REAL LIFE
Though it has a contemporary feel, the dining room is relaxed and welcoming
matter, but had no physical voice in these early rendezvous. Fast forward a few months
and we’d received the backing from a bank (eventually). And then, on the day of signing for the financial agreement, we were presented with an additional and very unexpected bill – to the tune of €17,000! At no point during the initial discussions had this been verbally explained to us. Apparently, it was a fee for underwriting our loan and was in the small print. But when the bank manager is flipping page after page of a lengthy document and saying “sign here”, you just instinctively do it and trust him.
“We started as ‘busy fools’, but we are now relaxed, composed hosts, doing what we love”
life in France over 10 years ago. Our forties, realistically for both me and my wife, was always going to be the last decade when we could commit so much time and intense physical energy into a new business with the dawn-to- dusk commitments that a full-service hotel can bring. The business has become
less physically demanding as time goes on, but we are now far better at managing our time, have systems to help us, and have changed our business dynamic to suit our lives and bank account. We started as ‘busy fools’, but with investments and strategic changes, we are now relaxed, composed hosts, doing what we love with a work-life balance most hoteliers only dream of. We’d be happy to carry on
here. But now we’re both facing our 50s, and this is probably the last period of our lives that we still have a sufficient level of energy and dynamism to start another project, which is what we’re planning to do. When I look back to those early days of turning dreams
into our new reality, it feels somewhat dystopian in comparison to the seamless and happy lives we lead now. There were the endless meetings with bank managers, the Chamber of Commerce, tourism officers, village mayors and accountants.
STARTING OUT I remember sitting there in those badly lit offices carrying an unwavering air of confidence on the exterior, yet slowly imploding on the inside because my language skills were ashamedly limited back then. Ingrid (my then French fiancée and now my amazing wife) had to relay our mutual hopes to so many stern- looking, doubt-covered faces. I was the mastermind of the
plan because, after all, I was the experienced hotelier. I was leaving behind two decades of managing multi-million- pound four-star properties, making daily decisions, which made our new plans in France look like mere breadcrumbs in comparison to the delicious generous slices of artisanal
brioche that had been my previous 20 years in hotels. And it felt so wrong to be leaning so much on Ingrid at this critical, future-shaping time because she was coming from quite a different professional background. I felt useless during those
early, make-or-break meetings. I kicked myself for not having tried harder back in the UK when I had the chance to push my language skills beyond the tier-one ability of politely asking a stranger the directions to the town hall. The meticulous plan was deeply embedded in my grey
FINANCIAL SHOCK Needless to say, I flipped at the reality of this financial shock; had it been a scene from a Marvel comic, this hotelier’s skin would have turned green, he’d have grown huge muscles and unimaginable scenes of anger and destruction would have ensued. But this is the real world. So, I stood up, and asked my fiancée to “translate this”, and let two minutes of verbal aggression spout from my mouth directly towards the bank official who could do nothing but look on and sheepishly realise his oversight. (I’m not absolving all blame from ourselves though). Lesson learned, and – as
is usual in the University of 4
Located in Puy-de-Dôme, Chabanettes is a great base to enjoy the outdoors FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: May/June 2024 65
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