Changing winds
Hello from sunny Spain! Yes, sunny again. We still have plenty of rain, but the weather’s improved since my last post.
The winds are slowly changing, both for the weather and for our Mission. We embarked on this journey with a vision and we are constantly forced to re-evaluate our true goals, questioning whether our dreams align with our values or if we are on the right path altogether.
Going back to the roots of our project
We were never uncertain about what we want, but the how is a tough cookie! Let’s evaluate our mission statement as written in that original blog post:
[To create] a sustainable, rural tourism business that aims to do things differently without large sacrifices in terms of comfort, cost, or otherwise.
(link to post)
- A sustainable, rural tourism business:
- Sustainable is a very broad (and perhaps overused) term, but what we want is to be socially, environmentally, and economically responsible. However, sustainability implies maintaining something the way it is.
- What we want is something resilient: adaptable for this changing world. However, environmental sustainability costs money. A lot of it. Which means our business needs to be economically sustainable (break even + provide us enough to live with).
- Rural tourism is a difficult business, at least in Spain. We did our calculations: margins are low because it’s labour-intensive and there is a lot of competition. In the end, any business’ primary business is to stay in business. If we cannot live off the business, we’ll have to find another way to get bread on our plates. If the business fails, any social or environmental sustainable aspect will go in the bin as well.
- Sustainable is a very broad (and perhaps overused) term, but what we want is to be socially, environmentally, and economically responsible. However, sustainability implies maintaining something the way it is.
- Aim to do things differently without large sacrifices in terms of comfort, cost, or otherwise:
- What did we mean by this? We would like to show people – “the world” – that sustainability as described above is possible and within our reach. Being here now, I have to admit that I’m doubting this at the moment. Look at the point about what sustainability really is – an environmental and social ideal that cannot exist outside of economic reality.
Why do I find this relevant to write about? Because If we cannot live off the business, we’ll have to find another way to get bread on our plates. If the business thus fails, any social or environmental sustainable aspect will go in the bin as well.
The Triangle
All this makes me think of a great analogy I once read about project management: the time-cost-quality triangle.
Essentially, the message is: choose two, forget about the other one. For example, do you want quality and want it done quickly? It’s going to be expensive. Want it cheap and good? It’s going to take a long time to get to that point.
In a way, I can make my own triangle for our project:
How much time and (above all) money can and do we want to invest to make a place comfortable and sustainable? And if we do that, forget about the place being “affordable”: we’d have to appeal to a target audience that has a higher disposable income than we ourselves do in order to break even in terms of investments.
Do we sacrifice comfort then, and make our project more “hippy” than we were planning? We don’t see ourselves living in such conditions! Lastly, sacrificing sustainability in this project is a no-go. On the short term while we set things up it might be okay, but long-term it’s such an integral part of what we believe in that it cannot be skipped.
Does this put us in an impossible loop?
Fortunately, tourism is a means to an end for us. As I wrote in another post once, “we want to create change in the best way we know how“. Which is tourism, we thought. However, being here opens us up to many other opportunities. So we might be able to (partially!) let go of the tourism aspect if needed.
Whether that’s an online business, setting up a co-working, a dog-care place, or something else… We need a source of income eventually. One that aligns with our project and with our ideals.
Navigating the Murky Waters and Rewriting the Plan of Attack
Whatever this Mission brings us, it’s absolutely an opportunity for self-discovery and exploration. We continue searching and discovering, which means we are also rewriting our ‘plan of attack‘ almost non-stop.
Do we rent a house and terrain with an option to buy it later? Risky, as we’d invest all our savings in a place that’s not ours!
Do we buy a small and cheap apartment in a town and develop a business on an empty terrain as per original ideas (and take for granted that this might result in nothing and take us many, many years)?
Do we buy an apartment in Andorra and run a business from there while saving up to buy something?
Do we give up and move to New Zealand? (okay, that one is a joke… for now 😉 )
– Seriously – all these ideas have crossed our minds. And we are still actively exploring them all (except for that last one)!
I guess our project has become a bit like fishing at the moment: we enjoy ourselves immensely, while we keep throwing out lines in the murky water hoping that something will bite at some point!
When something does, you’ll read it here 🙂
– Jochem
Oh, and of course… pictures! Not that many this time, as the weather hasn’t been ideal for any new big hikes and I was in the Netherlands for a quick visit, but here you go:
Oh, and if you’ve made it this far down, maybe you’d also like to see what my new job is about. Not about photos, but about video (hint hint):
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