One of the first things you need to do...
To free yourself on the internet...
Is BUY A DOMAIN!!
This goes for lots of areas of your tech ecosystem...
But especially for email.
Figure out a good name!
I'm happy to help if you want to brainstorm!! Just hit me up on the socials.
Think about your name. Business ideas. Personality. Add dashes if something is taken. Try to be short.
Those are some decent guidelines I try to keep in mind.
There are also some good tools to help you search for available domains on the web... I just need to find them again so I can share them!!
Most of the time I just check out availability on Namecheap.
Then Use It!
Once you have a domain, you want to set up your email!
This is done domain-wide and can be done in one of two ways.
Forwarding
To set up email forwarding, you are going to create DNS records that forward emails to your domain to another email address.
For instance, if my domain is cancelgmail.com
Then I would forward [email protected] to [email protected], perhaps.
This is a nice and fast solution that requires zero behavior change on your part. You can keep using your old email address, client, etc. And yet, customers / friends / family can start emailing you at the new address and you can begin your quest for freedom!
HOWEVER, it is also somewhat less than ideal. With this setup, you cannot send emails using the new email. As a result, replies will often go to your old email, and address books / contacts in your customers' phones are unlikely to get updated.
As a result, it takes a bit more work... but I would generally recommend doing the more involved setup below.
Full-Service
We are really kicking GMail to the curb here!
We are going to set up a full-service email provider using an email company like Namecheap, FastMail, etc. (Even Google, if you want).
This has a bit of cost associated with it... but the steps are generally:
- Create a customer relationship with your vendor of choice
- Associate mail to this vendor from your domain (usually MX records and whatnot)
- Test sending / receiving mail at the new vendor's email client / inbox / etc.
- Forward emails from your old address to the new one
- (Optional) Tell folks about the new email!
Does this process feel intimidating? It shouldn't be!! But if it's new, that is kinda how it feels sometimes.
I am planning to schedule some workshops to walk folks through this process. That way we can do it together!
If that would be interesting to you, why don't you join my email list.
Either that or you can check out our various guides on this site!
Go Forth and Email
Hopefully your friends / family / coworkers will be impressed by your new domain and your tech savviness!
Send them to our site if they need any help with the process...
And we would love to hear about your success story!!
