NEWS Story From Irvine Spectrum News
Dot-com helps you help yourself Irvine-based
selfhelpzone.com puts motivation right at your
fingertips.
Oct 16, 2000
By CATRINE JOHANSSON
Irvine Spectrum News
"And the winner of the gold medal in avoidance goes to..."
The speaking engagement can no longer be ignored. It's tonight. And the self esteem is not just low, it's in the red, the "empty" light frantically blinking.
What might help for tonight is selfhelpzone.com.
Founder Tony Akers and his colleagues have tinkered away on the Web site for a year, and, starting this week, a chorus of voices are giving out instant self-help advice to anyone who logs on.
That's right -- voices.
"Self-help speakers are dynamic, and you lose a lot of the enthusiasm if you read the books," Akers said.
Adding "but we have a warehouse in Florida, so we can ship books to those who want them," Akers emphasized that Self Help Zone is primarily into auditory material.
By logging on and paying with a credit card, users can plug into self-help programs, one tape at a time. The self-help material covers romance and relationships, stress management, parenting, public speaking, financial issues, and business issues, among others.
Previously involved with his technical training company, Ultimate Knowledge, Akers ran into some of life's anguishes a few years ago.
Those experiences prompted him to start Self Help Zone (Pink Sheets: SHZI).
"I had an extensive network of contacts that I was able to pull together for this project," he said. In addition to Akers, Scott Wells, former senior developer at Microsoft, recently accepted the position of chief technical officer at Self Help Zone.
Several distinguished members of the self-help community have also entered the Self Help Zone.
Bobbie Gee for example. She's on the board of directors for Self Help Zone, and is listed as one of the top motivational speakers in the world.
Jim Cathcart is another. He can title himself acting director of corporate communications at Self Help Zone as well as brag about being a member of the Speakers Roundtable, a group of 22 world renowned motivational speakers.
Expressing enthusiasm over the Self Help Zone concept, Cathcart said the collected amount of expertise at Self Help Zone can "help people evolve."
The newest member of the Self Help Zone is Carlos Conjejo. As director of international implementation, Conjejo is in charge of expanding the self-help concept into the Hispanic market. He will work on getting self-help materials translated to Spanish, for the Hispanic population in the United States and Latin America.
"Hispanics and the peoples of Latin America are hungry for resources that lead to global and educational empowerment," Conejo said.
Right now, some of the empowerment to which Conjejo refers is made available at the Self Help Zone Web site.
Prices begin at $2.99 for a tape. A full program usually takes up about six tapes, so a customer can get a whole self-help program for about $20.
In addition to getting a cut of the price of programs, Self Help Zone makes its money charging the motivational speakers for being on the site.
The authors can post reviews of their books, and distribute free letters to the potential customer base at the site. Those who sign up for it can get e-mails announcing when speakers will visit an area.
A particularly intimate feature of the Self Help Zone site is a real-time help desk. Users can call or instant message a help-desk person who in turn can direct the person to the appropriate material.
"This is good both for people who don't really know what they are looking for but also for those who are not so Internet savvy," Akers said.
Soon, Self Help Zone will approach businesses with a service especially designed for employees. After paying a lump sum, companies can give their employees access to a select number of programs that they can plug into at their leisure.
Akers expects this service to be available in about three months. |
