Service Business Owner Q's Re: Directories and Varying Anchor Text in Backlinks??

Sorry if this seems to be against common sense but the way issues have been phrased leads me to believe the entire situation is defying common sense when viewed from the point of view of a branding / home service site.

I own a service business and money it tight so I have to sit up until 3AM listening to podcasts and reading forums so I'm at least passably competent in SEO, web design and content writing. My bread and butter come when you refrigerator, dryer, etc. breaks. Then you look me up, call, I come to your house and fix it.

You don't just happen to notice my ad next to a home and garden blog post and call me because you want to call me. When you call me it's beause your machine is busted and you need a repairman, now... so you went looking for one and decided on whom to call within five minutes of starting your search.

Directories such as Angie's list, Yelp, yp.com etc. are important because those are often places where people go looking. Mass directory submission = bad feels like telling a business that it's bad to put your ad in the yellow pages and community directories. It seems to be totally bass ackward. Am I missing something here? Are directories such as yp.com, Yelp, etc. all considered to be relevant while having my site listed in a directory of 3D design tutorial sites considered to be spam? Also, what is a "PR" directory? I thought PR was page rank.

On varying anchor text: I can control the anchor text within my own site. I can create unique URL's for each article or tip page. However I'm getting the impression that having variation in the anchor text of back links is important. How can anyone ensure such a thing? If people link to your tips and articles you may not even know they did... and if you ask for a link in any sort of specific phrase then that almost guarantees that 95% of your backlink anchor tet will parrot whatever you asked for.

I clearly must be missing something here... it comes with the territory when a business owner is forced to try to learn someone else's business out of need. If someone can clarify this for me, I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you,

Scott