Mental Health Awareness Week 2019

We are now beginning to understand the importance of Mental Health and talking more about when we are feeling down. Mental health awareness and especially self -care I think for self-employed is vital as we often don’t have colleagues or a boss to spot the signs when we are struggling. What steps are you taking to protect your mental health? When I’m feeling anxious or tired or down, I simply put my towel and swimming hat in the car and off I head to Lough Neagh. My sanity is cold water dunking!

Virtual Assistant collective with global clients, the upcoming event by VA Heroes promises to open your eyes to the depth of services offered by such companies.

The VA Heroes are delighted to be guest bloggers for Sensei who help you communicate better with your clients and teams, in person, on paper and online

Editor: This month, we welcome Alison Matthews as our Guest Blogger. She is one member of a local, boutique Virtual Assistant collective with global clients, VA Heroes, whose upcoming event promises to open your eyes to the depth of services offered by such companies.

Did you know that the best way to raise visibility about your business is to speak about it? Whether it be in front of a live face to face audience or online and to gain trust by sharing your knowledge? Have you been turning down opportunities to speak at events as you are too nervous or feel too ill prepared? Are you uncertain of what questions to ask in advance?

They say that fear comes from the fact that are you are not in control and don’t know what’s happening so these tips will hopefully help you be more prepared and alleviate that fear. By being more prepared you will also have more time to really adapt your topic to your audience and feel more confident in what you are delivering.

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:

Guest podcaster for Gayle Alexander’s VA Today series on the topic of being a Virtual Assistant!

Do you know what the term Virtual Assistant means? Being a ‘virtual’ assistant doesn’t mean a faceless voice like Siri or Alexa. I’ve made this video to explain #Fatherted style the difference between real and virtual!

Recently, I was on holiday and when I arrived at my destination there was a copy of Mitch Albom’s book The Timekeeper in my room. I’ll let you read the story yourself, but the book is all about man’s obsession with time. How many of us tortured our parents or teachers with ‘What time is it’? or ‘Are we nearly there yet’? Think of all the games we played as children concerning time. One of my earliest memories at school for example was playing ‘What time is it Mister Wolf’? As adults we have time constraints put on us, but we are also very adept at putting them on ourselves.

Privileged to be invited to be a guest blogger for Louise Brogan’s Social Bee Academy on the topic of becoming Virtual!

A few Saturdays ago, I cycled from Moira to the edge of Lough Neagh (largest freshwater lake in the UK) (approx. 8 miles*this is important as you read further) and ever the eternal wanderluster my first thought when I reached the shore was I wonder what lies across the Lough from where I was standing? Having been at a charity table quiz the night before for another local adventurer who is walking the entirety of the Lough to raise money for Moira Committee of Cancer Research UK, I got to looking at the map and dreaming and then before I knew it I had signed up to the cycling challenge the Lap of the Lough at end of August!

Who is VirtuAli? The skills I have acquired over a long career have forged the services I offer and how I now help to take away the admin pain from a diverse number of businesses

What a Virtual Assistant can do for you. The 3 most common questions I’m asked as a Virtual Assistant are: 1)What is a Virtual Assistant? 2) How does a VA benefit my business? 3) How does hiring a VA work in practice?

While the Clergy only has a 0.81% probability of automation, according to data from the book “The Future of Jobs” the author believes even algorithms might one day replace the ordained! Earlier this year I attended one of the ‘Banter series’ at the Bullitt hotel entitled ‘The Robots are coming’ there is no doubt that artificial intelligence is here and growing at a rapid rate.

At the event there was a very lively discussing about artificial intelligence and jobs it will replace in coming years especially in manufacturing and supermarket sectors but equally about the ‘soft skills’ that robots can’t replace. I attended this event with one of my fellow Belfast PA Network committee members. Both Lorna and I can do our jobs because of cloud based technology, apps and smart devices but more so because of our emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence is something that can’t be taught to a robot (at least not yet!).

Delighted to be a guest blogger for Get Invited on the topic of organising events and why it’s a good idea to outsource admin tasks to a Virtual Assistant. Article published here.

The ticketing platform Get Invited helps you make money from your events by offering flexible ticketing, beautiful customised event pages, ticket scanning app, and so much more.

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.

On 19th January 2018, I spoke at the joint Women in Business/Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council Female Bootcamp for Entrepreneurs at Lagan Valley Civic Centre. Today on International Women’s Day I attended an event to celebrate local businesswomen in the area and it was such a pleasure to talk to people whom I had met on the 19th and hear how their entrepreneurial journeys are progressing. As Carmel McKinney, OBE and Samara Prentice from Evolve by Samara stated ‘Empowered Women, Empower other Women’

Once Upon a Time there was a Virtual Assistant called VirtuAli who came to the rescue of stressed-out business people everywhere

On New Year’s Day, I swam across this bay in Lanzarote and let me tell you the Atlantic Ocean is baltic in January wherever you are! but so what you may think? What you don’t know is 1 ½ years ago I joined my local swim club to learn how to do the front crawl and it has taken me that amount of time and getting up at 05:30 twice a week to actually learn the skills and build up the confidence to swim in any expanse of water past my comfort zone.

They say people buy from people so I’m delighted to be the first member to feature in Belfast PA network’s newly launched Members Moment this month!

Established in 2014, PA Network activities are coordinated by a committee of volunteers.

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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?

Guy Fawkes day what better day to talk about lighting the spark! Have you ever had a fascinating conversation that you never wanted to end?

The whole month of October was like that for me. I had a quieter month work wise but had some of the fascinating conversations in my life! I know that’s fairly huge declaration but then not surprising as I once told a friend If I ever write a book on my life it would be called ‘Declarations, Proclamations, and Superlatives’! When freelancers are asked why they become self-employed its very rarely about the money and in my case, I’ve really realised in last month it’s all about the energy you get from talking to fascinating people and their ideas which you can put no monetary value on. The more you open your mind, the more you allow it to expand and to let those effervescent conversations bubble up like a good bottle of champagne.