Friday, June 30, 2017

6/30/17: Three Out of Four Ain't Bad


Yesterday I discussed 4 areas of self-care that I am going to focus on: sleep, diet, water, and exercise.  I accomplished my daily goal in 3 of the areas.  I was sugar, alcohol, and wheat free for the 11th day in a row; I got 7 hours and 5 minutes of sleep; and I drank a lot more water (I was running to the bathroom all day!).  I did not workout yesterday because it was dinner prep day and I did not have time.  My work day started yesterday at 6:00AM and I was in the kitchen all day until quitting time at about 9:30PM.  I am off today, so I will be able to exercise today.
My weight is stable.  I’d like to start losing weight as I really want to be between 150 and 160 pounds for the rest of my life.  I feel and look great at that weight.  I believe if I can consistently get 7 hours of sleep, drink enough water, stay off the sugar, and don’t overeat everything else I will start losing weight.  How can I not?  This is a physically demanding job.  I am going to maintain this plan for a couple of weeks.  If the weight doesn’t start to come off I will have to be more disciplined, as in counting calories or something like that.  I’d rather not have to add that much structure at this point, as I am already living a very structured life, but if that is what it takes, that is what I will do.
It's a rainy day in New Hampshire.  Instead of playing outside I think I will go exploring.  My plan is to get in the car soon and head out into the countryside to see what I can see.
Carla and I have been the innkeepers at the Bernerhof for 6 months.  We took over at 8PM on December 31st, when the previous innkeeper took off for his next gig right up the hill.  To say it has been a learning experience would be an understatement.  The most important things we have learned are the big-picture things.
First, I like being an innkeeper. I like meeting new people every day from all over the world. You never know who is going to walk in your front door.  98% of our guests are wonderful people.  Every now and then we get an Oscar the Grouch, but we have learned that if we keep on smiling and keep on being kind and gentle, even the grouchiest grouch relents, smiles, and concedes that they are, indeed, enjoying their stay at the Bernerhof.  I like cooking for our guests, maintaining the inn and the gardens, working with our staff and vendors, and in general, running the show.  I find the work interesting and rewarding.  I like getting great reviews, but I still have a moment of panic whenever we get a new review and I haven’t read it yet.  We haven’t received a bad review yet, but you never know when you might have ticked someone off.  Knock on wood, so far, so good.
Second, we’ve learned what we don’t want to do.  We don’t want to have dinner service and we don’t want to have a bar.  While our guests love our dinners and they really enjoy the bar area, it’s just too much for us.  Innkeeping is totally manageable, with the exception of having to tend to the guests in the dining room and bar in the evenings.  The bar, in particular, gives our guests a place to hang out and feel comfortable.  They like to sit around and enjoy a cocktail and each other’s company.  There is something about our little bar and den that makes our guests feel welcome and comfortable.  We will have to be creative in our efforts to achieve that same sense of comfortable and relaxing space without a bar, but I think we can do it.  We both want to wind down in the evenings, not wind up.  Having dinner and bar service in the evenings requires us to keep our energy up all day and into the night.  It’s not healthy.  It’s not manageable.  We have a bar tender/server on weekend nights, when we have dinner service, but that doesn’t relieve us of the duty being on-point.  It’s still our jobs to ensure the guests’ happiness. 
Third, we won’t buy and inn with existing dinner service and then end dinner service.  Guests expect to come back to an inn and get what they had before.  When they don’t get it, they are disappointed and it increases the odds of a negative review.  Reviews are everything to the small inn.  We bend over backwards when we get a guest that has been here before and make certain they leave happy.  Things have changed, mostly for the good, but in their eyes, somewhat for the bad.  We don’t let guests walk behind the bar and get their own drinks, for example.  The previous innkeeper did.  We don’t serve German food.  It’s been over 12 years since German food was served here, but guests still come back wanting German food.  If an inn has dinner service now, we won’t buy it.  We want nothing to do with it and we don’t want to disappoint previous guests.
We need to be able to afford a housekeeper.  When we started, we cleaned rooms if we weren’t very busy and the harsh reality is that when you are in a guest room cleaning, particularly when you are cleaning the tub, you can’t do anything else.  You’re up to your elbows and knees in cleansers and bleach and you’re totally focused on making sure everything looks perfect.  It is really disruptive to answer the phone, meet with a vendor, take care of another guest’s needs, or anything else.  I want our inn to be big enough that it can afford a housekeeper.  I’d rather spend a couple of hours every day figuring out how to keep occupancy high enough to afford a housekeeper than clean rooms.  If we do it right, a housekeeper will be the only employee we need.  The rest of our help (repairs and maintenance that we can’t do on our own, snow removal, heavy landscaping, etc.) will be hired as contractors on an as-needed basis.
We need to learn how to market and advertise effectively.  We have not gone to any of the many seminars or chamber meetings that are available to us.  It’s time that we started doing such things.
I guess that’s it for now.  I’ve got to run.  I’m running out of morning and I want to have a full day of exploring.

Have a wonderful day!

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