Skinny Business

By Elle Barrett
First published in Frontier Airlines' Wild Blue Yonder magazine, May 2008

 

For six years, Karen Morales resolutely commuted from her home tucked away in mountainous Evergreen, Colorado to her office in downtown Denver. On still-dark mornings, it took nearly 22 minutes for her to work her way down the scenic local road to the main highway and another 45 minutes driving against the sun to get to the city. The 2 V hours she spent in heavy traffic each day was the price she figured she paid for the enjoyment of living in the mountain town that offered pine-scented air and an expansive stretch of backyard where deer would nibble at will on the garden she planted each spring.

Then more than a year ago, Morales, who is owner of Communication Infrastructure Group, LLC, was retained as a public relations consultant for RTD”s FasTracks program, the newest project of the region’s mass transportation system. “I started taking the bus as an endorsement of the transit industry that I represent. Since then, I’ve turned the cushy regional bus into a mini-office of sorts. Riding the bus buys back 2 hours of commute time that I now use to check email, review client and staff documents, read professional journals and take care of general office business. My productivity has increased tremendously and my stress level has  decreased drastically. I wouldn’t trade in my ‘office on wheels’ for gridlocked commuting if you paid me,” vows Morales.

She’s not alone. In 2007, RTD serviced 207,809 riders per day on its weekday boardings of fixed route bus service, up 6 percent from 2006. Its sister Light Rail has exceeded ridership projections, serving 60,634 riders per weekday, up a remarkable 64 percent from 2006. That was the year T-REX was completed, a $1.67 billion reconstruction of 17 miles of two interstate highways through the city which simultaneously added 19 miles of Light Rail track.

Morales’ commute is made particularly easy in that she disembarks the bus less than one short block from the FasTracks headquarters building. On the rare occasion that she has to stay in town past the last scheduled departure, she always has the option of driving her vehicle that day. While she doesn’t get much work accomplished at 55 mph, Morales’ cell phone starts to ring incessantly at 8 a.m. whether or not she’s still at the wheel.

The average amount of time a cell phone subscriber spends on calls has surged from 140 to 740 minutes per month since 1993, according to published research by two University of California/Berkeley grad students. Not surprisingly, the number of people owning cell phones is also up; 2 percent of the population had cell phones in 1990 compared to 75 percent by 2006. About 40 percent of drivers acknowledge using their cell phones at some point while driving. The correlation between en-route cell chatter and fatal accidents in 125 independent studies may have been the impetus behind California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signing a bill that bans the use of handheld cell phones while operating a vehicle. Similar to restrictions in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the California law goes into effect July 1 of this year but does allow motorists to use hands-free devices such as Bluetooth headsets, a technology that is becoming standard in new model cars.
 Other technological conveniences like the Toshiba in-car HD DVD player with built-in screen and touch-screen input released this year generate rants on blogs like that of Consumer Electronics where consumers post their reactions ranging from ridicule to “Glad to see a company looking ahead, even if it’s not needed now.”

On her website, talk show hostess Rachael Ray solicits feedback from viewers to feature in a future episode, asking: Does your car do double duty as your office? Has the passenger seat turned into your work station where you store all your files? Maybe you get most of your work done while waiting to pick up the kids from school? Do you travel all the time and use the airport terminal or train station to make business calls, return emails and catch up on paperwork? Have you transformed your carry-on bag into your office supply closet where you keep your rolodex, post-its, notebooks and everything else you need to run your business? If the open road is your office, we want to hear from you!

The number of home-based businesses nearly doubled from 1980 to 2000 to 4,184,223, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “You’ve got mail,” Kathleen’s email chimes when a spam email from World Profit Center, d/b/a www.websuccessguide.com hits wooing her with compelling promises: “Like millions of people worldwide, you want to stay home and make money, either full- or part-time. That’s why you MUST attend this fast-moving, info-packed program. NEVER has staying home and profiting been easier.” The webcast is scheduled for Sunday morning (9:30 EST), an hour once reserved for church-going.

Executive suites and virtual offices are like funhouse mirrors, making less look like more and offering support services from secretarial to technology, requiring negligible tenant finish, with the sweetest aspect being flexibility. Tenants can expand their presence or minimize it without having to relocate or make a pricy break from a multi-year lease. The upside in sharing support services is that the phone is answered professionally without having to commit to employing a receptionist full-time. The downside, according to one executive suite renter, is that every sheet of paper used, every Xerox made can tally up fast to a bigger-than-expected bill.

Of all the iterations of most productive work space across all industry, coffee has been both a change agent and a constant. Coffee is what people do when they’re doing business. Recall “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992) when the character Blake lambasts a roomful of non-performing salesmen with, “Coffee is for closers only.”

Coffee houses have always been hubs of the business community. In 17th-century London, merchants would gather at coffee houses to engage in trade talk. Edward Lloyd’s coffee house–later to become the flagship insurance carrier, Lloyd’s of London–was a popular place for merchants and ship owners to exchange hearsay information in the absence of other reliable forms of communication. In 1792 in New York, the Tontine Coffee House was the original location for the New York Stock Exchange because so much business was conducted there. Coffee houses hit mainstream America in 1971 when Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle. Suddenly, meeting for coffee was über chic and provided Type A personalities with a speedier, yet still socially acceptable alternative to the three-martini lunch. In reality, it was wi-fi that redefined java stops as legitimate workplaces. Escape Java Joint in Madison, Wisconsin has free wi-fi throughout its 4,000 square feet and owners Greg Bosonetta and Duane Erickson rent meeting and conference rooms to whole groups for a mere $15 as an alternative to patrons having to pony up to rent expensive meeting space in area hotels.

Marion Colby, a writer and web designer, was downsized from her newsroom job and out of necessity started freelancing from home to pay the bills. When she started to find herself still in her bathrobe at 3 p.m., she realized she was bordering on depression. On especially long days, she longed for the camaraderie shared at her former workplace. She rediscovered community at her neighborhood coffee house, where she now works happily from her laptop for four to six hours a day, enjoying the company of other regulars as much as the low-fat lattes.

Commerce knows no bounds in a coffee house, says Josh McCorcle, manager of the Zoka Coffee Roaster and Tea Company on Seattle’s Blakeley Street (one of three in Seattle). The popular coffee outpost is world headquarters for Delicious Monster, a Seattle software company that reportedly generated $250,000 worth of sales in its first month in business. “They work here and they work very long hours,” McCorcle reports, adding that, like many regulars, the Delicious Monster folks charge up in-house cards and buy “more than enough” food and drink to justify their long-hitting presence. 

Besides free wi-fi, Genuine Joes in Austin, Texas has two meeting rooms available free with a reservation. The larger room seats up to 30 and is booked constantly for everything from business meetings to language classes. “It’s a lot more comfortable than working in a cubicle,” observes manager Krystal Tullos. Loyal coffee customers are so predictable that Tullos says, “We can estimate the arrival of our regulars within five to ten minutes.” Many find their drink-of-choice waiting for them when they walk in the door.

Across the country, people like Marion Colby who miss the water-cooler chit-chat working while at home, are forming what is termed “co-working spaces”—café-like community/collaborative workspaces for independent workers, designers and developers. In Seattle, Washington, self-described “business agnostic” Jacob Sayles owns and operates a co-working venture appropriately named Office Nomads. “We don’t care what people do as a means of making a living. If they need a desk, we can help them,” he says. The coffee at Office Nomads would be considered retro by some standards; it’s brewed from a Bunn coffee pot by the people who rent desk space. No espressos, no lattes, no venti-sugar-free-vanilla-no-fat-latte-with-an-extra-shot orders taken here. Choices are limited to regular and decaf.

Not every business meeting can take place at a pedestal table in a sea of caffeine, or worse yet, eavesdroppers. For that reason, Tom Wright, president of Wright Group Event Services, a 57-year-old company his father started in Canada and Tom and his brother continue to operate, makes the determination of where he’ll hold his closing meetings based on the size of the deal at hand. “The bigger event will require the conference table at our office because 6 to 8 people will sit in on the meeting. A smaller event could actually be handled in a coffee shop between two parties,” says Wright who schedules closing contractual meetings at the end of the day along with a round of cold beers.

He is, after all, in the hospitality business. 

To that end, Wright regularly courts his clients, taking them to professional sporting events where they sit in the club level versus any old seat in the house. An evening of catered delicacies and full bar service leaves them sated. But the night is still young in Wright’s world. He transports his guests by luxury motor coach from the arena to downtown to continue the revelry, dancing the night away at one of the several clubs he counts among his clients. “We utilize the mountains, we do the golfing thing, and we have fun out on the boat. We may talk a little business, but we don’t plow it down their throats,” explains Wright. His sophisticated restraint translates seamlessly to the golf course where a solid grasp of golf etiquette leaves more of an impression on a fellow player than even a low handicap.

It’s not that Wright would literally ink a deal at the halfway house, but rather that a 4 V hour game of golf along with an hour or two spent at the 19th hole afterwards tells volumes about one’s character, composure and conscience, factors that make future business done together more profitable and less angst-ridden. For that matter, simply the opportunity to spend half a dozen hours recreating and relaxing is a benefit of working smarter, conserving the leftover hours in a workweek with the intention of enjoying them.

Corporate consciousness has inspired new work spaces. Sports Shares, LLC offers Club membership at $5,000 per person for suite seating at 20 professional sports events in a year’s time. Typically, buyers purchase four memberships, according to Todd Lindenbaum, president of Sports shares, a Denver-based company with a presence in Atlanta and immediate plans to expand to three more sports-crazy markets this year.

Membership has its privileges—which in this case means entrée into fully-catered luxury suites where they entertain their own clients plus take advantage of the networking component of mingling with employees and guests of three to five other well-heeled companies. What they avoid, explains Lindenbaum, is over-buying season tickets they’ll regret not using. Professional basketball and hockey each have 40 home games and baseball has 81. “Corporations don’t mind spending to entertain, but they want to do it the right way,” adds Lindenbaum.

“Participating in a Sport Shares suite allows our attorneys to entertain clients and guests in a cost effective manner, without the expense of owning an entire suite.” Claims Mark Beese, Director of Marketing for Holland Hart, Denver’s largest law firm.  “For a fraction of what it would cost to own a suite, we are able to use it on a limited basis, entertaining a few clients at a time, for only the events we choose. We have benefitted from the social networking aspect of sharing the suite with a few other leading companies in town.”

Small change; big payoffs. No fat.

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