Even the business she turns down is an opportunity to bond. Leanse considers her ability to respond to a customer's needs, whether she wants his or her current business or not, a vital skill for any soloist. "Even if you decline the business yourself, you have to be able to direct the client to someone who can solve his or her problem." Leanse maintains a network of 15 soloists like herself to whom she can refer or subcontract business.
Leanse's necessary fixation on customer relationships compels her to create collegial ones. By subbing out jobs she can't or won't do, or farming out portions of the large contracts she does take on, she not only avoids the fixed costs of full-time employees but also strengthens her position as a talent broker with clients. "I'm able to get some really good people at a really good price. It adds to my own credibility by demonstrating that I can bring clients the talented people they need."
Beyond her web of business allies, Leanse depends on an informal support group: "If I need encouragement or support, I know where to get it." She has a close circle of other women like her, all of them soloists and veterans of large technology companies. "These people are my virtual colleagues," she says. There are half a dozen kindred professionals with whom she can discuss even the most intimate matters. "We'll share information about hourly rates and getting paid," says Leanse. "We can talk about things you'd never broach in a corporate environment, because there's this camaraderie, a sort of fraternal alliance. There's no competition; there's no envy.
"In the corporate world, I was always preparing my gut for conflict. Now I have none of that. I don't have to go into a meeting and be the killer bitch from hell. I hardly have to go into a meeting at all."
* * *
The Unexpected Business of Running the Business
Despite their desire to leave the hassles of corporate management behind them and focus on the job they love to do most, the soloists interviewed all acknowledged that, their rhetoric notwithstanding, they had, in fact, become managers. "It's something I'm still struggling with: the business of running the business. I've got to project cash flow, decide what equipment to buy, file the right tax forms, and still have time to bring in business," laments King.
Soloists, at least the busy ones, unfailingly reach a point at which they must hire out much of the administration of their businesses. They pay others -- often other soloists -- to file, to bill, to manufacture, to maintain databases, to mail brochures, even to sell.
They cannot, however, delegate an understanding of cash flow. Learning to manage cash can be the cruelest lesson in their independent studies on how to run a business. After years of predictable paychecks, soloists face a new and sometimes harsh reality called intermittent income. "It can be feast or famine," says Leanse, who copes with the vagaries of cash flow by occasionally overcommitting herself. "To make sure I won't have a gap in income later, I'll take on too much business now. You never have equilibrium."
And you can go the better part of your first year without any income at all. "It's the most degrading and awful thing," reports Leanse. "I was doing all this work -- taking time away from my child -- to get the business going, with no paycheck coming back to the family. It took months to get a client. And I felt demoralized most of that time."
Moonlighting or launching the venture part-time can ease the financial pressure. "You should set up the business so you don't have to rely on it for sustenance during the first six to eight months," advises Leanse, who waited at least a year before she saw steady cash flow and even longer before she started to see reasonable margins. "In the beginning, you underbill and over work because you haven't convinced yourself you can really do this or that you ought to be paid well for it."
King concurs. "In the first couple of years, I didn't come close to matching my old salary. And I had always had a pretty good price on my head." She was charging customers way too little, she says. But then, pricing wasn't much of a science. "I'd say a number and hope they didn't faint." Over time, after doing plenty of work for nothing, she lost her innocence about bolstering her own cash. "I was watching my customers' assets grow," says the financial planner. "And I realized, Hey, my expertise must be valuable."
Of course, taming the beast that is cash flow hardly matters if soloists don't master another vital facet of their operation first: technology. For a one-person show, it's not just a productivity tool; it's a survival strategy. These enterprises could not exist but for the artillery of PCs, fax machines, and mobile phones defending and fortifying them. Technology has become the great enabler.
"My computer is my touchstone," says Leanse, who considers her Mac II, with dual-page display and fax modem, the heart of her home office. Throw in the spreadsheet program, the word-processing program, the Quicken package, and the on-line service, and a soloist sports a complete line of business software.
