Living The Virtual American Dream

Notes from the Recession - 1

2008-10-10T09:12:00.001-04:00

Thursday, Oct. 9

I peered through the slats of the kitchen blinds at the last glow of a beautiful fall afternoon. It seemed so strange that that nature should be putting on such a multi-colored show at a time when the news was filled with economic horrors.

I hesitated before turning on NPR. And sure enough, the small kitchen space was soon filled with gloom and doom from the stock and credit markets. I was tempted to turn off the news about possible bank failings, but incapable of wrenching myself from the latest catastrophic economic report.

I reached for the leftover pork in the refrigerator.

“The Dow fell 689 points today . . .”

I dug out left over chicken from the recesses of the lower shelf.

“GM stocks fell precipitously . . .”

The refrigerator was looking barren. I’d have to shop soon, only any expenditure felt excrutiating. Maybe that’s why eating had become so difficult. It was hard to take time from searching from work, searching for meaning in all this, searching for self . . .

But eat I must. Persevere I must.

All these years I’ve touted virtual company land as the pathway to economic and lifestyle freedom, but it’s damned hard to face this alone. Even so, it’s got to be hard facing a possible layoff. At least we have the option to keep on marketing . . .

CFO.COM REPORTS ON VIRTUAL WORK AND VERMONT

2008-07-03T21:29:00.004-04:00

If you get a chance, pop onto CFO.com and read through Alan Rappeport's June 30 article on the state of Vermont promoting the virtual work place.

They get it in Vermont. Work can be accomplished without folks actually sitting in the same building. And think of the energy savings . . .

Happy July 4th!

CNN.COM Calls it "Co-Working," Another Name for Virtual

2008-05-21T15:38:00.002-04:00

CNN.com has a great article on yet another type of virtual company entrepreneur, only they call it "co-working." I call it working out of a cafe virtually, but making sure your friends drop by . . .

For all the details, here's the URL:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/04/07/coworking/index.html

ROSWELL, Georgia (CNN) -- More than a decade after the Internet allowed millions of people to work at home, the next phase of telecommuting involves, well, not working at home. art.jelly.ho.randall.jpg

Web developer Toby Ho, left, has joined a coworking group called "Jelly" in Roswell, Georgia.

Organized "coworking" -- the concept of working solo alongside like-minded independents -- has spread to dozens of cities.

The irony of coworking isn't lost on organizers, including Kevin Bachman, who set up a group north of Atlanta as part of an informal Web-based network called Jelly.

"The reason people work alone, is because they're looking for freedom," said Bachman, a 34-year-old Web developer who telecommutes part time. "It may be ironic that you crave isolation, but you also want to be socially interactive with others like you." See how Jelly works together »

Once a month, Bachman's group takes over a room provided by Tony's American Grille & Tap. A handful of home-based Internet workers hunch over laptops writing code, tweaking administration systems or enhancing databases.

On RECRUITMENT AND PLACEMENT FIRMS . . .

2008-05-18T21:37:00.002-04:00

I'm always curious about recruiting and placement agencies -- not to mention online job boards -- that would actually help those of us who want client work, not jobs.

So far, I haven't found any until some folks from the Robert Half agency stumbled into Hidden-Tech's 5th birthday party a year ago. Some of this company's associates say they'd rep me as part of their "creative" sector, but I'm not sure what that means. (When I do, I'll fill you in).

My curiosity piqued, I queried my members at Hidden-Tech, the organization for virtual companies, to find out what they knew about this company and others. All 19 responses are posted below, but a quick tally indicated the following:

* 7 members had not heard that Robert Half at all;

* 10 had heard of the agency and said it was reputable;

* 7 knew they did project recruiting for those in the creative, legal or accounting fields;

* 3 had negative things to say about this firm (and most recruiting firms).

Curious to keep this dialog going and get your input.

RESPONSES:

1) In addition to being a computer tech, I'm also a professional actor (when I
can...). I have known that Robert Half often shows up where the actors are
to get them temporary jobs "between gigs," so I know of their alliance with
the arts. They seem to specialize in that. I didn't know that they could
find project work for small companies. I've always thought that they could
find consulting gigs for individuals. Interesting angle... I'm not sure if
I'd pay to get the work, however. I guess it depends on the fees.

Just my two-cents.

Frank

2) Over the years I've certainly rec'd many freelance jobs from agencies
like Robert Half. I don't begrudge them their $$$ as they're bringing
me work and they pay quickly and, if you work through them on a
regular basis, begin to actually pay benefits, something I don't
expect from freelance gigs.

Greg

3) I had not heard of them nor used their services, but a quick look at
their site leads me to think that they are credible. That said, if
you poke around their online forums you'll see a lot of griping by
users about Half's performance. This may be as much a result of the
user's overreaching and being less that qualified for the position
they were interested in. Who knows.

Oh, and after a quick Google, I found no hint that they served
creative types, tho their range of offerings is vast.

Am I correct in reading between the lines that they are staffing a
branch office in Spfld? If so, you might want to suggest to somebody
there that they offer W. Mass as a location to search. Boston is not
all of the Commonwealth, after all. There's also a lot of activity in
the Albany area adjacent to the Berkshires. Tons of tech oriented
programs at the region's colleges and SUNY, plus hoards of now
unemployed former GE workers and the Knoll's nuke research center
that GE runs.

Tho I haven't been very active with HT outside this list, the thought
that stitching together a region that includes west of Worcester up
to the foothills of the Adirondacks could give HT enough heft to
better compete for opportunities with Beantown. Our population not
nearly as dense, but we do have the numbers and educational
infrastructure to rival them.

One last thought. Have you taken a look at Mass Mutual? They
represent a different kind of Hidden Tech. The modern insurance
company is as much a IT shop as a financial institution. MM not only
has a value that, if I remember correctly, is ten times that of
Microsoft, but they are in constant tension with recruiters and
college placement folks to keep IT grads in the region. The company
may have an interest in supporting HT. You might also want to stop by
their Spfld headquarters and see if there's an article from such a
visit. Folks at the EDC can get you entree.

Be Well,

Steve

4) Never heard of them. But I have used businesses like them in the past. In
the electronics industry, most 'recruiters' are lone operations (like us).
Typically they get $10/hr, or 10% of the gross, which I consider very cheap.

This is probably the reason so many of them go out of business. Don't
charge enough.

Then I have run into the dishonest types. One a number of years back that
had an "in" at Lucent Labs in Andover. He wanted to place me 'on-site' for
$35/hr, while he collected over $100/hr. And another just last year who had
a 'confidentiality' agreement that would have bound every bit of
electronics knowledge that I had ever acquired to them...forever!

Be interested in a follow-up with the folks that you found.

Jim

5) Robert Half is one of the largest and longest-standing of headhunter agencies, although I didn't know of their work in the IT Projects arena, either. One question is: whether the large serves-all-markets agency is better equipped than a smaller, boutique/specialist. I don't have that answer, but it could add another perspective to the article.

Ed

6) I've heard of Robert Half in conjunction with legal and accounting placement. They've been around for a long time. The tech division is probably new, but I'd bet they're pretty good.

Tish

7) At Avacoda we've considered partnering with someone who would help find clients. We have not heard of Robert Half.

8) I worked for them in Denver for a short time (6 months) as a software development contractor. They were very big at the time (2000). Then the tech bubble burst. I'm not sure how they fared after that. But, at one time they were heavy hitters in the IT recruiting business.

Steve

9) Amy, I own a recruiting company, FIT Solutions, based in Springfield Mass.
and I work solely in the Information Technology sector. I have worked with
Robert Half and they are a reputable firm. In general, most recruiters work
for employers since they pay their fee. So, they find people for jobs, not
jobs for people. But, they must always keep a broad range of candidates
within their pool of resources to fill those jobs. Those requirements can
be for short-term projects, permanent positions or something in between -
right-to-hires. Typically, if I have a contract or short term project, I
will reach out to candidates that only like to do contract work. For that,
I will make a couple $ per hour and all the A/R and contractual relationship
is between the company and FIT Solutions. I then hire the candidates on a
W2 or 1099 basis, depending on their preference and insurance requirements.
I am assuming Robert Half works the same way.

There are companies out there that do the opposite. They work for the
candidate and charge them a fee. They then proactively market them to
clients within their field of expertise. Most companies will do this for
"executive searches" but there may be some that do it for other types of
candidates.

Jackie

10) Robert Half is very well known as a recruiter in the executive field. Anyone who has picked up a NY Times or WS Journal in the past 50 years may have run across their ads if they were job or career hunting. they are also a public company, trading on the NYSE, so it's easy to find out a lot about them (symbol, RHI). My experience with them has been minimal I knew folds who used them to find upper level executive jobs. However, finding people for projects is a newer wrinkle though not unrelated to their client work across the board. They blend into consulting as well as head hunting so finding project for techies or upper echelon execs would be a natural outgrowth of what they do. Frankly i have always thought if a person is a good networker plus organized and creative about their efforts they don't need a service like RHI. But 50 plus years of existence and a steady advtg budget tells me they have done well at what they do.

Recently i had a call from a management consulting firm looking for a writer -- immediately -- to go to the Middle East on a short but intensive assignment. I know they got paid for the search by their client. Half no doubt has many contacts at large firms and a lot of execs that they have placed who form a bank of contacts to mine for project work.

I haven't used them as a free agent but i can see how they might be interested in the Hidden Tech Group as a well of IT, intellectual and high end corporate resources for hire. Again i know them as recruiters of mid to upper and senior management/executive talent. That would include IT for sure since there is probably more turnover there.

I have neutral feelings about what they do. However, they could not have survived 50 yrs without being resourceful and benefiting enough people to produce long term business continuity for themselves and some clients. So IM opinion worth exploring to find out more about how they can benefit Hidden Tech and other free agents. If they had a board i'd be interested in participating so long as they were transparent about the fees etc. getting them to be open about that might take some real negotiating. However, they are pros and i can see advantages to working with them rather than the amatuers using the Web boards to commoditize so many professional services.

be happy to discuss further with you on or off line.

Anthony

11) Greetings from Berlin, Germany and a former IT headhunter and outplacement consultant!

I began headhunting and career counseling in February of 1980. Robert Half was well established back them and competitor of our Hartford and Springfield offices. They were the largest or of the two or three largest then. Most of their work was done in streamlined fashion… mass mailing. At the same time, they had one of the most extensive networks. They developed some very innovative products and were one of the first large firms to do temporary placement and advertise over the radio. The latter might be why so many folks may have heard of their accounting and legal placement. They are usually quite active and can be an excellent resource.

In the past, I found their approach impersonal, but for a large firm, they were and most likely, still are, the most personal of them all with a vast array of resources that they were open to share, e.g. surveys.

12) They are a big name in the HR industry. I've never dealt with them.

13) I used Robert Half when I was job hunting about 7 years ago. Contrary to
what has been said here, they are experienced in IT staffing at all levels.
I worked with both the Waltham, MA and Hartford, CT staff. I would use them
again if I needed to.

Chris

14) As an owner of a business that has hired quite a few permanent
candidates from recruiters, I can say that I'm very much unimpressed
with Robert Half, and very much impressed with FIT Solutions.

Bill

15) In my opinion, large recruiting firms are a joke. The only good recruiting firms I have ever dealt with that I liked are small, independent shops. Something about how large recruiting firms work is just dysfunctional, I'm not sure why.

best

JR

16) I met a couple of managers from Robert Half in the last few months and interviewed them to see if they were appropriate for any of my clients' needs. Occasionally a business coaching client is in a position to change jobs.
I did send a client to them and they are trying various avenues and keeping in touch, but my client has not secured a permanent position through them yet.
They do offer a lot of screening services that also might be helpful for the occasional hire.
Madeline

18) When the employer/consultant/contractor pays, you're talking about a placement firm, not a recruiting firm. Sounds like RHI does it both ways. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose...

Ed

19) Robert Half has been around the recruiting business for donkey's years--way long before there was a web in anyone's eye. But they're interested in keeping up with the Joneses, so's to speak. Witness their being willing actually to send a warm body to the H-T b'day party, probably in pursuit of networking via H-T (Rbt Half likely is somewhat formal) with H-T's interesting, networked members. It's likely a clear opportunity if H-T wishes to structure a relationship.

As nicely discussed below by Steven Solomon, clearly H-T’s members have marketing ideas that could help Rbt Half segment the Mass market including the Conn River Valley, Berkshires, & Hudson River Valley regional markets with more regional granularity than "Boston metro." The disaggregated nature of H-T may discombobulate folks as structured as Rbt Half, but then again, maybe not. It may not have escaped their notice that Craigslist runs to the city level around the country, which granularity has served seekers and employers equally well.

BTW, as Steven Solomon noted below, Mass Mutual is very much a technical company, and very large. You may want to touch base with Allan Campbell, MM's Sr Enterprise Architect

CLIMATE CHANGE TRANSPORT THINK TANK PROVIDES BIZ OPPS

2008-05-12T11:48:00.002-04:00

Like everything in life, horrible events can provide opportunities and climate change (aka global warming) is no different.

For those within an hour to ride from Amherst, Mass. try to get to the CLIMATE CHANGE TRANSPORT THINK TANK on May 29-30. (all details posted on www.h3bmedia.com under events).

Lots of public and private sector funding is flowing to resolving climate change, and the transport piece is huge. If you're a techie, environmental consultant or even in PR/marketing like me, there could be big opportunities down the line in this field.

The Virtual Economy’s Gift to Mothers

2008-05-09T10:21:00.002-04:00

Mother’s Day isn’t usually my thing. . .

But this year I got thinking about all the ways the virtual work place has meant that I could be a mother (don’t use that tired phrase “mom” with me, please) and keep up my professional credentials.

Hey, more than that . . .Make a decent living and be there for Julia, now 14.

It was way back in the early 1980s that I started to realize juggling motherhood and journalism was going to be a really tough route. I watched female colleagues struggling into work with bags under their eyes and frantically trying to arrange childcare for sick children while they rushed on deadline to meet the demands of the job. I couldn’t figure out how they managed.

And, basically, I decided in my early 30s -- as my proverbial biological time-clock started to tick -- that I couldn’t bear living that way. Nor could I imagine being a stay-at-home mother who didn’t work in some way. No offense to those who love that role – and it’s a tough one when you add on more than one child – but domesticity isn’t my thing. I’m better at exposing global corruption, trends in e-commerce, the virtual economy and fuel consumption . . .stuff like that . . . When I do housework, it’s usually around 11 p.m. as a relief from the stress of the work day.

By the mid-1980s with the arrival of cheap PCs and fax machines I started to get an inkling that, with enough hustle, I could quit my daily news job and run my own show. The freedom from daily deadlines, if not all deadlines, would mean I could live that old cliché: have my cake and eat it too as a working mother from home.

And, with fits and starts, ups and downs, and all the usual struggles of parenting and building a business, it’s worked. Julia was conceived in the spring of 1993 and arrived only hours after I finished the last chapter of my first business book – ISO 9000 Made Easy. Ten books later and countless school plays, dance recitals, choral concerts and too many tantrums to ponder, Julia and A – Z International keep growing together.

In fact, I had this wondrous experience in New York City just a few weeks ago that I wrote about in the last entry. I was able, finally, to introduce my “little” girl to my children’s book editor.

“Here’s my muse,” I told Steve, as a beautiful, dignified (at that moment) Julia reached out her hand in greeting.

Yes, tears did well up in my eyes. Because having Julia may have meant there were projects I turned down and major entities who turned me down because I couldn’t hop on a plane at a moment’s notice. But never once have I regretted having her. As I often say, you can’t cuddle up to your book jacket and reviews, tuck them in and sing a good night song (horribly off-key, by the by . . .)

Without Julia there would have been no beloved Perwinkle, our now deceased parakeet who I intend to immortalize on YouTube come summer. There would be no debates over skirt lengths or avid discussions over why the producers of “Sex and the City” made Carrie Bradshaw look so tacky. Who would have played the sitcom game in the car and made up horrible plot lines, or helped me write my children’s books?

And for all that I feared Julia would slow me down – and she did for many years – she also made me smarter, more aware, and even recently taught me how to text message. She makes me feel old some days, yet keeps me young at heart.

I’m proud to say on this mother’s day that because I learned to brand and market myself so I could earn our keep, I could be home to nurse Julia on the days she was with me (as, alas, her father and I divorced long ago). I’ve never missed a rehearsal or a major event because I had to stay late at the office. The office is right here and accessible at all hours.

So, ladies whose biological clock is ticking, know that today’s technology will let you have work and motherhood. Will it be easy? The answer is an unequivocal NO. You have to be able to create a product or service that people want and will spend good money to have. You have to be tech savvy and be good at marketing and keep going some days beyond endurance. Besides, which, if you breast feed get used to talking to clients as your baby suckles.

But you’ll never have a boss telling you that you can’t make that dance recital, baseball game or soccer match. Hey, you’re the boss, right?

Happy Mother"s Day

CNN's Jack Cafferty Calls for 4-Day Work Week to Save Gas

2008-04-30T21:03:00.004-04:00

Jack is pretty close, but is missing the point somewhat.

If he read the CNN.com on Dec. 17 he'd know that we are witnessing the rise of the virtual economy where many people already work from home or nearby in small offices. They no longer commute. The numbers are predicted to climb as boomers retire over the next 20 years, which could mean a drop in gas consumption.

I just wrote about the impact of the virtual economy on fuel consumption and traffic (read global warming) for Forbes.com last week. You can find the piece in the entry below.

It's hard to know why so few people in the media get what is happening. Perhaps it's because they still work 9-to-5?

Thoughts are welcome!

AZ writes on "Virtual Traffic" on Forbes.com - 4/18/08

2008-04-18T18:24:00.002-04:00

Commentary
Virtual Traffic
Amy Zuckerman 04.18.08, 6:00 AM ET

This year, as the first wave of 76 million baby boomers reaches official retirement age in the U.S., traffic engineers are already anticipating a potential shift in driving patterns that could well have enormous impact on fuel consumption and traffic technology needs for years to come.

Imagine 20 million people in the U.S., exiting the work place in five-year segments over the course of the next two decades. In total, that's half of today's work place. As many as 70% of boomers want to build their own small companies from a home setting.

There are indications from staffing and recruiting companies like global giant Robert Half that corporations are preparing to hire back boomers as subcontractors, but many may operate from homes or small office settings close to their residences. Already, major corporations such as IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) and Cisco Systems (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) are hiring more home-based workers, creating "hybrid" companies with full-time staff augmented by subcontractors.

Today the virtual work place trend is apparent in college towns across the U.S. like Amherst, Mass., and lifestyle locales like Asheville, N.C., and Bellingham, Wash., which are quickly becoming quality of life destinations for boomers developing their own virtual companies. Rather than experiencing clog ups during rush hour, quality-of-life locales like Amherst are experiencing far more traffic congestion at meal times--particularly lunch--as the self-employed virtual company owner heads to commercial districts for business meetings and to conduct errands. In these sorts of places, it's a return to the 19th century where people live and work close to a town or village center.

John Collura, director of the UMass Transportation Center and a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, has joined the virtual work place as a telecommuter who travels between a home office and the university several days a week. He also maintains what career expert Barbara Reinhold calls a "sidecar company" from his home, so he personally encompasses two types of virtual workers. Like many teleworkers, he has some choice in what times he commutes, whenever possible avoiding peak traffic hours on highways or arterial roads. Collura notes that virtual company owners have even more choice as they can tackle work in a flexible fashion and have the most choice about when to drive.

He's witnessing changes in driving habits, which are contributing to traffic congestion in the western Massachusetts region, particularly at midday along arterial roads and downtown commercial districts. "If I was a transportation planner, I'd make sure that officials in my agency recognized that people are changing how they travel. Fixed routes and fixed schedule like bus services won't meet their needs like they did 50 years ago, because what's inherent in the virtual world is there are no predictable schedules," he says.

So, how will the rise of the virtual work place, where workers operate in small-office settings with PCs and communication technology as key back up tools, affect traffic patterns? And why, with the enormous attention the boomer retirement wave is engendering in the media and among policy makers, is there so little attention being paid to the impact this trend will have on traffic and possibly fuel consumption?

What makes the silence on this subject all the more astonishing is that the boomers are hardly the only ones operating virtual work places. This happening trend includes everyone from the "millenials" to members of the "silent generation" now in their 70s and 80s.

Well, it's hard to focus on a subject without concrete data, and national data on the virtual economy is incomplete, at best. Take a walk through the U.S. Census Bureau's work and transport categories and you'll be carried back in time--say, circa 1975, when many workers commuted to a day job from a suburban split-level, or at least worked 9-to-5 in an office building. Even though countless thousands of Americans make their income from their bedroom or cellar as virtual-company entrepreneurs, the Census Bureau is neither monitoring nor digging deeper into the societal implications of this trend.

That's not that surprising as the mainline media isn't all that clued into niches like traffic engineering. Unless it's a story that has sizzle--say congestion pricing in New York City or gridlock in L.A.--developments in traffic engineering rarely make headlines.

Fuel consumption makes headlines, but no one appears to be connecting the dots to the virtual economy. For example, USA Today recently reported that a slowing economy and rising fuel prices meant February fuel consumption in the U.S. was down 1%. But without viable statistics on virtual work places and the habits of virtual company entrepreneurs, we can only guess that less commuting should lead to less driving and less fuel usage.

Take my own personal experience: At $3.11 a gallon it costs me about $30 to fill my compact Geo Prism. A full tank can last me almost two weeks if I'm just doing around-town driving. My partner, Lew, drives an equal compact VW Golf and pays about $38 a week at these prices to commute to his job about 20 miles away. So, if we can extrapolate from such a limited sample we can infer that commuters could be paying roughly a third to a half more for fuel than stay-at-home workers who are limiting their driving to errands close to their home office.

Isn't it time someone got the real numbers so we can do more than guess? Experts like Collura say that not only are traffic engineers and government officials not planning far enough out for the trends of today that will be tomorrow's world, but this lack of foresight may lead to clogged town and suburban roads, empty highways and lack of knowledge of America's true fuel consumption needs.

It all adds up to the potential for billions of dollars in misspent taxpayer dollars.

Amy Zuckerman is an associate editor of Thinking Highways North America and principal of A-Z International Associates, an international marketing research firm based in Amherst, Mass.

THE ECONOMIST GETS IT - They call us "Nomads"

2008-04-17T20:59:00.003-04:00

I was so amused to pick up this week's Economist (4/12 - 18) and see that they have a whole special on the virtual world they're calling "A Special Report on Mobility."

I thought this was going to be about mobile devices and nearly flipped through, when I saw a picture of a dancing woman in a black leotard who looked like she might be flying -- but certainly gave the sense of being FREE!!!!

Anyway, reading along I felt like I'd written half of the text. And to be truthful, I've written many variations of this section for many publications over the years from the issues of traffic patterns to the need for different housing/work spaces to accommodate the virtual or hidden-tech lifestyle.

There's too much to cover in this entry so pick up the magazine and know that our world is coming into focus for those in media land. And that means we exist!

Right, we've known that. But until THEY get it, no one else does.

And some of us aren't actually nomads unless driving over to the Loose Goose Cafe, Esselon or Rao's in Amherst Center counts.

Cheers!

Amy Zuckerman

Showcasing the Virtual or Hidden Tech Life/Work Style

2008-04-17T20:19:00.003-04:00

There are two videos floating around, at least one on YouTube (see link) that give you a great idea of what it's like to live the virtual, or as I called it -- Hidden Tech -- lifestyle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-HgjPdfGiE

Marketing expert Marcia Yudkin made this one with her friend Anne Zononi in Chesterfield, Mass. (anniez@hughes.net). Marcia told the Hidden-Tech list that Annie was "available to do a similar video for others in the area, if you're interested."

I love the shots of Marcia out on her skis. I almost wish for some snow back, though 70-degree temperatures sure are nice!

And I have a similar, though more formal video of my work "cockpit" posted on my website -- www.a-zinternational.com under WHAT'S NEW. John Novak shot the footage and Rikk Desgres of Pinehurst Pictures & Sound in Northampton did the editing.

One warning, at least about my video, you need RealPlayer and some Apple software to view it, which has made it tougher to get an audience.

VIRAL MARKETING: Spread the Word . . .

2008-04-16T09:50:00.001-04:00

Laying low the last 10 days with a nasty upper respiratory bug, I’ve been thinking a lot about how germs are spread. This one started with delightful daughter being sick and, in seeking comfort from mom, coughing in my face more times than I’d like to remember.

Which, believe it or not, leads me to a short discourse on viral marketing. Having attended a recent seminar hosted by the Regional Technology Corporation in Springfield, Mass. on this subject, I learned from speakers John Bidwell (http://www.bidwellid.com) (and Nathan Winstanley (www.winstanley.com) – both advertising and branding experts -- that the term viral marketing is directly derived from medical term VIRUS.

Just as we spread germs from coughing or touch, so you can spread information about products and services by word of mouth. And if that germ of an idea is powerful enough, it will build a following exponentially just as a nasty virus builds up in your body and then infests a population.

YUCK! (Hand me another Kleenex, please . . .)

OK, we know that germs make you sick and lots of sick people can make a whole population sick. But is viral marketing more hype than real? Are those folks posting their silly ditties on YouTube who make it big really representative, and can their efforts be replicated with similar results? And is this a method you MUST put in your marketing arsenal?

After more than an hour of lecturing, John and Nathan convinced me that viral marketing is a fancy word for what I’ve been doing all along, only on a smaller scale. Whether I’m cold calling to a targeted list or reaching thousands (or even more) with a press release, I’m spreading the word about an idea, an event or a product and service. When I put on an event and tack those posters around town, again, I’m hoping to get a buzz going.

The real thing to know is that it’s the messaging, the presentation and finding that “itch” people have for your information that can make or break any PR or marketing campaign. The Web can certainly provide a huge catalyst, but only if you’ve got those elements pegged right and have the time, money and energy to plug away at that message.

Here are a few really useful tips that John and Nathan provided in that session:

THE MESSAGE: “It’s about the medium and the message. You can jam bandwidth with crap and it’s still crap. It has to connect with your intended audience. . . Your tactics are only as good as your message,” says Nathan.

INTERNET CREDIBILITY: This is an issue you have to take into account. Nathan says the kids and adults have become more skeptical of Web-based messaging.

MAKE SURE THE CAMPAIGN BENEFITS YOU: You can blow your whole marketing/PR account on an effort that’s really cool and garners lots of attention, but the attention doesn’t sell your product or service. As the sailors say, ‘you’re spilling wind.’

WHAT’S THE COST?: John points out that even if there are no costs in terms of dollars and cents, your time equals money. Beware of the time spent on that YouTube production and factor it into your budget.

BE ENTERTAINING: This is especially important in the video medium.

THE TOOLS YOU MAY USE: There are lots of ways to push a viral marketing campaign on the Web. Some of them include email, blogs, e-books, YouTube, Websites, affinity groups/social network platforms and even getting lodged in Wikipedia.

Paige Rasid, marketing and operations manager for the Connecticut Technology Council, attended this session. Afterwards she said it validated “some things I’ve already been doing with Linked In and YouTube. I can see myself going out and looking at my whole online identity and figuring out which sites to present myself at. But I’m also quite concerned with privacy and how to balance that with online.”

If you share Paige’s concerns, or want to know more about the tools behind a Web-based viral marketing campaign, then post those comments. We can return to this topic down the line.

BLOGGER, WORDPRESS, TYPEPAD . . .

2008-04-08T21:23:00.005-04:00

The options are endless just as long as you don’t blog yourself to death . . . No joke.

Most of this entry will provide all your bloggers-in-waiting the information you’ve been asking about getting started, but before I urge you onward, you really need to dig up this full article from the New York Times (4/6/08) that explores how bloggers are making money from the art, bloggers getting ripped off by cheapskate blogging sites, and even bloggers dying on the job.

“In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop” journalist Matt Richtel chronicles the stories of a number of full-time bloggers who live, eat and breath blogging to feed the insatiable demand of 24/7 blogs, many of which are devoted to the frenetic high tech industry. Some bloggers are said to regularly fall asleep at the keyboard. And Richtel cites two tech bloggers – Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant – who actually died from heart attacks at the relatively young ages of 60 and 50.

Were their deaths connected to their high-stress blogging gigs? No one can actually prove it this was “death by blogging,” Richtel writes, but he paints a less-than-lovely picture of writers being ripped off by rapacious, low-paying Web publishers. For the handful of bloggers for whom the art has been quite lucrative, Richtel says those “on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post, and in some cases are paid on a sliding bonus scale that rewards success with a demand for even more work.”

He reports that sites like Gawker Media give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks based on page clicks. Then the goal is raised so that bloggers have an incentive to write more. And, yes, he says writers at some of the bigger blogger sites are earning about $30,000 annually and some are making as much as $70,000. If you’re lucky or smart enough to build a hugely popular blog site, you can generate far more, but most are lucky to make $1,000 a month for tireless effort.

How many bloggers are earning a living this way? Richtel says it’s “unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.”

So, if you still are itching to make your living as a Web-based writer called a blogger, imparting personal and even useful information to unknown readers, read on . . .Just make time to eat, sleep and get some R & R.

But how to get going? Lots of you wanted information on blogging platforms so I dug up some threads from a fairly recent Hidden-Tech discussion on the subject, which mainly focused on Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad. If you want to read the whole trail then join Hidden-Tech (www.hidden-tech.net), which is free, and do a search on the topic. But here, in condensed form, is advice from the A – Z International Associates blogging expert Tish G along with input from Ron M, Contributing Editor of EContent Magazine and Diane C:

“When I started blogging in 2003, there were basically two options; Typepad and Blogger. I started using Blogger (before Google bought them), but I didn't like the Blogger look and feel, so I switched to Typepad. It has/had more professional looking templates and a level of control I wasn't getting from Blogger. I get daily stats for instance, which I didn't get at the time from Blogger.

“If I were starting today, I would strongly consider WordPress, but I think for $5 a month, you get a lot from Typepad including paid, professional help. WordPress provides a community of help, but you don't know if someone will respond to your query and you don't know if the answer you get is right. I've always gotten prompt, professional responses from Typepad.

“ Typepad also provides a gallery of free widgets, add-ons that are dead simple to add to your page. They also have a variety of professional looking templates and they give you complete control over your blog from configuration and monetization all in a graphical environment. If you are a web designer, you can design your own CSS and they recently added a page concept that makes it easy to create a web site from your blog (with separate pages on different topics) without web page design experience.

“Wordpress is great, but the last time I looked at it, I strongly disliked that it required users to subscribe to the blog and comments separately. If you want free, I would probably go with Wordpress, but you get a lot for your money for $5 a month from Typepad."--Ron M.

“Well, which blog platform you choose could have more to do with your level of comfort with blog terminology than it does with whether or not to use Blogger over Wordpress . .. With Wordpress, there's Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org. Wordpress.org is great if you are a web designer and like to tinker a lot with your template and other stuff.

“If you don't have the time, or aren't a designer (I refuse to say not tech savvy -- there are varying levels of tech savvy that have nothing to do with whether or not you can build a Website or blog from the bottom up) then you may want to play a bit with Wordpress.com and Blogger -- go in to each, goof around with them (they're both free and don't have to be searchable if you don't want them to be) feel them out to see which ones are speaking your language -- that is, which one has the shortest learning curve and is easiest to use. (You can also check out "Blogging for Dummies"--a fairly comprehensive book with good hints about most blog software)

“Both WP and B allow you to have your own domain for your blog--your not stuck with the .blogspot.com or the .wordpress.com extensions.

"Both Wordpress and Blogger can be incorporated into existing websites. They have different templates, but are searchable the same way (one doesn't have better SEO than the other--not that I know of. Blog SEO depends on the amount of content as blogs register differently in Google and search in general.

"Some folks say that Wordpress is more stable than Blogger. But WP's had outages too. Blogger --the company --in their merger with Google did some funky things to some templates in order to weed out splogs. However Google's algorithm can flush you from the search engines too -- for lots of vague reasons, not that you're doing anything funky with your site.

Thus, we are all at the mercy of Google."--Tish

"The only way, David, to know exactly which package might be good for you specifically is to either play with each or talk over what you want to do with a consultant who can then sort out with you what your particular needs are and help you pick the right one.

If you don't have the money for a consultant, just check the different platforms out for yourself.”

“Ron has a good point. **my last paragraph is most important point** But I also want to point out that there are tons of free widgets (add-ons) for WordPress.
There are lots of professional templates (called themes) with WordPress.

You can also tweak or change the CSS to your hearts content.

I know that many WordPress people have their blogs integrated with their sites - seamless - I don't know if they created them all in WordPress or something else.

“You can have other pages with WordPress also - not just a blog. You can have static pages too. WordPress has had this page concept for at least while - I don't know how long.

Again, you don't need design experience to make those pages - very, very easy. I have not always gotten the help I needed from expensive paid software. WordPress people have been very generous in my experience with helping figure things out.

“I am a subscriber to several TypePad blogs and I don't get the comments - just the posts. With WordPress I can usually get the comments too. So, Ron, I wish I were getting the comments from my TypePad subscriptions. They seem pretty equivalent to me.

What I particularly like about WordPress is that is **OPEN SOURCE**. I love that hundreds if not thousands of people are working to make it better and to keep it free.I love the whole open source (also known as free) software. It's a power to the people thing.

It is quite a strong movement!-- Diane C

SOCCER MOMS OUGHT TO DISCOVER VIRTUAL, HOME-BASED BUSINESS OPTIONS

2008-03-30T20:56:00.003-04:00

If you get a chance, write to NEWSWEEK as I did. I can't stand this notion that people can't be good parents if they work outside the home. And the world out there (read media) hasn't caught up to the option many of us have discovered - working from home in a virtual office.

It's time to wake them up!

So here's what I wrote to NEWSWEEK editors at: letters@newsweek.com under the subject line "Stay-at-Home Silliness":

Dear NEWSWEEK editors,

I read with both amusement and annoyance your Page 46 (3/31/08) take on the TV show "The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom." Agreed that although amusing, the premise is absurd. But what was really distressing were the nasty reactions of those women who do stay at home, as if they are somehow superior to working mothers.
Even worse, TLC producers have entirely overlooked one of the largest work place trends taking place today among women; creating a virtual, home-based company. I've been doing this for more than 18 years and not only keep going professionally on a pretty high plane, but have never missed a sick day with my daughter (now 14) or an event.
We can't do it all, but if you join the virtual work place you can do a great deal.

best,

Amy Zuckerman
Founder, Hidden-Tech, the network for virtual companies

SEVEN TIPS FOR RIDING OUT A RECESSION - VIRTUALLY

2008-03-25T20:46:00.002-04:00

Whether you call it an economic downtown or slow down, there’s no masking a recession for those of us who have operated virtual companies during recessions past.

The signs are unmistakable. In the beginning, customers cut back on work or ask you to accept smaller payments. Checks that used to arrive in 30 days or less start showing up two or three months late.

Then there’s the call, or email, dropping the bomb: there is no more work. If you’re lucky, the customer suggests calling back in a few months rather than just severing all ties.

Given the virtual nature of our work, there’s not even the indignity of cleaning out a desk and having security escort you out of a building. All you’re left with are blank sections of your weekly calendar that used to be filled with meetings and interviews. And, not too many weeks later, those blanks start showing up in your receivables.

I’ve lived these downturns so many times I can smell the change in the wind long before the economists, and then the media, use the “R” word.

This time it started with a major corporate real estate magazine canceling a scheduled article. The editor said their freelance budget had been cut; a victim of the sub-prime mess, apparently. The next indicator came in January when my chief client didn’t book any work until May. The stated reason was a corporate reorganization, but anyone in the know could figure out that money was getting tighter. Then a major Web site killed funds for all correspondents.

The tally of income lost during the first quarter of 2008: $15,000. And don’t get me started about the stock market . . .

Despite these setbacks, I’ve been lucky . . . so far. I still have a number of regular clients. I was able to clear investment capital from a house sale in 2005 and bought my condo outright to reduce monthly expenses – all the better to weather downturns. I have a supportive life partner, a great network of virtual company owners at Hidden-Tech and social networking sites, and I was able to make a little from the strong bull market, which helped create more of a cushion. Even so I’m loathe to dig into savings. For an entrepreneur that feels like death.

If I have one prayer it’s to hold onto the condo. I don’t think I could bear telling my daughter, Julia, I have to move us again. She still cries for the house I sold three years ago that she calls home. If I can get through this downturn without calling the realtor I’ll feel lucky, indeed.

So how am I coping? Here are seven key steps (and a few minor ones) I’m taking to ride this recession that should help if you get into a financial bind:

STEP 1: FUNNEL ANXIETY INTO PRODUCTIVE PLANNING: As scary as losing income can be, work really hard to funnel anxiety into productivity. The best way to feel secure is to create a plan or strategy that will keep you from doing rash things like selling homes unnecessarily or cutting back spending too quickly.

You want to be prudent in your spending, recognizing that you often need to spend money to make money. And you don’t want to cut assistance at a time when you will need to double or triple market efforts (see No. 2). So haul out your ledgers and look at what money you can spare and where you can cut judiciously. But remember the old saw about being penny wise and pound foolish.

STEP 2: MARKET INTENSELY, BUT STRATEGICALLY: In good times I spend about 10 percent of my time marketing. That ratio changes depending on the percentage of earnings lost. In 2001 – 2002 I was probably spending more time marketing than working.

There’s a tendency when things get tight to market like mad, but that can be self-defeating. It’s best to stay as calm as possible, assess your budget and create that strategy to build short-term and pipeline business. Efforts born from panic could prove fruitless and demoralizing. All the experts advise you to reach out to friends and contacts, first, before casting your net too wide. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I think I’ve conducted 10-plus informational interviews on the phone in the last month to get the word out that I’m available. The interest has been strong and it feels good to be taking

STEP 3: CUT BACK ON DISCRETIONARY SPENDING: Don’t wait until the bills are overwhelming to start exploring ways to reduce discretionary spending. The less you are spending the less you need to generate. Taking this advice, I made the following list keeping in mind to budget for treats. Remember the old maxim about all work and no play:

a) Do not use the cell phone in the car (about the only place I do use it to excess, I’m sorry to admit). In fact, keep it out of reach while driving; preferably locked in the trunk. Those minutes and costs add up quicker than you can read this

b) Stop eating out at lunch unless it’s a business meeting with a clear money-making agenda in mind. Invite friends out for a lunchtime walk instead of meeting at cafes and restaurants.

c) Cancel the trip to Costa Rica in April. Book an apartment in NYC, instead, and reach out to NYC business contacts. Estimated savings: $2,000.

d) Put off buying new clothes for yourself, and put Julia on a clothing budget.

e) Scope out the cheapest gas stations. Also, coordinate errands to save on driving and gas expenditures.

f) Return to buying food on sale. Stop purchasing expensive packaged items. Same for visits to discount drug stores.

STEP 4: REVIEW LARGER EXPENSES: If things get tighter, my next step will be reviewing my health care plan. Right now I spend about $7,000 a year on health and dental insurance. This is a top-rated plan. I can always consider a lesser one.

STEP 5: OUTSOURCE YOUR BILL COLLECTIONS: This seems counter-intuitive as you will need to spend some money. But some projects are worth out-sourcing and dunning is one of them. It’s not cost-effective to spend time collecting bills when someone else can do this more efficiently and effectively. It’s better to direct time and energy to generating additional income. Julie, my book-keeper, has been directed to spend extra time pulling in all of those uncollected receivables.

STEP 6: TRY TO MAINTAIN SUBCONTRACTORS: I won’t cut hours for subcontractors without doing a lot of personal belt-tightening. Not only is it tough to pass on financial pain, but this approach can be self-defeating because you will vastly reduce the amount of time you have for marketing your business if you do all the work yourself.

Many times I’ve had business buddies reach me in desperation because they lost the one or two clients they had during a recession. Although I’ve always struggled during these times, I’ve learned to practice my “accordion” method of managing growth and have never been out of work during a recession. Trust me: it works.

STEP 7: REVIEW TECHNOLOGY ADD-ONS: Technology can produce tremendous productivity. If you haven't upgraded your PC this may be the time to do so, deploying those programs that can best assist with your work. Think of adding a database/broadcast alert system onto your Web site (or building one ASAP) if you don't have one. This can turn you into an online retailer almost overnight and at minimal cost. And wireless gadgets like PDAs can really boost your work efforts if you are on the road a lot, again at minimal cost.

Let's consider this an ongoing dialogue as the U.S. and global economy won't turn around overnight.

THE KICKY VIRTUAL COMPANIES OF KEY WEST

2008-03-14T16:57:00.003-04:00

From “Papa” Hemingway’s former home on Whitehead Street, to the artists who show their ware at sunset on Mallory Square, from the tall ships at the wharfs to the stores of Duval Street, virtual companies are cropping up like the colorful bouganvilla vines that cover the stately homes of Key West, Fla.’s old town.

OK, I was supposed to be on vacation. But after a few days of taking in the gorgeous waters of the South Atlantic I couldn’t help but start networking with folks. It was Shiro’s fault, actually. Shiro is my buddy Margot’s “goldendoodle” -- a gorgeous cross between a golden retriever and poodle. As you can imagine, Shiro is a real attention grabber. His favorite activity is hitting up Key West restaurant owners for dog biscuits, plus picking up lots of petting along the way from tourists galore.

As we stood around waiting for people to pet Shiro – which trust, me, can be a long-winded process -- I started to yack with folks on streets, in stores and in restaurants about what they do to make a living in Key West. It wasn’t long before the virtual work place started to emerge from behind the more obvious storefronts.

I know you’re going to say there’s nothing virtual about Ernest Heminway’s former stately home and gardens. In fact, old Papa’s presence is redolent throughout the place. You can almost hear him telling tall tales of the sea in his dining room or ordering about his famous cats. And if you head out back near the pool you’ll find a great store with loads of his books and other less than Hemingwayesque stuff. But the museum also has a Website -- http://www.hemingwayhome.com/ -- where you can book tours and even a wedding.

Right outside on the sidewalk are plenty of artistic renderings of said famous home, some better than others. George Salhofer caught my eye (see photo). A native Austrian, he looks like the sort that Papa would have invited down to Sloppy Joe’s for a drink. Maybe it’s that Austrian accent . . . And, no kidding, he sells contemporary art online that’s a far different breed than the tourist fare he sells on the street. You can take a peek at: www.salhoferstudio.com.

Speaking of Key West museums, here’s one I missed, but I hear is a real fun place. The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum is all about shipwrecks and salvage. And, low and behold, we landlubbers can buy lots of things in the salvage theme from their online store -- everything from flasks to replica gold bars. Just visit: (http://store02.prostores.com/servlet/mfmhs/StoreFront)

If Key West is fun by day, it really becomes atmospheric at night. You can almost feel the ghosts of writers past when you sip some chilled Chardonnay from the balcony room at the fabulous Blue Heaven restaurant. I kept picturing Stanley yelling to Stella in Tennessee Williams’ “A Street Car Named Desire,” knowing that he’d once walked those streets. And the famous main drag, Duval Street, has more shops than there are old men at sea (to butcher Papa’s great title), and just as many are operating virtual stores.

Take Erin Roussey of Paradise Cigars at 535 Duval St. (www.ParadiseCigarsKeyWest.com) Now I don’t smoke and never will, but tobacco sure smells sweet and I was lured into his store one night by the aroma of thousands of cigars from just about every Latin American country except Cuba. Giving us a tour of the world’s best cigars, Erin explained that he sells online, as well. He even teams with Smokingtourist.com, a Chicago-based site that advertises itself as “the world’s first Website dedicated to hassle-free travel and entertainment for smokers.”

After an intoxicating 20 minutes or so in Erin’s store I could almost be enticed into becoming a smoker. Almost . . . Instead that night I resisted the urge and headed down to the wharf for some grilled shrimp and fried oysters where, thanks to Shiro again, we bumped into Barbara Anderson. By day she sells real estate the old fashioned way, but she also operates Pets-in-Paradise.com, or did when I met her. The last check on the Web showed an empty page.

Hey, that’s Key West for you. But when Barbara has her site running, she says she guides people to locations in the Florida and Caribbean that allow pet owners to travel with their beloved canine and feline companions. Dinner came before we could find out about birds, lizards or rodents.

Speaking of real estate, no one gets more virtual than Soren Pfeffer, Margot’s son who sells Key West real estate from his home in Montpelier, Vt. Soren and his wife Irene are an archictect/contractor duo who now own Key West properties for sale and lease. When they get a buyer or renter they tap Margot and Shiro to do the actual showings. You can visit Soren for more information at www.SorenPfeffer.com.

And what trip to the islands or Florida would be complete without jewelry? Capricorn jewelry at 706 B Duval St. doesn’t just sell the usual stuff like earrings, rings, and necklaces. It specializes in ancient Greek and Roman coins that are turned into pendants and the like – a bit of the Mediterranean in South Florida. Just like many other stores today, they have a Website so you don’t even have to leave your home. It’s at: www.Capriconrjewelry.com.

Fortunately for my pocket book I mainly did a virtual tour of these virtual or hybrid establishments. The book was under $20 and the lithograph even less. I don’t even want to tell you what properties would cost . . .But isn’t it fun to imagine owning that little bungalow on Olivia Street covered with vines?

PBS Program Missing the Virtual Economy and Entrepreneurs

2008-02-18T09:15:00.003-05:00

I understand that PBS aired a very important, provocative program recently about freelancers who aren't provided corporate benefits. (see blurb below)

What this program missed (and most do) is that many people in the virtual economy don't consider ourselves freelancers. We're virtual company entrepreneurs with a number of clients (some corporate, no doubt).

I, for one, don't want corporate benefits because I don't want to be tied down to one client. That puts me back in the "employee" trap I was in before starting my own business. Once a company gives you benefits, they feel they can own you and will often dump far more demands on you than they are paying for.

The way around the benefit issue -- which is undoubtedly going to be hacked away for full-time employees, anyway -- is to have enough business to pay your own way. The IRS provides tax breaks for small companies, as you all know.

Anyway, very provocative and something to discuss if you want to as I write and talk about this subject a lot, nowadays. If you have thoughts to share for my blogs, you can reach me directly at az@a-zinternational.com.

From PBS:

Corporations are taking benefits from workers by calling them "freelancers."

Temporary workers and independent contractors make up nearly a third of the U.S. workforce, and represent a growing asset to companies who rely on freelance flexibility. But corporations are using the designation "freelancer" to avoid paying health care and other benefits, even though many of these workers put in the same hours as their covered counterparts. NOW looks at the effect of this tactic on the lives and personal economy of freelance workers.

We also examine an Enterprising Idea to help independent workers manage their personal needs, including benefits, networking and investment help. Freelancers Union, founded by former labor lawyer and MacArthur grant recipient Sara Horowitz, provides a safety net for over 60,000 workers, but how is it viewed by the traditional labor movement?

This is part of NOW's series on social entrepreneurs called "Enterprising Ideas"

Wesleyan U EXTRA Touts Amy Zuckerman, Hidden Tech and Virtual Economy

2008-02-12T18:44:00.001-05:00

The Wesleyan University online EXTRA has touted Amy Zuckerman and Hidden-Tech. Read on:

In 2001 Amy Zuckerman ’76 introduced the term “hidden tech” to describe individuals who use technology to run businesses from their homes, yet tend to be overlooked in studies of business activity. A measure of the successful introduction of this term into business lexicon came recently when CNN.com ran an interview with Zuckerman on its home page.

She told CNN.com that she has seen an increasing trend toward people who, thanks to their ability to interact virtually with colleagues and customers, work from their home office, from rented space, even from trucks on the road. Employment at a distance mediated by technology is a large and diverse phenomenon.

Studies show, she says, that a significant percentage of the baby boomers will want to go out on their own at some point. CNN asked her what questions she hears most commonly:

“If they have an idea, then their next question is, ‘How do I make that happen?’ They don’t know how to structure their ideas into a business plan. How to get health insurance -- that’s a real big one for people starting out. You have to have a good accountant and be really good at saving and investing.

“And there’s lots of business questions: What do I do about tech support? Do I hire someone? Should I work at home or should I rent space? And then you get into, ‘Is my idea good?’ I show people how to break their ideas up with my ‘time, money, passion, energy, and patience’ formula. It seems to me that those are really crucial elements, and if they line up you might have a winner.”

CNN article

Bush Budget a Bust for Small Business

2008-02-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

So says the junior senator from my home state - Massachusetts.

Time to get out there and fight for funding, small business owners.

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today Sen. John Kerry
(D-Mass.) said the President's proposed budget cuts critical small business
programs and falls short of repairing the deep cuts to the agency over the
last seven years. Excluding disaster loan funding, the proposed budget for
next year represents a 28 percent cut for the Small Business Administration
(SBA) since President Bush took over in 2001 -- the largest cut of all the
federal agencies -- and a three percent cut from 2008 appropriations. The
President's request of $657 million, including disaster loan program funds,
for the SBA is only .02 percent of the entire $3.1 trillion budget.

  "Unfortunately, this budget is more of the same from the Bush
Administration for America's 27 million small businesses. The Bush budget
fails to provide the critical investment to finance start ups and grow
existing businesses. Last year, nearly 900,000 jobs were created or
retained due to government-backed loans and venture capital deals to small
businesses. But we're already seeing these loans on the decline this year
as a result of the mortgage crisis so we need to do everything we can to
boost these programs. This is not the time to be making cuts," said Kerry,
Chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

  "The significant proposed cuts to business counseling programs will
have a detrimental impact on our ability to help small businesses succeed.
I will work with my colleagues in a bipartisan way to reverse the severe
Bush Administration cuts as the Democratic-led Congress did last year when
we restored $40 million to core small business programs," Kerry said.

  Once again, the Bush Administration proposes no funding for small
business loan programs and deeply cuts counseling and outreach programs
like Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers, and
technical assistance programs.

  Specifically, the proposed 2009 budget:

  -- Lacks funding for loans and venture capital programs. The budget yet
again provides no funding for the SBA's largest loan programs -- 7(a) and
504 -- and provides no increase in the authority to back new loans. The
President has recommended a program level for 7(a) loans of $17.5 billion
for 7(a) loans and $7.5 billion for the 504 program--the same as his last
two budget proposals. There is no money for the SBIC debenture program, and
the President has recommended the same program level of $3 billion for the
last six years. Last year, nearly 100,000 businesses received 7(a) loans, a
$14 billion investment in the economy that created or retained over 624,000
jobs. Nearly 200,000 jobs were created or retained from the 504 loan
program, which lent nearly 11,000 small businesses over $6 billion in
loans. The SBIC program helped create or retain almost 63,000 jobs in 2007.

  -- Eliminates all funding for the Microloan Program and Microloan
Technical Assistance. This year's proposed budget increases the program
level for the microloan program from $21 million to $25 million but doesn't
fund it. It continues shifting the cost to the lenders. This is the second
year in the row the president has made this proposal; for the previous
three years in a row he sought to eliminate the SBA's microloan program.
Microloans proportionately help more women and minorities than other
programs. The proposal also eliminates the counseling assistance program,
Microloan Technical Assistance, which is essential to help
microentrepreneurs succeed and repay their loans. Last year 2,437 small
businesses received more than $31 million in microloans nationwide.

  -- Eliminates low-income capital program. The President requested no
new funding for the New Markets Venture Capital Program.

  -- Cuts funding for key counseling programs. The President's budget
proposal makes significant cuts to grants for Small Business Development
Centers and Women's Business Centers, reducing their proposed budgets by
$10 million and more than $1 million respectively. Over the last seven
years, SBDCs and WBCs have essentially been flat-funded, which equals real
cuts for these centers due to their funding level not keeping up with
inflation. In addition, with the elimination of the Microloan Technical
Assistance program, the President proposes SBDCs and WBCs would pick up the
slack despite already reduced funding. Last year, SBDCs assisted 600,665
businesses and WBCs assisted 147,000 businesses. The Program for Investment
in Micro-entrepreneurs which provides counseling to low-income
entrepreneurs has also been eliminated.

  -- Provides no new funding for Procurement Center Representatives. The
proposed budget provides no new funding to hire additional PCRs. Currently
there are about 57 PCRs -- although only around 30 have full-time PCR
duties -- to monitor contract bundling and break out contracts for small
firms. This falls far short of the 100 PCRs Congress has been calling for
to oversee nearly $400 billion in federal contracts.

  -- Cuts funding for critical assistance programs and eliminates
line-item transparency. The President continues to propose cuts to funding
for the 7(j), HUBZone and Native American Outreach programs as well as roll
the funding into the overall agency operating budget. This reduces
transparency and creates uncertainty as to how much funding the programs
will receive.

RIKK DESGRES: Making More Than a Go of it in the Digital Economy

2008-01-30T18:37:00.000-05:00

Rikk Desgres may have to hustle hard, but he no longer moonlights as a dishwasher in between video editing jobs.

This boomer with great hazel eyes and a Fu Manchu facial hair is walking evidence that it’s possible to do just fine in the virtual economy as long as you’re skilled, versatile and, above all else, flexible.

Owner of Pinehurst Pictures & Sound, which he describes on his Website as “located just 2 miles from scenic downtown Northampton, MA.,” Rikk has been supporting his family for 20 years through his film editing expertise – long before film was video and then video became digital.

He has edited for the famous documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and made many a TV commercial for a local institutions like hospitals, as well as handling sound documentary filmmakers, and all without fancy degrees from big-name film schools. In fact, although he studied film at two regional state schools – Springfield, (Mass.) Technical Community College and Fitchburg (Mass.) State College -- Rikk also learned on the job.

With his sort of vocation, he points out that “the classroom can only prepare you so much.”

Rikk lucked into a subcontracting job not long out of school with Florentine Films – the studio that Ken Burns started with partners Larry Hott and Diane Gary in the mid-1980s. At that time the filmmaker group was operating out of an old fire station just west of Northampton in Haydenville, Ma. Burns, a Hampshire College grad, had gained fame with the release “The Civil War.”

Burns hired Rikk to work on “Baseball,” which was once known as America’s favorite past-time, though it’s probably been supplanted by Web surfing today. And for about eight years Rikk considered himself “a single film freelancer because that was the way to do it.” He’d sign onto a project like “Baseball” and work it to completion and then move onto the next. He went “from project to project,” working out of other’s studios because it was “too costly” to run his own place.

When digital came out in the early 1990s, Rikk purchased his first computer and, he joked, “the kid went out of control after that.” It’s hard to imagine this fairly reserved, soft-spoken guy out of control, but at further investigation it’s also possible to see that with Rikk passions run deep. His eyes light up talking about how he learned to transfer video to what was then “something strange – a DVD. I decided to take that on and now I do DVD work for publishers.”

Because of his technical curiosity and ability, along with not having a Prima-Donna bone in his body – rare in this industry – Rikk no longer works other jobs to support his film work. And he’s had the joy of being able to produce artistic work along with the run-of-the-mill commercial project.

Right now he’s promoting a new documentary that he edited called Including Samuel by Dan Habib, the photography editor of the Concord, N.H. Monitor since 1995. Built on the efforts of Habib and his family to raise a disabled child, the documentary examines the educational and social inclusion of youth with disabilities and also features four other families with varied inclusion experiences, plus interviews with dozens of teachers, young people, parents and disability rights experts.

Rikk proudly notes that the film recently won the annual Positive Images in Media award from TASH, an international group committed to the full inclusion of people with disabilities. The film was also named "Best Documentary" of the 2007 Somewhat North of Boston Film Festival.

One of the nicest things about Rikk is that he’s never too busy to help out others. And given that the technology behind making films is become cheap enough and accessible enough so that even kids are doing this, he notes that it’s possible for a boomer with some skills to make a living producing and editing film today as long as you don’t expect to be at Sundance or Cannes the first time out.

What does Rikk advise those of you who want to make film a business?

Well, he pauses, creative ability is good, “but nothing beats experience. There are computers today where you edit right out of the box. If they want some instruction there are great places like the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine where they offer week-long sessions. People have a blast and learn a lot.”

Some folks with film interests go into television broadcasting or nowadays may set up companies to do podcasting via the Web, but the news world never interested Rikk. Although he says there’s “no easy money as a film editor, events are a good starting ground, whether that’s filming weddings, bar mitzvahs, plays or football games.”

As much of his bread-and-butter-work is local and regional, Rikk gets a lot of jobs from “world of mouth.” In the days before he had built a reputation “I used to send postcards to current clients and to prospective clients. Sometimes I find people I want to work for and then track them online,” but he admits that he’s the “weakest” at marketing.

To handle work flow he operates what I call “the accordion” method of managing growth, by hiring “a lot of subcontractors to do things I can’t do or don’t have time to do.” And he also has alliance partners, some of whom are “huge corporations and others that are individuals.”

Here’s what Rikk has posted on his Web site that gives you an idea why he’s more than making a living:

“At Pinehurst our main concern is our client. You. We understand production schedules can be chaotic. We understand budgets can be tight. We work with you to create the best fit possible for your goals. We do the simple things as well. We return phone calls, reply to emails; keep you in the loop at all times. We'd like the opportunity to work with you. Please give us a call at 413-584-6200 and we can discuss the possibilities.”

The following are some examples of Pinehurst Film projects:

Cleveland, Ohio -

Pinehurst, again working with Florentine Films has created the Sound Design for the film Return of the Cuyahoga. National premiere in high-definition TV on PBS in 2008

Sunderland, Mass. –

Pinehurst has created a the DVD companion for the textbook LIFE: The Science of Biology, Eighth Edition for Sinauer Associates.

Albany, N.Y, -

Cindy Parrish's Heroic Girlz is a wonderful short film about four 11 year old girls who go back in time to live the lives as the 11 year old versions of Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Earhart, and Amelia Bloomer. We were proud to the sound sweetening on this project.

Boston, Mass. -

Pinehurst Pictures was part of the sound design team for the American Experience project Race to the Moon.

New York, NY -

Pinehurst Pictures & Sound has completed a DVD companion for the McGraw-Hill textbook Teachers, Schools, and Society

Las Vegas, NV -

Collaborating with Monadnock Media, Pinehurst Pictures & Sound created stunning 5.1 surround sound exhibitions for the Atomic Testing Museum.

PRESS RELEASE URGES FOCUS ON BOOMER NEEDS

2008-01-24T10:18:00.000-05:00

VIRTUAL WORKFORCE AND CAREER EXPERTS URGE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES TO FOCUS ON BOOMER CAREER RETIREMENT ISSUES

Warn of an "Avalanche of Need" that Could Sweep the U.S. For Financially Strapped Boomers

Burke, Va. - Jan. 24, 2008

With the U.S. and global economy gyrating, national experts in career transition and the virtual, home-based workplace are urging all presidential candidates to place the needs of retiring boomers among their top priorities, particularly in regard to career retraining, small-business development and management support where there is evidence of growing demand for assistance.

Don Wilson, president and CEO of the Association of Small Business Development Center Network (ASBDC), representing 1,000 service centers nationwide that provide no-cost consulting and low-cost training to half a million small businesses annually, says he is grateful for this year's $10 million increase to ASBDC's budget. However, he points out that the amount is a drop in the bucket compared to demand his centers are starting to experience from retiring boomers seeking help starting or growing small enterprises to augment their incomes during retirement.

"The candidates are talking about education and here we are offering education for businesses," said Wilson, adding that the ASBDC was level-funded from 2000 until 2007. Despite the recent budget increase, he said in today's dollars ASBDC needs at least $115 million "to have the same buying power as we did in 2001. We actually served fewer counseling clients at a national level in 2006 (no numbers were available for 2007), which was down from 2005," and this is despite the fact that the first wave of boomers hit retirement age in 2007.

"For the past five or six years, we've been seeing an increasing number of older Americans coming in. As they reach retirement age, they want part-time work, or they say they want to start a home-based virtual business, a small manufacturing, or retail brick and mortar business," explained Wilson. Many have broad experience or great skill sets, "but need business management knowledge," he said, adding that "this does not come automatically."

By virtual business, Wilson is referring to a small business that relies on advanced technology to operate, whether from a home, a rental office or elsewhere.

Georgianna Parkin, vice-chair of ASBDC's board of directors and state director for the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center (SBDC), is also witnessing "a continual increase each year among boomers who want to start a business. Some expand from hobbies, some for social reasons and others due to a perceived need in the market."

When asked if SBDC funding was adequate to meet projected boomer career or business counseling needs nationally, Parkin said "absolutely not." She pointed out that it was "critical to keep these boomers employed and active contributors to the economic base. Otherwise, we could have a population in debt, as well as ignoring the tremendous talent this population possesses."

Those serving boomers on websites and in private practices are equally concerned, particularly given the many boomers who are purported to be in debt. Amy Zuckerman, an award-winning author and consultant based in Amherst, Mass. who was recently profiled on CNN.com (12/17/07), warns candidates of an "avalanche of boomer need" that is about to sweep the country. Through the many blogs and groups she manages on boomer social networking sites such as EONS.com, Multiply, and TeeBeeDee.com, she is encountering many older boomers struggling to survive on Social Security and dwindling revenue.

"With boomers starting to retire in 2007 and many in debt, I am deeply concerned about the future. While the media and candidates are focusing a great deal on health care, which is positive, they are missing the enormous need for career retraining, as well assistance to the millions of boomers who are telling pollsters they intend to start their own businesses during retirement," said Zuckerman who also writes the blog: "Living a Virtual American Dream" (http//:www.virtualdream.amyz-blogspot.com).

She points to new data from a pilot Virtual Business and Careers survey currently housed on her EONS.com "Building a Virtual Company" group page (URL below). Preliminary findings, based on a sampling of EONS members, indicate that 77 percent of EONS respondents plan to operate a small, home-based business during their retirement years.
(The survey can be found at http://www.eons.com/survey/welcome/10.)

Although numbers from mid-December to the first week in January were based on a sample of only 170, they correlate with earlier polls by Yahoo.com and MassInc's Commonwealth Magazine, as well as anecdotal reporting from Newsweek's "Boomer Files." All of these regional and national sources have indicated that a majority of boomers - between 60 and 75 percent - plan to run home-based, virtual companies of various types when they are in retirement.

"The problem for many boomers, particularly those who have always worked for an employer, is that they don't have a clue about how to make money outside of a full-time job," said Zuckerman, who was the Small Business Administration's 2005 Home-Based Business Champion for New England and Massachusetts. "They don't know how to manage their time, manage technology, or market themselves. And many are falling prey to scam artists promising them a solid income from web-based schemes."

Zuckerman says she is pleased to see a new bill - The Parents' Tax Relief Act of 2007 - including tax incentives for those working at home. However, she points out that polls she has conducted with the members of Hidden-Tech (www.hidden-tech.net), an organization she founded in 2002, and from interviews nationwide, indicate that many boomers and others are operating virtual enterprises outside the home. "I'm concerned that that this bill will not assist many in the burgeoning virtual economy who do not operate strictly from their homes," she explained.

"The government," Zuckerman said, "needs to drastically beef up funding for boomer retraining through the ASBDC's small business development centers, as well as the SCORE program. And Congress needs to redraft the U.S. Census to gather data on the virtual economy, as a whole, and not focus solely on home-based companies."

Wendy Spiegel, founder of GENPLUS (tm) - Reinventing 50 Plus (www.genplususa.com) in the Los Angeles area, cautions that "over the past several years of receiving e-mails from mature workers desperate for employment, it is clear that we are still five years or more away from large numbers of employers being truly willing to hire-or recruit for-a 50 plusser." Spiegel, who authors the popular Gen Plus blog (http://genplus.blogspot.com) and, like Zuckerman, has been an expert blogger on EONS.com, collaborated with Zuckerman in developing the survey that appears on the EONS.com site.

She believes that "as a result of the employment challenges and lack of financial security facing the mature worker, more and more jobseekers are going to have to find alternative ways to make a living. Multi-channel careering is going to become the new boomer trend, and that includes a significant increase in virtual industry, flex jobs, telecommuting, and virtual contact center positions."

On the flip side of the job coin, businesses will be "facing a massive talent shortage as all these boomers move out of full-time employment," said Charlie Grantham, co-founder of Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program with bases in California and Prescott, Ariz. "Companies will have to turn to the boomers as a part-time labor force," he said, "but the boomers won't be willing to commute to central-city corporate offices. We're going to have to learn how to manage a widely distributed work force whose members have a very different set of values and expectations about how, when, and where they work."

"We need a ton of new public policies to deal with this massive transformation in the workforce," argued Jim Ware, co-founder with Grantham of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program. "Work force development programs will have to include post-65ers, and we should be rethinking Social Security, health care, and 401K programs to be sure they meet the needs of both employers and all these 'free-agent' seniors," he says.

AmyZ's "Accordian" Approach to Managing Growth

2008-01-23T10:50:00.000-05:00

The fastest way to kill a business is to grow it too fast.

Check out my newest blog entry on the "accordian approach" to managing growth. It's posted on the EONS.com Building a Virtual Company group page under "From the Expert. . ." and tells you how a major profile from CNN.com almost did me in before Christmas.

And I explain how my "accordian approach" to managing growth has helped her keep A - Z International Associates afloat for 20 years. Plus, I show you how I've applied this approach to a client's business.

Now I need to hear from you!

Yes, You can Generate $ By Blogging

2008-01-20T18:51:00.000-05:00

Let me introduce you to Tish G, A - Z International Associate's blogging expert. You'll be hearing more from Tish as the year goes on, so keep those blogging questions coming.

Last week one of our members wanted to know whether you can make money blogging. Here's what Tish has to say:

One way you can make money from blogging is to establish yourself as an expert in a field, and to build a community by commenting and linking to other bloggers. Making money directly from a blog requires that you have traffic coming in to propel ads or other programs you have on your blog. So you have to think about what you're going to say on your blog, and what community you're going to be a part of.

After you figure that out, you can stoke your blog (or multiple blogs) full of all kinds of ads: banner ads, in-text ads, pay-per-post programs, widgets, etc. . .

But if you've got lousy content, and you're not giving your visitors anything to make them stick around, you may not make much from your blog content anyway. Also, too many ads may bog down the loading of your site, thus making it difficult for people to read.

Now, if you've got a couple of friends who are also interested in blogging, and you share a common passion, you might want to set up a group blog that caters to a particular niche interest. Do some research and find out not just what niches are hot, but what are the niches where you have particular expertise and would enjoy writing about regularly.

If you're creating lots and lots of content on a regular basis, and it's readable and giving good info to others, eventually you'll get good placement in search and traffic will start to come in that will make it worth having ads.

Most ads pay by "clicks per thousand" or CPM. Standard CPM rates can run between the $5-$20 range. The more traffic you have, the higher CPM level you can command for an ad. But that means you have to bring in thousands of readers a day--so you have to have good content. And lots of it!

It will take time to build sufficient traffic, so don't expect to make money right away. Like any business, it's something that grows over time.

Yet lots of bloggers make money from ventures related to their blogging. Here are some examples:

* Some use their blogs to promote offline or other online businesses, then push traffic to their websites. They might make a small amount of money from ads or syndication deals, just to supplement their other business.

* Some bloggers are freelance writers and former journalists who work as "professional bloggers" and write copy for group blogs or blog networks.

* Some work as marketing, PR, or other kinds of consultants, but you have to know the medium.

If you are advising someone on building and maintaining a blog, but you've never done it, then you shouldn't be offering the services.
There is a niche, though, for people like me with experience in online communities to consult to individuals, companies or organizations about this trend, or about the use of blogs in business or journalism.

If you have design backgrounds then you can create your own specialized blog templates and offer your services as blog designers.

Technically, I am a "freelancer" or "consultant" or "professional blogger"--depending on where I'm working and what I'm needed to do. Currently, I am Community Developer for online news rating site Newstrust.net, and am Chief Blogging Officer for Placeblogger.com, a site that aggregates hyperlocal blogs. I also do a small amount of research on RSS/ATOM/XML feed tools.

So, while I don't make money directly from my blog, my blog has been a vehicle for helping establish myself as an expert in a particular field. It has helped me make friends who have offered me positions within their Internet-based businesses. Because things change very rapidly in here, I have to keep in contact with lots of people and be networking often.

NEW SURVEY SHOWS POWER AND NEEDS OF BOOMERS

2008-01-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS FROM BUSINESS/CAREER SURVEY ECHO NATIONAL POLLS FOR BOOMER RETIREES

77 Percent of Boomers Plan to Operate Home-Based Companies in Retirement

by Amy Zuckerman

The first numbers are rolling in from the ongoing Virtual Business and Career Pilot Survey posted as of today on the EONS.com Building a Virtual Company page, and they are right on target with earlier polls by Yahoo.com and MassInc’s “Commonwealth Magazine,” as well as anecdotal reporting from NEWSWEEK’s “Boomer Files.”

All of these regional and national sources have indicated that a majority of boomers – between 60 and 75 percent – plan to run home-based, virtual companies of various types when they are in retirement. (The first wave of baby boomers hit 62, the official retirement age, in 2007.) Early data from the EONS survey are right in sync, even a little higher: 77 percent of EONS respondents report plans to run a virtual business from their home in their retirement years.

It’s important to note that the survey was promoted for only two days over a mid-December ’07 weekend with little explanation and with a tool that was not beta tested properly before being released. Since then, it has sat without much fan fair on the EONS Building a Virtual Company group page, which this author runs to assist EONS members who either want to operate a virtual company or are already doing so. This means they operate a lean, small business that relies on advanced technology. Also, there was no time to add a category for part-time employees.

These factors may have skewed the data. Plus problems with the tool and lack of awareness of its presence mean only 170 EONS members – admittedly a small sample -- took the survey as of Jan. 7, 2008. Even so, the consistency of responses with other national polls on this same subject was striking.

For this reason, plans have been underway to post an improved tool on a variety of sites nationwide, including the author’s Website at www.a-zinternational.com; at Gen Plus+, which is owned by career coach Wendy Spiegel (another EONS expert who helped design the tool); on THE FUTURE OF WORK site, and on author/expert Joel Kotkin’s (The New Geography) Website. EONS has been invited to keep the tool live, but was undecided at this writing.

Also, discussions are underway with Michael Goodman, Director of Economic and Public Policy Research at the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute, regarding development of a scientifically-constructed study of the virtual economy for municipalities, regions, states or the nation to be based on the EONS pilot survey.

OK, so why all the hullabaloo about some survey numbers?

Well, for one, the boomers represent half of the United States work force. Sen. Barack Obama, the charismatic, young Democratic presidential candidate may urge this country to move beyond the boomers in his attempt to attract Gen X, Y and other voters – an understandable and even important step, by the way – but he can hardly ignore the largest cohort on the globe. As has been documented endlessly, whatever the boomers do sends hiccups at the least -- and often shockwaves -- through any sector they touch, whether that’s housing, auto industry, health care or the work force.

Also, it’s well known and documented that a large percentage of the boomer population has wracked up a huge amount of debt. Many boomers may need to work until they drop. The fact that a number of polls show such a high percentage of the 78 million boomers planning to work out of their homes, or in rental offices, and do this in a virtual fashion over the next several decades, will undoubtedly have huge ramifications for a variety of industries from home construction and repair, to tech companies, Internet service providers, business supply retailers, book stores, Web-based services -- just about anyone serving small businesses.

Then there’s the issue of services that boomers like this author need today to operate a virtual company, and will need in the future. To beat a dead horse, we need affordable health care. Yes, the IRS provides a tax deduction for a percentage of health insurance costs for those running a Schedule C, but we still need to ante up the money each month. For this writer that’s roughly $540 a month or slightly more than $6,000 a year, not counting the co-pays and visits that aren’t covered by my HMO plan. All in all, I’m probably spending closer to $7,000 a year on health care. And that’s for someone without chronic disease. My partner, age 61, is a type II diabetic and his health care costs would be $1,000 a month or more if he was self-employed.

The next most crucial issue facing all virtual company owners, whether they rent or operate from a home office, is Internet connectivity and cell phone service. As Kotkin and other digital economy experts can tell you, cell and high-speed Internet access are hardly ubiquitous, particularly in low population zones where topography makes it hard to get signals or lay fiber optic cable. Rural areas from North Dakota to parts of California, Tennessee to Hawaii and western Massachusetts lack the technology connection they need to build a company.

For example, there are parts of western Massachusetts, particularly in Franklin County and the Berkshires, where virtual company owners report driving 40 minutes into a town to download files, or to get cell service. In the Web 2.0 world the lack of broadband or cell service is the kiss of death to any real business. In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick is urgently trying to address this issue, but relief is not here yet.

Then there’s the fact that boomers spend a lot of money. This is the cohort, despite many of whom are in debt, that has the most disposable income (besides members of the World War II generation still alive and with large-scale assets.) Retailers and manufacturers of all kinds of technology take note: 30 percent of EONS respondents (based on a sample of 114 that answered this section) said they would be purchasing laptop and personal computers, cell phones or smart phones/PDAs in 2008. The breakdown by technology was 35 percent for laptops; 17 percent for PCs and almost 22 percent for cell phones/PDAs.

For all of these reasons and more, data on the virtual company population, which the U.S. Census Bureau does not yet collect, is urgently needed to meet the avalanche of need – and yes, opportunities -- that the retiring boomers present. Although the questions posed on the EONS pilot survey are not scientifically designed, they are based on standard journalistic methodology with input from academics. And, no, the means of gathering the data is not scientific, either. But this information at the very least represents the sorts of questions the Census might gather if and when government officials decide to take interest in the virtual work place -- one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. work force as it fits into the self-employed category.

The pilot survey, designed by this author and Spiegel, aims to gather information on several cohorts: boomers employed full-time at this writing; boomers working virtually at this writing, and boomers either in retirement or facing retirement at this writing. These preliminary findings are based largely on 170 respondents, although only 114 people responded to some sections (see below) by the Jan. 8 cut off date when the data was issued to this author.

The following is the collective the data for all 24 questions posed to EONS members at the end of 2007 and into early 2008. It’s my intent to present this information to the media, government officials, technology service providers, professionals such as lawyers and accountants, as well as manufacturers/retailers serving the small business population, and others serving the virtual work place:

GENERAL QUESTIONS (170 respondents):

AGE: Of 170 respondents, 50 percent were between the ages of 49 and 55 (not surprising as this was the largest sector on EONS.com); 26 percent were between ages 56 and 60; 17 percent were between 61 and 65, and there were a smattering of respondents reaching beyond the boomer generation with the oldest age 85.

GENDER: The majority, or 74 percent of respondents were female and 26 percent were males.

MARITAL STATUS: Most, roughly 60 percent, were married for a varying number of years; 29 percent were divorced.

CURRENTLY EMPLOYED (170 respondents):

CURRENTLY EMPLOYED: 62 percent said yes; 38 percent said no.

UNEMPLOYED AND SEEKING EMPLOYMENT: 12 percent reported they had been seeking employment; 19 percent said they were unemployed, but not seeking employment.

DURATION OF THE JOB SEARCH FOR THE UNEMPLOYED: 7 percent had been looking for work for one year; 3 percent had been seeking work for between one and two years and almost 4 percent had been seeking a job for more than two years.

TELEWORKER: 13 percent reported teleworking, meaning they were fully employed and checked into an office at least once a week.

WORKING VIRTUALLY FOR AN EMPLOYER: Almost 10 percent reported working full-time for an employer, but virtually from a home or satellite rental office.

WORKING FULL-TIME BUT BUILDING A SIDE BUSINESS: 26 percent of respondents are building a side business while maintaining a “day job.”

SELF-EMPLOYED (114 respondents):

SELF-EMPLOYED: 31 percent of the respondents were self-employed; 52 percent were not, and 17 percent said this was not applicable.

OPERATING A HOME-BASED COMPANY VIRTUALLY: roughly 39 percent reported operating home-based, virtual businesses; roughly 49 percent were not, and 13 percent said this was not applicable.

RENT OFFICE SPACE: Of 114 respondents to this question, only 5 percent rent space and 82 percent said they do not, while the remainder indicated this was not applicable.

OWN PROPERTY TO HOUSE AN OFFICE: 29 percent of 114 respondents said yes; 45 percent said no, and the rest said this was not applicable.

HIRE FULL OR PART-TIME EMPLOYEES TO BACK A BUSINESS (as defined by the IRS): about 95 percent of 114 respondents said no; 5 percent said yes.

HIRE SUBCONTRACTORS TO BACK A BUSINESS: almost 18 percent said yes; 82 percent said no.

TECH PURCHASES IN 2008: 30 percent 112 EONS respondents said they would be purchasing laptop and personal computers, cell phones or smart phones/PDAs in 2008. The breakdown by technology was 35 percent for laptops; 17 percent for PCs and almost 22 percent for cell phones/PDAs.

WOULD ADD A WEB SALES (ONLINE BUSINESS) TO A BRICKS ‘N MORTAR COMPANY: 28 percent of 114 respondents said yes; almost 20 percent said no and the rest were not applicable.

BUSINESS GOALS OF VIRTUAL COMPANY OWNERS: Of 114 respondents, 30 percent said they were “lifestyle entrepreneurs,” meaning they want to generate enough revenue to pay the bills and enjoy life; almost 40 percent said they wanted to generate as much income as possible while not operating a large business with employees; roughly percent would build a major corporation, and the rest said this did not apply.

EMPLOYMENT PLANS AFTER AGE 62 (of 114 respondents):

PLAN TO WORK FOR CURRENT EMPLOYER AS LONG AS POSSIBLE AFTER AGE 62: almost 33 percent said yes; 30 percent said no, and the rest said this did not apply.

PLAN TO LEAVE A FULL-TIME JOB TO START A RETIREMENT BUSINESS: almost 33 percent said yes; 30 percent said no, and the rest said this did not apply to them.

PLAN TO OPERATE A HOME-BASED BUSINESS IN RETIREMENT: 77 percent said yes; 12 percent said no, and the rest said this did no apply.

PLAN TO RENT OFFICE SPACE FOR A RETIRMENT BUSINESS: about 79 percent said no; 6 percent said yes, and the rest answered not applicable.

WOULD PURCHASE PROPERTY TO HOUSE AN OFFICE: 20 percent said yes; 73 percent said no, and 73 percent said this did not apply.

BUSINESS GOALS FOR A RETIREMENT OPERATION: 41 percent said they wanted to earn enough to support their lifestyle needs; 38 percent wanted to grow in revenue, but not in employees; 4 percent would build a major business in retirement, and the rest said this did not apply.

NOTE: For more information contact Amy Zuckerman at az@a-zinternational.com or visit www.a-zinternational.com.

TAKE THAT SURVEY - PALEESE!

2008-01-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

Hi Virtual-osos and others at EONS.com

We have an unique survey tool posted on our page that is helping the world know more about how you live and work TODAY and what you plan to do in retirement.

It only takes three minutes or less to click through, but the information being gathered could effect you for the rest of your life.

The bad news is that we only garnered about 169 results when the survey ran on the EONS home page. Yes, the tool needs fixing. But without your input and efforts, EONS will take it down. I'm fighting hard to avoid that and have EONS tweak the tool and have it show data in real-time, but I can't without your help.

So take a few minutes TODAY and take the EONS Virtual Business and Career Survey, OK? You'll be seeing some pretty interesting data when I put out my next expert's blog entry Wednesday.

It's also posted on Careers for Boomers 50 Plus

best,

Amy Zuckerman

Reaching the writers and the candidates about the virtual economy

2008-01-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

Bumped into the international press pack yesterday in Peterborough, N.H. and had a chance encounter with Sen. John McCain, the most seasoned and sensible of the Republican pack.

What a media circus, or should I say shark attack? McCain was buried so deep that even a CBS news teams (with whom I was running temporarily), couldn't get a shot from the floor.

Being an old news biz expert, myself, I took the time to reach many, many TV, radio and print journalists about the cause of the rising virtual economy (sometimes called home-based) and the lack of coverage of this trend, plus its importance for the 2008 campaign. In the process, I literally bumped into Don Gonyea (NPR White House correspondent) at the Peterborough Diner; David Corn (a star writer for Mother Jones and Fox news personality) at the deli next door; Mark Hopper (a producer for CBS News) outside of Peterborough Town Hall and many others.

My message was plain: Although our former Massachusetts governor has virtues on the entrepreneurial side that I respect, his health care plan is a major sham. As a young NJ-based reporter agreed, nothing like MANDATING that people like us pay for our own health insurance!

Wow, huge advancements! And I pay almost $555 a month for the honor of getting coverage.

Of course, Mitt has disavowed this program. But he sure was taking credit at the time the legislation was passed and keeps taking some form of credit on the hustings. Now who's a flip-flopper?

Over the months to come I'm hoping that some of these journalists will start digging deeper into the trend of all work force trends -- the hidden growth of the virtual work place sector. New data from EONS.com, although sparse in terms of numbers, correlates exactly with data from Yahoo.com, NEWSWEEK, MassINC and elsewhere.

Preliminary data from the ongoing EONs.com Virtual Business and Career Survey, which ran for two days on the home page in December, shows that 77 percent of boomers plan to run a home-based virtual business in their retirement years. This is hugely significant to a multitude of sectors from technology to service providers, the home construction industry and contractors who rebuild structures, the food service industry, restaurants, book stores, and on and on . ..

We boomers may be aging, but we represent the wealthiest sector of the economy in terms of disposable income. WHY IS NO ONE PAYING ATTENTION???

Dec. 22 Economist Features Census Politics Worldwide

2008-01-03T10:26:00.000-05:00

If you don't get the Economist, just holler with a comment and I'll fax you the Dec. 22 article called "Census Sensitivity," which is all about why counting folks matters.

Anyone checking out this space knows that I've made altering the U.S. Census questions for 2010 to include the virtual economy a cause celebre for the next few years.

Why?

As I've been writing, when you are not counted you just don't COUNT in the eyes of the government. At stake is health care, social security and a raft of other programs.

And The Economist article makes that case over and over, from country to country. Interestingly, in countries that are democratic the population wants to get counted for these very reasons. Often, there are cases of corruption on the part of government officials that purposely slight various populations.

The article posits that in recent years the Republican Congress, which has been anti-big government, has been less than eager to count all Americans. Again, those entitlement programs cost big bucks and big bucks have been going overseas for other causes that make daily headlines.

In authoritarian or fascist states, not surprisingly the population often does not want to be counted and resists censuses, says The Economists. Hey, who wants to end up in a gulag or even worse?

But what's great about this piece is that it makes the case, and a very forceful one, that being counted means being part of power blocks that can make a difference. Right now the virtual work place is NOT BEING COUNTED so many of us just don't count.

Isn't it time to get to your Congressman or Senator and ask for a change?

AZ's EONS Group Featuring Caryl Rivers - A Great Writer, Mentor and Asset to Virtual Company Owners

2008-01-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

Happy 2008!

This posting is now up on my Building a Virtual Company Group on EONS.com. There's also an inspirational story about Doc Bob who has transitioned from finance to selling nutritional products from his home and manages to make a living do that.

But here's someone you all need to meet and then rush out and get every book that she and hubby Alan Lupo ever wrote. They don't disappoint:

I want you to meet an amazing lady and human being who is now a member of our group. She goes under the moniker "Carylprof."

Now, I haven't met anyone in this group who isn't a winner, but I want you to get to know Caryl because she's devoted her life to pursuing justice both as a journalist and professor of communication/journalism at Boston University.

Her books and articles are legion (under the name Caryl Rivers) and she was one of my earliest mentors. She writes a great deal about women and equality, but also writes fiction and humor.

I loved her first book -- APHRODITE IN MID-CENTURY: Growing Up Catholic in America -- so much that I once stole it from the Worcester Public Library (though returned after 10 years or so in the drop bin.)

And this holiday I've been belly-laughing through the paperback release of FOR BETTER/FOR WORSE, which Caryl wrote with her journalist husband Alan Lupo (an award-winning gent with the greatest sense of humor east of Bangladesh, plus one of the great street reporters in Boston and American history.)

If you are interested in publishing, writing, editing or just life, post thoughts and comments to Caryl. I've never known her to turn anyone down. Just don't expect her to comment on house cleaning as that is distinctly NOT her forte, as you will read in her books.

Enjoy!

Amy

NY Times Gets it Right/Wrong on Massachusetts Plan

2007-12-25T11:43:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

As I wrote on my EONS.com blog last week in my letter to Santa, affordable health care tops my Christmas wish list this year. The article from today's NY Times (12/25/07) highlights the fact that many states have failed to alter or expand their health insurance plans, although California appears on the verge of a major breakthrough. It mentions the Massachusetts plan that former Gov. Mitt Romney is touting on the campaign trail and mentions the issues with funding the plan that are cropping up.

But, again, the NY Times missed out because the real problem with that plan is that it ignores the needs of self-employed people who actually are above the poverty line. And all the data on employment shows that the self-employed category, which includes virtual company owners, is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the United States economy, if not THE fastest growing.

The Times piece is excerpted below. On top I've enclosed my satirical look at this issue that I posted on my EONS blog last week. For the full entry go to EONS.com and join the Building a Virtual Company group OR find me on the home page through the PEOPLE/EXPERTS link:

1) AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE: Where do I begin Santa? I mean, I’m really lucky to have health insurance because I don’t have chronic ailments and I can get coverage. But, really, do I need to be paying almost $550 out of pocket each month for a HMO plan and dental insurance. I know the IRS may give me back a deduction for health insurance. But even so, it bites.

And please don’t tell me I’m lucky to be living in Massachusetts where everyone has health insurance, right?

Our former governor – the one named Mitt (like the glove) who is running for president – makes it sound like this plan he signed into law is working great. Well, Santa, consider the fact that for someone like me – one of the thousands of self-employed in the state and part of a growing part of the work force – all this plan does is penalize me if I don’t buy health insurance. The only way I benefit, if you could call this benefiting, is to earn less than $30,636 a year. Now if you call that benefiting you’re living on another planet, Santa, because I could barely survive with a teenage girl on that amount (though, yes, some people do).

I don’t know the answer to this health insurance mess, Santa, but maybe you, Prancer and Dancer could convene a summit and figure something out, OK? If I could be paying half of what I do each month I could afford better cookies for you when you come next year.

Health Care Expansions Hit Roadblocks

By KEVIN SACK

Published: December 25, 2007

SACRAMENTO — A year that began with great ambition for major expansions of health insurance here and in other state capitals is ending with considerable uncertainty, as a second wave of change runs headlong into a darkening economy and political divisions over how to apportion the cost.

Skip to next paragraph

Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

Arnold Schwarzenegger, left, and Fabian Núñez drew up a blueprint for bringing near-universal coverage to California.

Though the governors of three big states — California, Illinois and Pennsylvania — proposed sweeping plans to restructure health care this year, none will finish 2007 with bills passed and signed. In each state, the initiatives confronted entrenched opposition from insurance and other business lobbies that made it far more difficult to build a consensus for change than in the smaller New England states that acted in recent years.

Yet it also was a year of intriguing achievement, here above all, where the Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Democratic Assembly speaker, Fabian Núñez, drew up a bipartisan blueprint for bringing near-universal coverage to the country’s most populous state.

Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. Núñez have yet to close the deal by gaining the support of the State Senate. But they demonstrated in their yearlong negotiations that a consensus on basic principles could be reached, perhaps setting a template for other states and for Washington.

“It’s significant that what they’ve been talking about in California is similar to what many of the leading Democratic presidential candidates are talking about as well,” said Larry Levitt, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which researches health care issues. “There seems to be some convergence at least on the part of those supporting universal health care on how to get there.”

In addition to being the most populous state, California has among the country’s highest proportions of uninsured residents, about 20 percent. Indeed, there are more uninsured in California than there are total residents of Massachusetts, Maine or Vermont, the states that have set the pace for overhauling health care. Success here, therefore, would send a signal that such plans could be enacted in states with the heaviest burdens.

The Schwarzenegger-Núñez plan, which passed the Democratic-controlled Assembly last week, expands on the universal coverage law that Massachusetts passed in 2006. That state now requires insurance companies to offer coverage regardless of an applicant’s health status and mandates that most residents have insurance by Dec. 31, or face a tax penalty of $219.

State officials project that more than 300,000 previously uninsured people will sign up in time, a third of them in a surge over the last month. That has put Massachusetts more than halfway to its goal of insuring everyone.

The downside, and one noted by states with widening budget gaps, is that the program is expected to exceed its first-year budget by at least $150 million. And state officials are struggling to prevent double-digit premium increases next year.

Whether the momentum that began with State of the State addresses last January will continue into 2008 is not clear. It had been widely felt by health reform advocates that this nonelection year provided the best political climate for change.

Now the focus may shift to the presidential campaign, where the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination have each proposed major overhauls. Some state leaders may be tempted to wait out the year to gauge whether the next president will push for a national health plan that might subsume state efforts.

The essential problem, meanwhile, continues to worsen. The Census Bureau reported that the number of uninsured grew to 47 million in 2006, a one-year increase of 2.2 million. The share of United States residents who had employer-based coverage dropped to 60 percent from 64 percent in 2000, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. And though the rate of growth has slowed, the cost of employer-sponsored premiums still rose by 6.1 percent in 2007, more than double the inflation rate, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Because of its national influence, California will continue to command attention as Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. Núñez try to bring along the Senate president pro tem, Don Perata, a Democrat. While supportive of universal coverage, Mr. Perata has said he is concerned about the plan’s $14.4 billion price tag when the state faces a budget gap of commensurate size.

Visit EONS.com for Holiday Cheer - and Business Ideas

2007-12-24T17:08:00.000-05:00

If you're tired of holidays gaiety -- all that food, family, presents and even music -- stop by my group at EONS.com (building a virtual company).

Not only will you like the company, but I'll be unveiling the entries for the DECK THE HALLS contest I've been running.

Hoping that one or even two of these great holiday business ideas will be earning virtual business owners by next holiday season.

Prayers for peace, health and prosperity for 2008.

CNN.com/LIVE profile of Amy Zuckerman is up on 12/17

2007-12-17T11:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/12/14/hidden.tech/index.html

Visit this link to read more about what it's like to operate a virtual company and the issues we all face in this workstyle/lifestyle.

And you'll learn a bit more about my history.

Amy Zuckerman

EONS Has Posted AZ's Virtual Business and Career Survey!

2007-12-15T16:14:00.000-05:00

Virtual Business and Career Survey is LIVE!

For anyone who is concerned to learn more about the virtual economy or about the lack of accurate data on this trend, EONS is providing us the opportunity to be counted. And that's a HUGE GIFT from owner Jeff Taylor and the board.

I mean counted literally.

This weekend the new Virtual Business and Career Survey that I developed with Wendy Spiegel of the Careers for 50-Plus group and EONS producers is accessible from the home page -- front and center.

It will take you five minutes max to click through. But those five minutes could move mountains in terms of the private and public sector services this sort of aggregate information can provide.

Think of this slogan I created: When you are counted then you COUNT. But when you aren't counted you are OBLITERATED.

The lack of data on our population of virtual (including home-based) companies means that everyone from Congress to publishing houses can downplay the importance of our work style/lifestyle and deny us services such as health insurance.

So get onto the home page, click that link and make yourself heard!

Happy holidays!

Amy Zuckerman

AZ's Post Makes NPR's TALK OF THE NATION BLOG

2007-12-12T15:32:00.001-05:00

There is a HUGE misconception in the media that this is a home-based trend, ONLY. The reality is that we're witnessing the rise of the virtual economy that stretches from home-based companies to those renting space to mid-size companies like Court Square Data Group in Springfield, Mass. to major corporations like INTTRA and Arch
Chemical that operate "hybrids" where many staffers work from home or rental space and rarely come into the office. Then there are the companies that allow teleworking, which implies some office time and some time outside the office.

For more information on this trend go to http://virtualdream-amyz.blogspot.com where I maintain content on the virtual economy. For reports and articles I write on this subject see www.hidden-tech.net.

And for how to actually work this way visit my blog on EONS.com where I am the virtual business expert. It's posted weekly on the Building a Virtual Company Group (that's under People, Groups, Careers).

Amy Zuckerman
Principal, A - Z International Associates in Amherst, Ma.

Founder of Hidden-Tech, the network for virtual company entrepreneurs

EONS Virtual Business Expert

Sent by Amy Zuckerman | 10:44 AM ET | 11-16-2007

WORKING ONLINE DOESN'T HAVE TO MEAN WEB SALES

2007-12-12T11:42:00.000-05:00

AZ's 12/12/07 blog entry on EONS.com (posted on the Building a Virtual Company group home page) explores the difference between working virtually and selling online, also known as e-commerce or Web sales.

Five Hidden-Tech members, and long-time buddies, provided profiles to hammer home the point.

They are Theresa Leary, David Shepherd, Alan Hurwitz, Tony Vlamis and Bruce Carson.

As always, my offer is to profile or promote Hidden-Techies through my blog on the Building a Virtual Business group on EONS, as Hidden-Techies are THE BEST.

Seeking sponsors for Virtual Economy Survey

2007-12-11T18:00:00.000-05:00

Given that Congress and the U.S. Census Bureau have dropped the ball on seeking census information on the virtual workplace (which includes home-based companies), I'm working with EONS.com to seek the missing data.

As noted many times on the blog, without data our population is literally (not virtually) obliterated from government statisticians and policy makers. This lack of information affects everything from home construction to health care.

To move our cause into the academic realm and gain additional support it would be great to have a think tank or data experts sponsor an academically-constructed survey to address the virtual economy.

For this reason, I'm in discussion with Michael Goodman, Director of Economic and Public Policy Research at the the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute, regarding developing a scientifically-constructed study of the virtual economy for municipalities, regions, states or the nation to be based on a pilot survey about to be released on EONS.com.

Questions are geared to three cohorts:

Those currently employed, but working virtually through their employer or maintaining a side business;

Those self-employed working virtually, whether working from home, a rental or the owner of a property that houses their company,

And those nearing retirement who seek to enter the virtual workplace, whether working from home, a rental or even buying a property to house a company.

Parties interested in sponsoring this sort of study should reach AmyZ through the Experts link (under People) at EONs.com, or visit her at the Building a Virtual Business group at EONS.com.

Or, you can write to Amy Zuckerman at az@a-zinternational.com.

AZ and EONS running "DECK THE HALLS" Business Contest

2007-11-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

In honor of the holiday season, EONS.com and the Building a Virtual Company group are hosting a "Deck the Halls" Business Contest starting TODAY through Thursday, Dec. 20. Winner to be announced on Friday, Dec. 21.

The idea is this:

The EONS member who can come up with the longest list of viable business ideas with a holiday theme will win "The Best of the Johnny Cash" TV show from 1969 - 1971 with 66 full-length performances on two DVDs. That's over four hours of previously unavailable footage from his variety show.

The runner up gets two free hours of strategic marketing consultation from AmyZ, manager of the Building a Virtual Company group. She will also pick the winner.

Here are the rules:

1) Themes are not restricted to Christmas. Any holiday taking place this time of year, including New Year's, Chanukah, Kwanzaa (others?) is fine.

2) You don't need to submit a business plan, but you do need to provide one cogent paragraph explaining your idea and how it could work.

Examples:

-- A holiday card company on the Web

-- Holiday food for sale on the Web

-- a Web-based gift store

3) Please submit your ideas in the message section of the Building a Virtual Company group that will be set up to capture entries. It will be labelled: DECK THE HALLS BUSINESS CONTEST ENTRY FOLDER.

Who knows? Next year we may put this company to the test and all be winners.

Happy holidays!

AmyZ
Building a Virtual Company manager

OC Metro Magazine Seeking Orange County Virtual Businesses

2007-11-30T14:47:00.000-05:00

BUSINESS: Virtual Companies -- OC Metro Magazine (CA) TOP

OC Metro Business Magazine is seeking companies to feature in our

upcoming issue on virtual companies.

The story will discuss howcompanies can thrive without having four walls and a ceiling. We need

Orange County, Calif.-based companies that have five or more employees.

Please send the following: name of company; contact person; city company

is located in; product of service; number of employees; a high-res photo

of employee, product or building. Contact: Kimberly Porrazzo,

kporrazzo@churmmedia.com

Happy Thanksgiving Blog Posting on EONS.com

2007-11-21T11:47:00.000-05:00

I want to wish all wonderful, safe and peaceful Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for, particularly each other.

On a more humorous note, I thought you'd all enjoy this week's blog entry on EONS.com where I look at the many ways you can make "a killing" selling turkeys online. Thanks to Jeanne Yocum, one Hidden-Tech's long-time PR/programming experts, for introducing me to heritage turkeys. It was from that long ago conversation that I got the idea for this entry.

http://www.eons.com/groups/group/building-a-virtual-company

NPR Gets it - Sort of - it's a virtual world rising

2007-11-16T10:48:00.000-05:00

Wow!

NPR and the New York Times in one week all touting home-based companies.

Only they are missing that this is so much bigger. It's the rise of the virtual economy with many variations, from small entrepreneurs with big dreams renting space to major corporations like Arch Chemical allowing sales/marketing and others to work from home and hardly ever see an office interior. That's far different from teleworking where you check in pretty regularly and may even have a home office.

Lots of information on this trend is posted at www.hidden-tech.net where we have conducted original research for over five years.

But, hey, at least we aren't fighting for legitimacy. Data or no, the world is catching on.

The New Home Office

Listen to this 'Talk of the Nation' topic

David Gura's cluttered desk.

Source: David Gura

Ah, to be your own boss, to set your own schedule, to work from the comfort of your own home... Could life be better?! This producer, who is writing from his cluttered desk, in a small office he shares with a colleague, under the numbing glow of six fluorescent bulbs, says "No. It couldn't." Unequivocally. More and more Americans are electing to work for themselves, as freelancers, contractors, and consultants. But Matt Bai, who covers politics for The New York Times Magazine, says that this "modern, untethered American work force" doesn't include everyone... Just the worker who can afford to pay for his own insurance and retirement benefits. Do you work for yourself, from home? If so, how is it? Do you wish you could? What's standing in your way?

David Gura

Network World Indicates Rise in Virtual Workplace

2007-11-16T09:22:00.000-05:00

These sorts of ads are proliferating.

Seems the only people who don't get this are Congress and corporate America, or at least those dinosaurs that still want to tether people to their desks so they can "look busy" as they doodle.

Dear Amy,

IT shops are striving to manage distant virtual offices as the number of these remote sites continue to rise. Listen to this Webcast, Building IP Networks for the Distributed Workforce to get real-world advice on how to best manage this ongoing trend. http://www.accelacomm.com/jlp/EM_80123198_v1111507/7/80123198/

Learn how building a robust WAN might be your best tool in supporting a virtual workforce. Hear detailed information on how to achieve this goal, which includes:

Leverage quality-of-service and network optimization tools
Ensure the right amount of bandwidth to each site
Perform application benchmarks
Review carrier contracts regularly
Create corporate standards for remote-office gear

Click here to listen to this informative Webcast to learn more.
http://www.accelacomm.com/jlp/eMBlast_80123198_v1111507/7/80123198/

Sincerely,
Network World, Inc.

-Part 3-Part Series on Building Online Business Running On EONS

2007-11-07T10:52:00.000-05:00

Lots of you have asked me for information on the technology behind building an online business, and then all those tricks for pushing your site to the top of the search engines.

Come over to the Building a Virtual Company group on EONS.com for Part II of "It's the Backend, Stupid."

Or, you can access these entries via the Experts link on the home page under People.

Matt Bai of NY Times Gets it Mostly Right - Argues for Focus on Home-Based Cohort

2007-11-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

In this past New York Times Sunday's magazine, Matt Bai, a well-known political writer for them, argued that the country's political parties need to start focusing on the needs of home-based business operators.

And he argues that corporations ought to wake up to this trend -- which is more accurately the virtual company trend -- and allow folks more flexibility in how they work. The major parties need to provide support for people like us, especially on the health care front (AmyZ's add here).

But there are issues that Matt did not address, maybe because he hasn't devoted as much time as I have and you have to this issue. Of particular importance is getting the government to start collecting accurate data on virtual businesses -- whether home-based or in small rental offices.

Without data, we are insignificant. Our numbers don't count and our needs, from financing to health care, don't get addressed.

Here's the letter I wrote to his editor and others I know nationally, as I still write for the news biz occasionally. Please post your thought/input on the Building a Virtual Company home page.

I will do my best to funnel them to my contacts in the news media.

best,

AmyZ

Hi Alex,

I'm a former Times freelancer (Sunday business, e-commerce special sections, etc . . .) and Globe freelancer, as well as award-winning author/columnist and entrepreneur.

I applaud the article that Matt wrote on Sunday, but there are issues that he did not address that are important. I've spent over five years in this territory -- which I call the virtual work place as home-based is only a facet -- and his numbers were low even by the SBA's dismal figures. At least five years ago they counted 10 million-plus home-based companies, but no one knew for sure then and the situation has not changed.

Ever since I wrote the cover for the Sunday Globe Magazine "Hidden Tech" (Feb. 10, 2002) I've been digging for data. I even created an organization, Hidden-Tech, to study the virtual company phenomenon. www.hidden-tech.net. On the podium in 2005, accepting my award as Mass/New England's SBA Home-Based Business Champion I castigated the SBA's chief economist for the lack of data on this subject.

What I've learned is the SBA is stuck with census data, and the census doesn't track this category except tangentially. It takes Congressional approval to change the Census questions and, to date, no one in Congress has championed this cause. What we do know is that there will be an avalanche of people working from homes and small offices over the course of the next 20 years as the baby boomers "retire" as consultants and entrepreneurs.

As the Virtual Business expert on EONS.com I'm getting lots of calls for help from people in their 60s/70s who are subsisting on social security only, and no one knows the future of that program.

Frankly, Alex, I'm disgusted with the lack of real data on this front and extremely worried about the country's lack of preparedness for the need that will descend over the next five years or so. I've enclosed an example of the stories I get from people very day now.

Major Corporations Going Virtual

2007-11-01T08:36:00.000-04:00

Here's a snippet of an upcoming article of mine to be posted on CIO Update. What fascinated me was the fact that companies as varied as Arch Chemical, Trinus Corporation and Court Square Data Group all maintain hybrid operations, meaning they maintain offices yet allow numbers of employees to work remotely. Some are working from home and others from a small, satellite office. Read on:

The virtual work place is a happening, whether it's a one-person shop based in an office suite, or a multinational corporation where a large percentage of a sales team works out of a home-based office.

Consider Trinus Corporation, an IT services company based in Los Angeles, that builds data integration, data warehousing and business intelligence solutions. Sanjay Kucheria, Trinus president, says of the 200 employees most are based on the west coast, though there are employees on the east coast and in India, mainly working from home or client locations.

Al Schmidt, CIO of Arch Chemical, headquartered in Norwalk, Conn., says the specialty chemical manufacturer has “a global workforce of 3,000 employees” with roughly half located overseas in 20 countries. In fact, he says the majority of their sales organization, both domestic and global, operates from home offices.

At any given time Kent Fernald, vice president of shared services for Court Square Data Group in Springfield, Mass., may be supervising a fifth of the 50 people in his department remotely, whether they are based in home or small rental offices. These are mainly projects managers and some technical staff working for this managed services consulting company that also provides IT solutions for companies in transition

Whether their employees number in the thousands or less than 100, CIOs of all types say they struggle to keep remote workers in the loop, feeling part of the team and struggle to use communication tools like email effectively. “The biggest issue with remote employees is that unless there is a specific project or issue we are dealing with, there is hardly any communication. I think it has worked well with employees who have been with the company for a long period of time, allowing us to understand each other well,” said Kucheria.

AmyZ Hosts Spooky Halloween Networking on EONS.com

2007-10-26T16:14:00.000-04:00

If you happen to be free from noon to 1 p.m. EDT I will be hosting a spooky Halloween online networking session on EONs.com.

The aim is to hear your most frightening business stories and then "scare" them away. The candy is in the advice, I hope.

The best way to play is by signing into EONS (it's free) and then joining my Building a Virtual Company group (also free). That's under careers.

If you want to connect without joining, just take the tour on the home page and locate me through the Experts button. You could try searching fro AmyZ or my group by name.

Be prepared to have fun!

Virtual Hollywood Received Banner Play on EONS Oct. 26

2007-10-26T16:08:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'm going to brag a bit. . .

If you were to visit EONS, the greatest site around for boomer information and resources -- along with meeting super folks nationwide -- you would see my virtual Hollywood blog entry featuring Larry Jackson promoted front/center on the home page.

A similar profile is posted in the archives in this blog, but the EONs version provides more advice and tips from Larry, a former Hollywood studio exec, turned independent producer/director and film distributor, then what I posted here. Visit me at the Building a Virtual Company group on EONS, or enter through the experts button on the home page (if you signed in), or experts button on the virtual tour (via the home page).

That will get you right to my group and the blog.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

A new niche for the virtual business world

2007-10-17T10:12:00.000-04:00

With lots of work heading overseas, it's always fascinating to see how people are managing to generate money developing their own virtual companies.

This one involves working "live," but the business end could easily be managed from home or a small office using technology support.

So, here it is: a RESTAGER.

No, this isn't about the theater. A friend who is a BNI regular met one of these folks recently and offered this definition:

A "restager" is a kind of a decorator who works with homeowners or with real estate agents. When a house is going to be shown with the furniture still in it--e.g., the family hasn't moved yet or something--the restager comes in and rearranges what's already there to look it's best. They will also just come into a homeowner's place and do the same thing if, for instance, you want a new look but don't want to replace everything. I have no idea what their rates are or when this area of work came into being, but there it is!

There's no end to human ingenuity and what you can do on your own, apparently.

Building that web backend really counts!

2007-10-15T17:43:00.000-04:00

I've been busy the last couple of days picking up tips for those of you who either run online/e-commerce businesses, or want to do so. I'll be writing lots about this topics in the weeks to come, but though I'd pass on some basics from my Web developer for those in urgent need.

The first thing for beginners is to know that when you're selling products or services online a lot of the marketing tools can be built into your Web site. As I keep saying, you will have to keep marketing and often in very conventional ways. But the Web offers amazing options that didn't exist 10 years ago, or even less.

Here are some things I'll be covering in the weeks to come:

1) Page editing tools so you can go into your Website and make changes without having to engage your Web designer;

2) Email capture /broadcast – So you can create an email database and be able to broadcast announcements, specials, promotions to a wide group of people;

3) Payment online –You'll want to know whether PayPal or shopping carts are right for you at this stage of your business;

4) Search engine optimization -- How to be best located on the Web to increase traffic is tantamount and something we'll be covering;

5) Analytics tools to assess your traffic -- These are key to your marketing/sales strategy;

6) Search engine placement –- There are lots of tricks the seasoned e-commerce pros know about increasing your visibility through the search engines. We'll cover that, and get into lots of tips on Web-based marketing.

No need to wait for all those blog entries to come out. Post your thoughts, interests and needs NOW. I'll take them into consideration when I'm writing.

Tips for picking electronic mailing lists

2007-10-12T09:18:00.001-04:00

These threads came over my Hidden-Tech discussion list the other day, so I'm passing them along. For tech advice, it's the best. www.hidden-tech.net.

QUESTION: Electronic Mailing Lists

Hi folks,
I've been looking for a product similar to Yahoo! or Google Groups. Also
like ListServ, or Majordomo, but newer and with intuitive, clean GUI. I
don't want ads, but anything anyone could inform me about would be great!

ANSWER:

Mailman has pretty straight forward web-based interface. You need a
Linux mail server (eg Sendmail) w/ web server (eg Apache) installed.
Mailman allows users to add and remove themselves from the list. The
lists can be configured to allow unmoderated discussions or only
moderator postings (either anouncements or moderated discussions).
Mailman maintain archives, which can be public (web accessable by anyone) or
private (only accessable to list members).

Deepwoods Software has this setup and can provide you with as many
Mailman driven mailing lists. Visit view link to see
the currently available public mailing lists or visit
view link for more information. Mailing lists are $2.50/month/mailing list. No ads.

Corporate Secretary Cites Virtual Work Place

2007-10-01T08:31:00.000-04:00

For those who think virtual companies are home-based crafters, only, think again.

This month the publication Corporate Secretary has a superb article by Aviva Freudmann, a writer based in Frankfurt, Germany, on the rise of go-getter companies like Elcotez, INTTRA, Airwide Solutions, and others, that operate virtually. Or at least operate what I call the hybrid virtual businesses where there may be a headquarters, but many personnel work from home or in an office alone from all over the world.

The virtual world is rising.

The TMPEP Formula: Time, Money, Passion, Energy and Patience

2007-09-21T15:10:00.000-04:00

I don’t care how great your idea is, if you lack time, money, passion, energy, and patience the best idea just won’t fly. And I don’t mean huge sums of money, necessarily, but enough to get you through the first three years when the IRS says it’s OK to lose money.

Most likely, you are trying to replicate your salary with a retirement or side venture, not build Exxon. So let's explore small ideas that could prove winners for three lifestyle entrepreneurs, including myself. Here's one for examination that can be grown or stay small with almost no initial investment except time.

Improv Theater for the Active Elderly

A fairly recent migrant from New York to western Massachusetts, David Shepherd is best known for his pioneering work in improv theater. In fact, you can read his profile in the archives posted on this blog.

David is active, but not as spry as he once was. Yet, put him in front of an audience willing to risk appearing a bit silly and he’s a genius at getting amateurs to express themselves. Not long ago we were spinning some ideas for David to generate extra revenue and it clicked: bring improvisational theater programming into retirement communities where active elders are often seeking educational activities that double as entertainment. The idea seemed a natural for David’s passion and energy level. That meant we proceeded to the next level of questioning:

We then asked these questions:

1) Is there a market?

Given the numbers of baby boomers heading into retirement, and the blossoming numbers of retirement communities of all kinds there certainly could be a market. Only a survey – starting locally -- would indicate thumb’s up or down.

2) Is there any money to be made?

Same answer as No. 1. About an hour or two of calling programming directors at local facilities would provide the answer.

3) Should he proceed?

I felt that David should proceed as he was such a perfect match for the service and I suspected that with the right approach he could earn at last some pin money. We took an hour to spin out 20 or so bits that would catalyze an audience and agreed that David should try out a few gigs for free.

The last time I tuned in, David had worked the boards at a local rehab center. The audience was not the greatest for his experiment, but the programming director was enthusiastic. He’s honing his approach and heading out the door for more marketing. (David travels, by the way, and is available.)

ANY THOUGHTS FOR DAVID?

Find me On EONS

2007-09-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

As of this week I'm the VIRTUAL BUSINESS expert on Eons.com.

I'll still be posting to this blog here and there, but you can catch my advice and tips on Eons every week.

Just go to Eons.com and log in. It's free.

Click on People, then on Careers & Money. You'll find groups.

My blog is posted on the group I manage called, big surprise here --

Building a Virtual Company.

You can also find me via the celebrity and expert button on the home page.

Find me!

AZ

The TMPEP Formula for Building Your Business

2007-09-10T08:51:00.000-04:00

Up on EONS where I manage a group for virtual companies I just had another inquiry about helping a member of our group build their business. I figure lots of you in the blogosphere could use this exercise.

Here are a few general questions/pointers based on my TMPEP formula -- time, money, passion, energy and patience:

How much time do you have to build your business? Time equals money

How much money do you have to spend on the business, or do you need to ramp up sales, clients, etc . . . TODAY

Where is your passion? No matter how good an idea is, it will flounder without passion

How much energy do you have? You need to modulate efforts to match your energy level to avoid burn out

Are you an impatient or patient person? Sometimes you need to wade through lots of muck and alligators before seeing results

For those seeking help, answer those questions.

Then make a wish list that isn't bound to any reality about time, money, etc . . .

Finally, see which parts of your wish list could generate you income at the rate you need.

Once you've done this exercise I'll be happy to guide you further.

Virtual Doesn't Have to be Home-Based

2007-08-29T09:41:00.000-04:00

There's this perception out there, promoted by government statisticians, that the virtual economy is relegated to small, home-based businesses.

It's possible -- no one really knows, for sure -- that the home-based company makes up the bulk of this population. But more and more I'm coming across businesses that are operating virtually from office suites and with BIG IDEAS and BIG AIMS to grow major companies, yet operate in a lean and mean fashion.

EnerNOC Inc. is one of these virtual businesses with big ambitions and big venture money behind them. As the Globe reports, two Dartmouth MBA grads founded EnerNOC as a way of providing virtual services to utilities and helping them balance electrical demand -- a virtual power exchange.

These guys just went public and their shares were trading at $31 on the first day.

Whether they stay lean and mean is unknown, but they started that way. So here's another plus for the virtual business world.

Women For Hire Connects to ABC's Good Morning America

2007-08-15T09:47:00.000-04:00

Got this notice from my friend Shana Bourcier, a real networking go-getter based in Hampden, Mass. She had invited Tory Johnson to a conference for women in business and says that Tory is a real believer in the power of the virtual economy to help women.

Here are some offers for women who want to connect to Tory, her network and possibly get a chance to talk about their lives on ABC.

New Month, New Show

In addition to my duties as the Workplace Contributor on ABC's Good Morning America, I'm adding a new gig to my load: September marks the launch of my own new show, Home Work, on ABC News Now, which is the digital channel of ABC News. (It's available via cable; accessible to broadband subscribers of AOL and Yahoo, among others; seen on cell phones through all of the major carriers; and posted on ABCNews.com. I'm still learning the distribution, which grows daily!)

As the anchor of this program, I'll tackle a wide range of topics including creating better harmony between our personal and professional lives, starting and building businesses, and working from home. I'll interview great guests, feature exceptional stories and offer best practices to support success during this 15-minute program, which will originate from the ABC News studios in New York.

I need your participation

1) Use your video camera phone -- or a friend's video camera phone -- to submit videos 30 seconds or less touting your best practices for balancing work and home life. These must be out-of-the ordinary tips and tricks that would inspire viewers beyond the basics.

2) You can also use your camera phone to record and submit your most pressing questions that pertain to the home/work topic. We'll show those questions and provide the answers on-air.

Send those short recordings to media@womenforhire.com Be sure to include a text message with your name, city and contact information.

Connect Online

As we continue to build the Women For Hire brand and expand our career advancement services nationwide, we need your help in reaching even more professional women. This enables us to best understand the needs of diverse women so we can create dynamic products and services.

Women For Hire Network: This free resource is now 25,000 women strong. We're determined to grow it to 100,000 in the coming months. That's not possible without your help. If you're not already a member, join today at network.womenforhire.com. Give yourself 15 minutes to create a profile and upload a photo -- if you're going to join, might as well do it right!

Then ask 10 friends to join! If those 10 friends create new profiles this week, we'll send you a gift. Just send an email to megan@womenforhire.com with your name, your screen name and your mailing address, along with the names of the 10 friends who joined the network this week, and she'll send you one of a few different books. We have signed copies of Robin Roberts' From the Heart and of course we have copies of our own Women For Hire titles!

Facebook: If you have a Facebook account, please add me as your friend and be sure to join the WOMEN FOR HIRE group on Facebook as well. This will allow your Facebook friends to learn more about us too.

Make Your Voice Heard

Bookmark our blog at blog.womenforhire.com and be sure to register your comments to the postings. If you have a website, please consider adding a link to our blog. And if you'd like to submit entries to our blog, we welcome them.

Speak Up!

We just launched the Women For Hire Speakers Connection, which features online profiles of dynamic women who are available to lead workshops, seminars and keynotes for internal groups, meetings and conventions of all sizes. If you're looking for a brilliant speaker to wow your audience, I encourage you to search the online profiles. If you're looking to promote your availability and expertise as a speaker, you're welcome to join the program.

Mark Your Calendar

For me the best part of traveling throughout the country to attend our career expos is meeting exceptional women. Whether you're looking for a new job or you're keeping an eye on the marketplace, please make a point to plan to attend one of our fall events. We're working now behind the scenes to make this the best-ever season....but your presence is a key component to that success.

It's already mid-August and I'm embarrassed to say I've yet to take any vacation time. I've done segments and written columns on the value of relaxing and detaching from work and yet I haven't been able to follow my own advice. If you're like me, don't allow Labor Day to come without having taken a few days for you -- long weekends don't count!

Here's hoping I see you online, on-air and in person real soon.

Thanks!

Tory Johnson

CEO, Women For Hire

A Solution for Those Missing Broadband

2007-08-13T15:37:00.000-04:00

A good friend, a former journalist who craves her connectivity, passed on this approach to getting broadband while living "in the boonies." Like lots of folks in central or Western Massachusetts, she can't get service providers to do what they're supposed to do -- provide service.

The picture she sent is of a dish that looks to be about two to three feet in diameter set on a seven to eight-foot pole. Here's Kathy's description of what she rigged up and what it cost her:

"I had to pay $250 for the dish and $150 for an additional pole because it was too heavy for my roof. I believe the value package is about $50 a month. I can cancel out my second phone line and will move to a cheaper PeopelPC package. I need a dial-up back-up in case of bad weather or some shut-down in the satellite. I think it will come out fairly even. I am going with Wild Blue. Hughes Net is also big but they offered the same rate for the dish but I had to apply for rebates. I didn't have to do that with Wild Blue."

Glad I don't have to do the same, but also happy to know that my buddy can reach me at the speed of -- well - broadband.

Check Out Virtual Workplace Article in Aug. 13, 2007 New York Times

2007-08-13T14:31:00.000-04:00

I used to freelance for the venerable New York Times and have passed info to editors that we are seeing a rise in the virtual work place and creation of virtual companies/businesses. I can't take credit for this one, but it's good to see the paper of record chiming in.

August 13, 2007

Off to Resorts, and Carrying Their Careers

By JOHN LELAND

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Time was you could tell the urban refugees in places like this: corporate achievers who quit the rat race to open a bed and breakfast or a candle shoppe.

Jim Moylan represents a new tribe in this bucolic mountain town, named for its loud sulfur spring. Mr. Moylan, 59, is a lawyer who specializes in securities and commodities work. When he moved from Chicago in 2003, he did not downscale his career for the small town, keeping his secretary and associates in Chicago and his clients around the country. He conducts his practice by fax and e-mail, just as he did in Chicago.

In Steamboat Springs, Mr. Moylan dug into local affairs, joining three city committees, the Rotary Club, his church finance council and the editorial board of the daily newspaper. “I just wanted to get involved in the community,“ Mr. Moylan said, sitting in a bookstore/wine bar off the town’s main street.

As technology enables people to live and work wherever they want, increasingly they are clustering in resort playgrounds like Steamboat Springs (pop. 9,315) that have natural amenities, good weather — and, now, lots of people like themselves.

In places like Nantucket, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Teton County, Idaho, the migrants are creating hybrid communities, implanting urban incomes, tastes, careers, ambitions, restaurants, cultural activities and networking opportunities into small towns that until recently could support none of these, and for which there has been little planning and still no consensus.

“You are seeing a transformation of rural communities,” said Jonathan Schechter, executive director of the Charture Institute in Jackson, Wyo., a nonprofit organization that studies small recreational towns.

Into quiet resort spots the migrants have come, laptops on their knees: fund managers from New York, software developers from California, consultants, proofreaders, engineers, inventors. “The same processes that led to the suburbanization of the United States after World War II,” Mr. Schechter said, “are now producing a virtual suburbanization in places like Jackson or Steamboat Springs.”

From 2000 to 2006, population in the 297 counties rated highest in natural amenities by the United States Department of Agriculture grew by 7.1 percent, 10 times the rate for the 1,090 rural counties with below-average amenities, the department reported.

In towns that once emptied after the ski season or the beach season, these “location-neutral” migrants are complicating the traditional dynamic between tourists and locals. Here as elsewhere, average homes have become unaffordable for teachers, firefighters and others — the people who created the good schools and community closeness that newcomers said drew them. The rate of change “is causing a whiplash,” Mr. Schechter said, “because the towns don’t have the political and economic systems in place to deal with them.”

Routt County, which includes Steamboat Springs, is one of the first places to identify these new émigrés as a source of economic growth and, paradoxically, community stability. A 2005 survey found that as many as 1 in 10 year-round households was involved in a location-neutral business. Unlike retirees and second-home buyers, who are also roosting in vacation towns, they send children to the local schools. “Without kids, you don’t have a community,” said Scott Ford, a counselor at the Small Business Resource Center at Colorado Mountain College.

Cloistered in home offices, isolated from the local economy, location-neutrals are often invisible even to one another, except when they appear on local committees.

Many work as hard as their urban counterparts, often juggling commitments in several time zones, but can step from their offices to a hiking trail or mountain stream.

In Steamboat Springs, a pawn shop and loan store amid the expensive restaurants on the main drag illustrates the growing inequality in a region that produces few middle-income jobs. Each day 1,500 workers commute to Routt County from neighboring Moffat County, an hour away. Meanwhile, the airport, once filled with tourists, caters to people in business suits.

“You’ve seen changes in politics,” said Carl Steidtmann, the chief economist for Deloitte Research, who moved from Brooklyn two years ago. “The county tipped Democratic in the last election. You see the tension in the City Council. It went from being pro-business-and-development to more conservationist.” He added, “Twelve years ago, not everyone you met had a Ph.D. or was from New York. There are still a lot of locals here, but that aspect is changing.”

Peter Parsons, 45, who runs a microchip design company in Boulder, Colo., a city of 92,000 about three hours away, moved here five years ago to raise his three children in a small-town environment, keeping the company in Boulder. “It’s a real town,” Mr. Parsons said of the appeal of Steamboat Springs. “If your kids are running around, adults will see them and call you.”

He has kept a Boulder telephone number and does little to remind clients he is not in the city. “I wouldn’t have been able to come here with my family if it meant opening a coffee shop,” he said.

To combat isolation, he volunteered at the school and at church, and briefly moved from his home office into a town-run business incubator “in order to meet people,” he said. Now his office overlooks the ski slopes and is a short walk from a fly-fishing spot; computers vie for desk space with hand-tied flies. He still has to persuade associates that he has not slowed down or retired.

“We have big discussions about what it means to be a local,” Mr. Parsons said of his fellow location-neutrals. “Some people snub anybody who hasn’t been here a long time. And some people think they know everything when they haven’t been here long.”

The Routt County Economic Development Cooperative has embraced the new tribe as an asset, especially to an area with no strong industry other than tourism. Location-neutrals tend to volunteer heavily in civic organizations and local government. County interviews with 61 location-neutral businesses found they held 120 volunteer positions.

But their enthusiasm has not always rubbed long-timers the right way, Mr. Ford said. “If they haven’t bonded with the community,” he said, “they begin with the ‘You people’ speeches: ‘What you people don’t understand is...’ When they start that, it’s almost impossible.” Sometimes disputes spill out in the local newspaper or its blogs, where old-timers and newcomers point fingers.

Thomas Miller-Freutel, a partner in a directory-assistance startup, knows this chasm firsthand. Though he has lived here since 1990, first as owner of the Steamboat Inn, he sometimes struggles to balance his fast-paced work life with the small-town community.

“I have to switch gears from what I was doing in other parts of the world to sit down and be productive as a community member,” he said. “You have to be careful not to say, ‘Look, I deal with people all over the world and this is how it’s done.’ You have to change gears in a small town.”

For Bill and Stephanie Faunce, who run a marketing company for cable operators, small-town life often means starting work at 7 a.m. and quitting at 11 p.m., but with breaks to hike, ski or be with their two young children. Their goal in coming here was not to slow down but to eliminate urban distractions and pressures.

“There are no stressors here,” said Mr. Faunce, 43. “In L.A., it took 90 minutes to get to the office, so we had a Mercedes and a Land Rover. Now we drive a Suburban. In three years we’ve put 15,000 miles on it.”

What Do Virtual Company Entrepreneurs Do? Everything

2007-08-10T15:47:00.000-04:00

I was struck by the variety of my colleagues in virtual company land last Tuesday night when I dropped into the GoNOMAD Cafe in South Deerfield, Mass. for a summer schmooz session with my fellow Hidden-Techies. That's synomous with virtual company owners in these parts.

There was someone who develops sessions for people with neurological disorders, but peddles them on the Web. An expert in SAP software was showing off his new Website. And one of our members does juggling as a sidelight. Not to mention the fact that the GoNOMAD, which caters to the virtual work place, also has an a Website at gonomad.com, which features its own blog.

Just about the main thing we have in common is that we use technology, work from a small office setting and run a small business. But other than that, we do everything and anything. A few years ago I set out to find out exactly what folks in the virtual world actually do and together with Rich Roth, owner of TNR Global in Greenfield, Mass., developed a prototype skills inventory that sits at www. hidden-tech.net.

These broad career and occupation headers don't begin to tell you a tiny percentage of what virtual company owners are doing. It's everything except building a car or house in their small office. But they could well be designing one or the other.

Take a peek at this list and tell me what you think. Does it blow your mind?

Detailed listing

Added Skills listing

557 Members reporting as of Sat Jul 21 11:49:29 EDT 2007

Major Skill Category	Members with skills in this Category
ARTS AND RELATED SERVICES	160
BOOK PUBLISHING	63
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT/BUSINESS MANAGEMENT	128
COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT	45
COMPUTER APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT	160
COMPUTER/INTERNET/WEB SERVICES	251
COMPUTER/TELCOM SERVICES	121
EDUCATION	92
ENTERTAINMENT	33
FILM/VIDEO	77
FINANCES AND INSURANCE	27
HEALTH CARE AND SOCIAL ASSISTANCE	10
MARKETING/SALES	126
NEW MEDIA	56
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES	38
PUBLIC SECTOR/NON-PROFIT	56
PUBLISHERS	42
RESEARCH	71
SCIENTIFIC/TECHNICAL SERVICES	49
WRITERS/EDITORS/AGENTS	114

209 Members with Additional Skills

Larry Jackson and i-Arthouse.com - Virtual Hollywood

2007-08-07T12:38:00.000-04:00

For years, Larry Jackson, 58, did the high-class Hollywood hustle as a production executive with film industry giants The Samuel Goldwyn Company, Orion and Miramax. He made Julia Roberts a star as the man behind Mystic Pizza and was the executive on film hits like Silence of the Lambs.

So why is a man with this sort of Hollywood cache today working out of a home office in Amherst, Mass. - a town known for colleges, not cinema?

The move east in the summer of 2001 wasn't entirely Jackson's choice. As he explained over lunch at a local greasy spoon a year later - in between cell phone interruptions from the producer of a film from the Czech Republic whichJackson was about to distribute in the US - his wife wanted out of Los Angeles. She was concerned about raising their two children in a more wholesome environment. Jackson shared her concerns about the kids and knowing they would have to enter "the unsavory elitism" of private school life.

Moreover, he and his wife were more than alarmed when their bedroom was invaded one night by armed gunmen looking for a big haul in what had been touted as the safest neighborhood in LA. The couple survived. But they were held at gunpoint for about twenty minutes as the house was stripped of valuables. That long silence sent them an urgent message: relocate, and fast.

Then there was the fact that he was growing disenchanted with the corporate side of the movie industry. Jackson was finding that the studios weren't being as creative as they once were and had become dominated by MBAs and number crunchers. "They wanted to make movies that aren't adventurous and ride on the coattails of something else," he said.

Looking around for someplace to live, he and his wife sought a town "with none of the evils of urban living, but all the culture and intellectual sophistication you can find in urban centers." And that place was Amherst - home to several name colleges, Emily Dickinson and lots of cultural activities, and now the epicenter of virtual company research as the home of Hidden-Tech. Moreover, the town is just down the road from up-and-coming Northampton, Mass. and the film distribution company, Northern Arts Entertainment, that Jackson co-owns with a partner in nearby Granville, Mass. named John Lawrence Ré, who moved up from New York City many years ago and now lives on 400 acres of wilderness.

"It's wild but he's fully broad-banded and we trek into NYC whenever necessary for major meetings," he says.

Jackson's had his ups and downs in virtual company land, but today he's hyped again. He and Ré were able to secure an initial round of funding to create i-ArtHouse.com, a very special online film library that contains extraordinary films from around the world, "most of which have escaped distribution in North America and some that haven't been seen outside of their country of origin. Many have won significant prizes in major film festivals," he notes.

The launch is imminent. Some of i-ArtHouse.com's films will be available for streaming, some to download to own or rent. Some will be available to burn to an encrypted DVD that the buyer can keep. The combination of those options will vary, says Jackson, explaining that the rights "are different from film to film."

Although not everyone has the connections and capabilities to work in Hollywood-related industry from a home office, Jackson says the industry is changing enough for this to be a possibility for those with tech backgrounds, as well as for for screenwriters, composers, production designers, costumers, animators and even film editors. "An editor can be cutting a film anywhere in the world and communicating with a director anywhere else in the world, with a production company or studio in a third place - all linked through video conferencing."

Stay tuned for more on i-ArtHouse.com. And share you ideas about working for Hollywood from just about anywhere.

One Online Job Board with Promise

2007-08-01T10:02:00.001-04:00

Anyone who has read an ealier post of mine knows that I'm no fan of online job boards. And I am waiting for the recruiting industry (not to mention the corporate world) to catch up to the fact that half of today's work force won't be seeking full-time or possibly even part-time jobs in the future, but project work that allows for a flexible lifestyle.

And I'm not into touting any product, but there is some hope out there with Elance. I tried them out once before and got caught in that blind bid annoyance. No one with any experience wants to bid on a project based on two paragraphs of information and no way to talk to the potential client. Talk about getting sucked into a dark hole where you are working your butt off for pennies per hour, if you're lucky . . .

Elance now allows you to actually query the service provider about the project before bidding. No, it's hardly what SHOULD BE, which is a way of conducting at least a 15 minute conversation. But at least you aren't wasting your time preparing useless bids in a blind fashion.

Alas, you have to pay them for the honor of trying out their system. I'm full enough now professionally that I won't bother, but curious to hear from others if this is worth it.

By the way, I found guru.com pretty worthless. No one took a bid with a decent pricetag. Those who answered my bids wanted me to work on percentage of very iffy sales, or the pricetag was so low ($50 per newsletter edition) that only someone in Sri Lanka would want the job. And I'm hoping those folks wake up and start bidding higher, but that's another rant for another day.

Thoughts and input are welcome!

PROFILE: David Shepherd Is King of Improv from a Home Office

2007-07-21T17:17:00.001-04:00

"Group Creativity. We're doing a lot of very small, creative sessions this summer. If you want to be in one please give me a ring. Thank you."

That's the message you'd get if you called David Shepherd at his home office. A fairly recent migrant from New York to western Massachusetts, Shepherd is best known for his pioneering work in improv theater. Mike Nichols and Elaine May worked with David many years ago in Chicago on a project called Compass. Ed Asner and Alan Alda have been long-time buddies and colleagues.

Oh, and David is now into his 80s.
A lean, slightly gaunt man who is cross patrician and cross "beat," he's a walking advertisement for a creative non-retirement. And he happens to be a virtual company owner working from a home office.

This summer David is turning to his own generation to provide some entertain for people in retirement homes and assisted living arrangements. They'll be given topics like "elder romances," or "giving up driving," or even "interfering boomer children" and get a chance to act them out under the guidance of the master.

With any hope, David will turn this past-time into a money-maker. Because being 82 or so doesn't mean you don't want to make a living, nowadays.

If this has enticed you, locate David's book . . . THAT MOVIE IN YOUR HEAD. It will tell you all about improv theater turned into video experiences. And take heart that you can operate a virtual business long after corporate America says you've had it.

What is the Virtual Work Place?

2007-07-21T17:15:00.000-04:00

I toss this term around and realize not everyone knows what I mean?

Working virtually means relying on advanced communication technology (translate that to a computer and Internet access) to drive your business.

The setting is less important than the operating style. You may operate from a bedroom, a cellar, a garage or the living room.

You may rent space and even have back up help in the form of subcontractors or another principle for your business.

You may telework and maintain a side office.

Perhaps you're a full-time employee building what Barbara Reinhold, a career expert, calls a sidecar business.

And you may want to earn enough to support your lifestyle -- a lifestyle entrepreneur -- or grow a Microsoft.

Any of these categories fit into the virtual work place.

Write to me and tell me who you are and how you operate.

AmyZ

Building Your Virtual Business From Scratch

2007-07-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

I've been getting lots of inquiries about what it takes to get a business going from scratch, so I put together this list based on helping my friend Marge transition from full-time teaching to creating an editing business she named CLEAR CONTENT.

I walked her through these steps last March while visiting in Tucson. It was a crash course, for sure, but you can see that things are popping for Marge when you read a snippet of an email she posted to me today. Here's what Marge, and you, will need to do to get up and going:

BRANDING - Finding a product/service that suits you and branding it. That means giving your business a name that carries the message you want to empart.

ESTABLISHING A BUDGET/BUSINESS PLAN - For a small business (or any) the budget will dictate direction. We look at easy money versus building a business pipeline.

EQUIPMENT - Folks have to have the right technology, which will include a computer, Internet connection (preferably broadband) and a phone/fax. A laptop helps many stay sane as they can work outside the house.

FINANCES - Learning about the IRS and schedule Cs, plus keeping good accounting is very important. Some really smart people work with Quicken, but computer adverse people can do just as well with an accounting ledger.

BUSINESS NETWORKING - Exploring local/national networking options is important to the next category - sales/marketing.

SALES/MARKETING - This is a constant. People need to learn to crack a leads list, cope with cold-calling and how to handle interviews (both in person and remotely)

MANAGING TIME - Another biggie. Everyone has their rhythms. Being a virtual company means you can work with not against yours. But there's danger of sliding into inaction without a schedule

NEGOTIATING A FEE FOR SERVICE OR PRODUCT - Another stumbler for newcomers, but those business networks you join will help you establish the fees that are acceptable in your area versus what you can charge a client in a metro area.

COPING WITH GROWTH - It's often feast or famine in this world. AZ has developed the "accordian" approach to coping with multiple projects (see early blog entry).

Almost five months later, after working through these steps, Marge is getting results. Here's what she has to say:

Two meetings and lots of leads today! Let's see if they truly "lead" anywhere. But one man in BNI, who already does one of those advertising mailers, is starting a tourist-type quarterly magazine, the kind that gets left in hotel rooms, and he wants me to edit! And I have a meeting next week with someone who is a graphic artist who also writes, but I'm hoping she's willing to give some of the writing up to me because the woman who put us together told me that she (the artist) is not that crazy about writing.

Sometimes it's fun here in virtual company land!

PROFILE: Jon Reed is Mr. Virtual Business

2007-07-19T16:07:00.000-04:00

If ever I could conjure up an image of the virtual company business owner as maverick, it's Jon Reed. We met long ago on May 7, 2002 at the very first meeting I staged for Hidden-Tech, the organization I founded for virtual companies in Western Massachusetts and beyond.

Jon sought me out and impressed me with his quiet determination. If 1,500 people enjoy Hidden-Tech's network today it's because Jon, for all his anti-establishment ways, is one of the kindest, most decent guys around. He's also a Hampshire College graduate, which says it all if you know the place.

He describes his entrepreneurial career as "up and down and up again" since the early 1990s. He currently runs his own publishing and consulting company and says he is "sick enough to consider writing books a "hobby." Free from Corporate America is Jon's third book.

His second book, Resumes from Hell, has its own web site which includes sample chapters. Jon's first book, The SAP Consultant Handbook, is a career manual for SAP software professionals. By the way, Jon is currently the Vice President of SAPtips (SAPtips is a subscription-based publication for companies that have implemented SAP software).

Jon is still on the board of Hidden-Tech becuase he has "a passion for helping people to develop a more entrepreneurial approach to their careers." He believes that the "corporate contract" has been broken, and that it's time for people to regain economic control of their lives. Free from Corporate America shares some of Jon's favorite tactics and business philosophies. Those who want to delve even deeper into Jon's obsessions (and read a bit of no-b.s. music journalism) are invited to check out jonreed.net, Jon Reed's "essays, rants, and more" web site.

Jon used to have very short hair. Then he had very long hair and now has short hair again, which may be a commentary on his career. He notes that "this is very important to some people and not very important to others."

He that what matters in business (and in life) "is not how you look, but whether you are truly committed to excellence. Those who don't like how Jon looks don't do business with me. "

Jon continues to prosper, though sometimes it feels more like perseverance than prosperity.

U.S. Census Bureau Showing Rise of Self-Employment

2007-07-17T11:25:00.000-04:00

Got this note from a buddy who used to head up entrepreneurship for the state of Massachusetts. I'm sure in a few years the self-employed figures will be 40-million plus.

We're the vanguard here in Virtual Work Land . . .

The number of self-employed Americans has been rising rapidly for years, and new Census Bureau data indicates that the trend is continuing. Earlier this month, the Census Bureau released the latest numbers (2005) which show that more than 20 million Americans are now self-employed. A deeper look at these numbers yields some astounding figures. Each day, 2,356 Americans decide to go into business for themselves. Their companies account for 78% of all US businesses, and they collectively obtain annual receipts of $951 billion. Georgia (up 7.6%) and Utah (up 7.2%) showed the highest annual increases. The national average increase was 4.4 percent. The fastest growing sector was Web search portals, where the number of self-employed jumped an astounding 41.2 percent in one year.

Access the latest US Census Bureau Nonemployer Statistics.

Come Join AmyZ's Virtual Company Group on Eons.com

2007-07-11T16:03:00.000-04:00

Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com, has developed a really cool site for boomers called Eons.com where you can meet all sorts of folks and share ideas and interests.

I'm hoping this new group will provide a connecting link for virtual company owners beyond my home region of western Massachusetts. If you want to join me in meeting folks nationwide, and even globally, then go to the PEOPLE section of Eons and look for groups listed under Money & Careers.

You can make a post there, and of course, keep reaching me through this blog.

Right now I'm seeking information on your needs, wether you're starting out or a veteran virtual company entrepreneur.

Find me!

Amy Z

The Fordyce Letter Carries AZ Article on the Rise of the Virtual Work Place

2007-07-06T11:33:00.000-04:00

If you have time, dip into the current edition of The Fordyce Letter and read up on the rise of the virtual work place.

The Fordyce Letter is one of the prime newsletters geared to recruiters. The fact that they are running content about how we live and work means that recruiters are starting to get it.

Wouldn't it be great if someone called YOU and sought you out for project work, not just a full-time or part-time job?

This blog is designed to showcase our world so the powers-to-be can see that our needs are not those of folks working in bricks and mortar operations. But we need to make our presence and needs felt.

To get a copy of the article you can write to Paul Hawkinson, Editor at TheFordyceLetter@aol.

Creating that "Accordian" to Give Yourself a Break

2007-07-05T10:18:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, sitting under the tent at Bruce and Joe's 4th of July party in Amherst, Mass., I met a number of virtual company owners.

It didn't take long for that old complaint to rise up: "I'm either working like a dog or not busy enough. I don't dare turn down work when I see jobs in editing like mine going to India, but then I never get a vacation. I love this lifestyle, sort of . . ."

Ah, yes, the stickiest issue in virtual company land (sometimes called freelancing) -- how to have a life and live that virtual American dream?

I can't say my work life is perfect, but I have resolved this issue to a degree over the last 17 years. I've learned to hire and train other subcontractors to assist with work. I NEVER turn down a project unless it's inappropriate to my business, and I DO take time off.

That's because I have a crew of back up researchers and writers I can call on when there's an overload. And when times are a bit slack, I don't utilize my folks as much (and that hurts, but it's the way of the work world).

I call this approach "the accordian." It requires knowing the following:

1) How to break up work in chunks that even a teenager could handle;

2) Training people to do some work that may be out of their realm of knowledge;

3) Managing people remotely.

If you're interested in the particulars of how I make the accordian work, then post some questions and I'll do my best to answer you. In the meantime, it's back to work and checking on my top researcher to make sure he's got the information I need for a client.

Charlie and Jim at the Cutting Edge of THEFUTUREOFWORK

2007-07-01T09:31:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has visited Prescott, Ariz knows that the town is funky and the territory is stunning. But the business opportunities are severely limited, particularly if you don't run a retail store or are involved in tourism. For consultants like Charlie Grantham, selecting Prescott as a base would have been a hard-scrabble choice less than 10 years ago. He would have been forced to live in a congested urban center like Phoenix or run a store.

But Grantham, 57, a pragmatic visionary who was born in the mid-west, educated on the east coast and has lived all over the world - from the U.S. to Europe and Asia thanks to a stint in the military - finding a location to settle was a major concern. Migrating to California in the 1980s to live in an innovative culture, he was driven out by high housing prices and eventually settled in Prescott where homes were half the price as the Silicon Valley. Besides, he feels that "communities like Prescott are where creative talent will go to and I wanted to be one of the first."

At heart a creator and entrepreneur, he creates ideas, products and organizations that relate to the latest trends in work and employment. Recognizing the power of "consciously created new social networks," he and his partner Jim Ware founded The Future of Work in 2002 because "my life experience tells me that the best chance for positive human evolution lies in constantly changing social structures -- NOT hierarchical organized, rigid structures; they are not human in character."

The Future of Work is an outgrowth of The Work Design Collaborative (WDC) that Grantham and Ware began in early 2002 when he joined forces with Jim Ware and recruited several corporate sponsors to address questions about how the changing workforce, new technologies, and new workplace designs were altering the very nature of work. According to its Web site: "The WDC now represents the combined interests, resources, and experiences of Jim and Charlie over the past 25 years. Our partnership has grown out of 10 years of collaborative research and consulting in information technology, human resources, and facilities management," he said.

Charlie and Jim are writing a book about their experiences. Maybe you want to write to them here.

PROFILE: Robert Heller – From Hippie to Programmer and Back Again

2007-07-01T09:22:00.000-04:00

How many people have worked on potato farms and saw mills, are self-taught in almost every computer language imaginable, love model trains and helping teenagers?

Robert Heller, fits this description. A baby boomer from Bethlehem, Penn., he can claim residence at two hippie communes in the 1960s and a huge knowledge of computer programming. Today Heller is owner of Deepwoods Software, based in very woodsy Wendell, Mass.

As for formal education, he says "this is a bit iffy. I went through the usual public school scene while in Phily, but there were many mis-match problems. Lots of random Permission denied, Invalid arguments, Bus Errors, and the ever popular Segmentation Fault. Not a very good experience." Eventually, he dropped out of school and gave it up as a dead loss. I was learning more at home anyway."

By the time he ended up in western Mass. in the mid-1970s he already knew a huge amount about computers. Turning to the University of Massachusetts for continuing ed courses taught by Edward Riseman, he said he "did so well that Ed hired me to do some LISP programming for him." Since then, Heller has learned these programming languages:

* BASIC (who doesn't?)

* FORTRAN (yeah, I've even used it)

* APL (a small amount)

* COBOL (I've written one COBOL program)

* SNOBOL (one of my favorite languages)

* LISP (another favorite language)

* Pascal (I know it, but hate it)

* C (of course)

* C++ (the wave of the future)

* Asssembly language for:

o 6502

o VAX

o 68000

o CDC Cyber (some)

o 8008 (useless at this point)

o 8048 & 8051 (not quite useless)

* Several shell & scripting languages:

o csh (barely)

o Tcl/Tk (getting quite good at this one)

o DCL (used to be very good at this one, but am somewhat rustly now)

And have used these operating systems:

* DTSS

* XVM DOS (PDP-15)

* KRONOS/NOS (CDC Cyber)

* VAX/VMS (one of the best O/Ss)

* UNIX (several flavors: Ultrix, Iris, SunOS, & Linux)

* OS-9/68000 (another one of the best O/Ss)

* CP/M-68K -- a 68000 version of CP/M 2.2

* Apple DOS

* ProDos

* MacOS

* TI Explorer System (runs on TI Explorer LISP Machines)

* p-System (gag me with a spoon)

* MS-DOS (gag me with a fork) & MS-Windows (gag me with a turkey baster)

Although he still works for Riseman and his VISIONS group, Heller started his first virtual business – Deepwoods Software – in 1995. "This a shareware and consulting business. It presently has two shareware products out now: Home Librarian and Role Playing Database. Deepwoods Software (me) owns a virtual web and E-Mail server and now can offer Web Hosting. Deepwoods Software presently hosts the Town Of Wendell's web site and the Wendell Full Moon Coffeehouse's web site," he explained.

And, by the way, despite being 90 miles from Boston, Wendell is very woodsy and remote. It's not the sort of place once usually thinks of for running a business, but the Net/Web has made that possible for Heller and millions of others in the virtual work place. Writer to this blog and tell us how you are making it out there in virtual work land.

Gearing Up That Virtual Summer Marketing Campaign

2007-06-24T10:10:00.000-04:00

Hitting the summer doldrums? Those days you booked to work (and you really need the revenue), but every project feels like it's on hold?
Some years for me there are no doldrums. I barge through the summer months top-speed. But other times the doldrums hit as early as June and it feels like it's pulling teeth to get things rolling until Labor Day.
What can feel very frustrating is actually a perfect time to launch that marketing campaign you've been avoiding. Maybe you hate cold calling. Maybe you don't really know how to develop a lead list so you can cut new business territory. For me it's just getting myself to focus, as I'm one of those strange people who actually enjoy marketing, at least when I can turn it into an adventure.
Now that this blog is launched, I've been really curious how far the bricks and mortar world has become aware of the doings of the virtual world. And with 76 million baby boomers out there who could join us in virtual business land over the next two decades, there has to be some impact. But where? How?
Last winter, over dinner with my buddy Jon Reed (my former co-chair of Hidden-Tech, www.hidden-tech.net and a recruiting/publishing expert), we sorted out some categories that could be feeling the change. Think construction (all those retirement homes and condos) and recruiting/staffing (as the boomers leave their jobs they may want to seek alternatives).
As my strength is in media placement -- or getting articles placed in various publications in print or online -- I called up a researcher friend in Berkeley and asked him to do a rough cut of publications in those fields. With that list assembled, I brought in my top researcher in Amherst and got him rolling on cold calling editors.
In a matter of weeks, we nabbed five publications interested in content relating to the virtual world and the boomers. Some of the articles are heading to publication and others are in the making. In the process, I've met some amazing people like Bill Vick and Jeff Taylor (founder of Monster.com and Eons.com) and we're talking about ways we might serve the virtual work place.
No money is rolling in from this venture, but ideas are sprouting. And, as always, articles that are unpaid and lead to those with pricetags and possible consulting down the line. And whatever beats the summer doldrums is worthwhile in my book.
Write to me and tell me aobut your summer marketing campaign.

Virtual Assistants Are Booming

2007-06-18T10:49:00.000-04:00

From Publicity Hound (www.publicityhound.com)

This month, Reader's Digest and the Wall Street Journal both have

articles on the booming virtual assistant industry.

Stay-at-home moms and dads as well as talented but sometimes

jaded employees who are tired of the corporate world are setting

up shop for themselves, working for clients in their own

communities or thousands of miles away.

With skills such as bookkeeping, website development and public

relations, they're helping clients get speaking engagements,

maintain their websites, do invoicing, compile media kits, help

with other publicity tasks and do lots of other detail work that

drives people like me crazy.

"There is so much work for VAs, the field is thriving, absolutely

booming," said VA Diana Ennen, who was quoted in the Reader's

Digest article. She is the co-author of "Virtual Assistant the

Series: Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA."

My own virtual assistant has freed me up to plan and launch three

major projects that will create new revenue streams this year.

Isn't it time you, too, stopped trying to do it all yourself?

I'll even help you.

PROFILE: Shel Horowitz Is A Whizz at Virtual Marketing

2007-06-17T13:20:00.001-04:00

Shel Horowitz was still a teenager when he started doing publicity for grass-roots community organizations with zero promotional budget. With no money available for stamps, he used to hand-deliver press releases by bicycle. Trained as a journalist, he first became aware of the power of the news media when a local paper refused to print his meeting notices for a controversial group-but gave extensive news coverage to its refusal. From this beginning, Shel gradually developed into a top expert in effective low-cost, high-impact marketing and publicity, and has become a copywriter and consultant with an international reputation.

He has also been living the virtual American dream by operating a successful virtual business owner for the last 13 years -- Accurate Writing & More -- from a bucolic farm-house setting in Hadley, Mass. He and his wife, Dina Friedman, a children's book author and academic, came to this lifestyle region in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts (also known as the "Five Colleges" region) "as a compromise between Brooklyn and the Ozarks.” They wanted “fresh air, clean water and an easy pace. Dina wanted job possibilities, friends, others of her ethnicity in the area, so we looked at the intersection of our needs and came to the Valley," said Horowitz.

While looking for work, Shel and Dina started a term paper typing service. Without realizing it, they were experiencing the ups and downs of starting a micro virtual business of the many that will be profiled in Living The Virtual American Dream. First, they bought a used IBM Selectric for $176 at a school auction and spent $12 each on marketing and supplies. Because Dina found a job first, the business became Shel's responsibility.

"It was a real slow start: $300 revenue in the first six months, $5,000 in the next year as I began to figure out what marketing worked and what didn't. Over time, I shifted from typing to resumes to marketing materials," all the while hoping to continue as a freelance writer. Although he sold 87 articles his first year of freelancing, he made "a pitiful $2.000 total, so I decided that freelancing wasn't going to pay the bills and started developing the business more."

In time Shel got his first computer – what he calls his "biggest step toward viability" -- along with ordering a dedicated business phone line and starting to list in the Yellow Pages. By 1987 the business was strong enough to be the sole support for the family. Dina now teaches at the University of Massachusetts out of choice, not because the business can't support her. In the meantime, Shel started writing marketing books "as a way to develop a national clientele for copywriting and consulting. It worked, but it didn't really happen until I became active online."

Twenty-five years later he's still working at home, but his client lists extends to Japan, Cyprus, Belgium and beyond. He has no employees, though he had a "virtual assistant" for about eight years whom he never met face-to-face. "From my small platform I've been able to instigate an international movement around business ethics; publish and market my sixth book – Principled Profit: Marketing the Puts People First, and create a distinct niche for partnerships with industry experts," he said

If you want to meet more experts like Shel you can walk you through the how-to's of the virtual work place, stay tuned . . ..

PROFILE: HBWM at Vanguard of Virtual Company Trend for "Moms"

2007-06-13T10:46:00.000-04:00

Starting in 2008 the virtual company movement will get a huge boost as the first wave of 76 million baby boomers reach official retirement age.

Imagine 20 million people in the U.S., exiting the work place in five-year segments over the course of the next two decades. In total, that's half of today's work place. In Canada, the boomers representing a third of the work place, according to the Canadian Census.

Although many boomers will undoubtedly settle down to traditional retirements, clogging golf courses and rushing to "early bird specials" at local restaurants, polls in the U.S. and Canada indicate that a large percentage of college-educated boomers may continue working in non-traditional ways. Sources as diverse as Newsweek's "Boomer Files," Yahoo, and surveys published in Commonwealth Magazine, based in Boston, Mass., have reported as many as 70 percent of boomers want to build their own enterprises. And the 2005 MassINC survey ("A Generation in Transition: A Survey of Bay State Boomers"), reported that almost two-thirds of adults aged 40 to 58 expect keep working after they reach the traditional retirement age of 65, but only 6 percent plan to keep a full-time work schedule.

No one needs to tell Home-Based Working Mom's founder Lesley Spencer Pyle that the virtual work place is rising, especially for women. Spencer turned a childhood tragedy into a home-based career that's become a triumph for working moms. Founder and director of Home-Based Working Moms, an online network based in Spring, Texas, Pyle is now a columnist and author of The Work-at-Home Workbook who manages six online Websites that cater to home-based working mothers. Newly remarried, she's expecting a baby in August and has a child from a previous marriage.

Spencer Pyle grew up in a single-parent home in Tomball, Texas. She lost her father to suicide when she was 13. Finances were tight after her dad's death and her family didn't consider college an option. Moreover, she lost her first job out of high school as a secretary during an economic downturn. Not to be deterred, she found a way to enter Texas State University with loans and grants, graduating in 1990 as a Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in journalism and pubic relations. A full scholarship from Rotary International enabled Spencer to earn a master's degree in public relations and marketing from the University of Stirling in Scotland in 1993.

During this time she married and became PR Coordinator for a golf school and tour clinic in Austin. By now a "career woman" who intended to put her education to use, she found her world shifting when she became pregnant. "My world did a complete turnaround when our baby came into the world. I saw her, and my heart overflowed with joy. I immediately fell in love with her and could not imagine leaving her every day in someone else's care."

Determining to stay home with the baby, she and her husband agreed she could work freelance and set about slashing family expenses. Although they had to scrimp, she was happy with the arrangement in most ways. What she missed, though, was the support of office colleagues. The more she talked to other home-based working mothers, the more she discovered they had similar needs to connect and needed information on everything from marketing to accounting. But, she says, "there was no way to support one another through networking without a base for us to connect through."

Spencer Pyle was already noodling a concept for HBWM when some national publicity in "Baby Magazine" in 1995 helped her announce the network. By 1997, she was able to launch the HBWM Web site and began offering a wide variety of information on starting home businesses of all types, as well as the how-to's of managing and maintaining a business.

"Members," she says, "can also search for home business opportunities, advertise their business, network and get support from other parents who have been successful in combining home-based work with parenting. There is a free weekly newsletter with both business tips and parenting information. The association offers special advantages for members including a free listing of your products and services, national publicity opportunities with newspapers, magazines and TV programs that contact us, corporate discounts, a members-only email discussion listserv, free publications and more."

At this writing, HBWM has 400 members who pay a $69 flat fee to join. Spencer says 9,000 people subscribe to the free, advertising-supported newsletter and many buy her kits. The Web site averages five million hits a year. Through these services and fees, plus operating four more Web sites, she's able to make a living as a single mother today. Plus, she has the satisfaction of helping other parents, particularly moms, like herself.

Those like Spencer Pyle willing to connect employers seeking subcontractors to what will undoubtedly be legions of boomers seeking project are well positioned to service the growing virtual workplace. There are indications from staffing and recruiting companies that corporations are preparing to fill the gap retiring boomers will create with subcontractors rather than full-time employees - many of them boomers operating virtual businesses from homes or small office settings close to their residences.

And in March, "The Daily" cited a new study - New Frontiers in the Research on Retirement - that predicts the rate of self-employment will grow in Canada by more than 20 percent as the baby boomers leave organizations only to work for themselves. Already, major corporations such as IBM and CISCO are hiring more home-based workers, creating "hybrid" companies with full-time staff augmented by subcontractors.

Michael Teitz, professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley in city and regional planning, believes that the baby boomers are redefining the notion of retirement and, in doing so, "change the economic base of communities all over the place. We're seeing whole chunks of the regions and sub-regions becoming lifestyle regions." He says it's easy to dismiss the virtual company trend "as pretty small and not amounting to much, but the world has changed. It's just not the way it was."

Spencer Pyle believes we will "see more and more moms, baby boomers, retirees and other segments of the population move towards working from home. The benefits are just too great and the advantage for our environment, and reduction in traffic, work in everyone's favor."

She adds that "is has been and is my passion to help mom professionals find their place working from home. Our newest Website, HireMyMom.com, is gaining in popularity and helping hundreds of moms find true work-from-home-options."

BOX - HBWM Success Stories: ________________________________________

The following are some examples of how WBWM is helping its members:

"I want to share with you what a difference HBWM has made for me in my life. By joining HBWM, I met other women who have helped me develop my self-esteem. Thank you, Lesley, for all the wonderful experiences I have had through HBWM." - Mary Waggoner.

"Just wanted to make sure you knew that the TODAY show did choose Stroller Strides for one of their segments. They shot all day yesterday! It's all thanks to HBWM! That alone will make me a member for life! Keep up the great work!" -- Lisa Druxman, StrollerStrides.com

"Just wanted to give a big thanks to HBWM! A new client found me while searching for a virtual assistant through the HBWM website. Also, Parenting Magazine called me to get my permission to use a quote I had sent in some time ago. Thanks Lesley for a great networking avenue. I've always said, HBWM is the best!" -- Karen L. Reddick, www.vandeservices.com

"I love HBWM!!! Your website has helped me with my online business in SO many ways. I've met tons of terrific woman that have been more than helpful also and really work together to promote each others websites/businesses. Quite honestly, I think I would be very lost if I hadn't found and joined your website. Please keep up the fantastic work!!!!" -- Kari Zavsza, Skylar's Treasures

"I've seen several women's "work at home" groups on the net. This one is BY FAR the best and has the most interesting and most inspiring people subscribing. Once again, I'm honored and excited to be a part of such an incredible networking group. Congrats to every single other work-at-home person on HBWM. You are all great." -- Peggy Wheeler

Are the Online Project Boards the Way to Go?

2007-06-11T09:34:00.000-04:00

Entering virtual company land means knowing how to brand your business and market yourself remotely, sometimes across thousands of miles of cyberspace.

Until recently, the recruiting/staffing world pretty much ingored this sector in favor of permanent employment or placing temp workers. Experts in recruiting like Bill Vick, CEO of Vick and Associates, Plano, Texas, who has worked out of his back bedroom for 20 years and built four successful businesses this way, says about 80 percent of American corporations are "starting to wake up and realize we're in a true global economy. There are still a lot of old-school managers who feel that they need to touch and see employees and employees who need the structure, but the electronic walls are becoming broader, bigger and better."

In the next year or so, 76 million baby boomers start leaving the traditional world of work and many say they will enter the world of virtual work. And they're going to be looking for projects rather than jobs. But how will they find them unless their old bosses offer them a consulting berth? Human networking still works pretty well and I'll address that in later posts, but the world of online job boards and networks is now capturing 15 percent of the recruiting/staffing world.

I've dabbled out in Elance land and LinkedUp and always found something lacking. Not being able to put my finger on it, I tried out guru.com for a week and finally figured out what was missing for me and wrote to Bill about it along with sending one of the most unbelievable project postings I've ever seen:

"I see a project with POTENTIAL, but I really haven't a clue what the work will entail. I'm then supposed to make a bid on a project where, once again, I'm not really clear what the work is about and whether the price I'm stating is remotely going to cover the work demands.

"I'm just too seasoned to want to play this way. I want to talk to someone about what they want and sort through how we can work together. This cuts out the interview/negotiation process, which can really prove valuable for both parties," I write to Bill.

Here's the posting:

Company A is seeking an individual for a recurring project (12 Month Project) involving the development and management of a company newsletter.

This project will require the individual to develop, format, compile and deliver for final approval the newsletter to Williams Associates on a monthly basis.

At this time, the budget for this project is $50.00 per edition and anyone interested in this project is asked to NOT bid in excess of this amount.

Bill writes back:

Hi Amy - yes, the world is flat and my guess is this guy will find

somebody for $50 and the old story is you get what you pay for.

Let's Begin at the Beginning . . .

2007-06-08T21:18:00.000-04:00

. . . Afterall, for me starting my own business from a home office, was a journey . . .

It started in the summer of 1986 when I was unhappily employed at a newspaper then undergoing a grueling buyout. I was in my early 30s and already had a decade or more of work experience under my belt.

I knew I had lots of untapped skills, or transferable skills . . . I could gather, sort, write and edit information at high speeds and with a high-level of accuracy. And I could assist in making a product every day; sometimes more than once a day. Plus, I knew how to drive my work and create a pipeline to keep information flowing and I could network at will. No one survives the news world without being able to pick up a phone and call anyone at any time.

But sitting in a newsroom at 7 a.m. with auditors hovering over my desk while I rewrote the morning paper wasn't what I considered fulfilling, let alone for OK pay. Then there was the issue of advancement. In the corporate world you advance because someone has a use for you, or you're lucky to be recognized. I was doing fine on the job, but I knew this wasn't a place that woudl stretch me. There had to be a better way.

So I quit. I had a book to promote, my first book, and wanted to shoot the moon. Nothing was going to get in the way of finding out how far I could take my dreams. In those days I called myself a freelancer because I lived from project to project to support my "book habit." But, in time, I saw the intrigue of developing a small business where I could build long-term relationships with customers or clients, develop a revenue stream and even hire some subcontractors to help me out.

So, sometime around 1991, with the back up of a PC and fax machine, I became a virtual company entrepreneur and I've been on my own ever since. I think the thing I love the most about working on my own is not dreading Mondays. Not every day is exciting and there have been huge ups and downs over the last 16 years, but I'm rarely bored. I no longer have to sit at my desk "looking busy," or suffer endless meetings. On good days I feel like the world is my oyster to explore and there are no limits except my own energy.

So, I've shared some thoughts with you. Tell me about why you made the leap to the world of virtual work.

Hello from the Virtual Work Place

2007-06-07T11:13:00.000-04:00

It's almost 11:15 on a gorgeous late spring day and I'm waiting for the phone to ring for my 11 a.m. appointment.

Finally, for the first time in ages, I'm caught up. No issues with my teenager are pending and I actually resolved my health insurance purchase. But at $510 a month I will be scoping for a better deal.

Hey, I'm actually pay my bills and moreso, which is a good place to be when operating a virtual business.

But what I'm missing is input from lots of people who work on their own in small office settings like me. I want to know how you get your work and how your manage your business. Do you like online placement services like guru.com or elance, or do you get projects by word of mouth references?

I'm collecting these sorts of experiences, plus advice and tips, for this blog and maybe a new book down the line. So find me, OK?

AmyZ