Using Your Club As A virtual office  

By Patricia Baldwin

The Washington Post dubbed it the “Tower Lunch.” It’s the Tysons Corner version of that venerable D.C. institution, the power lunch. And it’s served along with generous portions of networking, business services, and just the right amount of cachet. For many members of The Tower Club Tysons Corner in the Washington, D.C., satellite city of Vienna, Virginia, that combination has made the club their virtual office, especially for those execs with home-based businesses. As such, the club is setting a standard for other Associate Clubs to better serve the growing cadre of home-based entrepreneurs, now estimated at 9 percent of American businesses. Here’s just a sampling of scenarios showing the virtual office concept at work for Tower Club members.

BACK TO THE FUTURE
Any stereotypic image of “home-based entrepreneur” vanishes upon entering the home office shared by Michael and Pat Atkins. In the 3,000-square-foot converted basement are five desks, seven computers, nine telephone lines, two fax lines, and four Internet services. And there’s a panoramic view of the rolling countryside around Warrenton, Virginia.

A virtual office, Michael Atkins explains, is a new way of doing business — but it’s still doing business.

He offers a brief bio: He used to work on Wall Street and was away from his suburban Virginia home Mondays through Thursdays. He missed his wife, Pat, and much of the growing-up of his two daughters. Now he misses traffic jams and coaches soccer, thanks to his virtual office — and the Tower Club, where he is found at least three days a week.

Technology made Atkins’ new business venture possible. In fact, his business is technology. His company, Commonwealth Financial Corporation, develops virtual office software. The consulting firm also assists technology companies with investment- related strategic planning and business development. It also packages financial and marketing information for capitalization, mergers, and acquisitions.

One of the company’s current projects is called monEnet (www.monEnet.com), which is an Internet lending network for consumers and lenders. In other words, “money malls” have been “built” in 200 metropolitan areas across the country to electronically connect consumers with banks, mortgage companies, consumer lending companies, real estate firms, leasing companies, and private investors.

“It’s a ‘financial search engine’ with 61,000 lenders in its database,” Atkins explains. Because every state has its own financial regulations, however, individual monEnet sites are set up for local communities.

Atkins has a physical meeting with his three key executives — who also have home offices — every Monday. Other business meetings he schedules over breakfast, lunch, or dinner at the Tower Club.

“The club is almost like an extended family,” he says. “The employees greet me by name, understand my needs.”

The only other place he spends as much or more time with business associates and clients is the golf course, he says.

Atkins advises that it takes self-discipline and organization to make a success of a home-based business. But the upside, he says, is more time to be creative and launch new initiatives.

The home office situation also allows Pat Atkins to pursue her career as senior relationship manager for Citicorp Diner’s Club, a position that requires her to travel once or twice a week. In fact, the decision for her to office out of her home was Citicorp’s. Her previous job required a two-hour commute into Washington so the change has been welcomed. Now, a typical week can still stretch to 55 hours, but she notes, “on my time.” And her daughters have learned that when Mom is in the “office,” she means business and maintains a professional environment. As for sharing work space with her husband, Pat Atkins acknowledges, “It’s interesting. His is the neat desk, mine’s not.”

CHANGING ATTITUDES
In 1984, when Donna and Bill Engelson founded their strategic planning firm, the Leadership Edge, they started with a home office. She remembers being anxious to find a “real” office. They did — in about 2,000 square feet of prime office space.

“I would not want to return to one of those now,” Engelson says. “My attitude has changed. The attitude of the community has changed.”

Recently, the Engelsons found the “best of both worlds” when they purchased a home with a separate carriage house that now serves as their office. The property’s zoning allows them to employ one person outside their household.

“As entrepreneurs, we put in some long hours. And we’re not a storefront kind of business. For us, the move has allowed us to run our business and our lives the way we choose,” she says. “We cut overhead and our business is better served if we spend more of our time serving the client, not commuting.” Again, technology helped, allowing the entrepreneurs to do work that once would have required many employees.

The Engelsons joined the Tower Club in 1988 and began using its facilities for business long before they opted for their home office.

“The Tower Club has been a good asset,” she notes, adding that the couple entertains clients at the club and frequently uses rooms, such as the club’s library and dining areas, for conducting seminars and workshops.

A 12-HOUR LIFESAVER
Muriel Yilmaz operates her management consulting company, Mentor Inc., from her home in Greenbelt, Maryland, 27 miles from the Tower Club. But with a growing clientele in Northern Virginia, she finds that the demands of her business increasingly take her across state borders many days. On those days especially, she says, the Tower Club becomes a “lifesaver.”

“I have literally come in at 7 a.m. and not left until 7 p.m.,” Yilmaz says. Such a day’s agenda might include breakfast with another member, morning meetings with clients, a business lunch, working in the club’s well-equipped business center in the afternoon, a late-afternoon outplacement counseling session in a private room, and attending a members’ Mix & Mingle session starting at 5:30 p.m.

“It’s a safe haven, if I have a two-hour window of time between meetings,” Yilmaz says. “It’s really been an office away from home for me. Everything is right there for me.”

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Maybe it’s his military background. Maybe it’s the technical  nature of his consulting business, the Sumner Group, a “one-man operation” that deals in the arena of national security. But Sumner Shapiro appreciates consistency. The Tower Club gives him comfort in knowing what to expect.

“The ambience is more conducive to a business meeting or lunch than an ordinary restaurant,” he says. “People are usually very much impressed.”

As a member of the club’s Board of Governors, Shapiro can speak about the decision five years ago to add a business center to the club’s quarters. He says the action resulted from feedback the board had received from the membership about using the club as a business club. In fact, The Washington Post also described the club’s Commonwealth Room as “the-see-and-be-seen” room for the area’s high technology executives. The business center is equipped with telephones, including enclosed booths for privacy, fax, and copier — and includes space to spread out papers or set up a computer and work.

Shapiro cites other attractions of the club that have been instrumental in gaining new members: Accessibility, convenient parking, an enforced dress code, and yes — sometimes — a “certain amount of snob appeal.”

GETTING CLIENTS ON BOARD
Birgit Klare, owner of BTK Seminars at Sea, wants her clients to feel special. After all, she wants to convince them to take their business meetings and incentive travel out of the traditional environments — and put them on board a cruise. She says the impressive, but relaxed, atmosphere of the Tower Club helps her do just that.

“I need a place where I have time to get into detail in a meeting, and not be constantly bothered by waiters,” she says. She adds that she can easily communicate that message to the Tower Club staff, and they “get it.” She gets two hours of undivided attention from her client.

“The Tower Club complements my home office,” Klare says. “It also gives me extensive resources through various activities.”

She says she especially has benefited from participating in the recently organized “Executive Women’s Forum,” a series of breakfast meetings and speakers geared to topics of interest to women. Members and non-members are welcome. A recent speaker focused on the opportunities presented by the Internet to leverage the strength of the women’s market.

FULL-SERVICE BALANCE
After 20 years in the marketing and advertising industries, Candace Hadley began noticing she was increasingly having conversations with peers and colleagues about their struggles to maintain balance in their lifestyles, or even to have a life, as they put it. Eighteen months ago, she took the plunge into home-based entrepreneurship by setting up an office in her house in Oakton, Virginia. This isn’t, however, any “mom’s shop.” Hadley & Associates remains a full-service marketing and advertising firm, Hadley explains.

“It’s an interesting setup,” she acknowledges. “I have associates in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and even on an island off the coast of Maine.” The latter is a senior vice president, who, according to Hadley, informs colleagues that when she gets stressed out, she jumps into her kayak and takes a trip around the ocean.

“What we’ve been able to do is set up a sophisticated Internet link,” Hadley says. “We pitch and service business over the Internet, using a variety of different software. Nothing, of course, replaces face-to-face contact and we make arrangements for that. But by and large, we can operate more efficiently and have more time left to devote to family, exercise, and fun interests.”

Two forces are driving the trend toward home-based businesses, Hadley suggests. The first, of course, is technology. The second is that most executives, instead of experiencing “9 to 5,” actually work 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. — juggling family and fun in between, or not at all.

“They want some balance but they’re also interested in continuing involvement in their chosen profession — and their level of income,” she says.

Hadley’s sister, Mary Medd, introduced her to the Tower Club, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“ One thing about having a home office is that sometimes you get a little bit isolated,” Hadley says. “It’s really important for one’s sanity to get out.” She likes the “little things” she has found as a member of the club, such as the mint packet with her name on it. “It’s the little things,” she says of her experiences doing business at the club. “But the little things become the big things.”

FAST FACTS ABOUT HOME-BASED ENTREPRENEURS 
• Nearly half of HBEs are Boomers ages 33-51.
• HBEs have a distinctly affluent demographic profile.
• HBEs strive for quality lifestyles even if it means short-term financial sacrifice.
• Relative to others, HBEs are more likely to describe themselves as “open to new ideas.”
• When shopping, HBEs value ease and convenience.
Source: Yankelovich Monitor Minute, Yankelovich Partners.