The Wall Street Journal

HER CLIENTS, HERSELF
(May 21, 1998)
RENE SIEGEL IS RIDING A GREAT ‘90S WAVE: PROFESSIONAL WOMEN WHO WANT TO WORK FROM HOME. WOMEN, IN OTHER WORDS, LIKE HER.?By Rodney Ho
Rene Siegel’s work life is a microcosm of 1990s job trends: She runs a business owned by women, employs a string of other independent contractors and serves clients on the cutting edge of the high-tech boom.
Let the old boys do their networking from private clubs; Ms. Siegel is building her network from her two-story, tan, contemporary cul-de-sac home near Silicon Valley. As a co-founder of HighTech Connect L.L.C., the 35-year-old native Californian brokers temporary public-relations and marketing jobs, mostly for women in their 30s and 40s who also work from home. You could call it Womanpower, Inc.
“It’s so trite to me. I don’t even think about it,” says Ms. Siegel, amused that what she is doing might be considered at all trend setting. “Then again, it’s something that couldn’t have been done as easily (technologically) 10 or 20 years ago.”
Indeed her service has tapped a genuine need, uniting high-tech corporations seeking PR and marketing specialists with former corporate climbers who prefer the flexibility of a home office but need a steady string of temp jobs.
ALWAYS IN MOTION
In just 16 months, Ms. Siegel’s company has grown tenfold, from a pool of 30 consultants to more that 300 in 19 states (though most are still in Silicon Valley.) Clients range from small start-ups to big shots such as Cisco Systems Inc., Oracle Corp. and Novell Inc. Nearly all new business stems from word-of-mouth. As a result of this growth, Ms. Siegel says, first-year revenue of $400,00 easily exceeded expectations.
Terry Neese, president of the National Association of Women Business Owners and owner of an Oklahoma City temporary-employment agency, says she isn’t surprised by Ms. Siegel’s success. “Many People today would much rather function as an independent contractor,” she says. “And women are natural-born multitaskers.”
Working from her home in Pleasanton, Calif., with a portable headset connected to a phone that’s clipped to her belt, Ms. Siegel paces around her home office, gabbing with clients, grabbing faxes, sifting through files and zipping around the Internet on her high-speed cable-modem line. She receives and responds to as many as 100 e-mails a day. Ms. Siegel has made so many calls over the past year, the numbers have worn of her phone.
“She’s a perpetual-motion machine,” says Cheri Goodman, a fellow Silicon Valley consultant who hired Ms. Siegel to work at Novell in 1991 as a marketing-communications manager.
In some ways, Ms. Siegel has tried to re-create a traditional office environment. She purchased a 4,000 dollar used cubicle. The usual accouterments – fax, printer and file cabinet – surround her Macintosh clone computer. Stuck in her office window is a two-sided sign for the Federal Express driver; one side reads “no package” in red letters, the other side “yes package” in green.
But in the office – with arched ceilings, plenty of light and flowery window valances – clearly show signs of a home den. There’s the Warner Bros. animation prints on the wall and a jolly-looking Buddha that sits guard on her computer monitor. Hershey Kisses in a star-shaped basket are always in reach.
MASTER NETWORKER
Consultants and clients alike say Ms. Siegel is successful because she’s a master networker – she knows all the players in Silicon Valley, never forgets their names and doesn’t hesitate to do favors. Moreover, with 13 years of PR and marketing experience in high-tech, she can discuss network integration as nimbly as she can critique Unix systems software.
Nonetheless, she talks in a down-to-earth manner, eschewing head-spinning tech-speak. Someone she knows has “killer” experience. Another consultant is busy, she’s “slammed.” After talking to an old colleague, Ms. Siegel exclaims, “He was jazzed we’re doing well!”
Even her Web site, www.htconnect.com, maintains an irreverent tine: “Having one of those overworked, understaffed, why-did-I-take-this-job-in-the-first-place weeks that every high-tech marketer knows so well?” she writes.
Here’s how it all works: HighTech Connect is usually contacted by a company seeking a consultant for a particular job. After hearing the required credentials, Ms. Siegel sets out to find a candidate – sometimes she already has someone in mind. The client pays HighTech Connect, which takes a 20% brokering charge and then pays the consultants. Consultants, who pay a $50 one-time entry fee, are contractually bound to HighTech Connect with specific clients indefinitely. No one has skipped out on her yet.
Ms. Siegel creates a profile for each consultant. She has them rank their top five skills out of 22, such as advertising, media planning and crisis communication. She also asks for basic resume information, a fee range (typically $75-$150 an hour) and a list of recent clients. She then gives each person a grade. If she knows little about them, they get a tentative C. If she doesn’t like their work, she’ll just avoid them. Noting one person’s resume, she rolls her eyes and says, “He’s flaky.”
Carolyn Mathas, a 49-year-old consultant in a small town in the mountains of Jacksonville, Ore., is one of Ms. Siegel’s “A” consultants – due to her experience and reputation. Ms. Mathas first heard about the service through a trade-publication editor last year. During some downtime last fall, she requested a temp job. Within days, Ms. Mathas got one at a public-relations agency, writing news releases and coordinating an editorial tour for executives at Motorola Inc.
A 13-year veteran in the field and former Silicon Valley resident, Ms. Mathas has her own clients, but finds HighTech Connect to be a great backup. “It supplements me when things are a little slower,” she says, adding that HighTech Connect’s work added 15 percent to her income last year.
Though most of the consultants have at least five years of high-tech experience, Ms. Siegel sometimes mentors relative newcomers. For instance, she recently guided Renee Maler of San Ramon, Calif. through a project for AltiGen Communications Inc. of Fremont, Calif., which was marketing a computer telephone system for small businesses.
Ms. Maler needed help explaining the product to a PC Week magazine review team and sought Ms. Siegel’s advice. Ms. Siegel quickly fed Ms. Maler a cogent five-minute summary of why the product mattered and suggested AltiGen send out an expert to help the review team. With the help of Ms. Siegel’s advice, Ms. Maler scored: a glowing full-page review.
Leyla Aylikci, AltiGen’s director of product marketing, says HighTech Connect provided her with committed and flexible work from Ms. Maler. “I could call her day or night, no problem,” Ms. Aylikci says. “And HighTech Connect’s rates are much lower than those of a large PR firm,” she adds.
On one occasion, Advanced Fiber Communications Inc. of Petaluma, Calif., calls Ms. Siegel seeking someone with telecommunications experience in Asia. “Oh, that’s a tough one.” Ms. Siegel says. A few seconds later, she adds: “But I have a couple of people who might fit the bill.” She tells her assistant, Michelle Stewart, to call Ms. Siegel’s sister, Lori Rocereto, in Utah to access the files of those two people and fax them to her. Ms. Rocereto handles the consultant database for HighTech Connect.
“Maybe senior-level people with telecommunications background is more of the angle than Asia?” she asks the company. “And price is no object, right?” she adds with a grin.
Ms. Siegel acknowledges later that Advanced Fiber’s requirements were more specific than most. Later, the company delays its decision to use her. “It’s part of the hurry-up-and-wait process,” she says. But Ms. Siegel isn’t disappointed. That same week, she finds jobs for six consultants, ranging from steady local-business press coverage for a high-tech water-filtration company at $95 per hour to a marketing project for a small Internet security start-up at a generous $150 per hour.
Aware that work-from-home consultants sometimes feel isolated, Ms. Siegel sends them a monthly e-mail newsletter. It’s full of information on seminars and trade shows, nuggets of advice, profiles on consultants and the occasional bit of humor. (”You know you’re in Silicon Valley when: you go to the movies and EVERYBODY claps along with the SciFi theme music.”) She also holds bimonthly luncheons for her Silicon Valley consultants so they can schmooze and have face-to-face contact.
PAGEANT QUEEN
A native of nearby Dublin, Calif., and a fourth-generation Japanese-American, Ms. Siegel says her parents were security seekers of a different era, embracing a lifetime work at a government-run research facility.
Ms. Siegel’s mother, Diane Shimada, says she thought her daughter would become a journalist because of her writing skills and appetite for reading. “As a child, she like to memorize the backs of cereal boxes,” Ms. Shimada says. To channel her boundless energy, Ms. Siegel played tons of soccer. During high school, she says, “I was on the geekier side, pretty straight and narrow.”
Though accepted to bigger and better universities, she opted for San Jose State’s engineering program in 1981 to save money while her parents were going through a divorce. She first considered chemical engineering, but a fluke changed her life.
Spying a flier seeking contestants for the San Francisco Cherry Blossom Festival Queen pageant, Ms. Siegel’s friends dared her to sign up. What the hell, she thought. Ms. Siegel says she entered with no real notion of winning. Perusing her eight opponents, “I knew for certain the rich, pretty girl who played the violin would win,” she says. Wrong. Ms. Siegel won.
Her first thought was, “Oh my God. No way, I can’t possibly do this.” Instead, she took a semester off to travel free of charge to Hawaii and Japan and promote Japan-U.S. relations. The experience opened her eyes to her own talents in marketing and public relations. “I was like, ‘I ain’t going back to the computer lab!’” Ms. Siegel says. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in public relations.
Ms. Siegel entered the wild world of Silicon Valley in 1986, starting at a small firm that laid her off six months later. After taking a three-month “fun” break in Europe, she got a 25,000 dollar-a-year job at a public-relations agency. That was followed by a string of jobs that rounded our her experience: a year at 3Com Corp. in Santa Clara, two years at a wireless-and-mobile-computing start-up, another year at a computer-networking firm and two more at Novell in San Jose.
By 1994, Ms. Siegel was married, with a second child on the way. The Valley way of life – a 90-minute daily commute and 15-hour days at the office – wore her down. So she took the plunge into consulting from home.
From day one, companies clamored for her business – Ms. Siegel was already known in the industry and had a good reputation. She was so busy early on, she didn’t even have time to print business cards. As a consultant her first year, she doubled her salary to close to $130,000.
In fact, ms. Siegel was getting so much work, she began handing off jobs to colleagues in similar situations. Steve Genova, a Santa Cruz consultant and friend, and others suggested she start brokering her services for a fee rather than give away jobs.
She hesitated. “I didn’t feel right,” Ms. Siegel says. “I have a hard time asking people for money.”
She even wondered to Mr. Genova whether brokering would be ethical. “I told her that was a bizarre question because employment agencies have been around for years doing this,” Mr. Genova says. “I said, “It’s not only ethical, but you’re in the perfect position to do it.’
“
Enter Nancy Collins, a former colleague from her Novell days who consults out of New Jersey. Ms. Collins offered to handle the legal and billing issues – the stuff Ms. Siegel hated to do – and throw in $15,000 as well. They formed a 50-50 partnership in early 1997, with Ms. Siegel drumming up business.
JUGGLING ACT
At first, Ms. Siegel’s natural generosity veered overboard. For instance, she promised to pay consultants within 30 days regardless of whether the client had paid HighTech Connect. It didn’t take long for Ms. Collins to realize this was killing cash flow. By spring, Ms. Siegel had to tell consultants they would be paid only when HighTech Connect got paid.
Ms. Siegel admits her biggest character flaw is her inability to say no. Her husband, Eric, a salesman at Cisco, says she will answer the phone at 9 p.m., and if it’s a new client, she will feel compelled to fax the person information about HighTech Connect and a contract immediately. “It borders on obsessive-compulsive behavior.” Mr. Siegel says with a laugh.
She has pared down her own list of clients, doing work now mostly for her old employer 3Com. But Ms. Siegel still tallies 60 hours a week in work. And after handling a stressful product launch for 3Com late last year, Ms. Siegel sent an e-mail to many of the consultants announcing she was taking a five-week sabbatical.
Quoting from the 1986 movie “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off,” Ms Siegel decided: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Then she listed a dozen things she planned to do during that time, from organizing four year’s worth of family photos to redecorating the kids’ bathroom and bedrooms. Consultants laughed. “I teased her to no end,” Ms. Goodman says. “I said, ‘You’re such a perennial overachiever. This is how you spend your vacation?’”
To cope with her time crunch, Ms. Siegel uses a nanny and private school five minutes from her home. To ensure time with her husband and her kids – Jared, 1, Arielle, 4 and Adam, 6 – she sets aside a “family no-work-zone” from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Each day has a theme: Monday is movie and popcorn, Tuesday is board-game night, etc. But after 9 p.m., she is often back on her computer, sometimes until 3 a.m.
Facing the future, Ms. Siegel and her partner, Ms. Collins, say they are on target to take in $1 million this year, but have no plans to move into a large office building and turn into a traditional temp agency. “Our goals haven’t really changed since we started,” Ms. Siegel says. “No matter how many consultants we help, we still believe in the virtual office.”

HER CLIENTS, HERSELF

(May 21, 1998) By Randy Ho

RENE SIEGEL IS RIDING A GREAT ‘90S WAVE: PROFESSIONAL WOMEN WHO WANT TO WORK FROM HOME. WOMEN, IN OTHER WORDS, LIKE HER.

Rene Siegel’s work life is a microcosm of 1990s job trends: She runs a business owned by women, employs a string of other independent contractors and serves clients on the cutting edge of the high-tech boom.

Let the old boys do their networking from private clubs; Ms. Siegel is building her network from her two-story, tan, contemporary cul-de-sac home near Silicon Valley. As a co-founder of HighTech Connect L.L.C., the 35-year-old native Californian brokers temporary public-relations and marketing jobs, mostly for women in their 30s and 40s who also work from home. You could call it Womanpower, Inc.

“It’s so trite to me. I don’t even think about it,” says Ms. Siegel, amused that what she is doing might be considered at all trend setting. “Then again, it’s something that couldn’t have been done as easily (technologically) 10 or 20 years ago.”

Indeed her service has tapped a genuine need, uniting high-tech corporations seeking PR and marketing specialists with former corporate climbers who prefer the flexibility of a home office but need a steady string of temp jobs.

ALWAYS IN MOTION

In just 16 months, Ms. Siegel’s company has grown tenfold, from a pool of 30 consultants to more that 300 in 19 states (though most are still in Silicon Valley.) Clients range from small start-ups to big shots such as Cisco Systems Inc., Oracle Corp. and Novell Inc. Nearly all new business stems from word-of-mouth. As a result of this growth, Ms. Siegel says, first-year revenue of $400,00 easily exceeded expectations.

Terry Neese, president of the National Association of Women Business Owners and owner of an Oklahoma City temporary-employment agency, says she isn’t surprised by Ms. Siegel’s success. “Many People today would much rather function as an independent contractor,” she says. “And women are natural-born multitaskers.”

Working from her home in Pleasanton, Calif., with a portable headset connected to a phone that’s clipped to her belt, Ms. Siegel paces around her home office, gabbing with clients, grabbing faxes, sifting through files and zipping around the Internet on her high-speed cable-modem line. She receives and responds to as many as 100 e-mails a day. Ms. Siegel has made so many calls over the past year, the numbers have worn of her phone.

“She’s a perpetual-motion machine,” says Cheri Goodman, a fellow Silicon Valley consultant who hired Ms. Siegel to work at Novell in 1991 as a marketing-communications manager.

In some ways, Ms. Siegel has tried to re-create a traditional office environment. She purchased a 4,000 dollar used cubicle. The usual accouterments – fax, printer and file cabinet – surround her Macintosh clone computer. Stuck in her office window is a two-sided sign for the Federal Express driver; one side reads “no package” in red letters, the other side “yes package” in green.

But in the office – with arched ceilings, plenty of light and flowery window valances – clearly show signs of a home den. There’s the Warner Bros. animation prints on the wall and a jolly-looking Buddha that sits guard on her computer monitor. Hershey Kisses in a star-shaped basket are always in reach.

MASTER NETWORKER

Consultants and clients alike say Ms. Siegel is successful because she’s a master networker – she knows all the players in Silicon Valley, never forgets their names and doesn’t hesitate to do favors. Moreover, with 13 years of PR and marketing experience in high-tech, she can discuss network integration as nimbly as she can critique Unix systems software.

Nonetheless, she talks in a down-to-earth manner, eschewing head-spinning tech-speak. Someone she knows has “killer” experience. Another consultant is busy, she’s “slammed.” After talking to an old colleague, Ms. Siegel exclaims, “He was jazzed we’re doing well!”

Even her Web site, www.htconnect.com, maintains an irreverent tine: “Having one of those overworked, understaffed, why-did-I-take-this-job-in-the-first-place weeks that every high-tech marketer knows so well?” she writes.

Here’s how it all works: HighTech Connect is usually contacted by a company seeking a consultant for a particular job. After hearing the required credentials, Ms. Siegel sets out to find a candidate – sometimes she already has someone in mind. The client pays HighTech Connect, which takes a 20% brokering charge and then pays the consultants. Consultants, who pay a $50 one-time entry fee, are contractually bound to HighTech Connect with specific clients indefinitely. No one has skipped out on her yet.

Ms. Siegel creates a profile for each consultant. She has them rank their top five skills out of 22, such as advertising, media planning and crisis communication. She also asks for basic resume information, a fee range (typically $75-$150 an hour) and a list of recent clients. She then gives each person a grade. If she knows little about them, they get a tentative C. If she doesn’t like their work, she’ll just avoid them. Noting one person’s resume, she rolls her eyes and says, “He’s flaky.”

Carolyn Mathas, a 49-year-old consultant in a small town in the mountains of Jacksonville, Ore., is one of Ms. Siegel’s “A” consultants – due to her experience and reputation. Ms. Mathas first heard about the service through a trade-publication editor last year. During some downtime last fall, she requested a temp job. Within days, Ms. Mathas got one at a public-relations agency, writing news releases and coordinating an editorial tour for executives at Motorola Inc.

A 13-year veteran in the field and former Silicon Valley resident, Ms. Mathas has her own clients, but finds HighTech Connect to be a great backup. “It supplements me when things are a little slower,” she says, adding that HighTech Connect’s work added 15 percent to her income last year.

Though most of the consultants have at least five years of high-tech experience, Ms. Siegel sometimes mentors relative newcomers. For instance, she recently guided Renee Maler of San Ramon, Calif. through a project for AltiGen Communications Inc. of Fremont, Calif., which was marketing a computer telephone system for small businesses.

Ms. Maler needed help explaining the product to a PC Week magazine review team and sought Ms. Siegel’s advice. Ms. Siegel quickly fed Ms. Maler a cogent five-minute summary of why the product mattered and suggested AltiGen send out an expert to help the review team. With the help of Ms. Siegel’s advice, Ms. Maler scored: a glowing full-page review.

Leyla Aylikci, AltiGen’s director of product marketing, says HighTech Connect provided her with committed and flexible work from Ms. Maler. “I could call her day or night, no problem,” Ms. Aylikci says. “And HighTech Connect’s rates are much lower than those of a large PR firm,” she adds.

On one occasion, Advanced Fiber Communications Inc. of Petaluma, Calif., calls Ms. Siegel seeking someone with telecommunications experience in Asia. “Oh, that’s a tough one.” Ms. Siegel says. A few seconds later, she adds: “But I have a couple of people who might fit the bill.” She tells her assistant, Michelle Stewart, to call Ms. Siegel’s sister, Lori Rocereto, in Utah to access the files of those two people and fax them to her. Ms. Rocereto handles the consultant database for HighTech Connect.

“Maybe senior-level people with telecommunications background is more of the angle than Asia?” she asks the company. “And price is no object, right?” she adds with a grin.

Ms. Siegel acknowledges later that Advanced Fiber’s requirements were more specific than most. Later, the company delays its decision to use her. “It’s part of the hurry-up-and-wait process,” she says. But Ms. Siegel isn’t disappointed. That same week, she finds jobs for six consultants, ranging from steady local-business press coverage for a high-tech water-filtration company at $95 per hour to a marketing project for a small Internet security start-up at a generous $150 per hour.

Aware that work-from-home consultants sometimes feel isolated, Ms. Siegel sends them a monthly e-mail newsletter. It’s full of information on seminars and trade shows, nuggets of advice, profiles on consultants and the occasional bit of humor. (”You know you’re in Silicon Valley when: you go to the movies and EVERYBODY claps along with the SciFi theme music.”) She also holds bimonthly luncheons for her Silicon Valley consultants so they can schmooze and have face-to-face contact.

PAGEANT QUEEN

A native of nearby Dublin, Calif., and a fourth-generation Japanese-American, Ms. Siegel says her parents were security seekers of a different era, embracing a lifetime work at a government-run research facility.

Ms. Siegel’s mother, Diane Shimada, says she thought her daughter would become a journalist because of her writing skills and appetite for reading. “As a child, she like to memorize the backs of cereal boxes,” Ms. Shimada says. To channel her boundless energy, Ms. Siegel played tons of soccer. During high school, she says, “I was on the geekier side, pretty straight and narrow.”

Though accepted to bigger and better universities, she opted for San Jose State’s engineering program in 1981 to save money while her parents were going through a divorce. She first considered chemical engineering, but a fluke changed her life.

Spying a flier seeking contestants for the San Francisco Cherry Blossom Festival Queen pageant, Ms. Siegel’s friends dared her to sign up. What the hell, she thought. Ms. Siegel says she entered with no real notion of winning. Perusing her eight opponents, “I knew for certain the rich, pretty girl who played the violin would win,” she says. Wrong. Ms. Siegel won.

Her first thought was, “Oh my God. No way, I can’t possibly do this.” Instead, she took a semester off to travel free of charge to Hawaii and Japan and promote Japan-U.S. relations. The experience opened her eyes to her own talents in marketing and public relations. “I was like, ‘I ain’t going back to the computer lab!’” Ms. Siegel says. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in public relations.

Ms. Siegel entered the wild world of Silicon Valley in 1986, starting at a small firm that laid her off six months later. After taking a three-month “fun” break in Europe, she got a 25,000 dollar-a-year job at a public-relations agency. That was followed by a string of jobs that rounded our her experience: a year at 3Com Corp. in Santa Clara, two years at a wireless-and-mobile-computing start-up, another year at a computer-networking firm and two more at Novell in San Jose.

By 1994, Ms. Siegel was married, with a second child on the way. The Valley way of life – a 90-minute daily commute and 15-hour days at the office – wore her down. So she took the plunge into consulting from home.

From day one, companies clamored for her business – Ms. Siegel was already known in the industry and had a good reputation. She was so busy early on, she didn’t even have time to print business cards. As a consultant her first year, she doubled her salary to close to $130,000.

In fact, ms. Siegel was getting so much work, she began handing off jobs to colleagues in similar situations. Steve Genova, a Santa Cruz consultant and friend, and others suggested she start brokering her services for a fee rather than give away jobs.

She hesitated. “I didn’t feel right,” Ms. Siegel says. “I have a hard time asking people for money.”

She even wondered to Mr. Genova whether brokering would be ethical. “I told her that was a bizarre question because employment agencies have been around for years doing this,” Mr. Genova says. “I said, “It’s not only ethical, but you’re in the perfect position to do it.’”

Enter Nancy Collins, a former colleague from her Novell days who consults out of New Jersey. Ms. Collins offered to handle the legal and billing issues – the stuff Ms. Siegel hated to do – and throw in $15,000 as well. They formed a 50-50 partnership in early 1997, with Ms. Siegel drumming up business.

JUGGLING ACT

At first, Ms. Siegel’s natural generosity veered overboard. For instance, she promised to pay consultants within 30 days regardless of whether the client had paid HighTech Connect. It didn’t take long for Ms. Collins to realize this was killing cash flow. By spring, Ms. Siegel had to tell consultants they would be paid only when HighTech Connect got paid.

Ms. Siegel admits her biggest character flaw is her inability to say no. Her husband, Eric, a salesman at Cisco, says she will answer the phone at 9 p.m., and if it’s a new client, she will feel compelled to fax the person information about HighTech Connect and a contract immediately. “It borders on obsessive-compulsive behavior.” Mr. Siegel says with a laugh.

She has pared down her own list of clients, doing work now mostly for her old employer 3Com. But Ms. Siegel still tallies 60 hours a week in work. And after handling a stressful product launch for 3Com late last year, Ms. Siegel sent an e-mail to many of the consultants announcing she was taking a five-week sabbatical.

Quoting from the 1986 movie “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off,” Ms Siegel decided: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Then she listed a dozen things she planned to do during that time, from organizing four year’s worth of family photos to redecorating the kids’ bathroom and bedrooms. Consultants laughed. “I teased her to no end,” Ms. Goodman says. “I said, ‘You’re such a perennial overachiever. This is how you spend your vacation?’”

To cope with her time crunch, Ms. Siegel uses a nanny and private school five minutes from her home. To ensure time with her husband and her kids – Jared, 1, Arielle, 4 and Adam, 6 – she sets aside a “family no-work-zone” from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Each day has a theme: Monday is movie and popcorn, Tuesday is board-game night, etc. But after 9 p.m., she is often back on her computer, sometimes until 3 a.m.

Facing the future, Ms. Siegel and her partner, Ms. Collins, say they are on target to take in $1 million this year, but have no plans to move into a large office building and turn into a traditional temp agency. “Our goals haven’t really changed since we started,” Ms. Siegel says. “No matter how many consultants we help, we still believe in the virtual office.”

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