Will Richardson spent £800 on a round-the-world ticket after a ten-minute chat with a travel agent, then quit his pub job and went to university. That trip shaped his career in hospitality and sustainability. He argues the best way to engage people on environmental issues is personal, timely, and matched to what they actually care about.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. I would love to be able to help you more on what it is that you are listening to and why you're listening to me. If you could click on the link in the show notes, that would be awesome because it will help me define what it is that we should be talking about on this podcast.
Somebody changed the direction of my life in about 10 minutes, and they were a travel agent. This is Sustainability Solved by Will Richardson, and this is part 5 of 7 on why I'm changing the main Sustainability Solved podcast. Last time was about who people listen to. This one is what happens when the right person tells you something at the right time. After 4 months as assistant manager at the Forester's Arms, I really had to start thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. I was saving money. I had £3,000 to £4,000 saved up from working. I was walking past a travel agency and I walked in. I spoke to the person and said, what would you do? I want to travel around the world. And they said, well, why do you not want to buy a round-the-world ticket? Ooh, that's a good idea. So I bought a round-the-world ticket there and then. £800 later, we worked out that I was flying from London to Delhi, Delhi to Bangkok, and then went overland from— to Singapore, and then Singapore over to Jakarta, and then overland through to Bali. And then Bali to Perth, where I stayed with my kind of sister, and then stayed in Australia, and then went from Sydney to New Zealand, New Zealand to Hawaii, which is a bit strange because I was in the same place at the same time because of date change, and then on to Los Angeles, and then flew from Los Angeles back to London. All for £800. Can you believe it? So, flying from London to Delhi. I had to go and get my injections and all the travel vaccinations before I left. We left enough time for me to be able to do that. And there it was. In 4 to 6 weeks' time, I was going to be traveling around the world solo. So I went back to the pub and handed in my notice and said, Right, I'm traveling around the world. It was a bit of a shock to them. When I told my parents, it was also a shock to them too. One conversation, 10 minutes long, with someone who knew their subject properly. I've sat through hundreds of hours of sustainability content since. Most of it is worthy, most of it forgotten, and almost none of it has moved away, that 10 minutes moved me. I come back partly at the request of my dad, who was a typical rags-to-riches story. He left school at 12 and made money for himself and for his family. He became a very well-known and amazing interior design architect in London, doing up houses for people like Madonna, Pierce Brosnan, and the Al-Fayed brothers of Harrods. That was the reason why we all had to go to private school. He did not have the opportunity to go to school, and so, let alone a private school. So he was really keen for us to do that. And as the oldest son with 2 younger brothers, I was really insisted upon to go to university as well. So my mum came out to visit me in Australia to really push me to go. I started applying to universities whilst there. I was not going to get in on my A-level grades— another story— so I wrote to them and told them about the experience I had had working in a pub and what I had been doing traveling. And I managed to get into Manchester Metropolitan University, Napier University, Birmingham University, And some others. So I remember being in Bundaberg and finding a person from Scotland, a person from Manchester, and a person from Birmingham. And I told them all to sell their cities to me. And the Manchester person won. Possibly a Glaswegian was the guy from Scotland, looking back on it. This is not a joke about Manchester. It is now a really, really important decision that actually gets made, not on the prospectus, not on the ranking, not on the data, on who was in the room and how well they told it. So I went to Manchester Metropolitan University and studied hospitality management with tourism. And my undergraduate thesis was on how people perceive the effects they have on the environment. Whilst partaking in sport within the Cairngorm region. The reason I chose that was we were told specifically we had to choose a subject that we were really interested in. Well, I love snowboarding and I love sustainability and the environment, so it made sense for me to do an undergraduate thesis on that subject. Weirdly, I now live in Scotland. Little did I know that I was really paving a career and a life for myself within that thesis. I was on for a first in the first year, and then I ended up getting a bit, well, shall we say, distracted. I left with a 2:2. I had quite a few jobs at university, working in warehouses, running pubs for the Compass Group, a bar in Twickenham for all the rugby matches, and bars and restaurants at the Open Golf and many other sporting events. And I used to take a lot of staff around with me. Through the summers, I worked in America, in Missouri, running another bar there. Then I went to Whistler, where I met my partner, the mother of my children, and my best friend, Laura. We parted ways after Whistler. We did not get together there. We got together 10 years later. After doing a ski season, I moved back to London, having traveled around Chile, South America, and Central America. I'd set up a wine company in Central America and set up a restaurant that is still running to this day at the Centro de Esquí and Hotel Antillanca near Osorno in Chile. Or should I say Chile? So what your organization can do today. Everybody with a sustainability responsibility has a version of my thesis. The bit of this they are actually interested in. Find out what it is and give them that part of the plan. Interest is the cheapest form of engagement there is, and it is the only one that lasts for 25 years. Next time somebody tells me I'm not bright enough and it changes the whole of the next year. The written version is on Substack. Link in the show notes. I'm Will Richardson, and this is Sustainability Solved by Will Richardson.
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