Today it was just the three amigos in the office: Jon, Isabella and Sarah. We didn’t start the 90-minutes at our usual time of 8:15. Reason being… milk, a necessity for our morning beverages, was not readily available. Therefore, a quick run to Sainsbury’s was due. (M&S why don’t you open sooner? That extra minute walk up the High Street wasn’t appreciated this morning).

On return from the milk run, we finally made our teas and coffees, (Sarah isn’t allowed to make Jon’s tea… still in the process of learning the fine balance between time, teabag and milk) and proceeded into the meeting room for our fifth session.

Jon purchased a laminator a few days prior to this meeting, and we soon came to realise why… We were tasked with making the key principles of our business growth, on-brand, in Canva… to be printed out A5 and laminated.

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This Should Have Been a Simple Task

I reiterate simple. However, no, this was not simple, it was not faff-free and it actually strained the brains of a very capable duo on a Friday morning. Just to be clear, we’re talking about Isabella and Sarah… Jon would have bossed this!

The creation on Canva was the easiest part, our key principles are as follows:

• Double reoccurring revenue.
• Improve customer journey.
• Celebrate birthdays with new-start data.
• Rebuild Virtual Social Clinics.
• Work on Delivered Social packages.
• 365 days of emails.
• Blueprint App.
• Organise Canva.
• Press.
• Rebuild Jon’s website with the ‘Melyssa theme’.
• Write a book.
• Jon’s LinkedIn banks.
• Free CV websites.
• Launch websites for opticians.
• Sarah teaches Jon to bake.

The Vampires Were Here

Day five and they were not vanquished. If you are lucky enough to be on Jon’s mailing list, you would understand why I am referencing this. Remember… his vampire was the paper shredder!

Transferring these principles to Word… not something we want to do in the near future. For starters, Canva does not have a template for A5, which we had to look up, apply in mm and then change this to cm for Word. Furthermore, we had to resize every single image (fitting two on a page was a pain point). The pressure was on at this point, we both knew this task should have been on the last hurdle of the relay by now. However, it was not, and we still had to cut and laminate.

If we could have printed onto A5 paper, a chunk of time would have been taken back, plus the help of a guillotine (for cutting straight and time efficiency) would have been a huge bonus. This is not something to dwell on, but to rectify for future tasks like these. The laminator has a setting which consists of one speed, so there was nothing we could change about that element.

What We Learnt

• Sarah can’t cut straight.
• Isabella can’t handle Word on a Friday.
• Jon thinks we are both loco.
• These laminated key principles won’t be used for future public events (forgot to mention that this was the intended use for these laminated A5 cards).
• Jon does a great job impersonating a quiz show host armed with wonky laminated cards.

What we took away from this session, was that we were to focus on organising Canva, come Monday so our ability to locate work was easier. Scarily, this will save a lot of time for the whole team.

Secondly, it will make it easier for us in future sessions to organise what we are going to focus on and plan for our future of 90-minute meetings.

After a working week of these 90-minute sessions, we really do feel what we are doing for the company is of high value. We are adapting to our new time frame and thinking in a way, which is beneficial for the business, for staff and for clients.

If you would like to read more content from us, why not start by reading this one?

Now, time for pizza…