Coping With Sickness When a Deadline Looms All the Nyquil in the world won't get that project done when you're chained to your bed with an illness.

Achoo! Sniffle, cough, wheeze. Those sickly sounds sum up mymost embarrassing entrepreneurial experience yet. A new client hadgiven me an assignment needing a quick turnaround: Spend anafternoon at her day spa, experience the different treatments, andcreate the text for a brochure and press release. The day beforethe assignment, I was attacked by a vicious flu bug.

Determined to meet the deadline, I dragged myself from bed atthe scheduled time. A few dozen sneezes and a cup of herbal tealater, I managed to interview the women at the spa, I turned in myassignment on time-and I never heard from them again.

Consider it Murphy's Law for homebased entrepreneurs: Themore pressing the deadline, the more important the project, thesicker you will be. All you can do is create a plan to deal withthose inevitable illnesses. That's something Kristen Timmers, founder andpresident of Los Gatos, California, marketing and event planningfirm Timmers & Co. Inc., learned long ago. "[I've] hadmany [instances] when deadlines were approaching and I wasmiserably ill," she says.