Act 2 - why we bought a business in a pandemic

It all started in a men’s urinal

– is not a phrase you often hear at the start of a LinkedIn article.

But it’s true, it did.

As I stood there emptying my bladder before I took my seat at a partner day that one of our airlines was holding, the Commercial Director walked in.

I must confess that I have stood at many urinal in my life and the situation can be fairly awkward – not unlike being in a lift with someone you have just had a meeting with and you have to make a decision on whether you start some small talk you know will only last 30 seconds or stand there with a boyish grin on your face and most likely look like a right plonker.

However, never one to miss a good opportunity I made a quick decision that this wee needed to be different.

‘We have something for you. Something that I think will generate the airline a lot of money and doesn’t need any resource from your side. Please can you make sure that one of your team come and speak to me about it today’.

Zip up, hands washed and out I walked.

Only now do I realise the significance of that chat. Forget an elevator pitch, I think I have just trademarked the urinal pitch.

So what led us to the point of me being at the urinal (other than being well hydrated)?

Almost overnight our industry had completely stopped.

People couldn’t travel.

Cashflow, which is the lifeblood of any business, had gone from very positive to extremely negative.

What were we going to do?

Well, the story goes like this

1.      We had a vision – a clear idea of where we wanted to be

2.      We had the conviction to get there

3.      We had no platforms to start building our vision and no clients to do it with (other than that it was a good idea!!)

1.      Always lead with vision, no matter whether times are good or bad

It is my strong belief, that as a leader, it is important to always lead with vision, no matter if you are experiencing the best or the not so best times. I look out at the world today and see a vision void. Who is painting the picture of a better future in today’s world? Personally, I can’t see too many leaders doing this right now.

In Act 1 I talked about the conversation Simon Leslie (CEO) and I had in a coffee shop the morning after the business was sold to our new investors in 2018. We walked out of that discussion with the realisation that we needed a bigger, bolder and far more scary vision.

So over the preceding year or so we sat with others in the business and mapped out the opportunity we saw was and what we believed we were capable of achieving. And we came up with this:

To become the Amazon of travel.

Every journey starts with a single step.

Now, if you are going to say something as silly and as bold as becoming the Amazon of travel then you better at least have an idea of how you are going to get there. Our veins may have been pumped full of caffeine, but back then we didn’t have a clue in the how – we just knew the what.

Looking back at it now, my biggest regret is that we allowed our success at the time to dictate the slow progress of this vision and transformation. We were doing too well and were having a record year. There wasn’t the pressure to make it happen quickly. We needed something to give us a kick up the backside – to make the consequence of not doing it greater than the effort needed to do it.

If only something like that was on the horizon!...........

2.      If you believe it enough, back yourself and have the conviction to deliver

Conviction is something that comes to me fairly naturally. I am good at being able to look inside myself and figuring out whether or not I am good enough at achieving something, or whether I back myself to find the resources to make it happen.

In a previous LinkedIn article, I spoke of the time that I was dropped from the Olympic team in 2004, when my dreams were shattered, and my ‘Ford Mondeo’ moment. When I looked inside myself and found the conviction that I was good enough to deliver my dream of an Olympic medal, and then 4 years later, there I was on the podium. I knew I was good enough. I had that conviction.  

On that fateful day in March when the world came to a halt and the travel industry was hit by a proverbial train, we had to rely on that conviction more than ever. As revenue went to zero and as our airlines and travel partners started to pull all of our platforms off the planes it would have been easy to turn and run or pull down the shutters and hide.

But we had a vision and if we were going to deliver on this vision then now was our time to make it happen, and to even accelerate it. And more importantly, we know we could achieve it and were willing to back ourselves.

3.      We had no platforms to start building our vision and no clients to do it with (other than that it was a good idea!!)

Now to the how. We knew what we wanted to achieve, we just didn’t have a clear picture of how we were going to achieve it.

I am not a big believer in fate. I don’t believe in Horoscopes. And I don’t believe in consequence.

But………..

In the Autumn of 2019 a message pinged into Simon’s inbox of his LinkedIn account. Someone had something they wanted to show us and thought we were the business to make their idea come to life. As soon as we saw it, we knew we had to have it. It would transform our business from one which was over reliant on print to introducing one of the most power digital platforms ever to hit the travel sector.

We spent a few months working out how it could fit into our vision and how we would maximise the potential it offered. We came to a general commercial agreement with the owner of the business and then started to take it out to market to see if others could see what we saw.

That is when I needed a wee.

Almost overnight our industry had completely stopped.

People couldn’t travel.

Fast forward 4 months and there we were. Staring down the barrel of the pandemic. If we didn’t do anything then there was a real chance the business would not survive or at the very least would be a US TV business operating out of Miami. Talk about pressure.

We accessed our deep level of conviction, revisited our vision and agreed we still wanted and could become the Amazon of travel, put our hands in our pockets and bought the platform.

Why we bough a business in a pandemic.

At a time when we were at the furthest point away from achieving our vision and at a time we were losing a lot of money we backed ourselves and convinced the business to part with cash we didn’t really have.

But there was one slight problem…………..

We had paid quite a lot of money for something and we had no one to do it with.

Ah!

Act 3 will reveal how we got to where we are today. 

Thank you