Here's my story:
I have been a communications consultant for 6 years. I'm not a LLC. I don't work with state secrets. I'm a sole proprietor, and most of my work is done through PR firms of which I am a member of their extended team and I work w their clients. I work with a ton of different industries and sectors -- health care, education, financial services, energy. In all that my time I've used my personal Gmail for almost all my work stuff. In a few cases, I have had a client set up an email for me on their domain that I get delivered to my phone. But for the most part it's been my Gmail which is firstname.lastname@gmail.com -- which is good because my name and rep is pretty much my business.
But now, I have a financial services client that has a new policy that says I can't keep using a "personal email" -- ie, an email with a gmail.com (or hotmail.com, etc.) domain. Literally anything else is fine, which is dumb, as it is my understanding that Gmail security is the same across its platforms, including their business/Google Workspace offering. It just has different words. The client tried to give me an email from their system, but after going through literally months of setting it up, it turned out they don't have any way of allowing people to check their email without being on site or logging into the Citrix virtual desktop, which fucking sucks. So, having run out the clock on the client on this issue, it seems the only option is to set up a business account with my own domain.
Now, I know *how* to set up an email for this -- I did it for my dad when he set up a consultancy after he retired from his business. I mostly just don't want to. For one, I have studiously avoided naming my business. I hate stupid clever business names with "strategies" and "communications" that I see on LinkedIn. But also, I don't want to transition all my clients to another email, I don't want to pay for an email and email domain out of my own pocket (even if I could charge the client or write it off). And I don't want to go through the hassle of checking multiple fucking emails. I'd like to have everything in my Gmail account without having to flip back and forth between business and personal.
What does SoSH suggest here as the best and most painless way to do this? As for the platform, I'm thinking maybe it's Google Workspace -- $12/mo. My wife has used GoDaddy but that seems to have been a mess for her and I prefer the Gmail platform to Outlook's. As for the name itself, I'm thinking and the name is either my name spelled out -- or maybe better yet, my three initials, a la "fredo@xyzcomms.com."
Thoughts?
I have been a communications consultant for 6 years. I'm not a LLC. I don't work with state secrets. I'm a sole proprietor, and most of my work is done through PR firms of which I am a member of their extended team and I work w their clients. I work with a ton of different industries and sectors -- health care, education, financial services, energy. In all that my time I've used my personal Gmail for almost all my work stuff. In a few cases, I have had a client set up an email for me on their domain that I get delivered to my phone. But for the most part it's been my Gmail which is firstname.lastname@gmail.com -- which is good because my name and rep is pretty much my business.
But now, I have a financial services client that has a new policy that says I can't keep using a "personal email" -- ie, an email with a gmail.com (or hotmail.com, etc.) domain. Literally anything else is fine, which is dumb, as it is my understanding that Gmail security is the same across its platforms, including their business/Google Workspace offering. It just has different words. The client tried to give me an email from their system, but after going through literally months of setting it up, it turned out they don't have any way of allowing people to check their email without being on site or logging into the Citrix virtual desktop, which fucking sucks. So, having run out the clock on the client on this issue, it seems the only option is to set up a business account with my own domain.
Now, I know *how* to set up an email for this -- I did it for my dad when he set up a consultancy after he retired from his business. I mostly just don't want to. For one, I have studiously avoided naming my business. I hate stupid clever business names with "strategies" and "communications" that I see on LinkedIn. But also, I don't want to transition all my clients to another email, I don't want to pay for an email and email domain out of my own pocket (even if I could charge the client or write it off). And I don't want to go through the hassle of checking multiple fucking emails. I'd like to have everything in my Gmail account without having to flip back and forth between business and personal.
What does SoSH suggest here as the best and most painless way to do this? As for the platform, I'm thinking maybe it's Google Workspace -- $12/mo. My wife has used GoDaddy but that seems to have been a mess for her and I prefer the Gmail platform to Outlook's. As for the name itself, I'm thinking and the name is either my name spelled out -- or maybe better yet, my three initials, a la "fredo@xyzcomms.com."
Thoughts?
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