The freedom to work from anywhere is a wonderful benefit of being an internet-based freelancer.

But what if your significant other has a career that is paper intensive and demands constant face-to-face interactions?

This was my situation when I met my soulmate Rebecca four years ago.

I’d been self-employed for years and was used to traveling and working. Rebecca was an attorney working for a law firm that required frequent in-person meetings and court appearances.

Breaking Free

We’ve taken many trips over the last couple of years and Rebecca has been able to continue her work remotely for weeks at a time. We’d like to share how we were able to break free from the traditional demands of one of the most paper-intensive professions.

With a bit of creativity any couple can find a way to work remotely.

While our techniques for remote work as a lawyer will apply to other occupations, our solution won’t work for every situation. We want to demonstrate that with a bit of creativity any couple can find a way to work remotely.

Here are the steps Rebecca took.

1. If necessary, fire your boss.
2. Simplify through technology.
3. Develop strategic relationships.

After achieving the ability to work remotely, Rebecca developed a 4th step: Little tips & tricks can have a huge impact.

1. Fire your boss

Rebecca left her job to start her own firm.

This step is not necessary in all situations. Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week offers step-by-step advice on how to convince your boss that you are more productive when not working on-site in the office.

For those of you who don’t want to bother with bosses, going self-employed is a great option.

The right technology should feel like magic.

2. Simplify through technology.

The right technology should feel like magic. It should simplify tasks and make life easier.

We researched law firm management software and went with one called Amicus Attorney. This gave Rebecca a solution for digitally managing all of her client files.

The next step was reducing paperwork. She started off with a small scanner and a sheet feeder, but it frequently jammed. Eventually she upgraded her photocopier lease to include one with a network scanner. Now her paralegals can quickly scan all incoming letters and documents and associate them to the proper file in Amicus.

To work remotely, we needed a VPN (Virtual Private Network) solution that would allow her to access her server from anywhere. We found a solution that was absolutely magical.

Hamachi is an amazing zero-configuration VPN solution. It doesn’t require any hardware or access to routers. We started off using the free version, then eventually went with a commercial version for only $40/year.

After testing and working through any issues of remote access from home, we were able to start traveling and working from other places.

When we first started traveling, we used a tiny travel wireless router to share my Sprint broadband connection. Now Rebecca has her own Sprint broadband device.

3. Strategic Relationships

When Rebecca first went self-employed, it was just her and a secretary. She developed relationships with other sole-practitioners so they could cover for each other in court as needed.

Rebecca was soon able to hire several associate attorneys. Now she has lawyers who can not only cover for her in court, but also meet with existing clients and sign-up new ones.

One of the most valuable employees is Rebecca’s Office Manager. She keeps everything running, manages accounting, and handles initial communications with clients. This allows Rebecca to only deal with critical issues while away from the office.

4. Little tips & tricks can have a huge impact.

Rebecca offers this advice:

While running a law firm remotely, I’ve picked up a few tricks that make working remote much easier.

1. Cord Bag - Having duplicates of all of my power, usb, and sync cables makes life much easier. I keep them in a travel bag and never have to remember to unplug a cord from my office and pack it.It sounds so simple, but it makes traveling much easier.
2. Portable Printer - Lawyers are used to dealing with paper. With my portable travel printer, I’ve been able to print up documents to sign on the spot. This has saved many mediations by having both parties sign before leaving mediation and later changing their minds.Sometimes I find it easier to make global edits to long documents by using pen and paper. My portable printer makes this a breeze while traveling.
3. Quickbooks Online - When I first started my firm, Quickbooks Online was a handy way to keep track of the firm’s finances while traveling. Now my office manager does such a great job of running things, I rarely have to look at it. But it’s always there if I need it.

Rebecca Long Okura
Managing Attorney
www.longokura.com

Rebecca has been running her own law firm for three years now. The steps listed above didn’t happen overnight.

Don’t worry if you are not immediately able to quit your job or hire reliable employees. Start planning things out and take one step at a time. You’ll be amazed at what is possible when you combine desire, planning, and creativity.

Learn More About Remote Working

Anywired -Blogging legend Skellie provides information on working from anywhere. Check out the article on mobile offices.

The Newly Rich - Four Hour Work Week, family style. The author shares his experiences on moving to Mexico with his family for 2 months in this article.

Location Independent Living - Taking remote work to the next level, this blog offers information on how to be truly location independent. I enjoyed the article on marketing your business online.

Do you have any questions or experiences in working remotely that you’d like to share? Please leave a comment below.

Are you opening a new web-store? Perhaps starting a Timothy Ferriss style 4HWW “muse”?

If you are launching an online store with the anticipation of being wildly successful, this article will explain why open source enterprise software is right for you.

Enterprise Software vs Shopping Carts

Enterprise Software provides tools for managing all aspects of your business.

A typical online shopping cart handles only the ordering part of your business. It might also have basic support for inventory and customer service.

So why would you need more than a basic shopping cart?

1. Room To Grow

Moms buy clothes their teenagers can grow into.

You should do the same with your web store.

As a teenager, I went through a growth spurt one summer. I grew an inch each month.

My mother bought pants several inches too long and would hem the cuff. As I continued to grow she’d let down the cuff inch by inch.

Moms buy clothes their teenagers can grow into. You should do the same with your web store.

Early in my career a boss explained that trying to upgrade a business’s information system while keeping it running is like trying to change the tires on a moving car. The company was moving from a hodge-podge collection of apps to a more robust solution. They actually had to shutdown for a few days to make the switch.

Having to shutdown to handle growth is a good problem to have. But it can be avoided with a little foresight.

Several of my clients have enjoyed explosive growth in recent years. Our open source enterprise solutions have played a vital role in achieving and handling that growth.

These clients started their business running on a scalable system that they could grow into and that would continue to grow with them.

Several years ago I setup Apache Open For Business (OFBiz) for Citydeals.com. The shopping cart had a trickle of orders for the first few months as online sales slowly picked up.

Eventually it reached the point where we had a multi-server load balanced solution handling 1000+ views per minute during peak periods.

It’s performed so well in its own metro area that parters are anxiously opening up new markets nationwide.

Citydeals originally used OFBiz as a shopping cart. They now also use it for the following:

• Customer Service team tracks who last talked to customer, what was resolved, and when that contact happened.
• Sales team uses a CRM/SFA module from Opentaps.
• Management tracks inventory levels and views sales reports.
• Accounting reconciles sales, returns, inventory transfers, etc.
• Partners have a portal to check on consignment sales and reports.

The entire company with 30+ employees and hundreds of partners use this system to run the business.

The Citydeals founder has often expressed amazement and appreciation for the software. Time after time he has requested new functionality and I could happily inform him that it already existed in the system or could be made available with a little bit of tweaking.

2. Available Anywhere

I setup OFBiz for an endurance supplement company over 5 years ago. Now they’re the king of their niche. They sponsor the top Cyclists and Triathletes in the world. Their product is carried in hundreds of retail stores, they have international distributors all over the globe, and the direct sales from their website is cranking.

Apache OFBiz is web-based so works with any browser. The two owners are able to login from home and place orders and check on the fulfillment process and look-up customer/order notes.

They also painlessly switched from one fulfillment center to another. It was as easy as disabling old logins and creating new ones, then trucking the goods over to the new warehouse.

A web-based enterprise solution like OFBiz is perfect for business owners that want to outsource to virtual assistants or other service providers without being tied to them for life.

3. The Price is Right

My clients love that OFBiz saves them a ton of money in licensing.

I’ve launched eCommerce solutions for corporations ranging from a VoIP pioneer with 300 employees to a $1 billion/year world leader in their market. I worked with expensive high-end Oracle systems and was recognized by IBM as the first to commercially deploy their eCommerce solutions on an AS400e midrange server.

When I left the corporate world to go self-employed I couldn’t afford those advanced systems that cost 6 to 7 digits. But I was frustrated by the poorly built open source shopping cart software that was available.

Then I found OFBiz and was floored by the elegant service-based architecture. It was open, free and built with solid framework, data model, and accounting practices.

My clients love that OFBiz saves them a ton of money in licensing. They love that it’s wide open and they don’t have to wait for software vendors to add functionality. They can hire any java developer to make the changes they want.

OFBiz is java-based so will run on almost any type of server. It is database agnostic, so will run on any major database. There is no vendor lock-in with this solution.

Summary

• Open Source Enterprise Software is a great solution for small businesses looking to grow.
• Web-based solutions allow you to run your company from anywhere and outsource to anyone.
• Open Source Enterprise Software is much more cost effective for small businesses than commercial software.

Stay tuned next week for a follow-up post titled “Wide Open - Apache OFBiz Reviewed”.

If you have any questions on this article, please leave a comment below.

My fiancé Rebecca (also a small business owner) recently expressed her frustration with trying to keep up on the news articles, blogs, magazines, and trade journals she’s interested in. I understand the stress of information overload, so showed her how I use iGoogle to help manage it.

iGoogle takes only 5 minutes to setup.

iGoogle is my favorite online productivity tool. It allows you to easily add widgets to personalize your Google homepage. Widgets are little tools such as to-do lists, calendar and weather info. One of the most powerful uses for widgets is to summarize news, blog & magazine headlines. You can create different tabs to organize your widgets into different categories.

Getting Started

iGoogle takes only 5 minutes to setup. Follow these easy steps to get started.

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. If you don’t already have iGoogle activated, click on the iGoogle link in the top right corner.
3. You will be prompted to create a homepage by selecting interests and a theme.
4. If you have a Google account (such as Gmail) login. Otherwise create a new account.
5. Now that you’re logged in, your iGoogle settings will be saved and viewable from any computer you login to.

Organizing Information

So how do you organize information now that you have a personal iGoogle? The easiest way is to use RSS Feeds to subscribe to blogs and news sites that you are interested in. Feeds are headlines and summaries of articles so you can quickly scan through many different feed headlines and only click on the articles you are interested in. Having your feeds in one place is much more efficient than going through your bookmarks and manually visiting each website looking for interesting articles.

Let’s practice by adding the Bizlift Blog to your iGoogle.

1. Add a tab called “Business”. If you leave the “feeling lucky” box checked, iGoogle will add related content.
2. Return to this article and click on the “Subscribe by RSS” link in top-right corner.
3. You will have several subscription options. Click on the Google button.
4. Click on Add to Google homepage button.
5. Verify that the Bizlift Blog is shows up.

You can create as many tabs as you want and drag the widgets into the appropriate tab to keep it organized.

Other Productivity Widgets

Some of my favorite widgets are:

• To-Do List - A simple list to prioritize and check-off tasks.
• Days Since - Easy tool to keep track of how many days have passed since you last did something. You can use it to keep track of the last time you watered plants, changed car’s oil, or called your mom. It’s also great for keeping you motivated while changing habits. For example you can use it to see how long you’ve been cigarette free or when was the last time you missed a day of exercise.
• Weather - Plan your activities for the week and adjust to weather conditions as needed.

iGoogle is really powerful when you start using Google’s other online applications like Google Calendar and Gmail. These apps have widgets that allow you to see recent emails or check for upcoming appointments at a glance.

Summary

• iGoogle allows you to customize your Google homepage.
• Feed Widgets summarize article headlines for easy scanning.
• Tabs allow you to organize widgets into categories.
• There are many types of widgets available including tools, entertainment, and information.

iGoogle Feed Tutorial

For more information on using iGoogle for RSS feeds, here is a video tutorial I found on YouTube.

If you have any questions or tips you’d like to share, please leave a comment.