This is my second attempt at this weeks blog, the first one was depressing even my fragile mind at the moment! We were in Dublin handing out our new brochure yesterday and I have to say it was our most depressing visit ever, we couldn’t believe the amount of competition on some of our products but I’am going to take a radical departure this week and forget about Barratt Tours altogether and talk about us (or at least I will try to!)
Instead I’am going to give you an insight into what makes us tick outside work on a more personal level, if I have one fault or virtue (you decide!) then it is that I have always worn my heart on my sleeve and probably reveal too much about what goes on behind the scenes of our little enterprise, we never have much to hide anyway! This week however has been one that has been really hard, Chris had to go into hospital on Wednesday for a minor operation but, of course we had a few passengers for our Cliffs tour and so I had to drop her at the hospital at 8.00 and then have a bite of breakfast before starting the tour. I hope I gave a good tour but have to admit to being deeply worried about Chris but my mood lifted when she rang me while we were at O’Connors pub to tell me she was alright, I suppose our job is like being on stage – the show must go on but trying to keep a happy exterior can be hard sometimes!
The happy exterior is being put to the test lately, we always get paranoid when business is not good but the market at the moment is really concerning us, we are even starting to doubt ourselves but fortunately our passengers often put our mind at ease and re assure us that what we are doing is good and that we are doing the right thing in not “selling out” for a short term gain in business, after all we didn’t risk our home 13 years ago to give up now but it does put a huge strain on us personally, we don’t need to talk to each other about how bad business is, we tend to have this ability to know what the other is thinking and unless we have come up with a brainwave there is no point in depressing ourselves further!
The other day I was out on tour and met one of our “successful” competitors tours out on the Burren now this company has had praise heaped on them by our former Minister for Tourism for being young and dynamic etc etc, I was having a photo stop and showing my valued customers a few sights at one of my favourite spots on The Burren, I had walked across with them and was enjoying the interaction but where was my colleague? Sitting on board the coach reading his paper of course, it seems that my old fashioned ways of helping people off the coach and mixing with them at photo stops is not the way to success and fame! This was not an isolated incident I look around me and see how badly people are treated but it seems service and manners are hardly a selling feature thee days!
I think I have mentioned this before in my blog but I’am currently re reading a fantastic book called “The Art of Possibility” by Ben Zandor. Now this is a book that I would often have glossed over as it tends to be thought of as being one of those “self help” kind of books but it really does help me, I wont bore you with too much about it but the real gist of it is that it encourages you to move out of “The measured world” into “the world of possibility” now this may sound idealistic and I suppose it is but how many of us exist solely in a measured world?
To apply this theory to our little business is easy, I spend a lot of time in the measured world thinking things like “we have 6 customers, but x tours has 46” or worse still “we had 46 for this tour on this day in 2006 and today we have 6” this is certainly in the measured world, if we spent as much energy considering how we could get 46 again then we would undoubtedly more efficient and cheerful but here is the problem. At the moment I’am only human version 1.0 and have never been programmed to remove the doubt and paranoia bugs that infest my operating system, I think I badly need a reboot up the a**e !
But this whole possibility thing has intrigued me and I have thought of a way that we could cast ourselves wide into “an ocean of possibility” and take away all measurement but from where I’am standing the water looks a little icy and I think I might see a shark or two! If I have wetted some of your appetites then drop me a line and I might tell you what I have in mind, it will be the bravest move we have ever made if we do it but I think we might just be able to pull it off if nothing else it will prove how much we are certain that what we do is right and honest, as always let me know what you think!
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