July - Both Challenge and Celebration

[Get comfy . . . this is a long post!]

Think of summer, and what comes to mind are longer days, slower, relaxing rhythms, and fun times spent at the beach, the mountains, or the amusement park, screaming on the roller coaster.

July opened up with a pleasant stay at a B & B, with a mountain view, over the 4th of July weekend.  As I entered the post holiday work week, I found myself feeling like I was being plunged up and down on an emotional roller coaster.

It began, the previous month, with a commitment on the part of my business partner and I to double our advertising budget to attract increased leads for our real estate wholesaling business.  We added an additional mail campaign which tripled our leads for the month of July.  All good stuff, ("Celebrate") but the challenge lay in handling the pace of my work day as it intensified dramatically.  I fell behind in other areas.  I found myself occasionally working in the evenings and on the weekends to catch up.

While this was going on, our primary business website for our leads, Cash for Homes Upstate, got accidently deleted!  Gone.  Kaput.  No more.  When I contacted BlueHost to cancel a different domain that was now hosted by someone else, they also deleted the website unrelated to the domain I canceled.  I spent a frantic 24 hours talking with 4 different techs at BlueHost, who told me that our website had even been deleted from the back-up servers.

As an FYI, Bluehost boasts that it will host unlimited domains for one price, but doesn't tell you that the are all connected to one account.  Eliminate 1 domain, and you risk losing everything else.  This happened to a friend of mine, who is far more tech savvy than me, who also lost his website with Bluehost when he cancelled a different domain from his website.

Our web designer did not have a back-up of our website, since he created it at Bluehost and was not hosting it.  He had the design frames he created, but not the actual website or database.  At the same time I lost my website, my web designer was working full time at the new Apple store that just opened in Greenville, SC.  He was working crazy retail hours and could only manage to work on the website in bits and pieces.

Over the past three weeks, our website has been painstakingly re-created and is up and functioning.  Still some minor cosmetic tweaks to finish, but that too shall come to pass.  ("Celebrate!")

One week ago we closed on a deal that came from one of our many leads -and made a great profit - yea!  ("Celebrate!")

Last weekend I trekked to Ohio for a "Girls Weekend" with my daughters, sister, niece, and several female cousins.  Four people traveled from Illinois, one from Boston, one from South Carolina (that would be me), and three from Ohio to gather in a beautiful vacation home set in the woods on 6 acres in the Hocking Hills area of Ohio.  We laughed, talked, cried, ate, drank, but most of all connected at a heart level.  What a blessing family is.  As my cousin remarked, "I am convinced the connection we feel in and among us is a foretaste of heaven."  ("Celebrate!")

Yesterday my sister, as Executor, attended the closing for my father's condo that has been for sale since his death last fall.  The attorney assures us the estate will be settled now within a couple of weeks.  Bittersweet, but cause to "celebrate!" as well.  Mom and Dad, we know you have prime real estate in Heaven, and no longer need the earthly house.  But this is still hard for us.  We miss you so!

Although July was bumpy in spots, I have gained much.  Knowing that we CAN grow our business has elevated my confidence to a new level.  We are creating bigger systems for bigger growth and bigger profit.  Not bad work for a summer month!  So much to be thankful for on all fronts!

What did you do during July?

[Photo Credit - roller coaster:  Marc Geradi]

Comments

[bluehost]

Bluehost Web Hosting has pretty tricky privacy policy and can really upset customers by their abrupt actions - especially when users rely on them to provide quality. They do have super fast servers though.