The honeymoon’s over…

.....well and truly over!

We’ve come down to earth with a bump over this Easter period. I think as the euphoria of the launch has worn off and we’re into the hard slog of actually running a start-up.

There have been a couple of incidents of clashes of opinion, as we’ve been putting our points across and trying to make sure we’re on the same wavelength. I think the worst is over for now, as we’ve cleared the air on a few things. Hopefully things will run a bit smoother.

These problems wouldn’t occur if you didn’t have just a few people trying to do many different things, some of which they don’t actually enjoy and aren’t skilled in either. If you could afford to hire staff to be responsible for their own little bit of the business, it seems like it would be a lot easier. But that’s just not realistic with a start-up, and I guess we’d have other problems then anyway trying to manage more personalities! So it’s just a case of heads down, plough on and keep going until we’re in a position to recruit. Even the founder of Amazon packed his own boxes during the early days!

The TV documentary thing didn’t quite happen last week. We were only going to be a ‘bit part’ almost a ‘walk-on’ really! But we were hoping we’d get the business mentioned and along with it, some profile. A hotel we were going to review (Sparkles in Blackpool) is being featured in ‘The Hotel Inspector’ a sort of docu-soap to turn hotels around and solve whatever issues they had. There’s only been one series of it before, and it’s on Channel 5, so if you didn’t see it, if you think of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, you’d been along the right lines. However the film crew had finished their filming earlier than expected and so we missed them.

We did know that before we showed up, but went along anyway because I really wanted to have the chance to review this hotel. Normally there’s no chance of a press trip because the hotel will be fully booked straight through to September now, but she was closed for renovations just before Easter (as a result of the work Channel 5 had suggested) and so I got to have a good peep at all the bedrooms – and what an experience! Have a read of my review “Blackpool Bliss” and you’ll see what I mean, it was like walking into a film set. The great news is that we’ve got a family holiday from Sparkles Hotel to give away in May in our monthly members’ competition. So not a bad deal after all!

By the way, talking of press trips, we want to review accommodation in Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, and Spain/France/Italy if anyone has any contacts who may like us review them in June – so we can get it on the site before the summer holidays. Just pass on my email address (kirsty@entertainthekids.com) if you know anyone who may be interested.

The company acquisition we’d been bidding for a few months ago raised it’s head again last week. The original purchasers had pulled out, after dragging their feet all this time, and so it was effectively back on the market again. We put in a (much lower) offer, because our big concern about the business was that it was in a specialist market and we didn’t have anyone to run it for us, as the former directors had decided they didn’t want to be involved in it at all any more. I’m not prepared to take my focus away from entertainthekids.com to start learning a new business sector. We weren’t successful, and the winning offer was nearly twice our bid. But that was fine with us because the timing’s just wrong for us to risk anything else at the moment.

We’ve been flattered in a sad kind of way! Our PR agency has found that many regional/local newspapers don’t want to feature us because they say we’re a threat to what they do already in their newspaper or on their website. This can really only be relating to the Days Out section, and it’s ridiculous in my opinion – but I guess I would say that. And if their websites do try to cover local days out, they’ve usually only got about 6 things on there! We’ve got well over 2,000 on our website. This even applies to my own local paper. So this week I’m going to pick up the phone to the editor myself and see if I can sort it out somehow. There’s got to be a way around this one.

More baby shows attended and booked. Most of them are very small, very local and not costing much at all. But very worth attending because I’m picking up all sorts of knowledge of one kind or another, even if we’re not getting much in the way of members joining at some of them, we’re not losing anything by attending.

This week starts with a catch-up after Easter, today. I’ve sent loads of emails for various things that haven’t been answered because many people were still on holiday last week. Followed by an extremely busy day on Tuesday with meetings with Fluid, Crush, a baby show near Hull (yes on a Tuesday – it will be interesting to see the turnout!) followed by a meeting in Leeds. Nothing fixed has been planned for the rest of the week, but that could change quickly, and it usually does!

Kirsty