I admit I have been avoiding writing anything about our global pandemic. The subject is still a can of worms that I hesitate to open. Who knows what will crawl out? There are so many opinions on COVID that I hesitate discussing it with family, friends and house guests. But it is what it is and it's big. Whatever might impact your business, positive or negative, it's important to be prepared for anything that comes your way. We can learn a lot from Aesop's fable about The Ant and The Grasshopper and the importance of hard work and planning for the future. Here at The Grand Kerr House, The Grasshopper married The Ant and, thankfully, it works for us.
Just before purchasing The Grand Kerr House, we were about to make an offer on a place located in Northern Michigan on Lake Huron. It had so much to offer including a main house, a half-dozen cottages and a sandy beach as far as the eye could see. It was paradise! I always wondered if it was the one that got away so, last summer, we went there on a family vacation to relax and see how the new owners were doing. Thanks to Mother Nature, the beach is now totally gone. The lake is encroaching on the cabins. The owners are having difficulty covering fixed expenses let alone investing in property maintenance and improvements. How could anyone foresee and plan for that? I am so relieved that we did not buy that property, I am not sure we could have adapted our business plan and survived the unavoidable.
If you really, really want to be a B&B owner more than anything else in the whole wide world, it will be difficult to not jump in with both feet before testing the water. You need to hold back a little, keeping one foot on dry land while carefully checking for rip tides, sharks and a possible tsunami. Do not make your decision an All Or Nothing venture or you could easily end up with nothing. Make sure your B&B is a reflection of both your heart and your brain. Literally make a list of what could possibly go right and wrong and write down how you are prepared to handle those situations. Will you set profits aside for a rainy day or invest them now while the sun is shining. Will you have funding when your HVAC goes out or will you have to turn guests out in the cold. You won't have everything covered but thinking about it now may prevent analysis paralysis in the future.
When initially investing in your business, you may need to do some clever financing including SBA and bank loans, dipping into retirement funds and asking friends and family for help. That can be dangerous and should be scary. When we were money hunting, I had to get into my casino mindset: Never gamble more than you can afford to lose and never borrow to pay for your gamble. That way of thinking has kept us from making costly mistakes and has saved us during more than one unexpected financial challenge.
Do you have a business plan that can be adjusted for changing times. During this past year, we cut back to one guest suite for the comfort of our guests and our own feeling of safety. This decision kept us busy and covered fixed expenses while we took advantage of the lower occupancy to work on home improvements and spend more time enjoying the main house. Another B&B in our area says this past year has been one of their busiest! They adjusted their offerings to give guests what they needed to feel safe while traveling - separate breakfast seating, social distancing and super cleaning - and it paid off for them.
I've said it before and I will say it again: If you fail to plan then you plan to fail - but plans are made to be changed. Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and be flexible along the way.
