Podcast: Micros Say No Mandates, Frown On Public Option

Posted on | June 29, 2009 | 1 Comment

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I am happy, because new microbusiness firm size data always makes me happy.

In fact, you may possibly remember my lament about having to wait for these numbers. (Lament = fancy way of saying “whine”)

Well, the wait is over.

If you don’t feel like waiting, I’ll tell you that nonemployers increased in number by almost a million in 2007, up 4.5%. For the rest, you’ll have to listen to the podcast.

The other item majorly on the agenda this week is health care reform. There are a few things I have to say about that in this week’s podcast and I’m going to say a few more things here.

First, be aware that I am not necessarily arguing in favor of the public option. Personally, I think that everybody who is engaged in the health care reform debate is barking up the wrong tree, principally because none of them seems able to travel very far outside ideas and concepts they are used to.

I’ve been saying for years that we need to separate the ideas of health care and health insurance. You can tell that we haven’t because of the way people object to public insurance by saying they don’t want the government in charge of their heath care.

(Hint: You are in charge of your health care. Unless you are incarcerated, that doesn’t change – no matter what happens to the system.)

What I am seeing here is a bunch of public option opponents (bankrolled, I suspect, largely by the insurance industry) scaring people into thinking it would be terrible if the government treated them exactly the way health insurance companies treat them now.

Go figure.

Use your head, people. That’s all I ask.

Listen to the Microbusiness News Briefs Podcast:

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Swimming (or walking) against the tide

Posted on | June 26, 2009 | 1 Comment

photo by Melanie Phung

photo by Melanie Phung

One of the things I like best about talking to microbusiness owners is that they teach me things and remind me of things I once knew and just generally make me think.

What’s particularly cool about that is that it usually happens not because of pontificating lectures but simply through conversation or even just from my observations of the ways in which microbusiness owners live.

One of the best things about being a microbusiness owner is the fact that, for the most part, these are folks who businesses tend to be very personal to them (hence the term “personal business,” used by many to refer to nonemployers). They don’t try to create barriers between their work and their play and the rest of their lives.

They live in a holistic fashion. I think that is good because it makes a lot more sense than the false and unnaturally rigid boundaries we modern humans have tried to create between work and life.

Here’s an interesting observation about 20th century attitudes toward work/jobs, made to me during my interview last week with Microbusiness Profile subject Gladys Strickland:

“You weren’t supposed to be happy [in your work] but you were supposed to be thankful that you had a job, so that you could be happy in your off hours when you weren’t working.”

It is certainly a modern conceit, this notion that happiness in one’s life work is not only a consummation devoutly to be wished but something that is worth pursuing as well.

There are even some people — plenty of people, in fact — stumbling upon the simple truth that, beyond the details of what you do for a living, in the perpetual trade-off between freedom and security, getting a job means there’s something else that you have to give up.

We Americans have become accustomed to institutional life, going from family to school to job. That’s why we don’t realize that we’re giving anything up at all. Living within institutions feels normal to us and living outside them feels both alienating and simply frightening.

But once we step outside the comfort zone and experience the rather thrilling joy of make-a-living flight without a net, where you bend your mind and your hand to the act of creation and you interact with your fellow humans and you bring them things they want or need and you do all that within a context that you create instead of having to play in somebody else’s sandbox,

then we realize what we’ve been missing. And it doesn’t seem to take very long for many people to get used to being self-directed, being free from the obligation to jump when somebody else says jump.

(Pause for musical interlude … )

In spite of what they say, your government does everything it can to discourage you from creating your own job by launching your own microbusiness. One of the most insidious ways in which they do it is by working really hard at the whole “job creation” thing at times like this and treating the ever-increasing number of self-employed like (as I have put it previously) some sort of labor market failure.

“You had to create your own job? Oh, that’s terrible! Don’t worry, we’ll talk to our friends in business and industry and get them to create a real job for you!”

Uh-huh. Yeah, thanks.

You are not as out-of-step with your fellow Americans as they would have you believe. And, as you’ll see next week when I get to tell you about the 2007 nonemployer numbers, you are part of something that is more than either fad or fashion.

It is, in fact, a tidal wave.

Have a great weekend, everybody.


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Category: Friday Musical Interludes, Rants and Ruminations
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Microbiz, capital(ism) and the changing economy

Posted on | June 25, 2009 | No Comments

photo by emdot

photo by emdot

Earlier this week, Emergent Research released the results of some new small business credit research. They found, among other things:

The reality is that the smallest of small businesses – those with five employees or less – often will not qualify for business credit. They’ll need to rely more heavily on relationships with their bankers or seek other sources of funds.

So what else is new?

Anybody besides me notice how often bootstrapping is coming up lately?

Maybe all those small business service provider types working through the Small Business Development Centers and SCORE and the Women’s Business Centers and even the microenterprise development organizations should be teaching small and microbusiness owners the varied and particular skills involved in bootstrapping for business.

It is well known that cash flow issues can kill a business faster than a lot of other things. Instead of scrambling to help small businesses to get loans (and act as if that’s the reason your outfit exists), there are better ways to help us out.

For more on this, check out my article published today over at the OPEN Forum Blog. In it, I spent some time musing about how the economy is changing and how small businesses may need to consider that one of the fundamentals of capitalism — taking other people’s money and using it to make more money — seems to be gone for us for the foreseeable future.

So, I say unto you, my fellow microbusiness owners, cease your lamentations about our lack of access to capital and learn the joys of bootstrapping your way to growth.

It’s harder and it takes longer that way but at least you won’t be subject to the vicissitudes of the credit markets.


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Category: Politics

Podcast: Signs of Economic Recovery Abound

Posted on | June 23, 2009 | No Comments

There’s an awful lot of pain out there still, so that my headline may seem like a case of overstating the positives.

But there are quite a few very positive signs out there, signs that improvements are coming even if they are not already here. It’s a bit like that tickle you get in the back of you throat that lets you know you’re in the process of catching a cold, if you see what I mean …

This week’s news also sees the first of this summer’s Microbusiness Profiles, and what could be better than a woman with the courage to launch a business only six months after the financial markets collapsed? I really enjoyed my conversation with Gladys Strickland and, from the MNB trivia files, you may be interested to know that we found each other via Twitter.

I’m getting more and more concerned the more I watch the SBA come back to life under the Obama Administration. If I am to judge him by his appointments, his tenure in the White House may not bode well for microbusinesses. The jury is still out but the writing on the wall is looking ominous.

How’s that for a set of frighteningly mixed metaphors?

Listen to the Microbusiness News Briefs Podcast:

For more information:

The Conference Board
Bureau of Labor Statistics
National Federation of Independent Business
National Association of Credit Management
GS Business Resources
SBA Office of Advocacy


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Dawn Rivers Baker, microbusiness journalistDawn Rivers Baker, aka The Journal Blogger, is the editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal, and the self-proclaimed Socrates of the small business blogosphere. See her official bio to learn more.


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