Smart Start Radio: Fuel for the Purpose Generation: Inside the Evolution of Sustainable Business

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In the latest episode of Smart Start Radio, Eming and Sara chat with sustainability experts in two segments.

First up is Leor Rotchild, a speaker, podcaster, sustainable business consultant and the author of the recently published all-star guide, “How We Gather Matters: Sustainable Event Planning for Purpose and Impact.” Rotchild tells us about his journey of becoming a sustainable business expert, his book and the enormous potential the events industry has to make a massive difference in creating a more sustainable world.

Next come two pioneers of regenerative tourism: Melissa Radu, executive director of destination stewardship at Explore Edmonton, and Alexis Kereluk, co-founder of ConnectSeven Group. Together, they created a regenerative tourism strategy that transformed the city of Edmonton for the better, and now, they’re on a mission to inspire other destinations to do the same. Are you wondering what “regenerative tourism” even means? Don’t worry. We were too. Luckily, Radu and Kereluk broke it down (spoiler alert: it’s pretty awesome).

Want to learn about how you can be a more #sustainablemeetingprof? Or, for that matter, a more sustainable traveler? A more sustainable human?

This episode is your doorway.

Further Resources:

You Can Go Net Zero

Your Complete Guide to Sustainability

Editor’s note: This episode of Smart Start Radio was transcribed by Otter.ai and edited lightly.

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Eming Piansay Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back, once again. You are listening to Smart Start Radio. I am your co-host, Eming Piansay.

Sara Robertson And I’m your co-host, Sara Robertson. It’s good to, not see, because you’re listening. It’s good to be in your ears again.

EP Yes, happy holidays. By the way, it’s December. I believe, when you work in publishing, you never know what month it is. And that’s our constant problem is that we never know what month it is. So technically, it is December.

SR By the time you’re listening to this, it is December, which means that it’s, you know, at the end of the year. And in addition to coming up with all of our fabulous New Year’s resolutions, we are looking back at the year behind us, and taking note of all the wonderful things that we have done, all the accomplishments we’ve had, we were also seeing us gather some data from the year before. How sustainable were we? How many carbon emissions did our events have?

EP That’s a good question. Good question.

SR No, I mean, like a lot of organizations, are also reporting out on their environmental impact from the year prior, right, right, and patting themselves up the back for good job.

EP So I guess the crux of this conversation is, how can we be better in events and be sustainable in events? And we are tackling this in many different ways. In our first segment coming up, we talked to Leor Rotchild, who I met in Canada. He wrote a book called How We Gather Matters, and it is fascinating.

I mean, I’m a fiction reader, I’ll tell you, but this book was really interesting, like I learned a lot while I was reading it, and I feel like it’s a helpful tool for anyone in events who wants to be to be more thoughtful about how they are progressing with like their events. Is it green enough? Is it sustainable enough? This book really tackles all those little aspects of it and really weaves it into it, like a, this is the situation. Here’s all the aspects that are affected by it. Let’s fix it. So as someone who likes things to be broken down, for her, this book was really helpful.

SR It really is a fantastic book. It is very straightforward. It has practical tips applications as well as real life anecdotes. So you can see these tips and applications brought to life. It is a fantastic resource, and so is Leor. So it was amazing to speak to him and get some more insight.

EP Also, he mentioned something called the stampede, and I really would like us to go during that festival just eat the pancakes, because that’d be a great F&B conversation, honestly, because the amount of types of pancakes I heard about, I was like, Can I come back for that? the F and

SR F&B Episode on pancakes.

EP Pancake breakfast for 10 days, 10 days.

SR Absolutely.

EP Of pancakes at different places, and there’s an app. Sorry, I had to share that, because that was, that was those exciting aspects. I was like, I just want the pancakes. Where are they?

SR No but it’s completely, so fun.

EP I am either too late or too early, either way, either way. Pancakes. Anyways, sorry, Sara, I know I’m sorry, I’m, I think I’m a little hungry. Um, it’s almost lunchtime for me, but let’s get into it with Leor right now.

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EP And welcome back to Smart Start Radio. I’m your co-host, Eming Piansay

SR And I am your other co-host, Sara Robertson.

EP And today we are very excited to welcome Leor Rotchild, the author of How We Gather Matters. Welcome Leor, how are you doing today?

Leor Rotchild Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me, Eming and Sara, I am really excited to have this conversation with you today.

SR We are so excited to have you here. So, Leor, would you go ahead and just introduce yourself, your name, what you do? Well, we already gave your name, so actually, I guess it’s not very necessary. Would you tell us about what you do?

LR absolutely so I’ll just remind folks that my name is Leor Rotchild, and I’m a sustainability consultant, and I work with companies on decarbonizing their operations and supply chains. Formerly, I was the executive director for a National Professional Association for sustainability leaders across Canada, and ran a events services business that specialized in major events, a lot of meetings as well as outdoor festivals and sporting events and. And so through my background in sustainability and my exposure to the events industry, I wrote this book called How We Gather Matters: Sustainable Event Planning For Purpose and Impact. And it was really a culmination of a vision and opportunity, and what I see as kind of a culmination of a lot of my experiences to share with the world.

SR So you’ve done a lot of good work in sustainability. I’m curious, though I feel like similar to those who are listening, in the events industry, a lot of people say that they kind of fell into this career. It wasn’t on their original path. I feel like it’s similar for people who work in sustainability. So I’m kind of curious, was working in sustainability something you had always wanted or planned to do, or was it something you discovered later on in your career and eventually moved into?

LR Yeah, thanks for that question. I’m probably one of the rare people that say I always knew I was going to build my career around sustainability. And it happened, really, when I was in university, and I just like, had this feeling like I didn’t have the language for it, but I had this concept that, as I was in business school and learning about how, you know, the idea of, like, seeking low wage labor in developing countries was being presented as, like, a positive model of development. And I felt like, no that that doesn’t, that doesn’t check out for me, that that feels like a misalignment of values. And then I’d be in my like, Poli Sci classes, and people would be saying, you know, down with capitalism, we need some kind of more sort of socialist economic structure, I would argue.

But no, the market just is responding to what consumers want. And so by helping to redirect the market towards the outcomes we need as a society, we can actually leverage capitalism in a positive way. And so I was like, on one hand I was this, like, raging tree hugger, and on the other hand, I was like, die hard capitalist. I was like, I am kind of like, looking for people who are in the middle with me. And it was actually during my time living and working in London, England that I came across people who were working on corporate social responsibility and sort of the precursor to the sustainable development goals. And realizing this is, yeah, this is the viable career track that I see for myself, and being able to apply this in lots of different industries is a really interesting way to create sort of a positive social impact that has, you know, minimizes the environmental impacts of industrial activity.

EP So for the book, what made you want to sit down and like, hey, I need to take everything I’ve ever, like, experienced in this industry and kind of build a book around it. What made you do that?

LR So one thing that is probably something that I should just say off the bat is that I love events. Like, I really love events. I’ve worked on a lot of them, and so I love being on the certified organization side, but I attend so many of them, and I’m a classic extrovert, so I always find that I get so many new ideas and lots of energy by attending events.

So for me, writing a book about events was kind of like a pleasure to do for that reason, and applying my sustainability background to it is really kind of what I felt was an important sort of way to pay forward all that I’ve learned. And in particular, I have come to this realization that the events industry is kind of like the meta industry of industries, because every industry does industry events. You know, there’s industry associations that do events and and then when people want to get away from their work, they attend events like, you know, the sort of like sporting and music events is kind of like, you know, when they want to get away from all the events, they go to other kinds of events.

And so I saw it as something that was all encompassing. And I believe that because so many people are exposed to the events industry, it is this underutilized platform for affecting profound change in our society. And I would like to see that be more utilized as a way to create the future that we need, but create it today.

SR This is actually kind of a perfect moment to segue into this quote from your book that I literally left a sticky note, and wrote “five stars” next to.

LR I love it. What is, What is it?

SR It was in your introduction. So you wrote, on page four, under “Events United,” if you guys are following along on audio, you wrote, “Never before have events been better positioned as a single powerful industry to meaningfully address climate change, establish a more inspiring and inclusive purpose and lead change towards zero waste and circularity within the supply chains we all share.” So I would love if you could tell us a little bit more about that quote, especially when it comes to this immense power that you essentially are saying event professionals have to affect sustainability in general. What would you say when it comes to this power that the events industry has? Where does this power come from? How do we have it?

LR Thank you for the question. Thank you for reading that quote. I have to admit that, you know, as a first time author, I’m not, I’m still not used to like people actually like reading my own words back to me, and it’s just like, wow, it resonates. That’s awesome. And and and there’s a few things in the quote that you read. One of them is that, in my experience, it seems to me like the events industry is hugely siloed. You know, just in this conversation already, we’ve talked about meetings, we’ve talked about music festivals and sporting events and and then, if you add in so many other things, including conventions and weddings and and other related tangential sub industries, they all do things very differently, and they have their own, you know, industry events and often don’t interact with each other.

And I thought one question that sort of started me in this path was the question, you know, is the events industry, if you were to group it together as one large industry that includes all those sub industries, is that footprint larger or smaller than the fossil fuels industry? And the the answer to that is, nobody really knows, because it’s not well-measured. But as much as people love to hate the fossil fuels industry, it is an industry where you can actually see, you know, the metrics around, especially their greenhouse gas emissions, what that looks like, globally, nationally, regionally, by facility, whereas the events industry isn’t grouping that data in a way that’s actually measurable and comparable.

And so that was important for me, and and the other part about the quote you read was around how supply chains is a really powerful mechanism to affect change, and that is kind of a universal statement across all industries, because my experience in sustainability throughout my career tells me that sustainability people are over here, and that people who actually, like, make the purchasing decisions on behalf of organizations typically are somewhere else and and don’t commonly interact, and even companies that I work with who have their net zero emissions targets aren’t clear about how procurement and supply chains actually align to those goals. There’s kind of a mismatch there.

And so from a from an events point of view, the argument that I’m making is, What if every vendor, every meal, every visual that people are exposed to, represented the decisions that we make to position sustainability and inclusion at the very forefront, the entire purpose for why we do these events, and what if that was reflected in every experience people have?

And one simple example, though I have many, is when we talk about circularity, or the movement towards a circular economy, a lot of people don’t even know what that means, and certainly not what that looks like. And if you have something simple, like upcycled material that has been turned into really attractive furniture that people sit on and interact with and they’re eating over these high top tables that have been transformed from, you know, like discarded barrels, for example, like they’re literally physically touching the circular economy. They’re interacting with it in a way that creates, like a sensation and a locked in memory. And I think that’s how humans think, like we don’t think in data, we don’t think in numbers. We think in experiences. And who owns the business of experiences if it’s not the events industry?

EP So, on that note, kind of what you were saying, one thing I noticed about your book is that, or one thing I was surprised, or, I guess, more surprised than anything, is that you really paint a picture of, like, you know, you know, green is great, but it also affects other aspects of the industry. And that’s something I was kind of like, I feel like that’s not really talked about in a lot of ways. So in, so based on, like, your research and what you’ve been experiencing, how do you feel that this affects like, things like DEI or anything else, like, how does what you’re writing about affect things like that?

LR Yeah, that’s such a great question, Eming, I’m so glad you asked it, because I this is kind of the bad news I share with with people, which is that even if you are, like an environmental leader, and you are way ahead of the pack, the chance of, like, a very broad range of your audience thinking, wow, you diverted, you know, X tons of waste from the landfill, you reduce greenhouse gas emissions by X percentage is not, it doesn’t resonate for most people, because, like I said before, people don’t think in data.

They, they are more likely to be inspired by the change it makes in people’s lives. And so connecting environmental programs to community impact is this magic formula for unlocking the power of events to affect change and and one example I like to talk about is one that’s near and dear to my heart. It’s from my hometown, here in Calgary, and the largest event that we host, which is the Calgary Stampede. And for anybody that is unaware of what the Calgary Stampede is, it’s like this larger than life… It’s a massive event. You know, a million people walk through the doors of the Stampede Park each year. But outside of the Stampede Park, the whole city is dressed up, as you know, in their western wear, you suddenly, like, banks have like, hay bales in front of them, and there’s free pancake breakfasts everywhere. You gotta download the app to find out where the nearest one is, and like, what the ratings are. And like, there’s a whole thing around that.

There’s country music everywhere you go. It’s a rodeo, it’s an amusement park, it’s a music festival, arts and culture, food festival. There’s a lot going on. I worked with the Calgary Stampede over nearly a decade to design a number of their environmental programs, and one of those programs that’s been incredibly popular is a compost program. The reason it’s so popular is because the food vendors on-site, I mean, produce a staggering volume of food waste, and instead of going and walking a long distance, carrying these heavy bags of donut batter and corn husks and like giant onions that typically wind up in the in the waste stream, instead of walking a far distance to dispose of that, we built a well-trained team that was collecting that that that waste, and providing valuable information to people to like, make it easier to compost as they went along, and and even taking, like, cooking oil and all kinds of things and and so during the pandemic, those programs, as you might imagine, were shut down and and as you know, the events industry took such a big hit.

For the first time in 115 years, the Stampede closed its doors. And when, post-pandemic, when those programs are being resurrected, I got a phone call saying, hey, we need you to come back and help us resurrect these really popular programs. The food vendors in particular would really like to see it come back. So there’s, there’s an audience behind the scenes that really is demanding this. So that was interesting. And the team that I had trained over many years to deliver that work had kind of gone their separate ways. And so we created this beautiful partnership with The Center for Newcomers, which is essentially a social agency that helps new immigrants resettle into Calgary. And we wound up training, in that first year, more than 40 people, and the vast majority of them being refugees from the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and other countries, to deliver these compost and recycling programs that that the Stampede needed.

And it was so popular that, I mean, the Stampede was clearly happy. They wound up hiring a number of these people as permanent staff. That was a sign of success and and it it just the the impact of having people have their first Canadian work experience be at the Calgary Stampede, a sort of signature event for the City of Calgary. Nobody’s going to ask them, oh, what’s that on your resume, people say, Oh, wow, what did you do for the Stampede? And they’re able to say, I did meaningful environmental work. It’s like this magical formula for saying, we’re helping people to do good work that has a tangible benefit for our planet and the community, and it’s changing their lives for the better and helping them to resettle and integrate into our community in a way that’s important to the city, because it’s part of our cultural, iconic institutions.

SR I think one of the things that comes to mind when we talk about this whole circularity process, or like form in which sustainability exists is really important to address. And something that I want to bring up, I think for people who are starting to tackle sustainability, or have started out on their journeys to implement sustainable practices into their planning, get really overwhelmed when they see like how broad it is. And I think one of the things you’re hitting on is this concept of, sustainability is so much more than reducing waste or lowering our carbon emissions. So I think a really, really good resource for understanding that is the UN SDGs, or the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So it’s a list of 17 goals, and you can find it literally by googling UN SDGs, and it really covers everything from, you know, a reduction carbon emissions to job security, ensuring that people have equitable access to quality, good work that supports their overall well-being. When we’re talking about the sort of broad scope of sustainability, I’m interested in hearing a little bit more about what you think about the UN SDGs and like how it might be applied into the planning process.

LR Yeah, so I’m glad you brought it up, because I also am somebody that is inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals. I think that it’s brought a lot of focus for those of us who are in the sustainability world, to say, here’s how we’re directly contributing to these global aspirations that 194 countries have signed on to, and there are a lot of things that countries sign on to, but very few that have resonated with such a broad range of the public As the Sustainable Development Goals have. And so I sometimes get asked by my sort of corporate clients, like, how do I measure, like, my progress towards the SDGs? And it’s not exactly a metrics tool. So there are other tools that probably are more effective in terms of measuring performance.

Having said that under those 17 broad goals, there’s actually like more than 100 sort of sub-goals. And so there are some more specific metrics that can be incorporated into looking at how companies are progressing towards sustainability. But the main point is, on a macro level, something that has broad adoption and broad engagement. It’s something that’s well received and people actively see that they’re, they’re working on these. I think where the power really comes in is to be able to say, here’s how I’m hitting such a cross section of these things. So if you look at sort of one of those topics, you know, and drill down, you could easily, kind of like be in a bit of a rabbit’s hole of, like, deep specialization.

But when you say the work that we’re doing here is meaningful, especially because it’s hitting so many of these broad goals, that’s when you know you’re on the right track and, and you don’t need to, you don’t need to be somebody who’s like spent their career in this to know that we’re having a very positive impact, because we’re addressing more than one of these societal aspirations. And I think that incorporating as much of that and asking which of this is relevant to us into your whole raison d’être, or your, your purpose for why you are utilizing events to better your community, then you’re, you’re on the right track, and you’re, you’re creating something that’s inspiring for people to want to be part of, whether it’s part of your team or part of your audience, or as partners who want to help you achieve those goals.

SR I think the key word when it comes to incorporating the SDGs, and you brought it up, is overlapping goals, making sure that these goals overlap. And as you said, that’s when you know you are on the right track.

LR Yeah, and I think we mentioned diversity and inclusion earlier in this conversation, and certainly I include a number of thoughts, perspectives, and I hope some practical steps around that topic that I’ve learned from my own experiences, as well as interviewing other experts on the subject, but in within the world of diversity and inclusion, the word intersectionality comes up a lot, and it’s because I think that sometimes we can be on a path towards something that we feel is going to be a positive change.

And it kind of like becomes more of a sort of surface level kind of change that we’ve created. And just one example within the world of diversity inclusion is that when people talk about inclusion, often they’ll go to sort of what’s easiest, which is gender diversity. And so, people sort of start to develop a whole bunch of metrics around saying, Are we creating equal opportunities for you know, people who identify as you know, male, female or different genders and, and that’s good, but like also recognizing that if you know somebody has a broad range of barriers that keep them from actively participating in the mainstream economy.

You know, if they have been born into a different socio economic demographic, if they are a person of color, if they’re a single parent, if they have a disability, like there are so many more barriers that, like a very simple program that’s just measuring the gender breakdown of the workforce isn’t going to actually create the kind of change that we can achieve if we look at these things in that sort of overlapping or intersectional kind of way and, and that really speaks to systems thinking, which I know doesn’t come easily for a lot of people, but I think creating partnerships that help us to engage in the communities that are relevant to us, relevant to our audiences, relevant to the kind of impact that we want to have, then we’re creating learning as we go and we’re maximizing the potential impact we could have.

EP I have one last question. I think Sara has one too. But my question for you is your experience in the events industry. What’s something you’ve noticed, or you think that the industry hasn’t quite gotten in terms of, you know, being more thoughtful about how they’re, you know, creating their spaces, creating their events? What’s something that, like maybe they wouldn’t think of? I mean, think of immediately, of like, oh, this is something that we should probably think about in terms of how we are being green and such. Is there anything in mind that you have that you could, you know, offer up for us?

LR Yeah, thank you. And there’s sort of three key things that I think are important, especially when people are getting started in this direction, and one of them is to really think through the power of their supply chains. And when you look at RFPs or requests for proposals that people send out into the market, I think one important question to ask yourself is, what is the signal I’m sending to that market? Is the signal I’m sending you better be the cheapest. Is that the signal I want to be sending, because I can tell you that 80% more than 80% of the RFPs that are out there are sending that exact message, you better be the cheapest, or else we’re not going to look at you.

You don’t even have a chance of competing. And so for an organization that sees themselves as an innovator, as somebody that’s working with disadvantaged communities, as somebody that’s deeply committed to measuring their environmental footprint and create solutions around circular economy. They’re seeing those RFPs and saying, I don’t think I should bid on here. I’m looking for, you know, say, like a government client that might be mandated to actually go in this direction. And so if you’re saying that, no, you know what, we have the potential to integrate more sustainability solutions into our purchasing decisions. If you just have any language around that in your RFPs, you’re sending a strong signal to the market that they can compete. They they should compete and submit a bid for your work so that that’s one key thing is think about the market signals you’re sending through your procurement and RFP processes.

The other thing that I think people can really take away is the idea that measuring your greenhouse gas emissions does not need to be rocket science. There are a number of free online tools. I certainly write about it and some of my favorite tools in my book and actually taking a first crack at measuring your greenhouse gas emissions, and start with your scope one to scope two emissions, which is really your direct impact, as opposed to scope three, which is your whole supply chains impact, but but measuring on your direct greenhouse gas footprint is is not that hard to do, and it it just gives you a baseline so that you can sense over time, whether your footprint is going up or down, and you can start to budget for opportunities that help you to bend the curve of that trajectory if it’s going up.

And the the final thing is around food and beverage, there’s, there’s so much that can be done in terms of limiting the impact of food and beverage and and I could say a lot about that, because it’s kind of a big topic, but one simple solution that I like to remind people is that food waste is such a huge issue for events and for society more broadly, and that it is an underutilized service to have all these food rescue programs that will literally come to your door and take your food waste away. And I’ve heard too often the idea that, well, we don’t want to expose our organization to liability if somebody were to, like, get sick because of that food waste.

But there are a number of legislative protection acts that are across almost all jurisdictions in North America that protect food donors from that liability, assuming there’s some simple steps you do to make sure like the food is like refrigerated if it’s out for a long time, for example, and a food rescue service that you can call ahead of time for your event and say, I’m probably going to have some food waste, and just want you at the ready to come pick it up. And we’ll give you a heads up, let you know what the volume is, so you can be ready for that. And they can also give you some tips. Hey, make sure that it’s packaged in this way. You know that you don’t just like, have it, like, out all day, like in a buffet style, you know, keep some of it refrigerated in this way, they can give you those tips so that they can pick it up and make sure it gets to the social agencies that the food donations can go to, and you can use that as a way to talk about the positive impact you’ve had just from the leftover foods.

SR Yeah, thank you for breaking it down that way. I think that that is you explained that really beautifully. So thank you. I do want to pop in and say that we have a ton of stories on Smart Meetings about carbon tracking and that break down scopes one, two and three really well. So we will link those stories in the podcast description if you’re interested in learning more about scopes and getting started on carbon tracking. F

For now, I do have one final question for you, Leor, and in your book, you wrote a little bit about Edmonton and one of their wonderful, wonderful people, Melissa Radu. So surprise, surprise, she’s actually going to be coming up in the next segment of this podcast to talk about this incredible regenerative tourism project that she through Visit Edmonton and Connect Seven Group embarked on together, and we’ll save that for a couple of minutes from now, but Leor, I’m really interested in hearing about how you connected with Melissa, and how you guys have worked together.

LR I’m so glad that you have Melissa coming on to the show. She’s one of my favorite people, and somebody that I really look to as an expert in this space, and I’ve learned a lot from her. I’ve quoted her in the book. She features pretty strongly in there, as does the work of Explore Edmonton. I came across her because so many people recommended me to her. When I was doing the research for this book, they told me she is somebody who is a thought leader in this space. So I was, it was a pleasure to connect with her, and she’s been unbelievably supportive, both in the process of writing the book and in the launch process.

We partnered on a little launch event in Edmonton recently, and she was a pretty significant part of that launch. So I really appreciated all the support. And one thing that I’m really excited about that I like to tell people about when it comes to the work of explore Edmonton is the fact that, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. If you are organizing an event at one of the venues that they own and operate, they can help you limit the environmental footprint of that event in number of different ways.

But regardless of whether you’re using their venue or not, if you’re organizing an event anywhere in the city of Edmonton, they have a free service to help you think through some of the impacts that your event could have, and in particular, help you measure your greenhouse gas emissions and then facilitate the process to purchase carbon offsets on your behalf. Like that’s a free service that explore Edmonton offers that I would love to see happen in every city, and I would love to see more event organizers take advantage of that service.

SR Yeah, the people that Explore Edmonton have done incredible work, so I think from here, we are going to jump into that conversation and learn a little bit more about these amazing things that Edmonton and Connect Seven Group have done.

EP Thank you, Leor, so much for coming on, and and listeners, find his book: How We Gather Matters. There was so much information that we I couldn’t bring up because we don’t have time, but I was very overwhelmed by like, words I didn’t even know existed, or terms I didn’t even know existed, that you shared in this book. And it kind of boggled my mind a little bit, quite honestly. So I think anyone who has the remote interest in being green and being thoughtful about the planet in any capacity and events, check out this book again. It’s How We Gather Matters. Sara, if you want to hold up the cover for the visual aspect of the show

SR Absolutely.

EP Yeah, there we go.

SR How We Gather Matters. You can see my little light reflecting on it. And subtitle is Sustainable Event Planning For Purpose and Impact. That’s by Leor Rotchild.

LR Thank you so much.

EP Thank you again, so much for coming on. No, we really, this was great. I really appreciate you making time for this conversation.

SR And it is a great book, by the way, your first book, I’m sorry, but, it’s very well written. We are writers.

EP Snap, snap, snap.

LR Oh, man, thank you. I really appreciate it. This has been such a pleasure to connect with you. And I guess as a parting thought, I just wanted to encourage people to visit my website leor.ca and certainly let me know if you’re interested in having me as a speaker at your next event. I’d love to do more of that and check out the book.

SR Thank you.

EP He’s available for events, so check out his website, and hopefully you guys can connect in the future over all these great topics. Thank you again. Leor, we really appreciate your time and thoughts, and hopefully, maybe in a future capacity, we can have you back on the show

LR Anytime, anytime. Absolutely.

EP Awesome.

LR Thank you.

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EP Okay, Sara, so you teed us up at the very end of that last conversation. Can you tell us a little bit more about who we’re talking to next?

SR Absolutely. So I met these two fabulous ladies at Destinations International in Tampa Bay this last July, and I, you know, didn’t really have anything major going on at that moment, so I sort of just wandered into this session, and it was titled Regenerative Tourism. I was like, well, that sounds interesting. So I wandered into this session, and what I saw, what I learned there, had me, like sitting in my seat, like bouncing up and down. Oh my gosh. I cannot wait to talk to them after this. I hope I get a chance to talk to them after this, because they essentially introduced the audience to this regenerative tourism strategy that they’ve implemented in Edmonton, and it was established through partnership between the two of them.

So Melissa Radu is the executive director of destination stewardship at Explore Edmonton, and along with Alexis Kereluk, who is the co-founder of Connect Seven Group, together, they  created this program that absolutely has transformed Edmonton and really created this very lasting, continually developing program that reframes sustainability from something like we should be tracking carbon emissions and trying to reduce them to something that affects the whole person. And it’s not just about being more sustainable in our actions and doing better down the line.

It’s about establishing practices and programs that are going to heal harm that has been done. So it really is about regeneration, regrowth, and I’m gonna save more explanation for Alexis and Melissa, because they really explain what they’ve done very, very beautifully, but they have just created something so impressive and inspiring, and I hope that it inspires you. Let’s jump into it.

[music]

SR Hello. Smart Start, folks. We are so excited you’re back and so excited for this episode. I saw these ladies speak at Destinations International talking about a absolutely phenomenal sustainability effort. Sustainability is kind of just the hit term. It’s just the start. So I’m honestly just gonna dig into it and introduce them. So this is Melissa Radu from Visit Edmonton, and Alexis Kereluk from Connect Seven. And they really have just taken strides towards making a world that is more environmental, more accessible. Yeah, we’re just gonna start. I’m so excited. Melissa and Alexis, thank you so much for being here today. I literally saw you guys speak at Destinations International, and I approached you right after I was like, Hi, do you want to be on my podcast?

Alexis Kereluk Thanks for having us.

Melissa Radu Thank you.

EP So when Sara got back from our trip, she bee-lined for me. She’s like, I have guests for this show.

SR No, I actually like I texted I texted her. I texted her, like, pretty much immediately. It was like, hi, I found guests. They’re awesome. We need them.

AK It was that intriguing?

SR I was so interested.

EP Yes.

SR Yes, and I’m I’m a big fan of, like, sustainability things, so.

MR Thank you. We’re happy to be here.

SR So do you guys want to start off by just kind of introducing yourself,  your roles with your respective companies?

MR Yeah, maybe I’ll go first, if anyone okay. My name is Melissa Radu. I’m the Executive Director of destination stewardship with Explore Edmonton. Explore Edmonton is Edmonton’s destination marketing and management organization. So very simply put, we try to bring people to the Edmonton region to visit and to spend time and really get a, you know, a sense of what Edmonton has to offer as a place culturally and socially and just experientially. I’ve been a sustainability professional for over a decade now, and I started doing this when almost everybody working in sustainability was kind of doing it off the side of their desk and not getting paid to do it. And at some point, I think we all had the realization that this needs to be a paid job. We really need people who are going to be like, head on tackling things like the climate emergency and just really working in the space of environmental and social and governance work. So now I do this full time. I have a great team, and I get to work with awesome partners like Alexis.

AK Hi everyone. I’m Alexis Kereluk. I am a co-owner of Connect Seven Group. So we focus on sustainable events and sustainable tourism. So strategy development, destination development, event development, we started our organization with the intent of using tourism and events to create change, since we just think that that’s there’s so much tourism and events can do to help cities and communities. And one of the big projects we manage is we manage the Global Destination Sustainability Movement for North America. So it’s a European program. Global program started in Europe. We brought it to North America in 2019, and that’s where we actually are right now, at the GDS forum in Bruges. So yeah, we work with destinations and event partners to help create strategy and implement change.

SR Amazing, awesome. I’m so proud of you guys.

EP This is awesome. This show definitely has everyone everywhere, because I’m in the office in Sausalito. Sara is in Seattle. You guys are doing your thing. So we’re we’re literally everywhere all at once, which is kind of great.

SR Yeah, yeah. I’m in Bellevue right now, actually, on a media trip. Shout out to the Hyatt Regency, Bellevue. Thank you for hosting me. All right. So I think, just to kind of start off, for somebody who doesn’t know the term, how would you define regenerative tourism?

Well, we’re pros at this by now. You know, sustainability has really been a buzzword for a little while now, and it’s used kind of all over the place right now, and sometimes in some pretty loosely related contexts. So we’re starting to gain an understanding of sustainability being, you know, let’s not do further damage to the planet. Let’s make sure we’re kind of keeping things, sustaining things as they are. But we really can’t keep thinking that way, because we’ve done a lot of damage to the planet, and a lot of our behaviors are creating negative impact. So if we’re really going to be ambitious about how our industry can create change, we have to look to start restoring and leaving things better than they actually were when we found them. So our regenerative tourism strategy that was developed in partnership with C7 and the GDS movement, is really about just that. How can we make sure that when visitors and events are coming to the Edmonton region, that they’re leaving things just a little bit better than the way they found it? They’re giving back in some way through their actions.

AK Yeah, I think the only thing that I would add to that is people ask, especially if they’re at the very beginning of this, or coming from outside the industry, like, is it a linear journey? So are we looking at sustainability first and then regeneration? Do you have to do sustainability first and then regeneration? And I think the one important piece to that is it’s not that. It’s more of circular thinking and different destinations or companies in the industry can focus on different parts of that. So it may be about minimizing impacts. It may be about creating benefit. Hopefully it’s about both, is what ultimate regeneration is, but there’s different aspects, and you could be working within regeneration in so many different areas of that or along that journey. I could say

SR That’s super interesting. I actually hadn’t heard the term regenerative tourism before I saw you guys speak. It was always like, the buzzword sustainability, and it’s always this issue of, like, people are kind of sick about hearing the buzzword sustainability,

AK Yep.

MR Yeah.

SR Yeah. I mean, so, but we go into regenerative tourism, and it’s this whole it’s a different realm. But that doesn’t mean that it is separate from sustainability. That doesn’t mean it goes after sustainability. I love that you brought up that point.

AK Exactly. Yeah. And terminology is a big thing. It’s, it’s, it’s probably one of our challenges in the industry as we try and tackle sustainability and regeneration and doing better and yeah.

EP So as someone who who wasn’t there for this wonderful event that Sara went to and wouldn’t like, have these phrases, how do you explain this to someone who’s not silly, doesn’t really have the background to understand what it actually means, i.e. me.

MR So we all, like most people, like to travel. There’s a lot of people that don’t. But, you know, I would say a good percentage of people like to take trips for leisure. And it’s, it’s not very often that I think people pause and think, Well, this is a great place that I’ve just come to. But you know, how are my decisions actually leaving an impact here, right? Am I supporting local businesses? Am I engaging authentically with culture, you know, and trying to learn something maybe about that particular culture? Where I then leave with a like having learned a greater appreciation for something also, you know, what is the environmental impact of our travel behaviors, right? So typically, you have to get to a place, you have to, you know, stay somewhere, and then you’ll go experience and probably dine and maybe do some shopping.

So I think it’s really about a mentality change, and we as the tourism industry play a role as well as visitors do. Right? We want visitors to be thinking about these types of things, but we also want to make sure that there’s experiences and options available that enable that. So for instance, if you go to a destination and you want to walk or take public transit or take active transit. It’s really up to the destination to make sure that those options are readily accessible for you. And you know, you know, because you’re not, you’re not the resident of that area, so you might not know where you can actually get a bike for your trip, or what’s the best way to take public transit. So the destinations really play a role as an enabler. I would say,

AK Yeah.

MR right?

EP Okay.

AK And I would say, you know, as visitors, maybe, I don’t wanna say back in the day, but maybe previously, like, there’s been kind of this notion that we’re on vacation and we’re going into a destination to take, take, take to like we’re on vacation so we can behave however we want, and it’s not our home. And that’s, you know, I think, a much older way of thinking of vacation and travel. But it’s, it’s about, instead going to a destination and saying, what, you know, what does me being here mean for the community? Where can I support the community? What do I need to be careful of like, if you’re thinking about something as simple as, what type of sunscreen you use in the oceans, or something like that, what like, what do I have to help protect here? And how can I, you know, be a part of this community and make this community better. And to Melissa’s point, that’s only an option if, if destinations help create that foundation.

MR And you know, travelers are starting to shift their mindsets. People want to be more purposeful, but they also need to have that awareness. So I think, you know, we have to trust that people ultimately want to do the right thing. So, you know, Alexis is talking about how that dynamic is kind of changing this old way of thinking about being a tourist, coming and then leaving, and not really thinking about your impact. But we have to have that hope

AK Yeah.

MR That people want to make the decisions in a more mindful way, or else we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.

AK I mean, have you ever committed to a destination that has like, a pledge for you to sign, or kind of a bit of an education piece when you get to a destination, or maybe get to a hotel or a cultural experience or anything like that, I think that’s like that. That’s kind of something that happens nowadays, a bit to, like, educate the visitor as soon as you get in like, this is what you’re walking into. This is why we’re here. This is who we are as a community, and this is what you can do to support us, and, you know, be welcomed here and provide benefit here.

SR Really interesting.

AK Essentially, is really kind of a piece of also changing the traveler’s mind and educating the traveler.

EP So I guess in that respect, if you have like, a large group coming in, like 1000s. How are you able to do that in a way where it feels like authentic and not just like here, here’s information and drop on you kind of thing? Like, how does that work?

MR I mean, this is really the function of a destination marketing organization. So your listeners may not know this actually, so this could be, this could be interesting for them. Every major, or most major destinations, have an organization that is tasked with this exact thing to make sure that we can authentically represent destinations in the way that the community wants them to be represented. And you know, that’s really what we have to do at the DMO. So we have brilliant teams of marketing people who work with international markets all over the world to make sure that that information can get in front of consumers, not just before they’re planning their trip, but also in the days that they’re coming and then also when they’re in destination. And technology is really our, you know, our biggest strength in that way people typically will plan their trips digitally now. And so there’s a there’s a lot of different tactics we can employ to make sure that the right message gets to the right consumer. It’s not a perfect equation. It’s always being refined. It’s always being worked on. But, you know, there is this big engine kind of behind the scenes that is, that is making sure that, on top of kind of social media, and however you get your information, you can find those types of sources of information.

SR So essentially, you guys implemented this regenerative tourism, I don’t want to say approach. It was like a giant program, right?

AK Strategy, yeah.

SR So would you guys kind of Yeah, strategy, regenerative tourism, strategy. So could you, since we have limited time, very briefly describe the overarching approach

EP Theme?

SR Of this theme, yeah, broad strokes, yes, thank you.

MR Well, we had, we had a great guide in our journey, because every formation of a strategy takes a lot of work, right? It’s like an 18 month project. You need to deeply engage your community in and all different people and voices in your community. So that was kind of the first step. We had Alexis and team to help facilitate that process. In the end, what we wanted to do was come up with a strategy that would intentionally address the issues that we have in Edmonton, in our destination. Because if you think about around the world, what sorts of things environmentally or socially need to be fixed. Need to be restored. It’s going to be a different answer regard, like, depending on where you are.

So for instance, if you go to a seaside destination that has a lot of like, ocean pollution or shoreline pollution, maybe one of the things they need to fix is that marine pollution issue. If you go to a place where maybe they don’t have a lot of regulation around workforce, like, maybe some of the issues that need to be fixed is like circulating around fair pay or human rights, right? So the first thing we need to do is, like, diagnose that in Edmonton, what is not going great that we really want to try to use tourism as a mechanism to help solve so that was super important.

We came up with a pretty ambitious strategy, and it has five pathway areas. The first is to decarbonize and restore nature. The second is to help transform mobility. The third was about investing in people and communities, which really has a lens on Indigenous reconciliation and equity, diversity and inclusion. The fourth is about purposeful growth and innovation. So like using technology, but also developing in a way that we know is good for people and the planet. And then the last is about leveraging events for change. A big part of tourism is major events, people coming in flux in the 1000s. We really want to make sure that those events are being planned in, you know, a responsible way. So those are kind of like the five bucket areas.

AK See how well she has that memorized, like, that’s how much she’s working in it every day now.

SR Yeah,

EP Very impressive.

SR That was very beautifully presented. I also think I just want to, like, shout out that sustainability really isn’t just about like being environmentally friendly to our listeners, like it’s not about just reducing your carbon footprint. It has so many realms. Like, if you look at the UN SDGs, which are an amazing resource for understanding the sort of dynamic impact of sustainability and all of these realms that it exists in, you can see that it’s about food security, it’s about people having jobs. It’s about quality of life for human beings, wherever they live. So I think that that’s just like a really, really important point. And I think that your five goals demonstrate that super well. So I just want to shout out the UN SDGs,

MR Oh, you did that. That was very interesting. You were paying attention, Sara, at the session!

SR Okay, so I write, I write on sustainability for smart meetings. So I’m a big fan. I’ve done ton of research. Big fan. I’m, like, actually kind of fan-girling that you guys are here.

EP So my question for you is, since you’ve since this has started, what, what have you seen happen? Like, the outcomes of this work that you’ve been doing? Like, what’s something that you can be like, we this has happened. This happened. This happened that we can like, show is like this works, and other spots should also be doing this as well.

AK Can I just say something that, because that’s going to be your answer. But I think one thing that’s so important to mention before she mentions what’s happened from that, is there’s a level of engagement like Melissa touched on that you have to take care of when developing this strategy. And our level of engagement with with people that wouldn’t, with groups and representatives and community that wouldn’t normally be considered in a tourism strategy, was so high, which brought, you know, brought forward all of those issues and solutions, and we couldn’t have got there without that. And that kind of curtailed into building a task force, like a diverse task force that went on to be part of this strategy, and from there, Explore Edmonton did an incredible job of launching and communicating this strategy. And both those factors, like the pre of that engagement and the post of the launching and the communication of it are often where outcomes can get stopped if those aren’t done properly, then a strategy could sit on a shelf or not get buy in. And so there was a whole launch of this strategy that took place with these groups and the community and the industry, and because of that, there was a bunch of results.

SR Amazing.

MR We’re very much in this journey, and I don’t want to limit it to just talking about the results from Edmonton, though I will happily talk a little bit about that, because you have some really great global agencies too. So this is a 2050 strategy. We still have lots of work to do, but in saying that, we’re just a year in and we’re still really proud of some of the work that’s happened. So we have formed an Indigenous advisory circle. They meet with us quarterly, because to do Indigenous tourism development right, you need lots of different Indigenous voices from different nations, so that has been formed, and they help to advise us. We also have an Indigenous tourism development person on staff who is just really focused on economic reconciliation through tourism. So that one we’re really proud of.

We’re doing some interesting stuff around culinary tourism development. So right now, we’re launching into an immersive program where we can bring culinary tourism operators, so that would be somebody who, like, operates a food tour, or does, like, a kind of tasting experience, maybe, or like a distillery, and they’re going to go through a several month long experience development program through the lens of sustainable food systems. So we love that. We know that people, when they come to a destination, they want to hear about how the food, the particular foods in the region, are grown and produced. So, you know, there’s this really great link between sustainability and agriculture there we’re also working on right now, we have a program where people who come for events can use public transportation at no cost. One of the big things we’re partnering with our city on is around the fleet vehicle transition. So not only can people take public transportation, which we know is a lower emissions form of travel, but now our busses are actually going to be electric or hydrogen busses, so it just makes it even greener to get around.

SR Oh! Wow!

EP That’s a big deal.

SR That’s huge stuff.

MR There’s lots of great things.

SR That’s an enormous deal.

AK And that takes so much work like that’s just you have to be in touch with the city and with the transportation departments and probably a whole bunch of other stakeholders. That’s not a small it’s not a small piece.

MR And then I think the biggest one that I just want to mention is around procurement. So in the tourism industry, we buy a lot of goods and services, and it’s really important that we’re purchasing with purpose. So this year, Explore Edmonton launched a social procurement policy, which makes sure that we prioritize purchasing from priority businesses, so businesses that are indigenous owned, that are small businesses, that are owned by equity deserving minority groups or entrepreneurs, and that also share in our environmental values. So that one is really important, because, like, who’s in your supply chain as a business is really a reflection of of you, right?

SR That’s really awesome.

EP You guys are really doing it. Yeah, that’s really awesome to hear.

SR It really is. I’m interested in hearing from Alexis, because Melissa mentioned that Alexis has some really good global examples. So could you dig in a little bit more to what Connect Seven Group does?

AK Yeah. So we, we, essentially, we have two sides for business. So as I mentioned, we really, we take on projects that we kind of feel fit under, using tourism and events to create change. And so there’s, there’s a whole event side, as Melissa talked about events for good, where we do focus on sustainable event strategies, helping clients bring impact to destinations and to their companies through events. But for the sake of this, I’ll talk mostly on the destination side, and it is, we do work with clients to create strategies like this from the bigger picture, long term strategies, but we also, a lot of destinations then don’t know what comes next, like, don’t have the resources or the experience to implement those strategies.

So we do a lot of action plans, like it can be, you know, two year action plans to help destinations take that next step of what this means and what to do. And part of that is, we mentioned, as I said, we manage the global destination sustainability movement for North America, and that starts with a benchmarking program where destinations, destinations all over the world, hundreds of destinations all over the world, go through our program and answer 70 indicators about regenerative tourism, and they get a score back and a ranking globally. Actually, tonight is the awards night too. It only happens once a year. So tonight we’ll be announcing where those 100 destinations were they ranked.

SR Oh my gosh.

EP Oh, wow.

SR If you guys are watching on YouTube,

EP Breaking news!

SR The awards night, Yeah, breaking news.

AK Thank you! We’re dressed up.

SR Sorry, we’re journalists. If you guys are watching on YouTube, that’s why they’re wearing the pretty dresses.

AK Well, yeah, actually in your time zone tomorrow, everything will be, will be there. Now, I totally lost my train of thought on that. So one thing that we did. We got Destination Canada involved two years ago. Or I should say, Destination Canada took the initiative to benchmark up to 20, so 16 to 20 Canadian cities to see where they were and how to make change in, say, one to five years. And it was, you know, Canadian cities are having a hard time understanding where they fit in regeneration and sustainability and what to do about it. And this program just just piloted all of that, like, just put everybody on a path of, now we get it.

Now we know what to do. Let’s get some action plans in place. Let’s get some strategies in place. Let’s hire some partners. Let’s work collaboratively. The way Canadian destinations work together to make change has been really impressive. So that’s, you know, a really good example of seeing Canada, or a country, we actually did this in the UK as well, but seeing a country rise together and figure out what it means and how to improve on that and then implement that, and there’s a whole bunch of pilot projects that we’ll work on to implement that, some similar to what Melissa’s talking about, and, you know, carbon accounting strategies and things like that, funding projects for sustainability. So lots of unique projects that could be one off, pilot projects that grow and get adapted,

SR Awesome.

EP Hmm.

SR So we always finish off by asking, what’s in your toolbox, which essentially means, you know, what is a piece of advice, a fancy tip, a lesson learned along the way that helped you either build your career or create this regenerative tourism strategy. I think in particular, what I would be interested in hearing from you guys is, what do you want destinations to know that are interested in following in your footsteps in this journey?

MR I think for me, there’s two things here. It’s starting at the beginning and defining what it really means to be successful. I have a very good friend. Her name is Mackenzie Brown. She’s an Indigenous woman, a very outstanding Indigenous woman in Alberta, and she once used the term “beautiful KPIs.”

SR Aw, I love that!

EP Beautiful KPIs.

MR And I use it all the time. KPIs are key performance indicators. And I think for our journey, it was really taking it back to the beginning and questioning, what does it mean for our industry to be successful? Because it’s not just about economic impact. It’s about how that economic impact is equitably distributed within our community, and also how we’re serving the beneficiaries in Edmonton, which is the residents, the people, the businesses and the ecosystems. And so we really wanted to sort of recreate what we wanted to have as an outcome, and that was really the foundation for this journey.

The other thing that I think should be in everybody’s toolbox, listeners, us, you, is the power to curate and design your travel experiences with purpose in mind. That’s a good one. It’s very easy to go online and just pick the hotel that’s cheapest or that’s closest to what you want to go see, but it’s just as easy to Google “eco-accommodation,” or what are the sustainability practices of where I’m staying. Where can I eat that features local or sustainable cuisine? Where can I shop, where it’s actually handicrafts or souvenirs or apparel that’s made in destination, using sustainable materials like, we can all ask these questions, we just have to remember to do it. So put that in your toolbox, people.

SR Absolutely and to do so, I think I just want to mention you can also use AI these days.

AK Yes, yes, totally.

SR It’s a great tool. It can put together a super comprehensive list for you, or you can reach out to your CVB or DMO.

MR Yes.

SR Melissa could give you some great recs if you’re going to Edmonton.

MR Yeah, hit us up.

AK Melissa’s was so, you know, she finished it off with like that change of mindset for the visitor. And I think that’s at the foundation of what we need. So don’t really know that you could top that one. What I would say to destinations, to anybody looking to get into sustainability, regeneration or to progress on that, but especially in tourism, it is all about innovation right now. Like, I don’t think the tourism industry has ever had so much leeway to try new things. What we did was not smooth, like it didn’t, our approach didn’t work perfectly. We had to go back. We had to refine things. We had to change things. And this is the chance for us to do, I always say pilot projects.

This is our opportunity to try things, get things wrong, rebuild them, and I don’t think we’ve ever had that leeway in tourism, and that’s how everybody’s building regeneration. And so this is the chance to innovate, to try and it’s okay if it doesn’t work the first time, you’ll learn something from it, and you will find something that works. You’ll find many tools for your toolbox through your innovation.

MR Maybe it’s like courage, like, put courage to try something new in your toolbox.

EP Hmm. Yeah.

SR I love that!

MR But like,

EP Be different.

MR Like letting go the fear of kind of failure.

AK Yeah. And tradition! Tourism has been so traditional.

SR Right.

AK So this is our time to think differently and have the courage to break tradition.

MR Yeah.

SR Right. And what you guys have been doing is so innovative, and it really does take a lot of courage to sort of embark on a journey like this. I think letting go of a fear of failure is really important when it comes to taking on a giant regenerative project,

EP For sure.

SR And it’s just it’s not worth it to let fear hold you back, because our Earth, our people, our animals, our planet, we need this. We just do. Like it’s time to not let fear hold us back anymore.

AK I don’t know about you, Melissa, but when we co-founded Connect Seven Group with this purpose, we had so much pushback, and I didn’t know if it would ever if it would ever work, if there’d ever be a market for it. And exactly that just took a couple of clients to come along with us, and that was it. And then people realized. How much our world needs us, our planet needs us. Animals need us. We need to change.

EP Yeah.

SR Right. And like, I just, I’m so impressed with what you guys have done. I think that it is such an immensely relevant topic. And like, once again, sustainability is not one realm. It is all about people thriving, animals thriving, the earth thriving, creating a good, peaceful, safe life for people and animals on the planet and everything. So gosh,

MR I think you said it the best! You could answer what we’re just mentioning.

SR I’m super I’m super passionate about this topic. I don’t want to say this to like fearmonger. I just want to say it to really drive home the point, if we aren’t committed to sustainability. If we’re not committed to Regeneration, we cannot thrive. Our world cannot thrive. It is so important, and we cannot stop telling this story. So keep telling the story. Get inspired by Melissa and Alexis and what they’ve done. Bring it home to your people, to your companies. Yeah, yeah, I’m getting emotional. I’m sorry. It’s just it’s so important. We cannot let go. We cannot let fear hold us back. This work needs to happen right now.

AK It’s urgent. That’s true. It’s urgent.

EP So thank you both so much for being here. I realize this is not as long as we would like it, obviously, because you guys are so amazing, and we would love to just, like, ask you more questions.

SR I would, like, actually keep you guys talking for like four hours, if I could.

EP I think they know.

AK We have an awards ceremony to go to!

MR Part two!

AK Yeah, a part two, we can do a part two!

SR Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, you guys, well deserved

EP More than able to do that for you guys. But we will let you go because, because we know you have a fancy night ahead of you, and we want to let you enjoy that. So thank you again, so much for being here. Sara from Seattle, me from Sausalito, appreciate your presence on this show.

SR We do. You guys from Bruges.

AK Thank you!

MR Thank you both for having us. Thank you.

AK Bye!

SR Thank you so much. It’s been wonderful.

[radio tuning sound]

EP That was really fun to talk to them. Quick, quick, I don’t know if it’s a disclaimer. We got them at the beginning of a gala. So it was a quick interview, because they had things to do that were gala related. So hopefully in the future, maybe we’ll have them back, just to kind of get into a little bit more, because I feel like we only scratched the surface of that a little bit.

SR Oh yeah.

EP But hopefully we’ll have them back for a deeper dive into what they’ve been doing in their area.

SR And if you want to shout out, please bring these people back. I want another episode with them, you can reach us,

EP So Sara can fangirl, appropriately.

SR So Sara can fangirl some girl some more. You can reach us on LinkedIn. You can share the podcast, email us at editor@smartmeetings.com, and we would be happy to oblige.

EP You can also find us on Instagram, @smartmeetings. You can find us on Facebook at Smart Meetings, any social media outlet, we are available just, you can find us. Let us know how you feel, how you think, and we will provide. As we head into our new season, which I can’t believe we just finished our first season, by the way, we are moving on up.

SR We are moving on up. We have so many fun episodes planned. You guys have no idea what’s coming, but it’s getting smarter.

EP It’s getting smarter by the minute. So we hope you all have a wonderful, safe and joyous holiday season

SR And we’re also wishing you a very smart start to the new year. Pun intended. Pun completely intended.

EP How long were you saving that for?

SR Like, 30 or 40 seconds, yeah.

EP okay, okay, okay, that’s cool. But yeah, we look forward to providing you with more content in the 2025 season, oh, my God. And again, if you have any specific interests that you would like us to explore, please just reach out and let us know again, like Sara said, editor@smartmeetings.com, social media, all those things, but in the meantime, thank you for joining us, and we hope to see you soon, and you belong here.

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