But running a small cheesemaking business is a bit more complicated as it adds accounting, sales and marketing to the job … and it also gives you some real data about the seasonal nature of tourism.
More about that later, but, having started up our first small business at 50, we’ve been slow to realise how many different jobs you need to do in order to succeed.
Having just about got to grips with off-grid living (first basic, then advanced level), building site project management, landscaping, interior design (Ana, definitely not me), accounting and then basic small-hotelier-ing, a new career in marketing has begun.
We built it and they came – in the summer at least – and now we have to keep them (and their friends) coming back in the quieter seasons too.
Still calling it “The Facebook” excludes me from any meaningful social media campaigns, but we’ll have that covered by a Swedish communications undergraduate who’s joining us on placement next year to play the algorithms at their own game.
Until then, it seems it’s up to us to dive into the world of pricing structures, discount deals, getaway packages and retreats.
We’ve been emailing travel agents, contacting friends of friends who are retreat leaders, but the “sell, sell, sell” mantra of marketeers isn’t a natural fit.
I am, however, giving it a try:
“Roll up, roll up and book your place on our first wine course while stocks last!
Vale das Estrelas and the Hutchins Wine Academy are running their first ‘taste like a somm’ retreat … can there be a better Christmas gift for your wine-loving better half?”
(There probably can be … and especially if they don’t drink!)
I had always considered myself to be quite entrepreneurial while working at the BBC – in selling stories to my editors in the competitive world of limited money and airtime.
I’d often get extremely excited about a particular idea and go all-in to sell it hard – often to different TV and radio programmes and online outlets to bundle together enough cash pledges to afford the trip.
I didn’t always succeed but did get a big elephant series commissioned in Africa and managed to secure a not insubstantial amount of cash for an ambitious six-week trip on the Congo River filming in Virtual Reality.
Having sold the story, our team then had to deliver … and that often took even more effort to make things happen with a limited time and budget in difficult places.
As many British military officers in Afghanistan often told me: “No plan survives first contact (with the enemy).”
So, it seems there are a few transferrable skills from journalist to small business co-founder, but dogged determination and bloody-mindedness stand out as perhaps the most useful.
Accounting comes into it too: I would often have to keep up with long lists of expenses in a range of random currencies while on assignment.
Thankfully, the amazing producers I worked with were very good at that … as well as all the other things they don’t get on-air recognition for, such as securing access and interviews, editing, and managing the “flesh puppets” … annoying correspondents like yours truly.
There were times when I had to manage big-ish budgets, and I understand why one journalist from a different publication, on discovering a receipt for $50 was missing, attempted some creative writing while on a flight out of a Middle Eastern war zone.
Sadly, the ploy of copying some random Arabic for a hastily scribbled receipt was uncovered by an Arabic-reading accountant back at head office who queried the $50 claim for a “Your lifejacket is under your seat.”
Having just logged 1,000 receipts and more than 200 invoices for 2025 on the accounting side of my job, I think I’m doing OK.
For a start, there’s the barrage of self-declared influencers looking for a freebie to navigate: “We’d need at least three nights to truly capture the essence of your lodge,” one wrote.
There are so many travel sites out there who, for a reasonable annual fee, will feature our property on their website, but we can’t justify signing up to all of them and it’s a bit of a lottery.
We’re happy to be working with Sawday’s and Further Afield, and hope to have more collaborations in fitting with our sustainability ethos.
Then there’s the price of social media promotion which goes up all the time, and we need time to learn how to target audiences better. Let me have another go:
“Christmas has come early this year! Stay in coastal Alentejo getaway between now and April 1st and – no joke – you’ll get 15% off for being a regular reader. Book before the end of January…”
(How am I doing?)
I’ve written before about the desire to host more “retreats” – package trips for groups based around yoga, painting, reading, or wine, and corporate get-togethers that are now called “offsites”.
The title “retreat” does conjure up the idea of 5am yoga sessions, cleansing shakes and a large amount of wellness.
We’ve joked for years about how, rather than detox, RE-tox is perhaps a better fit: the Retoxification Institute of Portugal, perhaps, or R-I-P for short.
And I can now officially confirm we are starting a Detox/Retox retreat for those who like a balanced diet of a healthy morning start, a hike into the valley to try some medronho, followed by some wine tasting and a fabulous meal to finish: Detox, Retox, Rinse and Repeat.
As well as making posts and working on programmes, we’re also learning about how to measure what’s going on through data.
Only now, seven months in, am I starting to understand how companies like Booking.com have managed to undercut our prices and pay us a lot less for the pleasure.
We’re told the key to it all is the data, and that’s where Lídia and Luís Lourenço from Queijaria do Mira in Odemira come in.
For real data, you need to speak to the cheesemaker – especially one who’s been in the queijo business for 18 years.
Lídia has real data from real people and knows when occupancy rates are down – because she knows exactly how much cheese the tourist lodges are buying.
Low cheese sales equal low occupancy – one to watch.
Blessed be the cheesemaker and her buying barometer.
Read Alastair Leithead’s last article: Off-Grid and Entertaining in Portugal – Storm surge: keeping the lights on and the water running
