• Did I accomplish what I had planned for last year?
• Has my position on certain issues changed?
• What can I do this year to make my life more enjoyable?

Another question is always: should I continue to pursue the microBusiness model? And, believe it or not, twice during the last 30-years my answer was, “no”. (But that’s a story for another time.) This year, my answer is the same as it has been for the past 20-years, a resounding, “Yes!”

It’s about a wealth of freedom

• For me the idea that a regular guy or gal, can sit at the kitchen table and run a global enterprise is a very exciting thing! For me “be your own boss” is not a cliché left over from the ‘70s, but a powerful, liberating idea that I simply must pursue—and I have for virtually my entire working life.
• The microBusiness (mBiz) model is rich in so many ways, that I simply must be a part of it.
• First, microBusinesses have the means to set us free. And for me, nothing is more important that freedom. It offers the freedom to be your own boss, while doing work that is worthy of your time and commitment. It offers the freedom to escape a work life in corporate tyranny. We have the human right to do work that we are passionate about, or at the very least, work that we enjoy doing. A well thought-out mBiz will deliver that.
• The mBiz is the right way to fight poverty, and free the economic prisoners of the world. It rebuilds self-sufficiency and self-esteem. It can be a way out of a dire situation. Take a look at what KIVA and ACCION USA are doing.
• The mBiz doesn’t discriminate. You can create a microBusiness regardless of your race, creed, color, age, economic standing, level of education, credentials, or physical limitations. And that’s a powerful thing!
• A microBusiness means no one can force you to retire. You can be a productive citizen as long as you are personally able.
• A mBiz can allow you to work from home if you need to or choose to.
• An well-run mBiz can provide you with a relaxed and comfortable lifestyle.
• An mBiz provides maximum control over your destiny. Puppet strings not required.
• An mBiz allows you to define success on your own terms. How do you define success? I’d like to hear from you.

I’ll never go back

If you’ve watched the news at all during the past year, you’ve seen what big corporations have done to our country, and the global economy. And we’ve all known good people who have been beaten down and diminished by a system that’s only interested in the bottom line, and creating wealth for a select few.

Personally, I don’t ever want to be a part of that system again. I don’t ever want to use my hard work and determination to build the American Dream for an employer. To me owning a microBusiness is the American Dream, and the measure of freedom that I enjoy so much.

How do you define microBusiness?

You’ll find most definitions in the marketplace and various buracracies are lacking. Here is my attempt at a substantive definition. Let me know what you think. (Expanded version)“A microBusiness is the smallest of all businesses, created by a self-reliant person (who often considers himself a survivor), for the purpose of making a living and making a life, and whose goal is not necessarily wealth and worldly goods, but rather a sustainable enterprise that can provide for the comfortable wellbeing of the owner and his family.”

Every mBiz owner has his or her own ideas on what makes a microBusiness great. Please feel free to share your thoughts on what it means to you.

Today our internet connection was disrupted. For 4 hours. During peak business hours (mid-morning to early afternoon) on a Monday.

If this happened to a “regular” business, it would be unacceptable. The internet service provider would likely take measures to mitigate disruption, for example, by conducting work during the weekends or after business hours.

But this is in a residential area, and most companies that provide services take a more laissez faire approach to service outages and disruptions in residential areas. Perhaps companies serving residential areas assumed that the neighborhood would be at work.

They didn’t count on the countless microbusiness owners like me who operate business – and I mean a REAL BUSINESS – out of our homes.

A few weeks ago, my internet connection was out for over 24 hours. When I complained to the service rep about the disruption that this outage is causing my business, she said that since I am in a residential area, my problem is not prioritized the same way as an outage in a business area would be. She was apologetic, but the implication is that disruption to my business mattered less.

I tend to write off glass ceilings of most kinds, because I believe that focusing too much on these glass ceilings took my eyes off the doors of opportunities that I can create for greater reward. However, over these past few years, I’ve noticed these micro-inequities experienced by microbusiness owners. To be fair, I am not saying that service providers are deliberately discounting microbusiness owners. Most of us also do not shell out wads of cash for premium business-level services either because we run a lean business or because we don’t need the gravy that comes with premium.

After all, we become microbusiness owners because we choose to be microbusiness owners.

Make no mistake – microbusiness ownership is not about “micro-profits”. We opt to limit our size to align our businesses with our personal values, but we are focused on creating the greatest return on investment. I personally would not want to become an entrepreneur if I could not gain both tangible and intangible returns from taking this risk.

Still, we as microbusiness owners are often “hidden”.

Our businesses run invisibly from residential areas, yet many of us command a global presence on the web. We may have mastered the art of lean operations, yet our scale precludes us from gaining priority service to run our businesses. We may have gained respect in our field and for our business successes, yet we are not recognized in many B2B transactions.

This may be the time for us to come together as microbusiness owners, and start by doing what Dawn Rivers Bakers advocates us to do: identify ourselves as microbusiness entrepreneurs. We can create microbusiness consortium to learn from each other. We can come together to help us all get a better business deal for our microbusiness operations.

What say you?

One of the things that often happens as the year winds down to a close is that we get into a reflective mood, a bit of Janus revisited, looking back at the year that was.

We try to identify the things that went well, the things that didn’t quite go as planned, the things we wanted to do but didn’t accomplish and the bits and pieces of serendipity that came our way.

And we ponder the horizon, consider the new year we’ll be stepping into and how we’ll cope with the things that are beyond our control, how we’ll manage the things that are within our control, what sorts of goals to set.

This is a good time to think about the microbusiness choice.

Perhaps one of the most ubiquitous business lessons of 2008 is that the pursuit of money beyond the point of necessity, of ethics, even of reason, is a generally bad idea. In some ways, it makes sense when people do that. That’s a big piece of what has happened to our culture over the last 50 years or so.

I got to thinking about this when I came across this, from an article about the Madoff scandal in the NY Times:

“In elevating to a level of demiworship people with big bucks, we have been destroying the values of our future generation,” [Rabbi Benjamin Blech, of Yeshiva University] said. “We need a total rethinking of who the heroes are, who the role models are, who we should be honoring.”

It’s not just future generations. In coming to worship money and the people who make a lot of it, in allowing our country to degenerate into an economy with a society grafted onto it (instead of the other way around), we have been destroying our own values.

Or have we?

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. One of the most undersold aspect of the job of President of the United States is to be a societal leader, to set a tone for the nation. For the last eight years, the tone has been one of unfettered acquisitiveness. Perhaps the defining moment of the time (at least for me) was when President Bush, in the wake of the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, advising a grieving nation that the best and most patriotic thing we could do just then was to go shopping.

At the very same time, however, there has been a quiet revolution going on. It’s been so quiet, in fact, that few of those in power have the least notion that it’s happening.

Which brings us back to the microbusiness choice.

A big part of that choice is the rejection of cancerous business growth and the recognition that there really is such thing as enough when it comes to making money. That is what causes some to sneer at us and others to dismiss us as “hobbyists” and still others to simply pretend that we aren’t there.

What’s interesting about all this disparagement is that we are always growing in number, as if more and more Americans are finding enough value in being a microbusiness owner (and everything that entails) to cheerfully ignore the nay-sayers.

Values? How about the freedom to find meaning in one’s life work? How about pride in workmanship and/or expertise? Frugality. The opportunity to develop a set of individualized professional ethics. A return to the importance of personal relationships. An ability to recreate your life so that it is less compartmentalized and more holistic.

These are the things I invite you to consider during the quiet times as the year winds down. They are among the most important reasons why I, at least, am glad to be a microbusiness owner.

What are some of your favorite reasons for running a microbusiness?

Share your thoughts in the comments.