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. Read More

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. Read More

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! Read More

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. Read More

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.) Read More