So reader, I married him.
Well I did not I just needed a way to start writing and that always pops in my head. In fact there are so many things that have been popping in my head for years and I am starting to try and deal with them.
During our HUGE mindfulness meditations I have suddenly had the very vivid image of frying a fish in a pan on an open fire on a beach, I have never done this but it is real.
Equally dumb are these: every time I see someone open a glass washer in a bar I think of the time my friend opened one at work in 1991 and said ‘facial sauna’, when someone says ‘I’m going to the toilet’ I say (without even thinking) “mention my name and you’ll get a good seat”.
There are more and I’ll be sure to share them as we go on.
My weekly review
I noticed that I keep chickening out of the ‘working out loud’ bit, the last week has been tough mentally for me (no where near as horrid as days last year) but I always start to share with you what a crap day I have had, really it is the sharing I intend to go with!
This week has been foot on the gas for our ‘Beyond the Business Card’ podcast – Jon, my co-host, is in France for most of November and then I am in Lisbon for a coworking event followed by OuiShare summit in London and then directly off to Buenos Aires so we want to ‘get a few in the can’ before we go.
While we are all fully committed “A year without pants” warriors at Jontus Media there is no getting away from recording a podcast being dependant on a good internet connection. Also recording a podcast is easy, it is the editing, distribution and promotion outside of your mother and best mate that take the time and energy. We can both tweet from our mobiles in airports and casinos but actual recording is not very easy.
What else?
Now I am on day 12 of publishing I have started to think what is this blog about. I am going to add a bit more in the disclaimer section of this blog – something like… “I know your blog is meant to be super focused and have calls to action and be your brand – fuck it!”
Why? Now I have said bollox to it all and just started posting whatever is in my head – which is not always THAT good anyway – I have had more connection with people and more people sign up to my newsletter.
In the past I have procrastinated for AGES about what order to do things in, what my message and brand is. My message and brand is BERNIE and whatever happens to be swimming around my sorry little head at the time of writing.
When people ask me whose blogs I come back to, it is people like JP, Luis Surez and Mitch Joel – they just write and are interesting to read, or rather listen to, I have them feeding into my sound gecko so I keep up that way. Mitch is a good boy and obediently posts every week, Luis and JP – well not so good at posting – but when they do post my head hurts in a good very good way which is why I stick with them.
All three of them have been moving and learning and causing trouble on a regular basis for years, I never feel I have to sign up for their ‘save your life in sixty seconds course’ when I visit their site and also I get THEIR thoughts not their PR persons guidance. Even though JP works for Salesforce and Luis worked for IBM they’d both be keen to speak their minds without head office permission.
Podcasting
I always listened to Mitch’s podcast and had to stop when I doubled down on podcasting at the end of last year I was in danger of trying to ‘BE LIKE Mitch’. No quite a scary as it sounds, in fact I just stopped listening to podcasts and now just listen to Online Marketing and Communications with Jon, our Beyond the Buisness Card podcast and James Altucher.
In the next few weeks I will post a list of podcasts that I have really learnt from – and if I am really good I’ll leave the link HERE.
Back to my week… and Virtual Freedom
I finished Chris Duckers book about Virtual Assistants (VA’s) I have tried a few over the years with varying degrees of success. The two best ones are Hannah who runs Amethyst PA and the Fancy Hands App. Hannah is great on events, organisation and being a PA. She also kept me sane (er) as I was plunging into a deep depression a few years ago – really I needed a therapist not a PA at the time!! – Thanks Hannah x
This year I realised I needed ‘jobs doing’ not a PA – so the Fancy Hands App works better for me. I need things like ‘find 10 things to do in central London with a highly active 3YO boy’ or ‘reorder my prescription’ or “call these guys and change my payment details” and best of all – ‘book these people in for podcasts.’ I do most of my organising on my mobile via the app and it all syncs with Trello and Asana.
Chris Ducker book ‘Virtual Freedom’ is a must read for people looking to work with any kind of VA or outsourced help, developer, Graphic designer etc. There are times when I REALLY make use of the Fancy Hands App and slice through projects and work, I had really fallen off the wagon in using them and had slipped back into ‘working a little bit at home in the evening’ which is bollox and not fun for my family or me.
So after this post I am going to whip through my Trello board and then give as much as I can to Fancy Hands. There big projects right now are the OuiShare Summit website and program and guests for Beyond the Business Card next week.
I also have to start preparing my ‘Inbound Marketing’ (or whatever I end up calling it) classes for Economy of Hours (Echo) at London Legacy – this is a workshop that I’ll be doing in return for Echos – more later!
Have a GREAT WEEKEND and thank you for reading 😉
Sent from my mobile device….
