How they work
After you understand the difference between SEO and SEM, you can put them to work. The article “10 Practical Small Business SEO and SEM Marketing Tips“ gives suggestions for making your SEO and SEM efforts count. Two of my favorite tips are #5. Pay attention to landing pages10 (you don’t have to send visitors to your home page) and #10. Stay True To Your Business. Write for your audience, not for search engines. You don’t need to implement all ten tips but you’ll find some good info you can use right away. Isn’t that the best kind?

Verizon + Office Depot = savings
There’s a new team in town: The Verizon Small Business Center and Office Depot. Reuters reports that this new team’s goal is to offer small businesses discounts up to 12% when they buy office supplies. That’s a definite improvement from the 0% discount I’m getting at my local Office Depot.

To participate, businesses need to log on to the Verizon Small Business Center’s Web site and click on the “Office Depot Discount Program” link (under “Alliance Discount Program”).

The incubator they described is a place where business professionals share office space with other professionals in different fields. The Jackson County Small Business Incubator, now with eight tenants, has been so successful that they’re opening a second location.

Incubators are similar to various co-working sites that I described in another post. The main difference is that the purpose of incubators is to help an individual grow his or her business, instead of just providing a place to work away from the family. There are a few more benefits to incubators:

• You’re encouraged to network with your “incubator neighbor” and maybe even work together on projects or hire one another. One business professional is considering hiring his neighbor to design a new Web site for him.

• Incubators offer high-speed copiers, printers and other equipment that a typical home office professional can’t afford at the beginning.

• You can’t get lonely in an incubator. There are too many people around.

• You can still keep your home office but as your business grows, an incubator is the perfect place to work with other business owners who are much quieter than your kids and barking dog.

Working Naked: Who came up with the name garoffice?

J. Kelly: My brother and I were working out of our garage and it became our office. Just like our company name (JACKSTIN) we squashed them together.

Working Naked: What does JACKSTIN do?

Tables, computers, a sofa, bed and more make up the garoffice.

J. Kelly: We have a truly fruitful, informal collaboration between the two of us and also our clients. We help them get the message they want to send online via websites, social networks, and consulting with us in our prior experiences of what’s worked and what hasn’t.

Working Naked: Who else works in the garoffice?

J. Kelly: Day to day it’s just Justin and I, but we do have interns and friends that come over to learn our traits and ask us how we did it. Our clients will even come over and pull out their laptops and start working on their projects with us face-to-face.

Working Naked: What’s the best thing about the garoffice?

J. Kelly: Being in the moment and making clients happy without the stress of a cubicle or a boss looking over your shoulder. We love to take the laptop out on the backyard deck and look over the ocean and meet with clients…get creative on their project! A new concept that we have been pushing is the “Client Trust Swing”. New and old clients come over and there is no better way to get them thinking outside the box than to push them on our 35 foot, ocean-view swing!

Working Naked: I have to ask about the bed. Does someone live in the garoffice, is it for client meetings or is that topic off limits?

J. Kelly: It’s a guest bed. Sometimes clients come through town and need a place to stay, and sometimes we get downgraded from our own rooms for our parents when they come in town. It’s a very cozy, creative spot that lets us get out of the same chair and desk routine. Shouldn’t everyone be able to relax and work? That’s going to be our next slogan on our business cards.

“My virtual assistant handles all my website design and maintenance. I’ve gone from four published books to eight. She has also saved my neck during a couple of major e-mail crises, performed troubleshooting of all sorts of stuff, and researched the best option for me on various technologies and platforms. She lives about 5000 miles away from me in Alaska and we’ve never met.

—Shel Horowitz, ethical marketing expert

”My virtual assistant has always been based in Copenhagen. I have used my virtual personal assistant for over a year and find that it is the only way to maintain efficiency and excellent service levels than any other method. She schedules all of my global meetings, does all of our invoicing and travel arrangements- getting me to and from clients in the US to Europe.

—Jennifer Hicks, founder of ink Communications and co-founder of bGrand

My virtual assistant does many of the things I am not qualified to do: She created a web site for me and maintains it by adding new materials, links, resources etc. She does this also for an existing site I have. My virtual assistant pushes me and encourages me. We’re a team that just happens to sit in two different states.

—Jane Cranston, ExecutiveCoachNY

Over the years, my virtual assistant has done a variety of tasks for me including formatting/updating documents, creation of Powerpoint presentations, flyer development, database management, email marketing, and website design/update. Over the years she has also helped me to automate as much as possible so I’ve actually used her less as time has gone on.

—Jackie Nagel, President of Synnovatia

Shredders are invaluable for protecting information.

The other morning while I was working in my home office, I heard a strange grinding noise. (Sounds like the opening line of a gory, horror movie!) I knew it wasn’t a lawn mower or a leaf blower or the neighbor’s go cart so finally I went outside to check it out.

Parked in front of my neighbor’s house was a huge truck with a shredder inside. My neighbor had trashcan loads of paper to shred and instead of wasting time shredding each piece, he had hired an on-site shredding company to do it for him. He could have just loaded up his car with boxes of paper and recycled them, right? Not so fast. There was the security issue—he had old tax information to shred—and then there was the possibility of identity theft.

I hadn’t heard of anyone working naked hiring someone else to shred their papers (my corporate clients have done that for years), but it made perfect sense. I’ve been through three shredders in two years because of my impatience at shredding. If a shredder can shred 8 sheets at a time, I shove in 12.

If I ever need to shred a massive amount of files, I’ll call in for shredding reinforcements or see if I can test my luck and avoid burning through a few more shredders.

The OfficePOD

What do you get when you put a cubicle inside an enclosed space and then install it in your backyard? You get an office-in-a-box or an OfficePOD.

I have to admit that when I saw this photo of the “next generation of workplace,” my claustrophobic tendencies kicked in. I don’t think I could work in a fishbowl. But if you need a quiet, uninterrupted place to work—really, who doesn’t—a portable office may be the answer.

The approximately 7’x 7’ OfficePOD is partially made of recycled materials. The glass walls bring in a bit of natural light, yet I tend to think the curved, wooden door would give it a cave effect. But the privacy factor the door provides may outweigh the amount of sunlight it blocks and any fear of being locked in a box for several hours at a time.

The OfficePOD draws power from your house or garage. The Internet and phone connection can be cabled but they recommend you use a wireless connection. If you’re concerned about security, you can keep curious creatures (human and animal) out with their secure locking system.

Schedule workouts the way you would an appointment.

When you’re working naked and handling everything yourself, squeezing in a workout can be nearly impossible. In another blog post, folks working naked and working out shared their exercise tips. Before you completely dump the idea of fitting a workout into your day, consider more tips from other folks who are working naked.

“For the greatest energy and focus, take a break from your desk every 90-120 minutes. Use the time to take a brisk 10-minute walk, do a few crunches and push-ups, or stretching exercises. You will return refreshed and rejuvenated.”
— Ellen G. Goldman, M.Ed., Cert. Wellness Coach

“Work out first thing in the morning. It motivates me to get up and get moving. Doing so sets me up for a better mood throughout the day and it’s already done and out of the way. One thing immediately knocked off the daily to do list!”
—Melinda Massie, Melinda Massie Events and Consulting

“My problem has always been finding the time to work out as the days seem to fly by. My solution has been to buy a 1-hour kitchen timer. I set it for the amount of time I need for the task at hand and then when it rings, it’s enough to interrupt me from what I was concentrating on. I then set it for 10 minutes and do a short stretch or weight workout.”
—Jeffrey Strain, SavingAdvice.com

“Hulu.com has just added Exercise TV’s ‘Bikini Body Makeover’. There are 4 seasons of workout routines ranging from 10 – 30 minutes. It’s perfect if you work at home. If you’re staring at the computer, need an energy boost, and have a few minutes to spare, just click and work out! I love it!”
— Shari Alexander, Presenting Matters, LLC

“Be realistic about the amount of time you have to devote to training and schedule realistic workouts that take only that amount of time. Avoid setting yourself up for failure with grandiose plans of multiple hour workout sessions, 7 day a week training and other plans that don’t fit your workload or schedule.”
—Charla McMillian, Fitness Expert

CelebriDucks includes a famous flock of musicians, sports figures & more.

Working Naked: When did you start your business?

Wolfe: We actually started the business in 1986. Back then we were buying and selling original Disney animation drawings. That evolved to us becoming the largest publisher of advertising/animation art in the country having created the first ever animation art lines for Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Bush, M&M/Mars, Nike, etc. CelebriDucks evolved around 1998.

Working Naked: What sparked the idea for CelebriDucks and what was the response from your family and friends?

Wolfe: I think I just wanted to have my own creative expression and not always be working with other peoples’ characters. My friends and family were totally into it. In fact in the early years, my daughter designed all the ducks!

Working Naked: Was it hard to find a manufacturer to make them?

Wolfe: Harder than I ever could have imagined. In fact if I had known how hard it would be to make a duck with the intricate detail in sculpting and painting plus having them float upright and be soft, etc., etc., I probably never would have ventured into this! Well, like they say, ignorance is bliss. Clearly, it’s gotten a lot better, but it took us many years to find the right manufacturing partners.

The Blues Brothers CelebriDucks

Working Naked: At what point did you see a profit?

Wolfe: In the beginning it was all tied up with the animation business so it was always making money. But as a stand-alone business probably around 2000 it was already profitable.

Working Naked: Why have you elected to work from home instead of rent outside space?

Wolfe: The freedom, the flexibility, the ability to outsource with some of the best people in the industry who are living all over the world. I love it. I often have to work later at night with overseas projects so it makes it so easy being at home.

Working Naked: What have been the three biggest challenges with your business?

Wolfe: Well, as you can tell from above, manufacturing has got to be at the top of the list. Next I would say is getting market visibility…it takes real time to build a brand from scratch. And finally, I would have to say sales. I own the company 100%, we’re debt free, and I have no investors which means I run it a bit more conservatively. I’m sure a bigger company would have had us in all kinds of retail venues by now. But all things in good time, grasshopper.

For all you Michael Jackson fans, Craig says that they’ve been working with Michael Jackson’s licensing people in Germany and have an initial contract. If everything works out as planned, Michael in his Thriller outfit should be out in September.

• Bathe daily and try to change your shirt and underwear at least every other day.

• Clean up your office once a week (even if it’s just removing coffee mugs and food wrappers).

• Limit your work hours. You need to sleep.

• If you have a deadline and you need to stay focused, turn off your e-mail alert.

• If your home office is a mess, meet with clients somewhere else. They say they don’t mind your mess but they do and they may be trying to figure out how to fire you.

• If possible, don’t let your kids use your computer. If you get a virus, you can’t work. If they get a virus they can’t play computer games. Do the math.

• Make sure every phone you own has Caller ID. It’s the best invention since chocolate.

• Make sure your mute or hold button works. Sometimes they don’t, which means you may have some explaining to do.

• Don’t answer your business phone if your kids are screaming or your dogs are barking. That’s why you have Caller ID and a hold or mute button.

• Set ground rules with your friends and family and let them know that even though you work from home, you’re not available to wait for the cable guy or plumber.

• Don’t use a chair from your dining room or kitchen as your desk chair. Pony up the money. It won’t cost you much for a descent, ergonomically correct chair.

• Teach your kids to leave your office supplies alone. In fact, buy them their own set.

• If you’re (literally) working naked, please wear underwear. ‘Nuff said.