It Takes a Hive
- Posted October 28th, 2009
- Filed under: @sbbuzz, How We Do It
One of our goals here at BatchBlue is to solve the age old problem of work/life balance. We are working on it within our own company – a hybrid virtual business with an officeless office space and flexible work schedules. We wrote a Blue Paper describing how we are doing it and write and blog and tweet a great deal about our approach to a work/life balance. Gina Blitstein wrote a wonderful article recently describing our Communications Director Michelle and my different approaches to balancing our professional determination with our family involvement. We are both very ambitious in both areas, so the balance is a constant, but invigorating challenge.
But I learned something new about this struggle last night. I learned the importance of our community in helping us pull this off.
We run a weekly Twitter chat every Tuesday night from 8:00-10:00 PM where we invite small business owners to come chat about everything from social media strategies to recycling efforts. For the past nine months I have logged in each Tuesday as the @sbbuzz bee and moderated an amazing group of motivated business owners as we work together to support each other and learn from each other and collectively build better businesses. But last night I got distracted during #sbbuzz chat. I put a sick child to bed and then spent the evening on the WebMD, CDC, and MyAsthmaCentral sites researching the latest recommendations for my at-risk son. And I missed the chat.
But this story has a happy ending. The #sbbuzz chat happened without me. A group of core members, lead by the brilliant and resourceful @scoblitz decided to spontaneously run the chat themselves. They knew the format and rules of the chat and were able to have a great and helpful discussion without me.
Yes, being able to do it all is important. But sometimes you can’t. And so it is equally important to have a community that cares, that understands the goal behind the chat (or product, or project, or business) and feels empowered to take the reigns when necessary. This is what will help us as individuals, as a company, and as a small business community to succeed.
I am a humbled and grateful bee. Thank you to the inspiring #sbbuzz community for carrying on without me.
Pamela,
You were missed last night but @scoblitz did a great job taking the lead. Thank you for creating the @sbbuzz community as I feel blessed to have met such amazing people there.
There are moments in our children’s lives that take away the importance of time, as they should. I hope your little boy is feeling better today.
Looking forward to next week!
Susan
That’s so cool. I missed the #sbbuzz last night because of family obligations, and I work totally from home. Even though I have an office where I am supposedly isolated, every now and then my 4 year old will walk in and start playing. If I’m on a conference call or writing something I have to make adjustments and even entertain my 4 year old until my wife comes back from the errand or from doing something in another part of the house. Hooray to work/life balance!
Hi, I am a client. What is best way to receive support and what is expected time response?
[...] This chat went a bit differently than usual… Pamela explains how important community is and why it takes a hive to be a success. Tagged as: BatchBlue, community, sbbuzz Leave a comment Comments (0) [...]
@Michael You can always reach us at support@batchblue.com and we usually get back to folks within a business day (usually much sooner!)
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[...] @scoblitz for handling things when our Queen Bee had a family emergency last week. Pam wrote a post about the significance of the SBBuzz community coming together over on the BatchBlue blog if you’re interested in the [...]