Those of you who have been following along on Twitter will know that I got it into my head that with my newfound riches I should get myself an office. Like, the kind that isn’t in my house.

I’m not altogether sure what possessed me to do this — OK, I’m totally sure, I was just trying to get away from my toddler but didn’t want to admit that to several thousand strangers. Whoops! — but I’m doing it and my home business is collapsing around my stubbly ankles.

I kind of thought it would be like picking up my laptop and getting on the bus and buying a soy latte and plugging in my laptop in a separate location and WHAMMO! I’m an office dweller. Well, not so much.

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 22, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 8 Comments
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OK, you have to stay with me on this one. I will get around to relating this to home business, I promise, but it’s going to take me a while. So go grab yourself a coffee or a Crown & Coke or whatever because here we go.

The other day I was talking to a very good friend and she said something to me that really got under my skin. She and her boyfriend are looking to buy their first house, and a couple of weeks ago they found perfection — love at first sight. They put in an offer and held their breath. This weekend they just found out that their offer was refused and the owner had sold the house to another couple.

By Jamie Dunford - Apr 17, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 33 Comments
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In The E-Myth Revisited — a book which everyone with a home business is expected to say they have read, devoured, and worshiped, even if they thought the running parable was incredibly lame — Michael Gerber talks about owning a business versus owning a job. For those of you who haven’t read it, and have subsequently had your “I’m A Credible Small Businessperson” bumper sticker revoked, I’ll recap.

The very, very, very short version:

If you run a business that won’t make any money if you don’t show up and work, you don’t own a business, you own a job.

Yes, it’s a job that you chose. Yes, it’s a job you can do while watching Ellen and eating stale Doritos from the bag. Yes, it’s a job you do where you don’t have the same boss every day. But it’s a job.

By Naomi Dunford - Mar 7, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 43 Comments
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The other day’s post on my defense of paper sparked some interesting discussion, and, put down your wine glass because I know this will come as a shock, I have more to say. Many commentators (yes, I’ve succumbed to “commentators” — I hate the word but I hate the squiggly spell check lines even more) had something to say about Moleskine notebooks, basically that they feel nice and they look nice and are all around cool. My favorite is from here:

“I am as rich as the Queen of England on a day when I have a finely sharpened Faber Castell pencil or two, a nice Moleskin sketchbook, some bon bons and some time.”

By Naomi Dunford - Feb 7, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 44 Comments
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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.

By Naomi Dunford - Jan 31, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 87 Comments
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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.)

By Naomi Dunford - Nov 10, 2007 in Home Business Psychology - 139 Comments
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For reasons that will soon become evident, I have chosen not to run a photo with this post.

Cocky – adjective
a. arrogant; pertly self-assertive; conceited

Balls, Slang: Vulgar.
a. boldness, courage, brassness

Time for a quick self-assessment quiz.

Please answer the following multiple-choice question, identifying the letter that most accurately represents your response.

Someone calls you cocky.

A.) I’m not cocky, I’m confident.
B.) Anything else, including, but not limited to: blushing, lame and self-deprecating jokes, stunned silence, and wild laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of the implication.

If you answered A, yes, you are cocky. I can’t help you. Find another blog. Good night and good luck.

If you answered B, you are a part of the 97.4% of the population who think they suck. Welcome. Enjoy your stay.

By Naomi Dunford - Nov 8, 2007 in Home Business Psychology
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(This is Jack, expressing his serious reservations about a Jolly Jumper. He was right to be concerned — they were recalled about a week after this photograph was taken. See? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.)

Moving on.

Working from home makes you crazy. If you have a blog with subscribers, you’ll know that this weekend, Feedburner messed up. It looks like they stopped aggregating Google feed readers, meaning that everyone’s subscriber count went down 30-70%. Darren at Problogger had a drop from 30,000 to 14,000. Crazy things, people.

Of course, much of the blogosphere was abuzz about this. (Hey! Spell check didn’t catch “abuzz”! Is that a real word?) Personally, my subscribers dropped 64%. What follows would make a good Moral Of The Story post, but I just did one. You should check it out. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. (Okay, you’ll laugh. I’ll cry.)

By Naomi Dunford - Nov 5, 2007 in Home Business Psychology
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Alright, people. This is killing me. Over at Lindsay’s blog, he has a little video. You’re supposed to look at it and the way you see it is an indication of whether you’re right brained or left-brained. The whole left brain vs. right brain thing is pretty important to your home business, so this would be a handy thing to know.

Click here. I HAVE to know. Which do you see?

Jamie swears on whatever one swears on about very important things that he sees it the left brained way. I think he’s lying to screw with me because it’s TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

Seriously, go. Send it to your coworkers, your mom, your neighbor. It’s nuts. Please leave your answer in the comments. I’m dying, here.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 5, 2007 in Home Business Psychology - 29 Comments
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