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Thou Shalt Unplug: Implementing A Secular Sabbath

We web workers who spend most of our waking hours online live a paradoxical life--we are uber connected, infinitely reachable, and almost always available to various people around the globe.

But this perpetual connectedness to other people through the virtual world (IM, email, internet, phone, etc) can often lead to a feeling of being disconnected from what is real. We lose our quiet time, we lose our privacy, and sometimes the technology that is so great at connecting us to folks far away acts as a wall between ourselves and the people in our real everyday life.

 We love technology and being connected, but what we're searching for is some balance so that we use technology intelligently but are not controlled by it.

What Does Your Virtual Office Look Like?

The cool thing about having a virtual business is that your office can look however you like and be wherever you like, and we tend to set things up in a way that just works best for us. It seems like the variations of our virtual workspaces are endless.

For example, a couple weeks ago we were talking about how some online entrepreneurs were renting outside office space at cool co-working facilities. There are other folks I know who sail around the world and have their office on their boat. Others of us consider cafes and coffee shops our main office. Some of us are completely portable and like to work outdoors.

Whatever the case, I’d love to see what your virtual office setup looks like. For those who are always on the go, just take a photo of the office you're using today. 

Let's hear from ya--please post a picture or video to your blog or to flickr or YouTube (or whatever) and leave a link in the comments below and tell us about your "rig"--you know, your office setup  .

OR...If you're not blog or flickr inclined, just email me your photos and "rig" info.

I'll collect the photos and post them all here so we'll have a virtual office library of sorts!

I'll go first...

Is Your Virtual Business Thriving? Please Share Your Best Advice!

When you earn money by something of your own creation, how much you earn is not a superficial fact--it is often a reflection of part of who we are.

It reflects our diligence, creativity, problem solving abilities, our integrity in creating great products and services that people want and that we stand proudly behind.

In much the same way someone who has built his own house with his own two hands will proudly tell you how many hours he spent working on it, how many nails he used, what kind of lumber he used, how many bruises he got, and how much the house is now worth, so an entrepreneur will likely be willing to give you an idea of what went into building his work of art (his business).

An entrepreneur who shares with us that his business is thriving is telling us a whole bunch more than just how much money he makes--he's telling us that he has found a way to create and run an successful online business, one that endures for years and years and one that continues to grow with his dreams.

When Is It Time To Get An Outside-The-House Office?

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine;told me he was looking at office space at this cool "collaborative co-working facility" (this is a more space age way of saying "office") called The Hive.

Undoubtedly it's much more cool than the office in my house (you should see the photos of the "chillout room" at their website, and they have a Wii!), but I wondered,

• Exactly what type of internet worker would really need to rent office space?
• Haven't we all been trying to get away from fluorescent lights and cubicles?
• Why not just work at home or at the cafe?

I had a few ideas at the as to the answer to these questions in respect to an entrepreneur with my friend's needs, but a new facet to this "virtual worker having space outside the home" idea popped up today when I found out one of my clients was actually doing something similar!

His reasons for getting outside space were different from my friend's, but I thought "Aha, I see a pattern here!"

Some very successful online entrepreneurs are yearning for a more structured workspace where they can get more work done, meet with in-person clients, and possibly socialize and collaborate with colleagues and potential clients.

Let's take a close look at these questions and discover when it's time to get an outside-the-house office.

Survey Time! What's Your Favorite Part About Working Virtually?

  Winter seagull at Lighthouse Beach- Chatham, MA 
  Originally uploaded by Chris Seufert

An interesting thing has happened since I got that first media blitz with that Penelope Trunk article about a year ago--now sometimes journalists will contact me when they're looking for an "expert quote" when they're writing articles on working virtually and virtual companies.

This just happened again on Friday, and I always get excited because it gives me a chance to share with mainstream society what this whole "nomadic web worker" lifestyle is about.

By "nomadic" I mean that our office locations can vary from day to day--one day it's the cafe, the next it's a coffee shop, the next we're working from the beach or a vacation home or our backyards or wherever. Even if we don't move around constantly, we have the potential to do so if the mood strikes.

Sometimes we get so used to this freedom that we forget that there are folks out there who still work in tiny cubicles under fluorescent lights ;-), but it is our duty as virtual company owners to share the amazing secret of what it's like to work without being tied to a geographic location.

HowTo Take A Spontaneous Day Off & Still Keep Your Business Running Smoothly

Entrepreneurs have to be the hardest working folks on the planet.

We usually carry much or all of the work load for our businesses, and that makes it difficult to take days off. We are human, however, and there will be days when for one reason or another we're just not feeling up to par.

While it may be tempting to "gut it out" and just work through the pain, I think a healthier and more productive strategy is to take the day off, rest and pamper ourselves so that we can recuperate our strength and bounce back fast.

Taking a spontaneous day off is sooo much easier if, during healthier times, you've put a safety net system in place for those pesky unforeseen sick, mental health, or family emergency days.

Passive-aggressive co-workers: Yet another reason to be glad you work from home

I am a sucker for a creative, funny, photo blog, the kind that has user submitted content and touches on aspects of daily life that are so annoying that they are downright HI-LAR-IOUS!

Enter passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers.

Yep, this is an actual blog, and it looks like there's enough passive aggressive anger and thinly veiled threats being exchanged by the human race that they'll have enough content to last them to kingdom come.

As you can probably guess, much of the passive aggressive note-leaving is committed by co-workers.

Those of us who used to work in the corporate world know about the Lord of the Flies environments that exists in many offices , especially when employees are jammed into cubicles and have to fight to keep their hotpockets, poptarts and pizza rolls from being ripped from their hungry little hands every day. (Are these lunch items even worth stealing???)

And I love the subject line of the above email: "Awkward Request". Uh, yeah I think she's hit the nail on the head there. Awkward and rude to boot! I bet she makes folks weigh-in before entering her office.

If you need a good laugh, please check out more passive aggressive notes left for co-workers, etc.

Kristin Gorski at Write Now Is Good found this gem of a blog--way to go KG!

Did you have a business when you were a kid?

  Lemonade Stand..... 
  Originally uploaded by fleamarketstudio

Have you ever noticed that kids are natural entrepreneurs?

I remember when I was a kid I had a number of businesses.

My solopreneur biz was selling wildflowers door-to-door in my neighborhood, which was a HUGE success.

Although most folks aren't really in the market for buying wildflowers, I've found that they can be easily persuaded by a 5-year-old girl wearing overalls and a friendly smile .

My summer-time business was a lemonade stand which I ran with a couple friends. Now this was big business!

There was also a lot of competition seeing as though when one group of friends gets the idea to set up a lemonade stand, then word quickly spreads and it seems like every kid in the neighborhood decides they want to do it too.

It is cut-throat!

I remember that with both of these ventures, the work days were filled with adrenaline, hopeful expectation, creativity, and a lot of play and excitement.

Above all, there was a feeling of freedom and pride at being able to create something from scratch and to make the creative decisions (what the sign will look like, how much to charge, what kind of lemonade to use, etc).

As an adult when I was re-examining my life path after leaving the corporate world, I found myself looking back on the joy I got from having my own businesses as a child and wondering, "How could I recreate this feeling of "work as play" in adulthood?"

For me, the answer was to create my own unique business doing what I love for people who I enjoy being around.

Thank God I had the initiative as a kid to set up that lemonade stand, or else I might not have known that this kind of life was even possible!

Kid's have a natural entrepreneurial spirit that combines work with creativity and play, and I think a lot of us entrepreneurs have souls that are fueled by the combination hard work, play, creativity, freedom, excitement, collaboration, ingenuity, and personal vision. 

*I was wondering, were any of you budding entrepreneurs as children, and if so, what kind of business did you have?

*Also, do you think your experiences with your childhood businesses influenced your decision to create your business as an adult?

Does anyone do "working vacations"?

  This is Work 
  Originally uploaded by waepoint.

When I first started falling in love with the idea of working virtually, I had this romantic idea of myself travelling all over the world, spending  a couple months at the beach, a couple months in the mountains, then just living in places that I had always wanted to experience but didn't want to stay long term.

The phrase that was going through my mind was "Have laptop, will travel", but now I'm a couple years into working virtually, and I'm noticing that I only work from the cafe if it's an absolute emergency, and other than that the most "exotic" location that I've taken my laptop is my own back yard.

I know--What a free-spirited jet-setter I am! (not )

I don't know why I hesitate to take work on the road--I guess I'm just super-conscientious about getting work done consistently every day, and I'm afraid to rent a cottage on the beach for a month because what if the internet connection isn't reliable, or what if something happens to my laptop in transit (dropping, sand, water, natural disasters).

I guess it's just a comfort zone thing, but I was wondering, do any of you web workers actually take advantage of the "virtual-ness" of your work by working in various locales, or do you find yourself mostly just working from home?

Freak Filtering

"There are some really crazy people in this world. And sometimes I think they all have my email address." --Andy Wibbels

I think all internet biz owners can relate to Andy's well-spoken sentiments.

We are a fabulous melting pot of psychological diversity (this is putting it nicely ), and while this may be endlessly interesting in some ways, when you're trying to conduct business via the internet, you really need to come up with a way to control who you let into your life and who gets a piece of your time.

Some folks call this the "Ideal Client Profile", but I get a kick out of Andy's terminology for it cuz he tells it like it is.

It's a "freak filter", pure and simple, and as small biz owners we are in charge of creating an early warning detection system that will save us time, money, frustration, and a gazillion bottles of Tylenol.

Freak identification marks

It's true that on many levels freakiness is purely subjective. One man's freak is another man's ideal client, but in general, I think most small biz owners will agree that a freak has the following attributes:

1) Wants our help really, really badly, yet has no money to pay us with

2) Needs an awful lot of work to be completed in a ridiculously short amount of time at a moment's notice

3) Is looking for a miracle--let me site the guy with the poorly written e-book who wanted me to help him get on Oprah (Oy!)

4) Only wants to communicate in-person or over the phone and does not like to use email and IM.

5) Anyone who says they need to meet me in person to verify that I'm "real".

These are just a few off the top of my head--please feel free to share some of your own "freak identification marks" in the comments if any come to mind.

Crafting the filter

A more positive way of looking at the freak filter would be, instead of weeding people out, what you can actually do is filter in the types of people who you want to work with (this is what I do).

In order to do this, you need to have a very good image in your mind of who you want to work with.

Here are the criteria I use:

Personality--this is the most important element for me. Even if all other criteria are thumbs up, if we don't click personality wise, then it's no-go.

Niche/Target Market--If you have a tight niche/target market, this does a lot of the screening for you. 

Retainer hours--This is just me, but I like to work with just a few clients and that means I work with them on a daily basis, which in turn means I have set retainer hours that will allow me to support clients in this way. Having set retainer hours helps me weed out folks who don't want daily, long-term support.

Fee--The higher the fee you have, the more folks you will filter out (this is a good thing).

These are just a few of the criteria I use, but basically what I do is formulate in my mind the type of person I'd like to work with, and I use the above filters to help keep me focussed on the prize.

So, I don't focus so much on weeding out; I focus on weeding in, or I guess a better way of saying it would be to say that I focus on "attracting" a very specific type of person with a very specific type of business.

It's sort of like when you set up filters for email, and you take a few minutes one day to set them up, and then every day after that all you have to do is click a button and sit back and watch the filters do the sorting work for you.

I find that the same is true for the client filter--if you make your decisions on the front end about who you want to work with and what kind of work you want to do, then all you have to do is follow the filters, and making client decisions is pretty painless. Having the filters in place also frees you up to focus on what you do want, instead of fending off what you don't want.

Does anyone have any "freak filtering" ID marks, techiniques, or special approaches for attracting a certain type of client? Please share!

(Stunning Donald Sutherland image created by Andy Wibbels.)