Tanya

At a time when co-workers can see each other in their living rooms complete with photobombing kids and pets, we can see journalists’ messy bookcases in the background as they ask serious questions on national television, and globally we’re all facing our own versions of the same crisis… I have been overwhelmed by the sense that we’re all human, and we’re all in this together.

In that context, I will risk getting a bit personal in a professional setting.

What I want to say is not particularly contentious: I have found the last few weeks tough. I do have a more constructive point to make, which I’ll get to! I promise this is not a doom and gloom piece, and instead I want to share a far more positive perspective.

But it doesn’t feel right to gloss over the reality of what we’re all facing right now, mid-April 2020, in the middle of COVID-19 and the UK lockdown.

We’ve got 99 problems

There are a whole lot of things on my mind right now. I’m far from alone in this, and none of them will be a surprise to you.

I’m worried about the global pandemic, the lives lost and the losses to come, the impact on the most poor and vulnerable, the health risks for loved ones, and the lack of suitable PPE for health workers and care workers.

I’m also concerned about the impact on the economy, the financial impact personally, civil liberties being eroded and what that could mean, the psychological impact of living in lockdown, and how this will all impact my kids.

It’s a lot to deal with, and it affects all of us.

But I’m writing mainly to self-employed people, and aside from health risks to yourself and loved ones – the impact on our businesses is in many ways the scariest and most immediate threat.

Everything changed overnight

This change was particularly poignant for me, as I had just celebrated a huge milestone in my business.

After over three years as a virtual assistant, having started out as a transcriber and pivoting to offer admin and project management to independent researchers – by February 2020 I had finally achieved what I set out to do. I had a handful of regular clients who I really liked, I was at full capacity, and I could look to the months ahead and see the work scheduled in.

That, for me, was the holy grail.

When COVID-19 hit the research industry, the rug was pulled from under me. The time between knowing I would lose a lot of work and the financial support announced by the government (I’m a sole trader, so I’m fortunate and will get some help) was a nail-biting time for me.

In the time since then, I’ve made my peace with not knowing what the future holds. The research industry is being hit hard, face-to-face research won’t be coming back any time soon, and we’re about to head into a global recession (or depression) which will undoubtedly hit research budgets.

However I have realised something incredibly important, and that’s really what I wanted to share.

A dead business model doesn’t have to mean the end of a business

In the industries that have been hit particularly hard by recent events, there are thousands upon thousands of self-employed people staring into the face of the same fear around what the future holds.

There is one reframe I have found incredibly helpful.

It’s often said that we write the <blog posts / articles / books> we need to read, and that’s undoubtedly the case here. I don’t want to patronise the people who figured this stuff out in the first week and honestly, I’m probably behind the curve in what I’ve realised. But still, I want to share something that feels profound for me.

If a business model is no longer viable, that doesn’t mean you don’t have a business. It just means you need to get to work and figure out how your business needs to look NOW.

More fundamentally, if you’re self-employed I’d argue that your business is not (really) your brand, your website, your client base, your social media presence. When it comes down to it, your business is YOU. Your experience, your capabilities, your insight, the problems you can solve and how you can help people. It’s harder for an external event to take these things away.

Yes, specific income streams will fall off a cliff. The particular set-up that worked perfectly in February 2020 may not be viable now, or in September, or next year. Future plans will be dashed, and everything will need rethinking.

But if you’ve built a business once, you can do it again. Adaptability, resilience, the ability to spot opportunities and grow things in those fertile places – these are qualities that the self-employed own. We may just need to take a step back, cut the dead wood and plant some new seeds.

What has been incredibly helpful for me is to turn away from looking at what’s been and gone, do a full 180 and look at what’s ahead. Where are the opportunities, and how can I pivot and offer something that will be right in this new landscape?

What the future looks like for my business

For my business offering admin and project management to independent researchers, it shakes out something like this:

It’s likely that I’ll need greater numbers of ad hoc clients. My whole business model was built on researchers having more work than they could handle, and I was there to take the excess. Now that the landscape has changed, the need for my services is likely to become more sporadic. I will need to spread my net far and wide. (To be honest, not having to do that before was a luxury.)

But will the research industry continue? Yes!

There may be less work overall, with a huge skew towards online research. Client budgets will vary by sector, and there will be winners and losers. But there will be work. Businesses will, without a doubt, have pressing questions that need answering. And the types of questions they will want to ask could be very interesting ones.

And the depth and complexity that online research can deliver will be a perfect match for the nuanced and complex questions brands will be asking. I predict it will be an exciting time to be a researcher, and I feel a renewed sense of wanting to be part of this industry.

My three to-dos

For my business, I think I need to do three things:

1. Grow my client base, a lot! Advertise widely, package up the ways I can help people, look for the pain points and my SOLUTIONS to them, and shout this loudly from the rooftops. Because undoubtedly there are busy researchers, I just need to make sure they know how I can help them.
2. Be brave and put a stake in the ground for the type of research I really want to support: Work that makes a positive difference in the world. Social research, charity research, projects with an environmental focus, projects that are about people rather than profit. This is where my heart lies, it always has been – and current events are bringing my values into sharp focus.
3. Follow my passions and look at other opportunities. My biggest passion is health and wellness, and more specifically the importance of slowing down and reconnecting to what matters. Never have I felt so ahead of the curve: I’ve been baking sourdough bread since 2016 and growing vegetables in my garden since April 2019! Suddenly, the whole world is joining me.

Now is a perfect time for me to consider a separate business alongside TS Research Assistant, offering admin support to online health and wellness professionals. This idea has been bubbling away at the back of my mind for a few years now, but it would have been too much for me to take on back in February when I didn’t have the bandwidth.

Looking forward feels so much better

One thing I can tell you is, it feels so much better to focus on the opportunities ahead rather than what’s already lost.

There’s a lot of debate about whether the world will be the same again after COVID-19. I’ve read far too many articles about this, enough to make my head spin. But I’m firmly in the camp that believes this pandemic will be an accelerator for change that was already building, and change that was desperately needed.

So, in many ways, in a far broader context than just my own business – I truly am ready to walk away from what went before. We can do so much better, in terms of supporting the most vulnerable in society, sharing wealth more equitably, and protecting our natural environment.

I usually end my posts with a fairly shameless call to action. That doesn’t feel quite right today, but at the same time it’s as important as ever to say it. If you’re a researcher and you need an extra pair of hands, I know my stuff and I know how to make your life a whole lot easier. Please do get in touch if that sounds valuable.

In fact, if you work with me you will not only get back your own time, with the cost of my time completely covered… but you should also make some additional money.

If that sounds implausible, keep reading and I will explain! And I can guarantee your response will either be, ‘Yes I knew that, but thanks for the reminder’ or, ‘Oh. That makes total sense!’ followed by, ‘Actually, that’s really obvious.’

It’s a bit like in research, when you see the Insight you’ve been working so hard for.

You’ve done the ethnography, the groups, the depths, the co-creation sessions, the analysis sessions, the debrief, the follow-up insight generation sessions – and wherever in the process it arises, you’ve reached the holy grail of Insight.

In my own experience back in my Clientside researcher days (3+ years ago), this process has always followed the same pattern. The ‘Aha’ moment, closely followed by, ‘Well, yeah… of course. THAT was hiding in plain sight.’ It’s not obvious until you see it, and then it’s so obvious that you see it everywhere!

So, if you don’t already use a Virtual Assistant and you’d like to, but the cost gets in the way… let me take you very quickly on that journey from, ‘Aha’ to, ‘Well, of course!’

If you can generate a bit more work than you’re able to handle on your own, and if you cost out the jobs based on your own internal hourly rate (which is more than mine at £30 / hour) …

Then you can hire me to pick up elements of the job, and not only will I effectively pay for myself – but you can pocket the difference.

That’s it. Or, you can make your quotes that bit more competitive and still make the same margin, and hopefully land more work (which I can help you with. It’s a virtuous cycle!)

Of course, there are other benefits too. You get to keep your head in the high-value stuff. Pitching and proposal-writing, analysis, presentation-writing. Thinking.

And it’s usually these benefits I focus on in my messaging, because they’re far bigger than the cost savings (honestly, I only brought the cost savings up to get your attention!)

The much bigger point is this.

If doing the deep work feels hard when you’re also spinning the plates of project management, and if that makes you feel fragmented and unfocussed, or just exhausted… a Virtual Assistant or Project Manager could be a game-changer for you.

I’m a research-specialist VA and Project Manager. I’ve also worked in research for years, I speak your language, and I know how to make your life so much easier!

If you want to know more about which parts of the job I can help you with, have a look here, or email tanya.squires@tsresearchassistant.com

I had two full weeks off work over Christmas. An entire fortnight, completely switched off. I went from Christmas prep and cooking straight into lazy PJ days… got bored and took on a project to update my 10-year-old son’s room… realised that I was squandering precious holiday time in IKEA… and finally found the perfect balance (which involves pubs and walks, if you’re wondering!)

For the most part I didn’t think about work, attempt any work, plan any work, ‘just check’ anything, or try to get ahead on anything. And it was glorious!

The reason this is notable, I suppose, is there was a time I’d have slept with one eye open, a little bit of my brain still whirring away in the background thinking about work. I have been known for workaholic tendencies (I may be understating that one slightly). But I have an emerging understanding that taking proper breaks matters.

This post isn’t really an argument for taking time off at Christmas per se. If you’re newly self-employed, two solid weeks off may not be a luxury you can afford for a couple more years (three years in, it’s fairly new for me). You may not be able to get the time off. Or you may LOVE getting ahead on work on those in-between-Christmas-and-New-Year days, saving your holidays for spring.

But with my Christmas fortnight off fresh in my mind, I do want to make an argument for taking a break when you can. Whether that’s holidays, giving yourself a proper lunchbreak and stepping out into the sunshine, or switching fully OFF over the weekend.

Do I always practise what I preach? Erm…. A better question is, do you best teach the things you really need to learn yourself? Absolutely!

So, here are five reasons taking a break matters.

1. Everything functions better when you’re well-rested. Yes, this is an obvious point – but most of us need reminding of it. When you’re tired, you slow down and lose focus. Work takes longer, so you end up getting to bed later and you’re even more tired the next day. The more this continues, the more you lose perspective – and your solution is to simply work harder, but you get diminishing returns (I know all of this because I’ve been there). But if you can take the time to rest properly you’ll get through your work in less time, produce better work more easily, and feel a whole lot better. That’s a pretty powerful combination.
2. You sometimes need to step away from a problem to solve it. It’s often when you’re NOT thinking about something that your ideas and creative solutions arise. Most of my best ideas occur in the shower, or sometimes when washing up or walking – but it’s the not thinking about it that’s key. When you don’t fixate so firmly on the problem you’re trying to solve, your brain has a bit more space to try out different angles – and it feels like the solution is handed to you on a plate. I used to think this was peculiar to me, but I have seen this mentioned so many times that I am now completely convinced it’s a thing.
3. You get to reassess your priorities. Yes, you may love your work. Yes, you need to earn a living. But your life is multifaceted: A tapestry of not just your work, but also your family, friends, pets, interests, anything you create outside of work, any good you do in the world. You can be passionate about your work and still thoroughly enjoy switching off each day – but it’s so easy to become swallowed up by work to the detriment of everything else.
4. Doing things you love reminds you how good they make you feel. Whether it’s long walks or runs or yoga sessions, baking cakes, watching films with your kids, going out with friends – sometimes you end up so busy that the things you enjoy doing get squeezed out at the expense of things you have to do. There’s a good argument that you should ‘pay yourself first’ and that doesn’t just apply to money. Ideally you should schedule in the things that fill up your cup first, and fit in the rest around it. That can be really hard to do in practice, but doing these things when you have time to serves as a tangible reminder of how good they make you feel. And that’s a great motivator to pay yourself first in future.
5. You can come back to your work with renewed enthusiasm. If by the end of December you feel tired and jaded, with a bit of luck, you’ll feel inspired to get back into your work chair in January. I find January a really good time for taking stock, getting clarity on what you want out of the year ahead, planning, getting your marketing done – before you get sucked back into the daily grind.

All of these benefits apply after a long break, but equally, they can kick in after a short one. And we have the ability to build breaks into our days, take evenings off, and make full use of the weekend. In many ways, I think regular shorter breaks could be more powerful than any fortnight off could be.  It’s certainly something I want to experiment with more.

If you’re an independent researcher and you would love to have more time, so that you can build in more breaks and reap these benefits… as a research-specialist project manager and virtual assistant, I can definitely help you with that.

Having grown up with a German grandmother, I have a fondness for the typically underappreciated language. I like the precision of it, and the words that mean exactly what they describe.

I recently learned a German word that’s gaining recognition in the English language: Sitzfleisch. With my rudimentary GCSE-level German I’d say that translates literally to “sit flesh” but its meaning is “the power to endure or persevere in an activity; stamina.”

It’s the thing millennials are maligned for supposedly not having. It’s the grit and sheer determination that I’ve always had, which enables me to take on the tricky, messy tasks that others might baulk at.

It doesn’t always get you much credit in the workplace – there may be better ways to make your mark!

But as a Virtual Assistant, clients love you for it – because you lift the weight of their thorniest problems off their shoulders, and hand them back a solution with a bow tied around it. I suspect it’s one of the key defining characteristics of a good VA.

Sitzfleisch versus flow

But this concept of sitzfleisch has got me thinking, as it runs counter to another viewpoint that resonates with me. Right now, there is a big movement towards doing what you find easy. Honing in on your zone of genius, getting into flow, and stripping back what’s not essential.

From the classic Essentialism by Greg McKeown to the more woo-woo (but still fantastic) Do Less by Kate Northrup – it’s about working with your own natural capabilities, and being lazer-focussed and intentional about where you spend your time.

So, how does all of this sit with sitzfleisch? Should we be grinding away at the tough stuff? Or should we stay in our zone of genius, and delegate what we find hard but others find easy?

My entire business is built around the latter (people delegate their tricky and time-consuming tasks to me). And being someone who derives a lot of satisfaction from an impeccable spreadsheet or a well-planned fieldwork schedule, I can happily pick up tasks that might drive other people to distraction.

But even if most of my work is satisfying, not every job is fun. Sometimes you have to dig in whether you enjoy it or not (and I will take on some jobs I don’t love, if it helps out a regular client). This is when the ability to grit my teeth, sit in the chair and JFDI remains important.

Trying to reconcile these two opposing concepts – sitzfleisch and staying in your flow – I realised that it’s not an either/or choice. Instead, it’s a matter of timing.

When to sit in the chair, and when to delegate

If you’re self-employed: A freelancer, consultant or entrepreneur – it’s pretty much a given that you’ve got grit and determination. Building a business is not for the faint-hearted, and there isn’t really an option where you get to sit out the hard bits.

The ability to sit in the chair, stay in the chair and get shit done is crucial.

However once your business is established, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If the tasks exceed the time you have to do them, it makes sense to delegate the jobs you find hard and unsatisfying – and focus your energy on the things you do best.

If you’re an independent market researcher and your time is at a premium, I can help with that.