Jeff Powlowsky
Solara, Inc.

How has technology impacted your ability to operate and grow your business?

You know technology is so critical to my home based business. It's unbelievable how technology has allowed me to be successful in business. Years ago there's no way I could have run a business like this from home. What technology provides me is a lot of productivity, efficiency, cost savings and really time freedom. With the technology that's is out there these days, the technology that I utilize, certainly the internet and the ability to share big files over the web, to look at PDF files, the ability to communicate with other individuals. I use Go to Meeting, Go to Webinar, I do Webinars with clients. I do meeting with colleagues. I have a lot of international colleagues in business. And we use Skype. It's common each week for us to have a call where I may have someone in Germany, South America, Great Britain, the East Coast and me out here on the West Coast and do a Skype call. It saves me money. I have no costs associated with it. We're all on the call and we can get a lot done. I find the technology has helped tremendously in that area. In addition to that I also use vendors that are outsourced and the web interface allows me to check things like my merchant account, checks things like my fulfillment, my websites to know the traffic and what's going on and that's significant because that's all done from my computer right here. And I think one other innovation is just the PDA. When I want to leave the office, I might be down at the beach. I may be at the store doing an errand and with my PDA it allows me to talk on the phone it allows me to check email, to go on the internet, to check some of these outsourced vendor interfaces and it's just hugh because it gives me so much freedom whether I'm in the office, whether I'm out and about, whether I'm on a business trip. That PDA is my lifeline to the business and I couldn't live without it. I couldn't do the business without technology. Wouldn't be as efficient. Wouldn't be profitable. That's that main key to the success of my business.