As the founder of Webvid, Neil had already taken action to help move his employees from their HQ to home offices. So the stress of adjusting to a new reality didn’t come as a surprise. But the exhaustion felt like something entirely new.
“When our prime minister was on TV saying, ‘Lockdown has started, you must work from home,’ I was walking back through my door realizing I wasn't feeling well,” Neil recalls. “Within a day, I was completely flat on my back, with no taste and no smell. I was just thinking ‘What's happening?’ I lost a stone and a half of weight within a week and a half. I was shivering. I was shaking. I was sweating. I didn't know what to do.”
For weeks, he struggled to recover from COVID-19. At the same time, he was worrying about his business and, in particular, how his team would communicate and collaborate while isolated in their homes.
“Some of our clients already embraced remote working, but in the UK, the majority of businesses would operate within a physical office environment—like us,” Neil says. “But there was no way we could get to our office. Travel was discouraged and I really wasn’t in the best of health. So we had to use synchronous virtual tools like Zoom to stay in touch, to make sure everyone had everything they needed.”
“Being ill seemed to muddy my thought process,” he recalls. “It took time for me to be able think clearer and understand where we were and where we were going. That's when having a great team helps you out. You can have the best technology in the world, but it's your people that are at the heart of the relationship between your company and your clients. They proved to be invaluable assets to the business and me.”