This is the longest stint I’ve not been travelling since I started WIT 12 years ago. Two solid months on the ground – and it’s been wonderful, I feel like I’ve kinda settled into myself .
Travel is not necessarily about movement, it can be mental. And my mind has certainly done a lot of travelling these last two months as I prepare for the months ahead.
Having said that, I can’t help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation getting on my first flight in two months this Sunday when I fly to Hong Kong to host our first WIT Hospitality conference there. I feel like a kid again, thinking of the airport, my seat, movies – I know, sad right?
In some ways, launching WIT Hospitality reminded me of the first days when we launched the first WIT conference at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront 12 years ago. It’s been as nerve-wracking and suspenseful – it’s a blank canvas and you never know what the final picture will look like.
And I wonder if this is what entrepreneurs need from time to time – that shot of adrenalin, that plunge into the unknown, that feeling of starting something new, the need to draw on a blank canvas – to reimagine.
A group of paratroopers in a free style free fall. Photo credit: istock
It’s an addictive feeling and I can understand how some can get hooked to this drug of entrepreneurship. I would certainly not call myself a serial entrepreneur – images of “Dexter” always come to my mind when people say that – but I know I do thrive on launching new stuff.
After you have started something and it’s running nicely, you do miss that charge and I do believe there are some people who are built to launch, those who are built to build and those who manage.
If you’ve got all three qualities, that’s ideal but it’s hard to find one person who can do all three well. The key is to build a team with those three pillars.
Often founders of businesses can become their own worst enemy – I’ve seen many of those. They are brilliant at starting a spark and lighting the fire but terrible at fanning the flames and in the end, they burn themselves and everyone around them. (Okay, enough of the fire analogy already)
Often, the best thing they can do is get out of the way but it’s hard to let e-go of something you’ve built.
I was speaking to an investor the other day. He is planning to fund a travel startup but he was concerned about the team. Great technical co-founders who’ve built a great product but he didn’t feel they had strong business development and marketing skills, so he was trying to persuade them to bring in someone new.
This is where most startups fail – they die at the chasm between product and the customer. That go-to-market bit. Selling, marketing and distributing is the hardest thing for any business – no point having the best product if no one can find it, buy it, enjoy it and buy some more.
For hotels, this whole game has changed beyond recognition. While the fundamentals of hospitality has not changed – feed them, clean them, sleep them, please them – the go-to-market has been upended. And hoteliers have to learn a whole new dance – how to market, distribute and sell in a complex, fragmented environment.
Even the notion of where I sleep when on holiday has changed. I can now sleep in somebody else’s house. In Penang recently for Chinese New Year, I rented an Airbnb close to my home and it was a wonderful experience, great host, good location, fantastic facilities so much so that my entire family wanted to move in.
This is why we are doing our first Hospitality event – not just to feed my addiction but to address a real need by hoteliers to respond to these changes.
Looking forward to be in the company of like-minded professionals who thrive on and embrace change, like those crazy, serial entrepreneurs but without the addicition pl
