Not only does Amy Bates Stumpf, of (La Canada Flintridge), a suburb of Los Angeles, run her business out of her home, she and her family, husband Graham, and the three kids and two dogs and the tortoise had to evacuate their home as the raging California wildfires came within ½ mile of their house.
Was this totally disruptive to her million dollar a year venture, Gifted Communications? Well not totally, since her business is almost exclusively digital. Grabbing the family pictures, her briefcase with laptop, and her Blackberry, she was back in business within hours of getting the kids settled at her parents’ house.
Not only could she work from there, but also from a convenient Starbucks while Graham and the kids went for ice cream.
“I was really rattled at first. It was about 120 degrees in the house! My husband and sister loaded up his car with our photos, while I retrieved two cats and the family albums of a neighbor who was out of town. The tricky part was keeping our dogs and their cats in separate quarters. But all in all it went pretty smoothly.”
“Now I’m banging away on my laptop in my mother’s den in (Glendale) and keeping the business up and running. It’s not much different from being at home. I have a virtual office so my staff is all safe and working from their homes across the country.”
The only thing Amy is worried about is how to get the smoke smell out of her house but “I’ll think about that tomorrow. I’m just grateful the wind shifted. They say these fires will rage for 10 more days, but as long as I can find a WiFi hotspot, I’m in business.”
Amy Bates Stumpf joins a growing legion of entrepreneurs who run virtual businesses from their home. Gifted Communications is a b-to-b venture that connects public relations firms, large and small, as well as small business vendors, to the more than 1800 news outlets who cover consumer products and the topic “gifts”. For more information, log onto giftlistmedia.com.
Gifted Communications 