6 Secrets to Running a Virtual Company

Cheetah Learning’s Michelle LaBrosseMichelle LaBrosse believes she knows how to motivate people. After all, the company she founded — Cheetah Learning — trains people to achieve their project management credential, the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Professional or PMP. She says that 97% of the people who attend one of Cheetah’s classes will pass their exam.

That focus on motivation trickles through to how she runs her 20-person firm, a totally virtual operation with people in Ohio, Connecticut, Nevada, California and Alaska. “I run a boss-free zone,” she says. “We don’t like people who want to micro manage. We also don’t want people who want to be babysat.”

How motivated is the staff? One person who had surgery wasn’t making plans to give herself time off for recovery. After all, the thinking goes, if we’re working from home offices, why can’t we do it while lying in bed? So LaBrosse offered her $5,000 to take off an entire week and let others pick up the slack. “She said it was the hardest week of her life,” reports LaBrosse, but she got the payoff.


Not so long ago, LaBrosse says, she’d forgotten her roots and decided to open up an office so that the company would have a headquarters. Suddenly, payroll was up and profits were down. Most of the people in that office have since been booted out and profits are back up — with the current staff focused on customer-facing activities.

Here are six secrets to LaBrosse’s success.

Use the web to stay in touch with customers. Cheetah has eliminated printed marketing materials totally. That philosophy was confirmed recently in a decision about how to thank its 2007 customers for their business. “A couple of years ago, we sent out cards to 9,000 students,” says LaBrosse. “That cost me $18,000 — ridiculous.” Along with the card was an invitation to take a free course, which 900 people took advantage of. This year, LaBrosse decided to send out an email holiday greeting — and included free access to video cooking lessons online.” That emailer had a 25% open rate — higher than the cards, as far as LaBrosse calculates it. “I didn’t print out any materials. They got a better product.” Total cost: $5,000 to sponsor the site providing the cooking lessons.

Invest once, grow infinitely. LaBrosse says she has very little overhead in her infrastructure. The company built its web site over seven years, and it’s fully depreciated. She figures she can triple her business before she needs to invest anymore.

Hire technically literate people with an attitude that they can work anyplace anytime. She gives people new notebook computers every 18 months. They all have iPhones. Their high-speed Internet access is paid for. They receive $150 a month towards their cell phone bills. LaBrosse points out, “I don’t have to pay for their electricity, heat or rent for office space. I can pass that onto them in higher salaries and bigger bonuses.”

Look everywhere for good people to hire. One of her top customer service people came from LaBrosse’s bank. “I saw him every week when I’d go into the bank,” she says. “He’d just been promoted to manager, and they’d stop doing a lot of their customer-focused activities. I told him, come to work for us!” She starts everybody in customer service (another word for “sales” at Cheetah). After six months, she says, “We figure out the best fit for them.”

Stay in touch with your team daily. LaBrosse says she “touches” people almost every day — by instant messaging and email and phone (a “distant second”). She — along with everybody else — can monitor company health by monitoring sales through a CRM system that tracks the results of sales and marketing efforts.

Get together in person too. The most recent gathering for Cheetah took place in Vegas for the company holiday party. LaBrosse flew them and their families in, allowed them to choose their own hotels, covered a nice dinner and tickets for the Blue Man Group and gave them $500 each for spending money.

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