The Entrepreneurial Free Agent and Dejobbed Small Business R&D Lab
Rants and Raves #01
The nanocorp adventure begins...
Jim and Timlynn start down the road less travelled
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Table of Contents

1. Welcome to Jim and Timlynn's Business Adventure
2. What's a nanocorp?
3. Surfing a nanocorp - Master Webring of the Nanocorps
4. Where we're headed
5. Keeping in touch and spreading the word

1
Welcome to Jim and Timlynn's Business Adventure

This first issue of Sohodojo's Rants and Raves newsletter. We want to share with you the thoughts and experiences we have as we evolve some BIG ideas for small business.

Thank you for reading,
--Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky--
Hosts
Sohodojo
Home of the nanocorp and small business revolutionaries

P.S. This kick-off issue is long on raves, (mostly enthusiastic stuff on what this is all about), and short on rants (like how software vendors site license pricing amounts to de facto discrimination against small businesses). We promise to provide a balance of rants AND raves in upcoming issues.

2
What's a nanocorp?

A nanocorp is a ruthlessly small business. By 'ruthlessly small,' we mean we are committed to a 'no growth' policy. Well, not entirely true. We mean no accretive growth, no getting bigger by adding more bodies to handle the workload.

A nanocorp's founding owners are forever its only employees. Coupled with this no-accretive-growth policy, it's easy to see why we say you have to be committed to being a 'ruthlessly small' business if you want to own and operate a nanocorp.

Growth and the nanocorp

Only closed systems can achieve stasis; a sustainable, perpetual balance of some complex of interacting parts. An open system, one involved in exchanges with anything external to itself, is either growing or dying. You cannot hit 'just right' all the time.

A business, of any size, is an open system. It is constantly growing or dying. The typical corporate lifecycle is a contest to see how big the company can grow before it inevitably dies.

The nanocorp intentionally eliminates the conventional tactic of accretive growth of the workforce; no new hires. So how does a nanocorp grow to keep from dying?

Growth in the nanocorp is limited to two types:

• replicative growth - mentoring others in the formation of new nanocorps
  
  
• transformative growth - using a combination of;
  
  
• nimble reinvention of itself in response to market opportunities and/or other external constraints or opportunities,
  
  
• converting in-house labor to outsourced labor, and
  
  
• converting human labor into computer labor.

The mission of the nanocorp

Okay, we have a sustainable corporate business model which does not rely on increasing its workforce for growth. So, growth to what end?

A nanocorp optimizes the Quality of Life for its owner/employees rather than optimize wealth production. Efficient production of 'just enough' wealth is more important than maximizing an unbounded accumulation of money. Nanocorpers value their time more than money.

Interestingly though, this does not limit the nanocorp's contribution to local, national and/or global wealth production through the creation of new jobs. The jobs created just will not be in the nanocorp, they'll be in other nanocorps or outsourced to conventional businesses.

The power of discretion and diversification

The nanocorp's ruthless commitment to a no-accretive-growth policy is the source of the nanocorp's disproportionate power. By not aspiring to the trappings of conventional business, we neutralize power and resources through the exercise of Free Will and discretion. We can as easily walk away from the negotiation table as the Power Player can; neither of us HAVE to be there nor do we HAVE to land that deal. There are no envious 'greener pastures' for a nanocorper.

To further insolate the nanocorp from the sources of traditional growing pains of business, a nanocorp is run, from its beginning, as a diversified, global corporate conglomerate... the Global Virtual Mom and Pop Shop!

We avoid the 'feast or famine' dynamic which affects most small businesses by NOT putting all our eggs in one basket. Such diversification strengthens our use of Free Will and discretion in business-to-business negotiation and competition.

3
Surfing a nanocorp - Master Webring of the Nanocorps

It's one thing to talk abstractly about the nanocorp business model. It's better to see one in action.

To this end, Sohodojo is pleased to announce the formation of the Master Webring of the Nanocorps.

A webring is formed by the voluntary association of a number of websites. By joining the ring, each member site agrees to place standardized hypertext links on its site to facilitate visitors' identification and travel amongst this collection of loosely affiliated sites. For example, folks who have a site about squirrels may join a Squirrel webring to interconnect with other sites about squirrels.

The Master Webring of the Nanocorps is a two-tiered ring, a webring of webrings. The outer ring consists of individual nanocorps which are members of the Master Webring. Each nanocorp, which is run as a tiny but diversified corporate conglomerate, maintains its own webring to showcase its subsidiary web businesses.

The Master Webring of the Nanocorps does not simply glue a bunch of sites together for easy access. Unlike traditional webrings which simply link site to site through hypertext links on the member sites' primary home pages, the members of the Master Webring of the Nanocorps link through special 'Open Business Model' doorway pages.

These Open Business Model pages provide a 'behind the scenes' glimpse at the strategies, tactics and n2n (nanocorp-to-nanocorp) collaboration opportunities for a currently visited nanocorp or any of its 'nano-subsidiaries.'

At the moment, there is only one nanocorp in the Master Webring. Sohodojo Business Services, that's us, is the nanocorp representing the creative and business enterprises of Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky of Raleigh, North Carolina. Our 'inner ring' showcases our current stable of three web businesses;

• Sohodojo
• Squirrelfeeders.com
• The Pop Culture Store

We won't go into greater detail here. You'll find everything you need to know by taking the ride...starting here.

Of course we would love to hear what you think. We've made giving us a piece of your mind easy at all our sites. Just remember, if you see something that irritates or confuses you, fork us. (You'll know what we mean when you surf our sites.) If you are provoked one way or another to reflect or amplify on the ideas of the nanocorp, join us in the open forum discussions.

And if all else fails or you just want to contact us personally, please do not hesitate to drop us a note by e-mail. You can reach BOTH Jim and Timlynn with one note.

4
Where we're headed

5
Keeping in touch and spreading the word

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