One summer when I was sixteen, I had to get away from my small town and my large family. Some of my well off girlfriends did the hitchhike thing through Europe. Me, I arranged to babysit a motel for a month (sounds like a bad trade off but I came back with better stories than they did).
In exchange for room and board, I handled front desk and cleaned rooms. I checked people in, checked people out, cleaned their rooms, called the maintenance man in for fix ups, that sort of thing.
Basically I was running the business during the month. A normal sixteen year old might have been intimidated but me, I had years of experience with the yard care business. That didn’t mean there was no learning curve. There was (for example, sheets may be washed daily but bed covers only once a month).
Learning
People are careless with their credit. The motel was a seedy little joint at the edge of the highway (think Norman Bates style). I was a sixteen year old kid working there only for the month. Most people paid on credit card and didn’t even blink when handing their cards over (I pay in cash in those types of situations).
Making the most out of the same asset. There were two types of guests. Those that needed a nap during the day and those that slept overnight. If I hustled with the room clean up, I could rent the same room out twice. It didn’t cost the motel any extra and the income doubled.
Solo gigs are not sustainable. I was a one-woman show during that month. Sure I did a bang up job, making more revenue in that month than the motel had made the rest of the year. But at the end of the month, I was bone tired. Since there was only me to do the tasks, I had no downtime. After my stint in the motel business, I always ensured that I had at least one other member on my team.