Can I have a side of nuggets with that please

Having worked from home for the past 12 years, here are my nuggets which should get you well on your way working in this new tech-focused world we find ourselves in:

1. Classy phone technique

Firstly stop writing long emails and pick up the phone. Then there is a sequence. Hi this is so and so. Are you x. I know you’re really busy.. Have I got you at a good time. This won’t take more than 2 minutes. Get to the point. Say thank you. And action what was discussed. The telephone with a QUICK email will do wonders. Do not fall into the bad habit of writing long emails. You will come across as a spammer. Your long emails will take forever to write and they will be deleted immediately. Speak clearly and slowly. I cannot stress this enough. Be polite. Do not use slang. 

1. Rather get a second AND third screen so you can have Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and and and open all the time. Instead of only having one screen, glancing over, feeling guilty, getting sucked into doing something you shouldn’t be doing and then not getting any work done at all. FOMO doesn’t go away so just feed it. Accept that while you are on the phone, its actually useful to be scrolling through friends bladdy holiday photos and amazing homes and all the wonderful things people do who don’t seem to work. You’ll be amazed how much time you have while the phone is ringing. A quick glance and then back to writing that short email.
2. Do not work in the same room as your TV. Big difference between a TV program and scrolling through mind numbing stuff on social media.

Now I’m going to change the conversation up a bit. We are now forced to appreciate that we live in a different world. We cannot rely on the old way of doing things. So listen up. May I suggest you start positioning You-As-a- Brand online. You cannot rely on going to work and having a guaranteed job and if that fails look for job openings and sending your CV. You need to up your game. Register on a business network that matches your industry. Make sure your photo looks very neat, no sleaziness. Professional with an I’m successful look. If it looks sexy, change it. You will attract the wrong set of eyes. Make sure you spend at least the whole of one Sunday detailing the work you have done to get to this point. You are on display for new business colleagues, clients and anybody looking to do business with you. If you look like you put it together in one hour, people will notice. Lazy people are easy to spot.

We are now in the video meetings world. Make sure your camera is at a higher angle than “looking up at you”. If it’s a laptop camera get a plug in and put it higher. You should have a smart painting behind you avoiding at all costs the “I’m working from home look”. The more you can make what is behind you look like a news studio, the better. Keep a smart jacket next to you in case you are called into a video meeting. Sit back and look like you’re the Chairwoman of the board sitting behind a smart oak table. Sitting too far forward looks doos.

Now is your chance to become a Flash Team super hero. Flash teams are when people reach out to you to be involved in projects because you have the skills they need for that project. It is empowering to know where you fit into the value chain of your industry. Once you actually understand your positioning in the picture, reach out to like minded Flash Team participants and try to work out how as an Organized Collaborative you can approach a client together. This will allow you to take on a chunky piece of work that they otherwise would have only given to a big agency. Obviously you need to know what brand you present as and have all your paperwork and email addresses in place so that when the client is ready for a proposal, it looks like you’ve done this many times over. The collaborative gig economy is the future of big corporations. You as a Brand can tap into this movement and make this whole work from home thing the best thing that ever happened to you.