August is when your clients need you most

In August, Spain switches off.

Websites don't.

Everyone has an out-of-office reply. "I'll be back on the 1st of September." It's practically a national holiday tradition, somewhere between paella and complaining about the heat.

When you're a big company, that's fine. Someone stays on call. There's a rota. There's a plan.

When you're two people, there's you.

The month your clients are busiest

Here's the thing nobody tells you when you start a service business.

Your clients' busiest month is not your quietest one. Often, it's the opposite.

Think of who uses the internet in August. People booking a rural house. People looking for somewhere to eat on holiday. People buying the thing they forgot to pack. Some of our clients work in rural tourism, and for them these are the weeks that count. This year more than ever, after a spring with everything shut.

So in August, their website isn't a brochure. It's the till.

And if the till breaks on the 15th of August, nobody is going to accept "the agency is on holiday" as an answer. Not their customers. Not them. Not me, if I'm honest.

Your out-of-office reply is a lovely idea. Your clients' customers have never read it.

The myth of the summer break

I'm not saying you shouldn't rest. You should. Burning out in October is not a business plan.

I'm saying the image of a small business owner with their phone switched off for three weeks is, for most of us, a myth. A nice one. Imported from companies that have someone else to pick up.

When you're small, you don't stop. You rest differently.

You learn to rest with one ear open. You do less new work and more watching. You move the big projects to September and keep the essentials alive. You take days, not weeks. You let clients know when you'll be slower, and you mean it, but you don't disappear.

It's less romantic than a hammock. It's also more honest.

Why I don't mind

I could see this as a burden. Everyone else is at the beach and I'm checking a server.

I prefer to see it differently.

If our clients need us most when everyone else has disappeared, that's not a burden. That's the whole value of what we do. Anyone can be available in October. Being there in August is, I think, what makes a client stay for years.

And clients who stay for years are what pays for everything else. The products we want to build. The months we can spend on an idea without asking anyone's permission. The freedom, in short.

I'd rather earn that freedom in August than ask an investor for it in January.

So yes. I'll rest. A bit.

With the laptop nearby and the notifications on.

P.S. If you write to me on the 15th of August and I reply in ten minutes, please don't tell anyone. It ruins the image.