Towards the end of the Great Depression, J. Paul Getty — the first American billionaire — bought the Pierre Hotel in New York City at a fire sale price. He paid $2.5 million, a quarter of what it cost to build the hotel just eight years earlier. He later quoted Baron Rothschild, 18th century British nobleman in saying:

“The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets.”

To paraphrase America’s current fearless leader, it’s time to go shopping.

Democrats in the United States have been playing the recession card for years now. As far as I can gather — and I try to avoid watching the news, so I don’t gather much — everything sucks since Georgie Boy weaseled his way into office. Am I right so far?

Whatever your political slant, you’ll probably agree that most people think that America is in an economic crisis. The auto industry, the oil industry, the recent Lehman brothers debacle — basically people are freaking, no?

The lovely Pam Slim of Escape from Cubicle Nation alerted me — via Carlos Hernandez — that the New York Times has recently published an article stating that with the economic crisis being what it is, now is not a good time to start or run your own business. (If you really want to read it, you can create a free account. Frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it. The link’s just there to show that I’m not lying.)

I call bullshit. Oh boy, do I ever call bullshit. Read More

This is a guest post from my fellow Stomper Eric Doggett, work-at-home dad, photographer, online business owner and all around cool guy.

As any of you that work from home know, trying to fit everything into a day is an incredible challenge. Add in a few kids who aren’t yet in school and you are guaranteed a hectic schedule that can easily rival anything your old fluorescent-lit cubicle ever threw at you.

As an Austin, Texas photographer, about 20% of my time is spent actually shooting. The rest of my schedule consists of image-editing, marketing, accounting, and the like. All of the things that us home-business types have to manage. I also have two boys, both of which aren’t old enough for school. My home is rapidly becoming a testosterone-dripping lair of insanity that neither my wife or I are ready for.

In an attempt to deal with this craziness, we’ve come up with some techniques to improve our productivity and save our minds. Here are 5 things that we’ve learned that you might be able to apply to your own household: Read More

To the nine of you reading this blog who happen to be experts in AdWords, you can skip this post. For those of you who have no intentions of launching an AdWords campaign ever, read it anyway. The lessons extend into other areas.

Because of the fan socks, I get a lot of email with “socks” in the copy. Most of the fan mail I get now starts like this:

“I know it’s not fan socks, but…”

This means that a lot of the contextual advertising I get in my gmail is sock related. Since I like socks, this isn’t quite as ridiculous as it could be.

The other day, I got an ad that read “The Funkiest Toe Socks” and since I dig funky toe socks, I clicked through. Bear in mind, this came in through my business email and I was busy doing, um, businessy things. But the promise of the funkiest toe socks was too much temptation.

I click through. The page takes forever to load. (Yes, I know THIS page takes forever to load, but I’m not advertising in your email, am I?) I’m waiting. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. Somewhere deep down in my subconscious, I feel that the longer I wait, the better the socks will be.

Finally, there it is. The left sidebar loads, then the right. Then the header. Then, finally, after much ado and excitement, the content!

It says: Read More

So, it’s been about a year since I’ve started IttyBiz. Normally around this time in a blog’s life you’ll see a post telling all the shit the blogger has learned. (Excellent linkbait and traffic strategy, btw.)

Since I’ve spent the last year telling you about all the stupid stuff I’ve done and what I’ve learned from it anyway, a post like that would be pretty redundant here. So instead, I’ll tell you what I’m changing. Read More

Because I’m the type of person who gets my wisdom from Starbucks:

“Failure’s hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.”

– Po Bronson

It’s tragic that instead of this being required curriculum at every school in the country, we have to read it on coffee cups.