Are you nearsighted? If you think you may be, you would probably go get your eyes checked, then go to the optometrist and get some glasses. Easy! But what about your business? How do you see it, from near or far, or both? The B&B Team talks a lot about how important it is to have an eye for details, from housekeeping to plate presentation and beyond. We also talk about the ‘big picture’, knowing where your business is headed and knowing that your actions are all working towards your business goal. With the big picture clearly in mind, every decision you make is made with your business goal in mind. These decisions must support and advance your business, not hinder it.

Successful innkeepers need to be detail oriented AND goal oriented. But you don’t want the details to get in the way of seeing into the future, you don’t want the future to become blurry. It is all about clarity.

Some innkeepers often get so close to their everyday ‘detail oriented’ work that they don’t see what is obvious to someone else, especially their guests. They put on virtual blinders and charge ahead doing the same things they’ve always done, getting the same results. Is this you? We have all done this in our lives at times, in school, in sports AND in business. But we can’t afford to keep doing the same ol’ thing over and over again even if that ‘thing’ was successful at one point in time. When do you know this is happening? When you start feeling stale, stagnant, bored and when your Inn starts looking tired, old and saggy. Pretty harsh words but you get the point. Time to get moving, take off the blinders and change the view.

The B&B Team is often called by innkeepers who know their business is in a stagnant mode but don’t know why or how to move forward. We have gone in and done what we call our ‘Inn Tune-Up’. Here are just a few of the details we cover.

• We will observe your property on the outside just as a new guest would to improve your visibility.
• Operations efficiency observations include housekeeping, laundry and repairs and maintenance.
• We will look at your financials for efficiency in the areas of record keeping, tracking systems, chart of accounts and expenditures.

The list goes on. But what about the ‘big picture’ mentioned before? If your vision has become blurred you may want to go back and take a look at your business plan, look it over and even rewrite some parts. Some of the goals you wrote down may have changed. You may need to refocus those goals. If you never wrote a business plan it is not too late.

In any business it can be perilous to take your sight off the ‘big picture’. We are in the hospitality business, which covers a much broader spectrum, a much bigger picture. Even though your bed and breakfast  may be small in size it doen’t mean you have to think small. This nearsighted mindset will lead to complacency and eventually lead to loss of sight of what your guests want. So take a look inside and out and if you want another set of eyes you know who you can call, and it is not the Ghostbusters.

Thanks for listening.

Janet Wolf