No courses. No hotel guests. Rushed off our feet!
Have you noticed that this has been a very technical festive season here on The Horse's Mouth - in fact here we are 5 days into the new year and it's been "CSS this" and "PHP that". And there's probably a clue in that to tell you I've been beavering away with those technologies.
Traditionally, we have shut down for a two week period over Christmas and the New Year, and often gone ski-ing. It worked out well for us ... but now that we're truly empty-nesters, there aren't the same holiday time and access time issues involved. Add to that, we had such a busy time in the last half of 2006 - refurbishing and opening a hotel while running, without slackening off, our training business - that we really didn't have the heart to set off on major travels.
Tradition, modified. We still shut down - as far as courses and hotel are concerned - for 2 weeks. But we stayed at home and around, and used the opportunity to take a couple of days (but no more) as breaks, and to work on a major web site update, including online booking, that will be going live shortly. And on the hotel side, some we took the opportunity to do a few of the little jobs that have been on our "snagging" list.
"No-one wants a course during the first week back". It's something we've learnt over the years and we didn't schedule any public courses. And, surprise, surprise ... no-one booked any private training that week either. So we've just come to the end of another quiet week have we?
Oh no we have not!
No-one is travelling on business yet. No-one is attending courses yet. BUT .. the first days back are a frenzy of people planning and booking. We've been busy, building up to a peak today. "Telephone calls are like London buses" I told a caller today, "you don't get one for hours, then 2 come together". Explaining that I couldn't put him through to Lisa as she was on another call, and that he would have to make do with me to help with his booking. But, truth be told, it was pretty busy all day - there weren't those gaps and one booking was scarcely complete before the next came in. "If it was like that every day" said Lisa "we couldn't cope with all the business".
(written 2007-01-05, updated 2008-12-25)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G500 - Well House Consultants - Running a training company [171] Skills and techniques of being a successful trainer - (2005-01-06)
[251] WIBNIF - (2005-03-19)
[385] Feast or famine - (2005-07-21)
[402] Netless - (2005-08-05)
[470] I wanna be a Python trainer - (2005-10-20)
[545] Is training seasonal? - (2005-12-28)
[627] JIT or JAU - (2006-02-27)
[652] Morning Post - (2006-03-20)
[813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
[838] Talking about other training companies. - (2006-08-19)
[926] Training rooms to learn Open Source programming - (2006-11-15)
[978] Wellhouse Manor, Hotel, Melksham - (2006-12-10)
[1040] What the customer is looking for - effective training - (2007-01-17)
[1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
[1393] First Alternative / what has happened there? - (2007-10-16)
[1433] Linux, PHP, Tcl, Ruby, C, C++ - last minute training course availability - (2007-11-16)
[1884] Recession? Depression? - (2008-11-14)
[1963] Best source to learn Java (or Perl or PHP or Python) - (2008-12-28)
[2003] Discount Training Courses - PHP, Perl, Python - (2009-01-21)
[2021] Short health and safety course - (2009-02-02)
[2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
[2074] Weekday or Weekend PHP, Python and Perl classes? - (2009-03-10)
[2084] Books and distance learning from Well House Consultants? - (2009-03-15)
[2144] Looking for a career change - Physician to Web Site Designer - (2009-04-28)
[2838] Respecting our customers anonimity - (2010-06-29)
[2924] Job applicants - wondering why they apply - (2010-08-16)
[2940] Training course locations - Melksham, UK; Buxton, UK; Lake Constance, Germany; Venice Italy, the USA and India - (2010-08-30)
[3361] Blowing our own trumpet - MySQL resources - (2011-07-18)
[3610] Training to do a job, or training to pass an exam? - (2012-02-13)
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[3824] Planned for a quiet period during the Olympics - but it is far from that! - (2012-08-02)
[4004] Annual Accounts - a big job for a small business - (2013-02-15)
[4135] Introducing your product to Well House Consultants - single, personally tuned email please - (2013-07-08)
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