Eco-Tourism And Eco-Business In Action

With memories of fewer aeroplanes and clear skies, less traffic on the roads and lower pollution during lockdown firmly in our minds, the desire of tourists to make different choices about how they spend their holiday time is starting to emerge.

ECO-TOURISM AND ECO-BUSINESS IN ACTION WITH DEVON DENS

This is great news for eco-accommodation and glamping businesses as the industry is enjoying a surge of staycation bookings and increasing interest from investors who are looking at diversifying their portfolios into more sustainable projects.

But what about the perspective of the glamping business owner? What benefit is it to them to increase their environmental awareness, lighten their carbon footprint and strengthen the environmental ethos at the core of their business?

This episode is about the journey of business owners Jo and Ben of Devon Dens, and how they’ve taken the concerns of their community seriously and demonstrated eco-tourism in action.

This episode is about inspiring people to live differently, setting the right expectations for the guest, never deviating from your own core values, trusting your instincts, implementing as much off-grid infrastructure to make a difference and yet staying as user-friendly as possible.

Jo, co-owner of Devon Dens, and Sarah talk about water saving, solar PV systems and off-grid technology, reed bed systems for greywater, edible hedging, wildlife support, taking the time to connect with slow travel principles and how you can have robust eco-credentials whilst also running a business.

Today’s episode is brought to you by The Start Up And Grow Club, which offers an accelerator program and support group for those who want to set up their unique holiday rental or glamping businesses quickly.

The Glamping Business Podcast Shownotes

Additional Resources And Links Mentioned

Listen to the podcast here:

Want To Feature On The Business Of Glamping And Unique Holiday Rentals Podcast?

If you have something inspiring to offer the world of Glamping and Unique Holiday Rentals then get in touch with Sarah Riley and share it on the Podcast. For more information contact Sarah here.

Listen to previous episodes here:

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah Riley: With memories of fewer airplanes and clear skies, less traffic on the roads and lower pollution during lockdown firmly in our minds, the desire of tourists to make a different choice about how they spend their holiday is starting to emerge. This is great news for eco accommodation and glamping businesses. As the industry is enjoying a surge of stay-cation bookings and increasing interest for investors who are looking at diversifying their portfolios into more sustainable projects. So if you are passionate about the environment and want to build a business that doesn’t negatively impact it, but instead helps to spread a positive message and encourage others to take action too, that’s what I’m going to share with you today with the owner of Devon Dens in the Southwest UK.

Welcome to episode 43. Glamping and unique holiday rentals are surging in popularity with the growing desire of customers to book holidays that deliver an experience.

They are also the new business of choice for those wanting to improve their work life balance. How do you build a strong business like this that gives you the life you need and a great investment?

I’m Sarah Riley. And I want to share what I’ve discovered after being immersed in this industry for over 20 years, to inspire you to find out more about what’s going on. Welcome. This is the business of glamping and unique holiday rentals.

It stands to reason if you’re in this industry or thinking of entering into it, then you will have a healthy respect for mother nature and our wonderful earth. So unless you’ve buried your head in the sand recently, you will be aware of the environmental report recently published. Well, I’m not going to dwell on the content of the report, but there will be some of you who might be feeling a bit helpless about the situation, but I’m here to tell you that you’re not helpless.

There are things you can do to make a difference, and you can maintain an unwavering faith that what you do and what your business will do can make a difference. This is exactly what Joe and Ben did with Devon Dens. They realized they wanted to stand out from the crowd and stick to their robust environmental credentials by building an off-grid cabin business.

So how did they do it, and what are the consequences for the guest, and Jo and Ben when they run their business?

These are questions I asked when I chatted to her recently. And if you want to introduce some element of off grid technology or off grid systems and make your business more sustainable, you’ll want to listen to this episode. There are a few tiny little background noises in this interview, so you’ll have to excuse us, Jo and Ben run another business too.

They’re very busy people and I’m incredibly grateful that Jo gave her time to share her knowledge with us so we can all benefit. So without further ado, I’m going to hop on over to the interview now.

Sarah Riley: Okay, so when we were in lockdown, I have these amazing memories of clear skies with no airplanes and no cars. So the roads just smelled so much nicer. It just, the air smells sweeter. And I wondered if it was just me because actually I live by the coast. So it’s pretty amazing here anyway, but it’s something that I started to hear from a lot of people about how that lockdown for them was really having this impact positive impact on the environment and the color of the skies and the amount of pollution in the air that we can see on a daily basis. And it started to generate this feeling of, well, I actually didn’t think I could do something that would positively impact the environment.

You know, we all try and do our bit with recycling and everything, but actually by not using cars and not getting in an airplane over that time, we saw such a big improvement. And I think people started to realize that actually they make maybe a few more adjustments to their daily life so that they could continue to enjoy these improvements and benefits the environment.

But I don’t know what you think about that, Jo, because you have talked to me a lot about your business and what you do to help, to, reduce the impact, to your local environment directly, but also the bigger picture. And I know that you’ve been doing a lot of learning recently about tourism and environmental issues and that kind of thing. So first of all, would you, can you just tell me a little bit about the types of things that you do as a business?

Just give me a few examples of things that you think through for your tourism business and how you help to reduce your impact.

Jo Henderson: Okay. So, it’s quite a long list and I always leave things off. It usually the critical things. so we’ve come at it always knowing that we were going to have a business that, was had as low impact as possible as, as light to carbon footprint as possible. I think hospitality and tourism can have a very heavy footprint and, that isn’t how we’ve lived on it. So it was never going to be, it was, we wanted it to be the core ethos of the business business and not just something that we kind of nodded to really. so it meant that all of these, lots of these decisions and lots of these, measures had to be really considered right at the very start because then you have to put infrastructure in place. So it’s things like we are off grid for electricity.

We have solar PV for both cabins. We’ve got two cabins on site. So we’ve got PV systems, that are independent for both which comes at quite a cost. If you want to be offering people anything more than just the kind of a couple of light bulbs. And we, compost all food waste on site. we have composting toilets, so that saves 52 liters of water per person per day, cause they’re not flushing, good drinking water down the drain. Both the food waste is composted and the human urine are composted. The food waste then gets used to, feed raised beds, which in turn feeds guests, so we grow veggies and herbs that guests can then help themselves to. The human urine gets composted onsite, and that gets used to feed the fruit trees and, and all the new trees that we’ve planted there.

We have a carpentry business, so our carpentry business provides the kindling and a lot of the fire, the fire pit wood, for the business, we have a read bed system, so the dry, the gray water goes into, a set of most filters, which, take the solids away, so the food and the hair that’s, so that’s pee, dishwater and shower water that go into the gray water system, and into the most filters then into the reed beds, then into a fairly large wildlife pond, which dilutes it. And then it drops into the stream. There’s quite a lot of infrastructure that needed to be put in place at the front end of the business to ensure that we were able to do that really. We’ve put a lot of, bird boxes, bat boxes we’ve planted an edible hedge, we’ve planted a whole, a huge amount of, new trees. We have, we don’t print anything now we, we don’t have anything kind of obviously post COVID things have changed in that respect anyway, we send people there, all of the info online, we don’t have anything printed. and yeah, I probably left stacks of things out of that, that I’ll remember during this conversation.

Sarah Riley: Well, do please bring it up if you remember. I mean, that’s an amazing list. And I think a lot of other businesses would be really happy just to get one or two of those things ticked off, but there’s some really huge infrastructure things that you were thinking about doing at the front end of your businesses, you were saying. How did you go about that? Did you go to experts and get the information? Did you research it yourself? How, I mean, I know each thing is different and required a different approach, but in general, did you first seek expert help?

Jo Henderson: We did a bit of both really. We did, Ben’s very good at researching my partner, Ben, who makes the cabins and who has the real vision with regards to the, how the site was going to work practically. And he did a lot of research into, PV systems, the science that we would need. you know, you can spend months on this stuff, you know, it’s actually the information that you’re given with regards to how much energy a fridge actually uses in real terms is actually quite a difficult thing to, drill down into, when you’re transferring that knowledge into something that’s going to work with regards to a PV system. So it’s very time consuming. We have a great guy that we use a guy called Chris Rudge, who is based in south Devon.

We wanted somebody quite local to us. So if things did go wrong and they have gone wrong, it meant that he was on hand to be able to come and sort it out as quickly as possible. Because if you’ve got somebody on site, you’ve got guests in and something goes wrong with the solar PV, you know, you, you don’t have an option. You need somebody to come and respond to that quickly. So it was a little bit of both chatting with Chris, chatting with other people. We never looked at people that either live off grid or who are knowledgeable about it. And it’s just kind of been a long-term process of getting that information together and, and then knowing where you want to spend your money, because it is a considerable amount of money that you’re spending to be able to put the infrastructure in for all of those things.

Sarah Riley: And so when you were budgeting all of that, did you have a budget in mind? Did it exceed that budget?

Jo Henderson: Yeah, it probably did. I mean, to give you an idea, the cabins for us to run the cabins off grid, that the system that we have in place is 10,000 pounds, but each cabin, and that is the panels, the inverter, the solar charger, the, we’ve got a display which allows guests to be able to see really clearly how much power they have, how much power is in their batteries, how much power they are using and how much it’s charging. And we really wanted all of that to be part of it because we want people to come and, to learn and for that to be easy for them to look at that, for them to switch a catalog, we have kind of two systems in summer, we have a electric kettle, from March to October, and then when the clocks change that comes out and we put the gas kettle, back in, but you know, in the summer when you’ve got your electric capital that you press the switch, a guest can see on their display, what that 2.5 kilowatt kettle, what that does to their batteries.

So, yeah, we, it probably was more than we like and we project. It was probably more than we expected it to be, but I am very glad that is the route that we went down.

Sarah Riley: and it is an education process for those people who maybe aren’t as connected to this kind of thing. Have you had much, thoughts, communication, conversations with your guests who said things like, I had no idea until I came here exactly, you know, what I needed to do to, you know, my electricity usage, my water usage and all that kind of thing. Have you had people that have been really enlightened by this?

Jo Henderson: Yeah, we have. I mean, one of the best compliments and the nicest things we can hear is when people leave and, either at the point of leaving, if we see them before they leave or when they got home, they send me a message to say, thanks to our, stay with you. We’re making changes in our life. Wow. You know, and that’s really lovely. And that happens regularly. You know, whether it’s, realizing we’ve got a HOTBIN composter, we’ve got two HOTBIN composters, which is a process, which has a sealed unit that you put food waste in and it breaks down into compost in three months. I don’t think it is in three months to be perfectly honest. I think it takes slightly longer than that, but that’s maybe because I’m not doing it quite as correctly as I should be, but, you know, so some we’ve had people that go out, they’ve asked us with the details of, of where to get that.

And, that means that, you know, they’re dealing with their food waste. It’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. We couldn’t, be happier to hear things like that. And we don’t, you know, I’m not suggesting people go out and spend 10 grand on a PV kit. you know, but, but there are small changes that people can do, that, that do make a difference. And I think that when you start looking at those things, then you, you probably are going to continue looking at those things. You’re not just going to kind of buy your HOTBIN and you’re going to really start looking at that at the amount of food maybe you waste and where you’re buying food from and other aspects of your life. So, I think we’re very happy for people to come and just have a holiday. We try really hard to get the balance between it being, it’s an eco site and we want people to come knowing they have to respect aspects of that, but we don’t try and shove it down their throat. We want people to just come and have a nice holiday, but if at the end of that, they take away something that is going to inspire them, then that’s fantastic.

Sarah Riley: And I think that’s an eco business in action. That’s a really good balance to have because we can’t force people to do certain things, but we can certainly show, through leading, I suppose, and walking ahead of the pack and showing what’s possible, so that people do potentially follow and maybe change their actions slightly. I mean, this, for me, it’s definitely an eco business in action. And in terms of ecotourism, do you actually have many people, So you’re quite in the middle of Devon and the Southwest UK. And so, it’s not the easiest place to get to anyway where you are based. But do you actually have people who are eco tourists, so this is people who are specifically making decisions to only stay in places for their holiday and leisure time that have, a certain number of, eco credentials. Is that something that you’ve come across? or is this just, new?

Jo Henderson: No, I think as a search term, it’s definitely increasing. And, I think there are people coming to us because we are eco, unfortunately the, irony, which is obviously not lost on us is that we are, we are in the backend of nowhere in West Devon and, you can get to us by bus or train, train to Exeter and then both, but, you’ve got to be fairly dedicated. It does happen and it’s happening increasingly more. So we’ve actually, there’s a company that have had just, picked us up, to feature on their books called slow travel. And, they, they promote holidays where you do arrive by public transport. We delighted because Oak Hampton’s just getting its railway line back from Exeter, which is going to make things a lot easier. but people do tend to arrive by car. but I think that people are coming increasingly. So because we are an eco site, they have sought that out. for us, it’s a really hard thing to know. the, the compost toilet debate rages on, with Ben and I, because we were busy, we’re really busy, we’ve got great bookings, you know, right, right, through. We’ve got bookings into 2022, which is wonderful. it’s very hard for us to know, to put a figure on how many people don’t book with us, because we have a composting toilet.

Sarah Riley: You’re getting a sense of people are concerned about that.

Jo Henderson: I would suspect we do lose bookings because of that. Yeah.

Sarah Riley: But then if you were to be truly off grid, it’s very hard to be digging up to connect to the grid for this kind of thing.

Jo Henderson: For main drains and things like that. I mean, we considered it and, for us, the 52 liters of water per day per person thing is an issue. but, we could have had a clar jester or something like that if we wanted to go and flushing toilets. and, but it becomes a power issue that for, treatment, sewage treatment thing like that, it requires power, which we, we wouldn’t be able to facilitate. But yes, I would suspect we do lose, but , that’s okay. That’s fine. you know, it’s getting across to people that they are compost lose, but they are, you’ll see, from any of the reviews, I think there’s one mention on one review, which was still a five star review of the compost toilets. Nobody else, even, you know, you don’t even really notice it. So, yes, I think we, I think that market is only increasing and I think we get people, I know we get people who come because of our eco credentials. but I think we also possibly lose a segment of the demographic of the UK as well, because they don’t want to use a compost toilet. Maybe they have an experience of a compost loo that’s very different to what we’re actually providing.

Sarah Riley: But I think as well that, I mean, I advise a lot on marketing for tourism businesses and how to attract guests, and actually one of the most important things to do when you’re looking at how your business is going to magnetize, the right type of guest is to be really sure that you’re connecting and pulling close to those people, that it really suits and you’re pushing away those people who doesn’t suit, because there will be enough segments of, you know, the tourism and many, many people who will want to come and stay in an off-grid, eco-friendly site like yours. And equally, there will be a lot of people who aren’t so interested, but it’s about finding where those people are hanging out and really connecting to them, the people who are right for you and, you know, being, open that it’s not right for everybody.

And that’s absolutely fine, but, you know, you have the most amazing, really beautiful places when they’re off grid, because that desire to add the, the off-grid principles and that kind of, facility means that you can be in more outstanding areas. You can actually have a low impact business. So this means that the individual, the guest is actually benefiting from that because they’re able to stay in some places more authentic, more genuine, and just, it’s so beautiful. And I think these are little treasures, and these are definitely the benefits that certainly outweigh the slight negative of maybe having to use a compost loo instead. But I think maybe as people become used to using them more and more often in different places, and as the compost toilets become more dynamic and modern and easy to use, and people are more comfortable with it, I think it will become less and less of an issue as we go forward.

Jo Henderson: I think so as well, and yeah, I mean, the ones that we use, we, the den that we’ve just taken out, did have a separate toilet. And that was a kind of traditional double chamber compost toilets, but the ones that are in the cabins that we have now, you know, they’re internal, Ben calls them a very expensive bucket there it’s a separate Villa. And, I empty that bucket, after every set of guests there, isn’t a smell. The pee is separated. We’ve got a pee separator in that so the pee goes off down the gray water system. And really, it’s a brilliant, it’s a brilliant system. You know, people, people are fascinated by it pre COVID days. I used to really enjoy taking people around and kind of, you know, showing them the human and showing them the food waste. And, you know, they’d be astounded that the food waste, because it’s an anaerobic system. I think I’ve got that right. I always get that the wrong way. But,

Sarah Riley: No, you have.

Jo Henderson: A closed system, without air. So it’s like your gut. So it’s really smelly when you open. And actually when you go in the human loo bins, there’s nothing. Yeah. And it used to fascinate people and I would love taking people around to do that. We haven’t done this since COVID because I feel like, well, I’m, I’m kind of keeping my distance from guests to be honest, but it’s a shame cause people really, really enjoyed finding that out. Yeah.

Sarah Riley: Well, it’s all part of the education, isn’t it?

Jo Henderson: We do try, you know, we have, we don’t have a huge amount of signage around the place. We’re not, we don’t really want to go down that route where, as I know, lots of people who you talk to, so, but we’ve fully embraced the touch, stay up, which is brilliant. and all of that information is on there. So if people are interested, then they can access that really, really easily.

Sarah Riley: and I think as well, it, modern day, we were so disconnected from so many things. And one of those things is our food where it’s grown, you know, how sustainably is it produced Is it, you know, what chemicals are used to produce it, And it’s kind of the same as you know, with what happens to that food when it comes out the other end, you know, what happens How does that work? You know, we were just so detached from it. And sometimes it’s important to understand and learn how that process works.

Jo Henderson: The human urine we put on the trees, right. We would never, we can’t put it on the, the raised beds, but the food waste when that’s composted, that goes onto the raised beds. And , that in term, you know, we’ve got a polytunnel, which at the moment is just filled with produce it’s full of chard and it’s full of salads and herbs. And, you know, watching guests arrive over the last few weeks, straight out of lockdown, into sunshine in West Devon, and then walking into a polytunnel that they can pick fresh vegetables from, it’s lovely.

Sarah Riley: Are they allowed to help themselves to the bed?

Jo Henderson: Yeah.

Sarah Riley: That’s amazing. So, in all of this, because you’ve put in, so much effort to do this and set up your site and, you know, to learn from that and, and change as you’ve moved forward. And, you know, you’ve had, you’ve changed a few things around in terms of a few, rebuilds and redesigns, for your, off-grid credentials and your eco credentials. What main lessons have you learned?

Jo Henderson: To communicate as clearly as possible in advance of people coming so that they, say every, every stage from our marketing. so, you know, our website, our Facebook page, our Instagram page, any, through, to all the correspondence you have with anybody, from the booking form to introduction emails, to everything really getting across managing expectations. So, you know, going back to what we were saying about people using compost loos and stuff like that, I would hope that anybody that is arriving at Devon Dens knows what they’re coming to. I think in the early days, you know, when we were starting now, I don’t, I would suspect that there was some people came and one and tightly aware, not fully of the limitations. We did have somebody ask if they could bring a microwave, it was a friend of ours, which was quite interesting.

And, you know, we’ve had people come and, with hair straighteners and things like that. And you know, now actually the PV kit that we’ve got in there, it would cope with it, but it’s better if you don’t bring that. Cause it really does put a huge load on the system. And, you know, other than the badges and then really nobody’s looking at what you hair looks like. so it’s managing expectations of people that are coming. And what would be my other, no really, a friend of mine always says that you should have rules and you should stick to your rules and you never deviate from those rules. As in, you know, if you only take people on a Monday, on a Friday, you know, only do take people on a Monday and the Friday. Cause if you take somebody on a Wednesday, it will be the person that comes on a Wednesday, that’s either difficult or it doesn’t have a good time or so, you know, stick to your rules. And actually, since her telling me that and me taking it on board, I think, you know, I think it’s pretty good advice.

Sarah Riley: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more, actually, there’s a saying in our world as well, about customers and guests and, you know, if you drag them in, you drag them around and then they drag you down. And it’s that thing that, you know, sometimes you just got to, if they can, the can become a can’t.

Jo Henderson: Absoulutely. You can’t say yes to everybody just for the sake of it.

Sarah Riley: Exactly. Because ultimately it will probably drag you down if that happens. so, and it goes back to that thing that we were talking about earlier, which is, you know, you need to know who to attract and magnetize and who to push away because they’re just not right for you. And if that’s the case, don’t worry about it. It doesn’t really matter.

Jo Henderson: And also, trusting my instincts, my instinct for, you know, literally from the point of the phone ringing and picking it up and within a nanosecond thinking, I know this person’s going to be tricky. And you know, when they come, they are the person that when they arrive six months later, they are the people whose son stole the tire swing from my neighbor’s land and set fire to their socks in the fire pit and recycled nothing. And, and it’s literally at the point of me picking the phone up to her, I knew, I knew that this, she was going to be tricky. And you really trusting that instinct.

Sarah Riley: Is there anything that you do to try to encourage people to follow your guidelines around, composting and recycling and things like that. I know you can’t force people, you can’t lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink, but is there anything you do to kind of gently nudge them forward?

Jo Henderson: Make it as, as user-friendly as possible. So the, the recycling bins are literally, you know, the two steps away from the door of the cabins. so it’s there, there’s the signage to say that is one thing we’ve put signage up about to say what they recycle, make sure you rinse it, we’re in a Woodland, we can’t encourage vermin or beasties. So, but again, going back to, all of that correspondence, I am really hot on people. seeing those guidelines, seeing the site rules, seeing within the, touch, stay up the essential information. I have essential information. I have helpful information and I have interesting information and they can dip into those last two as much, or as little as they want, but the more they do, the more they’ll get out of their stay.

But the essential information they have to re-read. Now, obviously COVID again, has changed things. I used to do a very personal check-in. I do still like when people arrive to look into their eyes. Because it kind of, it helps me, although I’ve pretty much probably worked out by the, by, before they’ve arrived, you know, who was coming you like, but it helps me, you know, really get a measure of who they are and, and for them to see me and to make the site personal. So I think they’re more likely to look after and respect our property when they seen somebody, a face who it belongs to, if it’s, if they’re just walking up and there’s nobody there, and they’re not going to see anybody for the whole weekend, then, you know, maybe they’re not quite as likely to adhere to your rules or respect your property, but touch wood.

You know, with all of those things in place. And it might sound like overkill, but I do, I really I’m conscientious about my community. We had a lot of problems getting planning for the site and I’ve worked really hard to make the neighbors feel like, you know, we are people who take their concerns very seriously. and a lot can go wrong in a wooden cabin with a wood burner in a very short space of time. So I don’t really have a problem. It’s a balancing act between let lay on too thick and freaking people out, but making sure people really do understand that these are the rules and that includes the recycling and things like that.

Sarah Riley: Yeah. And as you said, making that connection with them means that they’re much more likely to take that forward because they always, no matter what it is, if we love something or like something we’re much more likely to do our best with that thing, to make it work out, particularly if we learn to love nature of, we are in nature, more often. And if our children are in nature more often, we will work really hard to protect it through our lives. And I think that opening up the, beautiful places as you have in a really genuine way, but in a really environmentally sensitive way and community sensitive way is a fantastic, bridge for people to walk across who may become from the cities and towns and are able to spend time in these places, learning about them, becoming educated about the environment, and then hopefully taking that home with them and introducing something into their own lives at home. And I think that’s really fantastic. And I’m so pleased that we’ve talked about this, Joe, because I think so many businesses are maybe already doing this or maybe could tweak a few things to improve what they’re doing. And I think it’s inspirational what you’ve done so far and, and fantastic. If would, do you recommend any reading materials or anything else that you’ve found very helpful in what you’ve done?

Jo Henderson: Thank you for saying all that Sarah, that was really lovely to hear. There’s lots of free courses out at the moment you referenced earlier on that. I don’t know, some have been doing some learning about it and, I’m doing more at the moment, actually, not in relation to tourism, but just in relation to climate change and sustainability, there’s so much stuff out there. there’s, a free course with, called future a group called future learn, that is in sustainable tourism and over tourism at the moment. And it’s free, you know, and it’s got, it’s a very easy to use course. And, it’s got loads of information. You’ll learn lots during that. and just look at what other people are doing. You know, there’s some, there are some great people doing, doing great things.

With regards to sustainability, I mean, it’s personally, I’d never see it as a market that’s going to do a U-turn or it’s going to Trump. I just don’t, you know, I might, if it does, then I think we’re all screwed basically. But you know, more and more people, learning about it. And what’s lovely is yes, we do get the people who are searching, putting that search term, that term in eco, but we’re also just getting families who are, you know, they’re just coming for a regular family holiday, but doing that family holiday, they’re picking things up, they’re learning about things and, you know, they’re that kind of, they are the people that, I really would like to get to come to stay with us more because, you know, the people that are searching for eco it’s, like, I, I would never not want them to visit us. Of course I do, but they were kind of preaching to the converted a little bit with them. But if you get a family that’s just coming for a family holiday who is coming and taking things away and learning about their environment during their family break, while still having a wonderful time and making amazing memories with their kids away from screens, then you know, how, how can that not make me happy.

Sarah Riley: Yeah. Wonderful. So slowing down, slower travel, taking time to reconnect with each other and with nature. I think that just is a fantastic place to leave it. Jo, it’s been amazing talking to you today. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and experience. You’re welcome. And I hope someone does take away a little, something little gem of what you’ve said and maybe introduce it into what they’re thinking about their plans for their business. So fantastic to speak to you. I’ll see you soon.

Jo Henderson: Thanks Sarah. Bye.

Sarah Riley: So I’m sure you want to join me in thanking Jo for her time today, giving us the benefit of her knowledge and experience. And I think it’s fantastic that she was so willing to share, and hopefully some of you will introduce some of the things that she has already introduced in her business so that you can benefit too.

And your guests can. So if you have, introduced any off-grid technology, I’d love to hear about it, please get in touch, just go over to inspired courses and you can contact me there. All the links for everything we’ve talked about, are in the show notes. And if you want to go and check out Jo and Ben and what they offer over at Devon Dens, a small Google search will get you straight to their website, just put in Devon Dens and you’ll find them straight away. They’d been all over the place. They’ve got heaps of publicity because they’ve just done so well with their business. And they are genuine, genuine people, amazing people. And do, please go and check out what they offer. I think that you will really love it.

So if you found this helpful, I would love you just to drop a review into whichever platform you’re using to listen to this podcast. Reviews are really helpful for my podcast to get it out there a little bit more, and I’d be so grateful if you would do that for me. And also if in that review, you decide that you want to actually hear some content about some other topics. Drop it in there too. I read every single review and I’d love to hear your suggestions. So hope to see you here again soon, take care.

Inspired Camping