Hey,

How is it going? 

It’s Friday and I’m writing this blog post right before signing off from work. 

A few hours ago I attended the team meeting and stated that my weekly productivity was around a 7/10. It’s not bad but I feel like I could have done better. The main reason why I wasn’t as productive was that I was always jumping from one activity to another. It’s something I cannot avoid so I’ve learnt to deal with it. However, I think this week I have done it too often and I didn’t manage it in the best way possible. 

On top of this, my laptop was very slow and I had continuous internet connection issues. You can probably imagine how frustrating it is when this happens all together!

Despite everything, I still managed to get some things done so that’s why I think my work deserved a 7/10.

During the week I carried out the usual HR tasks.

I helped Akhila with the hiring process. 

I let her interview candidates and I only support her in case of doubts. I also help her to make decisions and to understand the company’s needs and priorities.

I optimised training material. 

Every time someone records a video explanation that could be useful to the whole team, I am in charge of uploading videos to our YouTube channels and then embedding them in the correct training courses. 

In addition this week, I took some time to update the information about the general partnership programme and add details when I think clarification was needed. It’s official: now Pearl Lemon Academy is part of the Pearl Lemon Group! 

Below is the new updated company structure:

I organised a new process to boost team collaboration and communication.

Whenever someone is stuck with something, I am usually the person who gives instructions or shares training material. I encourage everyone to come to me for any kind of challenge as I have a good overview of the team’s roles and responsibilities. This way I will either give them the answer or direct them to the people who can deal with the problem more effectively. 

As an alternative, I found a way to push people to collaborate more with each other. In most cases, we have a role at Pearl Lemon but we’ve also had the chance to work on other areas within the company. Since we all live in different timezones, it may happen that we need help from someone who is asleep or temporarily unavailable. That’s when we should feel free to reach out to other people as well who may know the answer about a specific matter. I’ve created a space where everyone can add their ‘areas of specialisation’ which can include a task they can manage well or a tool they know how to use.

To encourage knowledge sharing, Deepak suggested doing something we used to do more often months ago. 

Everyone should record a 10-min video of their usual tasks and share it with another person who possibly doesn’t know how to do those activities. Those who watch the video can:

• Learn something new
• Take inspiration to improve their work process
• Discover shortcuts and ways to simplify complex tasks
• Give constructive feedback to help that person optimise their work strategy

I think this task is very beneficial to the whole team so we will probably keep doing it on a regular basis.

At Pearl Lemon Academy, lots of things have happened this week!

Here’s what I did:

• I signed us up on platforms like LinkedIn and Angel.co to start building our online presence.
• I posted 2 job ads and interviewed some applicants.
• I had a team meeting with Deepak and Sam and we reviewed the strategy together.
• I carried out lead generation campaigns and shared the slide presentation to present our academy and courses.
• I recorded the current sales process which mostly happens when I connect with potential customers on LinkedIn.
• I exchanged ideas and received suggestions for improvement from Sam and Deepak.
• Together with Pearl’s help, we finalised the content for the landing page which I hope will be ready soon.
• Today (Friday) two girls have started their trial week as digital marketing partners exclusively focussed on Pearl Lemon Academy. I am happy to finally build a small team who will work on the project with me on a daily basis. I can’t wait to see how we’ll work together!

The goal for next week is to get better leads both in terms of quality and quantity. 

Something new I did this week was being interviewed in a podcast! Noah is currently working on a podcast for Pearl Lemon and has started a category called ‘Meet The Team’. 

I think it’s a great opportunity to let other people know more about someone’s job role, their perspective and experience at Pearl Lemon. Noah is amazing at interviewing people as he seems so natural at it! He has also asked personal questions and we ended up talking about learning a foreign language, taking care of a dog, deciding to go climbing a mountain and more. I even got to know what happened when we first met online as I was the HR person who interviewed and then hired him. Paradoxically now it was the other way around as he was interviewing me! Overall, it was a fun and funny experience!

Time to wrap up this weekly update as it’s getting longer than usual!

See you next week!

Ciao,

Federica