Business In A Backpack
Michelle LaBrosse is the founder of Cheetah Learning, which offers project-management training courses worldwide. She teaches business clients how to meet goals such as developing a product, launching a website, or reaching a sales quota. She also runs a corporate retreat in Haines, Alaska, and sell kayak-making kits that can be used for team building. Clients include Blue Cross Blue Shield, IBM, and Pepsi, and she has posted sales of about $9 million in 2006.
Cheetah has 30 employees, 40 contractors, three offices, and four training classrooms across the country. But LaBrosse don’t have an office, or even a main residence. What she does have is a backpack. It’s a five-year-old nylon laptop carrier with a hip belt. It costs $69.99, and goes everywhere she goes. She makes about 35 trips across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico for business and pleasure annually.
LaBrosse wouldn’t have it any other way, because she meets new contacts when she is on the road, and that creates more opportunities. Her backpack business has traveled to England, India, and New Zealand, where she has met with clients and given presentations. When it’s fully loaded, it weighs about 25 pounds.
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Photo by Andrew Hetherington.
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