Forge News and Updates |
At Forge, we know working from home is hard! At first, working from home may seem like a dream come true. But then the distractions of home bombard you- not to mention it’s lonely. That’s exactly why we’ve started Tuesday/Thursday Virtual Happy Hours for Forge members which you can see above! And it may start to feel like your work day never truly ends. With most Forge members now working from home during the pandemic, we asked for their advice on how to be most productive.
Matt’s Tip:
“Uhhh… DONT work from home. My productivity is near zero right now. So many distractions!”
We know a lot of you are forced to work at home right now because of COVID-19 – we just thought Matt’s immediate response was pretty funny! Now let’s get on to the real advice…
Donna’s Tips:
1) Security should be your first consideration. Make certain that you have secured your router with a password, keep your virus protect programs up-to-date. Do not work on an unsecure Wi-Fi network.
2) Carve out a dedicated workspace, preferably with a window and an ergonomic chair, at minimum.
3) Cloud storage for remotely accessing your files. Download the app versions of your productivity programs, which should include a document scanner.
4) Stay in face-to-face contact with customers using tools such as Zoom.
Alex’s Tips:
1. I’m sure this one has been said 100 times, but creating a routine is huge. My wife has created a daily schedule for the kids and I have my morning and evening routine too. Equally important to that routine is to be flexible if you have to stray from it. For example, I wake up with our toddler between 6:30-7 when he comes in our room, make him breakfast, get an Audible story going, eat my breakfast, shower, and get my day started by 9.
2. Determine the times you will be looking at your emails/computer and times you will not. After a certain time I will periodically see emails come across my phone, but I am not reading them or responding to them once I am spending 1-2 hours with the kids before they go to bed. Additionally, don’t let the chores that need to get done around the house distract you or cause you anxiety. When you get out of deep work to just quickly do some laundry you will find it hard to jump back into what you were working on.
3. Definitely have a separate “office” that is ideally not your couch and has most of the things you will need and is somewhat removed from kids/animals if they are going to be distracting.
4. Have your work playlist that works for you. Because I am a highly sensitive person, I find it very distracting to have background music where someone is singing/talking, so I generally have a jazz station as background music.
Autumn’s Tips:
Big things for me are to manage my expectations – this is not business as usual so have grace with myself and others. But also work can still get done – so do what works for you (setting goals, setting timers, keeping a to-do list)
- I moved my to do list to my kitchen chalkboard so that it follows me when I’m tempted by other things.
- Schedule more meetings and make more of an effort to call people because you can’t stumble upon anyone.
Jeff’s Tip:
The first thing that popped into my mind was having a headset for all the Zoom calls. On calls with people who aren’t used to doing videoconferences, I’m noticing that there’s a certain “etiquette” that “newbies” aren’t used to (muting when not talking being the main thing) and – using a headset (as opposed to computer’s built-in mic and speakers) helps with that.
Jami’s Tips:
- Try to give yourself specific ‘office hours’. It’s easy to keep the laptop open and find yourself working 18 hour days, putting you at risk for exhaustion and burnout. I like to use a pomodoro timer to help me focus on specific tasks and give myself enough brakes to remain mentally sharp
- Keep a sense of humor. Dogs are going to cry, kids are going to barge in, technology will be overwhelmed and break. Right now, we’re all in this together and laughing together is really critical to keeping us all sane
- Find ways to socialize and have fun with your teams. I’ve had a blast attending virtual happy hours where we play online games, I’ve hosted Netflix Parties where we all watch and chat through an episode of Tiger King (drinking is suggested!)–find ways to keep everyone connected and having fun. One of my favorite activities was asking everyone to go around and spend 20 seconds ‘selling’ everyone else on the call on why their drink was the best one.
- Set aside time each day to get away from technology. Whether you’re reading a book, taking a walk, journaling–screen fatigue is real
So what are your productivity recommendations when working from home? Comment and tell us!
Forge News and Updates |
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread and impact the lives of people here in Birmingham, we remain committed to serving our Forge members and their businesses. In order to do so in the most responsible way, we have made some changes to ensure a safe environment for our members to conduct business.
To minimize cross contamination, we are temporarily closing our kitchen and ask that all members refrain from using the kitchen, Forge mugs, dishes, silverware, serving utensils, refrigerator and microwave. We suggest that Forge members bring their own water bottles or mugs. We are no longer serving coffee, using our normal water dispensers or providing communal snacks. We ask that our members minimize the use of paper goods as they may be difficult to replace over the next few weeks.
As a staff we will regularly clean work surfaces. We will be following the CDC prescribed bleach cleaning solution on all work surfaces, chair backs, door handles and light switches. The Forge staff will wear single use disposable gloves while cleaning.
In order to promote social distancing, we are removing some of the chairs in our open work areas. We also encourage all meeting room bookings to adhere to suggested room capacity.
We ask that anyone who has traveled to a highly infected area or is experiencing (or has come in contact with a person who is experiencing) possible symptoms of COVID-19 to follow the CDC suggested two week self-quarantine- the CDC’s Travel Guidelines.
As recommended by the CDC, please wash your hands regularly and avoid touching your face. Your personal hygiene and recognition and action regarding symptoms not only impacts you but also those around you.
Thank you for your patience and understanding during this time. We know that small businesses will be impacted during this outbreak, but we are taking every measure to help our members conduct business as usual.
Sincerely,
Kim Lee
Founder and CEO
Forge News and Updates |
We’ve been daydreaming about all the fun we had at our International Women’s Day Celebration on March 6 at Forge. Mimosas, coffee, breakfast, door prizes, networking and goodie bags all made for a fun event! Forge member Kelsey Weeks documented the party- so all the photo credit goes to her.
Our panel consisted of:
Kitty Brown of White Arnold & Dowd, Dr. Adrienne Starks of STREAM Innovations and Kerry Schrader of Mixtroz.
Kitty is an attorney, mom of two and very involved in the Birmingham community through YWCA and Junior League.
Kerry is the CEO and Co-founder of Mixtroz, a business networking company that increases engagement and collects data. Kerry and her daughter closed a $1M round of funding, making them the 37th and 38th black females to ever close a $1M+ round of funding.
Adrienne is the Founder and CEO of STREAM Innovations who equips students from under-valued and under-served communities to explore and develop their passion for Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STREAM).
Our panelists shared stories of their career journey and the surprising twists they encountered along the way. Kim Lee, our panel moderator, also asked what our panelists think about the culture of women in business in Birmingham. Ashlee of Mixtroz shared a story of meeting with an investor who disrespected her and dismissed her in their initial meeting. After Ashlee was able to have an honest conversation with him, they are actually friends now! The investor apologized for mistreating her and grew from the mistake.
The transition from employee to entrepreneur was also a topic of conversation- along with how to balance being a full time working mom with young kids. We hope our panel inspired and encouraged fellow women from Birmingham! We loved celebrating the many achievements of women in our city and learning how we can support one another.
The first 100 attendees received goodie bags filled with items and coupons from women owned businesses around Birmingham. A huge thank you to all of the businesses who donated goodies and coupons for the attendee bags! Check them out below!
We ended the IWD event with a Mixtroz mixer! Attendees downloaded the Mixtroz app and answered a short questionnaire then everyone was divided into groups and provided prompts to get to know each other. People loved this portion of the event and were able to make new connections and friends through Mixtroz.
We are so thankful for our sponsors who made this event possible: Ashley Mac’s, Hightower Somerset Advisory, Gatehouse Law, Chase and Nourish Foods.
Forge News and Updates |
We love having the whole Bham Now team coworking out of Forge! They wrote this story on the history of Bham Now and why they choose to office in our coworking space. Read on!
Even if you’re a longtime fan of Bham Now, we bet you don’t know the story behind the company, what we do, who we are and where we’re headed. I sat down with Cindy Martin, Bham Now’s Founder and President, to get the scoop. Yes, I work there, so I’ll tell you the real story. Read on for all the details.
1. How Bham Now came to be.
According to Cindy Martin (CM), “Bham Now is Birmingham’s modern media. Our mission is to help connect people in Birmingham and to help celebrate the city’s renaissance by reflecting all the positive energy that’s happening in the Greater Birmingham Area.”
Where’d you get the idea for Bham Now?
CM: We saw a need in the marketplace from two constituents.
One is the general populace—I was continually hearing people say “I don’t know what to do in Birmingham; I don’t know where to go to find out what’s happening in Bham.” There was really a desire to know “how do I get involved.”
On the business front, we saw a need for local businesses to share their messages using content (storytelling, video, behind the scenes tours) because that is how consumers respond today. But businesses don’t necessarily have the resources or acumen to create content in a way that resonates or know how to measure effectiveness.
So we pieced those two things together to create Bham Now.
Much of the team works out of Forge now, but how did you start?
CM: At the very beginning, we all worked out of our houses. It was a handful of interns from local colleges and me with some tech support from my husband.
Planning for Bham Now started 4 years ago.
I had lots of media and internet business experience over the past 25+ years, and had given a lot of thought to what would be the next big wave in digital media.
Bham Now: In case y’all didn’t know, Cindy was CEO of AL.com from its founding in 1997 to its merger with state newspapers in 2012.
CM: When I spoke with a few people whose business acumen I respect, their input was “you don’t need a business plan; just start doing it.” This was some of the best advice I got.
What made you choose to grow your team at Forge, and how has that shaped the business?
CM: Kim Lee was getting the Forge co-working space started about the same time as Bham Now. Our younger team members wanted a place to meet up and collaborate and Forge was the perfect solution!
It has offered Bham Now a beautiful, motivational and collaborative environment right in the middle of the downtown action. You can tell from all the pictures in this piece and from our Instagram how much fun the team has exploring all things Birmingham. Forge is the perfect launching pad for all that.
Since Bham Now has been growing so much, it has allowed our rent expense to grow as we add people which is a huge benefit for a start-up company.
You don’t always know what your needs will be 2 or 3 years down the road. Forge provides options so you can grow as your business requires without taking on too much too soon.
2. We’re passionate about Birmingham.
CM: There’s a lot to love about Bham Now.
First, sharing the resurgence of Birmingham with new food, new bars, new jobs…Amazon coming to town…there are so many positives happening right now in the Greater Birmingham area. Instead of focusing on negatives such as crime and politics, we focus on what’s up-lifting. This positive energy begets more positive energy.
Second, supporting local businesses, being out and about and meeting so many business people in the Birmingham area—established as well as up-and-coming businesses. There’s a lot of joy from that and being able to provide a service they wouldn’t have otherwise. We’re locally owned and operated so we’re deeply invested in Birmingham’s success.
3. Bham Now is backed by a dynamic, creative and diverse team.
CM: I love working with our team. We have lots of young folks—watching them grow and having them be part of the development and growth of the company is rewarding from a career development standpoint.
Bham Now currently employs 19 people. Four work in business development and the rest are content producers, including writers, photographers and videographers.
4. Bham Now’s reach and growth are impressive.
CM: We reach over 30% of the Greater Birmingham market, which means more than 300k people in this market visit us every month. We have over 134k social followers.
The growth year over year has been tremendous, and we continue to look for talent to grow the team. We look for people who care about Birmingham and have a passion for media and creative excellence. A sense of humor helps too!
We have a unique business model. Part of the goal is to build a sustainable local media model and to create new jobs in Birmingham. So far it’s working.
5. Bham Now connects Birminghamians, businesses and organizations.
CM: Bham Now combines two constituents’ needs: the Greater Birmingham populace who wants to know what’s going on, what’s opening, how to get involved in local businesses and nonprofits, and the business community’s desire to share their story with fun, engaging content. We do all this in a way that reaches what we call “millennial-minded people.”
We have a pretty broad definition of “millennial-minded.” We’re referring to anyone who’s active, out and about and involved in Birmingham. We’re also thinking of the actual Millennial generation, which is poised to have the most spending power of any other group of people in the population across the country.
They’re also the future leaders, forming what Birmingham will be in the coming decades. While I’m not a millennial, I thought “why not partner with millennials who are up and coming and give them access to do it even better, with more knowledge, more resources and more info than we had.”
6. Our content provides value to Birmingham and to our clients.
Bham Now: One of the things you might not know about Bham Now is that we have a unique combo of about 30% “sponsored” and 70% “earned” media.
Sponsored media includes paid offerings where we work with clients to produce particular content campaigns for them. Earned means it’s not backed by a particular company. Here’s what Cindy had to say about these offerings:
CM: We’re continuing to expand Bham Now’s offerings to provide more value to the Birmingham population and to our clients. Examples include multimedia campaigns, with a full-time videographer (you can see him above, jumping into the rooftop pool at Forge). You can’t ever say you have it (marketing and media) with a checkmark. It’s a constant evolution and learning process, and I really enjoy that.
Our campaigns are more than an article—each Bham Now sponsored campaign is uniquely crafted for the client, backed by expert photography, videography and social media presence. Plus, it gets the secret “pepper sauce” of creativity from the Bham Now team.
There’s a lot of work across all of Bham Now’s distribution channels. We manage each of them uniquely to communicate with the audience in a way that’s meaningful to them. It’s different on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and in our newsletters.
Our 100% Google rating means that Bham Now’s content jumps right to the top when you search for something to do in Birmingham. It is also a benefit to our sponsors who see their content from Bham Now live through Google for a long time. And, 60% of our traffic comes from non-social media, which means it’s coming from Google, Apple News and directly to our site.
This is a really important point and distinguishes us from social influencers. In fact, one of our national clients came to us because the marketing software they use showed that Bham Now has the largest engagement across all channels plus the added benefit of search engine excellence.
Currently we have over 60 active clients on Bham Now, from local makers to large businesses like EBSCO to tourism companies like Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors’ Bureau.
Because of this range, we have offers that cover the gamut, from one-time social campaigns to multi-year media consulting and execution.
7. You can get involved with Bham Now, too.
Bham Now: Of course you can follow us on any or all of our channels: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | Newsletter. Hint: You gotta try our newsletter. It’s fun and includes puppies. 😉
Write to us with story leads, to ask about sponsorship opportunities, or to let us know you’d like to work with us at hello@bhamnow.com.
If it’s exciting for Bham, you’ll find it on Bham Now.
