Howard Levin, first time contributor to Unit of 1, submitted this article (look for more articles from Howard in the weeks to come):

Imagine boarding a tour bus and hearing the following: “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, this is your tour guide speaking. Today will be visiting somewhere, I’m not sure where. I have no plan and no road map. I have no instrumentation on this bus, so I will not know how far we are going, or how fast we are moving. We’ll figure this out as we roll along. Thanks for touring with "We’re Lost Tours." Chances are you would make a beeline for the exit door.

Yet, running a business can be similar to conducting a guided tour. In both cases, you must have a plan or a road map and a way to measure your distance from your destination. In the case of a business, that destination is success. As a business owner, one page business planning can create your road map to success.

Essential networking skills article by Stephanie Ward:

How do you answer the seemingly easy question, “What do you do?” Do you talk about YOU? Do you talk about your products/services? Do you talk about your industry? Do you explain the process of how your products/services work? If you answered yes to any of these questions you are missing an enormous opportunity.

Every time someone asks you “What do you do?” and every time someone reads your marketing materials you have the opportunity to:

* Interest potential clients
* Increase the potential for referrals
* Find out about potential strategic alliances
* Create recognition for yourself and your business
* Position yourself as an expert

Stop right now and take the time to discover how to answer the question, “What do you do?” in a profitable way.

Being involved with Unit of 1 means that you’re connected to other small business owners and solo entrepreneurs. As our network grows – so does its value to each of the members.

Please take a minute and add a link to Unit of 1 from your website or forward this newsletter to someone you think might be interested in it.

Over the past few months, I’ve begun to add comments in blog-like format on the Unit of 1 website. As a member – you can add your own blog postings or comment on others. Here’s an example of something I wrote online:

Large scale consulting and independent consulting are quite different. I much prefer the latter.

The difference between being an independent and working as a part of a large organization is that I have control over all aspects of the business. I like seeing the pipeline of projects, and never being surprised at a decision made elsewhere in the company.

The obvious downside is that you are also solely responsible for sales, marketing, legal, finance, taking out the trash, mailing packages, etc etc etc. Especially when you're busy with client work, it takes a lot of discipline to keep up on the networking and other infrastructure-type work.

I firmly believe, many businesses are much better off being run as a group of independents collaborating, rather than with traditional corporate structure and overhead. I've seen time and time again where individuals who were mediocre employees really shine as independent contractors. I think it's the complete accountability of the sink or swim reality of running your own business. Also, it's a self-selecting group. As an independent, there's no place to hide. If you don't perform, you're out of business.