How much of your business is offline?

The poll above is simply to ask, in your judgement, how much of your entire business empire (!!) is offline or 'real world'.

I suspect that a lot of people get into IM because of the convenience, low start up costs and overheads. I can certainly see the attraction, but let's not forget that Interent business has not yet wiped out conventional offline business.

If you don't have any 'real world' elements to your business, maybe you should consider it and possibly factor it in to some longer term plans - there could be a revenue source dealing with people face-to-face that you're not tapping into and other benefits besides.

This is our wee story:

We've only recently (about a year) moved into IM after running our business offline. We have the potential for completely remodelling our business so it is exclusively online. It certainly would tick a lot of boxes when it came to maximising our work/life balance, but there's a part of us that wants to stop short of completely digitising our venture.

For one, offline consulting and training is still very lucrative - the downside is the travelling and the development of bespoke packages that can't be sold on again.

The upside, as well as the money, is the interaction with real people, face-to-face, and (I don't mean this flippantly) it gets you out of the house. Spending days upon days in front of the PC can be soul destroying and bad for your health.

So how much of your business is in the real world and why?

Peter