January is one of the busiest, if not the busiest, months of the year for us.

Most hosting companies are b2b, which means that December gets steadily quieter and quieter, and then once people are back at work in January, it’s the start of busy season.

For the most part, our customers aren’t businesses (or at least very few take time off over Christmas), so our quiet period lasts all of a day (Boxing Day isn’t a holiday in the US) and then everyone wants to start or relaunch a website for New Year.

So rather than being one of the quietest, the week between Christmas and New Year is often one of our busiest, and it has’t slowed down; if anything, it’s got busier. This month has been completely crazy already. Orders have been up massively (probably 30-40% higher than usual), and we’re on track for our best month yet.

It’s funny because we both still end up in our personal overdrafts regularly, as we don’t have time to calculate how much we can pay ourselves in dividends.

At this point we’re looking to hire permanent staff members, which is exciting but also a bit frustrating because hiring people is hard. It involves all kinds of legal stuff, accounting stuff, and dodging ridiculously pushy recruiters. Even things like nailing down the details of a role and what experience level we want involves a lot of decision-making (at the moment we’re definitely leaning more towards very experienced, but we’re keeping our options open).

On top of that, we have the added pressure of finding someone our customers will love. It’s actually one of the most important things to take into account, because our customers have told us that it’s something they’re worried about, and that they don’t want us to change. We have a close relationship with most of them, so there’s a friendship aspect in there. We’re not just looking for someone who can do a job, but someone who wants to love their job and our people.

We’ve also made things difficult for ourselves by needing someone who’s happy to do support and be able to code. This is rare, since most developers don’t like doing customer support. Even those that have come from a customer support background. Our customers aren’t like typical web hosting customers, and we aren’t like a typical web hosting company, so the job is actually a lot better than people probably assume…but they wouldn’t know that till they started anyway, so swings and roundabouts there XD

Recently we also started having one of our friends take a lot of admin work off our plate. She’s amazing and we have quite a lot of stuff we can’t automate, and it’s been great. She’s already keen to learn more and says she’d love to work for us full time so…who knows? It’s definitely a big plus to have someone to do business things that need doing but that always seem to end up at the bottom of our lists.

Recently I’ve flirted with some paid business things. In the online circles I dip in and out of, there’s a lot of hero worship and expensive retreats and workshops and such, and I’ve often wondered if I missing out. This month I dabbled a bit, and realised I wasn’t (sorry!). I think they are probably really helpful for people at early stages of figuring things out, and people who are home alone all day and want some company with other self-employed people. I even think they’re probably really helpful for people who love being seen at places and enjoy the social butterfly aspect, and want some motivation.

But somehow, I, the girl who hated booking a holiday more than a couple of months ahead, has the next several years sorted. A bunch of stuff lined up, planned, organised, that just has to be actioned. I’m not sure if it’s because the industry I’m in has been most of my life now, or because genetics are involved (both sides of my family have self-employed workaholics sprinkled through different generations), or because I just read a crap load of stuff, but I feel pretty sorted currently, with what direction I want the business to go in and what products and services we have coming up. It’s just a case of deciding on some final details and actioning it all.

That doesn’t mean I don’t get scared, or frustrated, or that I don’t fail, or that sometimes the outcomes of things are different to what I’m expecting. Business is a constant rollercoaster; you can have people trying to reverse engineer everything you’re doing one minute, and other people saying how much they love you the next. Now that the early days of figuring out business set up and creating a sales flow are well established, the mindset and psychological side of it (even with depression and anxiety usually under control), remains the biggest challenge. And to be honest, it probably always will be, because there’s always something new to face.

But I’ll happily take that for the dizzying sense of freedom of being able to have an idea and just do it, or having a bubble bath in the middle of the day, or being able to spend more time with the cats. It’s something I’m reminded of and grateful every time I see commuter cars queuing in traffic, or people drenched from going to/from work.

This month for me is all about getting ahead. I’ve cut back on regular content a lot over the past year; Paula does a lot of our social media now, and our complicated combination of services automates most of our social media posting, but I want to get ahead on blog posts and monthly resources and photos so I’m not playing catchup. So far I have blog posts scheduled through to the end of Feb, thanks to some half-finished posts and some guest posters, and I have three photographers booked in so far to do our free stock photos.

If I can keep on top of these things, I’ll have a lot more time freed up to spend in our community groups, helping people, doing sales chats, and creating more courses. So at the moment I’m feeling very positive about everything!

How’s your January going?