Brand On! With Brandon Uttley Brandon Uttley

Hello, loyal listeners, this is Brandon Uttley. And today I want to thank you for listening to the Brand On podcast.

It’s time for me to retire this podcast and focus my efforts on my other, better-known podcast — Go For Launch. I’m in the process of relaunching Go For Launch, no pun intended, and I encourage you to check it out on iTunes and every other major podcasting platform. You can learn more at goforlaunch.io/podcast or goforlaunch.io/itunes.

Go For Launch is hosted on the awesome Libsyn platform. If you’re looking into creating a serious podcast, it’s the best I have used. I am proud to be an affiliate, and if you sign up for a new account and use the promo code LAUNCH, you will get the current month and the following month free as a trial.

I had been doing the Go For Launch for several years and put it on hold nearly four years ago. It’s a long story, but at the time I had someone who was supposed to join me as a co-host who bailed out. I was frankly burned out after producing nearly 100 weekly episodes singlehandedly.

This time, I’m going to keep the production quality high but more simple. It’ll just be me and a guest, or occasionally just me on the mic. I’ll still be talking mostly about business topics, branding, marketing — and how to juggle balancing running a business with maintaining a good quality of life. 

Working from seems idyllic but it presents its own challenges, even for the most introverted type of person. And especially during the global pandemic! Here are 25 tips to make the most of working from home.

1. Rise and shine! Pick a regular time to get up every day.

2. Take a shower and get dressed. Wear appropriate clothing that puts you in the best state to work at your best. Don’t stay in your pajamas all day!

3. Structure Your Day. “Structure equals freedom and structure equals results.” - Craig Ballantyne

4. Be intentional. Make an intention for your overall day, as well as individual tasks. This will help you stay focused.

5. Set expectations - when you work, your availability, etc. Let your colleagues and other people know. If necessary, block off time on your calendar.

6. Separate your workspace from your living space.

7. Limit interruptions — i.e., notifications and noise (use Krisp to eliminate noise on Zoom calls, etc. - https://krisp.ai).

8. Set up and TEST your video conferencing. Use a good camera (such as Logitech) and microphone (I like the ATR 2100)—and also your background. Download Muzzle to avoid embarrassing notifications when you are screen sharing (for Mac): https://muzzleapp.com.

9. Single task.

10. Track your time.

11. Use a Pomodoro timer - work in concentrated time segments (I like Be Focused for Mac).

12. Re-engineer your day into 3 mini-days; this was inspired by Ed Mylett (see this great Medium post by Eduardo Lopez for more details).

13. Take regular breaks.

14. Stand up (vs. sitting all day).

15. Exercise.

16. Meditate - a good free app is Medito.

17. Eat healthy foods.

18. Drink lots of water.

19. Wear blue-light blocking glasses. The American Optometric Association advises that when working on a screen, every 20 minutes look at something 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds.

20. Join online communities - examples including Slack and Comarketing Space.

21. Find an accountability partner.

22. Leave the house regularly — example, schedule coffees and lunches with friends and peers. Harder to do now with COVID-19!

23. Listen to music or ambient background sound (one of my favorites is Coffitivity).

24. Keep a journal.

25. Plan ahead.

What about you? If you have a tip, share it as a voice memo at https://anchor.fm/brandonuttley and I may include it on a future podcast episode.

In today's episode, I provide 5 tips to improve your LinkedIn profile. These are excerpted from my new product, LinkedIMPROVED, an interactive checklist, course and coaching to help you dramatically improve your LinkedIn presence.

I mistakenly say there are more than 675 people on LinkedIn...I meant to say 675 million!

Anchor has added a new feature that let's you upload the audio from a video session—such as a Zoom or Skype call—and convert it into a podcast episode. 

In this segment, I discuss two new tools for discovering and researching emerging trends: Treendly and Exploding Topics.

If you set up Zoom video conferences, you know the invitations are pretty boring! Zmurl.com aims to fix that, by letting you create beautiful landing pages for your Zoom events. You can even use Zmurl to prevent Zoombombers from getting in and ruining your events! The basic version is free.