Time to rethink that email address

If you’re a therapist in private practice you are a small business owner…you may not have quite come to terms with that yet but you are. You wear two hats – one as clinician and one as someone who has an accountant. That was my defining moment when I really realised I had a business, was when I appointed my accountant. Blessed be the bean counters!

So you’re a business owner, even if you’re still freaking out about this stay with me. If you are a business owner with an email address that ends @googlemail.com or @hotmail.com or @btconnect.co.uk every time you send a professional email relating to your business to a client, you are promoting their business and not yours. You also look like a small time operator, more like someone who has a hobby, rather than a business. If a service provider I engage with doesn’t have their own email address I do always wonder why they couldn’t be bothered…that’s just me. To me it seems like laziness. You might disagree, but I would encourage you to at least think about it if you haven’t before now. If you want a hobby, that’s absolutely fine but if you’re the primary breadwinner in your household and you’re not “you” in your email address, it’s time to think about changing that. Because every time you send an email from Yahoo or Hotmail or BT you are promoting their brand messages and their corporate messages and not yours.

What’s more, you’ll be at the mercy of their servers and security policies. If they decide that an inbound email is spam, they will not deliver it to your inbox. That email could have been a potential new client inquiring about your services, a referral from a colleague…once you start to think about it, it becomes horrifying. But the upshot is that you don’t get the email, so you don’t respond and you look unprofessional without even realising it. So not worth it.

I would encourage you to think about it – which looks more professional tamarisk@hotmail.com or tamarisk@twochairscounselling.co.uk? By the way, the former address isn’t mine so please don’t email whoever has that address! The second is me…email away if you’ve got questions or queries.