I made a tough decision this week. I decided to leave the company I've been working for these last 10 months. I really love the people I've been working with but in the long run I felt it was better to leave.

I decided to go back into business for myself. In a way, it's seems more secure to me to put my eggs in more than one basket. By having 20-30 clients instead of one (my employer) I could be sure that I could get a regular amount of income, and not get worried about getting fired or laid off.

I worked for a non-profit organization where I had to raise all the funds necessary to cover my salary, benefits and adminstration. I did this for 16 years. One of the things I learned during this time was that it was good to spread out risk by having about 130 smaller givers, rather than 10 big givers. If I lost one of the bigger givers, I was in big trouble. That would be roughly 10% loss in income. I would have to find someone quickly to replace that giver.

So, as I go back into business for myself, I have about 15 smaller clients, and then 3-5 bigger clients sustain the business. If I lose a couple of the smaller clients it will be less pain than if I lose one really big client. This happened to a local company who at one time had $30 million in sales. They went down to $12 million in sales and had to lay off a bunch of people and machinery was silent.