Dave Palmer - how a humble, hard working former auto finance guy is navigating an entrepreneurial journey in the world of travel.

Dave is the owner of Perfect Getaways Travel Agents. 

Perfect Getaways operates a chain of independent travel agents in the North West of England in the UK with stores in Little Sutton, Neston, Birkenhead, Liverpool and St Helens.  

At a time when many businesses have migrated away from the high street and onto the internet, Perfect Getaways takes a different approach. 

As Dave puts it, "We believe that booking a holiday should be a fun experience. Our concept is that 'Your Holiday Starts Here' when you walk into one of our stores. We provide a fresh and fun environment with complementary bars, beer gardens, relaxed seating areas and large screen TV's to view your preferred holiday destination. If you have children we have complementary sweet shops in every store and children's areas including cinema room, children's TV, Xbox, drawing and colouring. 

In addition, our Travel Consultants are trained to be experts in their field to give advice on all types of travel and holidays. 

In our conversation, we talk about how he left school at 16 with 1 O level at Grade A (maths) and no other qualifications, how he'd had it instilled in him that you have to work every day, how he started working in the mail room at Shell and how he found his way from there into the automotive leasing industry.

As well as sharing the steps that he took he shares the paradigms and thoughts that lay behind the actions that he took that helped him to develop himself and progress in the industry  

Those paradigms, thoughts and actions are filled with transferable value for all of us. 

And he talks openly about the fascinating entrepreneurial journey he and his wife Nicola have been on since leaving their corporate jobs. 

I'm particularly excited to introduce you to Dave. His story is a truly engaging one and he is such a humble and hardworking guy, I'm sure you'll enjoy hearing him tell it. 

LinkedIn: David Palmer 

Website: https://www.perfectgetaways.co.uk 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/perfectgetaways 

Episode Directory on Instagram @careerviewmirror  

Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk 

If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app.  

Episode recorded on 17 February, 2023 

Transcript

Dave Palmer: 0:00

He came to me and he said the presentation that you did to us three, I want you to do in front of 110 people. And honestly Andy I died.

Aquilae: 0:12

Welcome to Career-view Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers to share insights to help you with your own journey. Here's your host, Andy Follows

Andy: 0:43

Hello, listeners, Andy here. As always, thank you for tuning in. I really appreciate that you do, and I love hearing from you when you give us feedback. In this episode, we're celebrating the career to date of Dave Palmer. Dave is the owner of Perfect Getaways travel agents. Perfect Getaways operates a chain of independent travel agents in the northwest of England in the UK, with stores in Little Sutton, Neston, Birkenhead, Liverpool and St. Helens. At a time when many businesses have migrated away from the High Street and onto the internet, Perfect Getaways takes a different approach. As Dave puts it, we believe that booking a holiday should be a fun experience. Our concept is that your holiday starts here when you walk into one of our stores. We provide a fresh and fun environment with complimentary bars, beer gardens, relaxed seating areas and large screen TVs to view your preferred holiday destination. If you have children, we have complimentary sweet shops in every store and children's areas including cinema room, TV, X Box, drawing and colouring. In addition, our travel consultants are trained to be experts in their field to give advice on all types of travel and holidays. One of my listeners, Peter from Portugal, told me recently that he really enjoys getting to know my guests through these conversations. Thank you, Peter, for your feedback. I've known Dave Palmer for 20 years we met when we used to work together in fleet management and leasing at Alphabet in the UK. In our conversation, we talk about how he left school at 16 with one O level at grade A in maths and no other qualifications, how he'd had it instilled in him that you have to work every day, how he started working in the mailroom at Shell and how he found his way from there into the automotive leasing industry. As well as sharing the steps that he took, he shares the paradigms and thoughts that lay behind the actions that he took that helped him to develop himself and progress in the industry. Those paradigms, thoughts and actions are filled with transferable value for all of us. And he talks openly about the fascinating entrepreneurial journey he and his wife Nicola have been on since leaving their corporate jobs. I'm particularly excited to introduce you to Dave, his story is a truly engaging one. And he's such a humble and hardworking guy. I'm sure you'll enjoy hearing him tell it Hello, Dave, and welcome. And where are you coming to us from today?

Dave Palmer: 3:33

I'm here on the Wirral in the northwest of England, just in between Liverpool and Chester,

Andy: 3:39

thank you very much for joining me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. So you're on the Wirral now, northwest of England. Where did your journey start? Was it not that far away from where you are now?

Dave Palmer: 3:50

No, I'm probably five six miles away from where I was born to be honest. Not a massive traveller considering I own a travel company. Yeah, no, I was I was born in a small town called Neston which is on the Wirral, which is about five miles away from here.

Andy: 4:10

And I'd like to start there and talk a little bit about you growing up and things like that. So do you have brothers and sisters?

Dave Palmer: 4:16

Yeah, I've got two two older sisters, one 10 years older than me and one eight years older than me.

Andy: 4:23

Okay, so had they paved the way a little bit for you, were your parents a bit more relaxed by the time you came along or how did that work out?

Dave Palmer: 4:30

I think so. I think I was seen as the spoilt one to be honest. They were the babysitter's so when, when they wanted to go out with theiur friends and everything else, they had to have me tagging along with them.

Andy: 4:41

I bet they loved that.

Dave Palmer: 4:44

So I was probably hated in the early years.

Andy: 4:47

The other question I always ask my guests is what jobs they had visibility of when they were growing up? So what did you see Mum and Dad doing?

Dave Palmer: 4:54

Yeah, well, Neston's pretty much a working town to be honest. So there was a large steel works just down the road from us. So my dad was a steel worker. He was at the steel works literally for all of my childhood until they closed that down in the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s. And my mom was a part time cleaner in a nursing home. So both were at work all the time to be fair.

Andy: 5:21

So you saw them putting a shift in?

Dave Palmer: 5:24

Yeah, very much, so very much so.

Andy: 5:27

And what was the impact on the family when the steelworks closed down?

Dave Palmer: 5:31

Not just the family, but the town as a whole, because a lot of the town were employed by that steelworks in one way or another. So quite a big impact. There was, you know, a rush to the job centre from a lot of the town, a lot of people ended up in the pubs and spending the money that they'd received as part of the redundancy. My dad was a real worker. And you know, one of the things that he taught us, myself and my two sisters, we were never allowed to go a day without working. So that was instilled from the outset.

Andy: 6:01

How did he do that?

Dave Palmer: 6:03

It was just my dad's way, my dad's way was that that you work, even when when we were sort of in between jobs for a week, we would be told to get down to that job centre and find something that would, that would have us for a week, or if there was nothing available to go to the local farm and pick up bales, anything. But my dad's philosophy always was that we work every day that we possibly can. And it probably set me up from a really, really early age, to be that way of thinking. And I'm like that with my children now, there are jobs out there, even if you don't want to do that job, there was something that you can find today to earn yourself money for today. And that was instilled from a real early age.

Andy: 6:47

How early?

Dave Palmer: 6:49

Oh, from as early as I can remember. Because my sisters were 10 and eight years older than me, you know, they were finishing school at 16. So I would have been six at the time when Susan finished school. And that that was the message to Sue at that at that age. And even before she left school that no go and find a job and start earning yourself and paving the way for a career. She became a nurse and was a nurse all of her life until she was just recently retired and my sister two years younger than her, she was in the NHS for a time but then ended up estate agents and building society. All three of us just have that mentality. But that that was led from from my dad from a really early age as that's what you do, you go and find work.

Andy: 7:39

And was that primarily about getting money then? Was that about creating security for yourself and earning money? Or do you think he had other motives for that as well?

Dave Palmer: 7:49

I think it was about relying on yourself and not relying on others was was, you know, a good thing that was instilled into us, not to become reliant on taking things off other people or off the state or anything like that. And it was just a real good mentality. I wasn't the cleverest. And neither were my two sisters, in fact, far from it. So I think that that sort of work mentality was really, really important for the like, for the likes of us that, you know, we were a working class background in a small town in, in a working town. And that, you know, you had to fight for the jobs that were available. And that's what we were taught to do. When the steelworks went which I think was about 1982 but I might be wrong, it was very early 80s anyway, if not late 70s, my dad got a job at the council, but he got that job within about three days. And he was literally down at that job centre five times a day until they were sick to death of him. And that was the days where you'd walk into a job centre, and you'd wait for the jobs to be put up on the walls. And I think within three days, they were absolutely sick of him. And they were waiting for a job to come in that would be applicable to him, and get rid of him.

Andy: 9:05

Sounds wonderful.

Dave Palmer: 9:07

I think that way of working is just the way that that we have always been, you know, if you want something, make it so until they're absolutely sick of you.

Andy: 9:17

I think that's going to become apparent as we go through your story, how you've leveraged that work ethic that was drummed into you. So what about your time at school Dave? What do you remember from that? What sort of a student were you? What subjects did you like and what else did you get up to at school?

Dave Palmer: 9:35

From a student point of view at school I was I was a really poor student, not from a rebellious point of view, more so the comprehension, I just, I couldn't comprehend. And I'm not just talking about English comprehension of reading a paragraph and being able to understand it. I think the sort of the three main routes that schools then taught was sort of like either getting you to write things down, reading them or them telling you, and all three of those never really stored in my head when I was learning. So although I was hearing it or reading it or writing it, my mind wasn't taking it in at all. So comprehension covers everything effectively because it doesn't just cover English because you can't then learn history, geography, wherever it may well be. So when I went to high school, or comprehensive school, as it was called then, I was in the bottom set for pretty much every subject apart from maths and weirdly, for whatever reason, I could just, I could deal with numbers straightaway. So I was a very strange school student because it was in set five, which was one was the highest five was the worst in every subject, and I was in set one in maths, really strange. And from from the town that I was from, the obvious route then would be then for somebody like me would be to sort of go and get a trade and you know, whether it would be plastering, painter and decorating, electrician or whatever, roofing. But I was terrible with my hands. And I always have been, to the day I'm still probably the worst DIY person that you'll meet.

Andy: 11:16

No, I'm not having that, you can wrestle me for that title

Dave Palmer: 11:22

I have to pay for everything to be done in my house. So so that was a non starter as well. So yeah, to the point that I actually, I actually thought that, I don't like the word thick, but I actually thought that I was sort of like, not going to be able to do much with my life on the basis of not being able to comprehend things. But at the same time, even when I was at school, and I couldn't wait for school to finish. But I knew when I was at school that I could make a life from getting a job. And the numbers side of it numbers has always been a massive part of my life, I'm such a nerd with business plans and numbers even to today. That side of it, I knew sort of like in my mind what I could do with my life from a really early age. So I left school with nothing effectively, apart from I had an O level Grade A in maths and nothing else at all, which is bonkers

Andy: 12:14

Isn't it, I mean that's specialist, isn't it? I'm just here for the numbers, I'm not not doing anything else. Now, I've got to say to my listeners, because I recognise I've chuckled a few times already. And they might be thinking, my god, Andy's being a bit rude. And I have to say it's because I love Dave and I know Dave very well, and I know how good he is. So to find out, that was the school situation is it's quite amusing for me to know how far you've come and how talented you are as a business person. So that was why I was chuckling. So listeners it's okay, me and Dave, we go back a little way, it's going to be alright, I'm not being rude. So you got A at O level maths and nothing else. Just before we leave school and find out what you did with that, what about sport and stuff or other activities? And socially, how were you at school?

Dave Palmer: 13:10

I think socially I was good. Almost with two two sisters so much older I was almost like an only child. Because my two sisters were gone by those days, they were married at sort of 18 19 and so they'd left the house and everything. So I think from from my own point of view, I was sort of like quite a nervous child. But you know, sport I loved, I was I was always involved in sport from from an early age. And I had my own group of friends. But probably if you went outside that circle of friends, I wasn't the most confident person. And even when I'm talking about sort of making plans and stuff like that, probably for the last three years of the comprehensive school, I had the plan in my head that when I left school, I could actually go to a job and nobody would know about my nerves and everything and I could actually teach myself to pretend that I was never, I had never been nervous at school and I wasn't like that. So I was almost like making plans at that age to sort of like counteract that.

Andy: 14:13

You were going to have a fresh start.

Dave Palmer: 14:14

Effectively yeah, yeah.

Andy: 14:16

That's interesting, isn't it? The fact that you remember that now means you must have been aware of it at the time and thinking well, I don't want to be always like this and I'll but I'll get an opportunity in three years time to start again. And they won't know and I can I can have a different persona

Dave Palmer: 14:35

100 percent, even to even to the fact that I remember going on sort of holidays with my mum and dad and they'd be trying to push me to go and play with kids that I didn't know and I'd be like, absolutely not. And, and I just knew that when I left school and I sort of like got into new circles and things, I probably could make myself more confident from the outset. So yeah, you know, it's funny because I've got two young children at the moment, and one who one who's, who's older and works for me, but I've never let them be like I was, I've got them into sort of social groups and, you know, playing football from a really early age so that they sort of don't have that intimidation in them like sort of that I did

Andy: 15:18

when you came to leaving school and Dave, what did you decide to do?

Dave Palmer: 15:22

Well, nobody was going to take me on at that time really. And a lot of the mates that I'd gone to school with that were in the set fives that were mates, a lot of them just went on the dole and went and signed on. So that was never going to happen. So I went on a YTS for two years.

Andy: 15:38

So the difference between you and them, obviously, similar academic achievements, but your dad had instilled in you that you had to work. So was that just like that was a non start, there was no chance you were just going to follow them.

Dave Palmer: 15:53

it would have been impossible. It wasn't just that I was too scared to go home and tell my dad I was gonna go and sign on and not work. That that sort of thought was in me anyway, that I wouldn't have I wouldn't do that. Or, you know, that would be the absolute last resort. So I went and signed on for a youth training scheme, which was I don't know if you remember them, but I think it was, I think the first year was about 22 pounds a week. And the second year was 26 pounds a week. And I did that for two years learning a number of different companies, learning about computers and things like that. Again, never never really sort of excelled at it. But I enjoyed being in the workplace, meeting new people. And yeah, those two years finished and then Shell Chemicals from down south was moving up to the Northwest, and the only position that I could really apply for was in a mailroom. So I applied for that and I got it. And I worked in the mailroom, just putting letters in different boxes for about six months. And then I ended up in a warehouse, and literally just packing stuff and getting it ready for the couriers each day.

Andy: 16:59

So I'm thinking your work ethic carried you through the YTS because I imagine a lot of people didn't get on very well with the YTS. But you absolutely stuck at it. And then were prepared to take whatever you could get in a, as you say, start in the mailroom, that's fine. I'll go and do that.

Dave Palmer: 17:16

Yeah, basically. I mean, when my YTS finished, I remember my my YTS finished in the June of what would have been 1986 1987. And my contract with Shell in the mailroom didn't start till September. So I had a three months period. And I could literally go across the whole of the Wirral now and probably show 10 15 places where I've worked for three or four days, honestly, because I've literally, my dad would have me out every single day just finding a job for that week or for that day. So wherever somebody was off ill or they needed somebody to I'd just go and door knock and say, What do you want me to do? I can work today. And that's what I did for three months. So that work ethic and not wanting to sit at home was there right right from the outset. Yeah.

Andy: 18:06

I'm wondering how that might have helped your shyness if you're like, that constantly being the new person at work? Did it have an effect?

Dave Palmer: 18:16

Um well, some of the places were intimidating and some were sort of really good. I remember going to a timber factory. And there were lads of 25 30 all shouting and balling and in this massive warehouse where they're putting stuff together and I was thinking Oh my days, what am I doing here?

Andy: 18:38

You're not small, though are you Dave either? You're a

Dave Palmer: 18:42

I am nowadays but in them days, I would have been big lad. easily intimidated. But no, I wouldn't I wouldn't nowadays, and as I say that's where sort of, you know, I don't want my boys to feel like that. But it was a must do. And sometimes, you know, we talk about in sales and things if you do something 27 times to 27 days, it becomes the norm. And that's the way that you get over it. And I think by going in so many different jobs in such a short period of time, after sort of like the first seven or eight of them, the ninth becomes easier then the 10th becomes easier. And the 20th time you've done it. It's just the norm. Funnily enough talking about what we were talking about before, every new place that that you go to you don't know the people and it's a fresh start, isn't it?

Andy: 19:28

Yeah, so you can just gradually get better at it can't you.

Dave Palmer: 19:32

Exactly. Exactly.

Andy: 19:35

Brilliant. So you've then waited you're waiting to start at Shell in the mailroom in the September

Dave Palmer: 19:40

Yeah, I started I started Shell in the mailroom, I'm there for two years, do really really well, get to know a lot of the people and start helping out people that were on a lot more money than me and they end up sort of getting me bits of work on the side within Shell and getting me to sort of like come in early to deal with telex messages that were coming over from Holland. So I started getting in at six o'clock rather than eight o'clock and I'd be doing two hours overtime and getting more money for it and things like that. Yeah, I had a great time there. The only problem with when I was in Shell and in the mailroom was there, it was contracted. So it was a week to week contract. So they could literally get rid of me at any time. And that's where I seen there was a warehouse job came up with a company called JB Butterfield, and I wouldn't have been earning quite as much money on it but it was a job and it would have been the first full time job that I ever got. And I made the decision to take that to get that teeny bit of security. And that's what I did. I went over to be in the warehouse at JB Butterfields where I was for a couple of

Andy: 20:40

Right. So I've got this picture of you working years. incredibly hard, having that work ethic instilled from an early age, no question. That's what you do. And I also know you as one of the most incredibly nice people that I've ever worked with. And so I can imagine that you would start working there, you'd get to know people, I can only imagine you were just as lovely then. So you'd get people would say, oh, Dave, come in, can you do a bit more? And I'm I'm laughing because I think I'm quite a nice person. I don't mind saying that, I think people would say, yeah Andy he's quite nice. I remember you saying to me, Oh, you're dead mean you are.

Dave Palmer: 21:20

I don't remember that

Andy: 21:21

Yeah, I do. It's stuck. In my mind. It was probably about 15 20 years ago, and I did something and you said Ah you're dead mean you are, so that's how your, you're just so nice. Anyway, so that that helped you get in there. But then there was this opportunity to get a fixed a proper job full time not having it dangled in front of you every week, whether you'd got a job or not. So a bit more security. So you moved into that and what happened there then?.

Dave Palmer: 21:47

So I'm in the warehouse, I'm packing things up on a day to day basis for that their selling so I'm getting everything ready for the couriers, get to know all the salesmen on the road, you know, who've got a great life. They're all in Ford Sierra's or whatever it was then, I think it was Ford Sierra's, and their coming in in their suits and everything, and I'm seeing them and I'm thinking, Oh, my God, I would love to be that person that's doing that. But yeah, and I get to know them all. On a Friday afternoon, I wash the cars, and I earn an extra two pound per car by doing that for them. So I start sort of having a little thing where I started with one, but then on a Friday afternoon, I'm doing sort of six or seven. So I'm making an extra 12 pounds. I know it sounds small change nowadays, but that that's your going out money on a Saturday night at that time. And yeah, I'm there for a year or so. And I realise at that point that anything that's going to stop me being like they are or being in that type of job that I'm seeing the salespeople coming and going and looking great and going for food and stuff like that and affording things that I can't afford, I realised that my qualifications or lack of qualifications are going to stop me from doing that. So I do two things. There's a job advertised in the local paper for part time tele sales in the evening, a loan company called NWS Bank. So I see that and I also realised that I've got to go back to night school. So I choose four subjects that I pay for that I haven't got the money for really, but I pay for it. And I go back to night school to take four subjects and weirdly Andy, and I can never explain this but I take four subjects that I didn't get anything on at all, not even a CSE, nevermind an O level. And within nine months I get four O level grade A's on those subjects. It's mad, isn't it?

Andy: 23:40

Yes. Can you explain it?

Dave Palmer: 23:43

I can't. And you know, English that I couldn't comprehend, I got an O level Grade A in English literature and in English language. The only way I can explain it is there's a realisation within me that I've got to learn to learn. And also as well, I think the fact that I was working every day, and everything that I was earning, I was using to pay for that for those night school classes was that it was almost like, it can't fail.

Andy: 24:12

You had skin in the game as they say,

Dave Palmer: 24:15

exactly. And it's really strange. It is the sort of the one unknown inside me all my life because as I say, when I was at school, it wasn't that I wasn't a rebel. And it wasn't that I didn't want to learn it just wouldn't compute and for whatever reasons, three, three years after leaving school, maybe maybe it was just part of growing up and I don't know, but I could. So I couldn't believe it when the results came through. I could tell the difference when I was learning it and when I was speaking to the teachers and everything else. So yeah, so that that gave me grades.

Andy: 24:50

What about your confidence,did it help your confidence as well?

Dave Palmer: 24:53

Massively. I still would say I wasn't the cleverest in any way, shape or form but I think

Andy: 25:00

Those are good grades though

Dave Palmer: 25:02

they are. But I think the time dedication that I put into it was probably twice as much as anybody else who got those grades. So I had to work for it. And you know, I'd learned little things that I'd sort of heared about. If you want things to stick in your mind, fall to sleep reading it and when you wake up, it's the first thing you read. So I was doing things like that. So I'd wake up with the notebook on my face and start reading it again. And stuff like that. So I'm probably was working two or three times harder than everybody else to get to that but, it did work for me. And from that then I went to apply for that, for that evening job doing it was a company called NWS Banking. It was part of AA Financial Services. And it was effectively selling loans over the over the phone. And I went there and went on the two day course before they let you out on the phones or whatever it is. And just instantly, I knew that I could sell instant within an instant I just knew that I could sell. And yeah, and that has been the basis for my whole career effectively.

Andy: 26:12

So literally, let's just backtrack a little bit, because I love to I love a little backtrack. So you've spotted the opportunity at the bank, NWS was that you spotted that, you've thought I need qualifications. So you've gone and got your qualifications. Nine months later, you've got what you couldn't dream off three years ago. And right at the beginning, as soon as you got into that job, you thought I can do this.

Dave Palmer: 26:41

I knew within a week.

Andy: 26:44

Why? How?

Dave Palmer: 26:45

I just knew and, you know, if you look at my sales all the way through, all the way through my career, I've never been what I'd call and no disrespect to car salesmen but I've never been a car salesman type seller. I've always been what I'd call a consultative seller, but I just I just had the ability to listen to people and understand what they wanted and give them what they needed. And yeah, I could literally do it from day one. And it was funny, because you know, in the two days training at NWS Bank, they'd hold the pen up, and they'd say, right, sell me that pen. And I couldn't do that. Do you know what I mean? I'd be going it's blue, or grey or whatever, you know what I mean. But as soon as I got on the phone, and I started speaking to customers, and I was listening to them, and I was talking to them, and I could hear the dog barking in the background, and I'd asked them what the name of the dog was, and asking them about what they do with the life, I just have a genuine interest in people. And from that interest and listening to them and understanding them, I could understand for whatever reason what they wanted. And from that, I would offer them what they wanted. And that that has been the basis of sales for me for 20 years after that.

Andy: 27:55

I love it, absolutely love it. And I love that you knew within a week. And I find it amusing and interesting that even the training to do the job that you were doing bore no resemblance to the actual job. So you know, they're preparing you for it was so you know, they're obviously doing their best but you found it was actually couldn't do that. But as soon as you give me a real customer, a real live person, away you went qualifying their needs, naturally building rapport, getting to know them and then matching them up with a product

Dave Palmer: 28:29

100% And their training was you know, their training was what is deemed as or was deemed at that time is the best about here for that type of role. And, you know, for a lot of people, that type of training does work. But I just found my own my own way of doing it. And you know, the sales just rocketed from very, very early on and within I'd like to say two weeks, but I think it was within four weeks, within four weeks I was sitting down with them and talking about why don't you go and hand you notice in at the warehouse job in the day and come and work for us full time. And that's what I did. I changed it from a three hour, two day a week two evening a week evening role to a full time job within a month or so. And I was I was in there working full time for them.

Andy: 29:17

And did you enjoy the work?

Dave Palmer: 29:20

Yeah I loved it. I loved it, speaking to different people, all the time. People new, people from all over the country, people that I hadn't come into contact before. One thing I would say is that probably the phone was a sort of middleman so I wasn't face to face or presenting. So there's almost a facade there isn't there between between the two so you can be whoever you want. So yeah, the confidence on the telephone was just confidence that I'd never experienced before. Within a couple of months, I was one of their top three sellers. And they moved me into what they called their A team which was the team of 4 top sellers, which were sat on their own and weren't managed, and yeah, confidence went through the roof.

Andy: 30:05

Was that outbound stuff? Or was that inbound?

Dave Palmer: 30:08

It was outbound. Yeah.

Andy: 30:09

So you were dialling people up to ask them if they wanted a loan?

Dave Palmer: 30:12

Yeah, generally they had previously had a loan. So you ring them up and you'd be ringing up to see how they're getting on with the current loan. What I would do is, I would ask them, because you'd see the details on the card sheet of what the loan was for so you'd ask them how that went and how the car was if it was a car, and how the car is now and are they looking for a better car, blah, blah, blah, and just talking to people and finding out about people all the time. So yeah, and when I'm talking about my maths and my numbers and business plans, very, very quickly, I realised that if I made 65 calls in a day, I'd speak to 25 people, if I spoke to 25 people three would be interested, of the three that were interested, one would buy. And as soon as that computed with me, I knew all I had to do was make 65 calls in a day and the rest followed. Numbers don't lie. And as soon as I knew that I'd literally come in every day and think all I've got to do is pick up that phone 65 times and I make a sale.

Andy: 31:09

See, that's what they try and tell you and that's on the programmes and in the textbooks. You worked it out for yourself and then just did it.

Dave Palmer: 31:17

Yeah. And when we're talking about textbooks, we always talk about one no is just one more call nearer to the Yes, but I knew that. So when they'd say no or get lost and put the phone down on me, I'd be right Well, that's one of the 10 that's one of the 10 nasty ones out of the way. Thank God for that I've only got nine to go now.

Andy: 31:37

I know that's supposed to happen in theory, but you were doing it in practice. That's fantastic. Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsor. Could you use some additional experience resources who can work alongside you and your team on a flexible basis to help you achieve your priorities? I started Aquilae in 2016 and since then, we've worked internationally with established automotive OEMs, EV startups, fintechs, and insurance companies to achieve their unique mobility goals. Aquilae team members are highly experienced senior leaders with complementary areas of expertise who've run businesses and divisions internationally in our industry. Because we've all had many years experience of operating in the industry ourselves, we don't just advise our clients on what to do, instead, we tend to work alongside them delivering their specific projects. We're happy to develop strategy, and we're equally happy to then get involved delivering the plan. Mobility businesses are all about people processes and technology. We leverage our Aquilae Academy for people development, and Aquilae Consulting for those wider business topics. To give you some examples of the sort of work we do through the Aquilae Academy, we work with CEOs and their first line to develop cohesive leadership teams. We create continuous learning environments for leadership development, we develop bespoke programmes to improve the performance of specific teams, and we provide one to one coaching for high performing individuals. To give you some examples of the sort of work we do through Aquilae Consulting, we help create paperless digital end to end customer journeys for direct to consumer finance and subscription models, we conduct strategic reviews. For example, one client asked us what's the best financial services structure for each market we operate in? We produce feasibility studies for new market entry, we advise on and support regulatory applications. We help design, implement and monitor regulatory compliance procedures. We run tenders and vendor selection projects, we conduct end to end operational reviews to improve effectiveness and efficiency. If you're looking for some help with people or business topics, and you like the idea of having some additional very experienced resources, who can work flexibly alongside you, please get in touch with me for a conversation. You can email me directly at andy@aquilae.co.uk. Okay, let's get back to our episode. So you got into the A team, the four people who were able to sit together unsupervised, unmanaged if you like because you clearly were self motivated. And how long did that last? And what was the progression from there?

Dave Palmer: 34:06

Yeah, I was probably there for about a year and a half. I then started diversifying into other departments. So I went into what was called the resale team. So where people weren't converting, I'd get back in touch with the customers and ring them and say, How did things go blah, blah, blah, and sort of like resell to people. I was there for three years. I mean, we're not we're not talking massive money at that stage. I think when I joined there was on 5,500 a year. It sounds bonkers now, doesn't it? But that was a lot of money to me at the time. It just taught me the right things. And then what happened was the directors of NWS bank, there was a company in Manchester called Sovereign Leasing and that went bust the company went bust and the directors of NWS bank actually got brought into Sovereign Leasing in Manchester and renamed it Sovereign Finance and tried to build it up from scratch. And when they did that, I went along with them about a year after. So they they contacted me and invited me to go to Manchester to work for Sovereign Finance in Manchester. And that's what I did, I went there in very early 90s think it was 92, very similar type business, they had a massive customer base of customers that had bought things on finance, and been totally ripped off like old mobile phones that they'd had on a 10 year lease, and they were carried around in a suitcase. A nd a year later, they were about this size,

Andy: 35:36

and they've still got nine years of payment,

Dave Palmer: 35:39

they've still got nine years of payments on them. So our job was to go in and to get back in touch with all of these customers and try and find them sort of like a way out or to refinance or to get them on to new contracts on on new phones, or whatever it may well be. So it was it was very much asset finance based. And it was all to companies, it wasn't to individuals. So there was a bit of a change from that point of view. And yeah, I did that for five years. Again, all

Andy: 36:09

Did you notice, was there a particular difference for you? Or were you just doing your same thing, and it worked with businesses in the same way it had done with consumers?

Dave Palmer: 36:18

No, it worked in the same way, a better understanding from my point of view, because obviously, you were talking about business, and I started learning about business because I had a database of customers that I would ring every three months, I'd keep in touch with them every three months. So you got to understand about the business. And that fascinated me. From there I thought I would love to be one of these people that owns their own business. So yeah, just learning about them. Again, understanding what the business was, selling them asset loans based on the fact of would they not be better, instead of keeping that money and earning 3% in the bank? Would they not be better invested in something to to give them more money into the business? So I did that for five years in Sovereign Finance. Two things, I think, I think one one speaking to business owners on a constant basis, I found it really really interesting. Two, as well as the telesales people like us, they had people out on the road that were visiting the businesses, instead of me calling and selling over the phone. And I thought, Oh, my God, I'd love to be in that situation.

Andy: 37:24

Because that's closer to the sales guys whose cars you used to wash.

Dave Palmer: 37:27

Yeah, exactly.

Andy: 37:28

Who you thought that's a role I'd like to do.

Dave Palmer: 37:31

And one of the major problems at that point was that, because I was in tele sales, that was very different to external sales, and you've got to remember as well, I'm

Andy: 37:41

Ah, awesome. what, 21 years of age at this time, 22. So I'm not really experienced or anything like that, or, you know, I'm very young for that type of job. So an opportunity came up to finance and leasing diploma or a diploma in finance and leasing. And the reason that opportunity came up was one of the main

Dave Palmer: 37:58

I know and the plaudits were unbelievable, directors of Soveriegn finance, he became the Chairman of the Finance and Leasing Association. So he wanted some of his company to take this diploma. And I was one of six that decided to dedicate two years to doing this diploma, as well as working on on a daily basis. And that's what I did one, you know, one of the best friends that I had from work a guy called Tony, and suddenly he's passed away, me and him would revise on a constant basis. And he taught he taught me how to revise and it's sticking with post it notes and things like that. And on a daily basis, he'd make five questions for me and I make five questions for him. It was amazing. And we spent two years doing the finance and leasing diploma. And at the end of it, when the results came out, there was five distinctions in the whole country. And me and him were two of them. Honestly, honestly. And then because the director was the Chair of the Finance and leasing Association, he went and found out who actually came top in the whole country. And I actually came top in the whole country. honestly, the plaudits internally in Sovereign were unbelievable. Because it was a major, major win for him. And from that, I just knew straightaway, as soon as I got that, if I knew that it was going to propel myself into getting better and doing what I wanted to do, that was the absolute peak time to do it. Because I'd just got the awards.

Andy: 39:34

You were hot, hot property in the business at that point.

Dave Palmer: 39:38

Exactly. And I think it was 95 I think it was 95 or 96. But it was in all the internal communications. It was in all the finance and leasing Association communications. And literally, I packeted them up, I thought, right I'm gonna go and sell myself to be an external salesperson. I knew in my head that if I'd have stayed for another 12 For months, that opportunity would have gone because 12 months time, it's not in the news anymore to know what mean?

Andy: 40:05

Yeah, no, you had to strike while the iron was hot your share price in the company was high at that point as a result of that. So but you and you wanted to stay in the business, you were you were just saying I want to move external. Is that right? I've understood

Dave Palmer: 40:19

No, I would have loved to have stayed in the business, but there were no opportunities in the business because I think they had six external salespeople, and they were all taken. So I went to a company called First National Vehicle Contracts. And I went packed up with all of my awards and everything else. And pictures of the cheque that I'd been given and everything. I went for the interview. And I was just really bullish about it. And they said, you'd be the youngest person we've got in here by a number a number of years. And I just I just sold myself to them and said, all I'm asking is give me a chance, I'm not even bothrered how much I'm earning. But give me a chance, if you give me a chance I will sell for you. That was basically my, my sell to them. And they did, I was really, really lucky.

Andy: 41:07

Define luck, we've just heard how incredibly hard you've worked since slightly after being born. And then Okay, so you've made a lot of luck there.

Dave Palmer: 41:20

I think I think what I knew, right, you do make your own your own luck on the way but I think I felt I was lucky in that they were willing to give a chance to somebody that didn't meet their age criteria, because they were advertising it I think at 25 plus, and I think I was 22 at the time. So I was the youngest person there. So I went out there, went on the road, contract hire first time I'd done contract hire really. But as part of the asset finance, we did do contract hire as well at Sovereign Finance, so I knew what it was. And yeah, got my Ford Sierra, I was given the district of the north west, north Wales and the Wirral. And I went out to companies and started financing the cars. And again, I just they gave me a target of I think my initial target was like five cars a month or something, and it was done within a week of the month, and everything else was over.

Andy: 42:15

And were you at all nervous approaching these companies? Or had you become this confident?

Dave Palmer: 42:21

No, I think the main difference was I'd become really confident in my ability. So I'd found something that I felt I was really, really good at to the extent that I thought I was better than anybody else at it. I was just really, really confident in my ability. Which is funny, because one of my staff has written something a couple of days ago. And I seen it and it resonated with me. And she put that when you find something you love, you don't do a day's work in your life. And this is where I was at that time. I read it. And honestly, I could have cried when I read it because it resonated with me. And my whole work life, you know, it wasn't work to me, this was a brilliant game of going out and meeting people and finding them the right thing for what they wanted.

Andy: 43:04

Yeah, what a wonderful paradigm to have about the sales process, meeting people and finding what it is they need and giving it to them, takes all of the fear away from it, doesn't

Dave Palmer: 43:17

It does. And you know, I've always said this, it? that if we're not the right fit for what they need, be really honest with them and don't sell them anything. And do you know what they will tell 20 people about that and of them 20 people, somebody will need what I've got and will buy from you. And I think that's so powerful. And I've done it so many times where I've sat with a customer who would buy and I've said what we've got isn't right for you, for whatever reason. And I think that's a really powerful way to behave. Now a lot of times we do have the right things. But even now, when I'm talking about holidays, if I don't think the holidays is right for the person that I'm speaking to, I'd rather tell them then pay a lot of money for a holiday that they don't enjoy and come back and think that was a waste of money. And that is all about to me what I call consultative selling of listening to them and trying to understand. And then if I've got something that is right for you I'll tell you, if I haven't I'll be openly honest and advise you what I do think that you need from somebody else. So yeah, so I was out with First National Vehicle Contracts, my Ford,Sierra 1.6s or whatever it was. And then there was a bit of a jolt in the road because we were six months in and First National Vehicle Contracts got took over by another company. And the new company came in and they were a contract hire company. And they basically came in and they said, Right, okay, we've got a sales team, you've got a sales team. There's not enough room for everybody in this company. So what we're going to do is everybody's gonna have to come and reapply for the jobs. And there's 12 of you. There's 15 of us. There's 12 positions available, and straight away I heard the people in In the office talking and straightaway, they were saying, well, Dave's out because he's the last one in and he's the youngest. So I thought oh great and this is where you sort of fight or flight. And when I had my interview, I'd made a presentation and I just totally went for it on what I've done since I came in, my work ethic, my plans for the future. And I did a presentation to them, which I don't think anybody else did. And I wasn't a presenter at that time. But I thought, I've got to do more than everybody else, because I'm the youngest here, and expected to be the first out. And they told me in the interview, that I would be kept on. A couple of days later, when they announced all the redundancies, they arranged an all staff meeting together for the new company. And I think there was about 100 and odd people in the company. And they were they were meeting at St. Davids Hotel, which is about 10 miles away from here. And he came to me and he said, the presentation that you did to us three, I want you to do in front of 110 people. And honestly Andy, I died. I died. But his feedback was that it was I wouldn't say it was most polished. But his feedback was that it was so out from everything else. And it was such a fight and the work that had gone into it. And the work that was putting into the process of why I'll succeed and others won't, was he wanted everybody to hear what I was doing to make sure that I would hit target every month. So that's what I had to do. I to go to this company meeting and it was don't forget, it's a brand new company because they've taken over the company, so I didn't know anybody there hardly and doing this presentation, it was the worst night before of my life. Honestly, worse than my wedding night. I was up and down till about four o'clock in the morning. I couldn't eat breakfast.

Andy: 47:02

You're still very young, you still early, early 20s,

Dave Palmer: 47:06

mid 20s. I don't know if you've ever been in that position. But I'm even thinking to myself, should I pretend I'm ill, anything to get me out of this. And it was after lunch as well. So I'd been up al morning then lunch came couldn't eat my lunch. It was physically sick. I don't know what happened. But you know, I got up there. And I was probably nervous for the first couple of minutes. But then I was fine. And I think I was fine because I was talking about what I could do well, and what was working

Andy: 47:38

Yeah, it was from the heart. It was what you believed in wasn't it and it was stuff you actually did. It was honest. It was true. It was it wasn't hypothetical. It was this is how I how I work. And

Dave Palmer: 47:51

yeah, yeah. So I was a way then. And when I moved from Sovereign to First National, I got an increase of oh no, actually sorry, when I went from Sovereign to First National, I got a decrease of 1000 pound but I did it to get out on the road. Then when I went from First National and they got taken over, I can't even remember the name of the company, it was it was a Shropshire contract hire company, I can't even remember what they're called, they ended up getting taken over by somebody else. But when I when I went there, I got an increase of 1000 pounds. But I was still on probably 5000 pounds less than what the top sellers were on, because they'd be 45 years of age, been with the company 10 15 years. So I went to them within 12 months when I was the top seller and asked them for a rise to be on the same as everybody. And they gave me an extra 1000. And, you know, while I was grateful of that I looked at it and thought I'm worth so much more than a lot of these people that I'm out selling on a monthly basis. So I realised that every time that you move, businesses will offer you more money to attract you from the place that you at. So I gave myself a 10 year business plan. This is and this is true. I gave myself a 10 year business plan to move jobs every two years. And if I move jobs every two years, I get an increase of 2000 pounds every two years, which will give me an extra 10,000 pounds over over the 10 years. And there's two ways of looking at that. Because the risk involved with that is that you never staying anywhere. So you look like you're only going to stay anywhere for a short period of time. But in my mind at that time, the reward was I'll get to earn what I deserve to be earning. Taking into account I'm still really, really young for this industry. So the first thing I did was I thought I don't want to blow the chances. So while I was working, I'd be applying for jobs that I had no intention of taking and learning and getting feedback of you don't get this job because of this, this this and this or yeah, I've got this job and then I'll turn it down, but I was going to at one point two or three and views a month just to learn how to interview and get feedback on interviews. And that is no word of a lie. Because I knew that when the right jobs came up, I was coming up against people that would be more experienced than me, that have been in the industry longer, that were older than me, better qualifications and may because don't forget, at this time now we're talking mid 90s, most of these jobs, and you'll know it from BMW corporate finance, most of these jobs now, they would be saying minimum expectation is a degree. So I had to show that my employment history was worth more than somebody with a degree in whatever it may well be. So that's what I did. I got a job with Arriva in Sunderland, during contract I stayed there for two years became their top seller. Two years later, I got a job at Bristol Street Motors, contract hire again, I was there for a year, and I was waiting for my two year anniversary year left right got to be the top salesperson in second year. And I got headhunted by a company called Tusker Direct, who you'll obviously know nowadays, and it was the owner of Tusker Direct, a guy called Tom. And he was going to set it up. And instantly, it just felt right to me, because this was now my first chance ever. Okay, I'm not setting my own business up, but I'm going to be involved in the company from inception. And the pay rise was just it wasn't 2000 anymore, you were talking sort of like six 7000 pounds more than I'd ever been on before. And he came to me and he said, This is what we're going to do, he'd come from GM, the contract hire company, we're going to set up this new company, we're starting on zero cars and I want you to look after the whole of the north of England. And I looked at it and I thought if I'm going to learn to build my own business, I need to be involved with businesses from from the outset. So I took that job. And it was brilliant because you were involved in everything from the outset, because whereas all the other companies, they had everything and the cars were just delivered to you. And you know, you had lunch allowances, there was none of that with this because they were startup. They'd got venture capital investments. I was learning about venture capitalists and I was speaking to the venture capital people all the time. And it was just a different world. It was absolutely amazing. And I worked there for two, three years. And we built it from zero cars to I think there was about 2200 cars when BMW corporate finance came in, and basically did the same. They head hunted and were looking for it was Alphabet that were looking to set up BMW corporate finance as a new venture. And yeah, I just I loved it from the instant and I knew within the minute that I started a Tusker Direct that I would end up owning my own company one day, I just knew it. I knew it because I loved everything about it. So yeah, I was the top salesperson at Tusker Direct, everything was going swimmingly, I was absolutely loving it. I had been given 0.0001% shares in the company that was I was told that when the company was worth 500 billion pounds would make me a millionaire and then I got a call from Alphabet and you know, the package that Alphabet were offering me was just unbelievable. And something that I've never experienced before you know, a brand new BMW for me a brand new BMW for my girlfriend and my wife.

Andy: 53:33

Can we just clarify that that's the same person, the girlfriend and the wife?

Dave Palmer: 53:38

Oh yeah, sorry, she was girlfriend when I joined BMW and she became my wife in fact you were at the wedding

Andy: 53:49

Yeah, I just didn't want what a way for Nicola to find out. That you had three BMWs. So the package was very attractive and given this was part of your plan wasn't it? It was to keep moving. And you very sensibly got all that learning out of Tusker Direct about setting up a business

Dave Palmer: 54:15

yeah everything and while I was at Tusker Direct as you know I joined BMW Corporate Finance with with a child, I was was almost like a single parent because myself and his mum had split up. I sort of like had a responsibility to Jack to be the best I could at work while also you know looking after him as well. So although sort of like my personal life had changed, it hadn't affected my working life, it had actually made my my working life more resolute because I knew that I had to be even better at my working life to provide for my son. So that was really important. I always remember going to the interview at Alphabet. And you know how the Alphabet interviews work, you know, there's a number of interviews, and you've got to give a presentation on a scenario and a few other things. And I remember being really, really clear that I had a son. And there were things that they might want me to do at certain times that I've got to be back for my son. And, you know, if it's not right for you, I totally understand it now. But I remember saying to Richard Schooling at the, in the final interview, don't take that into account, because the one thing that I can promise you is that you will get more from me than somebody without a child, because when that child is in bed at six o'clock of an evening, I will work all evening until one two o'clock in the morning. So I really sold myself as there were things that I won't be able to do. But don't look at that, because there were things that I can do that will far outweigh somebody that hasn't got a child. And I really thank them from the interview process. And the managers that I had at BMW because everybody always took that on board. You know, that was always so important to me, because it gave me the confidence and the willingness to want to do better for everybody. Because they took that into account, if that makes sense.

Andy: 56:11

Yeah, it's quite unusual for you to be a single parent, Dad. Yeah. And so driven, and this is why I love these conversations, because we've heard your whole story. So we know if you know, if this was a movie, and we saw you going for that job. And we saw you in that interview, then as an audience, we'd be thinking ah Dave's got this, he means that, he will do that, we know what his work ethic is, hire him hire him, that'll be the sentiment from us watching. And it's great that they had the good sense to take you on.

Dave Palmer: 56:44

Yeah, and you know, people don't need to make those risks sometimes do you. So I'm always really grateful that I spoke to the right people at the right time, who sort of have seen through that and actually thought actually, this, this is worth sort of doing. And to be fair, Jack was shared as well. So I think he was with me four nights and with his mum, three nights or five, and two, so there were nights where I could go down to Hook and sort of be there for a day or so. But it would always have to be sort of scheduled. Yes. sheduled. And when I didn't have him,

Andy: 57:17

and what were your thoughts at this point around, you'd been to Tusker Direct, it was some years before that you'd had the idea that you wanted to have your own business and going to Tusker was a great way to learn about it. And now you're going to stay in employment. What were your thoughts around when would be the right time to start your business? Did you know were you deliberately sort of parking that and thinking right, I'm going to do another corporate job. What were your thoughts then? Can you remember?

Dave Palmer: 57:43

Yeah, well, the attraction to BMW was two things. One, the stability for a young child was unbelievable. Alphabet stability was was vast. BMW as a business, as you, as you will know, is vast. German manufacturer with processes on literally everything even how to sharpen a pencil. I felt there was so much that for me from a personal development point of view, I could learn from being in that situation. There were books on everything was weren't there, every department had their own operations manual on how things worked. And it was enlightening for me. And it gave me the best of both worlds because you had all that but then BMW corporate finance was a it was a brand new department and a brand new side of the business. So I almost had best of both worlds really. So it was a new business within a business that was completely stable and had such amazing background. I honestly thought for three, four years when I was there, I honestly thought I would be there forever because the people were amazing, the perks were amazing. The job was a great one BMW corporate finance sort of took off and we will seeing brand new BMW fleets in companies that had never had a BMW in their life and you know, putting putting the sales guy you'll remember the sell but putting a sales guy who was driving a Vauxhall Vectra, or a Ford Mondeo into a BMW three series, which had previously only really been for directors of companies and getting them out out on the road and that, putting it on their drive where the rest of the road can see what's on their drive. It was just a great feeling. And doing it for you know, a price that wasn't that different to what they were getting the Fords and the Vauxhalls and the Volkswagens for and there were sells as well, because Audi had obviously come into that market, and were brilliant at it into that corporate market two three years ahead of BMW. So you had your sell against your Audi and everything else, but it was just a great time and I honestly thought at the time, and we were we were selling well, we were earning lots of money. I honestly thought I would stay there for a really really long time. We bought a bungalow on a mortgage in 2000, late 2004 to 2005, while I was still at BMW, me and Nicola, we bought half of it us, and half with Nick's Mum and Dad, and we bought it on a mortgage. So we needed to rent it out to get rental income in to be able to enjoy it ourselves. And with my sort of business planning sort of head, we'd worked out that if we rented it out for 30 weeks of the year, then the rest of the year, we could sort of like go for weekends and, and enjoy it. And that's what we started doing. We were good at renting it out using our background of sales and advertising and everything else. And you know, happily working at BMW. And one day we went on holiday. And we were sat there around the pool, and we just started talking me and Nick and said, crikey, why don't we make a business out of this, because what we'd started doing because our bookings were going so well, and it was on a golf resort where a lot of people weren't getting bookings. Because don't forget, a lot of people were going on holiday at that time, they went to a place that they'd enjoy, be taken in by everything in the sale signs of own a holiday home. Everything was going swimmingly in the economy at this time 2006 2007. They'd buy a holiday home and have no idea in the slightest out to rent it out. So we started passing on bookings to neighbours and the rest of the road when we would get enquiries and ours was full. And we were probably doing it for about 10 properties for a number of months and just passing on bookings and saying it's 300 quid a week, you just give us 30 quid of that 300 quid. And we were sort of like getting a little income from that. And yeah, we sat there one day, we looked at the websites that were advertising holiday homes, the likes of Owners Direct, Home Away. And it dawned on me that the business that they were running, which was an annual subscription business, of getting owners to advertise with them for a subscription, and helping them rent it out. It was very similar to a contract hire business. And I got this instantly, the value of the business was not in the profit or the or nonprofit that you making on each deal, the value of the business was in the number of properties that you were renting out. So if you think of contract hire, if you look at the FN 50, is it called the FN50? I'm talking years ago? The top 50 contract hire companies?

Andy: 1:02:24

Yeah so let's just say because we've talked about Contract Hire a bit. So that's international listeners would know that as operating lease. But yeah, the Fn 50 Fleet News 50 was a top 50 contract hire although I went this year, and they're down to 49, because of consolidations. So it's the FN49 now. So you noticed this similarity between the villa rentals business, Owners Direct type model, and what you'd seen as a contract hire operating lease business?

Dave Palmer: 1:02:57

Yeah, yeah, very much so because, you know, I was lucky because at BMW, because it was a small team, and it was it was a new venture of the business, you got a good understanding of how the business worked a lot quicker than you would if I'd have joined a company where I didn't have that access. So it was clear to me, we had profit targets, and you're expected to make a profit on each deal, obviously. But it was clear to me that the value of BMW corporate finance or Alphabet or whoever was on the number of vehicles they had under contract rather than the amount of profit they were making on an annual basis. And the one thing I always remembered about contract hire and I can't remember whether it was from BMW, or whether it was from Tusker Direct, but I always remember being told, the minute that we don't increase our numbers, we're going backwards. And I always remember that, it might have been from Tusker in the early days. So more important than making a shedload of money on on the single year was that we continue to grow and grow and grow and grow. That was the most important thing. And obviously, if you do that, and you grow, and you get to x 1000 vehicles, a big competitors more, more likely to buy you and bring it into their fray. So I looked at the Owners Direct model and the Home Away model, and it was similar, it obviously wasn't the same because it's a different market. But it was similar because to me, the value in them companies was the number of holiday homes that they were renting out, rather than making a profit on on the amount that you're charging. So anyway, we sat down and we talked about it. We said, you know, this is an ideal opportunity. They don't do it great. They were they were decent companies and they were making a good living but they were both originally SEO companies. So they had the SEO side of it sewn up. So we put together a business plan me and Nic, one page plan, took it home, started working on it and within four or five months we we had a website built, came across the problem and it's an age old problem for any any sort of subscription site, how do you get the consumers to come on because we haven't got any anyone advertising, how to get any advertisers, because we haven't got anybody coming on. It's a chicken and egg situation. The way we got around that was while I was working for BMW corporate finance, and Nic was working for the Yorkshire Building Society at the time, we would both come home from work six o'clock, and would start ringing owners, and we'd be offering to put them on our website. And we'd do it for free. And not only that, we do it all for them. So literally every night for six months, we'd ring holiday owners, you know, what a great thing for a holiday owner, can we advertise your property, we'll put it on for free. And you don't even have to do anything. We'll take all your details, our phone is their website and put it on ourselves for you. So you've not actually got to do anything. And that's

Andy: 1:05:59

This is so good Dave, honestly, it is just what a what what we did. We did that for six months. We put on 1000 a story keep please keep going. properties, honestly

Dave Palmer: 1:06:05

Yeah, we put on 1000 properties, never advertised anywhere. And the minute we put our 1000th property on, we were updating the availability calendar for them and everything because we just wanted the we wanted a working website. As soon as we put the 1000th one on, we then went out and started advertising

Andy: 1:06:25

Right so you had nobody coming to you unless they accidentally found you.

Dave Palmer: 1:06:29

No, not at that time.

Andy: 1:06:31

So people weren't getting any bookings from you yet. But you were still updating the availability. It was a live working a work in progress. This is what it's gonna.

Dave Palmer: 1:06:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the minute we got to 1000 properties, that's when we switched it and the business started effectively. And I remember that I remember the day that happened, we got to 1000 like fantastic. Right. Okay, we're switching it. And all of a sudden, we went out to all holiday home owner communities, on all of the forums and everything else. I'm like, look at this amazing site, go and have a look how good we are. We've already got 1000 owners, you can see the availability, and you can see where they're booked out on the calendars. They weren't even our bookings at the time. We turned it into a business and we started charging. So the 1000 and first property that went on, they put the property on themselves, we didn't have to do it. And they paid 50 pounds a year for it. Our competitors were 250 pounds a year, 249 pounds a year, we were charging 50 pounds. And from that then because we knew that we'd start to get people starting to advertise, we literally every piece of money that we received in plus an amount of our wages, we then put into marketing to holiday makers to go and book on our website. And yeah, that's how it started. We were still working for another two years, Nic gave up her job within 12 months, I was still at BMW,

Andy: 1:07:56

I just want to say while you mention Nic, again, is if this was a podcast where we interviewed entrepreneurs, it would definitely have to be you and Nic together or just, you know, Nic could easily have just done it because your entrepreneurial ventures have been very much joint ventures, team efforts, everything you've done. And the reason it's you sitting here today and not Nic, is that because of the automotive, this is an automotive careers podcast and you've got a chunk of automotive in your career. So I just want to acknowledge you know, Nic's partnership in this and absolutely, yeah, without question. Yeah. Sorry Dave go on

Dave Palmer: 1:08:33

No, no, and that's a really fair point because the reality is if Nicola wasn't so similarly minded in in the decisions this this would never have happened in what we've done because not only is she been 100% supportive in everything that we've ever done, she comes up with as much of what we do as I do. It's it's almost like, you know, it's like a Lenon and McCartney in music for us, because you know, we live together we've got the children together, but literally, our life is our work together as well. And you know, we do we literally do everything together, most people couldn't survive like that in their marriages. So many people say to us, we couldn't we couldn't do what you do and have a healthy marriage as well. But we're, we're so on the same wavelength with everything we want to do. And it's very, very rare that you know, we will have disagreements on some things, but it's very rare that we're on completely different paths on things of what we want to do.

Andy: 1:09:29

Yeah, so I wanted just to I thought it needed to be said that. So you were just saying that you were still at BMW corporate finance part of Alphabet and Nicola gave up her job at Yorkshire building society. She was the first one to stop work. Yeah.

Dave Palmer: 1:09:44

Yeah. Because my job was actually funding it in a way. But also as well, the pressure to have been able to build what we wanted to build because this was going to be a two three year venture before we make we made any money. It was obvious. We would never of been able to sustain it. So we were clear in the way that we thought or I certainly was that this was a business that would require constant reinvestment. And we're starting on one prop. Well, we're starting on 1000 properties at this point, but initially we're starting on one property. And my number one goal year on year month on month was we never ever went backwards in the number of properties that we advertised. That was my number one

Andy: 1:10:27

Your fleet, your fleet of properties, keep growing

Dave Palmer: 1:10:29

My fleet of properties, it's got to keep growing and the minute it stops growing, we're dead in the water that's in my in my mind, even to the point of view that a year in we remortgaged the house to go into the business to put more money in to growing even though we were losing money, that was the sense. But the bank never got. it was funny because the bank never understood our business. But I knew our business and I knew what the worth a bit was. So yeah, we grew, we realised we were never going to compete for holiday makers Google with the top ones. We got quite high we got on the first page, but you know, the top ones had had its own up from five years earlier. And they were you know, one of them was it was an SEO company. And the cost of SEO was extortionate to get what we wanted it to do. So we decided to go down what we called a commercial partnership programme. So what we did was we went out and we identified businesses that would have holidaymakers that didn't have a villa offering, and we went to them with a villa offering. And in true Dave style, the biggest one that I could see was Ryanair, which was, to me the absolute ideal fit for for Perfect Getaways. Originally, we were called Jolly Rentals, it became Perfect Getaways within 12 months. Jolly Rentals is just an awful name isn't it. Jolly Rentals making holiday homeowners happy, that was the initial

Andy: 1:11:56

it's not awful.

Dave Palmer: 1:11:58

It's a bit sort of Yeah, it was a great sort of start. It was funny because one of our customers came to us and put your tagline would be the Perfect Getaway. And we looked at it and thought actually we really like that, so we changed the name to it Perfect Getaways. But yeah, we recognised that we had to get holiday makers to book holidays, otherwise, the holiday homeowners would wouldn't renew with us. So we identified partnerships. And the biggest, biggest one we ever identified was Ryanair, that, you know, they didn't deal with travel agents, they didn't get involved in anything other than book a flight on their website.

Andy: 1:12:36

Genius, genius.

Dave Palmer: 1:12:36

And we looked at their website, and this is a really funny story. We looked at their website, they had hotel provider, they had a car hire provider, they had a travel insurance provider, they had no Villa provider. So it took me about a month because Ryanair is the hardest company to get in touch with in the world. And it wasn't like today where you can google this and LinkedIn that and everything else. It was literally a search of finding the person's name, got the person's name, then trying to get through to them by telephone was just nigh on impossible. And it took me about a week of ringing call centres and asking to be put through. And eventually, I got her by pretending I was a friend of hers and somebody just tried to put me through. And they put me through to the thing. And I've got something urgent on the phone with me and I need to speak to her urgently and somebody put me through. So honestly, that's true story. And I got her, I spoke to her and I said Hi said, I see that. What's I don't Well, maybe I just need a stapler, we won't know me I'm from a villa rental site, How did you just get through to me, this is true. And I said, give me your email address. I said I've got a proposal that is going to blow your mind away. And I did. I sent the proposal to her. She arranged to meet me in London a couple of months later at the travel show, put a massive proposal together. And basically they took our idea and they tried to do it themselves with with honestly, they tried to do it themselves with another provider that they were already working with. And I was gutted at the time but we kept in touch with them because we seen it didn't grow properly. And within 12 months, they came to us and they said Okay, we'll we'll do it with yourselves. Massive commitment from us to the extent that it was unmanageable, but we'd got this massive contract. And it propelled the company like literally we'd never seen before. And it was funny because Arthur, mine and Nic's child was born on he was born on the first of January 2010. And the partnership with Ryanair went live on the 12th of the first 2010 So it was me and Nicola working from home with a 10 day old baby and our partnership with like Ryanair went live. So what happened was, our website was it was white labelled into their website. So when they went on Ryanair and they clicked on Ryanair villas, it was actually our website, on their website under Ryanair Villas. And we used to have a ding, that when someone went on our website, like a live person, when someone went on a website there'd be a ding and we'd be able to follow where they will going and what properties they were looking at. And you know, in a day, every sort of 10 minutes, you'd hear a ding, and we'd be watching them ah look, they're booking that one ding. I literally, remember the time because it just went ballistic, the time was 3.21, I think it was pm on the 12th of January. And literally, we had our one laptop there and it just went like that. And it was, it was the second that the Ryanair villas part of it went live on the Ryanair website. And from that, then we then targeted everybody that was in a Ryanair destination. And we just we got an extra 2000 advertisers within three months. It was unbelievable.

Andy: 1:16:04

What a brilliant plan, to notice that, okay, we need a partner. Customer acquisition is the key thing, isn't it with setting up these businesses these platform businesses. So how do you acquire your customers at a reasonable cost. So if you can find an affinity partner who's, you know, got a vacancy there, you saw a gap in their offering, they could be offering villas, we can connect them with Villa owners. I love the skills and the, you know, you'd already done the maths, if I make 65 calls, then 25 will do this. And 10 will do that. And three will do this and one or buy and you knew right we'll get 1000 do nothing just get 1000 villas on the site free of charge, and then that's going to be the way this business model works. So to do that, and then to think right, how do I get hold of this person in in Ryanair, so to use all of your skills and confidence and wiles to get her on the phone. And then when they shaft you for want of a better phrase and take your idea, you don't lose your cool, you just stoically stay in touch with them, keep the relationship going, keep an eye on it. And then when it doesn't work, you're not too bitter to say, okay, come on then, let's let's do what we originally suggested. because they all sections of websites and on the website,

Dave Palmer: 1:20:15

we were in partnership with The Guardian, so with the Independent, with a load with a load of local ones, a number of travel companies. And we built our business on the back of all of that. And as I say, we went, we got the Ryanair partnership in 2010, we built all the other partnerships in 2011 2012. And in 2013, the beginning of 2013, HomeAway, had contacted us, and they effectively gave us an offer to take us out of the market. They didn't want the website, they didn't want the company name, what they basically wanted was the holiday homeowners that we'd built up. And in that time from 2009 to 2013 when we sold it, we'd built it from our property to 8000 paying properties when we sold it. It never made a penny in any single year. In fact, we'd lost every year. So we put money in every year, we borrowed money, both of our families were amazing and trusted us. And my sell always was the banks never gave us anything because they thought we had a failing business that's how they saw our business as a failing business. But I always knew that the value in the business was the number of properties that we were advertising. And when we sold the properties, an annual subscription with us was 139. And with our competitors, it was 200 pounds. And we sold, we sold the business based on two years subscriptions with them not with us, and times by the amount of properties. So it would have took us four years worth of subscriptions with us with no outlay to to get that amount of money. So they valued the business. And I mean, you were talking in seven figures to be able to do that. And that was a business that the finance companies, the banks were telling us, there was no value in that business. But I always knew that that value was there. I love it Dave And you know what we never, we never, we never did it to sell. But it become really hard because the market shrivelled completely, because one people couldn't get mortgages abroad anymore, the recession had come in 2010 2011. So that had a massive hit. And it was easy for us to grow early on to 8000 properties or is easier for us to grow because we had the whole holiday property database to go at. It was really difficult for the big companies who have got, you know, the public companies worth a lot of money, I mean you're talking billions that there were, it became really difficult for them to grow because they were actually losing more than they were gaining by people going out of the market and having to hand keys in because it was easy for

Andy: 1:23:03

So they were sorry, they were just at a point in their maturity where they were so big, and they were being hit so hard by the market contracting that they couldn't grow, whereas you still had opportunity to grow from a much smaller base. Okay,

Dave Palmer: 1:23:19

Exactly. So the most cost effective way for them so to grow is to get rid of the competition in the market and to get those holiday homeowners and put them on their website. And that's what they did. So we did that in 2013. We kept the name Perfect Getaways. As part of the sale, we weren't allowed to use it in travel for three years. We kept all of our intellectual property of everything about Perfect Getaways, website, domain, social media accounts, Twitter, Facebook, etc. All holidaymaker data of anybody that had inquired about a holiday or booked a holiday with us, we kept all of that, that remained with us. Basically, all they bought was the holiday homeowners subscriptions. And they took them off our website, closed our website down and put them on their website. And their job then was to obviously get them bookings better than we did and get them to renew with them at a higher rate. That was their job. So we did that. And then we were left with a void really because we had a three year period, I'd come up with a business plan while being at Perfect Getaways that I called My Travel Pal, you've seen it. And My Travel Pal to me was an ingenious business plan at the time. And basically what it was it was to advertise on a subscription basis so very similar to what we were already doing. But rather than advertising holiday homes to holidaymakers it was advertising things to do and places to go in holiday destinations to holidaymakers. So basically, we'd go to a resort such as Fuerteventura and we'd go around all of the bars and tell them that we were bringing so many holidaymakers in through Perfect Getaways and if they wanted to advertise, they get a My Travel Pal sticker in the in the window, they go on the My Travel Pal app, and people coming in, we would push it to them so that they come in, if you want to promote any offers, etc, they'll come and spend money with you. And to me, it was it was a really clever business plan to go with the villa rental product. And when we, when we sold Perfect Getaways, the sort of plan was to go out to other Villa rental companies and to sort of do that as well. But because we sold the business, we ran it as a standalone business. So again, we grew that from scratch from nothing. And we got it up to about 2000 businesses that were advertising. But because we'd come out of the sort of the holiday market, it became more sort of home focused, because we looked at it and we said actually, we can put it in, in the towns and the cities in England rather than abroad. So we did that, we franchised the model out which I think we brought on a number of franchisees about 24 25 franchisees doing different areas of the country. And we grew that for two or three years. Again, that was always a struggle because these businesses like this, there's so much investment that goes in at the outset to get rewards later on, if that makes sense. And you'll see you see nowadays, the subscription model companies tend not to use them now. Even Home Away who took all of our holiday homeowners, they don't use that subscription. Now they've all gone down an Airbnb model where they get commission rather than take a subscription from that homeowner. And I think there's been a sort of a business change on that across the board. But we grew My Travel Pal, changed the name of it in the UK to Out There. And this is probably the the well it is 100% the biggest regret of my career is that in 2016, we took big investment from an investment company, who ploughed a lot of money into the business, became the biggest single shareholder of the business and it just didn't work. They got rid of our business advisors and our accountants who are with our business now.We've got a company call Sudulo and the best advisor I've ever had is a guy called Paul Cheatham. And he's been amazing. And he helped us grow My Travel Pal and Out There. And when the investors came in, they wanted their own advisors and their own accountants. They fell out with our web developers and we'd just developed a new app, which left us with no web developer and no app. So they had to go and source a new one. And that was in December 2016, that investment went through. More money than we'd have ever known what to do with into a company that we'd built with our own money. And by October 2017, they'd gone through all the money and decided they weren't putting any, any more money into it, and were closing the business down. And that was sort of three years of my life and a business that was valued at over a million pounds, nine months earlier, was closed down. And it was it was horrible Andy. It was horrible because I was still involved with the company. And I made the decision when I got the news, what they were doing, I decided to go and tell all the staff and it was the worst worst thing I've ever to do and tell them that the business wouldn't be continuing any more from within two months. And I was dead honest with them. I said listen, because some of them have been amazing, some had been with us from near the start and I said go and find yourself a job now before the two months is up. And it was horrible and everything. I think the big learn for me well there's two big learns. You know me and Nick have gone through our whole thing of of sort of personally guarantee and everything that you know it needs it we'd get we'd guarantee it. If it needed money we'd go and lend money left like borrow money sorry, left right and centre to put into it. And I don't think we ever fully understood that if something goes wrong, everything you're owed in that company dissolves within minutes so that that was an absolute killer for us. I don't feel sorry for us at all because I felt sorry for the staff and the people involved in the business you know, we get we get over it, we we build another business. But of our personal worth, so much was was sort of written off in a month. It was unbelievable. And we were left with things that were still owed by the company that were in our own personal names that we personally guaranteed and things like that. And you know, the big learn from it was, we'll never put ourselves in a position where we're not the major decision makers in what we do. We'll never get investment from somebody that we don't 100% want to work with and can't add to the business and there were so many lessons from it. It was horrible. As a positive from our point of view, Perfect Getaways as a name was available. When the investment came in, Nic had moved out of the business and what should we do with Perfect Getaways. And we started up a little travel agents down the road from us here. The idea behind it was we'd have one small travel agents and it would be sat at the shop. And it'd be a teeny little business because we'd been involved with having lots of employees for the previous 10 15 years. And yeah, that was the idea. But with everything that happened, I came out of Out There, came into Perfect Getaways and literally, from two staff and one one little shop in a small village, we've grown it and we've grown it amazingly. And in five years, we're probably the I'm guessing we're one of the only companies in travel and travel agency that have grown like we are from zero to eight shops in in that period of time. Because we came in, Super Breaks went bust within a few months of us getting involved in it, Thomas Cook went bust, that was the biggest thing to ever happen in travel, nothing could ever happen in this world that would be worse to travel than Thomas Cook going bust. A year later when COVID comes in Thomas Cook was the smallest thing you've ever seen in your life to happen to us as a travel agent. But we've gone into the travel agency with with the same sort of mentality and can do positive attitude and growth attitude. Growth is massive to me, and the same sort of growth plans. And we were really, really lucky because I touched on Sudulo the accountants and ford cheatam has been the biggest influence on us as business owners since we since we started when I came out about there, and we had the one shop and my first thing was to make this a business, we need the second shot, and I rang him. And don't forget the investors that have taken them out there and basically set them off. I rang him and said, This is what I'm looking to do. And he said, Come to my office in Manchester tomorrow night and go through it with me. And literally, I was talking to him. And he wrote a check and invested in the company there. And from that we opened the second shop, we came up with a concept which we called Your Holiday Starts Here. And the idea behind Your Holiday Starts Here is that we don't want to be a travel agent like any other travel agent, we want the feeling to be the second you step into one of our shops like the start of going on holiday. So we sort of like almost play the game of what the travel agents do. And if they do it lets us not do it. And if they don't do it, we'll do it. So we came up with the sort of all inclusive concept. So we put gin and Prosecco bars in all of our shops. So anybody who comes in, they can have a gin they can have a Prosecco, we've got beer on draft, rather than sort of like a cup of tea or coffee. If they want a cup of tea or coffee, it's obviously available. We came up with the idea with flower walls to be Instagrammable. With Perfect Getaways sort of neon signs, we came up with cinema rooms for the kids to go in. So anything that we seen as a distraction to be to be able to go and book a holiday, we sort of like have almost come up with the sort of counter to that. Because if you think back to 2017, our two kids would have been seven and five. If we think about if I want to go and book a holiday now gotta get in the car, get the two kids in the car that probably screaming in the back got to go and find a parking spot, then we've got to get out of the car, it might be raining, I've got to run into the travel agent to book a holiday you're talking 30 minutes as an absolute minimum. And that's if you know where you're going. So we've got to put something in that shop to keep the kids happy for 30 minutes, and the sort of like us to be content. So we went through every possible thing that would make it either hard work or impossible for you to do that. And we put in the answers within our shops to stop that. So we've got, you know, Peppa Pig playing in a kid's cinema room, every minute of every day that we're open. We've got the beer on draft, we've got we've got everything. Got games, we've got we've got retro arcade machines that have got 4000 arcade games. So yeah, everything possible. And we've used that we've used that concept and in every one of our shops, we've got sort of artificial grass in all of our shops. And we've just tried to make it an Instagrammable thing so that people will take pictures of it. And one of the major things you know, the staff have been amazing. One of the one of the major things we've been able to do with perfect getaways is we've been able to we had a philosophy of the staff that we wanted and The type of company we want, and we want a perfect getaway is to be a fun, enjoyable, lively place like no other travel agent. And to do that, you've got to, you've got to attract the staff that are winners, they want to earn a lot of money, they want to sell holidays, but they want to have fun, and they want to party and they want to enjoy the success. And over the five years that we've been on Perfect Getaways, we've managed to build a culture, we call it a tribe, we call it a Perfect Getaway Tribe. But we've been able to build a tribe or a culture, where if somebody joins, and they're not like that, they're almost the odd one out. So we're not for everybody, as a company that the people we employ, we're not for everybody. But if you're the right person, I put this lesson out on a Facebook post, if you're the right person, to me we're the best place to work for by my in travel. And that fun attitude while also being really, really professional and the best that you can be at your job that is sort of enabled us to grow like you wouldn't believe. And yeah, it's been it's been a bumpy ride well COVID meant that we couldn't open for neon two years. But we didn't make one single redundancy, we made sure the business was 100% protected. Every one of our staff picked up their laptop and the phone went and plugged it in at home and worked from home. And I think they're talking about the the Out There experience. My sort of my one thing I make sure is that the business is never put in a position where it's in jeopardy like like that, again, if that makes sense. And because we're in 100% control of the business, it's a lot easier to do that than when you've got outside influences that actually the same the business, if that makes

Andy: 1:36:50

Yeah, absolutely. You've learned so much Dave, you've sense. kept mentioning during that Out There experience, the learning the learning, the learning, everything is you take it on board as a learning. It's an incredible story. Incredible. And you've taken travel, because you might think that, you know, they said bookshops were going to disappear. And they haven't. And you've taken the travel agent and turned instead of why would I want to sit at home and do that on my computer when I can start my holiday already by going to Perfect Getaways. And the kids will have somewhere it's a little trip out, it's gonna be a fun thing to do today, we can have a drink if we want, we can kids will go and play and we can sit down we can talk to a human being an expert who's a lively, engaging person who's going to work hard to find us a holiday we want and as my listeners will know by now from getting to know you that the culture the philosophy will be well let's find out about this person, and what's the best fit holiday for them? And if we haven't got it, don't sell it to them.

Dave Palmer: 1:37:56

That's right. That's right. And the thing the thing I like about holidays and where we saw because don't forget our original Perfect Gateways as a villa rental company was don't go into a travel agent. But at that time, the Internet the Internet was was massive and DIY holidays were the in thing. Things happened post that, you know fraud for one. Fraud is massive in do it yourself holidays, people getting pictures of villas, putting them on websites, you book it, you turn up and they're not there. The worst thing though, is, you know, so we have anti fraud prevention, we were part of a consortium that was had anti fraud prevention with the Metropolitan Police. But worse than that was that the bonding of the holiday. So for instance, you know, the big one, the big one was the ash clouds remember the ash clouds where the you couldn't fly for two months. If you think about it, if you got a holiday booked and you can't fly to the destination, but the destination has got a villa or a hotel and you can't get there you're still paying for that accommodation even though you can't get there because it's not their fault that you can't get there. So the ash clouds was the first part and and Thomas Cook was was probably the second part where people who had Thomas Cook flights weren't protected, but people who had Thomas Cook protected holidays were protected. So because of those because of those things, we saw that there was a big shift back to needing to to book a packaged and protected holiday and that that protection was becoming more and more important. And we're 100% prooved right because one thing COVID did for the travel industry was made you realise that nothing is ever certain and flights aren't always going to go but the accommodation is always going to be there. So you know, every holiday that we booked pre and during COVID, where they couldn't go because the COVID they had everything protected. Anything that was a DIY holiday that was so that is so much more difficult because, you know, if you're a hotel in Spain, it doesn't matter to that Spanish hotel, whether you can get a flight there or not, they've given you a room and that room is available.

Andy: 1:40:10

So if I come to Perfect Getaways, I'm going to have more fun with the experience of booking it, I'm actually going to get someone helping me, rather than just spending hours trying to work out where to go, I'm going to get some input, I'm going to have feel like it's part of my holiday excitement build up, if you like, and what I buy is going to be more protected. So I'm going to be safer. That security piece I've been wanting to ask this, because you talked a bit about the financial security of joining Alphabet when you had a young son to look after. And I wonder Do you think that your awareness of financial security was affected by what happened with the steelworks in the town? Did that give you an awareness that things can be taken away? Or is that not really been an influence for you?

Dave Palmer: 1:41:06

know, at this moment in time, it's it's a sad time for a lot of people isn't it with, with what's happening. I think it does, but I think it does at certain times. So there are times when because me and Nicola to build a business, you have risks you've taken take big risks, but the I think the risks are calculated with your situation and your responsibilities at that time. So you know, if I think to like, when I was young, and I decided to move every two years, I've got I've got nobody to worry about apart from myself. So if I join a job and that company goes bust I go and get another job don't I, if it takes me two months, it takes me two months. The Alphabet and you are right, because the Alphabet decision was probably led as well, because I had the responsibility of a young son that I was responsible for. So that security is important. Or was important. I think you're learning all of the time, you know, the the Out There experience, one thing we would never do is we would never because it would be easy now to go and open two more shops, because we're doing so well. But I would never put the company at risk of anything happening to or the staff, because I've got 42 amazing staff, who literally give their all to this company. And they do they give their all to this company. They're actually bonkers, they're as bonkers as us but they're brilliant, they've all bought in. And we have problems every week, same as any company does. But as a whole, as a tribe of people all in the same, wanting to get to the same result and in the in the same business, they've got a massive, massive, massive lookout in their lives to get Perfect Getaways to where they want it to get or to where we want it to get. So they've all bought into our philosophy and we give them lots, you know, we pay probably the highest in the industry, our bonus structure is unbelievable. We take them away on sort of conferences abroad and things like that. But we only do that because they bought into the philosophy of the business in the first place. So it's sort of you know, they're great to us. And we're great to them type thing.

Andy: 1:43:27

Sounds sounds wonderful, Dave and you so deserve it, you and Nick. And it's an incredible story. And you know, the ups and downs and the work ethic and the insights you've had the business ideas and the recognition that the things that the banks couldn't see, you saw what the value of the business was. And the smarts that you've used to create the opportunities, it's just it's such a fabulous, rich and entertaining story.

Dave Palmer: 1:43:56

Thank you. Funny, isn't it? Because if we go back to sort of school and the the non comprehension of sort of being able to take things in it's, it is strange. I mean, I honestly, I honestly believe you know, when you are running your own business from the outset, you've almost got to be an accountant. You've got to be a solicitor, you've got to be able to do everything because it's the only way you grow otherwise you'd be spending so much money. So you've got to learn all of these things.

Andy: 1:44:25

You've got a very powerful motivator to do it though. Because you you want to build your business. So you do know it's like you said I knew I had to learn. Three years later when you went back. You said I knew the difference was I knew I had to learn. I had to learn to learn I think was the way you put it so phenomenal, phenomenal story. So eight shops now around the Northwest.

Dave Palmer: 1:44:51

Yeah, we've we've got seven shops in the northwest and one in the Isle of Man. And we've got a call centre and office as well, in addition to that, which has its own, they sell from there as well. So that has its own app too, as well. So,

Andy: 1:45:06

so if people in the UK are listening and think, do you know what I've quite fancy that experience, but they don't live in the Northwest can they just call up and be dealt with on the phone,

Dave Palmer: 1:45:16

They can, I mean, a massive part of our business is through social media. So anybody who follows Perfect Getaways on Facebook, all of our offers all of the best deals that we can possibly find, I put that on there on a daily basis, literally every single day of our lives we look for the best offers that are out there today. And we post those out on our social media channels. So Facebook has been amazing for us over the last three or four years, and that that's grown to be a big part of our business. And we get a lot of people that book direct with us from all over the country, just by following our Facebook page.

Andy: 1:45:51

Well, that's where we will put some links in the show notes. So people can do that. And then they can benefit from some of what you're doing. So listeners imagine this I was I was that sales manager fortunate enough to get Dave in my team in the days in BMW corporate finance, and what an absolute privilege it was an a pleasure. And it was wonderful to work with you then. And it's been wonderful to hear your story in full this afternoon. So thank you so much for spending all that time with me. Really appreciate it.

Dave Palmer: 1:46:27

Thank you, Andy. And thanks. It's been it's been great to catch up you as well, because, you know, it's been quite a while hasn't it? And BMW was it was such a it was a pivotal part of my life. Because it was it was the part that enabled me to sort of, to sort of like learn and then go into into sort of like running my own business. And I can't believe that I said that.

Andy: 1:46:49

I think you learned a lot at Tusker sounded to me, like you learned most of that at Tusker Direct, and then you just put some money aside while you were with BMW. But you were an incredible asset to the business. So let's let's not leave it so long before we speak again and I hope to see you soon.

Dave Palmer: 1:47:12

Oh, Andy, thanks so much.

Andy: 1:47:18

You've been listening to Career-view Mirror with me, Andy Follows. I hope you found some helpful points to reflect on in Dave's story. Some of the points that resonated with me were how he'd left school with just one O level at grade A in maths and no other qualifications, but that he'd had it instilled in him that you have to work every day, how hard he'd work to make sure that he did get work every day and how he eventually started in the mailroom at Shell and then managed to get some overtime. Dave going back to night school and realising that he had to learn how to learn, doing the Diploma in finance and leasing and coming top in the UK, being the youngest salesperson and them saying he'll be the first out. So doing a presentation and giving it everything, starting at BMW corporate finance, saying in the interview that you'll get more out of me, even though I've got a son to look after, because I'll work in the evenings once he's in bed, setting a 10 year plan changing jobs every two years. And when he and Nicola started the holiday lettings business, them getting on the phone every night and persuading Villa owners to list with them until they had 1000 on the site and then switching to a paid model. The fact that they started by renting out their own villa, and eventually developing their platform to have 8000 members, recognising that the value in the business was the number of subscribers not profit, and continuing to put their own money in as long as they were growing. That wonderful story of them becoming the villa partner for Ryanair. And that being splashed over the local news and revealing that they were a couple with a baby running the business from home. It's a real roller coaster of a story and I'm delighted to have been able to celebrate it with Dave and share it with you in this episode. If you enjoy listening to my guest stories, please could you do me a favour and share an episode with someone you lead, parent or mentor or a friend you think might also benefit? Thanks for listening