Hello everybody,

I hope you are all well.

Today is Friday, 24th July 2020 and I am currently on the train (but working) as I’m on my way to Tuscany – the awesome Italian region where Florence is! I am going to spend the weekend at the seaside at a friend’s place and I cannot wait to meet her, take a nice break, go to the beach and visit many new places! That’s also why I’m writing this blog post today instead of during the weekend – I will mostly be off from work for the next couple of days.

Here’s a picture of what my current working space looks like.

It’s actually the very first time I travel alone again after the lockdown due to the coronavirus – it feels pretty weird, I have to admit.

I was used to travelling alone very often and now that kind of experience seems like ages ago. Plus, with all the new restrictions, I always wonder if there’s a new rule I’m forgetting about.

So far, here’s a summary:

It’s for our safety!

To go back to the news about my work, I can tell you this week I worked really hard to avoid working during the weekend – one night I even finished at half-past midnight! It was my own choice though.

This week I was mainly working on my campaign to reach out to potential clients for Kemistri. I am trying to finalize my strategy and after one week of doing it, I already have a pretty good sense of how things work and how they can be improved – there will always be room for improvement and reasons to learn! Today I’ve launched a new campaign, let’s see if I can get better results targeting different kinds of people.

Meanwhile, I was also in the process of hiring a new digital marketer that can stay with us for one year and that is based in the UK, possibly in London. Because this time there were more requirements to be met, I had to reject way more applications. I interviewed two girls today and I think they can be a good fit to start the trial week on Monday. I will discuss this with Lydia, like always, and see how to proceed.

Let’s move to the new things of the week.

First of all, new people! Two digital marketers joined the team and a new sales guy is working with us. I took the time to have an introductory call with all of them.

Second of all, a change in my working style. One important thing that changed this week is my kind of communication with Deepak, our CEO and person that I refer to most when I work for Kemistri. We realised we needed a different system to be clearer and more efficient and I think he came up with a good one. Every day, I’ll share a list of questions I have and he will write down answers for me all at once. This allows him to be interrupted less often during the day and it allows me to have a better understanding of things and then communicate it to other team members, if necessary. This situation taught me a lot about how I can best organise my tasks and I am really glad Deepak suggested this solution that seems to work for both of us.

Third of all, time to collaborate! Another new thing I tried was working with another person. Tenny, one of our Marketing Executives, and I video chatted while working on listing platforms where we can review Pearl Lemon and other related businesses we’re working for. The idea of collaborating more often was suggested by Deepak as a way to feel less lonely and bored, especially during process-driven tasks. Tenny and I agreed on the beneficial side of being in contact when you need to exchange opinions, although this activity cannot be very efficient if only one person works while the other one only gives suggestions. This was our first approach while we were deciding how to organise information and then, we switched to both working separately while still being on a video chat.

What’s for next week?

I will tell you more in my next post.

It’s time to enjoy my getaway weekend!

See you,

Federica