In the course of the past month, a radical and exciting development has been made at SR to crystallize our business plan and begin executing on a very specific strategy.  I’d like to share some of the key points and introduce 2 new members of our startup team:  Nicole Walker and Sepehr Sadighpour.  Their bios will be added shortly to the site, but in order to understand why I’m so excited to bring them onboard, let’s discuss SR’s business model:

Remote Consulting + In-Person Training = A unique recipe for empowerment

A New Kind of Consulting:

1. Skype has changed the way we do business at SelfReliant, and the power of this simple and free tool allows us to offer a new kind of consulting relationship for clients:  a fully remote experience.  We are looking to engage consulting clients that are eager to use Skype with our team, so we can use both webcam and screen-sharing features to have rich client interaction on every project we do.
2. SelfReliant’s network of trusted friends and partners reaches all over the world, but we’re starting our most vigorous test of remote consulting in San Francisco, with the help of my colleague and friend, Sepehr Sadighpour who lives in Oakland, CA.
3. Sepehr will be helping us connect with small-midsize businesses or individuals in the Oakland area that need design, development, or social media marketing work done with the high level of professionalism yet maintain a budget.
4. We have plans to bring on dedicated representatives in the following regions:  Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, Tokyo, and London – just to name a few.
5. SR’s policy for every single consulting contract is to carefully listen to client needs, craft a custom quote, and always include a complimentary Step-by-Step PDF guide at delivery.  In this way, clients will have the ‘keys to the car’ and be able to run and maintain their Internet presence themselves, or hand off the guide to one of their employees.

Hands-On Training with SelfReliant:

1. From our new headquarters in Keller, TX opening in Fall of 2010 and our office in Raleigh, NC, SR will be providing a ‘menu’ of 1-on-1 Training Sessions and Group Seminars that will be delivered in-person to clients.  Within a certain radius of these areas, SR will be offering clients an outstanding value to work with one of our trainers.  Pricing for these sessions will be available on the site shortly.
2. Michael Innes will be SR’s designated trainer for the Raleigh-Durham area, while Carolyn and I will conduct training in Dallas / Fort-Worth.
3. As we build systems for better and more effective hands-on training, we’ll be hiring other trainers who can add unique topics to our total list of offerings.  Eventually, finding the SelfReliant trainer for your area will be as simple as typing in your zip code.
4. Every area offering training sessions will have a dedicated ‘Public Relations Director’ and SR has found its first in Nicole Walker.  Nicole is going to be helping to introduce the Raleigh-Durham area to Michael Innes, and help to promote his training sessions there.
5. If you’re reading this in the Dallas / Fort-Worth area, we are currently looking for someone to assist us in covering that region.  Please e-mail info@selfreliantllc.com with the Subject line “DFW PR Director” for more information.  We can only provide commission-based work at this time, but if you’re excited about Internet technology and training, then we’d love to meet you when we arrive in Texas!

I welcome comments, questions, or criticisms about our business model.  One of the main features of this 2-pronged approach is that it will allow all of SelfReliant’s employees to stay on the cutting edge of technology in the work we do for clients all over the world, and therefore vastly improve the quality of training session we can offer in-person to our local communities.

Thanks for reading, and remember, the web is transforming education and self-directed learning.  If you’re out there “learning deliberately” whether through social media or Wikipedia, keep at it, and share your stories with our team anytime.