About the Chief Heretic

Howdy!  Yeah, I really talk like that. I'm Joel D Canfield (I'm fussy about the middle initial, and the fact that there's no period after it; you'll discover I tend to obsess about little details.)

I've never been very good at having someone else make the decisions and tell me what to do; I prefer to be the driver, not a passenger. That's one reason I've had my own businesses over the past 25 years  (off and on).

Besides my various jobs (analyst for a telecom consulting company, IT and accounting manager for an office supply company, web developer for a wireless startup and then a health insurance administration company) I've maintained Spinhead Web Design since 1999, though its roots go back much further. I was playing on the web before most people knew what it was. My 15 years of experience make most web challenges fairly trivial to overcome.

During my years in web development, I started to specialise. I like the freedom that comes from designing tools for internal use in small companies. Gravitating toward intranet tools, I discovered how much enjoyed the problem-solving part of the process. Soon, I was spending most of my time analyzing business processes and less time coding. Lifelong training from my father, whose career for 30 years was quality and production control (problem solving at both ends of the production chain) made problem-solving for a living sound pretty good. (I tell all my clients to specialise, which is what I've done more and more of over the decades.)

My first step in building a business around problem-solving was to write a book (another thing I encourage all my clients to do; something about the process of writing an entire book helps clarify your thinking). The Commonsense Entrepreneur was published a year ago, and for a while Sue and I sharpened our focus even more and help virtual office professionals and virtual assistants learn how to operate their businesses efficiently, and enjoy themselves at the same time.

To launch that focus, we created a new version of The Commonsense Entrepreneur designed specifically with virtual assistants in mind. It's called The Commonsense Virtual Assistant, and it seems to be selling quite well.

I love writing of all kinds. I'm currently writing the sequel to my first fiction book; they're both mysteries set primarily in the west of Ireland where we plan to live sooner than later. I have three more business books in the works right now. And every year I participate in February Album Writing Month, where a growing crowd of lunatics commit to writing an entire album of music (14 songs, each) during the shortest month of the year.

As a parent of 7 (Sue's, mine, and ours) one of my greatest joys is teaching others simple ways to do complex things. After 30 years, I'm pretty good at it.

I'd love a chance to prove it to you. Call or email and tell me your greatest business challenge.

Joel D Canfield
Author, Speaker & Business Heretic