Beyond Zoom calls and sour dough, what to do on furlough
In summary. Recharge and refuel, plan, upskill, do — only if you’re arsed though.
Covid-19 hit the UK hard in mid March 2020 and London, where I live, along with the UK and Ireland basically shut down along with most of the world. Go home and stay safe, let this thing run its course. Totally understandable.
The creative business that I run and set up with my girlfriend Diana 3 years ago, M.Y.O, ground to a halt. We run creative workshops for adults in a studio in Central London. Over 14 different arts and crafts, from calligraphy to pottery, in public classes and private groups (team building, hen parties, birthdays etc) along with bringing creativity to brands, content, events and festivals.
Can’t really do that any more! My initial instinct was to not go on furlough when it was announced, plough on (!) and see could we start up new things quickly. But, the reality, we felt at least, was that people wouldn’t be spending owing to so much uncertainty, at least for a month or 2, especially companies — who drive a lot of our business. They would need to figure out what they were going to do too and to set up remote working etc. Big brands were also offering so many free things, so a small, self funded creative business like us didn’t have the resources to compete. It just wouldn’t be possible to generate enough new income to cover any sort of wage and general costs.
So, furlough it had to be, to ensure the long-term survival of M.Y.O as everyone’s job was suddenly on the line — there were 2 other full-time employees at the time (Kirsty and a new hire) and myself who availed of it and it was so important to ensure that they were paid and their jobs were secured during this time, was certainly stressful worrying about that. We also have a team of freelance creatives who we’ve been trying to support where we can too. We are now confident we will survive as a result if we are smart and work effectively when we can, the Government support has been great for us. We feel very fortunate and understand lots of business out there are in even more trouble and it can be majorly difficult to work from home, especially with kids. My brothers both have youngs kids at home in Ireland, it’s tough!
First things first though
Time to pause. Take a breath (literally). Recharge and ride out the absolute tsunami of news, free things to do, memes, Zoom / House Party calls and panic, as brands, families and the news reacted. It was clear to us from the start this was going to go on for a few months at least, not just the initial 2–3 weeks the lockdown was scheduled for, kept short to avoid mass panic I assumed. Toilet paper, then baking products aside….
Take a break
After 3 years and with energy levels very low anyway, a rest was actually what I (and we) really needed. The week before the lockdown I had taken a planned week off as the Covid storm brewed, although was lots of distraction with the impending escalation of everything. BBC news every 10 minutes isn’t that relaxing! Then, the business went from a bumper March income wise, to closing and zero future income overnight. The cancellations streamed in, but thankfully guests have been very supportive and mostly happy to transfer to a future date — I salute you. But, selfishly I guess, I saw the lockdown as some more respite and time to really take a break and re-think things, as I was now on furlough for the forseeable.
I’d play my part by social distancing and made sure I took care of the M.Y.O team, then put my feet up for a bit and reach out to friends and family (ended up being 3 weeks of that, it whizzed by). The time was used to rest and think, binge watch Netflix for a bit, get a little bit of exercise in. The old routine was gone, time to be lazy, then time for a new and improved routine, with spreading the benefits of creativity being its ultimate outcome. I did find it useful to write a daily list of what I was grateful for during this time, as I really found it hard to get motivated for anything, which I think a lot of people on furlough have experienced, but trusted that in a couple of weeks the motivation would come back, as I’d be re-energised and re-focused. Again, to emphasise, I feel very fortunate and know there are a lot of more hard up businesses out there and people doing the jobs of 2–3 people.
Nourish your mind — Breathwork
During this time I discovered breathwork. I’ve tried meditation before and used the Headspace app a bunch, but I always found it distracting on my phone and it never seemed to do much for me — loads of people find it great though and the sleep stories are brill. I’m more less tech than more tech though, where I can help it. Yoga is meant to be good for the body and soul too, done it loads, but I’m not very flexible, so kinda hate it!
Enter The Breathery, run by an amazing lady called Jo Cruickshanks. I’d known Jo from when she ran a branding agency that worked with startups and I was in Virgin StartUp. She’s recently trained in breathwork and is on a mission to spread its benefits around the world. With no routine, I spotted she was doing weekly free breathwork sessions at 10.30am on a Friday, which I could play from my laptop (no Whatsapps whizzing in on there). It was incredible and I have been doing it weekly ever since. I highly recommend you give it a try, go to the Breathery for details. Everyone reacts to it differently, but it helped me release a lot of tension, brought waves of gratitude and has also brought lots of clarity on things. After one of them I sent an individual message to all my friends and family to say I am so grateful to know them and be in their family / be a friend of theirs. I’ve never done anything like that before! Was really nice to push some love out there, especially now. I look forward to the class every Friday and every couple of weekends replay a breathwork sessions for friends who can’t make the Friday one. A little merry band of breathworkers is forming, thanks Jo!
Nourish your body — Exercise and food
Taking care of my mind and body was not a priority whilst I was running M.Y.O, stupidly of course. It lead to a bit of a burn out - non-effective work, poor decision making. I really enjoy sport and fitness, so it’s a whole side of myself I hadn’t been working on. I have a Whatsapp group with old friends of mine called ‘Runs’, not that there was much running talk on there for ages. We changed that recently and now spur each other on, is like a virtual running group, as they live in Dublin. With the breathwork now, there is a few close friends that regularly do it also. In short, I find it really useful to surround a specific and interested group of people around a specific thing, so you can spur each other on. It’s so much harder trying to do something on your own. We run every 2nd day, tracked on an app called Endomondo.
There is always people out there that you know who are up for these kind of things, so cast the net and get energy from the people who show enthusiasm and don’t spend too much energy on those that don’t — some of the ones that don’t, may naturally follow in the future as they see you taking the lead.
I also stumbled across a great fitness app called Centr, which I do pilates on a couple of times a week (find it more enjoyable than yoga!) and some FIIT workouts. After years of neglecting my body, am slowly getting into a nice routine and back into a little bit of shape. Gousto has been a bit of a game changer for dinners with Diana. We order 4 orders of 4 meals and it is delivered to the apartment, so gets us through 8 evenings a week! Porridge for breakfast and Huel for lunch then. Nice and simple. Over the course of all this, as less shop visits (maybe once a week), I totally reduced my sugar and sweets intake too, am sleeping better than I used to be and also have a cold shower every morning, which is good for your immune system.
Great, so that’s the mind and body sorted, Netflix binging done. Feeling recharged. Now, to grow!
M.Y.O as it was before Covid-19 probably won’t exist if it stayed the same, once a bit of normality comes back, as it will take time for people to want / be able to come back to do in-studio creative workshops. Maybe they will really want to do it as we burst out of our homes again, but is uncertain. So, we need to innovate and change things up massively, in the hope of smashing it once furloughing is tapered off and the studio is allowed to re-open. As mentioned, rather than rush into doing free things that everyone else seemed to be doing at the start, we took a step back, recharged a little (for 3 weeks) and read lots about strategy to help with thinking ahead about what the next few months / year might look like and how we can make the best of it, along with genuinely being helpful to people. I wouldn’t be able to chip away at all the below without sorting the mind and body first and getting some focus and motivation back. There is time to chip away at everything, if you really want to do it — just don’t set ridiculously unachievable goals.
Time to refine things and upskill
To help with this, I wrote out a ‘could do’ list of things I’d thought about and felt passionate about completing, not a ‘to do’ list. I picked and choosed different things for 30 mins to 2 hours at a time, or not at all, until I got into a bit of a rhythm. It’s now mid May and I feel I’m fully in a rhythm of chipping away at all of the below at various times of the week. Each day is different and I’m taking time on the weekends to spend proper time with Diana and we do a lot of the below together too. We think we’ve until the end of July on furlough and we can start getting back to a little normality work wise, so over 2 months — plenty of time if you break it into little daily or weekly chunks.
1. We spent some time learning about branding, so we can apply that when the time comes. Kat Coroy has a lot of useful information and webinars.
2. We also decided to research and launch a new brand, called Creative Jungle (website coming soon), part of which would be a Creative jungle podcast, so we learned how to make a podcast on Anchor.fm and joined the Podpreneur group on Facebook to learn more about podcasting.
3. Content making — Power Director is a great little video producer for putting together short videos, which would be useful to know too, so we did a couple of projects on that, including a fun stop motion video with play-doh. We also use Canva a lot and is a bunch of useful how-tos on there, so spent time going through those and Diana whipped up a logo for the Creative Jungle podcast on the back of that.
4. Online learning. Wellbeing and creativity are 2 key parts of what we do, but we’ve both never really studied either, so now felt like the time and I am genuinely fascinated with creativity. The Science of Wellbeing on Coursera is free and really popular, so we’ve both been doing that. There is also a Boosting Creativity for Innovation module on Coursera that is paid for ($60) that I signed up to, so I could delve deeper into that. Both will be useful for M.Y.O in the future as we want to do more in the space of sparking creativity and also wellbeing in the workplace, as creative workshops have great wellbeing benefits and creative thinking will be crucial to so many businesses (and ourselves) to get through the next 2–3 years with the impending recession. We reckon at least. It’ll be a new income stream in the future hopefully.
5. Reading. I’m a member of Rebel Book Club, another bit of an accountability group for getting things done, in this case a non-fiction book each month. Last months book was on Chernobyl, called Midnight in Chernobyl, this months is The Awakened Ape — A biohacker’s guide to evolutaionary fitness, natural ecstacy, and stress free living. What a title, eh!? The book club is a great way to read books I probably normally wouldn’t and it provides a different perspective on things, along with getting you into the habit of regular reading. I tend to have another couple of books on the go also, and this month I’ve been trying to get into the routine of reading for the first 30 minutes after I wake up. Creative Calling and Let my people go surfing from the founder of Patagonia are the others atm. After listening to Naval Ravikant talk about it, I got more comfortable with reading different books at the same time and in some cases, just reading chapters that appealed to me, rather than feeling olbiged to only focus on one book until it is 100% finished. See short video on it here from Naval. Although I do still read 100% of most books, I’ve still read 3 times as many books in the last year versus 3 years prior to that as a result of just knowing I may not have to finish, along with the book club pressure!
6. Amazon store. Another thing we haven’t done, so a chunk of time has been spent on learning about Amazon stores and how they work, as we may sell products on there in the future under the Creative Jungle brand.
7. Get it down on paper. Much like this blog, just documenting a strange time in history, I’ve been writing down lots about how to set up an arts and crafts studio, as will be nice to read in the future and also may grow into new things for us — a book, a course, who knows? I used to journal, but now find writing down 5 things I am grateful for each day has a more energising effect.
8. Regular calls / House parties with family, especially my Mam who is on her own, and close friends. Actually reconnected properly with lots of old friends I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. A call is so much better than a Whatsapp message every 2 months isn’t it?
9. Supporting others I care about and just checking in with them is important right now, along with giving kudos and donations to the NHS. I’ve spoken with tonnes of startup founders that are struggling and it’s nice to share learnings and support them. Amidst all this, I’m happy to offer others hints and tips, positivity and share advice where I can. It really is uncertain times and everyone reacts to it totally differently, there is no right or wrong way from a personal and a business perspective. If your body needs a total rest if you are on furlough, that’s totally fine. If you’re working, might be nice to pick up some habits that will help you transition away from work at the end of the day and on weekends, as working even longer appears to be a problem for people working from home. It’s hard I know. For me, it just kind of feels like this is an opportunity to change myself (Sam 2.0! 7.0?) and get ready for the next couple of years which are going to be exciting and fulfilling (I hope!), so don’t want it to slip by and feel fortunate.
10. Getting creative, hopefully inspiring others and learning new arts and crafts — of course! We’ve been doing a few creative things every few days, calling it #createsolation on Instagram, check out @MYOLondon to see what we’ve been learning and Diana has been posting. String art, wire work, calligraphy, brush lettering and tonnes more. We hope that lots of people are able to give it a go at home, as getting creative is really nice to do for relaxation.
Have you any suggestions to include? What have you been up to on furlough?
What next?
In general as a business, lots of new ideas have flowed from all this and Diana has been rolling out online classes for groups in M.Y.O, which we’ll be sharing with the freelance team when they come in and a few other ideas are bubbling. As a team, we’ll also be better skilled once some normality comes back, so we can take advantage of new opportunities that come in / that we generate. We’re hopeful for the future and feel fortunate we were able to take some time to pause, reflect, re-energise, upskill and go at it again.
Stay safe and well out there, we’ll get through this.
Drop us an e-mail on Hello@MYO.Place if you’d like to find out more or I can be of any help.
Sam
I’m co-creater (with Diana) of Creative Jungle Company, which brings creativity to life and business. For a start, we have a Creative Jungle Podcast, Creative Kits so you and your team can get creative at home / virtually and thoughts on creative thinking, like this. Lots more to come to help people better harness their creative superpower.
I’m also co-creator M.Y.O, a creative studio for adults in London, where you can make things, have fun and enjoy the mindfulness benefits of being creative through arts and crafts. Think of it like a place to stretch those creative muscles of yours! If you’re interested to find out more about M.Y.O and our journey, be sure to follow me on Linkedin / Medium, subscribe to the M.Y.O newsletter here and / or follow us on Facebook or Instagram.
