Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
How Important it is to Stick to Your Values Even if it Means Forsaking Short Term Profit
Show Notes
Background
Amanda is the founder of Perth Tech start-up, WA HomeStay. WA HomeStay is an online booking platform for WA holiday accommodation. Amanda wanted to create a booking platform that was fair for both owners and guests and gave back to the WA community at the same time. Bootstrapping the startup and having multinational competitors has made for an interesting journey but this local platform is going from strength to strength.
WA HomeStay
WA HomeStay started in around March 2018. We saw an opportunity to create a local booking platform that was fair for both owners and guests and gave back to the local community in Western Australia. We have owned a holiday home in Quindalup, which is in the south west, and felt that the international booking platforms’ fees for guests were getting too high and their customer service was slipping. We saw an opportunity to enter the market, but we didn’t want to spend a fortune on it. We had to work out how to do it in a bootstrapped manner, and we managed to do that and get our site up and running and currently have 280 properties listed on our platform and guests are obviously making reservations.
Staying True to Your Values
I believe staying true to your values and sticking to them, even if it does mean forsaking profits, is the best way to go. When starting up WA HomeStay, we had to speak to a lot of stakeholders in the short-term accommodation space which are locals that operate their businesses. There was a lot of angst against unregistered holiday homes in the area who it was felt were taking profits away and weren’t regulated enough. Locals are the life blood of holiday destinations and I didn’t want that happening in Western Australia. I love short-term accommodation and wanted to do it in a sustainable fashion which meant only allowing homes to list on our site that were registered appropriately with the local council. It meant we had to reject people along the way and reject business, and as a start-up, that’s hard to do.
Ensuring a Quality Standard
Ensuring that there is a certain standard of accommodation that is provided on our site is something I’m proud of. We’ve got people that have done the right thing, ticked the right boxes with council and have the amenities to service the number of guests that they’re advertising for. It helps ensure a quality standard and long-term benefits of holding on to those values. Although the short-term loss was that I didn’t have every property that approached us list, it opened a lot of avenues in terms of marketing and exposure that I hadn’t counted on at the very start. Once people realise that you are values driven and you will stick to them, that can be your point of difference.
Integrity
As a business owner you go through marketing courses and learn it’s not so much about the product you’re selling, it’s how people relate to you as a person. I didn’t realise how important that was until you are in the midst of it and you’re wondering why people are following you on a start-up journey when you make mistakes, as all start-ups do, but they continue on. It’s the relationships and the fact that they can see you’re authentic, and when you say something or you’re standing for a particular value, you go through with it.
Build Relationships With People who Share the Same Values
If you’re sticking to a certain value point and people can see your integrity, it can open up doors in relationships with people of like values that you had maybe have thought wasn’t going to be a successful business partnership, but you find common ground and then you can move forward. That also then gives them the opportunity for referrals. Partnerships can be not only made, but be very beneficial to both sides.
Key Values in Business
You need to make profit in business, otherwise, it’s a hobby however it’s important to make sure that your values align with your profit level. I think people are starting to talk with their wallet and wanting a more value-based organisation, they want people that care. People are looking to give more business to companies that stand for something and don’t waiver their values just for a profit line. We are seeing an increase in demand, and I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that they know we have some standards that we have kept to, even though it would have been easier to accept everything that came through the door, and I think it’s a worldwide movement. I think if you’re not staying true to your values, it’s no longer just a mission statement on a website. I think customers are genuinely wanting to see those values in place within the organisation.
Links
How Important it is to Stick to Your Values Even if it Means Forsaking Short Term Profit
Listen to Small Business Talk Episode 095 for the full episode.
