2 years ago I took a week off, and it was my biggest business success up to that date – I even shared how I did it. This winter we are going to eclipse that victory – The Mighty Mo! will be taking the entirety of Christmas week off!
Corporate employees with unplugged vacation days built into their company culture probably don’t understand the scope of this victory – it’s HUGE, life-changing! As you know, it’s rare for freelancers to take weekends off – We’re gonna take a week off.
“But Won’t Your Customers Be Mad?” you ask.
We promise 1 thing when we onboard new customers: No surprises. We’ve paved the way for this vacation by letting our customers know early and often that we’ll be out – they won’t be surprised. I never promise our customers that they won’t be angry or disappointed – that’s part of life. But as much as possible, we work to eliminate the surprises caused by poor communication. 99% of people can deal with a little disappointment if the communication is honest and early.
“What if my website goes down while the office is closed?” a worried customer asks.
At a high level, all of our website hosting operations are centered on stability and replication of support. We’ve invested a lot of extra money behind-the-scenes on the website hosting front to prepare for this exact moment, and a couple of things are true:
- Almost all “website down” emergencies are caused by human business owners. So, we are advising our customers to not update plugins or themes Christmas week.
- If your site does go down through your own actions or via one of those web mysteries, we’ll support you as always – just fill out our 911 Website Down Emergency form, and we’ll spring to action. Does this mean we’re actually on call and not on vacation at all? Yes, I suppose so…but again, we’ve invested in people and infrastructure to prevent this exact scenario, and the odds of this happening are slim.
Little Victories are Big Victories
As a small business owner, I celebrate the little victories. Back when I was a full-time WordPress freelancer, I did not take vacation, and I was miserable, because I let my customers control when and where I worked. It took me at least a handful of years to start figuring out why I work.
It’s been a long & gradual process of building a center of calm within my business, and sometimes these seemingly little victories feel huge. Let’s celebrate a Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all!
