Chapter 1 Excerpt - I Brushed the Sand Off My Suit
My days began abruptly at 5:45am with a loud blast of music from the clock radio on the dresser. I would shower, shave, and put on a suit, shirt and requisite tie. If there was time, I'd eat a bowl of cereal, pour some coffee in my travel mug and head out the door at 6:45am. If I was lucky, 45 minutes later I would pull into the parking lot at 7:30am. Assuming I had the customary and usual reports, meetings, conference calls and email threads, I would get back in my car around 6:30pm, and arrive home around 7:15pm. I would repeat this routine five days a week, except on travel days when I'd get up at 4:30am to make a 7am flight. These were extended hour days which often exceeded 16 hours before settling down at my non-descript business hotel. Now let's fast forward to a more recent work day.
My morning began in a plush condo with commanding views of the Gulf of Mexico, 21 floors above the cascading pools of the Portofino Resort. Before I sauntered down to the beach, I made a quick call to one of my clients, finalizing a minor item on a major contract. I zipped off an email to their prospective client, a multibillion corporation, asking if they would move forward with the $100,000 agreement with this minor change. Now that I've gone virtual, it's a little bit challenging to determine when I'm working or when I'm on vacation, in either case, I never put in the long hours many of us have endured in the traditional grind. When on vacation I might work an hour a day, and when I'm not on vacation, I work about six hours a day albeit in an extremely casual, flexible and comfortable environment. You can accomplish more in six hour virtual day than you can in a traditional ten hour business day. As a result of this productivity leap, my virtual company has yielded millions of dollars in sales on behalf of my clients and over a million dollars in personal income to me in just the last few years. I now have plenty of time for family, friends and personal pursuits like community activism, travel, reading, running, weight lifting, hiking, golfing, bowling and scuba diving, and on this day in September, a sunny day at a beautiful beach.
The white six panel condo door of the Portofino locked securely behind me as I departed for a few hours of beach time. Five minutes later I was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico in 80 degree water, watching the mullets dart into the air. I then settled into my blue canvass lounge chair and admired the unspoiled panoramic gulf view. I was equipped with all the essentials my virtual office required, which at this moment was simply a cup of coffee and my cell phone. About two hours later I received a call, "we're all set with the contracts - send over the finals". I brushed the sand off my suit as I headed back to the condo to email the final contracts. My business suit might be different from yours, on this day it happened to be a bathing suit, but then again, it is only a mild diversion from the typical sweat pants and t-shirt I wear in my home office. As I glanced back toward the beach I noticed there were plenty of empty blue canvas lounge chairs available in my current virtual office - in fact one of them might just have your name on it. Let's review a virtual path that will help you join me here or the destination of your choice.
My company, StartUpSelling, Inc., is in the business of helping other businesses grow, and I could help my clients accomplish this from essentially anywhere that I could find a phone and an internet connection. Your business can operate like this too. Over the last few years I've presented to Vice Chairman of Billion Dollar Corporations, CEOs of $100 Million Corporations and countless owners of organizations large and small, they in their suits and ties and me in my sweat pants and T-shirt. All of these meetings have been virtual, it's a rare occurrence that requires an in person business meeting. Thus I enjoy a highly flexible working environment and lifestyle in great part due to the power of the virtual model I perfected, using cutting edge virtual sales and marketing techniques, and leveraging a highly skilled team of virtual staff worldwide. This book will show you how to apply these strategies to start a new business in any industry or make your existing company virtual, or at least more virtual.
The more virtual your business, the more flexible the hours, the lower the overhead, the greater the profit potential and the easier it is for the entrepreneur or independent sales professional to use their strengths doing what they do best. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur starting with just a few hundred dollars, a small business scrambling for venture or expansion capital, or a sales professional in insurance, stocks, real estate or any other services business, I can show you a virtual path that is far more likely to result in success than traditional business models. What I am about to teach is not a theory, it isn't conjecture, I've done it myself and taught many others how to leverage a dynamic, fluid, profitable virtual business model.
If I can do it so can you - in most regards I'm just an average guy. My formative teenage years were spent in a shabby little bowling alley in Lynn, Massachusetts. My high school track record was less about education and more about cutting classes. My 1980 Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Northeastern University was hardly a ticket on the fast train to riches. I don't speak multiple languages (not even Pig Latin), I won't be a championship Tango dancer, and it's highly unlikely I will ever qualify for the US Olympic Team.
But I do know one thing: how to build a highly successful virtual company, and how to teach others to do so in an interesting and exciting way allowing them to replicate my results. My own enviable virtual business model has increased my freedom, obliterated my commute, optimized my flexibility, increased my income and drastically improved my life. I can live anywhere, go on vacation any time I want and create whatever level of income I desire. I can clearly show individuals and companies the implementation strategy to quickly set up a viable and profitable virtual business, in both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) environments.
End of Chapter 1 excerpt.
Feel free to continue to the next page to read an excerpt from Chapter 4.
Chapter 4 Excerpt - How to Create a Virtual Business in 72 Hours
I pulled on a pair of sweatpants, found my favorite blue t-shirt, donned my socks and slippers and walked downstairs to the basement. I needed a desk for my new home office, but didn't have one. The door creaked as I walked into my back basement. I lived in this house for twenty years; surely I must have some type of old desk stowed away down here. Unfortunately, after a couple of minutes in the musty, dimly lit room, I could see there was none to be found. But wait a minute, over in a dusty corner I spotted an old laminate counter and two beat up black file cabinets. My son had used these for a makeshift desk when he was a teenager allowing him to store additional clutter in his room, thus ensuring he could make his room look like a fully functioning junk yard. They had been leaning against the wall collecting dust for the last ten years and had not yet been tossed in the unlikely event someone was ever to need them. I carried them upstairs to a spare bedroom and slid the laminate counter top onto the opposing file cabinets. There was a cup resting on a closet shelf. I dumped a few pens and pencils in the cup, not really ever intending to use a pencil but somehow feeling reassured that it was a good idea nonetheless. I grabbed a phone that was in a "spare parts" drawer and plugged it into the wall. I was almost done. I gently placed my eBay purchased, Dell laptop on my new makeshift desk and powered it up. I had ordered the laptop a couple of days earlier and connected it to an existing wireless Linksys router. It seemed to work just fine. I connected my Dell to the all-in-one HP Printer, Scanner, Fax I purchased at Staples the day before. Lastly I rolled in a chair in from another room. My office basics were ready in 48 hours. I downloaded some Top 100 lists and imported them into an Excel spreadsheet, and hit the phones calling prospects on day three. I had a fully functioning virtual office. Granted, this presupposes that you have found a virtual business idea that works in this environment, and that you have a telephone and voice mail pitch ready to go. Today, there are so many great virtual business concepts available today, it's hard to imagine that you cannot come up with a viable idea, and with the methods discussed in this book, your telephone and voice mail pitch, or PPC campaign will follow closely behind.
As mentioned in Business Basics Chapter, my investment at this point was $600 for a used laptop (which came with Microsoft Office), $199 for the printer and $25 a month for VoIP unlimited calling in North America. You should add Skype, a free computer to computer calling and video conferencing solution which is a great communication tool for working with contractors and higher tech prospects. Skype is PC based and can also be used to call traditional phone lines using a quality headset in place of your PC microphone and speakers. There were a couple of other important items for my type of virtual business and most probably for yours. I also needed a real time meeting (collaboration) solution, and ultimately chose GoToMeeting which does a fantastic job and costs about $39 per month (first 30 days are free). Real time online meeting and web conferencing software like GoToMeeting, Webex, or Live Meeting are the backbone of any virtual operation. They are very inexpensive to use and typically work great. (continued on next page)
Low costs in a self-funded company mean low or no debt and a much faster path to profitability. Even in an eBay oriented B2C business, you might need online meeting software to collaborate with vendors, suppliers, partners and virtual contractors. These solutions are the great enablers, providing unlimited collaboration of your digital information and unlimited conference calling over traditional and VoIP lines.
My business didn't initially require a web site, but when I needed one, I created a nice looking web site for about $150 (this assumes you are doing most of copy and design work yourself). For about $10 per year I could register my domain name (www.yourcompanyname.com). For another $3 per month, I could add hosting services including email, email forwarding, etc. Ultimately I added all of these options, with my costs still under $100 per year. If you've been downsized, laid off, outsourced or just fired for no good reason, or if you want to start a business on a part time and have limited cash and resources, follow this model and you can be in business fast with almost no capital outlay required.
For more information contact:
Wendy Keller
Keller Media, Inc.
23852 W Pacific Coast Hwy Suite 701
Malibu, CA 90265
800-278-8706
WKeller(@)KellerMedia.com