167. Find The People Who Can Build And Hold Your Dream

Speaker A: You are listening to the Wellness and Hospitality Podcast. I'm your host, son ouberoy. Episode 167. Find the people who can build and hold your dream. Welcome to the Wellness and Hospitality Podcast where it's all about genuine wellness, true hospitality and real people. I'm your host, global wellness expert, life coach and author, sonaluberoi. Hello and welcome to today's episode. I hope you're all doing amazingly well. From Chef Part of the World, you are listening. It's baking hot here in Madrid and I say baking hot. And on, um, that note, a question for my boutique hotel owner friends. Who do you want by your side and as you build the world that doesn't exist yet? I'm going to ask that question again. Who do you want by your side as you build the world that doesn't exist yet? There is an inn on a remote island off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It is four times the size of Manhattan and only has 2,500 people living there. And the nearest city is hours away. So by every rule of conventional hospitality logic, it should not be one of the most sought after destinations in the world. And yet the Fogo Island Inn holds three Michelin keys. Guests travel from across the globe to reach it. Almost nothing inside it was made by anyone with a long hospitality background. And the woman who built it had never run a hotel in her life. She didn't hire hospitality professionals. She hired quilters, furniture makers and an architect who knew how to build with the land and not just on top of it. Zita Cobb knew exactly how to identify the artists she'd need to build the world she wanted to. A world that hadn't existed until she had the audacity to build it. In today's episode, I cover the three things that most boutique hotel owners get expensively wrong. One, why hiring the most qualified person in the room is often the most dangerous move for your vision. Two, why the people who built what you inherited cannot always take you where you need to go and m why that is not betrayal. And three, why most boutique hotel owners never find their artists because they never defined the seat those artists would sit in. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why you keep choosing the wrong people and who exactly you will need to build the world you want to build. So, without further ado, here's a clip from my recent LinkedIn Live where I talk about the difference between the people who maintain your legacy and the artists who create your next one. Hello from a baking hot Madrid. I hope you're all doing amazingly well. From whichever part of the world you are watching today, I would like to talk about finding the people who can hold your vision. So to just give a bit of context in these, over the last three weeks I have been specifically sharing one or two chapters of my new book. I've been testing that content with my lovely listeners. And just to give this all some context, when we enter the wellness business, most people don't know what wellness offering to put together and they don't know how to make it successful. And I think that applies to any new business you enter into. And like any business out there, the success of your wellness business boils down to two things. One, how you design it and to how, uh, you look after it. So how you design your wellness offering, not only the physical space, but the entire concept getting crystal clear. Why is it that you are doing this wellness business? Why is it that you're creating this wellness offering in the first place? What is it that you want to create? What is your vision for that and who do you want to serve? Now, if you design your wellness business poorly, no matter how ninja, uh, your team or beautiful your facilities, you will never have enduring success with your wellness business. And that goes for any business. If you've not created the right product or you're not marketing it to the right niche, it simply won't work. Or uh, if you're not even clear about why you're doing this in the first place, no business is about to work and you m might have created the best wellness concept out there. You're clear about your why, you're clear about what is it that you have created and who is it that you're serving. But you won't have enduring success with wellness if you're not looking after your wellness concept, if you're not stewarding it properly. So the two key ingredients always for the wellness business, like any other business out there, is your design and stewardship. And like with all other businesses, wellness on its own is not inherently valuable. We think that because the world we are working in has the potential to improve people's well being, people's lives, transform them, that whatever wellness elements we put together are valuable. And that's simply not true. Wellness is not inherently valuable. One wellness element, a gym, a spa, a particular therapy, on their own, they're not inherently valuable. It's how you put it together that makes it valuable and how you look after it. So the only way you make your wellness business valuable is through the design and its stewardship. That is what creates Value in the eyes of your customers, you, the people who are going to pay you for the transformation you've promised them with their well being. And that kind of gives you this kind of context around how not all wellness is inherently valuable. And the success of your wellness business boils down to two key ingredients. How you design it and how you steward it. Another key aspect to wellness business is your vision. So when we're talking about design and stewardship, it's all about why you're doing what you're doing, what is it that you're exactly creating, who is it that you're serving and how are you serving them, what makes your way so, uh, special. But before the design and stewardship, you need to be the person who can hold a vision for what you want to create. So the who you need to become as a founder comes before the design and the stewardship. And here is what I have seen time and again. Now I speak to two different audiences. So boutique hotel owners, so owners of properties who want to integrate wellness in a coherent way throughout the guest experience. And I also help wellness leaders, wellness professionals transition to becoming founders of their own solopreneur businesses. It doesn't matter who you are, how much experience you have with wellness, um, or whether you own the physical business, the physical property, or you are offering a service, it doesn't matter who you are. The success you will have with your wellness business will never, ever outperform your vision and capacity for your wellness idea. It will never outperform it. So your success, the maximum level of success you can have with your wellness business is directly proportional, proportionate to your vision for it and your capacity to hold that vision. So you quickly see how important it is to actually work on who you need to become before you even go to the drawing board. So the question is, how do you work on that vision and how do you build your capacity to hold your vision successfully? And I started with a few notions of the methodology I use to help founders unravel their vision and build the capacity to hold their vision. And two weeks ago I talked about how the ripple effect starts with the impossible idea. So when you want to create something extraordinary, you have to start with an impossible idea. You have to start with something that there is no traditional or, uh, conventional playbook written out there. And the beauty of doing business in today's world is that honestly, those people, those entrepreneurs who go to have success, uh, are people who don't follow a playbook. It's not about who has the best or bling idea it is who is willing to do that impossible thing, who is willing to really fill that wonder deficit that particularly the hospitality industry suffers from, to build that anticipation where the customers are lining up to buy what they want to sell. And last week I talked about, once you actually had that impossible idea and you go with what people would deem impossible, you then need to build a world around it. So if you have a property, and this could also apply to you, if you're a wellness director or wellness professional who wants to transition into consulting, it also applies to you, build the world first, whatever that world is, whatever that destination is. Ultimately you want your clients to literally come into a completely different world when they start to do business with you. Be that on a consulting basis, be that on a therapist basis, be that on a coaching basis, or you having a hotel and you're allowing guests into your doors. The idea is building that world first and, uh, knowing the people will come, the right people who are looking for what you have created will come. So two weeks ago with impossible idea, I talked about that possibility drop, so to speak, thinking about doing something completely different. The audacity to do something that no one has ever done before. And you can do it because you know you can do it. You have your unique vision, your unique set, skill set, and you know you are capable of bringing that impossible idea into life no matter what it takes. And then once you have thought of that impossible idea or unraveled that impossible idea, you are then becoming the architect of this world, this entirely new world that has not been created. And today we're talking about identifying the artists who are going to help you create that world. And when it comes specifically to my hotelier clients, specifically when I'm talking about second generation entrepreneurs who have inherited some form of hospitality business, they don't come from the hospitality business or hospitality world themselves, but they've inherited this business. So the most natural thing I see people do is to reach out for professionals and people who have experience in the industry because they believe they need people who fill the gaps in the knowledge. And I'm not booing that, Trust me, I make a living of helping people create wellness concepts. I'm not saying don't go hire wellness consultants or hospitality consultants. I'm not saying that. What I'm trying to point out is that if you're creating a world that does not exist, if you have thrown out the traditional playbook, you can't possibly go to find experts in an industry and think that they're going to teach you something new. No, they're going to be creating something much better, but within the kind of guardrails of the industry they know. So they're creating a better version of what already exists, not a, ah, completely different world out there that they don't even know exists and they themselves do not have experience in that. So what I was researching for today's podcast is there's this lovely project that I look at this hotel that I think is absolutely gorgeous. And while I was looking through it and I wrote some notes down here. So it's in, um, Inn. So it's a hotel in inn I N N on a remote island just off the Newfoundland in Canada. So this island in of itself, it is four times bigger than the size of Manhattan, but it only has about 2,500 people who live there. So it's this remote island off, uh, the coast of Canada, Newfoundland, four times the size of Manhattan, but only has a fraction of its people living there. And the nearest city is hours and hours away from this particular inn. There is no reason, if you think about, if you're looking at it through the lens of any conventional hospitality logic, that this inn should be the most sought after destination in the world. And yet the Fogo Island Inn has three Michelin keys. Three Michelin keys, remote island, hours away from any form of civilization, three mission keys, and guests travel from all over the world to reach it. And almost nothing inside it was made by someone with a traditional hospitality or wellness background. And the woman who built it was a tech executive from Silicon Valley and she had never ever run a hotel in her life. So when Zita Kaba returned to the island where she was born, Newfoundland in Canada, she didn't go looking for hospitality professionals. In fact, she didn't hire hospitality professionals. From what I understand, she didn't hire them to fill the gaps in her knowledge. She instead went to look for people who knew this particular place on earth, who had lived this particular place, who need the soul of this island. So she found quilters, so women who had been passing dress craft down from generation to generation. And she found furniture makers, local craftsmen, and she also found the architect who was actually born in Newfoundland, but had spent several years, I think it was in Norway, that someone who didn't have this, uh, long list of credentials within building hospitality products, but what he did understand was how to build with this land he was born on and not just put any old building on top of it. So none of these peoples, the quilters, the craftsmen, the furniture makers, none of them came with an impressive list of hospitality credentials. But each of one of them actually shared Zita Cobb's dreams. They understood her, they understood the place. And the result that we see today is an inn where almost everything, so the quilts, the furniture, the food, the hosting is made by the hands of people who belong to that place. You only do that when you have this innate ability or an ability or a skill you can acquire to identify the artists who are going to hold your vision. Now, this is not the same as people who steward your vision. This is people who are going to walk by your side. They share that vision. They're co collaborators, I call them the artists, the individual characters of Walt Disney. Then you have the cast members, which are your team members in the day to day of the property of your business. But what you want to identify is the artists, the people who share and hold the same vision with the same passion as you do. They're the people who want to create that, who want to embrace that impossible idea, who want to create that world. They're the people who see the world that you want to create. And these are the artists you need to find. People who are willing to go the extra mile to create something that has not existed. So it all sounds simple in theory, but here is what I see time and again happen with my boutique hotel owner friends. Despite knowing that ultimately what I'm telling you, that's nothing new, it's nothing that's been reinvented. I'm not introducing concepts that you do not already know. So how is it that we don't identify these artists? What stops us from doing what Zita Cobb did? And here are three things I see happen on a repeated basis. So the first thing I see is that we tend to hire for knowledge and not alignment. As I was saying before, you know you have great knowledge when it comes to business. You've held many successful business, business in and out. You know the principles, but you don't know this particular business, be it hospitality, be it wellness. So you go looking for the person who can help you fill your knowledge gap. Someone who has done this before, someone who knows the industry. Someone has. Someone who has a few success stories under the belt. But here's the problem with that. The person who knows how this industry works. Wellness, hospitality. The people who know how, uh, this industry works are the people who will bring you back inside the boundaries of what already exists. They cannot help you create a world that was never built or has not been built yet. They can only help you build a better version, a magnificent version of what they already know. And here's the thing, the artists, the set of artists you need, are not the people who know the industry. They're the people who share your dream and are ready to walk on that journey with you. Now I liken this to when we did the Camino de Santiago. We've done number of the routes within the Camino de Santiago. You start and you start walking. But you need someone who's willing to walk the 700, 800, a thousand, a thousand odd kilometers with you, 20, 30, 40 kilometers, day on day for three, four weeks in a row to go through all that discomfort. There are people who share this dream with you. It goes beyond that loyalty aspect. It goes through a dream and making it come through the courage to make it come true. The second thing I tend to see with boutique hotel owners, especially those who are second generation owners who are have inherited or taking on a hospitality business, is that they assume they can take yesterday's people and build tomorrow's world. So you see all these people, this great talent, loyal stewards, loyal to your vision or uh, the previous owners, the vision, and they delivered on it. They created the world that you have inherited, they've created the property that you have inherited. And that is a big deal. But a uh, completely different world because clearly if you are imagining it, it's going to be very different from any other person. Even if it's your previous generation. A completely different world requires completely different creative companions. The skills that protected what was built, what you got today, are not the same skills that will create what has never existed, what you want to create. So asking them to make that leap fundamentally is not honoring their contribution, their decades of work, it is actually misunderstanding it. Because we're all meant to, to make our unique contribution. And whatever we create is in constant evolution. So they had the contribution, they built something so beautiful that you have inherited, that you are taking on now it's others turn to take it forward. And knowing the difference of honoring contribution is important because it is not the same as betraying those people who created the world you've taken. It's honoring it, it's being crystal clear in valuing what has been created and taking it to completely different level going forward. And the third thing I see happen, and this kind of follows from this previous point, is that boutique, my boutique hotel owner friends, and they see themselves in this situation, they end up building their vision around the team they have instead of the team they need. I'm talking about artists, collaborators, partnerships. So when you're not clear about the world you're creating. When you're not having the courage to, to step in to be that architect who is going to create a completely different world, it is very difficult to define the creative roles you need. Now, this is, I've got Jim Collins from good to great book right on my bookshelf. And I have said that in a number of occasions where he talks about get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, and get the right people in the right seats. Now you need to define what those seats are in your new world. And let's assume, um, your new world is this new bus. You have to redefine these seats, these creative roles based on the world you want to create. And then from there, start filling each of these seats with the right profile. What many boutique hotel owners end up doing when they've inherited something is they fill the space with the people they already have. The good people are very capable. They've done amazing work. They keep things running. But what ends up happening is that you shrink your vision to fit the skills in that particular room. And you're no longer building the team your world needs, the team of artists your world needs. You're building your world around the team you already have. So the artists who could take your work to, uh, a completely different dimension never, ever get identified because you never define the new seats that are needed for your new world. Again, it's a form of conforming and protecting a legacy instead of knowing that another way of protecting a legacy is actually taking it to completely different dimension and evolving with times. So those are three reasons I see, you know, boutique hotel owners never really create that extraordinary world that, for example, Zita Cub has created. That's rare. So, uh, when you are creating this world, you need to identify who these artists are, who are other, uh, brands that you admire, who are people you can collaborate with? Local artisans, farmers, craftsmen, healers. Who are they? What are they doing? How can you work with them? What strategic collaborations can you create? What partnerships can you create? Because you don't build a world in isolation. Yes, you need a team of your team who's running the show on the day to day. But when you want to create a completely different world, you need to go hand in hand with partners with other artists who share your dream, people who want to walk alongside you and m, where both of you, where each and every party is growing together. So it's a win, win, win situation throughout. That is the only way you actually hold your vision and you build your capacity to hold that vision. Because when you're doing something impossible, everyone is looking to you and your ability to A have that vision and B have the capacity to hold it even. I'll try to say, particularly when things aren't going the way you expect it to go, because no business, no success story out there has been empty off challenges, discomfort, failures. That is part and parcel of what we all sign up for, particularly when we go into entrepreneurship. And what helps you hold that vision, what helps you build your capacity every day to hold it tighter and tighter, is finding those artists, those people who are going to walk alongside you, who you will go one step further always. And on that wonderful note, I wish you all a beautiful day ahead. Take care now. To recap, Here are the three key takeaways from today's episode 1. Hire for alignment, uh, not knowledge the person who knows your industry will build you a better version of what already exists. The artist you need is one who knows your dream and is willing to walk their entire journey with you to make it real. 2. Loyalty to people is not the same as loyalty to legacy. The team that built what you inherited did something extraordinary. But a completely different world requires completely different creative companions. Knowing that difference is not betrayal, it is actually honoring their contribution, its clarity, its respect. And 3. Define the seats before you fill them. If you don't define the creative roles your new world actually needs, you will fill them with a, uh, capable people you already have. And slowly your vision will shrink to fit the skills in your ecosystem. Build the team of artists your world needs, not the world around what your current team of artists can build. So my boutique hotel owners out there, who do you want by your side as you build the world that doesn't exist yet? And on um, that thought provoking note, I wish you all a wonderful day ahead. Take care now. Thank you for tuning in Tuning in to my podcast if you want to know whether your hotel is ready to meet the growing demand for wellness experiences both for your guests and your employees, then my Essence Scorecard is the perfect tool for you. Head over to spa-balance.com essencescorecard and get yourself a free and accurate temperature reading of your hotel readiness to meet the wellness needs of your people and your guests. It's a valuable self audit that not only helps you create a profitable wellness asset, but also promote a culture of genuine wellness for your team.