What kind of 75 watter is it? Flourescent or Incandescent? Just make sure it is not an incandescent, those are useless.
To keep it that small, you will need to top, LST, or both. There are plenty of good threads around here about LST to read.
You are doing it right by getting it into the sunlight gradually, just keep increasing the amount of time you have it in the sun.
To keep it as short as possible, you will want to change it's light cycle to 12/12 as soon as it looks the plant will be ready, maybe another 2-3 weeks. You will want to make sure the 12 hour periods of darkness are completely dark and without interruptions.
I think you said you were in So Cal, which means you should have enough sunlight and warmth this time of year for the plant to get 12 good hours under the light.
SO keep up what yo are doing so far, it seems to be working. Read up on LST techniques around here, as the one time I tried to do it, it turned into a supercropping, so I am no good as a resource for that....