Sue Rugge Part One interviewed by Randy Williams on July 24, 1996	"Really good solid information is so time-consuming to find on the Net or the Web that it's often not worth people's effort." Sue Rugge pioneered the information brokering industry, founding Information Unlimited in 1971, Information on Demand in 1978, and The Rugge Group (now Cooper Hydock Rugge, Inc.) in 1982. Today Ms. Rugge is largely retired from brokering and devotes her time to The Information Professionals Institute, for whom she teaches seminars and creates educational materials; her "Information Broker's Handbook" has recently been released in an updated Second Edition. In part one of a two-part interview, Ms. Rugge discusses common misconceptions about cruising the Information Superhighway for profit. Tripod: Do you get a lot of interest from people expecting a "Get Rich Quick" scheme? There must be a lot of misguided souls out there who think that anyone who can use a search engine can get into the information brokerage field. Sue Rugge: Well, that's a real fallacy! But yes, I do talk to those people on a regular basis. I get about five or six of those calls a day, plus e-mail. Tripod: There is a wealth of information available for free on the web these days that wasn't really out there when you started out in this field. Do you think that fact makes it harder for people to start out as information brokers? SR: I think it depends on their level of experience with information resources to begin with. The good news is that it alerts people that there are electronic sources of information: that's what all the hype does. The bad news is that the hype is so overblown -- and the Internet is so overloaded -- that really good solid information is so time-consuming to find on the net or the Web that it's often not worth people's effort. An efficient information broker would check the Web for information that might not be available other places. In general, most searches would be done through systems like Dialog or Dow Jones or Newsnet or Lexis-Nexis, because those search engines are so efficient. The sophistication of the systems that are used to search Dialog give you so much more power than anything that's coming anytime soon on the Web -- Alta Vista at this point seems to be the best for some sense of proximity searching and subject listing and indexing terms and things like that -- but it's still really time-intensive. Tripod: Does the Internet make it more difficult to convince clients of the need for information specialists? SR: I don't think the level of information available on the Web is going to detract from the viability of making a living as an information broker. I think what happens is people begin searching as an end user and they say, "Whoa, this is really convoluted here -- maybe I should be looking for a person who is an expert." That's what efficient executives do. They don't handle their own legal matters, they don't handle their own financial matters, they certainly don't change their own oil in their car or do their own laundry -- you know, those kind of things. A busy executive needs to think in terms of who performs those things of services best -- so that he or she can concentrate on what they do best.
"A big problem with the Internet is figuring out how to separate the important information from the trivial."	Tripod: In the "Information Broker's Resource Kit," you mention that most of the research an information specialist does is split 50/50 between telephone work and online work. Would you say that's changing, tilting more toward the online world? SR: Not necessarily. I think the telephone component is very important. I've built up four information services and sold off three of them. While it's true that I mainly spend my time now consulting, writing my books, and helping other people get started, it is also true that I keep up with the trends in the business. An information broker tends to deal in highly specialized information -- such as patent work, competitive intelligence, import/export, biotech, market research, demographics, etc. This is what you call soft information that isn't necessarily published. The researcher has to ferret out where the information is in the bowels of the Department of Commerce or the National Highway Safety Transportation Administration or wherever. You spend a lot of time on the phone with government employees, or just talking to people in the industry that you're in, looking for expert witnesses, etc. There's a tremendous amount of diversity in these fields, and telephone research is really critical to get the most current, up-to-date information for the client. Tripod: You sound pretty disparaging of the Web as a research tool, yet it is being touted as the major component in the "information superhighway." SR: When you're on the web, most of the time you're getting information that people want you to have, that has been cleared for public consumption. Another problem with the Internet is figuring out how to separate the important information from the trivial. For example, when you enter "information brokering" on Yahoo, you come up with over 9500 hits. Now how are they going to find my little Web page? I don't know how you found it! Yet one little Web page out of thousands may be the one you need. An experienced researcher will know how to find what they're looking for quickly -- and that's important because clients usually want information almost immediately -- but a novice might waste hours or even days.
"I don't mean to be discouraging, but this is really hard work."	Tripod: You seem to spend a lot of the time in your book and other materials discouraging people from getting into information brokering as a career -- you state many times that it is difficult to make money in this business. Is that not at odds with your current focus on "how-to" seminars? SR: The tagline at the end of my seminar is "I hope what I've said today has not discouraged you, it was not meant to do that, it was meant to give you a realistic picture of what this business is all about." In my own mind I feel very protective of our industry and want it to grow -- but I do not want information brokers to become the financial planners of the 80's. Everybody and their brother hung out a shingle saying that they were financial planners in those days, and then all of a sudden nobody had any credibility whatsoever. That's the problem with too many uninformed people getting into information brokering all at once: they're not going to make any money and they're going to turn off the potential clients for the rest of us. If somebody does know what they're doing, I would and do encourage them. I didn't want anybody in my industry to accuse me of writing about how to make a million dollars in the industry -- and the old joke is that the way you make a million dollars is to write a book about how to do it. I want my book to reflect the reality of it: it isn't meant to be discouraging, but this is really hard work with long, demanding hours and tight deadlines. Tripod: What is the main misconception about your business that you feel you should warn people about? SR: What people think is, "I've got my computer, I've got my modem, I can work at home on my own schedule." They totally forget the marketing concept and while you can do work at home ( I would say probably 65% of brokers work at home), you have to be out there and marketing all the time -- especially in the beginning. Usually people who love to work with computers think of their home as somewhat of an ivory tower, that they can do it all from there and they don't have to get down and dirty like the rest of the business community. That's just not true -- you have to market aggressively. The world will not just automatically beat a path to your door, you know.
"The ones who are really good researchers but really bad at marketing just don't make it."	Tripod: Do you think the idea of selling yourself and knowing who you're going to sell to is the most important component of this business? SR: I believe that one hundred percent -- more so than ever after thirty years of doing this and watching the people who have been proteges of mine coming up through the industry. The ones who are really good researchers but really bad at marketing just don't make it. If they have a real subject specialty, then they may make it as a subcontractor. If they really know, say, chemical patenting, they can market to their own industry, to other brokers for people who don't know much about that particular subject. Maybe they can make a living doing that. But if they're less specifically oriented, they're not going to survive if they can't market. IN TWO WEEKS: The conclusion features Ms. Rugge's practical suggestions for building a successful information business. <