Mindset, Learning, Collaboration

Monthly Archives: November 2017

Beautiful home office spaces

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If you are not enjoying your home office space at then moment then its time to do a bit of homework and look at remodeling the space or spaces you have. If you dont then it could be wrecking your mindset and making you unproductive. Think about it. If you are always grumbing about the limitations of your workspace then you are already having negative feelings for it. Here are examples:

  • If you are constantly interrupted by family and friends, neighbours, chores, animals…….
  • If your space is shared by others during the day
  • If it is unorganised and cluttered. Maybe you dont have the right systems in place. You can have great storage if you take the time to find out what is avaiable. (in fact we can help Organise You)
  • If you are feeling cramped and the area is hard to move in

Here are a couple of things to do right now.

  1. Sit back now and imagine what you would like your office to look like
  2. Think about where it would be
  3. Draw it or write down what you want.

Was the office in your home or did you see it outside the home? Just because you work for yourself doesnt mean that you have to or should work from home. I know its cheeper but ask yourself these questions.

  1. do you like working alone or do you miss the office enviornment so it might be better for your mindset to work in a shared office space or complex?
  2. would you get out to see more clients if you had to put on “work” clothes to go out to an office?
  3. would it be more professional to see clients outside the home? and if you worked outside the home, do you need to rent a space all week or could it be part of the week and share premises?
  4. would it add more security to the home environment if clients didnt know where you lived?
  5. would it make better sense to have an office space at home and outside the home?

You will be much more productive if you hare happy with your office environment so do some reserch, jot down some ideas and get a better understanding of how you like to work.

I read a great, well reserched article by a writer for Shopify so I recommend you take a look at this first.

Kerri Bainbridge

One half of the Anywhere Team NZ

Collaborate, Mindset, Learning

Join us on Instragram and Facebook for inspirational messages to get you in a better frame of mind for all you want to achieve. 

Creating a work/life balance

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Andrew has been working from home since 1997. I asked him how he achieves balance between his home and work life.When he set up his home office as a self-employed tax consultant he read a lot of books (LEARNING) on the home office and how should set it up.
This is what he learnt:

“I decided that I needed a number of none negotiable values to incorporate into my home office to make work successfully for me and my family:

1. SEPARATE HOME OFFICE

I needed to be able to be separate from my living space. I put up a partition in the hallway and it gave me three spaces… a reception area, an area for my computer server, stationery, printers, scanner etc and an office with lots of spare desks, room to talk to clients, work, study and concentrate. Art adorns the walls and above my main computer monitor I have the following words (MINDSET):

I will not be angry.

I will not worry.

I will be grateful and thankful.

I will do my work honestly.

I will be kind to every living thing.

2. DRESS FOR WORK

I decided I would get up, shave, shower and dress appropriately every day I was at work. My attitude is dress as I would if I had to go to work off site. The reason behind a certain dress code for office is that what you wear has an impact on how you feel. And thus one should dress up to feel charged up and stay focused.

3. SET UP MY WORKSPACE PROPERLY

I decided that I would work with at least two monitors of at least 26 inch each, I kick arse graphics card, good speakers, as much RAM as I could get with my desktop and the best connection available (currently 200/200 MPS)! In addition that the server would be updated 5 yearly! When there are no clients the music makes my day just a little brighter! AND webinars are a breeze!

4. SET OFFICE HOURS

Chores are done when I am out of office. I remember I am working from home, not for home!

5. STAY HEALTHY

I look after my health. I take regular breaks- micro pauses. I built my ergonomic setup myself as I suffered from RSI in the previous job! I also take lots of supplements for good health.

6. WORK ON MY MINDSET

I make sure that I meditate in the morning and at night, take a walk daily, do daily yoga and have a massage at least once every three weeks!”

Feedback is appreciated!

You can follow us on facebook or our website!

Kerri Bainbridge

Learning, Mindset, Collaboration

One Half of the Anywhere Business Network

Finding the Why

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Someone asked me why I was in business so I had a long and hard think about it!

I first covered off the things that were required:

  • Warmth
  • Shelter
  • Food
  • Health

I know what my business does:

Why We Do What We Do:

We wake up in the morning wanting to inspire people and their communities to make a difference.

Small business is the core of communities.

We are passionate that collaboration, mindset, and learning are key to small business success.

I dived deep and looked at the real why! After all the digital intrapreneur program is something we do

So here is my why!

Andrew Elphick

Half of Anywhere Business Network

www.anywherebusinessnetwork.co.nz 

Understanding the language of social media

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The language of social media can be very confusing. When do you put a #hash tag and what do they mean? You may be wondering how you can ever get to grips with it. You simply need to invest time in yourself learning about it or you will just be spinning your wheels and spending time on in effective social media posts.

It wasn’t that long ago that we didn’t know anything about online marketing. In a very short space of time we now know a lot and are successfully using online marketing tool to market our businesses. Now we are asked all the time about “how do you do it?”. There are a whole generation of kids in their teens right now who wont need to ask for our help. They already know more than us. But there are many like us who didn’t have a clue where to start. Here is a summary of some of the languages of social media:

Facebook- Man, I love pizza.

Twitter- I am eating a #pizza

Youtube- How to make pizza

LinkedIn- Pizza eating is one of my many skills

Pinterest- My favourite pizza recipe

Instagram-#out for #pizza #lunchtime #restaurant #image #filter

Google+- I work at Google and love pizza

 

Kerri Bainbridge

Anywhere Team NZ

Mindset, Learning, Collaboration.

www.anywherebusinessnetwork.co.nz

5 ways to understand the competition

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If you are ever in a situation in your business where your revenue or profits falling year-on-year it’s really important to find out why that’s happening. You know, a common response to the question “why is your revenue fallen?” is “well it’s the economy you know it’s really tough out there” and my response to that would be “well are there any businesses out there in your industry who are actually doing quite well now?”. And what I’m looking for is what can we learn from that other people are doing and those other people of course could be your competitors.

I think it’s really important to do a periodical review of your competitors.  Find out what it is that they’re doing relative to what you’re doing and maybe pick up some tips and tricks as to what you could do differently or better, to grab some market share back.

So here are five ideas that you could implement to do exactly that.

First, of all ask your team because they’re closest to the coalface they’re dealing with customers customers who probably had sought to competitive as well as your business and they’ll be able to give you some feedback as to what they’re hearing in the marketplace

Secondly, grab some promotional material some brochures any other material he can get hold of from your competitors and see what they’re doing or go to their website see what they’re promoting right now make sure that you’re on the same page as them in what they’re doing.

Thirdly, ask customers and suppliers find out where you’re better but also ask them to be honest and tell them where you’re weaker than your competitors is.

Number four, analyze your strengths and weaknesses maybe you just do a brainstorm with your whole team and list out all of the strengths you have in your business and then all of the weaknesses you have as well and then pull together an action plan of the top three items that you’re going to change
and then..

Number five, of course is most important get an action plan together and then implement that plan your account doesn’t help you with this they can do some mystery shopping for you they can do some analysis work they can facilitate workshops they can pull some reports together to help you understand how your competitors are doing relative to your business with the goal of course of improving your revenue and your profitability.

Video: Courtesy of Panalitix Proprietory Ltd via the Taxman Ltd. Panalitix produce these wonderful short videos. To subscribe to the Elevate EMagazine produced by Panalitix email us at info@anywherebusinessnetwork.co.nz and put Subscribe to Elevate newsletter.Need more help?

What next?

If you are keen to work with other entrepeneurs, get into a different mindset, and learn the skills to make your buisness more profitable. Check out www.anywherebusinessnetwork.com

Kerri Bainbridge and Andrew Elphick

Anywhere Team NZ

Collaborate, Mindset, Learning