Your Virtual Success: Finding Profitability in an Online World

INTRODUCTION

A Tale of Two Nephews

Let me tell you a true story I call A Tale of Two Nephews. One of my nephews—let’s call him Jack—works for a software company in a high-tech state and earns a very compelling income. Accomplishing this, as many of you may know, is no easy task. His commute takes almost two hours a day, adding 10 hours to an already-intense, 50-hour workweek. He works very hard, every hour of every day, and, at least once a month, he travels the Eastern United States, adding bonus hours to his arduous workweek. Not long ago, he mentioned that his manager told him that overall sales needed to be higher, and, though he was over quota, he needed to find a way to increase sales—even if he had to work harder. Make more calls and produce more business was the tenor of the discussion. This came as a surprise to my nephew Jack; after all, he is a top producer, is an over-quota sales executive, and is already putting in 60 hours a week. He eats lunch at his desk every day while he pounds the phones and sends follow-up e-mails. Thus, my nephew Jack is a talented and financially successful young man, but one very stressed-out nephew who often laments about high quotas and lengthy, frustrating commutes.

My other nephew—let’s call him Mark—is a contractor for StartUpSelling, Inc. He works virtually, less than 40 hours a week, perhaps 25 to 30 hours, though I cannot say for sure because I don’t track his hours. He has no commute and creates his own schedule. He takes a walk, rides a bike, or swims every day. He rarely gets out of his shorts and t-shirt yet watched his income double during the past year. He seems very happy and relaxed, and has enjoyed recent trips to Aruba, Boston, and Santa Barbara. He is a contractor, not an employee, and each day he determines his own hours, his own schedule, and the resource allocation for his own team. He is one relaxed and happy nephew.

Which nephew would you prefer to be? It’s certainly not the best of times and the worst of times for my nephews, but it is a great virtual time for one of them and a stressful brick-and-mortar time for the other.

Virtual means good, fast, and cheap. It means efficient, cost effective, profitable, flexible, and eco-friendly. My virtual model offers an easier path to profits, and, perhaps more importantly, it provides the time to enjoy these profits from a lifestyle standpoint. It means a better lifestyle and more time with friends and family. It is a better way for many, and, in one specific instance, for my nephew, who now reaps the benefits of my virtual company and the quality of life.

I wrote Your Virtual Success to help all of those whose lives are consumed by stress, long commutes, difficult bosses, and debtors at the door, to find a better way and a more efficient model to yield a better balance in their lives and an improved quality of life. Your Virtual Success is a guide to illustrate some of the best practices and preferred approaches, state-of-the-art tools, and tricks of the trade to help you navigate the virtual business road. This may be the road less traveled for many at the moment, but far more of us will be embarking on this journey in the very near future. Let’s delve into the dramatic business and personal benefits of my virtual model.

CHAPTER 1

I Brushed the Sand off My Suit

My days began abruptly at 5:45 a.m. with a loud blast of music from the clock radio on my 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 6:45 a.m. If I was lucky, 45 minutes later I would pull into the parking lot at 7:30 a.m. Assuming I had the customary and usual reports, meetings, conference calls, and e-mail threads, I would get back in my car around 6:30 p.m., and arrive home around 7:15 p.m. I would repeat this routine five days a week, except on travel days when I’d get up at 4:30 a.m. to make a 7 a.m. flight. These were extended-hour days often exceeding 16 hours before I could settle down at my non-descript business hotel. Now let’s fast forward to a more recent workday.

My morning begins in a plush condo with commanding views of the Gulf of Mexico, 21 floors above the cascading pools of the Portofino Resort. Before I saunter down to the beach, I make a quick call to one of my clients and finalize a minor item on a major contract. I zip off an e-mail to their prospective client, a multibillion-dollar 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 at work 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 or two a day, and when I’m not on vacation, I work about five or six hours a day, albeit in an extremely casual, flexible, and comfortable environment. I can accomplish more in a five- or six-hour virtual day than I could in a traditional 10-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 more than 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 such as community activism, travel, reading, running, weight lifting, hiking, golfing, bowling, scuba diving, and, on this day in September, a sunny day at a beautiful beach.

The white, six-panel condo door of the Portofino locks securely behind me as I depart for a few hours of beach time. Five minutes later, I am swimming in the Gulf of Mexico in 80-degree water, watching the mullets dart into the air. I then settle into my blue canvas lounge chair and admire the unspoiled panoramic gulf view. I am equipped with all the essentials my virtual office requires, which at this moment is simply a cup of coffee and my cell phone. About two hours later I receive a call: We’re all set with the contracts; send over the finals. I brush the sand off my suit as I head back to the condo to e-mail the final contracts. My business suit might be different from yours; on this day it happens to be a bathing suit. Then again, it is only a mild diversion from the typical sweat pants and t-shirt I wear in my home office. As I glance back toward the beach, I notice there are 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 to help you join me here or at the destination of your choice.

My company, StartUpSelling, Inc., is in the business of helping other businesses grow. I help my clients accomplish this from essentially anywhere I can find a phone and an Internet connection. Your virtual business can operate like this, too. Over the last few years, I’ve presented to vice chairmen 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 requiring an in-person business meeting. I enjoy a highly flexible working environment and lifestyle in great part due to the power of the virtual model I perfected. It uses cutting-edge virtual sales and marketing techniques, and leverages a highly skilled team of virtual staff worldwide. This book will show you how to apply these same 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 professional to use his or her strengths doing what he or she does 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 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, and 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 bachelor’s 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 U.S. Olympic Team.

I do know one thing; I know 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.

My virtual model has resulted in large, six-figure deals with people that I never met face to face—and never will—and small sales that would never be profitable in a traditional business environment. I’ve finalized large, six-figure sales in Europe, Australia, South America, and North America, easily and efficiently from my small, Massachusetts-based virtual office. I am sometimes thousands of miles from my clients’ corporate suites, yet a mere stone’s throw away in virtual terms. You will learn how to mirror this process utilizing proven techniques such as virtual presentations, the virtual elevator pitch, eMarketing, eCollateral, Web seminars, online meetings, virtual Website creation, online social networks, and asynchronous collaboration. I delve into the secrets of securing new clients for a virtual startup, and offer tips on virtual hiring, management, and cost-effective methods for the international expansion of a virtual operation. And of course, I demystify the cost-effective, leading-edge Internet-based tools that are available to everyone, as long as you know what to ask for and where to look for them.

Over the last five years I learned how to apply all of my best growth practices to a virtual business, leveraging the new tools and technologies enabling small companies to sell globally, easily, and profitably. I help many of my clients learn and benefit from my virtual model. My clients, many in seemingly stodgy, traditional markets, have learned to profit from my virtual company techniques, including: outsourcing, insourcing, Website refinements, remote collaboration, and a virtual style of management. Using these techniques, you can hire talented people globally, and coach, manage, and monitor virtually. Many of these talented individuals were underemployed or simply not employable in a traditional environment. Yet these highly qualified individuals have been easy to find on Craigslist and other online sources, and can usually be found with zero search costs. The virtual paradigm shift has already happened, and the good, fast, cheap paradigm has changed as a result of the Internet-based tools now available. A decade ago you had to pick any two of those three options (good and fast but not cheap, or fast, and cheap but not good). Today you can get all three using my virtual model, and the good, fast and cheap internet business tools now available. It’s not difficult for you to do this; Your Virtual Success will teach you how to master this model.

No Specific Marketable Skills

In retrospect, my evolution to a virtual business seems simple enough, though my initial career goal was merely to find a way to pay the rent. My political science degree resulted in a well-rounded, but not necessarily marketable, education. Many of you may have experienced a similar feeling when you completed your education and then disembarked into the real world. Though political science seemed obtuse at the time, my education did allow me to fortuitously touch upon computers at an opportune moment. We were at the beginning of the personal computer revolution in the early 1980s, and, because I had no specific, marketable skills, I decided to knock on the door of this emerging industry. Roughly translated, this means I hoped the people in this new industry were desperate enough to hire me. There were a number of new computer stores—the predecessor’s to today’s big-box computer stores—opening up in the Boston area. Though I knew little about these new personal computer devices and had no specifically relevant background, the good news was that neither did anyone else. So I picked up the phone book and looked up computer stores. I started with the As, and by the time I got to the letter C I was hired as a salesperson by a Charlestown, Massachusetts–based computer store, a modest retail establishment located in an old brownstone under the shadows of the famous Bunker Hill Monument.

It was very exciting—a hapless political science major getting his foot in the side door of an emerging industry! I would receive a truly modest salary of $9,000 a year. By anyone’s standards, my salary was really, really low at the time. I would, however, earn commissions, which offered some good upside opportunity if I ever sold anything substantial. It seemed to be a great way to learn about this new field from the ground up while gaining some real world experience, and I might just make enough to pay the rent.

The results, to be candid, surprised me. It seemed I had an affinity for bootstrapped sales and marketing, and enough understanding of PCs to be able to respond to most inquiries, which, during the dawn of the PC revolution, allowed me to appear as a knowledgeable oasis amid a desert of general incompetence. Within six months I was earning more than $35,000 per year, which doesn’t sound like much now, but in 1982 you could purchase a nice home in Massachusetts for $100,000. Eighteen months later I landed an outside sales position with a new computer company and doubled my income. In 1986, four years after my departure from Northeastern University, I was hired as a director of sales and marketing for a small computer company, and my income exceeded $100,000. Not bad for a local high school punk with lackluster grades and a spotty track record—and it’s a safe bet that your high school transcript looked better than mine.

INC 500 List

During the last couple of decades, I worked as a vice president of sales and marketing for half a dozen small companies and recorded consistently compelling results. I led the fledgling sales and marketing efforts at Practice Management Systems, Inc. and within a few short years recorded growth sufficient to land on the prestigious INC 500 list for two consecutive years, and did so without any outside capital or venture funding. How difficult is it to grow fast enough to get on the INC 500 list? In the last 25 years only 8,000 companies out of a pool of millions of possible candidates have ever achieved INC 500 status, and fewer than half of these companies have ever achieved it twice. I ramped up another small company from zero to an annual run rate approaching $20 million in two short years, and doubled, tripled, or exponentially increased the sales of numerous other small companies. Accordingly, I received rich annual compensation packages with all the associated perks including travel, stock options, expense account, car allowance, and more. Along the way, I learned many important tips and tricks, and created many of my own to foster growth in good times and bad. It was a win-win, with just one serious downside: I was burning a lot of hours and traveling frequently. How many of you have experienced the frustration of airport delays, clogged highways, stationary trains, and 12-hour plus days while on business trips?

While I traveled haphazardly across the globe, my children were growing up fast. During one stint I worked as many as 70 hours a week, recording a 20-hour day every other Monday while traveling from Boston to California. I should have had my head examined for accepting a promotion to senior vice president of sales and marketing of a West Coast company while living in Boston, but I felt an obligation to assist during a time of transition. Then again, transition is an important component in the definition of most small technology companies, for they seem to be transitioning all the time. Virtual companies transition frequently, too. Virtual companies, however, don’t have the onerous brick-and-mortar overhead, out-of-touch venture capitalists, and big-company executives with their associated salaries, perks, and big-company business philosophies found at many small, venture capital-backed companies. It was a happy day when I accepted a position with a local firm and left this West Coast company’s unrealistic expectations behind. Nonetheless, I was still conforming to the 60-hour work week when combined with the requisite 60-to-90-minutes-per-day commute. Regardless of the reasons, the end result was the same: more time on the road and less time with the family. It was around this time in my life that I asked myself how I could earn enough to support a great lifestyle from an economic standpoint, yet spend significantly more time with my family. I’m sure this same thought crosses the minds of many of you who suffer from the rat race paradox, or who merely face a long and difficult daily commute.

Look for Transition Opportunities to Create Your Virtual Business

My answer came at a supremely fortuitous time: through a layoff and severance package, compliments of my venture capital–backed employer. Severance packages offer an optimum opportunity to transition from a traditional employee position to an entrepreneurial endeavor of your own. Severance packages are actually personal investment vehicles you can use to create your own virtual enterprise. In a matter of a few weeks, I was working from home, and, within a few months, because of the structure of my new company and my