We’ve steered the ZRV south. We’re just inside North Carolina, at a KOA campground in Enfield. By tonight, we’ll be back in Florida, preparing for a presentation at the Disney Entrepreneur Center on Thursday morning. A lot of reflection going on right about now. Eighteen days on the road, and as a family, we’re still talking. Equally important, as far as this “home business exercise” goes, my clients still seem to be talking to me.

How has this happened? Credit understanding by my family and clients, and the tools I’ve used. I’ve said that Home Office Highway was NOT about some fancy technology that created a whiz-bang workspace. It’s been all about off-the-shelf stuff, easily accessible and priced right for anyone, that creates a workspace that mimics the home office.

What stuff have I used? Let’s go by the numbers… Read More »

I spent some time with Ruth King with The Profitability Channel in Atlanta as part of Home Office Highway. We had a great chat about setting up your mobile home office, getting work done – and managing family expectations. See for yourself. The 30-minute show that aired on July 21.

To check it out, hit www.profitabilitychannel.com, click on Channel Calendar or Library, go to July 21, and look for Jeff Zbar on Biz Buzz. It will be available through mid-August.

Enjoy…

Home Office Highway and the virtual office is all about technology. Sure, cooking burgers on a grill doesn’t take much in the way of high-tech gizmos — unless you bought your spatula at Hammacher-Schlemmer.

But this blog has been written on a laptop connected to the Internet by a USB device that delivers broadband Rev-A through-put from almost any location — an RV park, at the base of Stone Mountain in Georgia, or as we drive along I-95 toward Massachusetts. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or you telework / telecommute, tech is your toolbox.

If you’re a tech marketer, the secret of successfully putting high-tech gadgetry in the hands of consumers (especially if you don’t have an IT staff behind you) is making it accessible to folks in a non-threatening, high-touch venue. The chance to play with the latest handset, or demo some new device, or ask “Like Duh!” questions without getting some “You Silly Consumer” look in response is the answer.

Call it the “Evolution.”

Read More »

In Home Office Highway, we’ve tried to do our part for the environment — and our health.

We’ve seen the decline of our world. We drove through Atlanta, where a persistent drought is raising serious questions about long-term solutions. We visited the state’s northeast, where dropping water levels are plainly and shockingly apparently.

We had to do better. We have no paper goods, aside from napkins, tissues and paper towels (we have two cloth kitchen towels that do the bulk of the wiping and drying), and the paper of our journal. We’re eating off Corele chip- and scratch-resistant plates with actual silverware, drinking from sturdy plastic cups, and re-using water bottles. To wash, we’re doing the “fill one sink with soapy water, the other with fresh” to do the dishes.

The intention of this trip was not to be a burden on the environment, but to enjoy Mother Nature without eco-guilt. We’ve done a fairly good job. We’ve cooked out (ever had Rocky Mountain toast cooked over an open fire?), recycled where possible, and tried to minimize our waste. Read More »

I’ve been a fan of Henry David Thoreau for more than a decade. Didn’t read him in grade school or college. I came across his works and thinking later in life, and found a piece of him in me. Equal parts poet, essayist, biologist, ecologist, transcendentalist, anarchist, abolitionist and a creator of civil disobediance whose writings later were followed by Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, I believe any free spirited thinker can say they feel his work.

So it was when we were driving down I-495 in Central Massachusetts this week and came across a sign for the Walden Pond State Reservation, I knew I just had to stop.

I knew it would be an idyllic place, this campsite and woods that Thoreau spent two years, two months and two days in the 1840s exploring, journaling, and living a solitary life. I’d read some of his works, and while the details were a bit fuzzy, the big picture revealed a place I had to be.

“You’re going to see a lot of ‘earthy’ people,” I forewarned Robbie. “People in Birkenstocks and women in peasant skirts who still follow his writings.”

So Robbie, Nicole and I went. And we parked in a lot with far too many vehicles to be just members of The Thoreau Society. Whatever. We were all on the same plane.

And as I rounded a corner from the parking lot, I saw it… Read More »

“The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.”

American author, essayist, poet, naturalist, transcendentalist, civil anarchist, abolitionist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote this sentence in the mid 1800s, from a place not far from where I’m writing these words today. I’m in Littleton, Massachusetts, less than 10 miles from Walden Pond.

I’ve long read and followed Mr. Thoreau’s work. That passage hangs on my wall and is a central piece of my work-at-home philosophy — and that I espouse when speaking to fellow entrepreneurs. In modern speak, it’s akin to, “Work smart, not hard.”

Yet I’ll admit: I had no idea how close we’d come to the place where he lived, worked and died, from 1817 to 1862. We’re less than five miles from Concord, his home — that is, when he wasn’t in the vast woods nearby.

Seeing the sign for Walden Pond State Recreation Area yesterday, I nearly had to pull over and explore. Yet the hour was late, and we needed to pitch camp (OK, so we’re in a camper – “pitching” camp means plugging in the power, water and cable)… Read More »

During our recent visit to Jacksonville, Fla., Home Office Highway was profiled by First Coast News. Workation, vocation and vacation were key concepts the producers lit upon to highlight how the mobile home office will find its place.

See the report below…

Every other week, I sit and chat with Small Business Advocate Jim Blasingame. This week, I was sitting in the driver’s chair of the Home Office Highway RV while tooling down the Garden State Parkway (hand-free wireless, I promise…). It was a lot of fun.

Give it a click if you’d like to learn how to home office from the road, too, good buddy. And check out my weekly spot on The Rich Roffman Show. Hosted by Miami media entrepreneur and publisher Rich Roffman, we’ve chronicled my trip up the Eastern Seaboard — including my drive through New York’s Hudson Valley. We’ve proven that my work — or that of any information peddler — can be done from anywhere.

This is the Chief Home Officer, I’m 10-10 on the side…