Telework 101: expert tips with sandy collier

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Telework 101 videocast transcript

Hi, how are you?

I'm good thanks. I am yoann doing i'm the host of international consulting videocast and i'm now talking you sandy yes from  Hey Sandy PR   company yes?

In west palm beach florida, that's all great.

Hey, sandy pr origins

Could you tell me more about what your company is doing and maybe a little bit about its background?

Well sure i've spent the last twenty years in television and it's so about five years ago i decided i've always wanted to run my own pr company so but five years ago my husband unfortunately died from a long-term illness and so you know and one of my kids first you know wasn't dealing with it very well as expected and so i just stepped away from the newsroom and waited for a little bit and opened up  Hey Sandy PR   in communications.

What i do is i help small businesses nonprofits companies i help them to get media attention i help them with their pr needs okay i don't do branding i just do pr public relations i help them you know if they have us you know i create stories for them if they have something going on just to bring them awareness okay to bring awareness to their brand.

So i step back like i said from the newsroom it started and started on my own company and the name hey sandy.

How that name came about was in the newsroom i dealt with that was the assignment manager and like to say i had a news room full of kids you have adults but they're so kids okay in a certain way so every time when people would come to work every morning they would walk up to in front of the baskin they would say hey sandy hey sandy and i'd be hey hey hey!

So when i was ready to start my own firm i you know had a group of friends marie and some other friends of mine sitting there and i'm like well what am i gonna name myself and one of them just said well that's you know that's a no-brainer.

Hey sandy cuz everybody calls you hey sandy and that and that's truth to today so wherever i go my hey sandy my hey hey said hey so that's how hey sandy came about but it's very i love what i do i love getting media coverage for small businesses nonprofits i love to see people when they see themselves on tv or in the newspaper or on the radio or on podcasts they are just so excited and feel so accomplished that people are aware of what they're doing so that brings me joy.

Yeah actually  Hey Sandy PR   is a very catchy!

Thank you. Interview you are in media's for 20 years yes yes i worked in the television station i started out as a matter of fact as an intern and i started in the television stations when hurricane andrew happened in florida that was many many moons ago and i started out there and there was a reporter there her name i'd never forget her name was sally fitz and i loved what they were doing and so they started interviewing me on the field because i was asking the community for help to bring pampers and food and all sorts of stuff for the community that was devastated by the storm.

So this guy shows up with a big 40-foot container and he says is this is where sandy and i just looked around i'm like here i am he said well you just said you wanted you needed pampers he said there but i got you a 40-foot container full of pampers i was worse and i realized the power of the media at that time and so of course i wanted to continue on and sally fitz got me in as a intern and she said to me and i'd never forget.

She says now you here's an intern you need to make your own way you don't need to be hanging around my desk or my you know what i'm doing you need to make your own way and what you want to do and i took it from there and i did and i moved up the ladder end up leaving that was msvn in miami.

I worked with wsvn for almost for 10 years then left and went to wi od news radio 610 wi od reported there had a baby in the car my son in the news car after i was done with work that was interesting and is then i lived left in his business and we left florida for a while we went to colorado state in colorado for a little bit.

And then my husband got sick and when the doctor told us that he was terminal he said it's time for us to get back to florida so you can be close to family except family in the bahamas so i ended up coming here very close to family so when he passed i was able to be surrounded by family friends and at that time i went back into news which was great so during the news day i was responsible for helping reporters with their stories.

So they would come in and they would give me story pictures and if it doesn't fit into what our plan was for the day or the branding that we wanted or the platform i should say whatever we wanted i would help them to either make that story the way we needed it to be or i would have signed them stories um you know i would have sent him story said i have already pre-selected for them to do.

So i built a great relationship with them because especially the new report is coming into a market you don't know what the bosses want and i was one of three people who decided practically on a daily basis what went on-air and what didn't and you don't know what they want and so it's kind of intimidating for the younger reporter so i think that's how i got such a great relationship with them because the one said were a little nervous.

I would always walk them through things and if they came in and they didn't have a story i did it was really good i wouldn't my story idea and i'd say pitch this as your own and that went a long way and i but i knew the stories that i pitch would get what we would say yeah we're gonna take this we're gonna do it so i would give them that power to picture as their own.

And they felt they felt like somebody was helping them in and and you know and just working with them through a difficult process until they learn the market learn the people learn who they needed to be who needed to talk to learn who people they needed to have in their rolodex and i think that's to mommy-and-me that i always wanted to make sure that everybody was taken care of.

So moving into my own business and as  Hey Sandy PR   it was easy because i'm doing the same thing just on a different platform and helping businesses package their goods and make it newsworthy so you and me and whoever else is watching the news can say ah that's interesting because not everything is newsworthy and it's hard sometimes to tell clients well what's the story value what's the news value.

There's no news value in this what is it and sometimes there aren't any news

Values and stories sometimes are just stories that you just put out there and there's a time for that notice that i'm not for that so i really enjoy what i do.

Okay that's amazing! Well it looks like you have a lot to say which is perfect which is perfect especially for for auditors so now let's move to the first pardon and we want to talk about telework 101 and what is telework and why do we need

Telework 101: what is it, why do we need it?

So tell you what when a while what is it, why do we need it you work from home right you work remote we work from home what is the difference very well work from home work remote you see the same is it different?

I think it's the same telework i mean you know it's the same for me i mean it could be a little different in that i work from home so i have my own business and a teleworking i guess the person was telling what could be required to go into the office every now and then i guess i mean i that's the only difference i would see what telework is.

But for me i like to call it i'm working remote from home so i have so many different options to do whatever it is i want to do in my business and why do we need it for people like me who still have a family who has a family who has you know not only having a family you probably just don't want to be commuting every day back and forth.

You know it cuts down on this whole brick and mortar thing it cuts down on the amount the expenses that you have to you got to put gas in a car you have to you know buy you know bunch of new clothing for yeah you still have clothing that you have to wear for at home but you know you you don't have to be meeting with people every day and my feel i don't need to meet with somebody every day there's a lot of work that i do behind the scenes.

Okay that i don't have to sit in front of a customer every single day so i think for i think it creates more productivity and i think more companies i think more companies are gonna start to look towards teleworking more i think expression because of kovat and you know you want to be a you want to be home you don't want to be you know out there getting whatever it is that's out there.

So i think teleworking is here or or remote working is here to stay i really don't see me going back into a traditional work setting ever again i guess you for how long are you today working um you may not oh i've been doing this now for about four years now.

Which is a lot okay so you're you're next yes when i first started doing my own business i was working along with another friend of mine who who has her own company and i was helping her out and then i started realizing that you know she opened up an office and since she wanted like well let's meet in the office once a week i was okay with that.

For once or twice but then i had to drive a distance and hold on the very reason why i decided to do this was because i don't want to go to anybody's office okay

I've my own office in my house i can put on sandals if i need to to work i don't need to be in somebody's office you know so i revisit that i'm like no that's not gonna work for me i need to be here where i can shut it down close my door

Close my office so i can go and i can go into the kitchen and i can have dinner made in no time and that's easy for me and i love it

I've been working myself from remote at least from home for so many years and yes but so this is your walk environment behind you right behind you right yes this is my work environment behind me

Right now i am in my living room right now and i am going to however my i have my son that's living with me my 23 year old he just him and his fiancee just brought her home so they're gonna be moving out in about a week and a half so

I'm taking his bedroom which is downstairs and i'm gonna turn that into my office that's a big step yeah so that's gonna be a big change for me

Which is gonna be great and i think that's gonna help me also to set a little bit more boundaries and boundaries for myself because i have a tendency of just jumping on and just you know when i'm done with what i'm supposed to be doing for the day i jump back on and i start working and doing this and doing that and a lot of times my daughter would say them in my 14 year old what say to me mommy is still working are you so working i have to bei have to really pay attention to that from time

The time so i think with me setting up my own office in you know having the office set up and closing that door and when i leave that door i consider that work i'm done

The door is closed and that's it i don't go back in there until it's time to do it again the next day or unless there's an emergency so i think that's gonna be healthy for me as well which is a perfect transition for actually our how to set up a tv work environment actually

How to setup a telework environment?

Especially for newcomers in the daily work environment how to properly set up a terrible environment from home especially what is important with your four-year experience for me what's important for me is of course you have to have a good software system okay and but you need to know how to use it and i would think we just noticed that i didn't i had some issues earlier whether

We were coming on and you know even though you set up your system and whoever is working with you make sure that the people that you have working with you everybody skill set is different okay um you can't have everybody who's working with you that has the same skill set okay you have to have a person who knows how to do all the software stuff you have to have a person who probably is doing the running around that needs to be done which i do

A lot of running around murray does all the software stuff that needs to be done kelly does you know she helps with clients and many different ways surround yourself by people who have different skill set i think that is very very important and make sure you have what you need okay and i think that's pretty simple in order to it's kind of almost like the office think about it if you went into the office if you need a stapler are you running around looking for it.

You have that stapler right next to you have the things that you know that you need right next to you so that you can be as productive as possible during the times or the time that you have a lot of yourself to work or to to tell her remote or whatever you want to call it but if you're saying that she's gonna work for five hours today

Okay well you have everything that you need to have five hours of productivity okay just set those goals and set that set that right from the beginning and i think everything will be okay if you do that so actually how do you find what is really important for you or like when you are working in office everything is kind of accessible

Somehow you can always go to the receptionist or a stapler or whatever but when you're setting up your own tell me what conveyor meant how can you find what you need which questions we have to ask yourself to actually find out what you reading i think you need to find it first of all what did i say what should though what does she go and what do you need to be able to accomplish that goal

Set up daily goals

Okay i can say that i let's just say that i'm you know i want to get i do want to get my clients on tv well what do i need in order to get my clients on tv well first of all i got to create a story depending on what the platform is if i want to get my clients on to talk about something in kovin well it has to make sense so what do i need to do i need to research that what am i researching i need to find out the stats of whatever it is i want to do so

Whatever it is you want to do or whatever businesses you're doing you need to do the research to find out what what do you need in order to accomplish where you're trying to get does that make sense i think it's pretty i think

It's pretty simplistic what do i need for me to get to where i need to go what materials i need to have do i need a pen yes i need a paper yes i need a computer yes do i need a printer yes no do i need a stapler maybe yes no whatever it is you need you job that list down of what you need and then you get it and once you put those things in place then you start to do whatever it is you need to do make sense

So it's better to be goal oriented whenever you are sitting up your telework environment exactly set up the environment and and do you need a lot of quiet time you know if you need quiet time then you need to put a place where nobody is gonna bother you okay for me it's a little bit different because i need quiet time when i'm doing podcast so when i'm doing um when i'm interviewing a client i mean like specific time frames specific time frames okay

I'll tell you during this whole thing i i have a son that has autism he is 19 years old and he's living with autism i need to sleep right now so which is great but during the times that you know the whole kovat and which was still going through it right now and school had to stop and he's here at home

I had to revamp how i did things because he would if he woke up right now you'd run right here and come right here to the screen and see what i'm doing sometimes that's not appropriate for whatever it is i'm doing so i solicited my 14 year old daughter's help okay and i said hey listen you want a job and i started paying her to help me on a weekly basis i said okay think about this is you having a job your job is to entertain your brother for two hours out of the day that i have to do this so i have to do that and it worked out really well

So she ended up making a lot of money for the last six six to eight weeks that you know we're out of school she ended up making some good money i think she liked it because she ended up going and buying herself something nice so it all depends on your over your environment of where you are and what

What do you have going on in your life okay if you don't have anything going on in your life in terms of kids or you know your your animals or whatever and it's just you it's easier because you can carve out that time to do what you need to do but if you have to make adjustments and you have to make those adjustments that so that it works for you so that make sense so actually that again you are making the transition by yourself

How to keep productive while teleworking?

During telework how to keep the productivity from home compared to working from a office environment or like company environment set yourself up for the amount of time that you say you're gonna work whatever time is required of you to work for me it's a little different because i have i have my own business so i can set my own schedule but once i set that schedule like if i have conference calls with clients okay i try to set those calls up

On the same day okay that i can call from in the morning right down to maybe two o'clock i have a conference call every however you know every hour every other hour said that for that one day okay then the next day i don't have to deal with clients on a daily basis like that i don't have to talk to them on a daily basis unless there's something that i need to talk to them about or i'm getting them up you know or i'm writing a script or getting them on tv so i can do all the busy busy work that i have to do on certain days and then set aside days for the clients and all depends on what you're doing in your business

If you know you're more busier in the morning of whatever you're doing set aside that time to do what you have to do make sure make sure that you have the mindset that you are in the office okay is somebody watching you if you were in the office would you be walking around going to the water fountain going to do

This going to do that or would you be sitting down doing your work because you know the boss boss is over there and the next we're looking at what you're doing okay if you know that you are being paid to do a certain you know a certain thing do what you're supposed to do because anything less than that to me and that's what i tell my kids you're being paid to do a job and you're cutting corners you stealing

Miss lilly because you're not doing what you are paid to do what you're supposed to do so hold your own self accountable to do what you need to do and finish the task and then move on and that's basically the one thing that i always tell people do if you do what you're supposed to do there's nothing else to be said circularly it's pretty simple

Pretty simple and and set yourself up if you need help doing things ask for help a lot of people sometimes feel like asking for help is a sign of weakness that's not true

Asking for help is a sign of strength

Asking for help is a sign of strength there are times that i have things that's going on and i have no problems picking up the phone and calling another pr company and asking them for their advice okay because i may not know everything so i don't hey listen here's a scenario i need help with this can you

Do you have a suggestion for this if you have a suggestion for that and a lot of times when you ask people for help they don't do it and and it helps you that you don't have to spend so much time trying to figure something out rather than just pick up the phone and ask true

But it might probably be more complicated for people to ask for help while they are today walking and while they i need office and their colleagues are accessible from just from the next next oh she is next ernest - you know

What that can pose a problem - yeah your colleagues are right there next in the next cubicle you know but you know what let me go back to that we are in the world of texting sometimes your colleagues are right next to you and you still texting them okay so that works to save i can't tell you the amount of time set i'm sitting right next to somebody in a meeting and i'm texting them so you can if you have an issue at home and your person is not next year you can text them i don't think it's overly complicated unless there's some really really complicated thing like a software computers or something that's extremely complicated

Well that's a different story.

I mean it's not a one fit all mold you know it all depends on what you are doing and how complicated your job is so i don't want to i don't want people to think that well you don't know what you're talking about because i don't know what i'm talking about in terms of if you are doing something that's more complicated i'm saying if it's not a complicated thing and you know what you you know what your goals are and what you're doing it should be pretty simplistic for you if you put those systems in place to make it simplistic for you that gives that's what i'm trying to say

Telework practical tips

So which brings us actually to the next part of our interview pretty experienced a worker do you have some actionable teleworking tips that you can share like really

I would say yeah practical tips when you're ready to go to work make a task list okay i have my list of tasks that i have to do today but i need to be that i need to get accomplished today so let's not today so you're not gonna get everything done in one day but make a task list what are the things that are important that i need to accomplish today do i need to speak to this client

Do i need to speak to that client can this client wait or joining to talk to this reporter or do i need to talk to that reporter or what deadlines do i have make a task list of what you have to do set your office hours for what you want for the time that you want to give productive work to you to your company into your business whatever you're doing

What are those productive hours don't say i'm gonna work from you know all day to day from 9:00 to 10:00 from 9:00 to 9:00 o'clock in the morning to 10 o'clock in the night

That may not be practical set practical hours for what you are going to do take a break in between set your lunchtime okay i'm gonna break for lunch or this time i'm gonna break for a snack at this time

Okay whatever it is just the same that you were doing the office do those things okay and i would always say to people be good to yourself don't be too hard on yourself be good to yourself this is just work okay and this too shall pass it's just working have fun and what you are doing

And if you don't have fun at what you doing find something that makes you fun at what you're doing okay i never want to be in a job because oh my god i'm making so much money and i'm miserable i want to have fun at what i'm doing and i want to enjoy what i'm doing so i may not make a whole lot of money in a certain field but you know what at the end of the day i'm happy and to me that is more important than anything in life

Family friends faith love those are the important things in life and that's what's important to me i definitely agree

Organizing home for telework

Okay i have some questions looking at your webcam and seeing your background office did you make any change in your home to be able to telework?

Oh i know how long do you have this home did you start they walk in his home or you talk to her walking after i got into you know i started telling working in here i moved in here about four maybe about five years ago and i started you know it's open my business the same time and i i had to figure out where would i put my desk so my desk is in the corner of my huge of my living room and that's that's something that i really don't like because whenever you know but i have friends over but if i you entertain when i used to do a lot of entertaining with you know co but now you can you know one of the things i normally did when i worked as a reporter

Was on thanksgiving or any kind of holidays i would when i worked as a reporter i'm sorry when i work to the tv station all the new reporters and producers who came over who were working and they didn't have families over here i would invite them into my house during the you know fourth of july christmas thanksgiving especially thinking i would allah i would invite them over to my home so this was one of the things that i didn't like was

Because of i have right here my desk right here in the living room so and so i love my son i'm gonna miss him but once he's gone i can move all of this into my own office and that would be an adjustment for me which will be great so once i come out my living room is my living room

I'm not see work and my mind isn't you know playing tricks on me oh my god let me run to the desk and said is there something i need to be doing you know so i think also that will help me as well when i still when i move this into the you know to the office that i can close the door that would be a great transition for me and i i'm looking forward to it being something positive

For me for me to be able to shut things down when i need to shut it down and just come out and in the living room hang out with the kids or go upstairs that kind of stuff good

Wrap up

So actually it was a pretty interesting discussion we're already reaching the end of this this episode so you have a lot of insights or mutant workers even experienced terry walker because you have actually affects plants also going through different stages of family life

Yes very very interesting yes i have six kids yes some of them are grown and have families of their own

So that's a plus well when does may be a topic for another discussion yes do you have any any fewer shots on gigi but you would like to say maybe a little bit more but also your your business

Hey sandy pr well if you're looking for pr in west palm beach area or anywhere the global evp are hey hit me up  Hey Sandy PR   dot-com or  Hey Sandy PR   at gmail.com or you can look on my website and or you can look at your website and you will have it right there on your podcast and your website we're doing absolutely so we'll share it but it has been great

I enjoy what i do thank you very much it seems like you enjoying what you're doing as well and that's reaching out and they're having are you having fun always yes good wonderful but thanks for having me i really appreciate it it's it's been good yeah me too

Telework 101 with Sandy Collier

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