How Bed and Breakfasts, Guest Houses, Inns and Small Hotels Juggle Business with Family
Hi, I’m Yvonne Halling at Bed and Breakfast Coach.com and today I’m going to talk about juggling your business with your family, and why compartmentalizing your time is key to doing this well to stay out of unnecessary stress
Many of my clients have young families to take care of as well as running a bed and breakfast, guest house or inn, so let me share with you some of the time-saving tricks they’ve learned, and ones I learned too when my children were young.
Tip #1
Plan ahead on everything. This means planning meals, cooking in bulk and using a freezer. Decide which days of the week you’ll get things done, and which days you’ll take a break. Plan ahead for school holidays, weekends, family holidays, and other important events in your personal life
Be ruthless with your time. That means having a daily, weekly and monthly schedule that you stick to, which includes everything that needs to get done. Daily means what time you’ll get up, what time you’ll eat, what time you’ll play with the kids, when you’ll spend time with your spouse, and what time you’ll go to bed.
The reason we resist planning is because we become addicted to the stress of living chaotically. There’s a chemical reaction that goes on in our bodies whenever we feel stress. It’s called cortisol and we become addicted to the high of it and it’s difficult to get off. But not impossible. It’s simply a decision to do things differently, and then follow through
Discipline is freedom, although it will feel really restricting at first, as our bodies resist the new behaviour until we settle down to order and peace, and that becomes our new normal.
Tip #2
Get help with as much as you possibly can. If you don’t have cleaning help, get some. If you’re spending time doing laundry, can you find a way to send it out to a professional laundry, or get someone else to come and do it for you.
If you’ve got a cleaner for your guest rooms, could you extend their work to include your private areas? Don’t get bogged down with your own personal housekeeping tasks when you have able bodied people who can do it for you. They’d probably be glad of the extra money anyway
Could you outsource your own laundry too? Or at least the ironing if that’s taking up too much of your time.
Make a list of things that take up your time and look carefully at how you could get someone else, either or unpaid to take on some of them
Sometimes, especially as women, we feel guilty about not doing it all ourselves. But this is not necessary. Ask for help and expect to get it. You simply can’t do it all.
Tip #3
Incentivize your children to take responsibility for themselves and their own spaces. Encourage them to take part in the general running of your family. This makes children feel grown-up and builds self confidence and self esteem. I learned first hand how disempowering it is to do everything for our children, out of what we think is love, but it’s really about us and the need to feel needed.
Your children already need you and love you. You don’t need to provide them with endless opportunities to prove to yourself that you’re needed. A parent is always needed.
Tip #4
Remember to take care of yourself. Even though you have a family, a full-time business and perhaps a relationship to take care of, the most important person in this equation is you.
If you’d like to know more about how to streamline your business so you can free up even more of your time, then register below for my upcoming Masterclass where I’ll show you how to make more, work less, pay less commissions with less stress
https://bedandbreakfastcoach.com/masterclass/