What a time to develop my business!
It’s strange times indeed right now. A global pandemic, lockdowns, the whole planet moving to working from home practically overnight. You could drive yourself crazy, or just more anxious, by looking at the bigger picture too much right now. Other people have written brilliantly on how to keep up good mental health at the moment and I will save my tips for another time. Today, I just wanted to jot down a few thoughts about my first fully online Scaredycat workshop.
First off, it’s great to say that, despite my stress about it, the first Scaredycat Voice Coaching Online Workshop happened without too much of a hitch! In these days of so-called Zoombombing, I’m thankful for the lack of hitches (or unwanted Zoom intruders!).
I was always planning to run a full Scaredycat communication skills workshop in May but face to face so creating a mini version for online training was incredibly motivating at a time when it was too easy to question my Scaredycat purpose.
The good news: It worked! An hour and a half of vocal coaching for confidence with a short break in the middle was just right for online training. Look at those happy and relaxed faces!
My takeaways: I always practice my face to face Scaredycat workshops and going online meant more practice. I did a full tech rehearsal and recorded it. I also created a full script to refer to during the workshop.
Watching back the rehearsal helped me focus and refine the session as well as checking all the tech and background looked and sounded good – essential for voice coaching!
Syncing the Eventbrite page up with Mailchimp and social media was well worth it and gave me a refresher on how to do this effectively.
Zoom’s new security meant I also felt more confident that no one would be zoombombing (what an awful phrase) – passwords and a waiting room were key.
What do I need to learn: As fabulous as Zoom is for helping you hear everyone individually, I need a workaround for group training. If anyone knows how to hear everyone at the same time on Zoom, do let me know.
I also need to work on how I market these online workshops. A suggestion from one of the participants was to create a similar workshop that looks at voice confidence and body awareness (within the frame of an online meeting, cue “Where’s my frame” :)) for online meetings. I think this is a great idea and, as we can all see this lockdown continuing for a while, it may well be useful for teams who are still struggling to communicate purely online, which is a lot!
