[00:00:00] Hi, it's Karen here. I'm the founder and owner of Bed and Breakfast Academy. I help aspiring and existing B& B owners create a B& B lifestyle they're going to love running and attract guests who not only visit for the first time but keep coming back. If you're new to the podcast, hello. Since 2006, I've been running Bed and Breakfast Academy where I've trained hundreds of people to set up successful B& Bs.
I also spent 17 years running my own award winning B& B, Hopton House, Here in the beautiful Shropshire countryside. It's late December as I'm recording this. Christmas is next week. I can't quite believe it came around this quickly. And I'm looking out at a rather grey and wet winter's day. This will be my final podcast and blog of 2024.
I did spend all week writing a script and [00:01:00] podcast with lots of practical ideas on how to plan for your year But last night I suddenly decided I didn't want to do that. Don't worry, it isn't wasted. I'll save it for the new year. Instead, since it's Christmas, I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the funny things that happened while I was running my B& B.
Now, I know that in my courses, blogs, and podcasts, I can sometimes focus a bit too much on the challenges of running a B& B. But there are so many positives too, that they far outweigh those challenges. But it's important to be prepared for when things inevitably go wrong. I did a quick quiz. Google search this morning for quotes about being prepared for the unexpected and found quite a few.
And a couple I liked most. One is from Benjamin Franklin. By failing to prepare, you are preparing [00:02:00] to fail. Another was from Jay Shetty. Knowledge is power, and it can help you overcome any fear of the unexpected. Both are so true in the B& B world. It's all about knowing what could happen and preparing for it, and hopefully it won't happen, but if you're prepared, it's far less stressful when things inevitably go wrong.
In my complete online B& B course, in the Running a B& B module, there's a whole lesson on what can go wrong and how to prepare for it. Anyway, enough about that. I seem to have ended up talking about negatives again. Let's get back to the fun things that happen when you're running a B& B. I was lying in the bath last night with my phone.
Naughty, I know. And yes, I've dropped my phone in the bath before, so I should know better. But I was jotting down some funny memories on my Notes app. So here are a few of my [00:03:00] favourites. I hope you, , enjoy them. First some background. We live in a converted granary. It was converted in the 80s. Originally built in 1911.
And it comes with a lot of spiders. And judging by the size of some of them, I'm pretty sure they have been living here since the granary was converted. I'm quite spider phobic, not as bad as I used to be, but still not great. I can now manage to trap one under a glass, provided it's not too big, but as I've said we've had some whoppers here.
They wouldn't really fit under a glass, maybe, maybe a large mixing bowl. One morning, I went to greet a couple of repeat guests who were just coming down for breakfast. As I went to say good morning, I noticed a huge, I mean huge, house spider sitting on the woman's shoulder. My whole body was [00:04:00] screaming, run for it!
But instead, I don't know how I managed it, I quietly pulled her partner aside and whispered, How is she with spiders? She quickly brushed it off her shoulder and we all carried on as if nothing had happened. Well, not quite, I was frantically trying to find the spider hoping it hadn't run into the kitchen to help me with breakfast.
That was not a fun breakfast service. Spiders have been a bit of a theme for me at the B& B unfortunately. They love to set off the smoke alarms. always at three in the morning. Once when I was cleaning the guest room, I found a giant spider on the bathrobe that was hanging on the back of the door. The spiders in our house only come in two sizes, I think, huge and giant.
I wasn't sure what to do. Um, part of me saying, just leave it and pretend you didn't see it. But my conscience got the better of me as quite often did when I was, well usually did when I was running the B& B and I did somehow [00:05:00] get rid of it. I can't remember how I got rid of it. I think I blacked out that memory.
On another occasion, I'd picked up the dirty towels from the guest room and put them down next to the washing machine when I noticed a spider on top which quickly disappeared into the towels. Now in my book there is one thing worse than a spider you can see And that's one that was there and then disappears.
I just knew I couldn't deal with it and had to sheepishly go around and ask my neighbour to come and remove it for me. Years later she told me the story of some neighbour who'd once asked her to do that. She was a bit scathing about people with spider phobias, completely forgetting it was me who'd asked her.
I decided not to admit to that one. And one final spider story that nearly got me in quite a bit of trouble was I had a shower, guests were in, it's when they still, uh, had guest rooms in the house at [00:06:00] that point, and I had a shower and I picked up the towel that was hanging over the bath. I put the towel on and went to the bedroom and as you can guess it, I just happened to notice a movement at the corner of my eye, looked down and there was a spider running up towards me on the towel.
, I quickly shed the towel, ran into the hallway, , and then Luckily, the guests didn't come out of the room at that precise point. So I think that's quite enough of spiders for now. I do apologize to anyone else who has a spider phobia. On to dogs. Our first B& B dogs, Mitzi and Murphy, were also the source of some really funny moments.
They were rescue dogs with big personalities. Mitzi was usually the more reserved of the two. She was a A little Welsh dog who actually came to us just speaking Welsh. I couldn't understand why [00:07:00] she couldn't understand any of the commands that I gave her. Um, she'd come from, uh, living with an old Welsh speaking lady in Wales who became too ill to look after her, which was quite sad, but she turned into a lovely dog.
Um, there was one exception, , to her, , being quiet in the background, I was showing a repeat guest and her husband to their room. The woman was admiring the view and suddenly a husband, who I was standing next to, jumped and glared at me with a really shocked expression, saying, Oh, really? I couldn't work out what was wrong with him, so I looked down and saw a black nose appearing between his legs.
It turned out Mitzi had crept upstairs and given him a little nudge in an unexpected place with her nose, and he actually thought that it was me that had goosed him. Much to my shame, both his wife and I completely lost it and couldn't stop [00:08:00] laughing. He was less amused and um, I don't think they ever came back after that.
Mitzi also had a great thing for sight hounds, so greyhounds and whippets. She just absolutely adored them. And we had one lovely repeat guest, a greyhound called Sammy, who used to come and stay very regularly. The dog friendly room was outside in the annex, so the door opened onto our drive and into our garden.
Mitzi, being a bit older at this point, often needed to go out to use the toilet in the middle of the night. And one night he let her out, it was about four in the morning, and I was just sitting there impatiently waiting for her to come in. I had breakfast to do, I had to be up for 6. 30, and she just didn't appear.
She'd been gone for about an hour, and I was starting to get a little bit worried, but to be fair, she could spend an awful long time out there mousing or rabbiting. Finally, she came back [00:09:00] in, And then in the morning the guests told me that it had just happened that Sammy had needed to go out at 4:00 AM too.
And Mitzi seeing the door was open, had gone in and snuggled up to Sammy on her bed and fallen asleep, deciding she wanted a sleepover. It had taken quite some persuading for the guests to get her to leave.
Murphy was my heart dog. He was a real character and he wasn't that bothered about other dogs but he absolutely loved people. A trait which got both me and him into trouble quite a few times. He had a habit of jumping up leaving muddy paw prints on people's clothes. I was often having to wash guests clothing overnight.
And once a friend who had dropped in on the way to an interview had to do the whole interview with two muddy paw prints on her chest. Quite funny in retrospect. I'm not sure how she felt about it at the time. And another time Murphy managed to pull an elderly lady's elasticated skirt down while [00:10:00] greeting her.
Thankfully she found the situation, her standing in our drive in her underwear with a dog tangled in her skirt at her feet, quite funny. Whilst I was actually preparing breakfast and serving it up, the dogs would be behind a child gate in the lounge. But after breakfast, guests would quite often ask if the dogs could come in and say hello., Despite his Kennel Club Gold Award, we never quite managed to train Murphy out of jumping up and counter surfing.
And he would regularly jump up and steal leftover food from the guest table. One of the last videos I have of him, a month before we lost him, at the good old age of 15, was with his front paws up on the guest table, nicking their butter. And, um, mention of child gaits has just reminded me of one more dog themed anecdote.
Both dogs were pretty good at the um in the lounge command as it always resulted in a gravy bomb. One day when the guests rang the doorbell Mitzi [00:11:00] Murphy and I were all rushing for the door to get there first. Unfortunately the dogs made it before I did so as I opened the door I emitted a stern in the lounge, the guests immediately answered with a meek, okay, and started to make their way to the direction I was pointing out to the dogs.
Not the warmest of guest welcomes, so don't try that one at home, kids.
I was probably more responsible for a few more embarrassing moments than the dogs. Once while waiting for the last remaining guests of the day to check in, I mistook a teenager looking for a party in our village for one of my guests and invited to show him up to the bedroom. I'll never forget that complete look of panic on the poor lad's face.
Another time, just before the start of a busy course, I opened the door to two women, assuming they were the last two course participants, so I invited them into the dining room, uh, to meet the other people waiting for their [00:12:00] course.
They turned out to be Jehovah's Witnesses. My neighbour had already told them I was busy, but they decided to stop by anyway, and it took me quite some time to extract them from the room and, and send them on their, politely but firmly on their way. We also had chickens at the B& B. In 20 years we were very lucky to only ever had one fox attack.
We lost just six of our 30 hens, but were left with one injured hen, Puss, after the attack.
All of our chickens were named after characters from our favourite movies. So our very first hens were called Mary and Pippin. I do remember a guest patiently explained to me that Mary and Pippin were hobbits that were male and that chickens were female. So Puss was named after Puss in Boots from Shrek. , we also had a Shrek and a Fiona chicken.
We kept her in her own little run to keep her away [00:13:00] from the other hens who are not very tolerant of weaknesses in others. My friend Anna knitted her a little chicken jumper as well to keep her warm where she'd lost her feathers.
One morning A guest looked out and asked if she was separated because she was pregnant. I didn't manage to bite my tongue that time and not start laughing as they tucked into their breakfast eggs. Well, I hope you enjoyed these little anecdotes from my time running a B& B. I'm sure there's far more that I'll remember in time.
If you celebrate Christmas, I wish you a very happy one. If not, I hope you get some time to relax and enjoy the holiday season. For those of you thinking about setting up a B& B, this might be a good time for you to take my mini workshop on the basics. And if you're ready to dive in, my full online course is available at bnbacademy.
co. [00:14:00] uk. Thank you and I look forward to speaking to you in 2025.
