Disaster Averted

Last week, I was playing around with my Make Your Copy Count website and manged to delete a plug-in. Unfortunately, this plug-in was the one that all my online courses are hosted on, which meant all my course content just vanished.

Everything gone with the click of a button.

As you can imagine, I had a minor meltdown. I spent months creating those courses. And, yes, I have all the videos, transcripts and PDFs saved, but I had to build all the courses, upload the content, make all the pages and so on, and that took a lot of time.

So I was in a bit of a panic.

I tried to figure out a way to get the plug-in back or restore the courses, but I was at a loss.

So I decided it was time to ask someone who might actually understand how to fix it - my website host.

It took me two minutes to explain my problem to someone via the online chat and the fee to fix it would be a ridiculously low sum of £1.73.

So I paid the £1.73, confirmed I wanted them to use the previous week's back up to retore my site. And then I went to bed. By the time I woke up the next morning, my courses were back.

Phew!

Note to self: don't go clicking around the back end of your site late at night while trying to have a phone conversation with your husband.

So I guess the moral of the story (other than be more careful) is get help from an expert when you don't know how to fix a problem.

I could have spent all night trying to find a solution by myself. And if I couldn't figure out how to restore my content, I could have reinstalled the plug-in and rebuilt the courses from scratch.

Luckily, common sense kicked in and I looked for someone who could give me the answer and help me fix the problem quickly.

Getting help with an IT problem or an accounts problem or a technical problem might seem like a no-brainer. But when it comes to an issue with sales or marketing or business processes in general, so many freelancers will try and figure out the solution by themselves.

I was guilty of this for a long time. I was too proud to admit I was struggling, so I'd pretend everything was ok - business was great. But in reality, I was miserable. My business just wasn't where I wanted it to be.

Finally, I got help. I worked with two different mentors to help me get on track. I invested in my marketing. I asked for advice. And I got where I wanted to be a hell of a lot faster than I would have if I'd kept struggling along by myself.

Now I help other freelancers move forward. I help them get unstuck. I help them figure out the problem and how to fix it.

So if you're tired of trying to figure things out by yourself, get in touch. Sometimes a problem can be solved much faster if you get help from the right person.

Working for yourself doesn't mean you have to do everything by yourself.