14 April 2009

Slippers and crepes with the UK's best businesswoman!


The Easter weekend was a good chance to relax after the hectic pace of the past few months, well I say relax - what I actually mean is digging up new flower beds, laying patio slabs and having lots of creative thoughts on landscaping the garden!

Funny that a weekend of harder work relaxes one ... just the different routine and mental focus did the trick. Anyway, even though the muscles are aching and the back strained, the mind is now in slow-mo and I just want to go back to tinkering around in the garden.

Back to business ... our last meeting with Karen was a few days before the One Life Show and we had another great meeting with lots of laughs, good ideas and tons of motivation. Karen suggested we find something really different for our stand and fished some frogs out of her pond for us to take with.

We then spend the next few minutes coming up with slogans for our crazy frogs and ended up with a few show stoppers. Spawning home business ideas, Spawning work from home jobs and National Take Your Frog to Work Week were just a few of our crazy ideas.

The frogs went down really well and we had regular visitors popping back to the stand to see how our frogs were getting on. The frogs just stared and now and then sang a few croaky tunes when the loadspeakers came on. After the show ended we escorted the courting couple back to Karen's pond.

What is really baffling is where has the past 5 months gone, they seem to have melted away and we are almost at the end of the UK’s greatest mentoring competition. It all seems surreal – sitting in Karen’s slippers and being served chocolate and vanilla ice cream crepes made by one of the UK’s top businesswomen! I've just pinched myself and I am awake!

The good news is that Karen’s mentorship has grown our business and Remote Employment has just experienced our best month yet. Amongst other things, we are working on a diverse sales strategy to incorporate vertical markets and the possibility of using a call centre to enhance our current sales model.

We are also finalising details with a headline sponsor for the Remote Worker Awards after putting together a fantastic competition with a prestigious panel of judges and a fabulous awards ceremony. This just shows what a great story remote working is and how it is so attention grabbing.

We hope to announce the final details in the next week, in the meantime take a peek at www.remoteworkerawards.com to enter the next best awards!

All in all, we can’t wait to launch the awards and see where our next month of mentoring takes us ...
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

How to set up a home office ...

Before you set up a work station at home, check out our Seven Top Tips on how to work from home:

Your Home Office
Ideally, you will have a spare room to create a home office. If not, a corner of another room, will be fine as long as you are not constantly distracted in the family fast lane. Set up your kitSet up your computer, files and phone to give you maximum comfort for long hours. Have enough plug points for PC, printer, phone, scanner, mobile charger, fax machine and answer phone. Even better get an all in once mod con to save on a jumble of cables and wires.

Pick your desk location
You should be able to see the door of the office from where you are sitting or at least more of your surroundings. Beware of facing the garden and the bird bath – too tempting to watch the world go by! A hard chair will give you backache so spend a little extra on a good one.

Working Hours
Working outside 'normal' working hours helps to balance your work and home life so don't feel guilty dashing off to take the lads to footie after school, as long as you get your work done. Catching up in the early morning or later in the evening works well, but also watch out for going OTT. Make sure you close down and walk away at some point or the family will go hungry.

Have a breather
No matter what kind of work you do or what home you do it in, you can go bonkers if you spend 24 hours a day at it. Get out, whenever you can, to clear your head and to see other people. Use lunch time as a good break to pop down to pick up groceries for dinner, step outside to feed the birds during your coffee break or walk the dog around the block to clear the cobwebs. This is also a great way to mull over a document or get inspiration for new ideas.

Keep in Touch
Have no fear that your social life at work comes to an end if you leave your office to work from home, in fact in some cases your relationship with your colleagues may improve. Email is instant but be careful of 'funnies' – they can eat up a huge chunk of time. Chat through business issues by phone and meet for a quick bite every now and then.

Goal scoring
Give yourself little goals and objectives and then reward yourself when they are complete. Make sure family and friends know your hours or days of working at home and stick to that. Don't be tempted to pop over for a coffee or cook a large meal. Give yourself this time as a reward for getting up early on a Monday to finish a long-winded report. Or if you score well with a new client take five to put your feet up before the school run. Whatever incentives work for you, use them to motivate yourself to balance your time around your other responsibilities.

If you have any suggestions on working from home, please submit your articles to grace@remoteemployment.com.

Remote Work

Remote Employment is a brand new online recruitment site specialising in remote working and home based appointments, professional jobs working from home, home based career opportunities, high quality office-home job combinations and flexible work positions that can be effectively managed away from the office.

Register to find professional, jobs working from home and self employed home based business opportunities. Search to find Candidates, Freelancers, Consultants and creative projects.

Do you want to work remotely