Chuck Netwon, publisher of a favorite of mine, Chuck Newton, Rides the Third Wave and I were discussing the other day names and taglines creeping into the Internet world and working out of a home office. At the same time, I asked Chuck to provide me with a guest post. Out of our conversation and Chuck’s agreement to do a guest post, came what you see below. Chuck just has a way words. Chuck and his wife run a very successful law practice out of their home. Just one more example of how you can run a successful home based business, especially a professional service firm from home.

By: Chuck Netwon

There is a judge in Houston, Texas that likes to say, “The World is round. What goes around, comes around”. Of course he uses it in a different context, but I understand the universal point. And, that is what I think of when I think of Sparkplugging and its mantra of the “new work-at-home generation”.

What I have found interesting of late is that everything 70s is back in. There are 70-style clothes, 70-style kitchenware, 70-style furniture and fixtures, and young people are scooping these up and exclaiming they have somehow discovered something new. But, have they? No. About every 10 years residential real estate takes off and people run around claiming they have discovered a much overlooked good investment. But, was it overlooked? No. The most bodacious was when McDonald’s many years ago decided to add lettuce and tomato to one of their hamburgers and then proceeded to market it like adding lettuce and tomato to a hamburger was somehow new and revolutionary. But, was it? No. And, is sparkplugging new? Far from it.

I bet everybody has experienced something like this. I was standing in a line to use the self checkout at our local grocery store the other day. I had been waiting a while. I was next in line. There were two people behind me. My hands were freezing because I was holding ice cream and had been waiting a while. Yet, when the checkout machine opened someone walked right past me and the other two in line and utilized the machine. At first you think to yourself, “how rude”, but then you realize this person is not rude as much as she did not even recognize that others were standing in line. To her she just discovered the a quick way to check out of the grocery store. It happened about two months ago in our local Post Office. I was standing with probably 20 people waiting on one of three clerks to help with my mail. We were all lined up around the outer edge of the Post Office waiting for the next person in line to be called. Someone walks in to the Post Office anew, sees a window opening up and goes to it.

There are always those who are self-involved and who will view that which is readily apparent, obvious, pronounced, unmistakable, and which has already been subscribed to by many others, and think that they alone discovered something novel and original. There are those that will visit a Mexican restaurant and somehow think they discovered Tex-Mex (Bobby Flay), or discover a talent to inspire people and believe they invented Hope (Senator Obama), or find a way to bid on hotel rooms online and think they discovered the concept of an auction (Priceline). But, in the long run these people are only providing you what is manifestly noticeable and then they concoct, formulate, contrive or divine that which was already ordained.

Wendy Piersall says of her site, “One of the biggest things I have learned over the nearly two years of running this site is that “the traditional model of a “Home Business” is on a path to extinction”. Really? Everybody, I guess, is entitled to their own hyperbole. I am probably guilty of it myself. However, when I started Chuck Newton, Rides the Third Wave, and when Carolyn Elefant started MyShingle, and when Grant Griffiths started first Home Office Lawyer and then Home Office Warrior, and when Rick Georges started FutureLawyer, and Susan Cartier Liebel started Build A Solo Practice, LLC, none of us professed or eluded to something more than a desire to help an already burgeoning movement. We recognized similarities and just wanted to be part of the conversation, to offer a little something of value, to find a little common ground and a little fellowship.

What we have here is someone bypassing the line and going straight to the clerk or the checkout machine for which everyone else has waited. Look, it is easy to get out in front of a mob and proclaim you started the whole thing, but it takes someone a little more reserved, a little more mild, a little more modest to walk along with their fellow travelers offering and taking and sharing advice.

Look, working at home is nothing new. This past weekend I took a road trip to view the roots of Texas. My wife and I visited the home of Anson Jones, the last President of the Republic of Texas, and the log home of James Polk Johnson, the great cousin of LBJ that founded Johnson City, Texas. What you learn about the earliest days of Texas is that people lived and worked in the same place — home. That was true nationally as well. George Washington did not maintain a separate office as a surveyor. He worked from home. Thomas Jefferson worked from Monticello. Theoretically, the President works from home. My great grandparents operated a general store in rural Oklahoma. They lived in the back of the store. The early days most doctors and lawyers worked from their homes. Still today this practice is heavily followed in rural areas. The other day my wife and I took a Sunday drive and ended up driving the back roads to Beaumont, Texas. All along the route people worked were they lived. And, it was not just farming. Whether it was a Bar-B-Q stand, or a mechanic shop, or a machine shop, or selling dirt, or artisans of different types, their business would be in their front of side yards. So, this is not new. In fact, in the whole history of the World, working in an industrial environment away from home is what’s new.

What has changed is cheap technology. In that regard Windy Piersall is not wrong. It allows us all not to have to come together physically to achieve common goals and objectives. It allows us the luxury to stay at home and raise our children. But, then “sparkplugging” does not make a lot of sense to me. It is certainly not new. Just look on the Internet for all of the companies that use the term with the image of a spark. Unlike more utilitarian domain names like HomeOfficeWarrior, FutureLawyer, BuildASoloPractice SoloInChicago, MyShingle, TheInspiredSolo or even EMomAtHome, sparkplugging relays absolutely nothing. The Third Wave lawyer, unlike sparkplugging seeks only to define the changing environment that already exists and provide a little useful advice. Sparkplugging seems so last century. It is antecedent. It is yore. It is more combustible than it is enlightening. In fact, in this day of outrageous gas prices the domain can conjure up images that are just painful. Besides, I know a lot of eMoms at home. I am married to one. And, although I imagine there are some tool belt divas out there, I doubt the concept of spark plugs carry much weight or enthusiasm with most work at home moms. They have now been abandoned.

Naming a baby is a personal thing as well. That is the reason my wife and I kept the names we chose a secret until we had to make them known. But, we all know it is to easy to get too cute with names. Tell that to “Big Jim” Hogg, former governor of Texas, who, although a man of respectable making as they like to say in Texas, found it cute to name is daughter Ima. She grew to prominence in Texas herself, despite her name, which is laughed about until this day, as we hope is true for Sparkplugging as well. All the same to me, I wish they would have just left a good thing a lone with eMoms at Home. It was simple. It was precise. It did not make itself out as something it is not. It spoke visibly to a much neglected niche that is hounded online by too many trying to enslave them into multi-level marketing scams. They needed an honest broker. Only, I guess, there was no money in just offering friendly advice to those that needed it.