Share

  I hope you are reading this and safe and healthy.

Alex Hillman of Indy Hall recently hosted a series of coworking diaries

, talking to coworking space operators around the world. One of the people interviewed said something to the effect of 'We had ten years to innovate and we just did that innovating in ten weeks' and I thought that was so telling.

I'm calling this period of intense innovating 'coron-ovation'. 

I noticed I myself innovated hard and then proceeded to burn out. Maybe you have too. I think it's finally leveled off for me personally where I am striking a balance between caring about myself and caring for the world. But I am still figuring it out a little...

What's taken up the most bandwidth this quarter is a project I've been working with college students at Clarkson University as they built websites and help with marketing for businesses affected by COVID in northern New York. Working with 35 businesses, 16 students, their professor, and several non-profit project partners, I haven't been as effective and efficient as I've wanted to be at times. Mostly though, it's been really rewarding and inspiring to learn from these people and creating what I think is a really great model for hands-on projects, collaborations between private enterprise and non-profits, and building capacity in small businesses. 

If you are curious about this, I made a video about this project here. If you'd like to make part of or all of this happen in your area, please get in touch. We have definitely figured out systems and ideas to make this go more smoothly, if and when there is a Round 2!

Below is a grouping of helpful resources, both personal and professional things I've found helpful that you might find helpful too. I made some of them, other people made others. Feel free to forward this email to others you think may find it useful! 

Also, we're hiring. (Don't worry, Jane is still with us part time.) We're looking for someone to be an administrative assistant full time who has a great work ethic, strong English communication skills (all around), is detail oriented, and highly ethical. Check out the job post (yes, I am giving preference to people I could meet in real life but I am open to possibilities).

Some Cool and Useful Stuff

I set up a free, self paced course called 2020 Make Some Money

which is 20 minute videos over a series of 20 days to get an online business started.

(I did end up setting up an Etsy shop with my nine year old niece after this partially inspired by this course.) 

The full course is on

2020makesomemoney.com

, just scroll down and start on day one! 

Part of this time has been me becoming more aware of race and privledge. I've been trying to educate myself by reading books, following people of color on social media, seeking out black-owned businesses, and other actions but in particular

,

this Google Doc of resources has been really useful, not written work but activities, videos, podcasts, and more.

Very well organized too.

Speaking of inclusion, representation matters and

this open source (AKA free) resource allow you to source diverse and create illustrations of humaans

. (Yup, not a typo.) :) 

Dropbox has a really neat idea right now of digital care packages.

They have a few for free you can check out now but I think it's kind of a neat idea your business can give something to customers virtually.

.. or you can just send someone some free cooking classes.

At the beginning of this whole COVID thing,

I got together with developer Stan Baker at Leaping Logic to make an affordable online ordering system.

You can do things like specify delivery to within a certain radius of miles from your business, offer pricing discounts if people order certain things, and much much more.

Learn more about our offer!

 (Note: delivery is NOT just for food. Really.)

Content was king but now, it seems like events may have dethroned the king.

This article talks about why and how your business can use events as a way to market your products and services (Entrepreneur Magazine).

 Yes even virtual events work.

Our Anchorspace workshops are trying to be more helpful to those working from home.

 This one about how to host an event virtually with Zoom

(beyond 'how do I share my screen' type questions).

Click there to buy the course and see what you don't know about Zoom! (If you don't learn at least one useful thing, I'll give you your money back.

Our next workshop is a panel discussion about how three different businesses use Slack as a collaboration tool.

Register today, it's $25 if you aren't an Anchorspace member (and free if you are one).

 We'll have a brief demo of Slack followed by lots of questions and answers from our panel.

There are so many more interesting things going on than I can talk about here but I will say having to rethink life and business hasn't been an entirely terrible thing on my side. 

If there is anything I can do to help your business, please don't hesitate to reach out. I am sometimes terrible about writing back, having a new administrative assistant will certainly help! :) 

Stay safe and healthly friends and if you see ways we can help, know we are 100% in. Thanks for subscribing and hope to see you, online or behind a mask in real life, soon.

- Nicole Ouellette