August 31, 2004

Mobile Technology and Mobile Entrepreneurs

Inc Magazine has a very good story about how mobile entrepreneurs use their vehicles and technology to be efficient and productive.

Inc.com writes Abney's office is the front seat of a white 1999 Chevy van. Though the van lacks a coffee machine and other trappings of corporate life, Abney wouldn't dream of trading in his aftermarket Recaro driver's seat with lumbar support for a swiveling leather desk chair. Abney runs a three-year-old, $400,000 forklift-sales-and-service business called Western Industrial Equipment, in Moorestown, Mich. His V8-powered office adds an extra dimension to his working life, he says. "It's that much more freedom and that much more excitement" over and above the sense of independence most entrepreneurs enjoy, he says.

But today technology is changing the way Abney and others like him manage their time. "Cell phones, laptops, wireless -- in the last five years these have taken off," says George Phirippidis, CEO of the Mobile Office Outfitter, a manufacturer and retailer of car- and truck-office organizers in Pleasanton, Calif. "A lot of people don't have to have an office. They can do everything right out of their vehicles. The efficiency, time savings, and reduced overhead make it the right formula for entrepreneurs." Entrepreneurs like Abney, who need the flexibility of a home office with the added benefit of near-infinite mobility. Call it SOHO on wheels.

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