Ep15 - Inside the Journey of Growing a Global Brand with Adam Schwab

Episode Summary

On this episode of The Australian Business Show, Adam Schwab joins Nick Stehr to talk about his journey from law to business, founder mode vs manager mode, how much luck is needed to succeed, how Luxury Escapes filled a void in the travel market, innovating business during challenging times, recruiting and retaining quality people, and Adam’s ideal dinner party guests.

Adam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Luxury Escapes, the Non-Executive Director at Lux Everyday, Co-Founder of the Digicit Melbourne Chapter, Non-Executive Director of Myeloma Australia, and Venture Partner at Aura Group, as well as Investment Committee Member of Save The Children Australia, Mentor at Startmate, and the Co-Host of The Contrarians Podcast. He also Co-Founded MyTable (acquired by Menulog and later sold to JustEat) and Living Corporate Apartments.

In 2010, Adam released his Amazon Bestseller, Pigs at The Trough: Lessons from Australia’s Decade of Corporate Greed. Since 2014, he has been on the BRW Young Rich list, and in 2015, CEO Magazine named him the Australian Young Executive of the Year.

In his spare time, Adam runs Melbourne Marathons barefoot to raise funds for the Myeloma Foundation of Australia.

Timestamp Segments

• [00:43] Adam’s background.
• [03:27] How Adam finds the time.
• [07:18] Getting into business.
• [11:30] Founder Mode.
• [14:44] The luck factor.
• [19:42] Finding the travel niche.
• [22:43] Defining luck.
• [26:06] Scaling a business during challenging times.
• [32:05] Recruiting and retaining quality people.
• [40:59] How challenges have changed over time.
• [46:57] What’s driving Adam?
• [48:59] Who would Adam invite to a dinner party?
• [49:45] The Contrarians Podcast.

Notable Quotes

• “Luck is the biggest thing.”
• “Luck is […] being at the right place at the right time.”
• “If it’s not working for the employer, it’s probably not working for the employee.”

Relevant Links

Adam Schwab.

luxuryescapes.com.

thecontrarianspod.com.

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Transcript

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Australian Business Show, the ultimate destination for entrepreneurs and business leaders who are ready to make waves in today's dynamic marketplace. Whether you're scaling a startup or leading a major enterprise, the keys to success are right here. We bring you insider access to the minds of the world's top business trailblazers, uncovering strategies, insights, and innovations that are shaping the future of commerce. Tune in, take notes, and get ready to elevate your game. Now, let's dive in.

[00:34] Nick Stehr: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Australian Business Show. I'm joined today with Adam Schwab, co-founder and CEO of Luxury Escapes, among many other things. I tend to do a bit of stalking, Adam, when we come into these things, and you're a young man that's achieved a hell of a lot. It's quite incredible. So, on the Australian Business Show, we get to join with a lot of the world's elite. Yes, I would put you in that category, too, and talk about, really, what they're doing at the moment, their success stories, and their failures. One of the things we like to talk a lot about on the Australian Business Show is, what is it about failure that teaches us? I put it in the same bucket as fear. People talk about fear as a negative thing. Even in sales, we talk about the power of fear, versus, people will move away from fear much sooner than they'll move towards gain, and it's the same thing for me. One of the things is fear of failure, or fear of missing out, or the old FOMO, but fear drives me. It keeps me moving forward. So, I don't know how you feel about that. I'd love to get your thoughts on that, but, mate, look, you must have started business before you were born, I think. I look back at your history. So, you are actually a solicitor, right?

[01:42] Adam Schwab: Yeah, I started as a corporate lawyer for a couple of years. So, that's going back a little way. I just started pretty young, and me and my co-founder, Jeremy, just did a lot of stuff. Started our first business when we were 24 and just rolled from there. We rolled from business to business, to business. We pivoted a couple of times, quite significantly. There was no master plan. We just tried to work out which business had product market fit, and which could grow, and eventually found one. So, yeah, you're right. We did a lot of stuff, and I appreciate you calling me young.

[02:11] Nick: Yeah. I just want to read through, just for a bit of context here, some of your experience and the things that you've done. You've gone straight out of high school, I imagine, into uni. You've done your law; you've come out as a corporate lawyer. You co-founded Living Corporate Apartments, Executive Chairman of BookWell, you've been Chapter Chair at Young Presidents Organisation, the Melbourne Yarra Chapter, Non-Executive Director of Private Media. Is your LinkedIn profile up to date?

[02:38] Adam: I think so, yeah.

[02:29] Nick: Then we've got Non-Executive director at Bluethumb, but post-that, everything is still present, and I’m a little bit at awe of this, because where the hell do you find the time? You've got Non-Executive Director at, obviously, Lux Group. So, part of Luxury Escapes. Melbourne chapter Co-Founder Digicit. Still saying present. Non-Executive Director at Myeloma Australia, a mentor at Startmate, Investment Committee member at Save the Children Australia, Venture Partner at Aura Group. Of course, your podcast with Adir, The Contrarian. So, I started listening to that, too. I’d love to have a chat to you about that during this conversation. Really enjoyed the dynamic that you guys have got going there, and of course, the pièce de resistance, for you, I guess, is the co-founder and CEO, again, might I add, since Covid, at Luxury Escapes. So, I mean, that's a hell of a rap sheet. How do you find the time to be across all of that? I can understand it if you had stepped out of Luxury Escapes, but having stepped back in as CEO, how are you managing your time with that?

[03:41] Adam: Lux is absolutely the majority of what I do, easily 90%-plus of what I do. That's by far my day job, my night job, my 5:00AM job. So, doing that all the time, and then just around that, I'm sure you're the same, […] around it. Obviously, the kids are a big part of my life now. They're 7 and 9, and they're always between sport. My wife, fortunately, does the lion’s share, but they're still doing a fair bit. So, that probably is, after Lux, my biggest commitment, and everything else falls around it. I'm not sure if you've got non-exec roles, but generally my non-exec staff, I'm just trying to give my perspective based on experience, not based on any great understanding or intelligence, but I’ve often, in 20 years of doing this stuff, have experienced a fair bit of stuff. I find that's probably where I can add the most perspective. If I've lived through something, if I’ve lived through an expansion to the US, if I’ve lived through an expansion […], if I’ve lived through an expansion to Europe, I can talk a bit to that. I can talk a bit to consumer marketplace and the stuff we're really good at. I can't talk to biotech or complex SAS, or AI, at a high level.

So, I think I know where I can add value, and I know where I can't, and don't try and do stuff where I don’t have any great expertise or subject matter expertise. So, I don’t think my workload’s unusual. I probably work less now than I did 15 years ago, or even when we started Lux, and I worked 16-hour days every day of the year. I'm still doing something every day of the year, but it's much more measured. I'm up at 5:00, but I might work a 9-5, come back, 2-3 hours, I’m home, but it's a much more measured, balanced lifestyle now than it probably was the first two or three years. Startups, it's like growing a baby. As a young child, they need constant attention. As the business scales, we've got 600 people now, some really good people in the business. It's definitely easier from a micro perspective, and your perspective just changes a bit.

[05:31] Nick: Yeah, fair enough. Look, […] also, you become a bit of a master of efficiency. So, you get better at managing your time, at where you put your time. Technology helps a little bit with that, these days, too. So, you probably achieve, I know I do, I would achieve more in the hours. I’m like you. I'm up at, generally, 4:30 most mornings. So, I want to fit everything in. I want to try and look after my health. I still am actively involved in the business. We're going through different acquisitions and things, at the moment, and I just find that, if I'm up at that time of the day, I can achieve so much more. I've done half a day's work before most people are out of bed, but at the same time, the efficiency that I get within my hour-to-hour’s work is much more than it was perhaps when I started, too. Do you find the same thing?

[06:17] Adam: Yeah, I think I've always been relatively efficient. I think it’s also a factor that having some really good people around you, who can do a lot of stuff, but at the same or better level to you. So, that's a big part of it, and I try now to come in, and come in where I can add the most value. So, I've got, what am I good at? I'm pretty good at product. Obviously, I can manage people to a relatively good degree. I'm pretty good commercially. I'm not good at everything. So, there's stuff I'm not great at. I'm better off not being involved, and you’ve probably seen the founder mode and manager mode stuff that's been getting a lot of praise from Chesky and Graham, lately. We talked about it on our pod. I’m a hardcore founder myself. So, obviously, you’d think I'd generally veer towards founder mode, but we've got a business of one founder and 599 managers, or people in the business who are extremely talented. You can't have 600 founders. So, having really good people is more important than having one founder who necessarily can do it, or shouldn't be doing everything. So, it's understanding how I can add value to the rest of my team and really trying to focus on that, and not trying to do everything, like I used to.

[07:19] Nick: Yeah. One of the things I find, speaking to a lot of different-- like yourself, I try and get amongst a lot of different businesspeople at all levels. You want to be amongst people that are doing more than you, to learn from them. You never want to be the smartest guy in the room, as they say, and it's interesting, because you speak about your non-exec roles. It sounds to me like it's a little bit of, you're giving back, saying, “well, I've done this. I've learned that, and how can I contribute to others that are trying to achieve the same or similar things, in business?” Clearly, you went through your law degree, but you figured out that business and entrepreneurship was really the bug that bit you, obviously. It's a little bit the same for me. I had a guy on our pod here, who's a mate of mine since we were about 13/14 years old. He's a very esteemed surgeon up in Sydney there, but he was always going to do that. He was always going to be that. I had no idea. I was trying to learn to skateboard. I was trying to chase the girls. I was trying to figure out whatever the hell I wanted to do with stupid haircuts, and all those things, and then you fall into something, ultimately. You go “actually, something just gels. I like this. It works for me. I seem to be good at it,” and then you run with it. Did you ever think you were going to be in business, or were you always going to be a lawyer? How did that happen for you?

[08:37] Adam: I definitely wanted to be a lawyer, probably from when I was about 13 to the point that I became a lawyer, early-20s.

[08:43] Nick: This was before Suits, right? I mean, everyone wants to be Harvey Specter.

[08:48] Adam: There were still plenty of legal shows around, and my cousin and uncle are both very successful lawyers. I always want to be a lawyer. Did law, did okay. I was never going to be the absolute top of the class, but I did pretty well. Worked at probably the best firm in the country, in M&A, and the best M&A group in the best firm in the country, people much smarter than me, and law is pretty boring, although it’s a great background to doing other stuff. I probably would have pivoted to investment banking, but for starting up, and […], to his credit, pushed us to start the business, and we did, and went from there. I probably wouldn't have stayed in law. I was starting to speak to banks, and when you're in M&A, it's pretty natural to cross to banking. A lot of people did it. Now, actually, the pay’s evened up a lot. Lawyers get paid a heap, but back then, banking paid multiples of what lawyers got paid. They worked about the same hours. So, it made sense to […] and banking […] a little bit more. So, a little bit more fun. It still was pretty boring.

So, I would have gone across to a big bank, to big investment banks, but then we started our own business and went from there. So, I was going to be a lawyer for life. I recognised that I wasn't as good as the really good lawyers, and I just didn't like it that much.

[09:52] Nick: Yep. Fair enough, and a lot of people do that, too, don't they? I hear that a little bit about law, specifically, I guess, and whether it's because of all the law shows, where we think it’s the glitz and the glamour. I don't think it's quite like that.

[10:03] Adam: There’s zero glitz and glamour, but also, if you look at the economics of law, really any of those special services, I started at what they called articles. Now, it's called grad year. I started articles here with 30 people, and statistically, one, maybe two people become partner. So, 28 people have to leave, because you give up and become […] your whole life. So, a couple of people start their business, like I did. That’s a minority. A lot of couple moved to the UK to become lawyers. A bunch are interested in banking, and a bunch went into various different businesses, be it a big business, whatever. So, really interesting combination. One of my friends went and worked at Christies in New York with that law background. So, there's lots of different super smart people who did lots of different things. So, working at Freehills with incredibly talented people, most of them don't stay lawyers, but the background you learn as a lawyer, and a lot of people ask me, “should I do law? Should become a lawyer?” In many cases, I think the answer is yes, even if you don't want to be a lawyer. You learn unbelievable precision. You've got to get, same with banking, you’ve got to get the IPO perspectives right. If it's wrong, there's significant replications. People get fined and whatnot, […] jail, but signification ramifications. You’ve got to cross every T, dot every I, and as a junior, you're doing really basic stuff, but at a really high-level of precision. We've got a lot of smart people working for us now, but just have never had that grounding in precision that you have to, when you're a lawyer or investment banker, as well. So, you do learn a lot working in that high pressure, high calibre environment. It's pretty hard to stay there for that long a time.

[11:30] Nick: This is what I love about business. See, I could never have done that, because I'm not a detailed person. It bores me. I get frustrated with it, but other people, they just eat it up, and I think that's the thing about business, is that it's a machine, where it needs to be finely tuned and needs to be maintained, and you go, “well, I’ve come up with an idea, but if that idea is left with me in our business to implement, it's probably never going to get done.” I then need to give it to a team to be able to say, “okay, guys. This is the idea. Figure this out and come back to me,” because it'll just sit there and go nowhere, but interestingly, clearly, you're a detailed person.

[12:04] Adam: Yeah, I think a lot of founders naturally are. I’m not sure how much you love the details, but I didn't love being a lawyer, but I could do it and I do love getting stuff right, but certainly, as a founder, I'm absolutely over every detail of the business. It doesn't mean I'm acting on every detail, but to try and understand every detail, really understanding, what are the drivers? How do we go from product market fit, which we got as, obviously, in the business, probably 10 years ago, to building competitive advantages, and what data points are showing that we may be building competitive advantages, and where do we have to lean into those competitive advantages, and how do we build a sustainable business that grows profits at a greater rate of our competitors over the next 10/12 years? So, we're talking about founder mode, and are you going to be a founder running a business or not? Founders are very much in vogue now, courtesy of Elon Musk, courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg, courtesy of Jensen, of course, but six or seven years ago, they were out of fashion.

So, these things come in and out of fashion like yo-yo’s. Every few years, they’re coming out of fashion. It's in fashion now. In three- or four-years’ time, founders will be out of fashion again because a founder will blow something up. So, I think you've got to ride with that, and I think there are absolutely benefits of having a founder-led business, and one big one is understanding the big details and drivers, knowing ins and outs, whereas a manager might be better at design or getting the strategy on paper, versus Jensen, who has 100 direct reports […]. So, everybody's got a different preference. When the best businesses are founder-led businesses, are flying, NVidia, and even Microsoft, which is not founder-led but Bill Gates has still got a big involvement there, with Meta, which obviously Zuck still runs. When you see these great businesses, led by founders, doing really well, founder mode comes into vogue, but this will inevitably switch over, but I still believe that there is a great place for founders running businesses, and a great place for managers running businesses, and working together, to work out what my strengths are, and what a founder’s strengths are, and what the great strengths of managers are.

[13:48] Nick: Yeah. Well, it's interesting to see, because the detailed thing, as I was saying, I'm not a detailed person, but in terms of the detail of the business, that's a very different thing for me, whether it's our dashboarding, knowing our numbers. Mind you, the detail has changed over the years, too. I could have a team member walk up here five years ago and go, “we don't have any of the product SKUs, blah, blah blah.” I go, “yes, we do. It's on the second shelf, third from the right.” These days, I couldn't tell you what's down there in that warehouse. I have to try and make sure that our ERP’s right. So, the detail of those things, I know, or somebody will come and give me a report, and go, “that number's not right.” How do you know? I said, “I just know. I know it's not right.” That's that founder mentality, where you've got your finger on the pulse, but if somebody wants me to review a document in detail, and those sorts of things, I'm like, “no, I can't, but somebody else needs to do that.” I think of AI.

I read some of your stuff, that you've got a passion for innovation, customer satisfaction, and online marketing. How did that develop for you, and what do you think those critical success factors, if I could put it that way, for you, now in business, is it a recipe that you could rinse, repeat, do you think, in business, for perpetuity, or do you think it changes in different businesses?

[15:07] Adam: It's a really good question. Probably a few elements to that. I think there's so much luck involved in getting this right that, to be able to rinse-repeat and create another big business--

[15:18] Nick: I don't want to interrupt you, but what you just said, I'm so glad you just said that, because when people talk about luck, they go, “no. You make your own luck.” Actually, I think my latest conversation with Joe Foster, the founder of Reebok, is coming out today, and he talks about luck in his business that he sold for a billion dollars, and the story of Reebok's incredible, and I love the fact that you've actually just said luck, because you've got to put yourself in the position to capitalise, but luck sometimes is a thing.

[15:46] Adam: Luck’s the biggest thing. There's probably 100 million people with the same skill, same work ethic, same everything as me, around the world, and people with a lot more, and I was placed […]. Guy Raz’s podcast, How I Built This, which is the founder podcast over the last 15 years, and he always asks the question, “how much is luck versus skill?” There are definitely some stories we there is a lot of skill and hard work, and that's the people who are grew up with a single parent, in a slum in New York. That's a lot of hard work. There's not much luck involved there. A little bit, but not much luck, versus look at Jez and I, our co-founder. We were born to upper-middle class, went to private school in Melbourne, Australia, but it probably isn’t a better luck of the draw, as Warren Buffett says, […].

You don't want to be born too rich, because you're too rich, […] unless they have the drive and you’ve got […], and born with no resources and it's really hard, because you don't have it, and to be born middle-upper middle class is the rails run, as you call it, but then, A, you've got to be really lucky, and some top 1% or 2% of luck there, top 5% of luck there. That's 95% luck, and then there's probably a bit of hard work and skill, and whatever. Then you've got to get lucky again with timing and right place, right time, and we were coming of age in the Web2 E-commerce era. So were Ruslan Kogan and David Shafer, who run Kogan. So was […]. So, a bunch of our contemporaries, who are friends, who we […] grew up with, […] this business. Had we not been at the right place right time, we had a bunch of business that didn't quite work, a couple of business that worked, but when we never […] to scale. So, we were incredibly lucky multiple times. We had a business called MyTable that we sold to […] and they sold to Menulog, and we got incredible result from business that was terrible. So, we had incredible amounts of luck along the way. Founding Luxury Estates when we did, was just super lucky.

Yeah, we worked hard over the years, but so did lots of people. It's 95% luck, skill and hard work, and then probably another 95% luck. So, it's 99% luck. The question is, can you do it again? Well, now we've got resources. Now we've got history, and we know how it's done, but you still need a little luck to get the timing right, and you look at PayPal, as a classic example of a bunch of guys, who are all guys who came of age at the first .com bubble, from Peter Thiel to Elon Musk, to Ed Ho, and these guys are pretty much responsible for almost every consumer internet business in the last 20 years. So, it’s a huge amount of luck, but they also have done it before. So, there's a bit of pattern managing, there’s recognition. So, could we do it again, in some way? Probably, because of the resources we have now and the experience we've had, but it's still pretty hard to get it right, and to time it right, and to get all that stuff right.

Hence, we want to build Lux to the best business it can be, and then there’ll be a time where we sell it, or someone else comes and takes over, and we'll know when that time is. When I can't contribute anymore, when Jez can't contribute anymore as co-founder, at that point, we'll hopefully pass Lux over, but the aim is to create a business that, there aren't many businesses that last one year. There's even fewer businesses that last 20, and there's almost no business at lasts 50. If you look at the biggest businesses in 1980, very few of them still exist. This is the biggest businesses, let alone normal-sized businesses. So, to have a 50-year-plus business, it's something we'd love to achieve, and we've got a business that’s now 14 years old.

So, we're getting there, and that's about, can you build competitive advantage? Can you build a sustainable brand? Can you create some switching cost? Can you create something […]? There's a bunch of competitive advantages that you want to try and build. You can’t build them all. You can build some of them. We had […], and now we still have […], but eventually you become somewhat of an incumbent, and it's up to us, how do we keep building the brand? How do we keep driving an incredible customer experience? Aggregation theory, the best customer experience on the platform should win. We provide, I think, a really good customer experience. You still have Booking.com that provides incredible customer experience in a different way, but can we keep working on that customer experience, provide incredible value, incredible service, and hopefully, really stable business?

[19:32] Nick: Yeah, you've got 6M+ users, I think, on the platform, and I’ve been one of them. I've used it in the past, as well, and I think it's amazing, but what was the white space that you looked at? Because travel's a pretty saturated market, but you found this white space, this niche in the market. What was it that put you on to that in the first place? What was the nucleus of that idea that then brought it to what it is today?

[19:59] Adam: I'd love to say it was great planning. We more fell into it. […] story about businesses. So, we saw a bunch of other businesses, and we saw Groupon going really well in 2009. First business and fastest business, did a billion dollars turnover. We started at 1 of the 82 Groupon clients in Australia, and we realised pretty soon, that was a business that was challenged in a number of ways. Economics just don't really work in that business, and Groupon, which was worth $20 billion, at one point, dropped to $100million. So, it's now regained a little bit, but the market showed that the economics just weren't there if the #1 scaled business in the space couldn't get it to work, but we realised pretty quickly that the travel part of that business was actually a really good business, and we just went into travel. So, we never stayed at a 5-star hotel. We didn't understand how the travel sector worked. We didn't know anything about travel. That was a huge advantage. We were able to come to the travel sector with a completely different approach. 

Travel was, and I guess, Skroo and Flight Centre did something similar in the early 80s. Although, he became the incumbent probably in the 90s, but took a different approach, and us coming from outside travel was hugely advantageous. We didn't have any preconceived notion of how travel could work. A lot of the industry didn't like us, and probably still don't like us, because a lot of those guys are now dead, physically, and that business is dead, but yeah, we just took a different approach to how to sell travel, and it resonated. So, we took an online-first approach, database-first approach, a customer-first approach. If you look at how travel’s distributed, you go to a travel agent, get a brochure. That's just a really stupid way to distribute a product, and it was a middleman that will take half the margin, and then look at the online travel agents, Booking.com, Expedia. They found a way around that in the late 90s and early 2000s, and obviously, these are massive incumbents with huge scale, and we knew we couldn't take them on, because they're too big and too powerful.

We found a niche that they weren't necessarily doing quite as well, which we call flash sales, which was limited-time specials, where you drive a huge amount of volume at a great discount for the customer, but the hotel makes lots of money, as well. So, really creating a win-win, which is very different to always-on marketplace where all the […]. So, we just stumbled across this model that emanated really from the Groupon model, but we really tweaked it a bit to adapt it for luxury travel and just got really lucky that nobody was really doing this. Still, nobody does this particularly well. We're able to build scale, which is really the real challenge. Until you get scale, it's hard to have this business, because you can't go to a hotel and say, “I'm going to sell 10 packages.” They’ll say, “what's the point?” They’re not going to discount 10 packages. […] I’m going to sell you a million or 2 million or 5 million, or $10 million worth of product. That's exciting for them. That creates huge scale and huge value for the hotel. So, we're able to create this win-win. Customer gets an incredible deal. Hotels make lots of money. We just sit in the middle and facilitate this, and that stemmed out of Groupon. That was a really lucky find by us. We didn't go in setting out to do this. We just discovered it, and we just taught ourselves how to do travel.

[22:42] Nick: Define luck. I mean, we just spoke about luck there, and you've used it a lot, and the thing I think that really makes the hair stand up on the back of people's necks, when you say luck, is they go, “well, that means I don't have any control,” but that's not what we're talking about with luck, is it? What we're saying is that luck can be, something came across, but if you did nothing with the opportunity, then it wasn't nothing. It would never be today. So, I think luck was, an opportunity was presented, opportunity, then the skill was, one, identifying it, and two, exploiting that or taking it as far as you could. So, I think when we talk about luck, and that's probably just to crystallise the point a little bit, is that, yeah, luck’s luck. I mean, again, I've talked about Joe Foster. He says, well, they found that Jane Fonda was wearing their shoes, and they found the space in women's aerobics, and that's when it went gangbusters, post-that. They were doing $9 million, and then, a few years later, they're doing $900 million. That's luck. They spotted that, but the skill was spotting that somebody was wearing those shoes, and then exploiting that, and taking it on to the next level.

[23:44] Adam: Sure. I'll broadly define luck as being presented with opportunities that you get presented with, by virtue of something that isn't necessarily to do with your great hard work or skill, but being in the right place at the right time. When we started our business-- take us take out of it. Look at Malcolm Gladwell and Outliers, a seminal book, he talks about two greatest times to be born, in terms of creating wealth, but the second best time was in 1958/59. That was when Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, […] guys were born. Why was that a lucky time? Well, because in 1974/75, you're turning 14/15. You were at high school. The Altair computer got released. You were young enough to be able to play around on computers, but not too young that you couldn't use them, but not too old that computer looks a bit strange and weird. So, Jobs and Gates and Wozniak were the perfect gauge to be able to exploit the personal computing era. That was luck. Were they born five years later, too late. Five years earlier, too early. Yeah, that was super smart and super skilful, Gates is one of the smartest entrepreneurs ever, but had he been born 2 years earlier, maybe he would’ve missed it. So, had he not been born to a wealthy banker in Seattle, he would have missed it, because Gates’ school was the only school that had a computer. That's luck.

If you look at the greatest era of wealth creation was, you're born 1825-1835. That's the Robber Baron era. So, look at Carnegie, Rockefeller, Frick, all those super wealthy people. All males, coincidentally. They came of age during the Industrial Revolution, when railroads were created, and steel was created. So, that was lucky. If they were born five years earlier, Rockefeller wouldn’t have been Rockefeller. No Standard Oil. So, luck it's been at the right place at the right time. Obviously, you've got to exploit that luck through hard work and some skill, but it doesn't matter how hard working and skilful you are. If you're not at that right place at the right time, you don't make the fortune. We're at the right place, and not to an extent, but Gates and Rockefeller were, clearly, but we're in the right place and right time for us to use our hard work and whatever intelligence we have, and whatever entrepreneurism we had, but for the timing, if we were five years earlier, this Web 2.0 craze wouldn't happened, and maybe our skillset wasn't suited to whatever business was back there. Maybe it wasn't. Who knows? I define it as right place, right time, and being able to exploit something. If you're born in Bangladesh, can't leave the town, well, it doesn't matter how smart or hardworking you are. You’re never […].

[26:04] Nick: Yeah. Exactly right. Well said. What about the Covid experience? Everything these days seems to be demarked by Covid, with pre- or post-Covid. One of the things that, in business, seems to be the dream, is to be able to start, build, grow, scale a business, and then move out of that business, and have somebody come in and run it, and you did that, but then Covid hit. It must have hit your business particularly hard. So, I'd like to hear a little bit about that, how you dealt with it, what did you do? Because whether it's another pandemic or another GFC, there's going to be something else, at some point in time, and one of the skills of that, of managing and moving through those challenging times, is being able to, dare I say the word again, pivot, or find ways to move on. I think we talk about success as never quitting. I’m not a quitter. That's in my nature. I'm competing against myself. You love to run. I like to cycle, and I like to challenge myself. Three Peaks is one of the world's most challenging amateur cycling events, and I do that not because, I'm sick, I guess, because I love it, but it’s the most challenging physical thing I can find to do. So, business is another one of those things. Covid must have absolutely smashed Lux. So, how did you navigate that time? Then, you found yourself back as the CEO on the back of that. So, what was it that you were able to survive through that, and what did you learn?

[27:31] Adam: There's a few points there. So, when I had to stepped aside, we were planning on selling majority of the business in 2019, and enough shareholders though, “let's get out.” This is before founder mode. Manager mode was the in thing, and I think people, and I, to an extent, agree that having a professional manager in would get us a better valuation, because it wouldn’t be so dependent on the founder, and it’d be a private equity, […] come in and say, “we won't be dependent on James or Mitch, or whatever. If we've got a pressure manager in there, […] the business,” and that was the prevailing view at the time. Maybe looked at it now, there's probably a different view, and again, views change, but we put a manager in, good guy, meant really well, was very good at some stuff I'm not good at, and probably not as good at other stuff, but always going to deal with that, and he was doing a pretty decent job, and then Covid happened, and there is something that-- Brian Chesky talked about founder mode.

You just have this permission to do stuff, as a founder. You build a house. You understand every nook and cranny, whereas he’d come in, it's just a bit harder. So, it made sense for me to come and be able to make super quick decisions and really understand the business. Obviously, Covid and travel was super hard. We were lucky in that we had a domestic Australia business. So, people going from Melbourne to Queensland, for example, and there was a lot of times during Covid where you could still do that. Everyone thinks we were locked down for three years. We were, and obviously, things were always locked down for way too long, and the whole thing was a debacle, but take that aside, we could still survive. Our customers, thankfully, were great, didn't demand their cash back, in most cases.

So, we didn't have to raise capital. We raised capital after Covid. We didn't have to do discount until we did a capital raise, like most other travel businesses, and […] $100 million- business get the capital raise during Covid. So, pretty much every great travel business […] involved in capital raises wouldn’t get the same capital raise. So, we didn't have to do that, or we were able to avoid doing that until post-Covid. We ended up getting a much better valuation post-Covid than pre-Covid, interestingly. So, we're able to build the business, start to build better advantages. Having taken 18 months outside, and I was still going to the office pretty regularly, but I wasn't officially running the business, that was a huge benefit, and I'm super grateful to have been able to take a step back, and left while somebody else does the job. There's stuff that I was doing wrong, I didn't know I was doing wrong. Stuff that a new person coming in, doing stuff that I was doing. Now I can look at, actually, I should be doing that.

So, you can actually come and get a great perspective, and certainly extend my tenure as CEO. I would have been now, if I came straight through, 14 years. That probably is getting pretty long but gave me a renewed ability to do the job and probably extended my tenure, significantly. How long I stay, you’ll probably have to question shareholders. Don’t question me. Eventually. Shareholders make that call, or I'll make that call with them. Having a great time. We're growing the business really well, and it’s a great period for us, but certainly, Covid was difficult, from a profitability perspective, but significantly increased the intrinsic value of the business. We changed the business significantly. We have a Flash sales business to a much more diversified marketplace-based business. We've now launched a really cool loyalty platform, we've been planning for many years. Increased our tech team from 30 to 130, but currently raised the bar massively, Jeff Bezos-style. Shay, our fantastic CTO CPO, came back from Amazon. He left when I left, and he’s hired an unbelievable team. So, it went from being a really industrial business with a tech layer to a much more tech-driven business. We've got a bunch of rockstar technologists in the business. They're doing unbelievable things. Amost as good a travel tech team as anyone in the world. This is better than Booking.com, better than great travel businesses. Certainly, the best in Australia, and with that team, we’re able to build incredible products, and really understand the customer better, and doing things that we wouldn’t have dreamed about five years ago.

So, Covid was certainly a curse, in one sense, but a massive blessing, in a different sense, and you’ve got this crisis-opportunity in the same thing. Yes, it was a crisis for us, but it was a massive opportunity, and we were the only travel business, I think, in the world, that I've ever seen, that grew their staff under Covid, and we grew significantly. We leaned in. We were aggressive. We grew the business. We went from 220 staff to 600 now. Tech team, as I said, quadrupled. Skill in the teams significantly increased, probably 20x. We've had a lot of people who stayed through it with us the whole time. We were able to increase the calibre of the team on top of that, with hundreds of incredible people, mostly based in Australia, but also got great people in Brazil, got great people in Ukraine, great people in India, got a Europe team in Barcelona and London. So, team all around the world. We’ve seen a lot of people in New Zealand, people in Israel, it's a phenomenal team that, I wouldn’t have dreamed of having a team this good five years ago.

[32:05] Nick: How are you finding recruitment now? I mean, I don't know how involved you are in your business still with recruitment, but post-Covid, and coming out of Covid was horrendous. I found that finding quality people, or even retaining quality people, I think we made some mistakes within our business on how we manage some of our Interstate teams. So, we suffered a lot of churn and then replacing that, and finding those quality people, we found a real challenge. At the moment, I would say that that's probably shifted a lot. There's a lot of people, a lot of good people, looking for good opportunity, and they're looking for meaning in what they're doing, as well. I think the motivators that are driving people and what they're looking for seems to have shifted, too. How are you finding that, at the moment?

[32:50] Adam: Similar experience. Yeah, certainly trickier coming out of Covid because obviously the market balance is off. So, we do a lot of work into not just implement brand, but actually creating a brand experience. A lot of our best people have come from referrals. So, we've got a very generous referral programme, but people aren’t going to refer someone if they’re not having a great time. So, we want the work experience to be a great experience. I've loved all the jobs I've ever had. I worked in cinema. I work at a supermarket. Pretty menial jobs, but I loved them because of the people I work with, and Scott Galloway always says the most pressing indicator of somebody staying at work is having a friend. One friend at work, you're far more likely to stay. So, we do things […] lunch every day. There's lots of things we provide, but really creating a great environment. That's also hiring great people.

So, if you hire dud people, and everyone's going to hire people who aren’t that good. It's not a question. You never get 100% but moving on the […] as quickly as you can, and really understanding that, is super important because people don't want to work with people who are lazy or just bad people. So, it's recognising that and actually being aggressive to move on people who aren't a great fit for business. Some of those businesses scales past people, when they've been an unbelievable servant of the business, and you get to a point where it's time to get the next person into that role, and that will eventually happen to me. I'm not Jensen. So, eventually that happens to everyone. […] to understanding that and recognising someone who’s an incredible servant of the business, but maybe it's just time to change that role. There's that category, and there's people who just aren't great people. You’ve just got to move on quickly.

[34:11] Nick: I read that in an article on you, too. It interested me because our employment laws in Australia are very restrictive. It always confounds me a little bit, because no business I know of moves on, wants to fire, terminate someone who's a performer, that's delivering to the business, yet you do want to for those people who are underperforming or not delivering, or not aligned, I think is what I read. As quickly as possible, you need to get rid of those people that are either underperforming or not aligned with the culture of the business, but how do you do that in Australia, particularly with such restrictive employment laws?

[34:49] Adam: We don't really work in unionized, highly regulated parts of the economy, and most of our team are normal contracts or above […] limit, in many cases. So, obviously above 180, or wherever that limit is, you obviously have to abide by […] requirements and the contractual requirements, but generally, any employment contract, it comes down to money, really. So, pay anyone enough, they’ll leave. If someone’s earning 50 grand a year and you give them 300 grand, they’re going to leave, of course. They […] a job within six years. So, not that we do that, but ultimately, it comes down to money, and we always want to leave on good terms with pretty much everyone, and I'm not saying it doesn't ever happen, because it very occasionally will happen, but we're talking sub 5%, but in most cases, if it's not working for the employer, it's probably not working for the employee, and they almost always understand and know, they can get a better role that’s more suitable for them, and you obviously want to treat people fairly and obviously try and be more generous than less, and pay people more notice than maybe, legally, you need to pay, as per the contract

If they're a good person, you can give a great reference. You can't lie about that, but if somebody calls me and says, “is Nick a great person?” I can say, “he's amazing for us. The business changed directions, and he can meet this role,” but we'll always try and help out our team members. We've got people who actually leave us and come back to us because they understand that we're a great employer. So, it works both ways, but we always want to be fair with people. Obviously, someone stole, and […] is a different story, but that's pretty rare. In most cases, you can have a great relationship with someone, and for whatever reason, time has come on that, and you can, we think, leave on really good terms and do everything you can to support that person in the next life, and people don't work here forever. People can leave and get a better role because they're paid more, or they got a better opportunity, or whatever, they want to work from home and we don't have that, or whatever it is. That’s rare, but that can be the case, but I think it's, how do you leave on great terms and do the right thing by treating people fairly and well? I think that, overall, is the best result you can hope for.

[36:43] Nick: Yeah, it’s interesting, because, as I said before, anybody who's really contributing to your business, both culturally towards your vision and your mission, and is performing, you never want to lose that person. You're never going to move that person on. So, I find it a really frustrating thing about running a business in Australia, is that sometimes you make the wrong call, and you hire the person, and it's not that they're a bad person, or maybe that they're just in the wrong company, maybe they're not aligned with the culture, and they deserve to find somewhere else, as well. Yeah, I think you're right. You said something there before. If it's not working for the company, it's probably not working for them, as well. I think it's a really valid point. There needs to be some change in employment law in Australia.

[37:26] Adam: I don't think employment law-- actually, there are elements of it that I love. I think, we've certainly got the first six months to make a valued assessment of an employee, and even within […], you should be able to make a decision within six months. If that person just isn't right, then don't drag it on past that time, and there's obviously general protections that you can't be unfair, but in general, in most cases, as long as you do the right thing, you’ve got six months. Post-six months, it’s trickier.

[37:55] Nick: But they can still pursue you for unfair dismissal within that probationary.

[37:59] Adam: Only for general protections, not unfair dismissal. So, you've got six months, and if you're earning above a certain limit, that falls outside. You can't be racist. There's a lot of things you can't do, but that’s separate, but ultimately, you can end the contract within six months under current trade laws. So, you've got the six-month period, but ultimately, it's a matter of hiring the right people and then treating them right, and if it isn't right, then you’ve got six months to make that call, and if it's formed past six months, the people are really great, and something changes, and whatever, and it's a matter of working out the best way to end the relationship in a way that doesn't lead to litigation down the track.

[38:36] Nick: I guess I want to be clear here, what we're talking about, because it’s something that, we're the biggest employers in the country, as small and medium business, and you’re large business, but you employ a lot of people, and like you, we want to have people. We can't do what we do without the amazing people in our team. Sometimes, when it's not working, it can be a cancer in your business, and a lot of people I've spoken to, different people use different ways to describe it. One guy I know, he says, “I'm not afraid to hire the wrong person. I'm afraid to keep them.” These sorts of things. So, I think it's such a critical part of success in business. It's the right people on the bus, committed to the vision and the journey, but one wrong person, one bad apple can spoil the bunch, as they say. So, you do need to act quickly, don't you?

[39:20] Adam: There's almost 3 categories. There are people who are bad employees, and this is pretty rare, they call it the cancerous-type employees, that impact other people in a negative way, and those you have to get rid of. You can’t keep them. You’ve got to get rid of them. As soon as you realise that's problematic, you got to move them. Then, you’ve got, call it, the bar-raisers, the Jeff Bezos bar-raisers. They're really impressive people who lift people up around them. Incredible work ethic. Super smart. Super initiative, and if you can find someone that, you want to hold them, and these are diamonds. If you're 1 in 10, you're doing well, and then there's everything in-between in the spectrum, and in that spectrum, people can be amazing, the business goes past, and then you have to move on, or you have people who might grow with the business, which is a great result. So, just understanding, obviously, that the cancerous employees, they're terrible, that you’ve got to move on that ASAP, and really quickly, and that they're also the ones, the rare instance you might have an issue, is usually with those employees.

Usually, everybody else, the […] one’s you’re trying to keep, and the people in the middle, generally, do pretty well. They want to do the right thing, and you want to do the right thing. It's just the bottom 10% that’s causing the problem, maybe it's the bottom 5%, and it's recognising that, acting quickly, cauterizing it, and really moving as quickly as possible, because you don't want them to influence the middle 90% in an adverse way.

[40:33] Nick: A little bit like Jack Welch's differentiation. I don't know if you've come across, have you ever read Winning by Jack Welch?

[40:39] Adam: I think Jack Welch has been little bit discredited since he wrote that. He was the stack ranking type. Let's get rid of the bottom 10%, which in a sense, I think, he's right. I think Jack had some issues, in other respects, but I think, broadly speaking, what he said there was pretty sensible. The bottom 10%, you probably don't want to keep around.

[40:58] Nick: Exactly right. Challenges, now versus then, cash flow is, as I say, cash is king. Cash can kill your business. You can have all the business in the world, but if you can't fund it, that’s a challenge. What's some of the challenges that you've faced over the journey, and how do they differ now, as a large business, than they were as a scaling business?

[41:16] Adam: Yeah, we're a negative working capital business. Our customers pay us first. So, cash is probably generally not a major issue. Of course, I can’t say it never is. We've had cash issues in 15 years. In 2012, we had a liquidity issue. We bought a business that was more debt-laden than we expected. So, it’s not as if we never have cash issues. During Covid, it was always in our mind, but generally cash isn’t a massive, as opposed to a marketplace, where you got to build the marketplace from scratch, or a SaaS business where cash becomes a much bigger issue in the long […]. The cash probably isn’t the forefront of our issues. Building competitive advantage probably is a really tough one. So, look at our business. Really easy to sell cheap travel. For someone to come in and sell travel, it’s not hard, but building a genuine competitive advantage, building real brand, building real scale, building of some network, building some stickiness, that's hard. There's no switching costs in our business.

You can go from having a great experience at Luxury Escape and go to Booking.com next week, even though someone may love us, and our MDS is one of highest, if not the highest, in the travel sector, one of the highest for any consumer business. Yeah, people used Flight Centre, Booking.com, Expedia, all great businesses, but we struggled somewhat to hold on to our customers, and this is the case for every consumer business. […] got the same issue. Amazon, the same. Amazon created loyalty programmes. We tried a loyalty programme to try and create some stickiness in customer. We launched our Lux+ programme about 3 months ago. It's going really well, so far. Been some great customer behaviour, much more stickiness, providing some great discounts to our customers who are buying in to creating that same cost, and create how do we create more win-wins? Always our question, but how to create genuine, lasting competitive advantages, to create a business that is really sustainable, remains just our biggest ongoing challenge.

[43:01] Nick: Yeah, I get that, and I think the name was genius. I mean, nobody wants to jump on and buy from Cheap and Cheerful Holidays. 

[43:08] Adam: It’s a blessing and a curse. Some people think that they can't afford it.

[43:14] Nick: It's out of reach. Yeah, I was going to say.

[43:16] Adam: You can end up paying double on Booking.com. So, it’s a great generic name. It's easily memorable. It's got great brand recognition. There's downside.

[43:22] Nick: Everyone loves the idea of luxury, don't they? Everyone loves the idea of luxury. Everyone aspires to have luxury.

[43:29] Adam: Yeah. Well, luxury is different things. Your luxury might be Four Seasons. Mine might be Novotel. It's different to different people, but the challenge is, some people are just, “I'm not going to like that. I'm not that fancy,” when really, they're spending less. So, the […] Luxury Escapes out of our original brand, Deals.com.au, is we wanted hotels to be really safe and comfortable, an environment where you’re going to really treasure their brand and take good care of their brand. Hotels who advertise Luxury Escapes are entrusting their brand to us. Most of the best brands in travel, the 5–6-star brands, work with us, which is unusual, in a lot of these cases, and they work with us because we do a great job making sure their brand stays sacrosanct, despite us being a great value discount channel, which there's a bit of a contradiction there. Luxury Escapes is great for that, and we make our hotel partner look incredible, but the downside is, some customers think, “this is too special, too expensive, for me,” when actually, that's not the case.

So, there is a bit of a perception gap that we always try, and the one way to overcome it is through really social proof. People go to Luxury Escape, you can go to Grand Hyatt Bali, you go to one of our great partners in Bali, on Luxury Escapes, and getting free dinner, free lunch, free breakfast. The guy next to you has paid double. So, that person then goes, “I’m the idiot in the room. I'm going to buy Luxury Escapes next time. I've seen what Johnny next to me had. He had an amazing holiday.” So, once to experience somebody else experiencing it, then there's a bit of FOMO there, to your earlier point, but it's getting that social proof. 11 years, we're still working on it. Every time we give a travel customer a great experience, they tell a couple of people, and it's a slow burn, but as they say, do things that don't scale, and trying to provide great customer service to every single person is something that doesn't scale that well.

[45:07] Nick: Yeah. When we can start to complete each other's sentences, that's even better. It's the sign of an amazing conversation, and I won't keep you too much longer. I know how busy you are. There were probably two things that I really wanted to ask you, and one I want to ask you, probably outside of this, too. It's interesting. The emergence of, and it's overdue, I think, in my opinion, but people with special needs, accessibility needs, these sorts of things, are a huge population of consumers now, and off the back of what we've just seen, I've never seen an Olympics with the coverage of the Paralympics, like we've just seen, and I think it's brilliant. Our business is really, that's in our space, and we've got another business, my wife and I, that we've started up, that I'll talk to you outside of this, but it's about, know before you go. I think it's fraught with challenge, the idea of holidaying or travelling, for people with special needs, accessibility needs, because it's so specific, and it's so unique to them, and it's not a one-size-fits-all.

I've got a very, very good friend of mine that travelled down here for my eldest son's wedding, drove from Queensland, Sunshine Coast, in the back of a van, facing backwards, because that was the van they had. He's got disabilities, which was acquired through injury, and from Sunshine Coast to Melbourne for a wedding, which was just a phenomenal effort, but the place that we found him to stay at was 90% right. He's really sensitive to temperature. So, during the night, he will change the temperature, often on the air conditioning. The thing is, this place, which is supposed to be fully accessible, the temperature control’s on the wall, near the door. Now, he can't get to that. So, all night, he's waking up his partner saying, “hey, could you adjust the temperature?” Simple thing that most of us take for granted, we would never think of, but they're a massive group of consumers. So, commercially, there's also an opportunity there, as well, which I’m keen to hear your thoughts about, and talk about, but you've achieved so much success. You've done so much, but what's really important to you now? What's really driving you?

[47:05] Adam: It’s a really hard question to answer, because you're so focused on the day to day, or even doing the annual multiyear budget is still relatively short-term. So, we want to create incredible business and take whatever capital we're able to accumulate and make a real difference. That probably is a not-for-profit sector in some way, and probably I'd love to grow my own not-for-profit, and much like yourself, work with a bunch of not-for-profits, but having your own, I think it's different. Within 10 years, we'd like to be able to do that. Not that we’re on the clock to the minute, but we want to create as much value as we can, and you only get so many chances. You only get so much luck. You only get so many great, long-lasting, sustainable businesses. We're looking at an advantage, and we think we've actually got that chance. We haven't finished the job yet. We're still working on it, but we're heading in the right direction. We want to keep building on that. If you look at our business, where we've come in the last five years, the business transformed. We’ll continue to really transform the business, create some real value for shareholders, customers, and employees, and then what can we do from that? What's our second act? That’s still to be written. We have an obligation to give back, in some way, and how we do that, we're still working it out, but we're still in accumulation phase, and how do we then take what we've built, and try and help others, I think is the overarching goal, and we'll see how it goes.

[48:25] Nick: We're really blessed in our business because so much of what we do impacts the lives of those, where their daily life is just so much more difficult than ours, and that's just the blessing that we have, and we talk about it in our business, and we celebrate the stories, as well, but we make sure we revisit those stories frequently, because we all have shitty days at work. Everybody does. You said before, you've loved every job you had, but I'm sure you've had days where it's like, “this is just a crap day,” but off the back of that, we remind ourselves of those that we serve and how much more challenging their life is. So, really, one day, it's just a day. You've got to move on. Thank you. I've got one I want to ask. Last question. It's a bit more fun. If you had a private dinner party, put on by you, who are your special guests that you would have there in that room?

[49:09] Adam: This probably changes regularly.

[49:10] Nick: Obviously, I'm there with you, but who else?

[49:12] Adam: Yeah, you’re the co-host. I'd love to get Warren Buffett there. Obviously, he's 94 now. If you look at businesspeople, which is probably who I would probably look to. Probably Buffett, Bezos, are probably the two seminal businesspeople. You could probably put Gates in there, but not sure […], and I love The Acquired Podcast. […]. I love the Acquired boys. They’re incredible, Ben and David. Who else? When yous think about it, they’re probably more who would jump to mind.

[49:37] Nick: Yeah. I know, I spring this on you, but it's probably the best way because they're the ones that come to mind first.

[49:43] Adam: Yeah, exactly.

[49:44] Nick: So, that’s cool. Now your own podcast, The Contrarians, I love the title, too, by the way. I looked up, I really wanted to understand, but contrarian is: opposes or rejects popular opinion. That's pretty cool. People can find you on all the different streaming services, I guess.

[50:01] Adam: Yeah, I do it with a guy called Adir Shiffman, who's the Chairman of Catapult, who's an incredibly smart guy. He really holds the show together. I'm just the hired help there. He does an amazing job. He's super smart and runs an amazing business, and he’s run many amazing businesses. So, we talk about what's happening, and have some fun. We really go deep into analysing businesses. We've both got 20 years’ experience, he’s got 30 years, I’ve got 20 years of pretty deep business experience. So, with it, we can bring a good perspective. Like yourself, we run a business. So, we really understand how things work, and we still […], which is pretty rare, and we've got a really great listener base of people, like founders and pretty senior people, C-Suite founders, entrepreneurs, and young people wanting to do that. So, we speak to 5-10,000 people every week, which is really great.

[50:47] Nick: Yeah. Amazing effort, and look, I'd recommend to everybody out there, get on and check out The Contrarians, because it’s a great listen. These days, I think I'm up to about 1.5x speed when I’m listening to my podcast. So, I can really cram them in, but it’s fantastic. So, great stuff. Adam, brilliant chat, mate. Thank you. I really appreciate your time I know you’re busy. You’re off to Bali tomorrow, I think, with the family. So, enjoy that. Have an amazing trip, and we'll look forward to catching up soon.

[51:12] Adam: Thanks, mate. Great to be here.

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