I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur by Mathias Svalina

(Mud Luscious Press, 2011)

For Mathias Svalina’s I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur, I’ve found myself, like any good and proper American, yearning to consume the products and services that Svalina, in his equally American industriousness, created when he started this one business or that one business, as described in his book.

I don’t imagine I’m alone either. Who wouldn’t, for instance, subscribe to a business “that allowed children to remain children their entire lives?” Seems like a beautiful prospect

Finances wouldn’t be an issue either and I’ll tell you why. Svalina’s ability to invent businesses that fit so perfectly snugly into the pocket areas of an individual’s life, American or otherwise, filling voids, triggering both need and want, will up and motivate any person to loyally finance these businesses and their services/products by any means: moonlighting at the downtown grilled cheese diner, multi-numbering federal loans, selling children, etc.


Of the 44 businesses Svalina reports on, there are 4 that, beyond the pleasantries of the others, I personally need to see developed sometime soon wherever I'm living.

1) The business “that takes Americans on tours of their own neighborhoods.” Honestly, I can’t think of a better way to better understand my local area than atop a double-decker bus with one of Svalina’s “cute young tour guides.” The beauty of the business is that it really gets at the meat of what I need, “[a] tour guide [who] simply state[s] who lives in each house & what the house looks like: This is the Wilkinson’s house, which has three bedrooms & two & a half baths…”

2) The business “that provides catering for your moments of sudden, unexpected revelation & epiphany,” if only to confirm that the epiphany has taken place (I imagine that I would’ve been served after finishing I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur, but I can’t be sure).

3) The business “that installed high-end surround-sound stereo systems inside people’s heads.” This one simply sounds too awesome not to have. And the broadcast, as described by Svalina, is likely not what you are expecting, which makes it all the more necessary.

4) And lastly, the business “that folded up maps into replicas of people you went to elementary school with.” For both their nostalgia and their utilitarian effect of, once being unfolded, offering highlighted directions “to every place you needed to go.”

Capitalism has always been comedy, but somehow Svalina’s entrepreneurial spirit side steps the tragedy of it all and instead sprouts wings. I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur is both hilarious and tender, absurdly satirical yet perfectly beautiful. To read sections of this book is to know that it must be owned. I picked it up with intentions of only sampling the first page and, literally, did not put it down until I had finished, I liked it so much.

A necessary product if there ever was one.