Great Podcast for Small Business Owners

If you own a small business, you should be constantly pursuing improvement in your methods to increase the margin on the hard work you put into the thing. I have become a fan of Jack Spirko both from a preparedness standpoint and as someone who would like to eventually own a small business. I also want to help my family's small business - Art Supply grow in the same spirit of "word of mouth advertising" that has put the business where it is today. To that end, I have been listening to Jack's business podcast "5 Minutes with Jack". At FMWJ, you can get tons of information and drill instructor-like encouragement to get in gear and make your business more of what it COULD be regardless whether you're selling soft product, hard product, or even if you're still in the Brick & Mortar Age. He will tell you what he has done that works and also what he has done that just doesn't. He will also tell you that if you continue to do the things that don't work that you are a dumby. Some people can't handle being told that what they're doing is dumb. If that's you, you will not enjoy FMWJ. You might try to push through the pain and improve yourself, though. I know I still can.

PS - As direct evidence of the fact that I have room to grow and quite a few "don't be a dumby"s in my future, I still haven't bitten the bullet and spent some cash to register an actual domain name for Art Supply or bought web hosting for it. So I'm still using the free Wordpress site I created. I feel like Spirko would tell me I'm dumb for that, but I don't get the write off. I can only lead the horse to water on this one. The response would probably be, "Well why isn't there a dillonallen.com yet? You should be blogging and establishing your personal brand." Touche, sir.

I Won a Soil Cube!

The Soil Cube is a small tool used to start seeds. More specifically, it is a mold that you stuff full of your soil and press into a small cube. You then press a small hole into the top with a threaded press. I've been wanting one, but it was way down the list of things I planned to buy as I have a few hundred dollars of other items to get to put the new L-shaped, Eliz-approved raised bed in the backyard. After all, my Pop never used a soil cube. Nonetheless I really wanted to add one to my toolbox for use starting seeds... meaning I wanted it now because IT'S TIME!

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I have become an avid listener of The Survival Podcast by Jack Spirko. Jack occasionally has listener appreciate contests in which you send the appropriate key words in the subject and a sponsor will send the winner their product. AWESOME! But there are more than 25,000 listeners and I listen to the podcast at least 5 hours after the podcast posts, so snagging a win out of one or two potential prizes before the other listeners get to them is like catching a t-shirt out of a t-shirt gun while sitting in the middle deck at an ACC football game. NOTE: I was gonna say football game generically, but I'm from the SEC. We have 25,000 at our spring scrimmage games.

But lo and behold, this morning after the dust cleared from a couple of busy meetings, 6 missed calls from my boss, a contractor, and my wife, I got an email saying I'd WON the soil cube. I never win anything in random drawings... I mean like NEVER. So this really brightened my day. I will do a review of the soil cube once I get it and have some free time to start my seeds. It's the least I can do for Clayton and Jack. THANKS Y'ALL!

PS - I'm jumping the gun a hair since Jack hasn't announced the winners as of this writing (he had to unexpectedly can his episode today), but he says getting content out there is the most important thing and write about what makes you tick... this is it today. So I hope I didn't ruin the suspense for any of the 50-100 people per day that read this if you are also a TSP listener.

Downward Class Migration: Not Falling Alone, Sliding Together

Jack Spirko has been talking about "Downward Class Migration" for quite a while on The Survival Podcast. I am hearing more and more media reports about people falling in the class structure, but that isn't what Jack has been talking about. His point is that what it means to BE middle class (or any given class) is sliding downward while the actual class structure remains relatively stable. I think of it like an avalanche or landslide in which a shelf of ice (the class structure) slides down a mountain so that everyone remains about the same relative to each other but everyone is actually lower on the mountain. The kicker is that this shift combined with all of the individual cases of falling down to a lower class (due to unemployment, etc) compound each other for those to whom it happens. Below is a video that Jack put together to better explain this concept:

WARNING: This isn't a graduate thesis. It's a discussion from a normal guy to his community. There is some PG-13 language, but nothing rated R.

Here is Jack's blog post at The Survival Podcast, with a growing comment thread.

The bottom line of Jack's entire focus at TSP is that if you become more self sufficient in providing your needs (and wants), you can combat the downward migration of the entire class structure while nothing else is going wrong on a personal, local, regional, or global scale (storms, medical emergencies, financial difficulties, civil unrest). Thus his slogan "Helping you live the life you want if times get tough, or even if they don't." - Jack Spirko

UPDATE - Here is a link to a story from the Wall Street Journal on cultural inequality. Many similar themes, but from a mainstream polished source.

OH NO! BVO?

I love Mountain Dew, well Diet Mountain Dew (DMD) to be more precise. I drink enough of it that I keep about 2 gallons (8 liters) in my pantry rotation to make sure that critical resource never runs dry and as an accumulator tank so I can catch sales on it. On top of that, I drink a knock off of DMD from Kroger - "Big K Diet Citrus Drop Soda" out of cans. I drink 1/day as part of my lunch at work. Here is an article comparing the Citrus Drop to Mountain Dew. The prices aren't up to date, but the relative comparison between the 2 options is still accurate, thus my choice. But I stick with the original for the 2 liters.

I heard a short discussion as part of The Survival Podcast feedback show yesterday regarding the use of a chemical called brominated vegetable oil in MD, DMD, and other citrus sodas. This chemical is pretty much like it sounds, vegetable oil bound with bromine/bromide salts. What is this chemical used as outside my DMD... a fire retardant. That is not enough in and of itself to make me shy away. After all, I regularly intake chemicals that are standard fire retardants/extinguishers (water, carbon dioxide). But a quick google search for "BVO" or "brominated vegetable oil" leads you to sites like:

• Scientific American
  
• Food Democracy
  
• Bon Appetit
  
• Environmental Health News
  
• RD411
  

Not a single one of these sources, or any other source I could find, has anything positive to say about BVO and everything I read says this stuff could be pretty nasty. In fact, it is banned for use in sodas in many countries (~100). Now I recognize that many of these sites are a bit on the alternative side of the media spectrum. But Scientific American is certainly mainstream scientific media. I have to do some digging into the actual impact and the data behind it and I think I may have to go to offshore data for impacts specifically in food/soda. But I sense that for my DMD habit there may be a quiet death knell looming in the distance.

Financial Bogeyman

I am starting to get nervous about markets like I was in 2008. I held on a little too long then and wish I had moved to cash a month earlier than I did... it would have saved me almost 10% of my investments. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like one of many financial bogeymen are hiding in the closets just waiting for us to open a door.

The major things going on out there that worry me are:

• European debt crisis - News from The Guardian and Wall Street Journal

Everybody knows there is a crisis here and lots of nations are doing things in the background and more overtly to fend this one off for a while, but it still makes the market do stupid stuff. I think the impact of this one could potentially be smaller on me us if we are smart about how we react. I also think that there may be some long-term good investments to be had as European companies that are solid get hit at the ticker but less elsewhere. (See also the US market in late 2008)

• Domestic municipal debt "crisis in the making" - News from The Guardian in the UK, Reuters, and CNBC

The Brits are saying we might be in trouble, while CNBC is trying to maintain that there's nothing to see, move along. If you sign up with your brokerage to be on the "New Offerings" list, your email will be pelted with multiple listings every day for things like $134M from the NY Dormitory Authority or $282M from the Omaha Public Power District, etc. I could see how you spend almost $300M in a power district. They could be building a new power station and/or upgrading their infrastructure - I know they're dabbling in wind generation, too. But a dormitory project >$100M is ASTOUNDING. You can build a WHOLE LOT of dormitories for that kind of money. Cities around the country are having to cut services to meet their debt obligations, moreso where they are prevented by state law from filing for bankruptcy (see Harrisburg, PA). Yet they continue to drink the spiked kool-aid out of the cooler and party like it's 1999. Eventually, these cities are going to need a bailout from the state or their (formerly apparently rock solid) munis will tank. The states don't have the dough (try figuring out the California budget) and will have to borrow it or be bailed out by Uncle Sam. Now Uncle Sam can do a few things to fix the problem... raise revenue, cut expenses (they don't have the fortitude to do that) borrow more or just have the Fed print more money to give to the states to funnel to the cities. Borrowing more is just kicking the can again. I don't have full faith that our credit can hasn't been kicked all it can stand. Printing more is gradually devaluing the dollars (so they don't have to do it all at once Zimbabwe style). Both of those options pretty much just suck. I don't have a more cogent, mixed company appropriate, professional term.

So what do we do about it? I'm still working that out myself. But I am certainly looking for opportunities to move things to cash where it makes sense and the risk probably isn't worth the reward (European sovereign debt off the top of my head). I'm also trying to position myself to make the really good buys that I believe will be there when things eventually do get bad. I think the market could experience one more super jubilant rally over the next few years, but protecting capital is my primary goal right now and I am beginning to feel like one of the sober people standing around the frat party at 3 in the morning. It's been fun, but there are going to be some serious hangovers.

Focus Areas for Improvement

Jack Spirko's tenants of modern survivalism are leading me to learn (or relearn) skills that can make my life better. Here are the ones I am focusing on right now:
1. Gardening
2. Food Preservation
3. Energy Independence

I will post some basics of what I've been doing in each area over the next couple of days.

My Inspiration to Act

Jack Spirko has completely lit a fire under me to get active in a lot of areas where I have dabbled. I want to make my family more independent and he offers many tips and inspiration to help you get there. In addition to his podcasts: The Survival Podcast and 5 Minutes with Jack