Dry cleaning as a service is a commodity. One dry cleaner is usually the same as any other. You take your clothes in and pick them up cleaned, pressed and wrapped in plastic a week later.

In my town you can find numerous dry cleaning businesses. Some are family owned, a couple of others are corporate chains.

Since I’m pretty busy running a small business and being a mom, I try to keep things efficient. I plan out my errands and group like-minded tasks together. So it makes sense to pick a dry cleaner in my town — saves gas, saves time.

Except I don’t use a dry cleaner located just minutes from my home. No, I do business with Rick, whose dry cleaning business is located 20 minutes away in Massachusetts.

This is because Rick has made taking care of his customers’ clothes a high art. And, as Seth Godin describes in his book, Linchpin, he’s made himself indispensable, to me and hundreds of people like me. In short, he’s a wonderful example of a Linchpin.

Don’t let appearances deceive you

The first thing you must know, when you walk into Rick’s establishment, is that it is *filled* with clothes and similar items. (That’s how busy he is.) You walk in the door and you get maybe 24 inches of space between the door and the counter.

You can’t even see the back of his establishment. Too many clothes in the way.

The counter is usually piled high with clothes people have dropped off.

You also see dozens of police uniforms hanging from hooks — all pressed to exact military standards.

But even better, you see money hanging from metal clips. I’m not joking. If Rick finds cash in your pockets, he’ll hang it on a clip with your clothing tag so that it can dry out. Then he returns it to you when you pick up your clothes.

One of his customers took a picture of the money, framed it and titled it, “Laundering money.” (ha!) Rick hung it above the counter.

Rick remembers people’s name and asks them when they want to pick up their clothes (as opposed to telling you when they’ll be ready). He also tells you when he’s going to be closed or going on vacation.

What I love best about him is that he’s *smart.* Last year I provided a proposal to a company that sells items to dry cleaners like Rick and started hitting him up for insider information. In just a few conversations I learned more about the dry cleaning industry and its challenges than I would have reading trade journals.

Rick knew to the penny how much his attached laundromat cost him in terms of upkeep and water usage, what it would cost to convert over to energy efficient machines, and why he still used machines that accepted quarters rather than those new credit card type machines (which I hate).

What Rick does is magical

It’s not the fact that he has clothes ready when promised or that he doesn’t lose articles of clothing. Any dry cleaner can do that.

• Rick doesn’t have to return people’s money. If you’re like me, you have no memory of the money you leave in your pockets.
• He doesn’t have to ask people when it’s convenient to have their clothes ready. We’ve all been trained to have service people tell us what’s convenient for them.
• Heck, he doesn’t even have to remember people’s names. How many service people do you do business with that have no clue what your name is?

No, he doesn’t have to do any of this. But he does. And in the process, he’s turned his commodity business into an art, which is why I drive 20 minutes out of my way to do business with him.

Do you have an example of any business that’s indispensable to you? Is it because of one specific person and how he/she treats you? If so, please share it.

Over the weekend, my automatic garage door sprung a spring — meaning I had to pull the red emergency cord to get it to close.

Because I’m a handy-with-tools kind of woman, I could see how to fix it, but given that the pulley / cable combination had broken too, figured it better to call in the pros. (Plus, my garage door, which is solid wood, is *heavy.* As buff as I am, I couldn’t lift it to the open position.)

Going online, I searched for “garage door repair Plaistow” and was presented with the Google map pack.

Read the one review for Cass Shumsky Overhead Garage Door Corporation. The customer was very happy with her garage door repair. Bingo. Called the company on Sunday afternoon and received a call back from Cass Shumsky himself Monday morning.

I told Mr. Shumsky I had found his site through Google and he said, “They say now the yellow pages no longer work, so I’ve been working hard to make sure I show up in Google.”

Even better, to get people to leave a comment on his Website, he entices them with a $5 gas card — an enticement I read about on his Twitter feed. How cool is that? (I left my own comment.)

The entire experience of dealing with Mr. Shumsky was wonderful. Eric, his repair person, showed up at my house at 12:15 and because I had a call scheduled for 1:00, he had my door working again by 12:50. I was very impressed.

Small companies like Shumsky’s call me regularly because business has dropped off and they’re scrambling. I explain about why they need to be online, but I get resistance.

Here’s why being online — with just a simple Website that’s not even optimized — worked for Mr. Shumsky:

1. Because he has a Website and has claimed his Google Places listing, his business appears in the Google map pack.

2. He encourages people to leave testimonials, ensuring future business.

3. Simple site shows what he does — fix and install garage doors.

4. Phone number is on every single page making it easy to call.

But there’s more to it than that. Mr. Shumsky succeeded with me because he treated me with courtesy and respect (I can’t tell you how many male tradespeople have treated me like I’m an idiot), he had his repairman out when he said he would, and the repair was done quickly and cost-effectively.

Yes, the Internet has changed all the rules with regard to marketing. But some of the rules haven’t changed — as seen in my experience with Mr. Shumsky. As he said to me on the phone, “My name is on my business. That means I stand behind my word.”

Thank you, Mr. Shumsky, for reinforcing this “traditional” way of doing business, and thank you for fixing my garage door. It works better than it did before it broke. And, you’ll definitely get my order when I’m ready to order a new garage door.

A few months ago, while deep in the planning stages for my son’s bar mitzvah, I added up the costs of a typical bar mitzvah party, looked at the number for a long time and then said to my son, “Dude. I could take you to California for a week and give you a better time.”

His response, “Can we tour Google?”

“Uuuuhh, sure.”

The first thing I did, after hearing my son’s request, was to find out if Google even offered tours. In fact, they do! However, according to the Google page I read (which of course I can’t find now), the only way in is through a Google employee as employees are allowed to host two guests per month.

Pulling some strings, I snagged a tour . . . and off we went to California for eight days. Woot!

Touring the Google Campus

For those of you who haven’t seen the Google campus, it is . . . amazing. I hadn’t been to Mountain View since I left California in 1999 and was astounded to see building after building that make up the campus.

According to our tour guide Karen Wickre, Senior Manager, Global Communications and Public Affairs, Google employs over 8,000 people in Mountain View alone — which is one reason why the company has dozens of cafes / cafeterias / smoothie and frozen yogurt bars through out the buildings.

To have thousands of people descend on the local area during the noon rush hour would cause instant gridlock.

In fact, according to Karen, due to having access to so much food, new Googlers often gain 15 pounds, referred to as the “Google 15″!

“We also lose lots of man hours when people leave campus,” said Karen. “People have to get into their cars, drive somewhere, eat, and then come back. By providing on-campus cafeterias, people can eat here with other Googlers and save time.”

In the hour that Karen generously gave us, we visited three or four buildings, a couple of the cafeterias, one of the gyms, the post office, and one small work area that wasn’t off limits to the public.

We also saw the beach volleyball area, the outdoor eating areas, the Corporate Store (in beta) and the funky bicycles that Googlers use to get from building to building.

Even more astounding, however, was the bus depot. To reduce pollution and traffic, Google buses its employees to various points around the Bay Area, including San Jose and San Francisco. We’re not talking vans — we’re talking full-sized coaches equipped with wifi!

I came to the Google campus with a slight chip on my shoulder. Google is a big company, it has made some questionable moves (re: the initial roll-out of Google Buzz), and it sometimes feels like Google is trying to take over the world.

But I came away with a new-found respect. I was simply blown-away at how the company treats its employees, its respect for the environment, and its visionary thinking.

We could all use a little Google dust in our businesses.

In addition to visiting Google, my son and I made stops at the Apple campus and the Intel Museum.

Unlike Google, Apple doesn’t offer tours, so we settled for walking up and down Infinite Loop and buying a t-shirt from the Company Store (which is open to the public).

The Intel Museum, on the other hand, was way cool. Free and open to the public, the Museum features a well-laid out historical timeline of the founding of Intel and the development of the silicon chip. I learned about Intel’s “Copy Exactly” strategy and how it manufactures wafers.

The museum even includes a history of Intel’s marketing and advertising — including its audio logo.

The lesson I learned from Intel? Don’t be afraid to be different and keep things simple. Intel’s founder, Bob Noyce, for example, wrote Intel’s business plan on one sheet of paper.

Because I focus on B2B Web marketing, I sometimes forget that everything a company does is marketing — from the way it answers the phone (or doesn’t answer the phone) to how it treats people who obviously aren’t customers.

Google gets five stars for its corporate tour — it’s the best one I’ve had. And the fact that Karen, a senior level employee, took time out of her incredibly busy day to show two tourists around campus says something.

How many companies would do this? I’m thinking not many.

And Apple? Steve, honey, you could easily build a pretty cool Apple museum or visitors center for the Apple faithful. Having one would go far in generating a little more good will. I love your products and I totally admire you, but you could do more to give people a peek behind the curtain.

I’m one of those people who reads books cover-to-cover, including the acknowledgments, the prologues, the introductions and the testimonials.

You can learn quite a bit about the author/s by reading this information: who is in his/her network, how the book idea came about, who edited the book, and sometimes how long it took to write or the obstacles encountered.

So I was tickled to read Jason Fried’s and David Heinemeier Hansson’s list of people who inspired them on the Acknowledgments page of their new book, Rework. (Fabulous reading, by the way. Five stars.)

The 37Signals founders included the typical names you see in books of this type, i.e. Seth Godin and Jeff Bezos.

But they also included lots of other “big” thinkers who have changed our world, including Julia Child, Thomas Jefferson, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Love it!

While walking the dogs this morning, I pondered my own list of people who have inspired me in some way in the last 25 years, both personally and professionally. Herewith my list, in no particular order:

Jane Austen
Virginia Woolf
Sharon Teitelbaum
David Meerman Scott
Mark Victor Hansen
W. Clement Stone
Brian Halligan
Anne Holland
Mac McIntosh
Steve Jobs
Barbara Stanny
Bob Bly
The Founding Fathers and Mothers
Doyle Dane Bernbach
Jim Fannin
Leo Babauta

Who inspires you?

I became a student of how to effectively network at business functions when I met my good friend Mac McIntosh in 2001.

Mac, I discovered, was the consummate face-to-face networker and was a joy to watch. When I bumped into him at local marketing events, he would be quick to introduce me to influential people in the room.

Instead of handing out a business card, Mac always had something of value — a copy of his newsletter, his little calendar card you can tuck into your wallet, etc.

Most important, he always amazed me with the details he remembered about people.

I remember thinking, “Man, I want to be like him!”

So I read lots of books, such as Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty and Endless Referrals.

I repurposed my online newsletter articles to make them look like pages from a magazine and would hand those out versus my business card. I even took my online newsletter and made it a print publication for a couple of years — and would hand that out, too. (It also made a great direct mail piece.)

I got to know people and tried hard to connect faces with names. (That’s my one failing. I don’t remember people’s names but I always seem to remember their details.)

I made myself useful and volunteered for committees.

It worked. I went from not knowing a single soul when I moved to the east coast in 1998 to having the extensive network I enjoy today.

You can find lots of information about social media and the new marketing rules, but here is the one simple truth:

The same good manners you used when you networked face-to-face still hold true when you network online.

• Be polite and charming.
• Have a firm handshake.
• Look people in the eye.
• Be generous and introduce people to others.
• Become known as someone who refers people to others — it will come back to you in spades.
• Don’t interrupt the conversation in order to talk about yourself.
• Ask lots of questions.
• Be helpful by directing people to information / resources.
• Dress appropriately.
• Know your alcohol limits — i.e. don’t embarrass yourself.
• Hand write your thank-you notes — people will remember this thoughtful detail.
• Don’t air your dirty laundry or speak ill of others.

A good rule of thumb for being an effective online networker is this: if you wouldn’t do it, say it, or wear it at an offline business function– or if your mother wouldn’t approve — then don’t do it online.

Do you have tips for successfully networking online? Post them here.

(Hat tip to Chris Koch @Ckhoster who inspired this post with his post about Facebook’s privacy disasters.

Nancy Lublin, the founder of Dress for Success and the CEO of DoSomething, wrote a thought-provoking article, “Let’s Hear it for the Little Guys,” for the April issue of Fast Company.

In it she talks about why we should focus on the followers of visionary thought leaders.

“I think we’ve got it all wrong,” she writes. “We’ve overdone this whole leadership/founder/entrepreneur thing. And we’re not spending nearly enough time crediting the folks who turn all that visionary stuff into tangible reality: the chief operating officers, the mid-level managers, the staffers. If the word didn’t have a pejorative tinge to it, I guess you’d call them followers.

“The world needs people who can follow intelligently. Good followers ask questions. They probe their leaders. They crunch the numbers to ensure that their visionary boss’s gorgeous plan actually works.”

For over a year now I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m not hard-wired to “think different.” I’m definitely not a Steve Jobs, Seth Godin, or David Meerman Scott.

Once I read Lublin’s article, however, I realized that the world needs people like me — those of us who implement others’ vision.

Lublin calls us “followers.” I call us “pragmatic implementators.” We’re the ones in the marketing trenches.

When I give presentations on social media, SEO, and Web marketing to groups, I find myself answering very, very basic questions.

“What’s ‘viral marketing’?” a corporate communications manager once whispered in my ear. She was too embarrassed to ask the question openly.

“How do I open a Twitter account and post things?” people ask constantly.

“How do I use Facebook for business?”

“I heard meta tags are dead. Why do I need to optimize my site?”

“How do I leave a comment on a blog? And, do I even need a blog?”

Visionary thought-leaders are wonderful. But someone needs to teach people not only how to fish but how to string the pole and bait the hook.

Taking someone’s vision, breaking it down into bite-size chunks and action items people can actually implement takes real skill — and patience.

You have to show people how the “vision” works in language they understand so that they “get it” in about 10 seconds.

The best part of when I give presentations is when I hear a collective “ahhhh” from the group after I’ve demonstrated some how-to. “Oh my gosh!” someone will say. “You make this so easy! Thank you!”

I’m a real fan of visionary thought-leaders. We’d wouldn’t advance without them. They push the envelope and get us to stretch in ways we hadn’t thought about.

But after reading Lublin’s article, I realized I needed to take pride in being a pragmatic implementator — especially when I get an email like this from Marketing Coordinator Rochelle Otterstrom at Burnett + Company, LLP :

“I’ve implemented some of the web SEO strategies taught at the IGAF Marketing Conference by Dianna Huff. Our Google ranking has increased, we’ve received more calls citing our website as the referral, and our Hubspot website grade has improved! Even better, I received kudos from my firm’s Partners.”

Woot!

The world needs us pragmatic implementators, too. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?

Had to take my car in for its service this morning and while paying, chatted up the service rep by telling him why I like their waiting room: It’s clean, you get free coffee and it has WiFi.

The rep said, “Oh, is the WiFi working today? We get slammed by people when the router is down — people really want it.”

My marketing antennae picked up . . . “How do you know that?” I asked.

“Surveys. We get bonuses based on 100 percent customer satisfaction rates and when our WiFi is down, people give us less than a 100 percent rating. I’m personally losing thousands of dollars in bonuses!”

As a customer and a marketer, I found this little interchange fascinating. I just assumed that people would downgrade the facility based on cleanliness or whether or not one’s vehicle was properly repaired.

By surveying people, however, this dealership learned that WiFi is also an important benefit.

So it’s surprising to me that since management knows this, they don’t move heaven and earth to ensure the router works — all the time. (When I asked if they needed an IT referral, the guy said they had an IT guy, he just hadn’t gotten around to figuring out why the router wasn’t working.)

What can you learn from this interchange?

1. Survey your customers frequently to ensure your service and/or products are up to snuff.

2. If responses reveal a problem, fix it! Nothing is worse than asking customers how you can do something better and then ignoring suggestions.

3. Don’t purposely strive for less than 100% satisfaction ratings so that you don’t have to pay bonuses. Your employees will become jaded.

Does your dealer or repair person have a waiting room? What do you like or dislike about it?

As motivational speaker Mark Victor Hansen says, all of us can come up with excuses for why we can’t (or haven’t) yet succeeded.

I’m not educated.
I’m over educated.
I’m under qualified.
I’m over qualified.
I’m too poor.
I’m too rich.
I’m too fat.
I’m not healthy.
I’m handicapped.
I’m too old.
I’m too young.
I have kids.
I’m not married.
I’m the wrong color.
I’m the wrong ethnicity.

And the biggie — I’m a woman.

That’s the excuse the woman behind the Men With Pens persona used to justify using a male pen name and why she kept her gender a secret from almost everyone, including clients. According to her (him?), she made more money writing as a man than she did as a woman.

When I first read her coming out of the closet post on Copyblogger months ago, my first thought was, “Of course. We all know this.”

My marketing women friends and I acknowledged that yes, it’s still a man’s world. And, yes, you can find lots of data that show women still aren’t filling leadership roles — despite a large pipeline of very smart, very capable women.

Sadly, sexism does still exist, as evidenced by our last national election cycle. No matter what you think of either woman, Senator Hillary Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin took a beating in the media — by conservative AND liberal outlets — and were castigated for their clothes, their looks, their body images, and their motherhood.

Male candidates, on the other hand, rarely went through this type of media bashing gauntlet. John Edwards, for example, managed to keep a mistress on the side without too much trouble or media inquiry.

I hashed out my anger and my confusion about this issue after the Men with Pens post came out with my colleague Mark W. Schaefer, who had originally addressed a related topic on his blog, “‘Social Media Expert’: Women Need Not Apply.”

Mark encouraged me to write about sexism in business, but I held off, not wanting to come across as an “angry woman.”

After much grappling, however, I realized that we are what we make of ourselves.

If you want to use an excuse like gender to explain why you haven’t achieved your goals or why you can’t be successful or why you can’t make as much money as male copywriters, then that excuse will hold you back.

On the other hand, you can say, “Yes, sexism (and other -isms) exist, but I’m not going to use it as an excuse.”

You can claim your power the way many of the women did who headline the Simmons Leadership Conference. At this conference, you’ll find women from all industries and walks of life who are making radical changes in their communities and across the globe.

I’m especially excited to hear Sheryl WuDunn talk about how women in the developing world have lifted themselves and their communities out of repression and poverty.

I’ll be attending the conference, Friday, April 30, 2010. I’m looking forward to meeting other powerful and successful women, celebrating my own successes, and getting inspired to make even bigger changes in the coming years.

Will I see you there?

(A HUGE thank you to Mark who encouraged me to overcome my fear about addressing the topic of sexism and who thoughtfully responded to my lengthy emails. Mark, you’re the best. I hope we’re able to meet face-to-face one day.)

Like many people, I have a computer hard drive crammed with files: documents, audio, video, PowerPoint presentations — you name it, I have it.

When it was time to replace my aging PC a couple of months ago, I got price quotes for a blazing fast Windows 7 machine that came with mega huge storage. “You won’t need another machine for a few years,” said my IT person.

I was all set to buy it when I walked into the Apple store with my son to get the machine he’d been saving for for months . . . and a half hour later, walked out with a 13″ MacBook Pro.

(And let me just digress here a minute to say that I cannot find the words to express the entire Apple experience. From the store displays to the packaging to the product themselves, you just don’t find anything like it — anywhere.)

At first I thought I’d use the machine as my personal laptop. It’s small, it’s portable, but it definitely was not a business computer.

When my aging PC started acting funny, I began migrating my business to the Mac — thinking I’d purchase a larger iMac later in the year.

In the process of moving, however, I discovered having a “small” computer was actually quite freeing.

Based on the “less is more” principal, here’s how having the small MacBook has made me much more productive:

1. I dumped (almost) all of my software — With the exception of the slimmed down version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, all other software is now cloud-based, including:

Basecamp and Highrise from 37signals — I use Basecamp to manage client projects and Highrise to keep track of contacts and tasks. (Highrise is far superior to Google Tasks / Gmail contacts). I can also access both applications through iPhone apps.

Harvest — This nifty application lets me keep track of time and expenses, and it syncs with Basecamp. And, with the handy iPhone app, I can track time while on the go.

Quickbooks Online — Quickbooks desktop software is bloated and hard to use. I hate it with a passion. But most accountants like it, and truth be told, it is easy to send your QB file to your accountant at tax time. QB Online, however, is much easier to use and because it’s online, I can access it from anywhere.

WordPress — Although I made this change before purchasing my Mac, it still counts as part of my overall “become more productive” goal. Instead of two Websites (my DH Communications site and my blog), I now have one site — simplifying everything. And again, I can access my site, and make changes on the fly, from any place that has an Internet connection.

Yield Software — I use this application to help me with SEO and PPC for clients. Don’t know how I lived without it.

2. I cleaned up my hard drive — Last year I spent a week cleaning out my physical office and removed piles and piles of paper. This past month I’ve cleaned out megabytes of unneeded files gathering dust on my hard drive. Cleaning out all this junk has made it much easier to find the files I need on a day-to-day basis.

3. I work glitch-free — With my PC, I was spending increasing amounts of time dealing with technology. Due to anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-pop-ups, anti-scripting, anti-anything software and browser plugins, nothing worked right.

Clients would point out things on Websites that I couldn’t see. Java never worked properly, rendering some applications useless. Then of course, there were the famous Window reboots that would happen right in the middle of a project I was working on. Argh!

Now everything just works. I’m finding I’m much more productive since I don’t have to stop mid-stream to deal with some “small” technological glitch that would leave me pulling out my hair.

In short, having my MacBook has freed me to do what I love: Create.

Have you moved from a PC to Mac? If so, what kind of Mac do you own and what do you find is the biggest benefit?

Yesterday evening I posted on Twitter that I had achieved a “zero inbox” (i.e. no email in my Gmail inbox), and Chris Yates (@chrisyates11), one of my followers, asked how I did it.

Managing email — versus it managing me –has been my holy grail for months ok, more than a year now. I am completely overwhelmed by it. Not only do I have my Gmail account, I also have a personal Yahoo one — which fills up with clutter from temple, my son’s school, my personal stuff, and spam.

My problem is compounded by the fact that I work in different locations — from home, at my office, at my son’s fencing lessons, at Starbucks between client meetings, etc.

I tried Xobni for Outlook for a few months, but due to the work in various locations problem, I realized I needed email “in the cloud.” Gmail works well — but isn’t ideal, if you want my opinion — but email-in-the-cloud still left me with an overflowing inbox.

You can’t manage email. You have to reduce or eliminate it.

The strategies I’ve been training myself to use to aren’t difficult per se. You’ve read these tips in other places, but I’m posting them again because they do work — the trick is that you have to be incredibly disciplined and use them (that’s the hard part).

1. Don’t check email constantly. The checking-email-constantly addiction has to be worse than smoking. I have learned the hard way that I simply cannot keep Gmail open all day long as I tend to live in my inbox and get nothing done.

You really have to set pre-determined times when you’ll check email. For me, that’s now 11:00 AM, 2:30 PM and 4:00 PM. When I do check it, I try to process all of it. I even write these times on my daily task list. Sometimes I write, “Don’t check email until 11:00.” It works.

This strategy is still a work in progress but it’s getting easier. One thing that helps is to keep track of just how many “urgent” messages you get per day. For me, that’s just about zero. I’m not a brain surgeon.

2. Don’t check email first thing in the morning. Again, this is another tough habit to break. Instead of checking email first thing, I sit down and get right to work on my biggest task of the day.

To make this step work, you have to write your task list the night before.

3. Decrease the amount of email you send out. Back in the days of hand-written letters, the advice was that if you wanted someone to send you a letter, you had to send one yourself.

Well, it works the same with email — you send out an email and the person replies to it, putting more email in your inbox. I now find myself asking, “Is this email really necessary?”

I also found I have a really bad habit of sending multiple emails, either because I type too fast and forget to include information, necessitating another email, or because I’m giving status updates on multiple items.

Once I became conscious of this, I realized I needed to better manage projects.

4. Use project management tools. I’ve tried to use Basecamp, a project management application, numerous times, but always seemed to fade out on it. This is because I never really gave up the email habit.

However, due to multiple clients and multiple projects, I was just losing track of important details as they would get lost in the email shuffle.

I’m back on Basecamp and now that I’m better managing my email, Basecamp is working like a charm. I email clients from it and since everything is grouped by project, I can keep track of discussions and add to-dos and milestones as soon clients give them to me. Best of all, everything is located right there in Basecamp, making it easy to keep track of details.

5. Eliminate “status” updates and other unnecessary stuff. I discovered by accident that you can receive Google Alerts via RSS. What a relief! I’ve added all Alerts to my Google Reader — eliminating in one fell swoop dozens of daily email Alerts.

I’ve also begun unsubscribing from those newsletters I no longer read as well as those that people send me without my permission (in the past, I would simply delete them). For those newsletter I want to read, if they have an RSS feed, I subscribe to it instead.

I’ve also charged my VA with reading HARO emails for me — she reads them for other clients as well, so it was easy for her to add my potential PR opportunities to her list. That eliminated another three emails per day from my inbox (plus freed up some valuable time).

And finally, I eliminated all those “status” updates from social media platforms, including Twitter and LinkedIn, and configured my blog so that I don’t receive email whenever anyone posts a comment.

These are the steps I’ve taken to reduce email and get to a zero inbox. What strategies have you used to reduce and manage email? Post them below.