Coffee Shops: Office or Playground?

Follow my adventures in writing and entrepreneurship on my website and read more blog posts offering; tips, advice, inspiration and ideas for freelancers and small business:

www.AmyMorse.co.uk

 

I am self employed, but I'm also a social person and gather energy and inspiration by being around other people. 
 

It means that one of the greatest challenges I face is struggling with the isolation that working at home can bring.

I find a reason to go out every day and like to conduct business over a coffee with people, when people meet me, they are more likely to want to work with me.

As a writer, it's easy to lose an entire day tapping away at a keyboard and not see another person until my husband gets home from work.

I like to take my laptop out with me and work in coffee shops. I find that just the babble of voices around me feeds my creativity and motivation to write, and it gets me out of my pyjamas and out of the house!

I live in the fantastic city of Bristol UK. 

A city that has won awards for its cuisine and its independent spirit.

A city that celebrates diversity and does so through food and drink. 

I am spoiled for choice for places to eat and drink and all within walking distance.

But Bristol is a different animal in the daytime during the week, when most people are at work. 

As you would expect in a family friendly city; during the week most of the coffee shops are filled with mums.

At this point, I need to add a caveat...

I'm in my late 30's, I'm very happily married (and have been for 12 years) and I have no desire to be a mum.

This is the part where most people look at me with either; fear, disgust, mistrust, horror or sympathy. 

I am a social pariah by virtue of the fact that I am childless and I choose to be. Even my own family (especially my own family) don't understand it.

I'm a proud aunt, most of my friends have kids - I don't hate children. I'm not some weird Cruella DeVille character who wants to make a child skin jacket. 

Kids are fine, they can be fun to be around, but at the end of the day I want to come home to a quiet house and minimal responsibilities.

Frankly, I'm amazed I've managed to keep myself alive for this long, let alone another person!

My husband and I are very happy in our family unit of 2 (+ cat) thank you very much.

I can work in a noisy, child filled environment but I don't want to. When I told this to my sister (who has 2 small children) she said that was "depressing".

Is it? Is it not okay for me to want to have a public space to work in that is not filled with children? (Without having to pay to book a room - the whole point is to be around people, not in a room on my own!)

Picture this: You're trying to have a professional meeting with another freelancer and you have to raise your voices over the sound of children screaming and make sure your bags, coats etc. are out of reach from sticky fingers.  

In a city as eclectic as Bristol with its, literally, thousands of coffee shops it should be possible to find one to take a laptop into or meet a client in, without feeling like I'm sat in an adventure playground?

This is my challenge.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to work in a variety of coffee shops in the city and rate them for their useability as a mobile office.

I've constructed a short survey, so that I measure each establishment against the same criteria.

My questions include:

• Do they have Free WiFi?
• Value for money - Not 'cheap', I'll pay more for a good coffee.
• Friendliness of staff
• Noise/Environment

I'll score each place and report my findings.


Have your say...

Am I out of order to seek this?

 

Should there be places where adults can find sanctuary from other people's children?

 

Are there enough child friendly places?  

What's it like where you live - how child friendly are public spaces?

(Please comment)





  

22 Way to Harness The Power of Networking

The internet is a great place to make connections, but there is no substitute for physically meeting people.


The people most interested in you on social media and most likely to happily share your content are those that have actually met you.


The key to social media is ‘social’. It’s far better to have a small following of interested and active people than thousands of faceless followers.

Quality is always better than quantity on social media (tweet this). 


So how do you get to meet new people?


By networking.

It’s a horrible word isn’t it; networking, it feels so corporate and jargony!

On my shiny new website, I talk in more detail about the power of networking...

Read the full feature here on Amy's shiny new website

But here's a quick snapshot of my 22 Tips:

1)  Say yes to every invitation

2)  When you want something, broadcast it - But always be generous with our own knowledge and connections

3)  Show up and often

4)  Fear comes from uncertainty. Improve your chances by being prepared, you’ll feel more in control

5)  Think ahead of the meeting  about what you’d like to achieve. Jot your ideas down or do a mind map to get the thoughts out of your head and committed to paper, then they can start to become tangible goals

6)  Have a goal – for example: ‘I’d like 1 warm lead’ or a small step: ‘I will start a conversation’

7)  Make sure you have plenty of business cards. A notepad and pen is also handy so you can take notes if there is a speaker offering handy tips or so you can jot down the details of someone you meet who doesn’t have any business cards

8)  Prepare a spiel for yourself. Sum up what you do in a short sentence and have answers prepared for any questions that may follow

9)  Make notes on the back of business cards to remind yourself where you met a person. It could be weeks or months before you re-connect with that person and putting them in context is much easier when it comes to getting in touch i.e.: ‘Hi we met at such and such event…’

10)  The best piece of advice my mum ever gave me was, treat others as you’d wish them to treat you. Always be friendly and respectful, you never know when you may bump into that person again

11)  If you go to an event with someone you know make a conscious effort not to just speak to that person the whole time

12)  Look for people with open body language to strike up a conversation

13)  Look for people who are on their own. The chances are they are just as scared, if not more so, than you and they’ll appreciate your company

14)  Joining an existing conversation and listening for a wile is a good way to start to get involved and get to know people

15)  Be yourself. You don’t have to be formal, in fact people are more likely to warm to you if you’re friendly and genuine

16)  No one goes to a networking event to buy things, so don’t behave like a sales person. Ask lots of questions of the people you speak to and listen, don’t just wait for your turn to speak

17)  Enjoy it! You never know what fascinating people you might meet, be bold, behave confidently, you might just surprise yourself.

And after the event...

18)  When you make a new connection, reinforce it by connecting with them online through; Linked In, Twitter, Facebook etc.

19)  Publicly acknowledge on social media that you enjoyed meeting them

20)  Regularly share their content and join in with or start conversations with them online

21)  Arrange future meetings over a coffee to catch up and possibly do business with them or pass on referrals to people you think could help them.

22)  If they are not local to you, make use of tools such as Skype to ‘virtually meet’. Even when you are behind a keyboard, seeing a face is a far more human and real experience than just exchanging emails. It’s good to hear each others voices and look each other in the eye

  
  

What's you number 1 networking tip?

10 Great Habits to Form When You Work For Yourself

Our brains make millions of tiny decisions every second, many of which we have no control over, it just gets on with the job of remembering to breathe, feed us, rest us and pump blood around our bodies.

With so many thoughts passing through our brains, either consciously or otherwise, it can be tough to make decisions. We are hardwired to be creatures of habit, partly because it takes some of the pressure off decision making.

For example; Do you have the same thing for breakfast every day? Or at least, variations on a theme? Do you get up at the same time (ish) every day? Do you have a favourite pair of jeans that you throw on when you can't be bothered to think of something else to wear?

One of the biggest challenges facing freelancers is establishing a routine.

When we work to someone else's schedule we have to adopt a routine, but when we work for ourselves, we are our own boss. It's easy to get into bad habits when there is no-one looking over our shoulders.

When it's just you, it's up to you to form good habits that increase your productivity and prevent the scourge of procrastination from stealing your time.

Here are 10 great habits to form:

1) Write your ideas down
We have hundreds of ideas everyday. If we don't capture them, we forget them. Many successful creative entrepreneurs swear by the power of their notebook. I love notebooks and have loads of them.

  

Don't filter the ideas, just write them down, you can filter later.

Tip: I like to write different points in different coloured pens to break up the text and make individual items stand out

 

2)  Share ideas
Ideas get better with more inputs. 

Having a new perspective can give you clarity and confidence.

3) Dream Big, Start Small
The answers are rarely obvious at first glance, but break it down into smaller actions and you'll start to work out a path to success.

4) Question everything
The way you ask a question often reveals different responses and parameters. 

Get the obvious questions out of the way first and dig deeper. 

Gems are only precious because they are hidden, if they were obvious, they'd lose their value.

5) Change your methods
If you always do the same thing, in the same place, at the same times, with the same people, you'll get the same results. 

Our brains need diversity to create diverse ideas

6) People fear change, accept it, be ready for it
We like our comfort zones, we like stability. If you need to make a change that involves the buy in of others, what are the benefits to them? Always be thinking about the benefits to others in everything you do in your business, this is the surest way to build a loyal fan base. It's up to you to sell the benefits to the sceptics.


7) Practice creativity
Creativity is a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets. Don't be afraid to experiment and test things out. Getting feedback is the best way to make improvements and testing things out is the only way to know what works.


8) Have a plan
You don't necessarily have to have a big fat document the size of war and peace, but you do need to have some sort of a plan, recorded in some way: written, audio, visual, it doesn't matter - but if you don't know where you are going how will you know when you arrive?

A business plan is a living document, an agreement with yourself to take your business seriously and keep it sustainable. It's not something you just do to impress an investor. 

Use it to make decisions, allocate your resources in the most efficient way and manage your progress towards whatever success means for you.


I have a plan for my authorpreneur business.




 

9) Take money seriously
You may use the services of an accountant or bookkeeper, but you are still the financial manger of your business. It's not your accountants job to tell you where you are hemorrhaging money or that you are not charging enough for what you do. Ultimately, the main person who will suffer if the finances get out of control is you.

10) Be organised
Write stuff down. Have a process in place to get things done as efficiently as possible. Take regular, focused actions. Know where you are, what you've done and where you're going next - you business plan is your road map. 

What good habits do you recommend forming?