Microbusiness in pursuit of happiness

Posted on | March 31, 2010 | 3 Comments

(Photo by Annie Mole, via Flickr)

If you were to judge the American people by the pronouncements of their leaders, you might be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that we are a shallow, materialistic bunch.

And, in justice to our nation’s leaders, many of us are. Because we live in an economy that is dependent (or thinks it is) on getting people to continually buy things, we have been socialized to believe that the more money and stuff we have, the happier we’ll be.

The only problem with that is that it’s not true. And, as David Brooks points out in a recent NYT column, that’s not just whistlin’ Dixie. There’s honest-to-peanuts research to back that contention up.

Brooks concludes, in part: “The overall impression from this research is that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important.” (Emphasis mine.)

What’s neat about this (and about the whole Brooks column) is that it gives me an opportunity to head off in more than one direction.

So, if I draw your attention to the bit in the Brooks quote that I chose to draw your attention to, I can simply note that microbusinesses have evolved a set of business models and a business framework that combines the two: professional success and interpersonal relationships.

That is why microbusiness owners often feel so at home online, engaging their customers on blogs, developing relationships via social networking platforms. It’s also why they often experience a greater degree of success by relying on referrals from customers/clients with whom they have built positive relationships.

For the typical microbusiness (and many small businesses, too, before they get too big for this), it’s not an either/or proposition when it comes to professional success and interpersonal relationships. It’s both/and.

It’s part of the evolution of a re-humanized workplace in which people get to be people instead of cogs in a huge machine.

Which brings me rather neatly to my second point.

I’ve spent the past ten years listening to people trying to explain to me that I’m wasting my time, that microbusinesses are unimportant, that they are “mere” lifestyle businesses that earn so little and grow so tepidly that they are unworthy of my (or anybody else’s) attention.

I beg to differ.

I believe that, regardless of how they are socialized, people know what they need deep down inside.

The workplace used to be somewhere where people could be people. It was a place were you could stand around the water cooler or the coffee pot and have conversations, a place where you could meet the person you would one day marry.

But, as time went on and human resource management techniques evolved to eke maximum profitability out of every minute of the employee’s working day, work became a place where human interaction had to be kept to a minimum.

Asking that cute co-worker for a date could get you a date but it could just as easily get you a sexual harassment lawsuit.

Indulging in a quick game of Freecell to let your tired brain idle, so you can switch gears for your next task gets you in trouble. You are supposed to be a machine that doesn’t need to rest before you switch gears.

Management likes men with families because men with families are stable. Management does not like women with families because women with families have to care about things like sick kids and parent-teacher conferences.

(Note: men with families are supposed to be stable but they are not supposed to actually care about those families … well, at least, they can care but they are required to care about their work more.)

Is it any wonder that more and more people are calling themselves corporate refugees and starting their own “lifestyle” microbusinesses?

It doesn’t matter how much you pay people. If you are not going to let them be people when they get to work, they won’t be happy working for you.

People know what they need. Sneer all you like at those “lifestyle” businesses and speak learnedly about why the economy really must grow until you’re blue in the face.

The bottom line is that there is a limit to the degree to which people are willing to be miserable in service of somebody else’s profit margins. Or even their own.

And so, we have the current decade-old explosion in the percentage of U.S. firms that are microbusinesses. See, we already knew all that stuff in the research Mr. Brooks points out to us.

We couldn’t prove it. We simply chose to live it.

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