Blog and video tutorial on how to use Zoom (for hosts and participants)

How to reach out/educate/train in a virtual environment

Oh, how I wish I had bought share in Zoom, it’s the video conferencing tool on everyone’s lips these days. Everyone who up until 2 weeks ago was delivering face to face training/mentoring/ teaching skills now realises the only way to survive for the time being (and perhaps also in the long term) is to deliver content virtually.

This blog covers the essential of the tool Zoom which has become a lifeline for many people and can be used for Video Conferencing/ Web Conferencing/ Webinars/Screen Sharing

I’m not any kind of affiliate seller for Zoom (I unfortunately don’t think such a thing exists) but I have used it as a host to organise committee meetings and virtual team progress meetings. On the other side I’ve also used it as a participant within online business networking meetings, webinars and even during an interview for the best PA network in the UK!

With the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the likelihood that most of us will have to self-isolate and work from home at some stage is now looking pretty high.

I’m in a particular situation as for the last 5 years I’ve run my own virtual assistance business and so 80% of the time I work from my own office at home. Previously though I was a paid employee in a large corporate organisation with around 2,000 colleagues on site, a beautiful canteen to pop to wherever you were hungry and IT support at hand! Working from home can be a bit more challenging!

I did a Facebook live on this week so if you prefer to listen here is the link. Otherwise, I’ll recap 6 main points here on how to work efficiently.

Who knows your employer might be so impressed with your productivity levels and you happier with your work/life balance that remote working may become the norm in your workplace rather than part of emergency business continuity planning?

Do you feel your business is affected already with coronavirus outbreak? Are you a trainer who delivers face to face workshops or someone who organises physical events on a regular basis?

How can you turn Coronavirus outbreak to your advantage and take your business online and to a larger audience?

I’m in the fortunate position that I work from home and share documents and tasks already remotely with clients, but I have a lot of clients who do face to face work so there is also a knock on effect for me also and we all have to find innovative ways to conduct business and think outside the box.

It’s my party and I’ll have a checklist if I want to! Do you know the one thing that doesn’t change in life whether you are an adult or a child? The complexity of who to invite to your party and where to have it! Finding a venue for your workshop/conference/anniversary can be very time consuming so I’ve compiled a checklist below to help simplify it. If you are based in Northern Ireland, Visit Belfast have a very comprehensive list of venues in Belfast with the maximum capacity theatre and banquet style.

Have you ever completed a sporting challenge and realised afterwards that there are so many lessons you can carry into your personal or professional life?

Back in July, I wrote about the 97mile cycling challenge I was undertaking around Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland and the focus it required. I successfully completed it on Sunday 26th August 2018 on the wettest and windiest day of the whole summer ! Preparing for it and actually doing it required an enormous amount of planning. I had a training programme of how much time I should cycle every week, but I had to plan out for myself:

10 Admin tips to protect your mental sanity

How has your 2018 been so far? Are you frazzled? Every freelancer I’ve spoken to recently say they have been flat out this quarter and they are overwhelmed! In 2015 The Guardian published an article on ‘the disease of being busy’ you can imagine how much more prevalent this with the communication we are surrounded by in 2018. In February, I attended the Digital Marketing Sanity workshop organised by Fascinating Company about digital marketing tips to keep you sane but what about admin tips?

Back in November, I wrote an article for Women in Business about not letting time rule you and how to be more productive. I’ve learnt a lot of lessons in the last 4 months about how to keep sane in an increasingly insanely busy world which I’m hoping will benefit others.

When you ask a freelancer, what motivated them to become freelance in the first place, 9 times out of 10 they will cite wanting more flexibility in the way they work and control over their own time. The paradox is of course when you become self-employed you will never work as hard or feel as if there are simply not enough hours in the day. The entrepreneur Jim Rohn famously said ‘Either you run the day, or the day runs you! So how can you make sure that you maximise your productivity every day?

Having worked as a PA to CEO’s for more than 7 years, there are always two periods in every year which were dedicated to sitting down to plan the year ahead – January and September! This time was spent setting objectives for staff, organising appraisal reviews and to plan SMT/Directors’ meetings. Now as a self-employed sole trader my objectives are slightly different and it’s myself I have to plan for the year ahead.

In June, I published a post every day on my business Facebook page about productivity and as fortune would have it when I attended the 09:15 Biz NET meeting last Friday the topic for discussion was Time-Saving Tools. If you haven’t attended a 09:15 Biz Net meeting before -the clue is in the name! It’s a network for small businesses who meet at 09:15, every fortnight on a Friday at Antrim Enterprise Agency.

Looking for virtual office space or a registered UK address?

Whether you are a start-up who isn’t just ready to hire out a permanent office space or a company outside the UK wishing to have a registered UK address, I’ve had more and more people contacting me about Virtual office space and wanting a registered office address in NI. I don’t offer this service but there are any many spaces in N.Ireland which do and am listing the ones that I’m aware of below.

I was recently at the excellent Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council workshop delivered by Digital DNA (part of the optimise 2.0 programme) about writing web /article content and the speakers suggested always writing about topics that you have a certain amount of expertise in, so I’m writing this article on Top 10 places to meet for business outside the office. This is written from several perspectives: