I know Halloween was in October, but November was a month that scared me. It was a month where everything that could go wrong went wrong. Let’s get into this month's report.

Bad News

The month began with one of my retainer clients telling me they were experiencing cash flow issues and would not be able to pay their bill.

As a result, I had to hustle to make extra money for the month. In fact, I ended up taking on more work than we can currently handle at discounted prices to clients who had not converted yet due to pricing.

It was helpful that I could turn some of those pipeline clients into cash, but it was also costly. But we will discuss the workload in a moment.

Health Scare

On the 2nd of November, I sprained my ankle, fell backwards and hit my head. I didn’t think much of it at the time, as it was just the ankle in pain, but on the 8th of November, I started having this lingering headache that would not go away and at times was unbearable.

I realised I had a concussion, and when I did too much physical stuff, I would start to get this pounding pain on the left side of my brain.

This made working extremely hard; I went days without touching work due to not being able to look at the screen for more than a few minutes at a time.

The headaches have finally gone since November 26; it’s one of the first times I’ve actually been scared of an injury.

This period of living with constant headaches made me realise I need to take my health more seriously, I need to protect my head as our brains are our greatest assets, and if we are not careful, that can be taken away from us.

Teaching is Consuming Time

In October, I finally hired someone to help grow the business and eventually take work off my schedule and to be frank, she has come a long way in the last 2 months.

She is taking some work off my plate, but I'm finding myself not completing enough of the work I need to do, such as building out the websites. She is not quite ready for this aspect, so it falls on me to build the websites.

I think the time consumed comes when she has a question. It breaks my flow, and then I struggle to get back into that deep flow state, which prevents things from getting closer to where they should be.

A solution is to schedule times when I’m not available to her, and establish times for her to ask me things she's struggling with, maybe 2-hour blocks of deep work and 15-minute breaks for emails and her to ask me questions.

Project, Projects and More Projects

I’ve been alluding to having too many projects in November, and yes, I took on more than we could handle. In total, 7 new websites, and that's not even mentioning ad-hoc or retainer client projects.

At the time of writing, I’m busy getting number 5/7 ready for client review. It’s currently 10 PM on the 1st of December, and I’m about a week behind schedule, as these should’ve all been completed by last week.

Numbers 6 & 7 will be completed tomorrow and Wednesday morning. Once the clients review, we will most likely be busy with revisions for the rest of the week. It’s not great for my reputation, but all I can do is apologise for the delays.

December is Here

How are we in December already? This year has been a good year of growth and momentum for Fosker Media, and it’s not just done yet.

I don’t think I’m going to take on too much work this month, as I need to close now that I have an employee. Usually, I would work straight through to the new year, but this year is different.

I have one project pretty much confirmed, 2 potential projects to follow up on, but capacity-wise, I just want one more project.

I want to spend some time this month looking at Fosker Media and how I want to position it, what our brand looks like, and our service offering as the business turns 15 in January.

So that's what December will look like.

Year to date

• Clients:
• Total clients: 64
• Active clients: 33
• Social Clients: 2
• Website Retainers: 0
• Projects
• Websites Projects: 28
• Websites In Progress: 3
• Went Live (Nov): 1
• Web Apps: 4
• Support/Operations
• Care Plans: 3
• AD Accounts: 3
• Hosting Clients: 25
• Team
• Team: 2
• Freelancers: 6

Lessons From This Month

It’s something I’ve been worried about for a few months now. This month was when it actually happened. What if we lost an account or weren’t paid? How would I pay for everything that needs to be paid?

It’s no longer an option; Fosker Media needs to start building an emergency fund for cases when clients are not able to pay, so this is going to be a massive focus going forward, putting money aside for business emergencies, so when they happen, we are not desperate to raise extra cash flow.

This is vital for all businesses. Does your business have an emergency fund?