The funny things that make me tick...

The view at The Royal Roost

I say it time and again, guilt is a useless emotion.  When I am going to start listening to myself, well, that is a different story all together.  I had spent weeks beating myself up that I hadn't set aside my meager marketing budget for our bed and breakfast The Royal Roost.  Set aside my foot, we have no budget!

See, we normally advertise on VRBO, which is a great site, but the price to advertise almost doubled this year and I had not expected that in this economy.  Of course summer is our busiest season and I just felt like I was some kind of schmuck business owner for not doing the status quo of the previous years and couldn't get my poop in a group to get my advertising bill paid.  What a piece of work (well that's a nice word), I had been telling myself.

That was when I realized that I was getting my weekends booked, and even a few week days as well.  Mostly with repeat customers and some new, but all of them had been referrals of some kind.  On one of the days I had gone up to the cabin to clean it for the weekend, I found that our bird had rebuilt her nest; now, what does this have to do with advertising?  Everything, in my book.

Mama bird

(this shelf is structural or we'd remove it)

I had been watching for signs of her, and we had done a few things to try and get her to not build her nest there, because last year some of our guests made her so nervous we lost three baby birds before I knew it.  Besides my family, I have not told anyone until now, that is how upset I have been over the loss of those baby birds!!!

So, mama bird can finish out her time at the B&B, and we can be a little more choosy with who are guests at The Royal Roost right now while she is laying and hatching and raising her young.  My motto has always been to listen to your heart and to always do what you believe is the best thing for yourself, but sometimes in business you forget that.  But, even as a business owner I need to stay true to my goal, and that is to be environmentally friendly, I started that way over a decade ago, and I will surely not change course now.  In these times of trouble and upheaval I think it is of utmost importance whether it is in business or personal situations to really reexamine what makes us each tick, and really passionate about the world to remind us where we stand and hopefully it will leave us on nice solid ground.