Julie Cheetham
It’s a myth that the CEO has the answers or the founder has the answers. I think often we have the passion, but, you know, we’re on a learning journey just the same as anyone else.
Sebastien Leitner
Hi there. I’m Sebastien Leitner. Welcome to The Turndown. Today, I’m excited to talk to Julie from Weaver. She’s the CEO and founder of a fantastic product that works and operates in the sustainability space and providing great insights to hoteliers about their performance around sustainability. Something that is critically needed. We need to make, as an industry, more sustainable. Our world is impacted by global warming, by overtourism, by a lot of different things.
And Julie has some great insights, some great experiences around making travel more sustainable, providing hoteliers insights into their own performance, but also what they can do about changing some of their behavior and making their products and services more sustainable. Really, any type of property can benefit from the solutions, products, and best practices around sustainability. Let’s roll the tape.
I’m joined by Julie Cheetham. Julie is the cofounder of Weaver, and I’d like to open up this podcast today with our standard question, what is keeping you up at night, Julie, as the founder of Weaver?
Julie Cheetham
So there are a few things. The one is that Weaver is a tech startup, and I’ve never been the CEO of a tech startup before. So that’s been an interesting journey, and working in the virtual space is keeping me up at night for sure. There’s so much to learn. And then more broadly, the fact that we’re not decarbonizing as quickly as we need to to prevent that one and a half degrees of warming that the IPCC’s been warning us about for years, that keeps me up at night. Really worried about crossing those boundaries, the point of no return.
Sebastien Leitner
Making that required change for us to stay alive on this planet?
Julie Cheetham
Absolutely. And how one person can make a difference, one organization can make a difference. That often gets me at about three o’clock in the morning.
Sebastien Leitner
Well, let’s talk about what Weaver does in order to help hoteliers around the world to become more sustainable. Can you walk us through very high level what your company does and what services it provides?
Julie Cheetham
Sure. So Weaver was born during COVID when we are fellow hoteliers and saw the challenges that we’re facing in our industry. We’ve developed Weaver to be a digital sustainability solution. So it’s accessible because it’s online. It’s affordable because it doesn’t involve flying expensive consultants around the world. And every business has positive and negative impacts. Weaver helps you to identify all your impacts, to measure them, and then to report on them. There’s some fun things built in, all sorts of tools and resources for continuous improvement. But essentially, it’s an impact monitoring and sustainability management system.
Sebastien Leitner
What inspired you to come up with the product or the company? There must have been a point in your career where you realized, I wanna be a founder, I wanna create something like Weaver to make an impact.
Julie Cheetham
I have a background in management consulting and also in running organizations, but never a tech startup before. I was consulting particularly in the sustainability space when COVID hit, and a number of my clients were hotels and lodges. One of my clients, Swali Kalahari, at the time we were sitting in the middle of the Kalahari and lockdown happened, and we realized the income would be turned off for the foreseeable future.
We’re fortunate enough to have owners that can afford to keep everything going during times of crisis, but we saw our friends’ lodges closing down, tour operators shutting down, lack of conservation efforts, people losing their jobs. So we got a working group of like minded people together. Doctor King from The Long Run, people from Preferred by Nature, Juliet Kinsman, the sustainability journalist. About twenty of us got together and just said, what can we do to help?
After many hours of workshopping, we figured the best thing would be to put something really accessible out there that can help people make their businesses more resilient. Financially sustainable is of utmost importance, not just nature sustainable and people sustainable. So we needed to look holistically at a business and give people the tools to do that. Especially independents, where we’re not really embracing technology as independent hoteliers, and it really can make our lives a whole lot easier.
Sebastien Leitner
I like where you’re going with this because sustainability is so much more than just the energy light bulb or the water or the towel that you’re not replacing. Walk us through what you include when you think of sustainability.
Julie Cheetham
Most people think of sustainability as energy, waste, and water, and then perhaps some nature and biodiversity. The way Weaver looks at it is from a typical balanced scorecard perspective. You have four quadrants, you have to balance the commercial against the conservation, the community and the culture, because people is more than just human resources and community. There’s a big cultural aspect, especially in the travel industry.
So whilst energy, waste, and water are super important, things like the impact you’re having on your neighborhoods and the well-being of your own staff members, your company culture, how are you helping to preserve local cultures? And commercially, are you looking at your supply chain? What are those analytics telling you about how local and sustainable your supply chains are? Are you looking at your cash flow management and your RevPAR and your occupancies and what your customers are telling you?
To be truly sustainable, we’ve got to look at all the parts of our business together and make sure we’re equally invested in all of them. Not extractive and exploitative, but commercially successful. Because without that commercial success, there isn’t business sustainability.
Sebastien Leitner
So Weaver is providing that scorecard, that interactive consultative tool to provide not only transparency, but also actionable insights on what to change?
Julie Cheetham
Yes. Weaver helps you identify all the different areas of your business that you could work on. You don’t need to work on everything at once. You can pick the things you want to start working on first, and then we help you measure your current performance and set targets to improve. We suggest continuous improvement pathways with tools and resources for your team members. And then great reporting functionality because as a sustainability practitioner myself, that was always a really difficult part, trying to cobble together different pieces of information from different sources to understand your impact at the end of the financial year.
Sebastien Leitner
Let’s say I’m a hotelier that has followed all the recommendations. Do I become certified? Is it a stamp? What’s my end of the year certificate?
Julie Cheetham
Weaver is not a certification. You could think of us like an accounting system or a CRM. We’re an operating system. But what it will do is that if you choose to certify with any of the great certifications already out there, like Long Run, Preferred by Nature, EarthCheck, One Planet, any of the GSTC recognized certifications, you have all the information at your fingertips, and you can produce a report that makes your certification process so much easier.
And if you choose not to certify, there’s credibility in your data. Data gives your stories credence. So you can just share your stats. You can say our carbon footprint per bed night is seventy five kilowatt hours, or we use two hundred liters of water per guest bed night. Our staff well-being index sits at eighty five percent. These are the impacts of our community projects. And I think there’s power in telling those stories with data behind them.
Sebastien Leitner
What is helping you sleep at night? What makes you happy? What gives you a sense of satisfaction?
Julie Cheetham
I think following the news of all the great things happening. I saw just today there’s some new mushrooms or fungi that can decompose plastic in record time. And there are these amazing single use clay coffee cups that have been printed with 3D printers that are available at the same price as paper coffee cups. And you see turtles and whale populations being restored, and cultures and languages that people thought were gone being revived and documented.
This is what tourism does. We’re such a great redistributor of income in our industry. And that income is a primary source for conservation, not only of biodiversity, but also cultural conservation, socioeconomic stability and growth. Tourism is so powerful. That’s what makes me excited, to see these examples of where businesses are run as an inclusive, shared source for good, and they’re not extractive and exploitative. There’s so many great stories coming out that it’s easy to be a believer.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s really nice to hear. I wanna talk about your life as a founder and CEO. You said this was something new to you. Let’s start with a common myth. What’s a common myth about being a CEO?
Julie Cheetham
I think the biggest myth is that the CEO has all the answers. Your team members, especially in a startup, there’s so much volatility and uncertainty. Your team members are looking to you for the answers, your investors are looking to you, your collaborators. And it’s a myth that the CEO has the answers or the founder has the answers. I think often we have the passion, but we’re on a learning journey just the same as anyone else.
What I’ve learned though is that I do have the responsibility and the ability to make decisions really quickly based on the evidence produced and to know when we’ve got enough data to make a decision so that we can move forward. You’ve got to be courageous enough to be the one that’s happy to make those decisions. But we certainly don’t know what we’re doing necessarily. We’re learning and growing with the team and growing with the business.
Sebastien Leitner
What is one of the challenges that you’re currently facing in your role right now, and how are you tackling it?
Julie Cheetham
For me, one of the challenges is a geographically dispersed team. Weaver is a UK based business, and our founders are a South African family of private philanthropists. We have teams based in London, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and team members in the States as well. Building team culture, cohesion, and a high performing environment that’s also a learning environment and an open mindset when everybody’s in different places can be really challenging.
We’ve had to spend a lot of time being really intentional about our routines and our operating rhythm and how we connect with one another formally and informally. We’re moving at a very fast pace, so to keep everybody together and on track is a challenge. But the team are really rising to that challenge, and we’re developing a culture of accountability and performance, but also kindness and respect that I’m really proud of.
Sebastien Leitner
I wanna do a lightning round. I’m curious to sort of get your first immediate reaction on words that I’m gonna throw at you. Departures.
Julie Cheetham
Departures should be from business as usual. We should always change the way we did things yesterday.
Sebastien Leitner
Luggage.
Julie Cheetham
You should travel light because it’s easier to use public transport.
Sebastien Leitner
Distraction.
Julie Cheetham
Distractions are a part of life, so I have to learn to just hyperfocus and shut out the noise.
Sebastien Leitner
Direct versus third party booking channels.
Julie Cheetham
I think there’s a place for both. Direct business has a huge benefit to the hoteliers themselves, and third party booking channels are really important so that travelers feel safe and secure and are able to go to destinations that they otherwise might not feel confident visiting.
Sebastien Leitner
Travel in two thousand and thirty.
Julie Cheetham
I’m hoping it’s not all gonna be virtual. I’m hoping we’re going to rage against the complete AI experience. That we will go and visit places and do it slowly and really immerse ourselves and continue traveling and sharing these life changing experiences.
Sebastien Leitner
Social media.
Julie Cheetham
Necessary evil. Don’t really get it, but thank goodness my team does.
Sebastien Leitner
Bleisure.
Julie Cheetham
Bleisure is an awesome idea if you can pull it off. And if you can take your family and your loved ones with you. I don’t like the idea of chilling out without my people. So bleisure needs to blend with family and friends too. Otherwise, it can be lonely.
Sebastien Leitner
Housekeeping.
Julie Cheetham
I think housekeeping is so important in our industry because it gives access to a sector that doesn’t have a high barrier to entry from a skills perspective. And it also gives access to women and single moms and people that might not otherwise have employment. I’m devastated when I see hotels trying to minimize housekeeping, especially if they do it in the name of sustainability. Don’t reduce your cost base and your payroll and then claim it was for sustainability purposes. It’s way more sustainable to keep all of your housekeepers and work with them on better standard operating procedures.
Sebastien Leitner
Last but not least, turndown. What comes to mind?
Julie Cheetham
Being spoiled. Such beautiful memories of turndowns all over the world in special hotels and lodges where something significant like a little story or a small gift or a handmade sweet is left on your pillow, and it’s usually representative of where you are and that sense of place. So turndown makes me feel warm and special before bedtime.
Sebastien Leitner
I wanna talk about the impact of COVID on travel and your personal experiences. What did you learn from it? What has changed you?
Julie Cheetham
As a leader, I think COVID taught me that people are not as okay as you think that they are. COVID pushed people to the limit in terms of working from home and homeschooling and trying to hold on to jobs and creating new sources of income. In our industry, having to mothball lodges and try to keep people going. But what came out of that for me is that people probably weren’t one hundred percent okay before COVID. We had just kind of been on this treadmill.
So COVID pushed us to have conversations about what is it that you need from your employer? What is it that you need from your employees, your friends and families and partners? I still don’t think I have a perfect solution for how to help people be okay after COVID. But that’s probably the thing that stuck with me the most, how do we run a team, lead an organization, and what is the new normal for hospitality?
Sebastien Leitner
What changes to travel didn’t you see coming that came out of the pandemic?
Julie Cheetham
I think the vehemence with which some countries were just avoided and shut down, and it seemed really arbitrary. The UK would have their red list, and the USA would have their list. It seemed a bit arbitrary when you looked at the infection numbers and death rates. That was a real surprise, and it spoke to the importance of diversity and inclusion and changing mindsets. Immediately unconscious biases sprung up, and people made assumptions about countries or their infrastructure or how safe people would be there. That reminded me how important the diversity and inclusion and allyship work is because clearly we’re not there yet.
Sebastien Leitner
You’re in the tech space right now. What technology do you think will disrupt the travel industry the most in the upcoming years?
Julie Cheetham
I think the most positive disruption is gonna be flight technologies, aviation. Looking at new energies, perhaps hydrogen fuels, certainly sustainable aviation fuel is already on its way. Looking at new aircraft technologies and energy sources for aviation will enable tourism to really continue to grow and thrive and do the good work that it does. But I think we really need to get that right.
Sebastien Leitner
I can’t wait to fly on an electric plane. What piece of advice you would have for someone starting in this industry, whether it’s technology or travel?
Julie Cheetham
I think two things. The one is really go and understand a place and be part of a place before you want to go and build a hotel there or work in a hotel there. You need to understand what’s important to the people in the neighborhood and the communities, what their assets and worries and needs are, so that things don’t become contrived.
And the second thing I’d say is it’s the best industry in the world. You’re in for such an amazing ride because of the amazing people and places. But try not to get sucked in by the luxury and the glitz and the glamour and the superficial stuff that is prevalent in our sector. Try to get underneath a little bit and also experience what’s real.
Sebastien Leitner
I’m curious if there’s an area or a topic that you’re passionate about that we haven’t touched on.
Julie Cheetham
There’s two things. The one is technology. Many of the big hotel corporations have embraced technology. But by and large, our industry is independently owned or small collections. And we haven’t really embraced technology. Think of your Fitbit and Strava. If you wanted to train for a marathon twenty years ago, it was really hard. Whereas now your watch can do everything for you. We’ve got to do the same. I’m really passionate about how technology and AI and machine learning can make our industry better and more inclusive and have better impacts.
And then my second passion is human rights. It makes me sad when I see the colonial legacy of tourism and how places become owned by outsiders and actually not by people who have a heritage and ancestry in that place. Why should regular citizens have to use less water so that massive hotels can give their guests tropical rainforest showers? Tourism needs to share. We need to share the value that we create together, and we need to be inclusive. That’s really the part that I’m the most passionate about.
Sebastien Leitner
As a traveler, what do you do when you see something like this happening? Do you avoid the destination?
Julie Cheetham
Yes. There are destinations that I avoid entirely because I’m not comfortable with their particular political regime or human rights abuses. In my personal life, I always try to choose smaller, locally owned boutique hotels or small lodges where I know that they’re owned by individuals with some history in the place. And I try to make sure we go on tours and excursions that are led by people from the area. I suppose we try to make sure our dollars stay where we are having those amazing experiences. Follow the money is what I try and do.
Sebastien Leitner
What’s your favorite travel destination in the world?
Julie Cheetham
Being African, my heart is here, and Kenya is my favorite African destination. It’s just so beautiful in terms of safari and beaches. And then you just can’t go wrong with Chile in South America for the most beautiful mountains, beaches, forests. The cultural experiences in Chile are so amazing. And South Africa for food and culture, and the beautiful beaches, as well as the beaches of Australia. But Kenya would be my happy place.
Sebastien Leitner
Julie, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate the insight. Fantastic what you’re doing with Weaver. Wishing you all the best as a CEO and as a company.
Julie Cheetham
Thanks for having me, Sebastien. I really appreciate it.
Sebastien Leitner
Thank you for listening to The Turndown. Don’t forget to subscribe and tune in next week as we discover new exciting guests.
