 Do you work from home but still crave to climb the corporate ladder? You can still be career driven while working from home. You just need to find some different ways of gaining visibility and getting in front of your organization's leaders. We're going to talk about that today. Hey, it's Leanne from leancolderwood.com and I've worked from home for most of my career. And while I enjoy the flexibility and the solitude of working from home, I still crave to grow in my career and to climb that corporate ladder. So when you're working from home, you just got to find different ways of doing it. And so I'm going to outline a few ways that I've made myself visible in the industry over the years. And these are things that you can do not only in our meeting planning industry, but also with your respective organization. So let's dive in some tips of things that you can do while working from home and still climb that corporate ladder. Tip number one, opt to work in the office setting once or twice a week. Now this might not be a possibility for you, but if you have the flexibility and opportunity, I would recommend going to the office once or twice a week just to get your face into the space. Make yourself known, get in front of the leaders. Let them know that you're working hard both in the office and of course behind the scenes at home as well. Tip number two, attend office functions. So if your small office is celebrating something, be it a retirement or a birthday or milestone of some sort, make a point of getting into the office to celebrate. Now again, if you can't get there in person to celebrate, send a note of congratulations or whatever that looks like so that the person, the recipient, the office people know that you're thinking about them on this special day. Tip number three, arrange for video meetings with your colleagues and leaders. So often you'll have these phone meetings and monthly check-ins or weekly check-ins. Try to encourage your team to do video as well. And then again, it gets your face in front of them so they don't forget what you look like. You can use Skype, you can use Zoom, go to meeting. There's so many tools. You probably have them on hand already. So does your organization. So do your best to encourage people to do a FaceTime meeting. Maybe even call it a coffee chat where everyone brings their favorite cup of coffee and share in that way during your team meeting. Tip number four, find a mentor in one of your leaders. You know I love mentorship. I can't stop talking about it. In fact, one of my very earliest videos was on the importance of mentorship. And while the video sucks, you can find it up here. But mentorship and finding a mentor is so important in our meetings industry, especially if you're working from home. So please find a mentor. And if you want to climb the corporate ladder internally at your organization, you may be able to find a mentor in one of your supervisors or immediate leaders. And that way, again, you're getting visibility outside of your day to day tasks and into the bigger picture of who you are as a person. Tip number five, network with leadership. So whether you do that at industry functions and meeting planning conferences or at local chamber of commerce events, make sure you're networking with leaders both in and outside of your organization. Tip number six, volunteer in the industry. This is one of the fastest ways of gaining visibility both in and out of your organization is to volunteer in some capacity. Be it with MPI or HSMAI, whatever industry affiliation you have, see if there's some way that you can contribute. Not only are you going to meet people, but you're going to get visibility to the leaders who are seeing you contribute to the industry. Tip number seven, start stocking your leaders on social media. And stocking has a negative connotation, but here's what I'd like you to do is I would like you to find your leaders, especially on LinkedIn, which is the most professional of the social media platforms. They're probably creating content, liking content, sharing content. So you want to get in on those conversations. And I did a post not too long ago about elevating your personal brand and you can check out that very quick video here. But what you want to do is you want to start to like, comment, and share on your leaders content so that they see that you're visible and contributing to the conversation as well. Tip number eight, keep your LinkedIn profile updated. So make sure that you're updating it regularly with all of those things I just mentioned. Like the volunteer experience, like the LinkedIn groups that you're contributing to because leaders are looking to LinkedIn profiles as well as hard copy resumes when they're looking at the next successor for a position. Tip number nine, volunteer or create strategic projects. So if there's a project in your little team or your organization and they're looking for people to take this on, see if you can fit it into your calendar. They want go-getters and they want people who are going to be creative to take on these projects. So be that person. Now, if there's no strategic projects at hand, perhaps there's something that you've identified as a need for your group. Start working on that project, present it to your team and of course present it to your leaders. That's going to be a great way to get visibility. And again, it goes beyond the day-to-day tasks and into something a little bit more meaty and something that they want to reward people with down the line. So is there anything that I've missed? Do you have any tips on how to elevate your visibility while you're working in a home office? Please comment below this video and share it with your community. They want to hear from you as well. I'm hopeful that if you're working from home, you're now encouraged that you're definitely not alone and that leaders are paying attention to you when you partake in the right activities. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And if you're thinking about working from home but not sure if it's a good fit for you, I encourage you to try my work from home self-evaluation tool over on my website. It goes through some leading questions that may help you evaluate if working from home would be a good fit for you. Thanks for watching this week's video and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.