Environment plays a big part in our businesses. Some things we can control ourselves, others (like the weather) not so much. The trick is to stack the deck in favor of highest productivity.

Here’s one way I control my environment. There are times when I just can’t get myself to start working on a project. I’ll do projects around the house, go work with the horses, play with dogs, do the laundry; in other words, I’ll pretty much do anything to keep from knuckling down. My environment offers me far too many preferable options.

This is a problem, since I have a multiple deadlines to meet, and avoiding a project just puts more pressure on me and may have a negative impact on work quality.

When I run into this situation, I go to Starbucks. There are no distractions there, no options to sitting at the computer and working. Put in my ear buds, hit one of my iTunes playlists, and it’s just me and the keyboard.

Our environment can help us or hinder us. The outside temperature may be outside of our control, but there are a lot of aspects of our surroundings that we CAN influence. Stack that deck in your favor!!!

But the reason for the missed posts is positive: I’ve been super busy with paying projects! Quite a change from the start of this revenue quest.

Let’s review. I started out to share my journey from “Eek! A critical contract got canceled!!” to “I need to organize my busy project schedule!”

Well, I have arrived at that point. I got on Elance to bring in business right away while I teed up a white-paper-focused practice, and ended up with lots of awards, some of which may very well turn into repeat clients. Along with that, my client got my contract extended another three months (phew!).

While the immediate pressure is off, I’m not complacent. I consider the almost-cancellation of the contract a wake up call; the contract has a 30-day cancellation clause, so no matter how long the duration is, truth is that I only have 30 days’ worth of security on that engagement. So, now that I can breathe a bit more comfortably, I’m putting things into place to avoid that situation by:

• Decreasing my outlay on discretionary and household expenses
• Working on cutting a chunk out of my fixed monthly costs
• Putting any extra funds I end up with into my savings account
• Continuing to work Elance on a regular basis
• Continuing to tee up the white paper practice

This is in addition to continuing to produce good results on the contract gig so that I stand a chance of another extension when the time comes.

But even if that extension doesn’t happen, in three months’ time I will have enough of a financial cushion (something I always had pre-recession) to weather a drop in revenues for a short time while I bring in new clients.

Even though things have kind of gotten back into equilibrium, I’m not going to stop posting here. The only thing I’m doing is adjusting my commitment: Instead of posting every week day, I will post no less than twice per week. And I will continue to keep the “coach shield” down and share whatever is going on, up/down/sideways.

It was exhilarating to reach the end of the day having crossed all project items off. Euphoric almost.

Then, the alarm went off the next morning, and there I was: Looking at another day’s list of project items to be done by end of day. Argh

This must be what it’s like to be an athlete. Nail the workout or training session today, and celebrate. Get up the next morning, and there’s another workout or training session to do.

What makes the athlete do it? What makes me do it? We both have goals that we can’t get to without these daily sessions. So we better learn to love the process!!!

And here we have another challenge for the solo business owner. Some solos address it by just doing it all…at the expense (in my opinion) of the rest of their lives. Others remain serial, and have to go through revenue ups and downs that correspond to the presence or absence of marketing activity. Then there are those who keep at least a baseline level of marketing going even when they’re busy.

What does baseline marketing look like? I think it depends on personality and market. It could involve offline stuff like attending networking meetings and staying in touch with customers and associates by phone. Or online stuff like posting to Linkedin and/or Facebook and/or Twitter on a regular basis, sending emails to the contact list on a regular basis, publishing articles and/or blog posts. Or a combination.

My commitment to posting here every week day is part of my baseline marketing. And my regular review of available Elance projects to find candidates to bid on. I have a few other things on the list as well that I need to put into play…more on that later!!

I voiced my admiration for his insights, and his response was interesting.

“Oh, this didn’t happen overnight. I started out in a completely different place, did a lot of work and a lot of learning, and moved over time through several different steps.”

Well, okay. I still say huzzah for his insight. But this brings up a good point. We hear this point made from time to time, but I’m not sure how many of us really get it:

There is no such thing as overnight success.

Author, musician, entrepreneur … dig into the history of any of the big names and you will find stories that span years and, in many cases, multiple failures before hitting the mark.

There are two takeaways for me here:

• It is unrealistic to expect big successes to happen quickly.
• Big successes are preceded by a lot of focused work, learning, and acting.

This should not be discouraging. Just the opposite, in fact. When we understand how things work, we can stay on course easier and make better decisions. Which, in fact, could shorten our time to success!

In the years that the economy has been in the tank, I’ve had to modify the rule, not because it isn’t still sound, but because the market has tightened so much (at least in my offering area) that it hasn’t be feasible to turn away any opportunities. This has led to other challenges, the most recent being the thing that create this Quest.

A very large company has me on a retainer for marketing services. Though there is a contract in place, there is a 30-day notice to cancel clause. And the company invoked it. I got notice through email, and the news was pretty much out of the blue.

Things have settled down some. My main interface at the company went to bat to get the contract extended (not for me, but because he needs my services), and managed to squeeze out a few more months. But I am not complacent.

Here are my thoughts about big eggs in solo baskets:

• Of course you need a contract in place, but in my field at least, there is invariably an “early cancellation via written notice” provision. This means that in reality, you only have the job for whatever the time frame is (in my case, 30 days). There is no guarantee beyond that, no matter how many pages are in your contract.
• Maintaining independence from clients is paramount. This means that you need to avoid relying too heavily on any one contract to put food on the table. Create a situation that would allow YOU to cancel early via written notice and not have to worry about the consequences.
• The best way to maintain this independence is money in the bank. Keep a cushion stashed in your account—at least enough to cover however much time you would need to replace a big client if things fell through.
• Use part of the revenue received from that client to fund your cushion account. This will not only help with “income insurance,” but will also keep you thinking lean in terms of your financial situation.
• Commit to continuing to market your services. Even if you don’t directly pitch new prospects while you’re working for the big guy, keep your name in your marketplace. Publish articles, maintain your blog, stay in touch with your contact list, go to networking events. You get the idea. This will make it easier to go back to pitching prospects when the time comes.

Big eggs are not bad to have in your basket. You just have to remember that they could break unexpectedly and make a mess, so it’s important to make sure you can clean things up quickly!

I can’t think of a single day since I stepped out into the solo space that some version of this conversation hasn’t been part of my self talk. I admit that some days the conversation starts out on the opposite end: How will I ever make it? It’s too hard…and other stuff that also accompanied me up the slope of Mount Snowden

But even when the conversation has started that way, I have always ended up stoking my fires and continuing my chug up the track.

What I’m really talking about here is FAITH. I’m thinking more of what I call “secular faith,” as opposed to faith in a higher power (though this certainly has its place in our self talk). Faith in ourselves, faith in the people who love and support us, faith in the power of patience and persistence.

This faith is such an important ingredient in solo success. There will be days when nothing is working and you won’t be able to see ahead with any kind of clarity. It is so easy to extrapolate from there to a future of failure, and from there it is a short step to despair and “result paralysis.” Your secular faith, your Little Engine that Could self talk, is the best and most powerful antidote to that downward slide.

I have faith in myself, and on days when thinks look most grim, I remember that there have been other times in the past when grimness reigned, and also remember that I prevailed over the circumstances.

That’s my message to you today: Keep on chugging. You CAN do it!!!!

This is not okay. I’ll dig myself out the best way I can, but it is not good that I got myself into the jam in the first place. The reputation, and therefore the success, of a solo business owner depends to a very large degree on that owner’s ability to keep their word. In other words, deliver the goods when we say we will, stand by the pricing, terms, and scope we quoted in the beginning, provide updates and communications as agreed, etc. The jam I’ve put myself into as far as delivery deadlines puts my reputation at risk. At the best, I stand to lose at least one repeat client; at worst, dissatisfied clients will make their opinions known via online feedback that future prospects will see.

And so we see the tightrope we walk. Very few of us are willing to turn work away (especially these days), and at the same time we must make sure we can deliver on our commitments without losing quality or our own well being. Walking that tightrope takes practice and development of certain muscles. If those muscles lose conditioning, it’s very easy to get into a bind.

That’s where I stand right now. My tightrope walking muscles are out of condition, in large part because I’ve been working with just a few big clients rather than many smaller ones. As I shift back to the second scenario, I need to put those muscles to work and reignite my ability to successfully juggle lots of deadlines simultaneously.

I guess the main point here is that no matter how long you are in business, no matter how well you do, there will always be things to master and remaster.

And on that note, I’m going back down into the deadline-meeting mine….

This can be a serious pitfall for a solo business owner. In the first two years of my business, I went literally MONTHS without taking a day away from work. And I ended up with serious burn out. My concentration deteriorated, my ability to accommodate problems and setbacks atrophied, and my temper became microscopically short. Even worse, the quality of my work started to suffer, which, if I had let things go on, would have been a self-correcting mechanism. My clients would have stopped calling, I wouldn’t have gotten any new work…and presto! I would have had plenty of time off!!!

I caught myself before it got that far, and I haven’t gotten that far down the road ever again. If I have to put in a long stretch of work, I make sure that I build in down time at the end of the push. In this case, I have a five-day Colorado vacation to look forward to at the beginning of September. Guaranteed down time.

In the meantime, it’s in through the nose and out through the mouth as I keep breathing to stay centered and focused on my wonderfully full workload!

And I must keep bidding….so easy to let the marketing slide when the work schedule is full. Problem with that is that there is inevitably an income slump when the projects are done and there aren’t any coming in to fill the schedule. So, in addition to figuring out the project schedule, I have to add in time to keep the prospect machine rolling.

And I will be sure to enjoy the projects that are raining down. Now if we can just get some REAL rain on this parched Texas ground!