We interrupt this series on emotional marketing to tell you the story of why I have a black eye.

In our home, the child care responsibilities are fairly clearly divided. I won’t say they’re evenly divided — Jamie and the nanny do far more than I do — but the division is clear. I give him breakfast. Jamie gives him his nighttime snack. I do stories. Jamie does baths. Because we’re a little more right brain than most couples, it took us a few more years than most people to work this stuff out. But now that we’ve got it, it works pretty well.

Then there was yesterday.

In our house, Jamie gets up with the baby at night. Jack has allergies and skin problems, which means this happens several times a night. He goes in, they work their magic, they sing their songs or drink their beer or whatever, and they’re done. In the morning, I get Jack organized to go to the nanny while Jamie sleeps in. It is a good system. Everybody is pretty happy with it.

By Naomi Dunford - Oct 10, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 56 Comments
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Regular IttyBiz readers will know that every now and again, when I do something really fucking stupid, I’ll write about it here and teach you a valuable business lesson at the same time. Because I’m cool like that.

If you were paying attention and actually read the monster home business resources post, you’ll have seen my warning about Skype. If you haven’t, I’ll recap here and say that Skype is WONDERFUL. It took me forever to suck it up and get it but it has totally changed the way I do business. I heart Skype. It has saved me a boatload of money and hassle and is generally awesome.

Except. (You know how they say, “there’s always a but”? Not true. Sometimes there’s an “except”.) If you’ve read any of the must read books/magazines/blogs about home business, you’ll know that the first order of business when you go out on your own is to treat your home office like you would treat a real office. Take it seriously, they tell you.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 21, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 39 Comments
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This is a guest post from Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Brain. It takes a brave man to tackle a Moral of the Story post. I told him I’d post this last Tuesday. You’ll notice I am a little late. This is because I am a deeply flawed human being. Thanks for your patience, Mark.

“You canna change the laws of physics, Captain!” I don’t know if Mr. Scott actually said that classic phrase in a Star Trek movie or episode, but I learned that lesson very well during one of my summer jobs. It was a messy, embarrassing, humbling experience. Since this is IttyBiz, and Naomi slipped away for a few minutes, I’m going to share this story with you. Because that’s what IttyBiz is about — embarrassingly personal stories that (should) teach someone a lesson!

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 24, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 8 Comments
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When I first started blogging — she says, like it was OH SO long ago — I encountered a young man in a niche similar to mine. He expressed an interest in networking with me but frankly, I had bigger fish to fry. I mean, the guy wasn’t even self-hosting, for God’s sake. (OK, let’s be honest. I was very busy trying to become Darren Rowse’s best friend. There. I said it. Can we move on?)

So I sent a cursory email back every time he shot one my way and left it at that. At some point, I ended up subscribed to his newsletter. When this happened, I thought he had put me on the list, although in hindsight I was drinking a lot back then and would’ve put myself on a Porno for Chemical Engineers mailing list and not remembered it in the morning.

By Naomi Dunford - Apr 16, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 31 Comments
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Here in Canada, we don’t know a whole lot about this whole war thing you’ve got going on in the States. We have some troops in Kandahar and there was a big hullabaloo when our esteemed Prime Minister decided he wasn’t going to fly the Ottawa flags at half mast EVERY DAMN TIME a soldier died. Other than that, we tend to ignore it and discuss more urgent and pressing matters, such as the rising cost of gasoline.

(To give you an idea how seriously Canada takes the war on terror: Canada’s military was recently renamed. It used to be the Canadian Armed Forces. It is now the Canadian Forces. Jamie believes this is because we no longer provide them with guns.)

By Naomi Dunford - Feb 29, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 26 Comments
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Right now, I’m trying to work three home business jobs. Trying, in this context, is a euphemism for failing.

Luckily, all three of those jobs are from home. Luckily, I have a phenomenally supportive husband. Less luckily, Jack has entered that charming toddlerhood stage in which he must be physically attached to me at all times or he might die. Not conducive to working from home.

Earlier today, I was hiding in the kitchen and trying to get some work done. (See: “trying”, above.) I’d been in here for about an hour, and I was able to get a few posts edited and loaded, a few pictures chosen, with little more than a knock at the door I chose to ignore.

All this I could probably handle — people have certainly done more difficult things in the whole of human history. But, as many of you already know, Jamie and I got the bright idea to have another baby.

By Naomi Dunford - Feb 12, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 49 Comments
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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”.

By Naomi Dunford - Jan 9, 2008 in Moral of the Story - 73 Comments
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One day, I will have my shit together. Today is not that day.

I got an email last night from a potential client. In their email, they asked for the phone number for my home business. It was 3 in the morning. I was in a bad mood. I also might have thought I was emailing someone I know far better than this lovely person who might have paid for my children’s orthodontia. My husband, say. My response?

“It’s on the website.”

That’s it. That’s what I said. That was the full body of my email.

Moral of the Story?

Never listen to anything I say ever again.

***

Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own micro-business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.

By Naomi Dunford - Dec 21, 2007 in Moral of the Story - 19 Comments
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So we at IttyBiz have been following a post and some comment streams between what seems like my fellow home business owners James and Harry at JCM Enterprises and basically the entire free world with an internet connection. This got me to thinking, and because the comment streams were so huge I figured I’d write a post instead. But first, a disclaimer:

WARNING

The preceding and following statements represent the opinion of this blogger alone and are not necessarily those of the entire blogosphere. We take no responsibility for any debate, dispute, argument, fight, falling out, wars, acts of terrorism, or any other negative reaction that may result from these thoughts in any form. (We’re thinking about making this a standard disclaimer for our blog. Maybe we’ll copyright it and sell it to other bloggers. Speaking of income streams…)

By Jamie Dunford - Nov 19, 2007 in Moral of the Story - 37 Comments
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So LIZ STRAUSS called me on the phone this evening. (Some people call it “name-dropping”. I call it “adding flavor to the story”.) I told her this story. She said I should blog about it.

Oh yeah, and for the doubters? This SO has to do with home business. Just wait.

Um, when LIZ STRAUSS tells you to blog about something, you should probably blog about it. She knows a little bit about this sort of thing. (Blogging, not the story itself. I’m sure when it comes to the story she’ll wash her hands of it and claim she doesn’t even know me.)

Here’s my story.

By Naomi Dunford - Nov 3, 2007 in Moral of the Story - 36 Comments
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