Creating the skills palette
It All Began When…
I was temping after university and found my way into IT Support, and realised that if I commuted into London from my home in the South East, I could double my salary.
Off I went.
Then moved to London, naturally.
IT Support led to contracts in Project Administration, Project Coordinator. Remember the whole Y2K thing? I was Project Coordinator for the team making sure a big financial institution didn’t come crashing down. Honesly, I’m not convinced that anything we did made a difference to that business at 00.00.00, but I learnt a lot so it made a difference to me!
In between some of those contracts I put a tick on my bucket list and took myself off travelling round the world. Along the way I fell in love with New Zealand.
Back to London and I landed a role as Project Manager in the Programmes Office of a large London startup. I loved it. Transverse Project Management that couldn’t have been more hands-on. I was in rooms with lawyers, engineers, product designers asking what I thought (little me?!), marketing folk, IT whizzes, accountants, logistics peeps and customer services. I got to understand how a business works, how the parts need to fit together. It suited my logical brain, my creativity and my ‘get stuck in’ attitude.
Another tick on the bucket list - buy my own flat in London - while I applied for New Zealand residency.
2002, the exciting business had dreamed too big, pushed too hard, and went into administration. I took six months off to ride my Vespa to bits of London I felt I should have seen, eat things like eel pie and mash, sold my flat, then emigrated to New Zealand.
London to New Zealand (though we went via Tokyo, if it matters)
New Zealand
Happy to see the back of the rat race at this point, I set up home with my partner on rural plot on the outskirts of a faded NZ town and took on some temp work - University Administrator, Arts Project Manager… Then I re-embraced my acting training working in TV commercials, as a ‘featured extra’ on film sets and parts on a homespun soap opera and did some freelance writing for newspapers and magazines. In between I was cooking and everything else needed in a local café. Being creative and a part of my small community felt right.
Doctor somebody-or-other, Shortland Street, way, way back when.
When my partner, ex London rat-racer turned freelance photographer and part-time barista, voiced a thought about commercialising a photography accessory he had made in our shed, I happily pulled my project management know-how out of my mental filing cabinet and our business, enlight photo, was born.
Entrepreneurship
Long story short…
Pretty much everyone knows what a ring light is these days. Well, back in 2006 when we started developing what became the orbis ring flash, people didn’t. A ring flash isn’t quite the same as a ring light. It’s a ring of course, but instead of a constant light source, it’s a flash so it only fires when you take a photo. The camera lens is positioned inside the ring so that the subject is evenly lit, from the camera’s point of view. It’s a light that is used a lot in high end fashion, and back then the only rig flashes were very large and bulky, needing mains power or a large and cumbersome alternative power source.
Photographers the world over made ring flash adapters for their flashes out of pie tins and all sorts. Not a very professional look. So we developed the orbis ring flash, built up buzz online with a load of below-the-line marketing in photography forums, got interviews and articles in paper publications, built up an email list (it was 2006, Facebook was still very new, Twitter was born that year… the term ‘social media’ was not in circulation), my partner positioned himself as quite the man to know, I worked hard behind the scened and grew and delivered a real life baby... busy times.
Search online for ‘ring flash’ today and you’ll find lots of orbis-esque devices. But in 2007 we were the first and the only. It was exciting. I remember sitting watching our website when we launched, and when the US woke up and the numbers of sales started ticking up, our heart rates started ticking up too. We had just had our first child and we had launched an international business from a country the bottom of the planet that’s still often missed off the world map (pen in bag to right that wrong where I see it).
“…it’s almost miraculous what they can do, so this is a pretty impressive piece of equipment.”
Also in 2007… Steve Jobs
In July 2007 the first iPhone came out.
Our second product was the Frio cold shoe, then our third was ioshutter. An ‘appcessory’ that enabled photographers to control their digital SLR camera with their iphone.
By now we had international resale and distribution and ioshutter went on sale in Apple Stores.
Big Time.
Meanwhile with each successive iPhone launch that nifty little iPhone camera got better and better.
Our products were accessories of accessories, and our core end-user base was keen amateur photographers… Who swiftly started to abandon their bulky SLR gear as they explored what the iPhone camera could do. The camera in their pocket.
Sales slowed. Stock sat still. We tried diversifying then faced the inevitable.
enlight photo had had its time and we closed the doors and said farewell.
My palette of skills
What to do as an ex-entrepreneur, no longer 100% Project Manager but will good skills there, business process oriented and accomplished, toes thoroughly wetted in the marketing pool, a published writer, mother of two small children and newly re-immigrated to the UK?
Virtual Assistant, business consultant, business support. call it what you will, I knew I could help business owners to thrive.
I put an advert on the UK website ‘Gumtree’ saying ‘Entrepreneurs Look’ listing my skills in business process improvement and implementation, project management, writing for business including blog posts and articles, email automation, IT confident and general Jill Of All Trades.
And entrepreneurs like you looked, saw, connected, and we worked together.
I grilled them about their brand.
Streamlined internal communications.
Automated customer communications.
Mapped out their processes, recommended improvements, I helped my clients formalise and improve, reduce and even eliminate errors and omissions, save time, rest easier.
I curated their image gallery, recommended better photography, helped with the redesign of their website writing all the copy, adding better blog articles.
I researched Enterprise Resource Planning software options then got hands-on implementing and setting up their chosen software and writing how-to guides suitable for their teams.
I scheduled their social media so that their online presence was consistent and current.
I wrote relevant blog posts, researching industry trends, relevant events, local happenings and interviewed happy clients.
I used Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Dropboyx, Google Drive, Canva, Wordpress, MailChimp, Hootsuite, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, photo editing apps and more.
Sounds like the kind of Virtual Assistant help you could use?
Or even non-virtual? I live conveniently near Nyon and am happy to travel to meet you to discuss from the Lausanne to Geneva Area.