Over the past 2 years I have gained a lot from Six Degrees, the co-working space in nearby Coffs Harbour. It’s been a great way to network with other people working from home in Coffs and Bellingen. And through attending events and giving a couple of pitches about my businesses at Six Degrees I have found: a web designer, who created …
Finding new clients
Since I started my business about 3 years ago, I’ve been fortunate to have a few high-value clients who have given me plenty of work. Of course, it was a bad idea to have all my precious eggs in so few baskets. However, with a constant stream of projects, it was difficult to find the time or the motivation to …
Have laptop, will travel
I have now been away from Australia for 4 months and have managed to keep working, first from the UK and then from a small village in the south of France. The only ‘tools’ I brought with me were a few reference books and my laptop, but I found during my 3 months in France that I couldn’t manage without …
Different hats
Last year I bought SmartDraw, with the intention of turning all my procedures into flowcharts. Then I got bogged down in project work, and the flowcharts didn’t happen. However, today I had another go, inspired by an email from SmartDraw describing VPM – visual process management. This is a neat idea whereby the organisation chart contains a hyperlink from each …
More on networking
I love networking – it really helps to counteract the isolation of working from home. In recent weeks I’ve met up with a few freelancers and been interested to hear about the different ways people work and the tools they use. One tool that I came across through a conversation with a participant on a training course is the reference …
Getting things done
This week I made lots of progress on my company intranet (thanks to help from an IT expert). The plan is to have all my procedures, checklists, style guides, etc in a central place, so that (a) they are readily accessible and (b) there is no confusion about which is the latest version. This is all part of setting up systems …
I have way too much to do – when I set up my own business I meant to work four 8-hour days per week, not 48 hours per week, as I’m currently doing. However, there are some good things happening: The computer’s understanding of my speech has increased amazingly in just one week, and I can now use it quite …
Accepting my limitations …
I’ve really enjoyed my first year in business, it’s been a great experience and I’ve learnt a lot. One painful lesson, which I’ve had trouble accepting, is that I’m not a well-organised person. To some extent this deficiency has been offset by Intervals, which has been fantastic for keeping track of work. However, the program is only as good as …
Challenging week, and a win through LinkedIn
It has been another challenging week, with lots of editing to do and yet more problems with the computer (finally fixed on Saturday morning, thank goodness). At least my second computer is now set up, and I’ve learnt the important difference between a back up for restoring the computer (which I had) and one where you can see files in …
Finding a coach
My business coach has been a great help over the past year, but she has now moved on, so I need a replacement. I have tried a few companies I found online, but they all seem to have a relatively fixed product that is way beyond what I need in terms of time and cost. Happily, I’ve now found two alternatives: A friend who …