Take your common sense, your people-smarts and your micro-biz wisdom, stick ‘em in a blender and find out if YOU are the next small business genius.  If you are, pack some sunscreen and a bikini ‘cause you’re going to Hawaii!

Welcome to the Ultimate mash-up of Street Smarts and Horse Sense

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Hawaii: a spot in the next Micro-palooza Lana'i, Hawaii.  Join Jayson and other micro-business fanatics on the all-expense-paid vacation of a lifetime to the most exclusive of the Hawaiian Islands.  Talk micro-biz with the best-of-the-best and play in the sand, sun and azure waters on Jayson’s pleasure boat.  Check it out!  One Micro-palooza Getaway awarded to the Grand Guesser AND to the Primo Promoter every three months. That's right: TWO Hawaii trips every 90 days! (click here to make sense of all that.)

BizWiz Prizes: cool prizes like HD Flip Cameras, iPod Touches, MotoRokr S9 Wireless Headsets and MBF T-shirts awarded to blog contributors who pony up killer insights into the biz featured in each Showdown.  Each month, BizWiz Prizes will be awarded by the business owner, by the MBF Community and by Jayson himself.  BizWiz Prizes also contribute points to the Ultimate Prize.  Check out the categories and rules here.

Random Acts of Coolness: Jayson will give out other prizes and points at random to contributors who make insightful comments, do interesting research and demonstrate heart-pounding micro-biz spirit.

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Each month, Jayson chooses a featured micro-business project (click here to submit your project for consideration.)  The project must be a new project and it must be interesting-as-hell.  Jayson will kick off the Micro-Biz Showdown with a video blog interviewing the featured micro-businessperson (“MBizzer” for short) and describing the business project in detail.  Then, let the games begin.

As a member of the free MBF Community, you can blog-your-guts-out about the featured business – slapping down your opinions, your research, your questions, your experience and your sense of whether this Biz will LIVE or DIE.  The best contributions will be awarded BizWiz Prizes and will be subject to Random Acts of Coolness.

Each week for three additional weeks, Jayson will video blog an interview with the MBizzer and will ask questions fielded by the MBF Community.  Each week will bring you closer to a verdict:  will the business die, will it succeed and (if it lives) how soon will it log its first $10,000 of profit.

After about a month of jawing about the biz, all guesses will be locked in.  Each player will answer one question:  by what date, over the next six months, will the business clear $10,000 in profit.  If you think the business won't make it in six months, you can vote EPIC FAIL.

If the biz makes it and you guess the date exactly right, you get a huge gob of points.  If you get within five days of a correct guess, you get a bunch of points, depending on how close you got.  If you guessed EPIC FAIL, and you're right, you get points for that too.  Each contest ends when the Biz clears $10,000 profit (by the owner’s reckoning) or after six months, whichever comes first. (Click here if you want to know more about how the points work.)

But, wait.  There's more.  On top of all that fun, if you make interesting comments along the way on the forum, you can earn points and prizes too.  We call those BizWiz Prizes.

Hold on.  There's even more. On top of all this contest goodness, you can go head-to-head against our Board of Big Brains.  These guys and gals are hot shizzle in the world of business (at least their moms think so,) and they’re handing out three opinions each on the MBizzer and the business.  Agree or disagree with each opinion and score points when you’re right.  100 points per correct guess.  Egg on your face for each incorrect guess.

But, wait.  There's even on top of the more I said before.  Another way to win this thang is to become the Primo Promoter.  By sharing the contest with your friends, family, Facebook friends, Twitter Followers, knitting circle buddies, etc., you'll score points AND compete to win another slot in the Ultimate Prize (Lana'i, Hawaii -- booyah!) just for talking up the contest and getting people to join for free.  That's right:  one Ultimate Prize slot every ninety days is reserved for the person who brings the most players to the game. 

Game Rules and Legal BS