Managing expectations is something that we struggle as human beings, even when we are aware of this particular flaw in our psychological sphere. We tend to overestimate what we can do or achieve, or underestimate the level of influence of the external forces on our span of control (which we think we have bigger than it is).
Have a quick watch of an update that I recorded at Murvagh, and meet me below for the rest of the write up:
[watch time: 13min 27s]
This Sunday was expected to be nice. The weather forecast was super positive and indeed the temperatures went to twenties (Celsius) and the sun came out. It was dry and pretty hot due to windless almost conditions. We knew that it will draw a lot of people to the beach and thought that this is logically a good idea to operate from around 1pm, so the more traffic on the beach, the more potential inquiries will happen.
At the back of my head I was thinking that this is too good to be true even in my estimation, but we went for it and decided to see how it goes. Tide is low at 1pm and we had about 4 hours until it will come close enough so we will have to escape the beach.
It was a dead zone. Despite being busy initially and only becoming mad busy later, becoming the busiest time on Rossnowlagh that we have seen in those two years of living here. Dead zone – client wise.
We barely got couple of inquiries and in fairness we had two potential clients, but they were thinking about coming in 2-3 hours time, while it was already 3pm. This was dangerously on the verge of tide coming back, but we waited until last minute around 5pm. I suspect that they might have come and just missed us later, but we couldn’t risk it to stay longer at the beach.
No clients today. It’s madness. Hundreds of people on the beach and zero bookings. We had better days when it was rainy and cloudy, and that might be the reason. Warm weather caused people to think about cooling down, and it was probably the last thing they were thinking about, to go to the sauna.
Another element was our visibility. We were in a good spot initially, but over time as more and more cars and caravan homes appeared, we really disappeared in turn, in the crowd. Even though we were unique looking and a bit upfront, we still looked like some private fancy hut on wheels, due to…
…lack of branding. We need them banners and flags pronto. This will likely increase amount of leads. All people that came to us out of curiosity, were saying similar things, that they didn’t know it’s a business, forget that it’s a sauna. Still more education is needed amongst general public, to recognise the sauna, but the fastest and effective solution we can apply is the branding, so I need to sit down and order the banners and flags tomorrow.
I am tired. I parked sauna later on at Murvagh, and dropped Julian and Elizabeth back home, so they didn’t have to be with me and waste time there. I wasn’t expecting clients, but at least tried to increase exposure and maybe sow some seeds of interest in this busy time.
As expected, zero remained zero.I had good amount of chats, probably more than at Rossnowlagh. Other than that, I decided to use sauna myself in the end, spent 15 minutes in remaining 60 degrees Celsius (about 140 F), and ran into the returning tide. Atlantic waters were lukewarm at this stage in Donegal Bay, and only from time to time, when submerged, I felt small “tickles” of colder currents.
Rejuvenated and dressed up, I reversed the trailer and returned home. On one side, it was a “failure” on the surface. In reality, it was a lesson learned. Hard but a lesson nevertheless. Timing, weather, lack of branding, audience (families with kids in midday), all of that aligned to show us that we need to carefully rethink certain days and the way we should operate. Time to prep for Monday, it will be a busy one. Julian plays another league match in the evening and on Tuesday I spend whole day at National Cyber Security Centre Conference in Dublin.
Stay tuned and see you tomorrow!
Blunt Force Healing 
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