Do you want to start a microbusiness with next to no startup costs?  Mark usually keeps his spare microbusiness ideas to himself, but I thought I'd throw this one out to the world since we don't have the skills to turn it into a reality (and we'd really like to take advantage of the service!)

Mark and I agree that we would pay at least $10 per month for an entertainment consultant service, someone who would read a questionnaire about our movie preferences and pick out movies for us to put on our Netflix queue.  Netflix does its best to suggest movies we'll like, but their formula is sad, sad, sad --- the program can't seem to understand that I rate a movie one star simply because I just can't stand Jim Carey and that Mark will watch absolutely any movie that revolves around time travel.

After that initial questionaire, the entertainment consultant would just have to delve into his mental data banks once or twice a week to pick out perfect movies for each client, then read email feedback to tweak his choices for next time.  I suspect that someone who enjoys all kinds of movies and is a good people-person could build up a clientele pretty quickly.

I hope someone will take Mark's idea and run with it...and then come back here and let me know how we can sign up.  That's how I calculate the quality of a microbusiness idea --- if the skinflint in me is willing to pay for it, I figure anyone in their right mind will too.

We were interviewed recently over on Dane Carlson's Business Opportunities Weblog and I was quite pleased with the resulting post --- I always make more sense in an email than when speaking.  As part of the interview, I wrote:

Later, Mark told me that his parents didn't officially discourage him from inventing, but that their lack of encouragement amounted to the same thing.  When I asked him what they could have done differently, Mark jumped straight to the idea of giving him some capital to market his first invention.  At a few years older than seven, Mark built a basement flood detector that was clearly a worthwhile product --- he saw a similar concept being sold by a large business not too long thereafter.  Now he wishes his child self had $500 to $1,000 so that he could pay for a few ads in magazines, beating the big company to the punch.

Although I think that Mark's flood detector was a great idea, I tend to disagree with the approach of giving a kid capital.  From my limited experience with kids (I was one once...), it seems that handing over a wad of cash is no way to get the entrepreneurial wheels rolling.  Instead, could Mark's parents have helped him sell his first prototype for a profit, so that he could buy more parts and build more models?  Mark was already working at the time of his first invention, beating the pavement to sell subscriptions to a local newspaper.  How hard would it have been to carry his flood detector along with him and give those housewives the hard sell after pushing his paper?

In Microbusiness Independence, I admonish folks fleeing the rat race to start small, paying for supplies a few at a time even if you think you can save money in the long run by buying in bulk.  If your first experiment is a failure, you'll have to reenter the rat race if you sank your entire savings into the project.  On the other hand, if you only spent a couple of hundred bucks getting started, you can try out several ideas before you find one that really sticks.  By giving a child capital to market his or her invention, I think you would be doing that child a disservice by channeling him away from the microbusiness approach.

But as I said earlier, my experience with kids and businesses together is extremely limited.  So, I'm curious --- what do you think is the best way to encourage a budding entrepreneur?

An elegant study recently demonstrated that having more cash --- or even looking at riches --- decreases our enjoyment of the simple things in life, in this case, chowing down on a bar of chocolate.  Related studies have shown that we can increase our happiness by spending, but only if we give the money to others or buy experiences rather than things.  (Read more about the science over at Not Exactly Rocket Science.)

In the last year, I've started to notice the same trends scientists mention about spending and happiness.  I'm loathe to spend money on anything, but the cash we've given away, spent on restaurant meals with family, and used to buy our honeymoon cruise tickets have definitely increased my enjoyment levels.  While buying physical objects results in a short-term rush that fades away once we get used to our new toys, our experiences keep growing brighter and fonder in my memory.  I guess I know where to channel excess cash in the future!

You've probably read the stats --- over two-thirds of new businesses fail in the first year.  What the pessimists don't tell you is that the businesses that make it through the perilous period take off like a rocket in subsequent years.  Our chicken waterer business is now six months into its second year, and is showing a 400% increase from our first year profits.  (This is a big part of the reason why our blogging has been a bit slow lately.)

Part of the increased profit is simply due to a steep learning curve.  We were making it up as we went along last year, but this year we're putting all of the tips and tricks we compiled in Microbusiness Independence into play, with predictable results.

The other reason our business is doing so well this year is because the internet rewards people who keep active websites for long periods of time.  You can hire an SEO master, and Google will still look at you a little funny for the first six months.  Over time, more and more people will naturally link to the useful information on your website, and before long you'll get comments like I did this week in response to my note on a Livejournal community:

That just made my day.  I can tell you that I have absolutely never, ever been called a Rockstar before --- capital letter no less!

I haven't read the book yet, but Dolly Freed's Possum Living philosophy is just too much fun not to share.  When she was 12 years old, her father quit his job and let her drop out of school, then the two of them began to live.  They worked just enough to get by, bringing in $1,400 in 1978 (equivalent to $4,673 today), but mostly lived off their garden and ingenuity.  "It's so easy to live without a job it's pathetic," said Dolly's father in 1979.

Dolly's lack of formal schooling was illegal, so she had to hide in the house while the other kids were at school, reading books that caught her fancy.  She clearly received a much better education than she would have in school, and churned out a nationally acclaimed book at the tender age of 17 before going on to become a NASA engineer.  If that's not proof of the benefits of simple living, I don't know what is!

I'm glad to run across someone else who believes that conventional jobs are optional.  Check out our own book, Microbusiness Independence, to find out the way we fund our simple lifestyle.

What do you do when your business is booming and you receive the first of an inevitable series of hate emails?  Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week, spoke in Amsterdam about how to deal with negativity and criticism.  I've put a lot of thought into this myself since customer criticisms are my least favorite part of our chicken waterer business.  Although we receive ten times as many enthusiastic testimonials as angry gripes, the criticisms are all that remain my mind at the end of the day.

Ferriss makes the excellent point that "10% of people will find a way to take anything personally."  I'm starting to realize that there is a small subset of our customers who really need to vent their frustrations on someone, and sending a nasty email to a faceless company is an easy way to do that.  After a while, I began to notice signs that indicated folks who were uninterested in resolution and just needed to yell.  Customers not worth engaging further include people who think they deserve something special because they are a Navy Seal, an astronaut, or [fill in the blank with reason of your choice], and people who clearly didn't comprehend the explanation in my first reply and ask the same question again...and again.  My solution is a short, polite email that cuts the conversation short before it can become a pissing match.

"It doesn't matter how many people don't get it," noted Ferriss.  "What matters is how many people do."  Once you finish emailing back your most recent critic, remind yourself of the customers who wrote in to say that your product changed their lives.  Then go enjoy your own life, made possible by your version of Microbusiness Independence!

Mark Boyle got his economics and business degree, entered the rat race, then jumped back out.  For the last fifteen months, he has lived without spending a single penny.  His experiment is a bit too extreme for me, but I like to see that the lifestyle is possible.  He writes:

If you're entrenched in the rat race and can't see the way out, I recommend you read up on Mark Boyle.  Our Microbusiness Independence book provides a milder path out of the rat race, but if you try either method I suspect you'll be happier and healthier.

I'm constantly multi-tasking because my gut feels that the technique makes me more efficient.  Surely I'm saving time by burning CDs while writing a blog post, or by spending my morning going back and forth between laundry, weeding, and watering.  Right?

Most scientists would say, "Wrong!"  Psychiatrist Richard Hallowell describes multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.”  Various scientific studies suggest that human multi-tasking results in lower efficiency rather than a time saving.  On the other hand, one recent study does show that our brains may be capable of focusing on two tasks at once, though not more.

After reading a bunch of scientific articles about multi-tasking, I've come to the conclusion that my typical daily schedule may not really be multi-tasking.  Generally, I'm sliding tasks with significant time lags together to create a cohesive whole rather than trying to do two chores at the same moment.  Doing laundry in the wringer washer has several periods of sustained activity with twenty minutes of wait in between.  Watering has an even longer lag period --- I set up the sprinkler, then let it run for an hour before moving on to another zone.  Weeding fits nicely into the laundry and watering gaps since it's a linear task that doesn't lose anything by being interrupted.  (In fact, I often cherish the breaks.)  When multi-tasking, I also try to make only one of the tasks brain intensive, interspersing a physical chore like pushing CDs into the drive with a mental workout like blogging.

Popular wisdom holds that women are better at multi-tasking than men, though scientific studies don't tend to back this supposition up.  Maybe women have figured out my method of multi-tasking without doing two brain-intensive things at once?  Until I see a study bemoaning the inefficiency of my type of multi-tasking, I'll continue to jump back and forth between tasks and will believe I'm getting a lot done.

Our normally rainy weather seems to have disappeared for the moment, and on sunny spring days I have a terribly hard time yanking myself out of the garden and plopping down in front of the computer.  I don't want you to think that I've abandoned you, but blogging will probably be abysmally slow over here for a while as we put in our garden.  If you don't already read our homestead blog, now might be a good time to check it out --- we're always faithfully updating that one, if only because I can't resist snapping shots of fresh green leaves.  Once the rains come back, so will I.

I'm such a relentless early-bird that I didn't even realize today was tax day until just now.  I tend to file my tax return as soon as the last bits of paperwork trickle in from the bank, then get my refund while most people are still happily forgetting that taxes exist.  To those of you who aren't quite so obsessively early --- I hope your taxes are in and the ordeal is over.

While taxes are still fresh on your mind, you might want to check out this thought-provoking article about war taxes.  I really like the tone of the piece because it resonates with my feelings about the issue --- I don't like my taxes going toward war, but I do like the other things my money funds.  The article's conclusion is vote, vote, vote!  Good advice in any case, and a timely reminder that those taxes you are paying today are decided upon by you and your fellow citizens.