Eye on the ball

Isn’t it a lovely thing when you get to help a friend out in times of need?

Even better still when you get paid for it...

News in brief (ish):
With Christmas looming, my dear friend the Healthcare Goddess is under the cosh with several projects that she’s concerned about dropping balls on. Most of these require research materials being collated, distilled and re-presented to their target audiences. Not exactly the world’s most taxing job individually, but when you’ve got eleventy billion of them happening at once, it can get a little out of hand.

Halfway through November, it didn’t look like there was much work to be had for us in the run-up to Christmas, and I assumed that it was likely only to change for the busier in January, once most of the clients had recovered from sifting budgetary paperwork. So, I told the HG to throw as much work as she could my way, in order for her to meet deadlines and maybe sleep every once in a while!

I’ve been happily crunching through the odd bit of research for her, along with being a sounding-board for various business concerns, for the last few weeks. And she pays me for this, the lovely woman! She’s now in more of a position of control of the work and not quite as worried about fire-fighting and letting clients down as she was. She may even be able to prepare for her holiday soon, you never know.

Even better has been a sudden influx of work from an unexpected quarter (ie. a new client), who are ridiculously happy with the quality of our work (as well as our prices) and are intimating that there’s a vast amount of work for us for the new year. Having seen the standard of the stuff they were being handed before, I’m not surprised. A video interview for an internal presentation being done on a palmcorder with the audio from the mic on top of the camera, with no white-balancing, led to the subject sounding like he was at the bottom of a mine-shaft, with a bad dose of jaundice. And this was given to the client (a large, multi-national pharmaceutical company) by one of the biggest creative/advertising agencies on the planet.

Staggering.

But what an opportunity... ;-)

So, it’s heads-down for a while in the run-up to the Festering Season and a positive vibe for the New Year.

I’m sure I’ll get another post in before then, but hope you all have a great time and eat enough for an army of locusts where possible. Hope the positivity comes to you all too.