Why I'm focusing on small business and creativity these days: The 2013 Oxford "Future of Work" report

 

Here's a 1 1/2 hour talk on the 2013 Oxford University report, "The Future of Work."  Among other findings, the researchers estimated that 47% of U.S. jobs could be lost to new forms of technology from 2013 to 2038.  The U.S. "workforce" is about 165 million people, officially, and 47% of that would mean about 75 to 80 million Americans will lose their jobs to some form of new technology over this 25 year period.  That's a lot of people.  That's why I feel this issue, and small businesses, as one major solution, deserve a lot of attention.

When I was a kid in the 1970's, my dad would pull into a "service station," what gas stations were still often called back then, and a man would walk out to our car.  I'm not talking a high school kid, but it was usually a grown man, who had a family he supported.  That man would not only pump our gas, but he would clean the windows, and offer to check the oil, for free, while pumping the gas.  This was a normal thing every time we got gas, back when gas was about 50-55 cents a gallon.  That man usually would spend part of the day in the garage, repairing cars, as well.  Those men working at gas stations made a decent living back then, pumping gas and fixing cars.  In those days, gas stations weren't mini-marts, and people rarely went into the stations, usually my parents would pay while sitting in the car.  

Obviously now, we have self service gas pumps, and we pump our own gas, which is now $3 per gallon, and $4 a gallon here in California.  Those gas pump jobs are long gone.  The new technology (in the 1970's) of self-serve gas pumps, was a major factor in replacing those gas station attendant jobs.  In a similar fashion, ATM machines replaced hundreds of thousands of bank teller jobs in later years.  Industrial robots and computer technology replaced millions of high paying U.S. factory jobs in the 1980's through the 2000's.   Outsourcing jobs to foreign countries gets demonized for the loss of factory jobs, but just as many were lost to new technology.  Income tax software has replaced thousands of tax preparer and accountant jobs in more recent years.  These are just a few of the most obvious cases of new forms of technology replacing human jobs in the last 50 years.  

In 2013, researchers at Oxford University in England released this report on the future of work,, which predicted that 47% of U.S. jobs could be replaced by new technology between 2013 and 2038. I heard about this report, being a geek on economics and Big Picture social dynamics in 2017.  It blew my mind.  Yes, like everyone, I realized that new forms of technology had replaced millions of human jobs already, and would continue to replace human jobs.  But this report put an estimated number on that... a HUGE estimated number.  

The U.S. workforce is generally estimated at about 165 million of our 328 million total population.  Those are basically the people from ages 16-18, to age 65.  So the 2013 Oxford report predicted about  75-80 million Americans would use their jobs to new technology from over 25 years.  That's an enormous number of people.  Now you can argue the researchers' thinking and estimate.  But even if they're off by 20% to the downside, that's still well over 60 million people losing their jobs, through no real fault of their own, in a generation.  That's huge.  If the estimate is low, and the number goes higher, we get up near 100 million jobs losses in 25 years.  So I added this huge trend into my own Big Picture of where society is heading in my brain.   I even wrote about this is my blog (Steve Emig: The White Bear, June 28, 2017) in the summer of 2017.  This continuing loss of jobs to new forms of technology is a huge issue that almost no one seemed to be paying much attention to.  But it seemed to be an issue that would affect most people, in some way, at some point.  Plus, my career as a taxi driver went down the tubes when new technology (dispatch computers replacing the old CB radios), so I had experienced this first hand.  

As I blogged about the major recession or likely depression I saw coming (back in 2017-2019), I saw job loss from new tech as a major amplifying factor.  Since I geek out on these kinds of things, I tried to figure out possible solutions.  Yes, 75 million jobs will likely disappear over 25 years, but new tech will also create some new jobs.  But nowhere near enough.  Another option would be large new companies hiring massive numbers of people.  But most of our most valuable companies now employ relatively small numbers of people compared to the major industrial age companies of 50-70 years ago.  Amazon has 810,000 employees in the U.S., according to Wikipedia.  As we all know, Amazon is a behemoth in retail, and is coming up on its 27th birthday as a company.  Apple has 147,000 employees.  Google (aka Alphabet) has 135,000 employees.  Netflix has 9,400 employees.  Facebook has 58,000 employees.  Those are five of the most successful, valuable, major companies in the world today.  All of them grew exponentially in the last 20-45 years from nothing, due to the tech revolution.  Together they employ about 1,159,400 employees.  Even if they all double their workforce in the next 25 years, it would barely make a dent in the job losses.  The simple fact is, there will not be enough major businesses created to put 75-80 million people back to work.  

For about 2 1/2 years, early 2017 to 2020, I was trying to figure out what the best solution to this huge issue would be.  The only people who seemed to even think about this issue were smart people at the high tech companies themselves, and their answer was to push for a Universal Basic Income.  That's where the government gives every adult a check each month, say $1,000 a month.  But then, how does the government finance that?  Creating that much money would lead to massive inflation, and likely hyper-inflation, where those checks become almost worthless over a year or two.  

The best solution to this huge societal dilemma that I could come up with is to encourage tens of millions of Americans (and the same in other countries) to start small businesses.  In effect, people could create their own jobs.  This trend in micro and small businesses has been happening for many years now.  Think of eBay sellers, and all the freelance people doing work using the internet, and other new tech.  In fact, Amazon has 1.9 million resellers, who are small businesses, often 1 or 2 people in a garage, that work in conjunction with Amazon.  That's more than the big 5 companies have in actual employees.  

While no major corporation will come along to hire 40 million people, the idea of 40 million people starting a micro business (1 person business) is entirely possible.  Not easy, but possible.  If half of those businesses hire one person, that's 60 million people working.  The numbers become possible when new small businesses are considered.  After all, the U.S. began as a nation of farmers and shopkeepers, it's in our nation's DNA.  So that became what seemed like the best solution to me.  Then the economy began to tank in late 2019 (Repo Crisis, Sept. 2019).  Then Covid-19 hit the U.S. in February/March 2020, and withing 2 months, over 45 million people were out of work, although "temporarily."  About half have gone back to work, to some degree, since.  

Suddenly, this long term issue of job losses to new tech seemed very real.  But even now, few in business and politics are talking about this issue.  Everyone is betting on the false hope that the end of the pandemic will get everything going full bore again.  It will be better in in 6-8 months, but far too much damage has been done.  Far too many people, tens of millions, can barely make rent or mortgage payments right now.  And many major businesses are using the pandemic to find new tech to replace even more workers, and not hire them all back.  This is all on top of the fact that about 60% of U.S. jobs are fairly low paying service jobs, which no one can live well on, to start with.  

So for all these various reasons, I'm now focusing much of my personal writing and thought on getting my own business off the ground (I'm one of the tens of millions struggling), and helping small businesses  get more creative, use the internet and social media more effectively, and looking at how different people are creating small businesses in our ever changing, high tech enabled world.  So that's where I'm at.

As if this issue needed any more emphasis, I heard a presidential economic advisor say on TV that 400,000 small businesses have already closed down because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  So the U.S. has not only lost over 555,000 American lives to the pandemic, we've lost 400,000 small businesses, as well.  

We need MILLIONS of new small businesses  in this decade.  Got any ideas? 

Why you need to "drive traffic" to your website or blog

These metal dinosaurs (and other sculptures) are out in the California desert.  I've seen videos of these, but didn't know there were 130 different sculptures.  These are in the Anza-Borrego park area, look up "Borrego Springs metal sculptures," to find directions.  Basically, they're in the middle of nowhere, west of the Salton Sea, and straight east of Carlsbad, California.

Why am I showing you a video of metal dinosaur sculptures out in the Southern California desert?  Because they are a great metaphor for building a website or blog for your business, art, or other projects.  When you build a website of any kind on the internet, it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, out there in "cyberland," just like these dinosaurs. A random person here or there might come across it, but very few will.  

For over 20 years now, forward looking marketing people have been telling businesses (mostly major corporations) to promote their products and services online.  In the early 2000's, after the Dotcom boom and bust, most traditional businesses had websites built, as did many smaller businesses.  But they didn't put in the time, money, and staff into really learning how the internet, and now smartphones and apps, have changed the game of business.  These forms of communication have dramatically changed people's shopping habits.  So that means your business needs to adapt, if it hasn't already. 

Now, 20-25 years into a practical world wide web, aka "the internet," many major businesses of the Industrial Age are gone, or bankrupt, and most major businesses have some team doing online and social media marketing for them.  But a huge number of small businesses don't use all these "new" tools and platforms to anywhere near their full capacity.  

Having become a serious blogger in 2008 (after writing zines, and for magazines and newsletters since 1985), I've been learning how to operate as a writer today's world.  One of the big lessons I learned is that when you build a blog or a website (or an app), it's pretty much invisible.  It's not like opening a bricks and mortar store next to a busy road, where a lot of people will just stop in and check it out.  For any kind of website (business site, online store, blog, etc), you have to "drive traffic" to the website to get people to check it out.  This is still an often missed concept by lots of small businesses.  

Driving traffic means that you create content of some kind in other places on the web, social media, or phone apps, and you link them to your website.  You also can hand out physical flyers, or post signs in your physical store for people to check out your website.  You go on social media, in all its forms, and write posts, or post photos and videos, and link them to your website.  You find communities of people interested in what you sell, like on Facebook groups, for example, and you let them know about your website.  There are dozens of ways to drive traffic to your website, for free.  These are just the main themes.  You can also pay influencers on social media to mention your website, and send people to it.  You can place ads all over the internet, social media platforms, and phone apps, to get people to start checking out your website.  This is absolutely critical, to get people to see your work, and to sell through your website, online store, blog, whatever.  In time, some people will start telling others about your site, or it may even go viral within a large group.  That's what you want.  You want people to be able to easily find your website, and have it be interesting enough that they tell other people. 

So, in review.  Your website is a lot like these metal dinosaur sculptures out in the desert, when you first build it.  It may be cool, but no one knows it's there.  So you start building paths and roads (links) in the online world, to your website.  Like building a bunch of roads to these dinosaurs, so more people will see them.  That's the idea of "driving traffic."  When you build any website, you have to spend time, daily, if possible, to drive traffic to your website, to be successful at getting views, and making money if it's a business site.  Got it? More thoughts on this, and specific techniques, in future posts on this blog. 

Why Content Creation is important these days

The land rush scene from the 1992 movie Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. 

In 1889, the United States opened up a huge chunk of land, what is now much of Oklahoma, to homesteaders.  By the order of President Benjamin Harrison, on April 22, 1889, about 50,000 people lined up on the borders of this huge area, ready to grab a free piece of land.  At noon, cannons and guns fired, and trumpets sounded, that was the start signal, and people raced into the region, which is what this movie scene is about.  The deal was,  people would find a piece of land they wanted, and plant their flag.  By doing that, and then registering the claim soon after, these people could claim 160 acres of land.  They had to live on that land, and make improvements on it, for five years.  If the homesteaders did that, they would receive the title of that 160 acres of land, for no money.  This is one way that the U.S. got people to claim the former Indian lands, and encouraged settlement of those lands.  You can learn more about the Land Rush here.

If you own a small business, do some kind of creative work, or maybe are an athlete who makes money from some kind of sponsorship deals, you're ignoring "free land" and free promotion for your business, work, or ideas, if you don't create content on many of the platforms available in today's world.

So what does this Oklahoma land rush of 1889 have to do with the internet and social media?  It's a pretty good analogy.  When you open an account on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, or create a blog or website somewhere on the internet, you're claiming your own piece of the cyber world.  Like the Oklahoma land rush, you're staking your claim and saying "This area is mine." 

Once you have your little piece of the cyber world, you can share your ideas through text, photos, audio, and video.  You can also share other people's ideas and content, drawing attention to that content and those ideas.  When you do that, you're "creating content," as it's now known. 

Why create content?  There are a whole bunch of reasons.  Getting Likes is one of the worst reasons, but a popular one.  Some people just want attention.  Some people want others to like them and validate them.  Everyone has their own viewpoints on many different subjects.  A lot of people have specific info, or some skill or experience in some area, that can help other people learn a new skill, entertain people, expose people to something new, or share ideas. 

For most of human history, there were very few ways for an average person to share their knowledge and ideas with very many people.  But the internet and social media have democratized media, and now, nearly everyone can get their ideas out and make then available to a huge chunk of the people, in the entire world.  For centuries, there were "gatekeepers" who let only certain people have a voice to large groups of people.  The gatekeepers may have been a TV producer, a magazine publisher, a newspaper editor, or someone like that.  Now, in today's world, there are no gatekeepers.  Virtually everyone can put stuff out on the web, or on social media. 

Because of this, there's a ton of crap out there to look at, and there's a lot of really good stuff, too.  By creating content, the best stuff you can put out, you can take advantage of one of the greatest opportunities in all of human history.  But hardly anyone really does it well, or puts much effort into it.  Nearly everyone shares stuff on the internet's websites, and social media platforms, today.  Most people go through their days spitting out mostly lame and crappy content.  But very few, even those people who are trying to promote something, take the time to learn to do this well, and work at creating good content on a consistent basis.  All kinds of business are in trouble, or going out of business these days, because they don't create good content regularly.  With the rise of the internet, social media platforms, and smartphones, people of all kinds now expect businesses and organizations of all kinds to put out good content. 

This has changed the business and social game.  In effect, if you own a business, creating content has been part of your job since about 2000-2005.  Before then it was helpful.  But since about 2005, you're leaving a great deal of money on the table, if you're not consistently creating good content, and a lot of it.  If you want to promote anything; your artwork, your business, yourself as an athlete, your favorite political candidate, your band, whatever, content creation is simply a necessary part of the game now.  If you don't get good at it, the person who takes your place, or puts you out of business eventually, will get good at it.  So that's why it's important in today's world. 

The paradox of being a homeless entrepreneur

Bad selfie, while sitting outside the downtown library in Richmond, Virginia, where I was living homeless, earlier this year.  I had just walked a long ways, carrying all my stuff, on a hot humid day, and I found this little ledge to sit down on and take a break.  I turned around, and saw this sign.  This photo just seems to sum up being homeless, anywhere you go, you're not wanted, it doesn't matter where it is.

For the last 20 years, since I left my good paying job as a "Hollywood" lighting technician, because of an injury, my life has been this crazy struggle, skipping along the bottom of society, struggling in and out of homelessness.  When I mention that, or people see me and realize I'm homeless, they jump to all sorts of conclusions, nearly all of which aren't true.

I've now spent about 10 years in some form of homelessness.  About 7 1/2 of those years, I was working full time, way beyond full time (70-100 hours a week as a taxi driver), or near full time.  Here's the kicker, I don't do drugs, legal or illegal.  I don't drink at all anymore.  I'm not an alcoholic who went through a program to quit, I pretty much stopped drinking (which I didn't do much, anyhow) while working as a taxi driver. After driving drunks home every night in my cab, I just stopped drinking, I just got sick of the world attached to beer and booze.

I did struggle with depression, in a serious way, after my dad's death in 2012.  That got serious, but I went through group therapy, took meds, worked through all that. I weaned myself off the depression meds a couple years ago, while a friend from group kept an eye on me in case I got sketchy. 

My main issue, the thing I've struggled with most, was simply not being able to find a good paying job after taxi driving went down the tubes in about 2003.  I struggled in the taxi until 2007, then had to quit for both health and business reasons.  Like millions of other people in other industries, the taxi industry got disrupted by new technology.  First computer dispatching replaced the old CB radios in the cabs, which changed the game, and then Uber and Lyft popped up.  Boom!  Business over.  Like millions of people who lost factory jobs in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's, I had to find a new way to make a living.  And I have struggled with that.

During that same time period, there has been a ridiculous amount of outside pressure and influence on my life, from a variety of sources.  I can't really tell the story of this, though it's been the dominant theme of my life for 17-18 years now, because it's so ridiculous.  Finally part of the story came out, and all this weird stuff happened, supposedly, because I scored absurdly high on an I.Q. test 34 years ago.  Someone, somewhere, decided they needed to control my life because of that.  Supposedly.  So I've struggled through nearly two decades of crazy adventures, busting my ass to simply survive, and I can't explain this whole mess to anyone.  The story is just too fucking crazy.  It would be more believable to more people if I said I got abducted by aliens in 2001, brought back ten years later, then dropped in the woods of Oregon where I lived with a Sasquatch family for a few years... and now I have to start over.  That kind of crazy tale is actually more believable than what's actually happened in my life.

So I have 20 years of craziness I can't really talk about.  Now I'm 53, homeless, living in the Hollywood area, with a mouthful of broken teeth (20 years of no dental insurance after a life of too much sugar), and working to rebuild my life and start a viable business around my Sharpie art and my writing. 

What I do have in common with many of you reading this (hopefully), is that I'm working to build a creative/artistic based business, and make a living from that.  What I don't have in common with most of you is my starting point.  I started actually selling my Sharpie art, 4 years ago, while living with my mom, in a small North Carolina town, literally without a dime to my name.  After applying for about 140 jobs over a year or so, and not getting called back, it became obvious a traditional job wasn't going to happen.  So I decided to focus on my Sharpie art, which made me a few buck now and then. 

I've sold over 80 major pieces of art in four years, nearly of all which took 35 to 45 hours to draw.  So while most people look at me and see only a complete failure, I've actually sold more pieces of art than most of the best known masters of painting in their lifetimes.  My drawings may suck, in your opinion, compared to the great artists, but 80+ people thought they were worth paying for.  That's something.  No I'm not making a "good living," at this, even after four years, but I have survived through some tough times, by selling artwork.  However lame my life may seem, there are thousands of people out there who wish they had sold 80 pieces of original art.  That's something.  Yes, I have a long way to go, but I have made quite a bit of progress in some areas.

So now I'm dealing with a weird paradox, as I work to build my art/writing business in a new area, in the cliche' of all cliche's, Hollywood, California.  On one hand, as a homeless man, struggling for food money, bus fare, and basic need money, day to day, my main focus is simply keeping my spirits up, and not getting deeply depressed.  The struggle of homelessness is a struggle not to succumb to depression and give up.  The hardcore street people you see in large cities have mostly given up.  I've found the way to keep my spirits up while homeless is to give myself little "gifts."  In my case, it's mostly food, I'll spend a little money on a caramel sundae at McDonald's, or buy a $6 pepperoni pizza at Little Caesar's.  Little gifts to myself help me keep feeling like an actual human being, a person who will do cool stuff again, some day, not the "homeless person," most people see me as.

But as an entrepreneur, trying to start a small business, I need to spend as little money as possible, to put every dime I can into my little business, buy more art supplies, or copies of drawings to sell, or money to promote somehow.  So my biggest struggle right now, is making small amounts of cash day to day, and to try not to eat too much, but to eat enough to keep my attitude positive, because I get really grumpy when I don't eat much. 

We all have our struggles, the things we battling and struggling with right now.  That's mine.  What's yours?  What's keeping you from the small business, or small creative business, you really want to have?

My first shot at running a business

That's me on the right, running the Ferris Wheel at The Fun Spot, in Boise, Idaho, during the summer of 1985.  The three young women on the ride are Kim, Michelle, and Pam, who all worked there.  The Fun Spot was a tiny little amusement park tucked away in Julia Davis Park, close to the Boise Zoo, in downtown Boise, next to the Boise River.  This is my carnie street cred photo.  I spent so much time running the Ferris Wheel that I used to have pizzas delivered to me right there on the ride on really busy days.  When the the pizza guy showed up, everyone got an extra long ride as I ate the first couple of slices.  Photo by Vaughn Kidwell.

An 18-year-old with a dozen employees under me...

Like so many good and bad things that happened in high school, it all started with a party.  I was grounded for two months of my senior year in high school, 1983-84.  I couldn't go out with my friends at all.  That was because I threw one party that year.  The party itself wasn't such a bad idea.  The bad idea part was that I threw that party in my dad's boss' house, that I was house sitting over Christmas break.  The house didn't get trashed or anything, but I got caught, and put on family house arrest for two months.

Finally, at the beginning of March, I was allowed to go out with my friends again.  We drove around in my friends' VW bugs, tried to meet girls, and then heard about a party in some trailer park, typical Boise Friday night.  About 40 high school kids were crowded into this trailer, and I think someone bought a pony keg, which was in the back bedroom if the tiny single wide, and kids were lined up trying to get a beer.  After the earlier trouble that year, I made a pact not to drink that night, trying to keep out of trouble.  My best friend Darrin, however, was bent on getting well buzzed, if not fully drunk.  He'd had a few beers already as we entered the party.  He grabbed a cup and weaseled his way to the back bedroom.  I stayed in the tiny living room, and tried to talk to some girls.  Since I was deathly shy, that wasn't going well, as usual, so I ended up talking to some other friend I saw there.  Suddenly the cry went out, "COPS!"  We tried to bail out of the tiny, single wide trailer, but there was nowhere to go.  The police were at the only door.  The police just stood outside the front door, and wrote everyone of us a ticket for underage drinking as we walked out.  At least half of the kids didn't even get their cup filled up at that point, though some had been drinking earlier.  I didn't have a drop that night, but it didn't matter, I was there, and I got a ticket, too.

As my friends re-grouped, all of us with tickets in hand, we realized that only one person managed to get away and not get a ticket.  That was Darrin, my best friend, the only guy who was actually pretty drunk that night.  He didn't drink anymore than the rest of us normally, but he wasn't driving that night, so he made the most of it.  He managed to slip out a tiny bedroom window and run into some nearby bushes, and escape. 

As you can imagine, the fact that 40 kids got tickets at a party, a lame party at that, a rare occurrence then, was news around school.  Us 40 ticketed kids started to get together at lunch, and strategize on how to handle the tickets, since we all had court dates coming up.  It was in those lunch powwows that I got to know a kid named Doug.  We hit it off, and became friends as the ticket process moved along.

As far as the ticket went, I went to court with three other people on the same day, we all had a pact to plead "Not Guilty," and fight the tickets, since most of the kids had little, if any beer since we got there minutes before getting busted.  When it came time to plead, the three before me caved in and pleaded Guilty.  Fuckers.  Some integrity.  But I held tough and pleaded Not Guilty.  The way things turned out, since so many kids got the same ticket, the judge gave them all a warning, and no sentence.  When I had my trial a couple weeks later, the judge was informed about what happened with the others, and I got off with a warning, too.  But that whole big group had become better friends because of those tickets.

When late April rolled around, and we started thinking about summer jobs, Doug said he worked at The Fun Spot, which had six amusement rides, a food stand, and a miniature golf course.  Doug, a senior like me, was the manager of The Fun Spot that summer.  He worked there the summer before, and was assistant manager then.  He started going in on the weekends, painting, and doing some other maintenance stuff, and asked if I wanted to start working there.  So I went to work there, for the whopping wage of $2.05 an hour.  I think minimum wage was $3.35 an hour then, but because of some Idaho law designed for migrant farm workers, the owner could pay us less than the federal minimum wage.  Even in 1984, $2.05 an hour was lame pay.  But it was some pay.  

As the summer got going, and I became a ride operator, Doug tapped me, and a guy named Brian, a year younger than us, as assistant managers.  We ran the park during the few days Doug wasn't there.  Halfway through the summer, Doug got a higher paying job doing construction work, and Brian and me took over as managers.  Suddenly, within a week or two of my 18th birthday, I was running a small amusement park, along with Brian.  We had 12 employees under us, and the owner, who also ran a construction company, would drop off the cash drawer in the morning, and then take off.  He came in to do major maintenance, and to check on things now and then.  But he let us run the whole business operations on a day to day basis. 

For nearly 20 years he had been giving kids who were 17-18-19 years old the chance to actually manage and run a business.  He'd tell us the basics, and then it was up to us.  We had to schedule employees, maintain the rides day to day, train the employees, get high school kids to pull weeds and mow the lawn area when it was 92 degrees out, make sure things ran smoothly, handle complaints from customers, test the rides every morning, clean the pine needles off the miniature golf course, handle employee disputes and drama, and actually run the business all day long.

Brian quit near the end of the summer, and I was sole manager for the last two or three weeks.  It was a tiny, goofy, little place, and our friends often made fun of us for working there.  But it was a huge responsibility for an 18-year-old, and experience I couldn't get anywhere else at that age.  Even before The Fun Spot, I had this sense that I wanted to work for myself, and run my own business in life.  But I was deathly shy by nature, had trouble talking to strangers, was a terrible salesman, and just didn't have the personality to actually start my own business in my 20's. 

I wound up getting serious about the new sport of BMX freestyle and moved to California.  Ultimately, I wound up in Southern California, working as a kind of sidekick to several really talented young entrepreneurs.  As I did all kinds of work for them, and watched how they ran their businesses day after day, I got a sort of informal apprenticeship in enrepreneurship.  I also began to read about personal development and other books, and began the long journey to become a person who could actually run a legit business of my own.

Now, at 53-years-old, I'm still on that journey.  Technically, I've never run an "actual business" of my own, with a business license and all.  But I've done a whole slew of other jobs, managed other people's businesses, and I've produced videos and sold them through small distributors.  I was also a taxi driver for 6 1/2 years, which is not a job, it's actually a self-directed small business with really high overhead for the income possible. 

So now, with a mixture of artwork, blogging, writing and publishing zines (and eventually actual books), and social media skills I've learned selling my artwork, I'm finally building a small business of my own.  Part of what I want to do with that business is to help other people who are building or running their own small businesses, with social media and some of the particular skills I've developed over the 35 years, since I started working at a little amusement park in Boise called The Fun Spot.

I'll be sharing a bunch of things I've learned at various small businesses in this blog, as well as newer ideas on how technology has changed the whole world of business in general, and how Disruption caused by new technology is tossing old business models out the window, and opening up new opportunities.  I'm also an amateur futurist, and looking forward, I think America is going to need to create millions of small businesses in the next 20 years, as things continue to change rapidly.

So that's where I'm coming from, I hope many of you find stuff that helps your business in this blog.