Avoiding the Small Business Cash Flow Roller Coaster

A solopreneur I know disappears from my radar screen for weeks on end when she's actively engaged on a project for a client. During this time she is heads down, totally focused, and immersed in delivering her service to her current client. She works long hours each week, sacrificing her personal life, relationships, and self-care to meet her commitments to her client.

Laudable, but a destructive way to run her business.

After working all hours of the day and night to complete her project, she'll hand in the final deliverables and suddenly find she doesn't have another client lined up. Then she panics. That's when she starts returning phone calls and getting in touch her network, her former clients, and any prospects she might have ignored during her "work period."

She rides the feast-or-famine revenue roller coaster continuously. During her "work periods" she has cash coming in; during her "marketing periods" she has cash flowing out. And she has no idea how long her "marketing periods" will last or how much of her revenue she'll need to live on before she gets her next client signed up.

Does this sound familiar?

Here are the 5 biggest ways to avoid the feast-or-famine roller coaster:

1. Make time to consistently promote your business. Don't be like the solopreneur above and only participate in marketing activities when you are between jobs.

2. Build effective strategic alliances that leverage your marketing resources and enhance your visibility in the marketplace.

3. Get referrals from your current clients. (And that doesn't mean that you ask your client "Do you know anyone else who's hiring right now?" as you pass each other in the hallway! It does mean that you systematically build a referral engine for your business.)

4. Create project-oriented teams to level the workload, leverage your marketing resources, and expand the types of jobs you can get.

5. Work for multiple clients at the same time. Running a business on the feast-or-famine roller coaster is hard on the cash flow aspect of your business and harder still on your nerves. With diligence and determination you can break this cycle.

Copyright 2004, Rose Hill, Inc

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Rose Hill, Founder and Owner,of Biz Whiz Expert (http://www.SoloBizVille.com) and Team Member of Solo-E.Com (http://www.Solo-E.Com) has been self-employed since 1990 - first as a technical writer and publications project manager, and now as a business coach for solopreneurs.

Knowing how to run corporate departments and how to market corporate entities, products, and services did nothing to prepare her for successfully running and marketing a one-person business. That is why Rose created the SoloBizVille and SoloBizU community - to specifically to help solo entrepreneurs jumpstart their business success without all the trial-and-error learning.

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