Bonus lesson:
Time-saver emails

Note: save this lesson until after you have completed Activities 2-4 this week

The purpose of generating “time-saver emails” is two-fold.

For the first, there’s a hint in the name: they will save you time. These emails are responses to the sorts of questions many of us will receive a lot of the time. Emails from strangers asking us to collaborate / put them on our podcast or in our blog / critique their work. Emails asking us about our work, services or offerings, that we have already answered elsewhere on our website. And emails we need to write ourselves, to follow up on queries we have made but not received responses.

Telling someone “no” is not always easy, and I know from personal experience just how much time we can end up dedicating to saying “thanks but no.” Time that is already precious, and that takes us away from actually working on the things we set out to achieve, and to growing closer to our goals.

Having generic forms of these sorts of emails pre-written means all you need to do in these circumstances is copy and paste. Tweak or personalise a little if you want to, but the basic framework is there: you can hit “send,” and get back to your own work.

The second reason I recommend creating these emails is because by writing them mindfully right now, rather than when you’re responding to one or many of those queries, you will have the time and head-space to write them in a way that is on-brand, that utilises your unique tone of voice, your brand vocabulary, and your language principles. (That’s why I recommend you hold off on writing these until you have completed Activities 2-4 this week.)

Composing the emails

In Workbook 2 on page 13, you’ll see prompts for you to compose four commonly-needed emails. Do this keeping your brand’s tone-of-voice (the three words you chose during Phase 1 at the front of your mind) and by employing your three language principles (from pages 6-11). If you need to, dip into your brand vocabulary (page 5) for specific words or turns-of-phrase that might help.

To get you started, I have drafted two very generic versions of each of these emails, below. One uses a chatty and informal tone of voice, while the other uses a more professional and formal tone of voice.

If it helps you, use one of my emails as a starting-point for your own, then adapt it to be sure it reflects your own verbal brand.

How to use the emails

When you’re done, copy and paste them into a document called “Time Saver Emails,” and save it somewhere that you will remember. Whenever you next receive one of these emails, or need to post out a quick reminder, just copy and paste from your pre-written document.

Over time, you may notice other commonly-received emails that you could also pre-write and add to this document, so that it becomes increasingly useful to you.