Intro: My coaching client, Laura, recently told me that she saved more money than she spent on my coaching because I helped her simplify and consolidate her tech stack. And now I want to do the same thing for you, too. I have put out a free tool called the Tools Audit. It will help you determine what tools you use, how much you're paying, and where you can consolidate and eliminate to simplify what your small business tech stack. You can go to streamlined.fm/tools to get your free tools audit today. That's streamlined.fm/tools.
I saw Wicked for Good in the movie theaters with my wife and daughter, and I did something that a lot of people would probably think is crazy. I turned my phone off. I knew that my kids were in good hands with my father-in-law, who was watching them. I could get emergency text messages to my watch, and everything else could wait. So for 3 hours, I enjoyed a movie. I didn't check my email. I didn't check Slack. Nobody except my father-in-law could get a hold of me. Now, that might not sound crazy, but here's another one.
Back in May 2025, I went to Disney World with my family. I didn't check my email. I actually couldn't check email in the parks. I deleted Slack and Google Chat from my phone, and I had my phone in a very specific focus mode where nobody who pays me for work could get a hold of me.
Back when I was working at an agency and running my business, there were two instances where I was unreachable. One was my honeymoon. We went to Italy. I didn't even have my— I had like a burner phone for two weeks. Nobody could get a hold of me. And when my first daughter was born, I took an entire month off paternity. What's the point of all of this?
Recently, I shared a new positioning statement on LinkedIn where I said I will help you take a vacation without your laptop. And that really unearthed some strong feelings. The biggest objection I got was that I need to respond to an email. And in a reasonable time. I need to— I can't just not respond to email. I need to be available.
My friends, I am here to tell you that that's not true. So in today's episode, we are going to dig into why people feel this way and how to start the healing process.
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Streamline Solopreneur. My name's Joe Casabona, and I help solopreneurs build reliable systems that run without them so that they can take time off worry-free. And part of taking time off worry-free is not feeling like you need to check email. And maybe this is because I've worked from home nearly my entire life. Because I started a business when I was 14, because I've been through what a lot of solopreneurs feel, and I came out the other side.
I get that there is fear that if you don't respond to email or Slack, or you don't make it seem like you are readily available for your clients or new leads, if you don't respond fast enough, you will lose that job, that client, that income.
And don't get me wrong, I've had clients and bosses and people like that in my life. I got a call from the owner of an agency I worked at on Christmas Day because something was going on. Could it have waited till the next day? Absolutely. After that, I was done. When they told me that I had to work a weekend if I wanted to get paid on time, I said, I got tickets to Hamilton. It's my anniversary. I'll see you on Monday. And you know what? I still got paid on time. I didn't lose my job.
At another job, my boss emailed me on the first day of my vacation. And said, Joe, if you have time over your vacation, I don't even know what the rest of it said. I deleted that email, and she never asked me about it. So I think we have this deep-seated fear that people expect immediate responses from us when that's not the case.
All of us are busy. It's— that's kind of like main character energy. Where you think that you are the main character in everybody's story. But the truth is, we've all got things that are going on. People are sending you an email, and most of them are going to expect a response when they get a response. Most emails that say urgent aren't even urgent.
So how do we get over this fear, this feeling? I think there are 3 things that you can do to help.
First of all, you'll notice that each of those times I didn't lose clients. I didn't get fired. I didn't miss opportunities. And again, it's because for the most part, people are going to expect you to work within a timeframe that is, that is managed by expectations. So when I talked about how I turned my phone off for 3 hours, I didn't tell anybody that. No one needed to know I wasn't going to be around for 3 hours. You don't text your job saying, hey, I'm going to sleep now. You don't text your clients, hey, I'm going to sleep now. If I don't respond, it's because I'm sleeping. No.
When I went away for Disney World, I communicated with all of my active clients. Hey, I'm going to be away. I'm not bringing my laptop. I'm not going to be able to check my email. If there is an emergency, you can email this email address, and it will go to a person who will determine if it's a real emergency. Would you believe that nobody emailed that email address? So manage expectations. When you get a new client, explain how communication works, what they can expect, and when they can expect it. That's perfectly reasonable.
For people who just bang into your inbox with a request, you don't owe them anything. Respond to them when you can. You responding now or 2 days from now is not going to make or break a decision about hiring you. And if it is, I gotta be honest, that's not the kind of person I want to work with. So that's the first thing: manage expectations.
The second is to set up actual boundaries. So I mentioned, or I might've mentioned, I don't have Slack on my phone. I don't have Google Chat on my phone because that's how I communicate with some folks that I do work with. Those are all relegated to my computer when I'm in front of my computer working. And when I do get a text, because some people do have my phone number, I usually tell them to email me. Hey, I'm not in a position to do this work right now. Email me, and I'll do it as soon as I can. That's it. I don't drop what I'm doing because I'm on my time. Because let's be honest, if you are working for yourself and you drop what you're doing for your clients, you don't really work for yourself. You have a boss by a different name, and that's not what a contractor-client relationship is. You should both respect each other's boundaries.
Now, at the outset, before they hire me, I let them know, hey, I'm a, you know, I have these really strict boundaries. If that's not going to work for you, then we're a bad fit. Or if they say, hey, I expect you to be on call on the weekends, I say, well, that's no good for me. So it's about setting and managing those expectations. So I don't have Slack on my phone. Now, I have email on my phone. I don't have, um, you know, the, the email addresses for, uh, the contract work I do on my phone. I have my Gmail account and my casabona.org email account because I have various accounts and two-factor authentication that I need to check for those.
But I do use the Brick, which is a device that locks you out of apps until you physically scan it. And I will use that especially when I go out with my kids so that I'm not checking email. I don't have social media on my phone either. So when I am away from my desk, I am away from work. And I think this is perhaps the, the biggest problem with solopreneurs in the year 2026. You can work from anywhere, but just because you can work from anywhere doesn't mean you should work from anywhere. Or just because you can work from anywhere doesn't mean you should always be working. It's really important for us to have time for ourselves.
Now, the last thing— I promised 3 things, right? Setting the expectations with the people you work with, setting up some physical boundaries so that you are not enabled to check messages and do work all the time. The third thing is mindset, mantra, whatever you want to call it. It's the understanding that nothing bad will happen if you don't respond right now. I got to tell you, you're not that important. I'm not that important that if I don't respond to an email, a message, or a phone call at this moment from somebody who pays me to do work for them, everything's going to fall apart.
Now, maybe you work— I used to work in web development, and I used to think that I had like— I freaked out one day in Disney World. I love Disney World, I guess, uh, because my server went down, my hosting went down, and I was like, all of my client sites went down. And my brother was like, what can you possibly do about this right now? Nothing. I wouldn't have been able to do anything if I were sitting at my computer. It was fully out of my hands because only the hosting company could fix it. No one even noticed. It came back before anybody noticed.
So there are, there are not a lot of things that require your immediate attention, especially in the work world. Maybe there are times, right? Maybe 6 months from now, I'm going— someone's going to hand me a huge bag of cash to be readily available for them for a short amount of time. And maybe I will determine it's worth it for me.
That's not what I'm talking about. So don't, don't hear what I'm not saying. That, that goes to managing expectations. And if the expectation is, hey, for this next week, like, I'm going to need you, and I'm going to compensate you appropriately, great. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you are not beholden to everyone in your inbox. You are not on their time. When someone emails you a request, they are on your time. It is your time. And if they are paying you for your time, the relationship is different.
But again, we manage those expectations. And when you understand this and when you don't respond right away or for 2 days or 3 days, maybe a week, you will learn that it's okay. You will see that it's okay. So my advice to you is really ask yourself, what bad thing will happen if I don't respond right now? I'll end with this.
I got an email. You know, I happened to be checking my email towards the end of my workday. I was leaving the office, and I got an email from somebody saying, this is urgent. Okay, they are not a paying client. It wasn't something that I did. It wasn't a mistake I made. And so I made the call that I'm going to respond when I can respond because I was leaving to have dinner with my family and have a family night.
And the next day was really busy for me, and I wouldn't have been able to give it the time it needed. And you know what? Nothing bad happened. So I want to— I really want you. If you feel like you need to respond to emails within a “reasonable timeframe”, ask yourself, what is reasonable? I don't think people should expect a response within 24 hours. That's what I'm going to leave you with.
Let me know what you think. I, based on previous experience, I'm probably going to get a lot of thoughts about this, and I welcome them. Go to streamlinedfeedback.com. If you feel like you need to respond right away, like you don't have the time and space you need, I would recommend taking my tools audit over at streamlined.fm/tools, because there are a few tools I use to manage my inbox. I named a bunch of them before, hardware and software, to help me set and keep boundaries. Your tools can help you. So that's over at streamlined.fm/tools.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I really, really hope you find some space in your week.