NFIB

Keeping Your Balance
03/ 28/ 2002

by Rachel Adelson

Caught off-stride by work/life conflicts? Technology can help you keep your balance by loosening the constraints of time and geography. Here's how some small business owners manage.

Technology let Lauri Gross telecommute two days a week when her first child was born—forwarding her calls from office to home, letting her dial into company databases. She later formed her own Burton, Ohio-based media relations practice, using multiple phone lines at home for voice, fax and modem. "As long as you're disciplined enough to check for messages in-between diaper changes or other interruptions," she observes, "you can use those devices to help you provide top-notch service."

"E-mail is ideal for people who have time-management issues," says small business strategist Evelyn Goldstein of Silver Spring, Md. "It also saves costs, and it's efficient."

April O'Koren, president of Project Masters Inc. of Ellicott City, Md., oversees her virtual team with the help of basic tools—a shared company laptop that employees swap when they travel (more than one is too costly for her small business), and cell phones that everyone carries "so we can reach each other any place."

If you work out of your car, you can get a tech makeover with the help of an online course: Smart Planet's "Turn Your Car Into a Functional Office," at http://www.smartplanet.com/course_info.asp?course_id=11222.

Gary Arlen, owner of Bethesda, Md.-based Arlen Communications, offers these travel tips: return voicemail messages via hotel-provided 800 numbers and a long-distance calling card. Arlen also takes advantage of public facilities with Internet connections, such as cafes and Kinkos, to leave his laptop at home.

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U.S. Behind Japan in Wireless

Cell phone owners connecting to the Internet

72 percent of Japanese

6 percent of Americans

Source: Accenture

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This article originally appeared in the May/June 2001 issue of MyBusiness Magazine, NFIB's member magazine.

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