Success has a lot to do with your sense of being Find out how to train yourself to make money and stay in tune with your mind, body and soul
I had some time to kill this morning while I was in town waiting at a coffee shop for a group of guests who were out on a charter fishing trip - figured I'd write up a quick update since it's been awhile.
Most people in here already know us but for those who don't, this is our resort and here is proof that we built this bad boy DIY style from the ground up.
5 Years In
This whole process has been such a wild ride it's hard to believe that we've finally (mostly) come out the other end. It's been just over 5 years since we arrived to Mexico and we're FINALLY at a place where our income is no longer a source of worry and where we can start to focus more on "doing things better" rather than "how the fuck can we find customers?"
It's an amazing feeling to finally have enough reservations that there are times we are tired of having people here :)
I mean, we still have tons of room for growth but we're out of the danger zone and that's an amazing place to be after putting our balls/ovaries on the line.
A Sign for the Future
A few weeks ago something pretty big happened for us. We got our first full-price, all-rooms, full-week reservation from a complete stranger.
We've had groups before but it was always a return customer coming back with friends - meaning they were getting a discounted rate.
This is big for us because we long ago targeted groups as being the real key to driving big profits. To put things in perspective, we'll earn as much in 1 week this coming January as our first 6 months of being open.
So what we're really hoping to do is a build a base of loyal customers who return every year or two with a small group to book out the whole place.
At any rate, it might not sound like a big deal but it is. We'd hoped to have had more groups by now so hopefully this is a sign of things to come.
Bringing on Help
Another exciting prospect is that since wintertime is our busiest time of year, we've made an arrangement with a buddy to come out and help us Dec-Feb for a stipend and room/board.
It's going to be a great opportunity for us to test out having staff that interacts with our customers. So far we only have hired cleaning/gardening staff but we do know that at some point we can't continue to do "everything" ourselves and will need to hire someone to take over some of our duties.
So we're thrilled to give it a go with no commitment with our mate...and we're also excited because having a little help will allow us to enjoy the winter more. Winter is the best time here but this season we didn't have much fun because it was our first stretch of being consistently busy for weeks on end.
Fun Stuff
Hitting sales marks well above the "pays the bills" level has also given us time to add fun stuff. We built a fire pit recently that was well-received by customers and this summer we plan to revamp our sound system in the common area and make a few other upgrades.
Tipping Point
We definitely feel like we're on the downward slope of Startup Mountain. That all the hardest shit is behind us and that word-of-mouth, quality reviews, return guests and all that sort of stuff will truly start to snowball soon to where attracting a baseline of customers is no longer a worry.
No comments:
Write comments