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Is your business virtual? Is my business virtual? Well, yes it's virtual. There's nobody here but me and one, two, three, four computers--used to be five. I had to send one away. What I mean by being virtual is that occasionally I work with other people, bring them in on projects, and when the projects are over, they go away, and the projects go away. This whole enterprise expands and contracts depending upon what I'm doing, and this is considered a good way to be these days--to outsource everything, even yourself. The trend, of course, in corporations was first to sell off their real estate and become renters; and then, secondarily, to sort of sell off their employees, as it were, to turn as many of them as possible into contractors who did not have to be paid benefits and who were there completely on a contingent basis; then to replace their permanent employees with part-time employees, again who don't have the long term commitment and the matrix of costs and involvement involved with benefits and sick leave and pensions; and in a sense all businesses just becoming lighter and lighter and lighter as these costs of doing business and everything we would associate with the society of work are being jettisoned. To start a virtual business you need virtually nothing, if I can use that word out of context. These days it requires a computer, a phone line, a modem, an account on the internet. A fax machine used to be required but I find almost no use for it. That's it. What else do you need? The really important ingredient in a virtual business is your brain, and it's extremely portable, and your wits. It's really easy to get started and alot of people think, "this will be wonderful. I don't have to commute. I don't have to deal with all of those jerks at the office. I'll be my own boss." That's the one that everybody really gets off on--to be your own boss. But what it really takes over the long run is a tremendous tolerance for solitude, a strong ability to be inner-directed to the point of almost asceticism. There are no other people looking at you, making you sit down to your desk. Every transition in the course of the day is something you have to find inside yourself. Every reason to do one thing and not another is something you have to decide. Every call to the outside, every client you get--it all calls out of oneself, over and over. That seems appealing when other people are controlling your life all the time. But you can run out of yourself. There's only so many times you can reach down and get something rich. I mean, that store needs to be replenished in contact with other people and in encountering situations you have not chosen or anticipated by the general richness of chance and experience. When you work for yourself in your own little virtual company, you don't really get enough of that. No one's paying you to wander around the world, or read widely, or experiment with tools or technologies that you haven't used before. So, it's harder and harder to refresh that store that enables you to keep working. |