So I’m in a sex shop today, because that’s the kind of thing I do on a Tuesday morning. (And they ask me why I run a home business.)

It’s fairly new, and it’s one of those women’s only deals that markets nice things, not sleazy things. Body balms, belly dancing costumes, very lovey dovey. It’s a good idea, and from what I can tell, business is going gangbusters. (Do things “go gangbusters” or do they “do gangbusters”? Is “gangbusters” really a word I should be using when discussing sex shops?)

So I go in and it’s all pink lighting and nice displays and there is a zero sleaze factor. There’s even a sign on the door that says, very politely, that they don’t sell novelty items so don’t even ask. Everything is going well. My could-be shopping experience is all good. Read More

“Should I write pieces made for the front page?”

“Should I spend more time on StumbleUpon?”

“Can Twitter seriously do my blog any good?”

“What about Reddit? Del.icio.us? And what the hell is Sphinn?”

If I go four waking hours between hearing one of these questions from a home business client, it must be a religious holiday. Everybody wants to know about social media. But they don’t want to know just anything about social media.

They want to know what they’re doing wrong.

They’re doing all the right things. They’re getting involved in the community. They’re putting all the right buttons in all the right places. They’re networking. They’re making friends. They’re voting up other people’s content. They’re doing everything Skellie and Maki told them to do.

So why is nothing happening? Read More

You’re not alone.

I’m typing this in bed, on the new laptop my IttyBiz readers bought me. (By the way? Thanks for that.) To my right, on the floor, on Jamie’s side of the bed, sit two Macintosh computers. They belong to my mother. For those of you who are new, I’ll take this opportunity to mention that my mother moved to Europe in 2005. I have yet to get off my ass to put them in storage. To my left is a floor full of books. They used to live in my busted chipboard bookshelf, but Jack likes to play with them, taking them down and putting them back in an order he feels is more appropriate. The last time he played this game was about 10 days ago. The books are still on the floor. Neither of us can get into bed from the sides, so we come up from the foot. Read More

I was writing this in an email to my good friend, Bill, and I realized that this is the kind of story IttyBiz readers would like. We are discussing my feelings on the topic of semicolons. (If you’re interested, I hate them. A lot. The rage gets unleashed when semicolons come up, and the rage, it is not itty.) Does this have anything to do with home business, you ask? Oh, but it does. Anyway, here’s my email.

“Oh, I stand by my not-so-casual disregard for the semicolon. It all stems from my tattoo. One morning, a teensy bit hungover, I decided to get my tattoo. (My tattoo, and not a tattoo. It had been in the works for a while. This was not a flight of fancy.) I have four Japanese symbols across my back, gleaned from a Japanese-English dictionary. In case you weren’t aware, Japanese-English dictionaries are printed in 6-point font. Like 6 Sigma, but with less “Sigma” and more “point font”. Read More

Somebody (Tim Ferris? Gandhi? Princess Di?) once said that if you’re not offending anybody, you’re doing it wrong. You’ll be happy to know, I’m clearly doing it right.

When I clicked “Publish” on my most recent post, I can honestly say I didn’t know people would be so bothered. I had no less than five snarky emails in my inbox before the damn post hit my Bloglines. (Yes, I subscribe to my own feed.) Seriously, people were mad. Really mad. People were mad at my word use, people were mad that I called them cocky, people did not dig it. (For those of you who did like it and commented, thank you. That was very nice of you.) Read More