Finding Your Niche: A Conversation with Laurie Pritchard of Small World Journeys

You’re originally from the United States—what brought you to Cairns?

I’ve spent my whole career either guiding tours, organising them, or working in outdoor education. I started out in the U.S., moving around for different jobs—sometimes guiding, sometimes handling operations. I worked with both student and adult tour companies, and eventually settled in San Francisco, where I spent five years organising multi-day tours for American teenagers. That role had me travelling overseas to set up trips, and that’s how I first came to Cairns.

What inspired you to start your own business?

When I first moved to Cairns with my husband at the time, we had this vision of creating an eco-lodge, somewhere guests could stay while also joining guided day tours we’d run from the property. The property we wanted fell through, but it got me thinking about business, and warmed me up to the idea of being a business owner. At the time, I was working for a local adventure company, and I remember thinking—I could do this. I’d spent my whole career guiding and organising tours. But running tours and running a business are two very different things!

I was still figuring things out—adjusting to life in Australia, learning how the tax system worked, even getting used to the different vocabulary—but despite all that, I started the business. I worked on the business during the day and waited tables at night to help pay the bills. It began in a spare room, then moved to the basement of our next house, and later to the whole ground floor of another. Now, we own the building we work in (and it’s fully solar-powered!).

Waiting tables! It sounds like it was a real hustle in the beginning. What were those early days like, getting Small World Journeys off the ground?

When we started, we simply had a website and waited for people to come. That’s it. There was no budget for marketing, or anything like that. It was really a case of casting the net wide and seeing who was interested. We were open to anyone—families, student groups, solo travellers, couples. Our approach was essentially: if you want to discover this region, we’ll make it happen for you.

Looking back, it was more like being a travel agent or travel coordinator than a tour operator. I didn’t have buses or a team of guides. I was piecing together itineraries; booking activities, arranging hire cars, and organising hotels. Our very first customer was a couple visiting North Queensland as part of a bigger Australia trip. I met them at the airport, handed over their car keys, and set them up with accommodation and day trips. I remember thinking, please don’t ask how long we’ve been in business—I was terrified they’d realise they were the first. But they didn’t, and neither did anyone else—by the time someone finally asked, we’d already been running for at least a year!

I didn’t realise your first tours were for couples and families. You’ve since become known for your school tours—how did that transition happen?

Over time, that wide net started narrowing. I realised it was a lot of work to coordinate trips for international solo travellers and families—people who would probably only visit Australia once and never come back. So I started thinking, who actually comes back? And slowly, I realised the answer was schools.

The turning point actually came by accident. We had developed a trip for a Sydney school that hit a lot of their academic goals and they re-booked immediately for the next year. This opened my eyes to the opportunity with domestic schools. That’s when I made the scariest business decision of my life: we decided to narrow our focus to school tours. That meant we had to stop taking bookings from families, couples, and independent travellers. Saying no felt terrifying. Turning away work when you’re building a business feels like the opposite of what you should be doing.

But it turned out to be the best business decision I ever made. We changed our marketing, redid the website, and positioned ourselves as school tour specialists. Suddenly, we stood out. Schools saw us as experts, and the business took off.

Looking back, what’s something you wish you’d known when you started?

I think I was more intimidated by the idea of starting a business than I needed to be, and it probably held me back from doing it sooner. I didn’t go to business school, so I never really saw myself as someone who could run a company. I thought the biggest hurdles would be money or not knowing enough about business. But what I’ve come to realise, and I know this sounds a bit airy-fairy, is that the real barrier was belief in myself.

I think I could have started the business earlier if I’d gotten past that voice in my head saying, “Who am I to run a business?” i.e. imposter syndrome. What I know now is that you don’t need all the answers upfront. You just need to be open to learning, to asking for help. People are generous. They’ll say, “I’ll show you how to do this,” or you’ll find what you need online. I’m not saying it’s easy, but the biggest barrier is often your own self-doubt. If I could talk to my younger self, I’d tell her: You’ll be fine. Take the first step … you’ll figure the rest out along the way.

What are some of the best practices that help your business run smoothly today?

There are a few things we do that have made a real difference to how we work.

Our weekly team meeting is a big one. It’s a chance for everyone to come together, acknowledge what we’ve done well, and get grounded for the week ahead. I can’t imagine not having it—it keeps us connected as a team, and it’s also when we review the feedback from every trip. Reviewing the budget after every trip gives us a good pulse on how things are tracking financially, so if we’ve under-budgeted somewhere, we can catch it early and adjust for future trips.

Another big thing is giving our group coordinators a lot of autonomy. They run their trips end-to-end—reconciling budgets, talking to clients, and making changes on the fly if needed. That ownership keeps them invested and lets them respond quickly when things come up.

And then there’s our internal wiki. That’s been a complete game changer. It’s our go-to knowledge base, with everything from standard operating procedures to our employee handbook, supplier details, and interpretation notes for guides. If something needs updating, it goes in the wiki, so everyone always has the latest info. It’s saved us so much time and helped us stay consistent across the team.

Are there any tech tools that have made a big difference for your team?

We’ve introduced a few tools that have made a big difference. Fieldbook has been a game changer, streamlining our itinerary and tour management. We also started using Less Annoying CRM for customer management—it’s simple, customisable, and keeps us on top of client relationships. For training, LearnDash has transformed how we onboard and upskill staff. It allows us to include video modules we’ve made and quizzes that track progress. It integrates with our internal wiki, so if a guide needs a quick refresher—whether it’s how to clean the bus or give a safety talk—they can pull up the video on the spot.

What led you to adopt each new technology in the first place?

We were lucky to have someone on our team with a background in both tourism and IT—someone who understood the challenges we faced and could spot opportunities to improve our systems. He listened to our pain points, like struggling with knowledge management and guide training, and introduced us to tools we hadn’t considered. He helped us set up our internal wiki and later implemented LearnDash for training modules.

What’s the best piece of feedback—positive or negative—you’ve ever received?

It’s hard to pick one piece of feedback, but what’s stayed with me is more about how I’ve come to view feedback in general. Everyone says they value negative feedback because it helps you improve, but the truth is—it stings. That initial feeling of defensiveness is natural. You want to say, “But they don’t know what went on behind the scenes,” or “If only they understood why we did it that way.”

Over time, I’ve learned to push through that reaction and really listen. When you let the sting settle and ask, “What can I learn from this?”—that’s when the best changes happen. Some of our most valuable improvements, whether it’s new programs or updated training, have come directly from this kind of feedback. Positive feedback is lovely—it’s great to know you’re doing well—but it doesn’t necessarily push you to improve. It’s the tough feedback, the kind that challenges you, that actually makes your business better.

How do you approach collecting and using feedback from your customers?

We’ve evolved our approach over the years. We used to rely on paper forms handed out at the end of a trip, and they worked well because we could ask guests to complete them before they left. It was a lot of paper though, and the feedback had to be manually scanned into the system or typed, which was a nightmare. When we moved to online feedback, we hit a different problem—if we emailed the survey later, only about 10% would respond.

Now, we’ve found a balance that works. We give guests a QR code at the end of their trip, often at the airport before they depart. It takes them straight to an online evaluation. This way, we catch them while the experience is still fresh, and we get more responses. The feedback is both quantitative—ratings we can track over time—and qualitative, giving us detailed comments on what worked well and where we can improve. That combination gives us the full picture and helps us stay on top of what’s working and what’s not.

How can people connect with you and Small World Journeys?

You can reach me at info@smallworldjourneys.com.au, and check out our website to learn more about Small World Journeys.