Can you imagine building a luxury resort in a small fishing village, yet incorporating values where community, leadership and service are redefined? Today, I talk with Michael Schubert, cofounder of Telunas Resorts and certified speaker, trainer and coach with the John Maxwell Team, to hear more about his fascinating journey as an expat entrepreneur in Indonesia.
Episode Links
Luxury Resort Business & Community Impact
Mike Schubert and his friends may have stumbled upon the idea of buying remote islands in Indonesia, but the route they took to make it happen was everything but random. The intentionality of values and community business mottos has turned employees into leaders, consumers into volunteers, and businessmen into agents of change.
Michael and his business partners learned how to change the way they asked questions to locals. Yes or no questions got things done, but definitely not in the most beneficial way. A simple transformation in the way they asked made a world of difference in finding the answers that helped the most.
This was such an inspiring interview with Michael! I’m so excited to share with you all that we discussed. Since Michael co-founded these luxury resorts over 15 years ago, he draws from a significant amount of history and valuable lessons learned. These are just some of the things we talked about in our fascinating discussion:
- Why he and his business partners took the slow road to set up their resorts
- The surprising amount of capital it took despite their best calculations
- How they struggled to hit the bottom line in order to maintain their their values
- The process of turning local fishing villagers into five star resort employees
- The shocking amount of volunteer hours they get from consumers
- The ways they have expanded, and the opportunities to continue to improve
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Great show! I especially resonate with two ideas – as you grow your business, you grow your community + the power of open ended questions. Thanks for such an informative and inspiring podcast.
Thanks, Joab! I agree – the recommendation to use open-ended questions was extremely helpful. We tend to bring our own assumptions into the way we do things and using open-ended questions is one way to avoid that pitfall.