The following is an excerpt from Jenna Schnuer | November 28, 2011 | Entrepreneur.com
The parties often went late into the night, with up to 150 friends milling about their pool, gathered around the piano, singing, talking and laughing. Scott Jones and his partner, Kell Hicklin, loved entertaining. So when they decided to tank their respective careers in marketing and human resources, the couple determined it was time for a complete change. They bought a then-failing seasonal inn and restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard.
“She was just an old girl that was all rough and worn out and needed somebody to love her,” Jones says.
With a new name on the inn’s sign–Lambert’s Cove Inn & Restaurant–Jones and Hicklin spent two years and $1.5 million of their own money to renovate the property.
“We thought, How much harder can this be than throwing a big party? It still sounds stupid as I say it again even now,” Jones says. “It’s like a never-ending party, especially the restaurant part. It’s like you have continual houseguests.”
But he and Hicklin thought they would be able to keep the houseguests coming for far longer than the Vineyard’s traditional summer season. That, they soon learned, was a mistake. It’s the rare tourist who visits the island once the beach cools off. “It’s really kind of a little ghost town,” Jones says.
Jones and Hicklin experienced plenty on their way to success, including a serious case of burnout that could only be fixed by either selling the place or, as they decided to do, taking a year off to travel (leaving the inn in the hands of a general manager). “We were 24/7 for the first four years, and then we hit this brick wall,” Jones says.
Welcome to life as a seasonal entrepreneur. The cadence of seasonal businesses often sends owners swirling during the first few years, and typically affects businesses born from a desire to do (and share) more with others.
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