Today’s post is dedicated to a little story about my week… a spoiler alert – It’s not been fantastic! BUT there are some lessons to share with you from it!
So, some vermin decided to hack our websites on Monday morning and completely destroy everything.
And I mean EVERYTHING!
This was for both CJC Hair and Makeup and Glitter & Glo.
They got into our databases and deleted every single piece of content I have created over the last 12 years, they completely destroyed the structure, and so basically there is nothing left.
If it was bricks and mortar and not a website, then it’s a bit like someone going in and burning everything to the ground!
Before you ask, there is no backup… this I’m not going to go into as it’s still a sore subject, but also this is the whole point of the story…
The fact of the matter is, it is what it is!
Many people have reached out to me pointing the finger around at the hacker, the hosting company, the developers, my mum was even blaming Google bless her! 😂 (I tried to explain that isn’t anything to do with Google… but then I don’t really understand any of this, so I told her it’s best neither of us thinks about it)
Because it doesn’t matter.
What is done is done.
And pointing the finger doesn’t bring anything back or solve anything it just gets everyone upset and angry… and it’s bloody tiring!
Monday to Wednesday I was taken for a real spin around by my hosting company and the developers of the site, I’ve never experienced such unhelpful treatment as a customer, it honestly left me flabbergasted.
While I don’t expect anyone to drop everything and save me, I would expect the people that I am paying for a service – or have paid and willing to pay again – to still provide that service and support me.
This was not the case.
I had far more support and action taken from my general business and personal network. And this was a valuable reminder for me. It made me realise how lucky I was to have such an eclectic network and such wonderful, supportive people who were willing to dedicate their precious time to look into things and speak with me.
I always talk about cultivating supportive environments and support networks for yourself and this is why.
Because your networks are the nets that catch you when you fall.
However, it got to the point where I realised there was too much talking going on, not enough doing, I was going round and round in circles and I was draining, draining fast, emotionally and mentally.
So Wednesday afternoon rolled around and the developers decided to clock off for the day and leave me hanging yet again with still nothing changed about the whole situation apart from everyone wasting their time and energy back and forth on emails and live chats.
We have not been allowed to work due to Covid but now with weddings back on the menu of life, and us being allowed to reopen, we were just starting to clear the debt and damage of the last 12 months.
The last 2 weeks have been wonderful as people have flocked to the website and made inquiries…
but now there was no website,
and so people would go elsewhere.
I had no more time to waste and I said to myself “Enough! If you want something done Camilla, you’re going to have to do it yourself!”
And keeping in mind my favourite motto
“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can”
I got to work!
I lost about 4 hours on Wednesday attempting to build on 2 different platforms but yesterday I got up at 4am and cracked on with my 3rd attempt – 3rd time lucky it was!
I locked myself away, no talking to anyone, I went completely off-grid, just deep focus – It actually felt really good which was another lesson for me this week about how much energy and focus I waste with multiple conversations across various platforms and constant switching of tasks each day…
So, about 11 hours later I had rebuilt a “shop front” for us at CJC Hair & Makeup.
It’s only temporary, the site can’t stay there and it’s missing all the stuff that you don’t see from the front which is what allows people to find us when they search in google. It would take me a number of days to put every single page and post from the last 12 years with the exact same URLs which I was about to do today… but as I’m not 100% sure if that will make a difference I’ve made the executive decision to just let it go. I’ve made peace with the fact that I will be starting from scratch…
And that’s OK by me. Resets are positive. Starting over has many benefits.
We will lose the ranking I’ve built over the last 12 years but we still have so much trust from people, so much experience and knowledge from the years and with regards to the website, at least we have something again that people can see.
If I carried on waiting for people to help me then I’d still be no better today, and with the bank holiday weekend coming up then many more days. And waiting for other people to do or fix stuff for you is a very powerless position to be in.
And so herein lies lesson number 3! I refuse to be at someone else’s mercy, I will take responsibility and I will make my own actions whenever, and wherever possible.
Sometimes in life, there is no perfect solution, there is only progress.
And the only way to make progress is to move forward.
But in order to move forward, you need to recognise and accept what is holding you back.
Only then can you cut the chains of it and start putting one foot in front of the other to get moving again.
It may be a long road ahead but you’ll never reach any destination without moving forward.
Now, with decimated websites and businesses put to one side, I have some news!
I’ve started a new VLOG SERIES on my YouTube channel!
It’s just a bit of fun (I’m in bloody need of it this week!)… if you enjoy my random Fb and IG stories then you might enjoy these feature-length episodes 👇
