In Your Shoes - Tricia Fox

Early Start, Late Finish - Busy Monday!

Monday is always a busy day in the den and this week was no exception.

It was an early start to be at the desk for 8am, time enough to run off a few reports ahead of our meeting with Crieff BID Succeeds to review project process before us all heading to a quarterly Growth Fund review meeting with VisitScotland. We're currently in the early stages of delivering an integrated marketing campaign to encourage visitors to visit Crieff and we've got a group of photographers and videographers working on content for us which will be rolled out later this year.

We then headed back to the office mid afternoon to see if our job offer for the Social Media Manager role we recently interviewed for had been accepted. She said yes! So it's full steam ahead to get an offer letter out the door by close of play.

At 4.30pm I jump in the car and head to Edinburgh, covering off some phone calls in the car on route to the capital, arriving at a very festive destination of George Street for an Entrepreneurial Scotland event. The speaker, Professor Heather McGregor, aka FT's Miss Moneypenny, is a real hoot - had the audience in fits of laughter while telling us all about her entrepreneurial journey. Always good to hear from other inspiring entrepreneurs about the challenges they face while building their businesses.

Finally hung up the overalls, so to speak, around 9.30pm by which it was time for some dinner.

We love a to do list!

Late start in the office after a quick trip to our client Tayside Chiropractic for a "tune up".

Nice to catch up with Murray from The Angus Hotel who was in the office today and used our meeting room to do some interviews for staff. Business has always been a bit nomadic for me so I'm always happy to throw open the doors to our clients who might need to use our space for a quick meeting, or hot desk for an hour or so.

In the afternoon we had more guests in the office. Audrey and Elaine from Miller Hendry came in to discuss campaign requirements for the remainder of this year and for 2018. Left the meeting with a very big to do list - we love a to do list!!!

Quick dash to Perth train station to jump on the train to Glasgow, our travel plans were thwarted at the ticket desk when we learned there were engineering works on the line. Fearing Kim Bauchope, our Head of Digital, and I would be late for the PRCA event launching the Digital Communications Report, we jumped in the car and headed off to Glasgow. Sadly the universe was conspiring against us and it took over an hour to get to Stirling, at which point traffic was flowing at a frustrating 5mph. We turned off, gave up on getting to Glasgow and headed to Bridge of Allan for dinner instead. Luckily that meant I was home earlier than planned so had plenty of time to sort out the guest lists for tomorrow's Big Business Breakfast event with Chris van der Kuyl. Not enough hours in the day. 

Good energy is contagious

It was an early start this morning at the Big Business Breakfast, organised by Perthshire Businesswomen's Network, which was welcoming Chris van der Kuyl as their guest speaker. We've been working with Chris on the PR for the fantastic Water's Edge development in Dundee and I was keen to hear how the development was progressing and his vision for its future. As one of the PBN committee members I was at Perth Racecourse (literally) at the crack of dawn to watch the sun come up and set up the welcome area. With over 50 attendees, the room was buzzing with entrepreneurial zeal but Chris's presentation certainly revved up the crowd even more. Great to see so many business people leaving a networking event with such a big grin on their faces. Good energy is contagious. 

After that, I headed back to the office for a series of internal meetings with the team, before settling down at my desk for an afternoon filled with sales calls, proposals and catching up with emails. 

Before the day was over, I also found time to squeeze in a hour of pilates with my instructor who comes to the office. 

Work at home day!

One of the benefits of having a business that's entirely set up to work on the cloud is that you can work flexibly, anywhere in the world. I had two award entries to write for a client today and was on a tight deadline to get them finished so I decided to work from home to get some peace and quiet and to get them off the desk. 

Done and dusted by lunchtime, working from home also gives me the chance to take my dog Molly on a nice leisurely lunchtime walk - or in Molly's case, roll - in the park plus time to eat lunch (Translation: lunch usually takes place at my desk and is at best a hastily scoffed sandwich!). 

Back at the desk in the afternoon and I rattle through the finishing touches to a presentation for a digital training session I am delivering for clients next week, work a couple of hours on a web build project for a client, an end of project report for another client and manage to squeeze in a couple of phone calls before I switch everything off for the day. 

Then, finally, it's the weekend......time to relax!

Back to the desk in the morning, it's time to attend to the weekly pile of invoices and get everything ready to go to the accountants for processing. Got to admit, it's the one aspect of my job I truly despise. I studied accounts at university for two years and there's a very good reason why I didn't continue for another two and become an accountant. Still, it's got to be done, as they say! 

With the dull stuff out of the way it was time to crack on with client work, battling through what's left of the to do list for this week: uploading images to VisitScotland's digital media library for a client, updating websites, writing press releases. I even snuck in some time for lunch at the new Perth Theatre with our PR & Marketing Executive, Linda Allan - so nice to see this project finally come to fruition after sitting on the fundraising committee for the last year. 

Rounded off the day at a meeting with a client who was looking to move their website onto Volpa's wordpress friendly hosting platform, and a launch plan for a new business they are working on.