This is a guest post from my creativity and business coach, Charlie Gilkey. It’s one of the most relevant posts I’ve read in a very long time. You should read it. He gets a real bio at the end.

Things started out great. You had this creative thing that you loved to do. It was fun. And then you figured out that other people wanted your thing, too. YAY!! So you started selling your thing.

Then things went to shit.

In The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber tries to address why things went to shit. (Naomi’s note: E-Myth is one of those books everybody tells you that you absolutely must read before you start a business or your wife will leave you and your dog will die.) He talks about Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Technicians; he discusses who should be doing what and when, all told using Sarah’s “All About Pies” as a case study. It’s a great read, but it leaves one not-too-small question unanswered:

By GuestAuthor - Jun 11, 2009 in Guest Post, Small Business Marketing - 26 Comments
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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Hunter Nuttall, the “stop sucking and live a life of abundance” guy you may have read about in “The Last Lecture.”)

What a pleasure to be guest posting here at IttyBiz, where finally I can say “fuck” without needing the slightest hint of a reason.

I’ve always thought that recessions are bullshit, but this time I happened to lose my job during one, when my company eliminated every single one of their “safe and stable” jobs. Fuck.

After the shock wore off, I decided it was actually a welcome transition. I had been given the freedom to redefine my life. Lots of free time means lots of possibilities.

But without the structure of a job, I fell victim to one of the deadliest entrepreneurial traps: complete and utter lack of focus. While trying to find something that not only matches my talents, but that I find meaningful, and that other people will pay for, I considered many options, and split my attention between all the ones that seemed appealing.

By GuestAuthor - Mar 25, 2009 in Guest Post, Small Business Marketing - 15 Comments
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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:

By Naomi Dunford - Sep 17, 2008 in Guest Post - 6 Comments
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This is a guest post by the charming and handsome Nick Cernis. He forms the lesser-hinged half of Goburo. He writes at Put Things Off, the laid-back productivity blog.

“You’re fucking mental.”

I’ve just told my best friend that I’m quitting my cushy day job to start a home business, pimping me and my partner out as a graphic design and web development duo. My partner’s ditching her job too.

“You’re both fucking mental.”

I inhale the vapour from my bittersweet hot chocolate and seek solace in the silky oblivion where full-fat cream and rich, Venezuelan Cacao become one with the crushed chilli I’ve laced into the devilish mixture.

Two thoughts slap me harder than a fat balding man with a cold wet fish:

1) I dearly love my friend
2) She’s absolutely right

By Naomi Dunford - May 27, 2008 in Guest Post - 39 Comments
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(This is a guest post from the lovely David and of Postcard Perfect. One of his taglines is “Because frankly, ecards are kind of lame.” You can see why he fits in well with IttyBiz.)

Want me to swear under my breath? Ask me the following question:

“How’s PostcardPerfect coming along?”

I suppose I should explain. PostcardPerfect, my one year old home business start-up (unofficial slogan: “bringing sexy back, one postcard at a time”), went from an exciting initial launch to a flat-line of progress. Frankly, it’s embarrassing. For the last six months I’ve been answering said question with some variation of: “Umm..you know….it’s coming,” which, of course, is just code for: “Nothing’s changed, get off my back.”

The animosity, however, is not because the business is doomed. It’s not because people aren’t interested in the product. At the end of the day, it’s because I have done very little recently to move things forward.

By Naomi Dunford - May 21, 2008 in Guest Post - 27 Comments
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Today’s post is a guest post from Erin Atherton of DurtBagz. (You know it’s a guest post because she uses semicolons and we all know how I feel about semicolons.) Go check out her site. As you’re about to find out, it won’t be around for long.

***

Five months ago, I launched my first home business; an online bag company called Durtbagz.com. Today, I’ve hardly sold 30 bagz, my web traffic is atrocious, and my website is about to be shut down due to breach of contract by the web designer.

Want to know how you can avoid this situation?

Yeah, I thought so.

On paper, I should never have been put in this position. I’m smart, I have experience locking down vendors, I have a mentor who was in business for himself for 25 years, and I have more financial backing than the typical first-time entrepreneur. So, with all this going for me, how can I be struggling like this?

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 14, 2008 in Guest Post - 29 Comments
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[This is a guest post by James Chartrand of JCME. You too can tramp yourself out on my site by contacting me. Send the whole post -- if you're the next Dan Brown, I want to know immediately without having to mess around with email for weeks.]

Would you love to never worry about losing your job?

I thought of that freedom last night while standing on my porch, taking a break to freeze my ass off and look up at the stars. (Actually, I was racking my brains for a topic for a blog post, but hey. I like the stars concept better.)

Where I live, the economy is poor. Jobs are rare, and they don’t pay well. The area depends on the tourist industry. Winters can be cold, long, hard, and cold… and they feel even harder when a summer job gets cut short by frigid snow.

By Naomi Dunford - Jan 21, 2008 in Guest Post - 37 Comments
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