Lemonade Maker: Jim Dowd, IT Entrepreneur

Profiles of people who are seeing opportunity in a pile of economic lemons.

Jim Dowd, 40
Gloucester, MA

Before recession: Technology Strategist
Now: Entrepreneur and Co-founder, HelpGuest Technologies. HelpGuest connects people who need tech support with people who can provide it.

How are you making lemonade?

A. We want to be the good guys. Remember Jimmy Stuart’s character George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life?” How he used his business to make people’s lives better during hard times? That’s who we want to be.

With all of the layoffs and companies going under, a lot of people have been cut adrift. Either they have been pushed out from under the corporate IT support umbrella or they have support to give but no means by which to offer it efficiently without the context of a corporation. That’s the niche we fill.

Depression-Era Dinner & Flick

One of FDR’s favorite meals and a damn funny movie make for an evening of festive frugality….

Dinner-and-a-flick can easily run you over $50, so why not whip out the cookbook and pop in the Netflix? Better yet, make it a themed evening with a Depression-era recipe and a classic movie. This chicken dish is a flavorful alternative to a wallet-breaking restaurant meal. Lucky for me, PBS was airing the 1958 fav Auntie Mame the night I made it. The film stars Rosalind Russell as lovable New York bohemian Mame Dennis and chronicles her hilarious responses to the Great Crash – which she mitigates by marrying a southern oilman, of course. Mame’s famous line, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving,” remains an excellent motto for hard times.

Recipe from The Tabasco Brand Cookbook
by Paul McIlhenny with Barbara Hunter

“Country Captain Chicken”

This chicken and rice dish has graced southern tables for many a generation and continues to be popular today…

At the End of Your Robe: Cashing in Your Cast-Offs

Each week, stylist Julie Greene offers expert advice on looking fierce in a financial crisis.

You’ve tried them on, mulled it over, considered repairs, and still can’t make certain clothes work for you. So they’ve been voted out of your closet, have been bid “Auf Wiedersehen.” Or, maybe you’ve decided to let go of some beloved pieces in order to put some money in your pocket.

Fortunately, one Fashionista’s trash is a Recessionista’s treasure (this goes for guys, too). As a former vintage clothing store-owner and power Ebay seller, I am all too familiar with the second-hand clothing market and how to get the most out of what you no longer need. Here are five ways to say farewell to your unwanted clothes with no regret or guilt—only gain.

Cookin’ for Love: Hot Tomato

When the hot blond fitness blogger peeks over her Us Weekly and purrs from the couch, “Baby, I’m in the mood for a little Italian,” a keen, anticipatory pleasure takes over all 5-foot-6-inches of me. Often though, all K-Food (as she will heretofore be known) really means is that she wants me to make tomato sauce.

Tomato sauce is easy enough to cook, especially for someone raised on it. But I like to reach into the immigrant’s cucina povera cookbook for an alternative to pouring it over pasta. You should too–face it, you may not be an immigrant, but odds are you’re working the whole cucina thing because you’re a lot closer to povera these days.

This recipe doesn’t have a name. It showed up at my mother’s house regularly in the 1970s, and reappeared in the Cobble Hill co-hab I share with K-Food—right around the time I noticed my fellow Conde Nast executives actually reading budgets rather than just nodding and checking out each other’s shoes.

Love in the Time of Layoff: A Gentle Response to Joe the Trader

In his post this week, Joe the Trader chronicles a meeting of the He-Man’s Unemployment Club. Roberto is the one who dumps the lunch he brings from home. Joe complains about picking up the iron and recycling the trash. Their girlfriends and wives, they say, spend too much on soy lattes and artisanal cheeses. I do love Joe’s humor—and I truly hope the gecko survives the downturn.
Yet like that New York Times article Joe gripes about, in which a stay-at-home Wall Street wife considers divorcing her unemployed husband because he can no longer deliver coin, Joe falls back on some too-easy stereotypes himself.

The Local Joint That Was

The bistro was called Beato—an Italian word meaning “blessed” or “happy”—which is how I felt when it opened in my Seattle neighborhood during December 2006. The owner, a local returning to Seattle after a New York finance career and a round of culinary training, brought generous backing, an extensive wine collection, a great chef, white tablecloths, and cool servers into what was otherwise a big-screen brewpub neighborhood—along with fantastic Italian-inspired local fare.

We never guessed it wouldn’t last forever.

Farewell, Year of the Rat

Today marks the beginning of the Tibetan New Year, and the Year of the Rat has mercifully passed. In Tibetan culture, rats are the animals who know how to get their little paws on all the treasures. We’re on to the Year of the Ox, inspired by a more thoughtful, steady animal, so the signs are auspicious.

The New Year is normally a time of celebration, but dampened this time around by the brutal Chinese crackdown on a recent wave of peaceful protest in Tibet. Last night at New York’s Tibet House, people gathered to hear Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman discuss teachings that provide solace in times of turmoil…

Rice to Riches – The Feed Yourself Challenge

Maybe this has been said before: “Cheapness is the mother of invention.”

It’s been years since my five-dollar budget. I like lingering over a long meal with friends. Sometimes, I get super lazy and pick up something prepared and eat it out of the plastic compartment. And even as finances have grown tight, I’ve been more likely to treat myself to evenings out to lift my low spirits and pick up cheap indulgences as if stuffing myself with a rich dinner would magically fill my bank account.

Redux: Barter is Back

Looking back at the Great Depression to see the path ahead.

If past crises are any indication, a cash shortage won’t stop the wheels of commerce.

During the1930s, people without money started trading goods and services as a way to keep themselves afloat. Workers exchanged labor for room and board. Students traded farm produce for tuition. Moonshiners, bless them, exchanged goods with just about everybody.

People with skills in high demand did especially well. Someone who could bake delicious bread or sew quality clothing could draw people from miles around to barter for their products. Eventually, people established more formalized barter groups like The Unemployed Citizens League, which had 200,000 members across the country at its peak…

Layoffs on the Menu

It used to be that if you were out of work, you could always wait tables. Freelancers, actors, and recent college grads have long relied on this economic truism as a hedge against hard times. But a Saturday piece in The Orlando Sentinel that caught our eye suggests that the times are a-changin. Sandra Pedicini’s “Slump takes toll; servers lose jobs as restaurants cut back” chronicles the woes of restaurant staff as tips dwindle and layoffs pile up faster than food orders. Waitstaff at the acclaimed Manuel’s on the 28th at the Bank of America Center’s top floor once held some of the most enviable jobs in town. Last week, these servers joined the ranks of the 91,700 restaurant, bar and food-service workers across the country who have found themselves jobless in the last six months…

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