Archive for December, 2006

Next mountain to climb: teamwork

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

The next mountain to climb for me is Mt Teamwork. After doing this and that it appears that the next thing to conquer and master is teamwork. I think it is not going to be an easy piece of cake. Perhaps I’ll go through misses and hits and may see the result after many months. So this journey is on now.

Crushing workload in this business

Monday, December 18th, 2006

Being the CEO and the janitor and all in between for this company, I have crushing workload most of the time. The to do list is always long: preparing the itineraries, researching destinations, changing/upgrading the website, and sometimes not being able to do much at all.

Once a doctor made me fill a questionaire which asked how many hours I work a day. When I said I work harder than most full time employed people, she said that’s the same with her husband who left his job to start up a company.

Last 2 weeks went away extremely fast. I was not able to respond to some emails in time. It appears that the next mountain to climb is to build a stronger team. Much stronger team.

high turnover industry

Tuesday, December 5th, 2006

Tour season is short in Mongolia as the summer season is the best time to travel in Mongolia. Since the business goes on few months a year and the rest of the year stays dormant or slow, it is difficult for companies to keep quality staff all year around. Seems like all companies have core group of people and the rest are part time employees, specially guides and drivers.

When it is warm and tourists come, everybody -students, guides, jeep and car owners, small cafes, big restaurants, horse owning herders, hand craft makers, hotels, artists, performers- makes money. So everybody in Mongolian travel industry is trying to keep the tourism season longer.