Milestones and Rewards

Any one in business will be familiar with the highs and lows that go with the responsibility of being your own boss.  At times you doubt having made the right choice taking the plunge from safe employment into the deep blue something.  Sometimes you fear that you might not have the stamina to stick at it when the growing bills are spread across the floor.  And then the next day you get up and don your rose-coloured glasses to look upon the hardship as the pain that will make the eventual pleasure seem all the more worthwhile.  Somewhere deep inside you find the strength to hold on to your dream.

And then every once in a while you get a boost, a reassurance that your cock-eyed optimistic belief in yourself and your vision for the future, has validity.  This week we have had an all important milestone boost.  I am proud to say that, after entering the 2014 Inland Tourism Awards, The Blue Bird Cafe has been selected as a finalist in the Heritage and Culture category.  There is plenty of competition out there so we feel very proud to be in the running.

I entered the cafe in order to boost our morale and found, as I filled in the extensive application, that it made me take stock of where we are now, two years after deciding to take on this outrageous adventure, as well as how far we have come.  I revisited our original business case and updated it to reflect all that we have learned about the practicalities of the hospitality trade and running a business.  I reassessed our business risks and our mission statement.  Our mission has become more eloquent over time but I am as charmed by it today as I was in the beginning.  And most importantly, the process of writing the award submission allowed us both to take a moment to dream.  We put all of our crazy blue sky ideas for the future down onto one piece of paper and looked at the shape our business could one day take.

It is all too easy to get bogged down in the day to day.  The routine of getting up and making pies each morning, the demands of the lunch and dinner time rushes.  Over time Roger and I seem to have managed to split ourselves into about three people each with six sets of hands.  It astounds me at how quickly the necessity of adapt and survive has made us efficient.  We approached the cafe two years ago with oodles of combined life experience and practical skills that we knew we could adapt to the specifics we would need.  Such is the enthusiasm of the optimist and it is surprising how quickly you do just that...adapt.

So when we heard that we were to get a site visit from a regional judge, we were chuffed (Roger is going to roll his eyes at me for using that word).  As I pressed the 'send' button on the original application, I remarked to him:  "Ah well, I have no idea if we have what they are looking for but it's worth giving it a go".  The site inspection was the morale boost we needed to take the next step forward.  I know that I spent the day of the inspection floating on a high, knowing that we had "done ourselves proud" in presenting The Blue Bird at its best.  Well, our best for the moment that is because The Blue Bird, Roger and I are still works in progress.  We work hard every day and it is fantastic to have made it this far in the award process and to be receiving some external recognition for what we have done as well as what we are still to do.  Both sets of parents, family and close friends have supported us with encouragement, sometimes physical assistance and always tenacious believe in us but at the end of the day it is Roger and I who struggle together through the tough bits.  We laugh when crying would get us nowhere and balance each other's downs with an up.

We now have to wait until the awards night on 26th July to see what happens so cross your fingers for us and watch this space.