As a measure of how far things have changed, he points out that a few years ago he was doing 30,000 miles a year travelling for work. That figure has now shrunk down to 6,000km which is not only great news for the planet but great news for his pocket too. Not to mention the time he’s saved. “I used to waste so much time sitting in traffic thinking ‘what the hell am I doing here’,” he recalls.
But there are dangers in taking a completely remote approach. “If people don’t see you around, they start taking you for granted,” O’Callaghan says. “That can be tricky if you send them bills. I make point of dropping in to see clients and having a cup of tea or coffee. You’ll be surprised what business that can turn into. People might say “I was thinking of calling you”. So, it’s particularly useful. I don’t like the idea of dropping completely off the planet, so I like to drop in at least once a quarter. It’s better for everyone that they see you there.”
A big benefit of being able to deal with people remotely is that you can pick up work that wouldn’t normally be viable if you had to be onsite more of the time. “There are times when it wouldn’t be worth it to support people down the country because you have to build in the costs of fuel, time and staying over,” so if you can do more work from your own location that can make it much more realistic and achievable.
So is the man in the van on the verge of extinction as Conway suggests? There are some valid reasons why people might feel inclined to consign the man in the van to the dustbin of history but there are equally valid arguments for believing that he and his kind may bestride the planet (oh, alright, crawl along in traffic) for some time to come.
While it’s true that the numbers of homo vaniens are starting to decline, they have not fallen to the point where they will be completely replaced by homo remote supportius. After all, when all else fails, in the last resort, who truly believes that customers will have their hearts lifted by the sight of a man in shorts appearing at their front door saying “don’t worry, your troubles are over, I’m here to fix your IT problem”. In shorts? Really? At least the man in the van wore trousers when he came to sort out their issues.
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