Here’s a tip for you: if you’re feeling a bit depressed about how your business is doing at the moment, go and see a recruiter.

Not because of their sunny personalities and positive outlook (although lots of them have that too), or because they’ll supply you with a raft of recession-beating stars (although they might). But because you can pretty much guarantee that they’re having a worse time than you are. That might not sound very nice, but it definitely puts your own problems in context.

I took one out for a coffee this week, partly for the usual reason I like to meet recruiters – to get a flavour of what else is going on in the market. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I think recruiters are great for this because they’re always chatting to people in the industry, so they tend to have a good overview. As I’ve also mentioned, I’m usually a terrible client for recruiters, because I hardly ever bung any business their way. But this time, for once, I did actually have a specific role to talk about. Although I’m still not totally sold on this COO idea, I figure that it can’t hurt to test the waters a bit, see what’s out there.

Anyway, this poor girl – who’s normally a fairly cheery, jolly-hockey-sticks sort – looked positively cowed by her experience of the last year, bless her. Apparently her agency has shrunk from 12 people to 3, and she personally had to let three of the unfortunates go. I actually felt quite bad that she doesn’t even have her own business, and yet she’s had to sack more people than me in the last year. (Although not that bad, obviously.)

I suppose I was expecting her to be fairly positive about my idea; to tell me that I’d be able to take my pick from a huge array of brilliant candidates who have seen their previous jobs disappear in a puff of recessionary smoke. But that wasn’t entirely the case. What she said – and I don’t know how true this is – was that people like this are actually in huge demand at the moment, because they’re perfect for companies looking to get a handle on their cashflow and cut costs. So she thought it might actually be quite tricky to find a good one.

I suppose she may have a point. Companies do need people like that (or better still, I’d argue, they need to be run with people with an iota of common sense). And if you’re a cost-cutting COO, the last thing you’re going to do is fire yourself, right? On the other hand, I couldn’t help feeling this was kind of a subtle sales pitch (‘you’ll never find one without a good recruiter’ etc etc etc). And there was enough encouragement in there to make me think that there are people around.

But perhaps my biggest takeaway from the meeting was that I really need to give this a bit more thought. On several occasions, she asked me questions about this person’s role or ideal background, and I had to make up the answer on the spot so I didn’t look incompetent. I quite often go into a recruitment process pretty sure that I know what I want, but possibly not to the extent that I could articulate it to anyone else. I’ve just got used to thinking ‘I’ll know them when I see them’. But when you’re hiring someone at this level of seniority – with all the financial and organisational risk it implies – you can’t really get away with that.

The zest for New Year self-improvement seems to make everyone a lot more aggressive in January.

I'll tell you what I hate about January. Well, apart from the filthy weather. And detox. And putting the wrong date on things. And the prevailing air of gloom. OK, so I hate lots of things about January. But the worst one, as far as I'm concerned, is self-improvement.

I've no idea if this is actually true, but I'd be willing to bet a substantial chunk of equity in the business (since I have no other real assets) that 87.5% of New Year's resolutions are to do with people deciding they don't get paid enough. Sometimes this will result in them looking for a new job, in which case it's only a pain if they get one (otherwise it can be a useful reality check). But far worse is when they come back after Christmas determined to get a pay rise. It happens every single year without fail, and it's always really annoying.

At the start of this week, for instance, I got an email from a guy who works for me on the delivery side. He's been with me for a couple of years now, and I think he's great – just quietly and efficiently gets on with his job, the type of employee managers love. It read: "Dear ___, I’ve become concerned that my current position and salary is not properly consonant with my contribution to the company. Can we please discuss this at the earliest opportunity as I am no longer confident that you see me as having a successful future in this business as opposed to elsewhere". Happy Monday morning to you too.

Now you have to understand that this guy genuinely would not say boo to a goose. He also sits about five yards away from me, and had previously given no indication of this burning ball of rage that was building up inside of him. So to say I was taken aback is putting it mildly. However, I also happen to know (from painful office socials) that this guy has the world’s pushiest girlfriend. She works as some kind of ball-breaking corporate lawyer in the City, and clearly keeps her immaculate Louboutin heels pressed to his throat at all times. This email had her clawmarks all over it; I could well imagine the poor guy getting a constant earful from her throughout the Christmas holiday.

Anyway, so I got this guy into a meeting room for a chat. I’ve had some excruciating chats in my time, but this was definitely up there – the poor guy was obviously horrifically embarrassed about the whole thing, and terrified about the consequences of not getting his message across. Since I’m not easily embarrassed, particularly about this sort of thing, this put me at an immediate advantage in the negotiation (which of course is what this was).

Now it has to be said that people like him do sometimes get a rough deal on pay. The pushy ones who never stop banging about their salary often do end up progressing faster up the scale, however hard you try to avoid it happening. On the other hand, I love people like him who don’t make my life difficult or spend half their time complaining. Which means that when I come to assess his pay, I’m much more inclined to give him what he’s actually worth, as opposed to what I can get away with.

I guess the ideal is somewhere in between.– you have a good idea what you’re worth, and you can argue for it cogently, but you don’t do it constantly and you don’t waste loads of my time on it. In other words, there’s a certain way of going about this. And as far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t mean abrupt emails with aggressive language and thinly-veiled ultimatums (plus I had to Google what ‘consonant’ meant). So I told him that, in no uncertain terms. ‘If you have aspirations of being a senior figure within the business,’ I told him primly, ‘I’d expect more of a mature and consultative approach to this process’. He looked suitably cowed. And since he also got a (very slight) pay rise, hopefully it’ll get the girlfriend off his back for a while too.

Still, it wasn’t much fun. And my overriding feeling afterwards was that getting someone in to take care of (at least some of) this stuff for me would make life a lot more pleasant.

In between worrying about the snow, I’ve been pondering how to make my life easier in 2010.

First things first: (a belated) happy new year to you all. Thanks for all your Christmas messages, they were much appreciated - and yes, thanks for asking, Christmas was great. I had a whole week off. What a slacker.

I wasn't going to talk about the snow this week (I'm still feeling a bit embarrassed about my schoolgirl gushing on the subject last year). But it's definitely been the big preoccupation so far in 2010. Just when you really need people to be switched on and focused on the task ahead, along comes the snow and suddenly everyone develops the attention span of a goldfish. I was desperate to start the year with a bang, but it's actually been more of a whimper. Even I, the world's biggest snow fan, am starting to dread its arrival (I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t keep thawing and coming back again – just make your mind up, will you?).

Also, the rubbishness of our general response to snow seems to have become a lot more irritating this year. It's as if everyone just gives up as soon as they see open the curtains and see some white stuff outside: trains and buses stop functioning, and people suddenly become incapable of doing anything useful. It makes you wonder how places where it snows all the time manage to have any functional businesses whatsoever.

Anyway, enough of that. My plan was actually to talk about my New Years' Resolutions. Now I should probably point out that I'm not really very good at resolutions. Or at least, I'm not very good at sticking to them. Every year I sit down and think 'I really must try and improve my work/ life balance', and every year it gets to March and I realise that I've worked 75% of the weekends and can barely remember what some of my friends' names are (fortunately they're kind of used to this by now - years of practice).

Since I'm so useless at sticking to personal resolutions, I figured it was best to concentrate on work ones this time round. And although I came at it from a few different directions, it basically boiled down to one thing: to spend more time working on the business, rather than in the business. In the second half of last year I spent so much time fire-fighting that I didn't do enough thinking about the future. I don’t regret that; in the circumstances I had no choice. But it's no way for a good entrepreneur to operate, because it means you miss opportunities.

One potential way of addressing this, I’ve decided, is to appoint another senior person to spread the load - a COO type who can oversee all the boring-but-important stuff like legal, IT and finance. I’ve been a bit reluctant to do this, in the past. I don’t mind shelling out for salespeople – if they’re good they make more money for you than they make for themselves, and if they’re not it’s easy to get rid of them. But with a COO, you don’t get the same direct return – good ones cost money, which comes straight off the bottom line, and their contribution is a bit harder to measure.

On the other hand, there’s a chance it might free up 30-40% of my time (since I manage most of this stuff at the moment). And if I can’t make enough extra cash for the business in that time to offset the cost of his/ her salary, then I need to give up right now. It’ll also make my job a lot more fun, I think – and my other resolution is for this year to be a lot more fun than the last one. Hope yours is too.