December has been a little disappointing though business is ticking over it is not booming. The fish spa continues to stall then at time totally redeems itselfso it is difficult to decide whether we should restructure or keep going with the model we have?

One of our therapists keeps telling us we are doing much better than her previous employers so perhaps we are just unrealistic in our expectations. Considering the bleak news and the threats and realities of job losses should we just be happy with ticking over?

Fresh Feet will have been trading for one year at the beginning of January 2012 - we have learned a lot and have made so many mistakes but still know so little! Marketing is still our biggest weakness as we just do not know the best way to  promote ourselves - having tried just about everything we still find that word of mouth and passing trade gains us the most business.

Every time we start a marketing campaign our competitors seem to jump on the bandwagon and use the same marketing. This just seem to confuse the public who arrive at their shop or ours by mistake! Then again it's not surprising the public are confused since our competitors' names and brands are so similar to us. Perhaps they are thinking we know what we're doing which would be ironic :)

What we have learned is that owning a small business is stressful, challenging and at times exhausting. Tonight we were at the shop until 9pm. We were cleaning the filters and changing the carbon - this is really hard work and every time we do it something goes wrong. Tonight one of the parts snapped so we then had to catch 80 fish and transfer them into the other tanks until we can get the tank repaired. Fish are very quick to learn - the first 4 are easy then the rest know and can you hell catch them - it is surprising how 75 fish can hide in a tank with nothing in it. The last fish - clearly the fastest and brightest -is virtually impossible to catch!

We have also learned so much about ourselves - our tenacity, determination and our ability to learn new skills continue to amaze us. We have also had a great time - thankfully we both have a sense of humour and we can laugh about things that probably aren't funny - we're probably just deranged with tiredness and stress.

We're both in agreement that we're glad we did it - we're pleased we've got through the year - will we still be trading this time next year - we don't know as so much of this is out of our hands but whatever happens we're mostly having a good time!