Posted by Adele Youngs

17 May 2016

Mothers, businesses and our gift to you

Our theme in May is all about mothers - if you receive our monthly wallpapers, you will have received images related to some of the greatest matriarchs of European history. 

In my blog post this month, I wanted to talk about a more personal matter related to being a mother. Both Kate, my fellow co-founder, and I are mothers, and setting up a company, as many of you will know, is very much like having a baby. In the early days, there are the sleepless nights (what have we done??!), the constant calls for attention from Baby Business (set up my website NOW!), and the very many teething troubles (best forgotten actually...).

Then come the toddler stages - the business that realises it can walk but that, every now and again, falls flat on its behind as it tries to reach something that it is just not yet ready for.

Our business is now rapidly approaching the age of eight years old - no longer a young baby, but not quite yet a stroppy teenager, thank goodness!

One thing I have realised, however, is that, unlike with real children, as the "parent" of a business you can do the following things that you can NEVER do with a child, even though you might try...:

1) You can set its culture, a motto to guide it and choose to have it support the things that are important to you

2) You can choose your business's "friends" (ie clients, suppliers and staff) in a way that we can't with our real children (although we may occasionally try!)

3) You can choose what it focuses on and if you think something will be a "bad influence", you can do your best to avoid it!

At the same time, a business does have a life of its own - for example, all the people that have worked with us and travelled with us have their own impressions of our "child". As our baby grows, we will do our best to guide it in the direction we think it should take but, ultimately, it will also make its own path in the world.....

Normally on Mother's Day, you get a gift from your child. To be fair, we all get gifts from our children every day, even those children that are our businesses. 

However, in honour of mums around the world, and in honour of the parents of businesses who work just as hard, here is a gift for you. As we would tell our kids in the school playground, standing up to the bigger kids is sometimes hard.

Our Top 9 Tips for selling against the Big Boys is for you if:

You feel like you are always competing against the large, budget companies in group travel You constantly get asked to cut your prices to match someone else's You feel as though price is the number one motivation for group leaders  Just complete the form below to get your copy right now.