One Man Band

Hosted by Steven Silvers at Scatterbox — and it’s short, with only ten posts.

Here are the first three that made me click through:

• The first-click-through award goes to Dane Carlson at Business Opportunities Weblog for “20 Things Not to Do Before Starting A Business” because I’m always looking for things to stop doing… My favorite from his list is #8:

  Don’t hire anyone. Don’t hire someone if you can do it yourself. For everything else, use contractors and give them 1099.

  Any One-Man Band would take that to heart!

  I also like #15:

  Don’t buy any equipment. Outsource everything. Fedex Kinkos can handle all of your printing, and instead of splurging on a postal meter head down the post office. Need something big? Rent it! If it’s not something you can rent by the day, maybe there’s another local business with one. Can you rent it during their off hours in the middle of the night?

  Outsourcing is a mantra around here. One of the first criterion applied to a possible new thing to do is: how much of it can I get somebody else to do? Can it be done online? Is there an already existing webtool or open-source solution? I enjoy personalizing. Starting from scratch is exciting at first, but maintenance is a killer.

• The second-click-through award goes to Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends for “How Word of Mouth Spreads” because knowing how to harness the power of word-of-mouth is invaluable for a One-Man Band.

• The one-more-before-the-door award goes to Guy Kawasaki at How to Change the World for “LinkedIn and the Art of Avoiding an Asshole Boss” because I was curious about LinkedIn and had recently read an earlier book, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, by Robert I. Sutton. After reading the post, I have added an item to my to-do list: create a LinkedIn profile. (Reading Sutton’s new book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, was already on the list.)

As always, there are more than the three listed (although light at only ten). Click through to see the rest.