This working paper, delivered at the ©reative Encounters workshop on the Business of Ethnography in June 2012, and in part (the sections on advertising and anthropology) at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco in November the same year, recounts the author’s personal experiences as a fieldworker to consider what it is that defines the newly emergent sub-discipline of business anthropology. The underlying argument is that all kinds of ethnographic research not overtly conducted on ‘business organizations’ may be counted as an anthropology of business, which itself is not strictly defined by the word ‘business’ per se, but includes such features as kinship and household organization, creative and craft practices, community structures, and so on.