The Captain Jefferds Inn, Maine
Erik and Sarah Lindblom are the innkeepers of The Captain Jefferds Inn.
Erik and Sarah have worked together for 13 years and counting…
The best piece of advice to couples thinking of getting into innkeeping professions and working together is solid relationship, a great sense of humor, and the mutual desire to run a successful hospitality business!
Castle in the Country Bed and Breakfast Inn, Michigan
"Ruth and Herb Boven, owners of Castle in the Country Bed & Breakfast Inn, is located in the countryside of southwest Michigan. They have 10 guest rooms within two extraordinary buildings, the “Castle” a 112 year-old Queen Anne Victorian and the “Castle Keep” a contemporary country manor house, are surrounded by a wooded 65 acre estate and each building houses 5 guest accommodations. Their Inn is famous for romantic and relaxing couples getaway experience
Herb and Ruth have been owners and innkeepers of Castle in the Country for 27 years. They purchased the first building, the Castle in 1990 with 5 acres and moved their young family, Eric (3 yrs.) and Elizabeth (10 months) into a derelict building that had been a single family home prior to purchase. They renovated the building extensively and opened it in July 1992 with 4 shared bath guest rooms while Herb continued to support the family (including their money-pit building and property) with management level positions in various corporations.
They continued to grow Ruth’s dream bed and breakfast business and had added all private baths, 3 with 2 person whirlpool tubs and a spacious 3 bedroom, 2 bath innkeepers quarters.
By 2002, Herb decided to leave his corporate job and join Ruth full-time in the business of the B&B. In 2004 they were able to purchase the adjoining building, the Castle Keep and its property including wooded walking trails, a pond and a 80 acre lake.
The Castle Keep also features a large commercial kitchen which Herb presides over and creates amazing scratch-made breakfasts and dinner baskets for guests. The 8700 square foot building also houses the on-site spa area and the indoor and outdoor wedding facility. Ruth is the owner/Innkeeper and presides over all of the guest “front of the house” experiences. Together, they make decisions regarding their marketing efforts and about our staffing requirements, etc.
Ruth shares, “The hardest part about working together day in and day out is probably the need to stay together in our decision making about our business while staying out of each other’s way in the areas that we each excel in. Both of us are “Type A” personalities but we both have a very different way of approaching “how things get done”. For example, Herb prefers to work behind the scenes (back of the house) and is rarely visible to the guests while I am constantly interacting with the guests about their experience and working with our staff to make sure that every detail is implemented.”
The BEST part of working together day in and day out is their love for each other and family is woven into the love of the business and the lifestyle that they have in the business.
To keep their life and profession in check they have put in place some significant boundaries, some are operational, like having a phone system that manages off-hour time schedules and also forwards automatically to staff during on-hours; also, having living space that is on-site but separate from guests, and, having lots of amenities always available to guests and a clear check-in procedure that provides everything a guest would need to have a great stay without needing to interact with us. Some of the other boundaries that they have set up are providing for individual time away from the business in order to accomplish this they have hired and trained live-in full time Innkeepers who are able to cover for us.
Their most important advice to other couples who are aspiring innkeepers is to surround yourselves with other innkeepers who you can share with, learn from, and teach about best practices, marketing tools, successful and failed ideas for growing your business and finding in this way a constant source of inspiration for yourselves and a sense of really belonging to the Innkeeping profession!
“Sometimes you just need to agree to disagree.”
Erik and Sarah Lindblom
INN SUCCESS