Facts over Feelings: Why Your Business Needs a Tracking Sheet

Samantha Smits moves from the 'diagnosis' of a one-time check to the 'permanent cure' of a digital system. Learn how to take the blindfold off by tracking hard numbers, stop paying the 'Guesswork Tax', and discover why a simple spreadsheet is the fastest bridge to professional standards and hidden profit.

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

We're looking to make things more durable. You have to know what we are making more durable. It becomes a numbers game. You cannot manage what you do not measure. If you are not tracking your resources, or mistakes that happen all the time, or questions you receive all the time, you're hoping for the best. Hi, I'm Samantha Smits, and welcome back to the Sustainability Edge, your tourism podcast. No Jargon, no fluff. We're breaking down sustainability and especially how to turn sustainability into a practical tool that gives you more profit, more time, stuff that's staying, and a business you can be proud of. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Sustainability Edge, your tourism podcast. Great seeing you. Well, don't really see you, but great that you're here again. Over the last few episodes, we've been talking about the chaos that tourism brings, the talent leak, exhaustion tax, and a bunch of other topics, but all things that you, as a tourism business owner, from an accommodation to tour operator, do recognize yourself, or from competitors or colleagues, friends. And we've talked about why applying a sustainability logic is more important than any claimed luxury you have if you actually want your business to deliver any luxury or adventure or any value you claim. Today I want to give you very specific how on another way that you uncover some hidden profit next to that hidden profit number and all of it. Because earlier on this podcast, we even talked about finding your hidden profit number by tracking your resources. I even asked you to go into your bins to look at them like a financial report, because honestly, it tells you quite a lot. If you're just tuning in here, I do recommend you to definitely go back and also listen to these episodes. Those were great first steps and they prove that there are some opportunities in your business that you haven't identified or noticed so far. And today we're going even deeper down on that, moving from this one-time check to a simple digital system that is going to protect some of these operational bills every single day. And to start here, most tourism businesses, if not quite some businesses in general, are running on feelings or hunches. You feel like you're spending too much on fuel, or you feel like the kitchen is wasting too much, you feel that this and that is happening. But in business, feeling can be quite expensive. I'm not telling you to become heartless, especially use your feelings when being with your staff. The point is making decisions on something you think or feel like is happening. Because when you don't have the actual numbers, you are making decisions based on guesses, because you guess it might be something good. So you might spend quite some money on, for example, new solar panels because you think your generator is on too much, but then you find out that the real problem was something entirely else, like your bill for the actual water pipe, because you didn't check the bills, it was an entirely different resource. This is the cost of guessing, or you think that your staff members will be happy with a new couch in their lounge, but actually they were not happy with the food that was coming out. So again, making decisions based off guesses is quite an expensive thing to do. Or classic example, you might think that your logistic manager has made a mistake because the people are stuck at the gate and permits are not paid, but in the end, actually, the finance hasn't looked at it yet and has already been reminded three times to pay the permit. But you felt like, oh, but the logistic manager has to arrange the permit. Don't feel, don't guess. Go dive into the numbers. So to stop guessing and to start knowing reality, you need to move out of this feeling and start creating a way to gather the hard numbers on this, like a digital control room. And here, if you had the chance to play Sims when you were younger, or maybe like a roller coaster or a Zootacoon, or you might have played some games where you were in control and where you had to make decisions, how the city, how the park, how the people, how the family was running, you will know there's always a dashboard where you make these decisions. It will show you how much money you have, how what you are using, what the battery levels are. Oh, that would be good if your employees like the Sims, you could see the batteries above their heads and what the moods are. And here, when you're playing these games, you use those numbers to make your decisions because then you see what the needs are. So you don't guess if someone is thirsty, or in this case, if your vehicles are thirsty, or even in the car, you will look at the bar to see what to fix before it becomes a problem. And you should do the same for your tourism business, whether you're an accommodation or a tour operator or an agent. You without such a tracking sheet, if you're not tracking your resources or reporting incidents, all of this, you are playing a tourism game with the blindfolds because you're just running your business on gases. And when you start logging, like water, energy, fuel, food waste, but also every time one staff leaves, or what are the most received complaints, or what mistakes are most made, you are taking your blindfold off, and you can actually see with these numbers, you can more manipulate what happens in your business, you can make better decisions because you know the facts rather than what you are feeling, which makes you actually you can choose your results much better because you see what is happening at real time. Also, having such an Excel sheet, a Google Sheet, a dashboard, however you want to call it, it'll make you feel much more like a business owner rather than an employee of your own business where you just see day-to-day what is happening. You can be much more strategic. And even for your managers or for all the employees, when such things exist, also relevant to departments, how much quicker will it be for them to look five minutes at what the current details are rather than hours on what do I think I should do, what do I feel what is right. So this sheet is becoming a brain, a decision sheet, something that is kind of setting the roots of your business and how you make decisions. And that with these numbers, you get to that hidden profit that I mentioned earlier in this podcast, in one of the earlier episodes, because then you very clearly see what are we wasting time on, or resources, or money, where do the opportunities lie. It all of a sudden becomes so incredibly visible in front of your eyes, just on the sheet. I see this in every audit or baseline, or maybe even a desk audit, basically any review that I do for clients, I see there's opportunities that there definitely is a hidden profit, which can be a big chunk of your company, and it's just at the moment being wasted because there is no policy, there is no tracking or hidden leaks, or it's that mindset issue we talked earlier about. Because why would you even start doing this? You're too busy, but then you thinking you are too busy and not prioritizing this is missing your other opportunity. Again, you will find this financial opportunity by using such a tracking sheet. It could be 1000, it could be 10,000, it really depends on the size of your business. But I bet that for anyone listening, you have money to pick up by tracking. And that money is actually already yours, as we talked earlier. It might be a double invoice you're paying because you paid for something you got, and paying now the whether it's wasted, and for not using it. So sometimes you don't even use the resource because it's getting out, but you pay for it twice. That double invoice we talked about earlier, and just these numbers are exactly what you need to make your business operate as efficient as possible from the employees included to actual operational bills and what's left for you. And you'll find very often, we talked earlier about certifications, that they actually will ask you if you are tracking these things, not telling you to start tracking this now today to be to certified tomorrow, but it just shows that it's also part of high-class standards. So why not take a thing or two of these standards and already start applying this to your own business to up your surface a notch? Because even if it's for an auditor, for certificate, or just for your clients, or for agents, or for investors, anyone that you actually try to show what your business is about, how your business is doing, how your business is different from the rest, of course, your words can also work wonders, but it's nowadays usually not enough because, especially with AI nowadays, a lot of companies are sounding the same, well, in reality, not being the same. And how are you different from others? This is where numbers and very hard evidence are coming into play, and where you can diversify yourself from others and show that you are the real deal. I always recommend my clients and starting to work with them to definitely start measuring the simple resources that they're paying. You will know what your costs are every month. To just so, like I say all the time, water, electricity, fuel, and if you are an operator, if you are an accommodation, food waste, because these things are like the core operational bills of your business that you pay all the time. So once you start tracking them, and actually based on quantity, need not only on the amount of money you pay, you will see that when you reduce the amount you use or the amount you waste, you will directly see in that sheet how much you get back. I actually have a hidden profit sheet. So if you hear this and you're interested in the sheet, go to the show notes, reach out to me LinkedIn, I will send it over to you. Happy to share that with you. But as I also said, I would love you to track actual mistakes that happen all the time. When you see that every high season, the same two mistakes get made all the time when there's always a driver at the wrong location, or when there's always a double booking or a typo, then you start to recognize okay, these are the core mistakes that happen, can they be prevented? How can I make them happen less often? It is they're such small things you could even start tomorrow from doing. Google Sheets is free, and it'll make all the difference in what you know about your business and how you run it. And yes, again, tied to sustainability. Sustainability is not a guessing game. Since we're looking to make things more durable, you have to know what we are making more durable, and there it becomes a numbers game. You cannot manage what you do not measure. If you are not tracking your resources or mistakes that happen all the time, or questions you receive all the time, it'll be yeah, you're basically hoping for the best. The business is not sustainable, you're just back into feelings. So when you move from just guessing what's going on to knowing what's going on because you have written it out, you have a tracked, you have it numbered. Here is where your business really goes to the next level and becomes professional in tourism. So it's amazing that you started with looking at your bins earlier, but even more powerful, start looking at the numbers. Here, a tracking sheet is going to be a solution to quite some of your problems, and it's gonna make you the professional tourist business that really sets itself apart from the other businesses because you're gonna be quicker making decisions, you are going to reduce the amount of the typical mistakes that are made all the time, which is gonna have your stuff stick around longer. It's there are just too many benefits that all of the several episodes link back to each other, which really is giving you that sustainability edge that I'm vouching for. So if this episode has triggered curiosity, questions, concerns, I'm happy to hear them. Do notify me via the show notes, book a call with me, find me on LinkedIn, and I'm so happy to discuss your situation, what I could do for you, and I'm confident this would be so powerful for you. And again, a reminder: do ask me for that hidden profit sheet where you can find your hidden profit number. Okay, that's it for now. Until next time. Thank you for listening, and congratulations on investing your time today to think strategically about your future, to make sure you never miss a step to understand sustainability better, how to grow your competitive edge. Follow the podcast right now, and if this was helpful, please leave a five star rating. It will help other people like you to find these tools. I'm Samantha Smits, and I'll see you in the next episode.