primarily it's a text format, backwards and forwards. And I do love email, but as I said, people use email wrong.

So the solution we came up, and there are several solutions for this, but the one that we came up with was using, HEY, for business or HEY for work.

I don't know, they keep changing their names, but HEY, adding their domain to it, luckily they didn't lose their domain name, where everyone can actually comment on email.

So rather than forwarding emails to each other, they could actually assign emails and also talk and communicate about an email within that email, which is fantastic.

So when I showed them that feature, it kind of woke them up into, oh, this will actually work.

Now, I know how they work, and it will work for them, again, even though, I think they should use something else. They were really happy with it.

So the takeaway from this is twofold. One, there is a lazy way of using your email in your business to not forwarding emails. But secondly, making sure that you don't lose your emails.

I mean, they were in business for 12 years.

And they have moved email service providers in the past, but they've kept that email archive. and they lost it all because they had really bad security and passwords.

Well, I don't know how they got in. There's no way of knowing really how they got in. We did work with the provider, but they couldn't really tell us anything.

They just said someone logged in and deleted everything. Could it be a rogue employee, possibly? I doubt it because I know who they are and who the old employees were.

So I have a feeling that they were hacked somehow and with some other information that they gave us. So yeah, make sure your email is secure. That's kind of the first thing. I did say the second thing, but the first thing...

But second thing, there is a lazy way of using email in a workflow, especially when you got stuff so you can communicate and liaise with your colleagues about those emails, etc.

Hopefully that helps you out. If you have any questions, let me know. The product I'm talking about is hey.com so you can go on check it out. but if you have any questions, let me know.

There'll be a link below. Two links below. One, to subscribe.

Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter or to the channel if you're watching on YouTube. Another link so we can have a chat, if you need any help.

Anyway, have a great day. Keep it simple. And I'll see you in the next one.

Bye.