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Wetknee Books News
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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:
Mark
told me just yesterday that he wanted to be an inventor at the
advanced age of seven. Unfortunately, his parents weren’t keen on the
idea, so he followed a more traditional path, spending a few years in
the Navy, many more years working as a copier repair man, and then a
few years working constructon. He really knows what the rat race is
like and never wants to go back.
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!
Do you think excess cash is a
mythical object? Microbusiness Independence will help you start a small
business that will meet all your needs.
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:
Anna? I subscribe to the Walden Effect on my
google reader. I'm thrilled to make your acquaintance. You and Mark are
Rockstars in my book!
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:
Ironically,
I have found this year to be the happiest of my life. I've
more friends in my community than ever, I haven't been ill since I
began, and I've never been fitter. I've found that friendship, not
money, is real security. That most western poverty is spiritual. And
that independence is really interdependence.
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.
Want to learn more about
techniques for making a living on a homestead? Check out our microbusiness ebook.
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.
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