The Practical Partner: How to Hire Help without the Headache

Sustainability often feels like an extra project that busy owners simply don't have time for. In this episode, Samantha Smits explores how to find the right expert to help you take the leap. Learn why you should avoid theoretical consultants, the importance of hiring within the sustainability bubble for things like marketing and web design, and why a certificate is only the proof of a much more valuable business revision.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do see it more about implementing a new business system. So stop changing quick help, quick checklist of finishing a project, a quick logo, but go for this operational excellence. Hi, I'm Samantha Smith and welcome back to the Sustainability Edge, the tourism podcast. No Yargon, no fluff. We're breaking down sustainability and especially how to turn sustainability in 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. Today I'm going to discuss a more maybe practical topic with you, where the last few episodes have been really talking about this importance of why you should care about sustainability in your tourism business and things you can do about it, and very specific internal topics. I also see very often, specifically my work, that how on earth do you start? And especially when you're alone or just running your business and busy with daily reality, very often people wondering, can I get help with this? How do I start moving this forward? Because I just keep postponing it. And there's a bunch, there's a lot of experts, and I want to dive into it, what kind of experts there are, how to choose one, and how to fill go above that. So help you fill some experts. There's many ways to approach sustainability. There are many sustainable tourism consultants in general. But I want to make sure that you find the right one that actually helps you with what you need and moves you forward. So we see a lot that owners of accommodations and tool operators they fear all the paperwork involved, they fear that they are not compliant with criteria and that they have to overhaul their entire business or have to cut off all their partners or that there is no return on investment on starting this whole journey, or that you have to write an entire PhD thesis on sustainability. But again, really it can be super different. There are enough sustainable tourism consultants, and those are, I believe, the good ones, who focus on making this as easy as possible for you, breaking down what's needed, recognizing the priorities. You really need not someone who's going to give you those 50-page documents and tell you call me when you're done with reading it, or this is the criteria, call me when you're done, I'll have a review. But someone who breaks it down. For me, my I, for example, break down the process to getting certified in three different phases. Uh, I think I dive into that later in a different episode, but very shortly I always start with the baseline, then the gap closing comes, and then we get you ordered ready. And everyone has their own way in this, and for everyone, something works and something doesn't. But you need, in the end, you need a partner who looks at your business and understands your reality, who understands tourism, and how something as small as an energy bill or logging your fuel or the payroll or anything can identify business opportunities and be supporting evidence for your sustainability report. The whole thing that I find key here and important is that we keep it practical and of course it should make business sense. That's what I always see. That people who are still a little bit skeptical to get on board with all of this, does this make business sense? And do I not have to overhaul my company and basically become a startup again from zero? Really? No. So please don't spend tons of money on help that is recommending the most expensive certification to you, and then gives you tons of homework and does not break anything down for you or structure the experience, and doesn't even what I think is most important, start with the baseline and see where you are at. Because without seeing what your current chaos is and your current situation is, all of the help will stay in a theoretical level, will not move to practical breakdown. I joke sometimes in my work, I feel like a project manager. Because very often sustainability if for you, it feels like an additional project on your plate that you don't have the time for, and you need someone else to manage it. So very often I joke, yeah, well, I am a sustainable tourism consultant or sustainable tourism certification specialist, but very often I end up being a project manager somehow. But hey, if that works and if we then can make it practical, we break it down, I structure it in faces for you. Absolutely perfect, then we're both happy. So if we talk about certification, companies often see certification as the ultimate price, at the ultimate result, as the ultimate end journey, and of course it is a major reward and it is something to strive towards. But it's the changes you make towards achieving it and the system you set up for your business that keeps running and is not a one-time show, that is going to be the ultimate price. That is going to be much more rewarding than just that certificate. The certificate just shows you that you have done the work and that you commit, that you keep doing it. That's why you have to keep renewing them and that you don't get them just once. So it's beyond just that logo, it's the whole work process, and it basically shows we have applied a management system, we are running our business in a specific way. And setting this up, creating the policies, the standard procedures, or identifying what works in your context, that is where very often people ask for help and why it's so valuable that you look specifically at someone that suits your needs best. Do they understand your region? Are they positioned in a way that they understand the specific certificate? Or are you even within the sustainable tourism consultancy bubble? There are people that specialize in branding, marketing, and especially if you are interested to go down this road, it might be much better to not just find someone, a general tourism marketing expert. They will probably put you down way too commercial and sound very off-brand. And there really are people that specialize in marketing, responsible, sustainable, whatever you want to put to it, tourism. So within the bubble, whatever based on your needs, it would be so good to take a look. Even if you look at ads, basically anything a normal business would need, if you go down this road of sustainability, there are people in that corner that provide these same services, but that will understand your language much more. I even had that with my my own business. That my first website I mainly made myself, but I did have some help for some pages, but still it looked a little bit more DIY, because it was, of course, the first time. And at some point I had the need to get a professional-looking website, the website that I have today. You can check it out and see if you agree with me that it looks very nice nowadays. But I was so scared to just reach out to any random website developer or website helper, because I knew they really will not understand what I'm doing and what I care about, and they will put me down totally wrong. So that's why in my case, I mean, luckily I already knew someone in my corner back then that really found it specific. Yes, I need someone who can do this website thing, but also someone who understands sustainable tourism. So there are many people that combine both. So, in terms of certification, for example, I do combine both. I can help you get such a certificate and understand the sustainable tourism space. But in terms of marketing, there are marketers out there that care about how to market responsible tourism without making it sound boring, without just showing a certificate and that being the post of the year. So, first of all, really look into what kind of help do I need. Is something I want to outsource or is it temporarily help? And do I plan to have someone involved to continue it after the help is gone? Really determine that first before you start your search. And then I would honestly say that LinkedIn is such a good place to find these people because that's where it's easy to find such a keyword. Because I mean that's the issue with greenwashing nowadays. I mean, yes, you can Google and you will find some sites, but it's much harder to be more specific, and especially nowadays, there will be this AI box on top, which will also come up with a bunch of things, but then you have to provide a lot of context. So I would argue that LinkedIn is a great search engine to find the right person that could provide you such help. But the point is the whoever you hire, whoever you start to work with, you have to feel like they understand your vision and they are also passionate about it. But at the same time, that they're gonna make your life easier, right? They're gonna have to make the experience easier and not make it even harder. So before you even spend any bit of money, you have to really ask how this is going to change any the way you run your business, how is it going to affect your staff experience and your staff briefings because everything will trickle down. I mean, a proper consultant in this space will transform your company somehow, but for good, they will leave their own stamp that they've been there in a good way. So always ask where their understanding of, for example, sustainable or responsible tourism come from. How do they understand it? What do they consult? And do just first see, are you aligned? Are you on the same page? And do they, for example, have experience with the certification you want to pursue? Are they focused on practicality over the theory? Do they have some kind of professional structure where you move through phases? Do they come with templates? Because you have to see beforehand, is this going to make me even more overwhelmed, or even more do you are you going to need second help from the experience, or is this going to move you forward? The right consultant will really care about that they're going to leave a positive print on your company with a new operating system, a new tracking system, your staff handbooks updated with the new actions you're going to do. Just something that really impacts the system of how you run your business for good, which will allow you to come with that more consistent guest experience that we talked about earlier, and that you become a great working place for your staff, and so much more. So when you when you hire with the thought about we're going to improve our business system rather than just getting this project out of the way, though I just said I do feel like a project manager at times, because people will see me as solving the project, do see it more about implementing a new business system that is going to be continuously implemented in your new system and affect the way you run your business for good. It will change your business. So, in short, so stop changing quick help, quick checklist of finishing a project, a quick logo, but go for this operational excellence. Because a certificate is actually the proof that you've gone through such a revision, but it's so much more important to keep it going because that's where the results come from. So if you if we talk about certificates specifically, if you would like to get help with this, and if you have been struggling, do go to the show notes and book a call with me or reach out to me on LinkedIn. But at the same time, you heard me referring to people that understand your vision and sustainability about websites or marketing or branding. That is what I love about this bubble. I'm happy to say that by now I have quite some friends in the space, and we all have our own specific specializations. So also, if you're looking for someone in that kind of space, do reach out to me, and I'm happy to introduce you to the people that I trust. Also happy to do that. Reach out to Hope Von a call, and I'm happy to help you out making all of this so much simpler and mostly practical, not more theory on your plate. Alright, 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 Smith, and I'll see you in the next episode.