The Amber Moment
The podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers.
The Amber Moment
Ed Pyke
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Ed is the CEO at Simpson Travel. Here he talks about an early TV appearance and "getting the bug"; becoming a Eurocamp team manager at 19; running Premier Inn's most profitable London hotel; the lure of being able to define AND execute strategy; leading the private equity sale of Simpson; the power of optimism and diplomacy; and getting a serious taste for outdoor cooking.
Amember Mom and welcome to the Amber Moment, podcast that tells stories of remarkable careers. My name's Paul Howeth. My guest today is Ed Pike. Ed is the CEO at Simpson Travel, a luxury travel company renowned for its exceptional customer service. He's led Simpson through a period of substantial growth and overseen a private equity backed sale of the business. Prior to that, Ed held a number of senior positions in the hospitality industry, including being a general manager at Whitbread. Ed, thanks for being there. How are you today?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very good, Paul. Thank you for having me on.
SPEAKER_00It's a pleasure. Thank you for being there and for making yourself available. It's an honour to have you on. So um the first thing I noticed is that Simpson Travel was named as one of the Sunday Times best places to work recently. That must make you very proud.
SPEAKER_01Proud, yeah, privileged to lead the organization, very, very humble as well, because there's so many great great people. I just so happen to be the sort of ultimate face of it, but there's so many great people in the in the organization, highly engaged people. So it was wonderful to receive that recognition and see our see our name and print in the Sunday Times.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you you receive it on behalf of a lot of people, I'm sure. And how how does that process work? Do you have to sort of apply to be on that list or how do they judge it?
SPEAKER_01You do. It's a bit of an engagement survey exercise and a ranking and and cut of the uh the top percentile of that engagement survey. So it runs as a bit of an internal engagement exercise that we've done with the business before in various different forms, and those people who score exceptionally well out of those scores then get put forward into the um Sunday Times list.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure you're in very good company there. How many are on the list, do you know?
SPEAKER_01I think there's about a hundred in each category, a hundred small, hundred medium, a hundred large, something like that.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic. So I did I didn't mean to like make the whole interview about about that, but it's a lovely, it's a lovely accolade to get. So well, anyway, we'll we'll make it more personal because that's what this is about. And as I think you know, what I'm trying to do here on the amber moment is to tell some great stories, and I think yours is a is a really fascinating one. So I'd love it if you could start by telling us a little bit about your background, your childhood, your upbringing and education, and any early influences you might have had.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, delighted to. Well, I grew up on the sunny south coast uh in in England, in uh Bournemouth, um, and haven't been back there or haven't lived there back there really since uh since I left at 18, but it was a wonderful place to grow up. Um I had a uh pretty normal, stable upbringing, 2.4 children, etc. Went to a uh a nice grammar school down there, Bournemouth school for boys. Yeah, and yeah, had a good time really. I uh you know, I had a good time in the army cadets, I did a lot of outward bound stuff, made a lot of good friends through through that, explored the new forest and the purbex and got to do some interesting stuff there. But you know, I started overseas holidays probably when we were when I was about eleven or twelve years old.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um one of the first things we did was we uh we appeared on TV for uh the summer holiday program with Monty Monty uh Monty Don Jill Dando were presenting it at that point. Um and they wanted to pick a family who is who is their first time travelling abroad, which was us. We were going on a a Eurocamp camping holiday in France, and they picked us and they sent a film crew down, and we had about a 10-minute slot on BBC One prime time, sort of 7 pm. Fabulous 10-minute slot on uh on the summer holiday programme, going around France and and exploring and staying in Eurocamp accommodation. Yeah, and that set us off really on EuroCamp holidays for the next five or six years, and I had a wonderful time and I was looking at what people were doing there working for Eurocamp, overseas sort of reps or couriers as they were called, their terminology. And um, I thought, well that that sounds like a looks like a really nice thing to get involved in. You're away from your parents when you're 18, you're getting stuck in learning a bit of French or the local life, chatting up a few French girls, maybe that kind of stuff. So I I applied and I went straight into that at 18. And I sort of really became passionate very quickly about travel and hospitality. They're very much, you know, my career has been bouncing between the two the two of those sectors, but they share so many joint similarities, really, looking after people, making sure they have fantastic experiences, delivering a very special and hopefully memorable in the right ways experience to people, not not a commodity of you know selling a pint of milk or something like that. You know, something that people are gonna remember and talk about. And um, for all of those reasons, really, I just fell in love with travel and hospitality and hosting people, and uh yeah, I can I I I continued on and went and went from there, really.
SPEAKER_00So you were 18 when you you started in that role. What age were you when you were there with your parents being filmed by the BBC?
SPEAKER_01I was about 11. It was about 11, 12. Okay.
SPEAKER_00So even at that early age, you got a real taste for it such that you at the age of 18. I got a bug. I got a bug.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I I I had two sort of career choices, I suppose, in life. One was the police, and I also entered at 18 and I became a volunteer police officer, which was great. When I look back at 18-year-olds now, I can't believe I I did it really. But at 18, I I signed up uh on my gap year before university to uh Dorset Police and I started on 999 response shifts there after a period of you know six months training, etc. And then and then carried that on through university as well.
SPEAKER_00Did you?
SPEAKER_01And I I I enjoyed doing it as well. I enjoyed I I enjoyed the police, I enjoyed the the drama again, you know, looking after people, helping people, providing a service in a different way, but providing a uh a service to people. I I I very much enjoyed but yeah, as I was doing all that, I was uh every summer and every every Easter even, I was escaping university to pick up work overseas, and I kind of had I suppose the option of going one way or the other after after my university education finished, and I went I went with travel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So you got the bug quite early. And uh were you were you aware then? Because you'd you'd had this, you caught the bug, as you put it, at quite an early age, and then you had this role. Uh was that with EuroCap you said you had that role?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I did EuroCAP all the way through university, and then I and then I changed post-university to a company called Canvas Holidays.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Same thing.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and so when you arrive at the start of your career then, having caught this bug, were you aware of setting out to achieve something? Did you have what you might term a mission or a sort of long-term plan?
SPEAKER_01I think yeah, well, the very first job I did, it again in hospitality, I became a kitchen porter at the golf club. Right. Um, going in when I was 16, uh, washing dishes, is I knew I wanted to work. You know, I I didn't I didn't want to draw down money from my parents or anything like that. Or I wanted to pay my own wear, I wanted to earn a bit of pocket money, spend it on what I wanted to s spend it on, have that responsibility, not have to sort of ask permission or beg for different different things. So I knew I wanted to work, and I think hospitality was a pretty good start. I did spend some time then in Sainsbury's as well, at a very young age, 17, retail internet shopping as well. And I did some work again on my gap here for um in mobile phone sales for what was the what was the it doesn't exist anymore, but it was called the Link, which was a kind of car phone warehouse um sort of environment. So it was always people facing, it was always in front of the customer, it was always you know trying to uh especially in the travel sector, trying to trying to make people happy. And I think that's what I enjoyed doing. I enjoy I I and I also enjoyed the very the great thing about the travel sector at that early age when it exposes you into a climate where you need resilience, you're living abroad, you're working with other people, you you you need you need to be a jack of all trades to fix things, it it exposes you to very, very early leadership. Uh because uh when I went back the year later, when I did Eurocamper 18, the next year they said, Well, you've done the entry-level career job, you come back next year and you're going to be in charge on a site of three people. When I was 19 in my death, and I was in charge of three people, all of which I think were older than me, or maybe one was the same age, but the other two were certainly older than me. And you kind of build on that as you go through, you're you're leading more and more people from a very, very young age and being responsible for for people. And I quite enjoyed that buzz of you know climbing the ladder. Um, and I think you can do that in hospitality, especially, but travel also, you can do that from a young age. You can you can get responsibility and climb the ladder and experience a bit of early leadership and make and make your mistakes. I made some some crazy mistakes when I was, you know, in my first leadership role, etc. of of uh which I look back on now and they're they're fully ingrained in my mind of oh, you know, I remember the time I said this and I shouldn't have, etc. Yeah, it's it's good it teaches it teaches you in a in quite a safe environment, really, because these are all seasonal jobs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So the people are not relying on it, you're not influencing their forever careers. They're there for a for a summer working overseas with you. So, you know, it's not uh the be-all and uh and end all in that respect.
SPEAKER_00So from from those early forays into the industry, then perhaps you could give us a little sort of potted history of your career, you know, what what happened, how did you get to where you got, and and do feel free to share some of those stories of those mistakes as well along the way.
SPEAKER_01I'll start with the mistake. I remember I was working in yeah, that first leadership role. So I've been doing it about a month, and I welcomed my new team. I remember saying to them at one point as I was working with them on setting up these uh mobile homes and tents. I remember saying to a couple of people, I think I said, um, oh you know, what we're what we're gonna do here is we're gonna aim for B grade. You know, we don't want to we don't want to be the worst and be on the radar, but we're not we're also here to have a good time. We don't want to be the best. We're just gonna be we're just gonna be B-grade people here. And that was a really clear early mistake where I just basically said, you know, you can everyone can drop their standards, they don't need to work as hard as you uh as you might need to, etc.
SPEAKER_00But very clear vision you've outline though, to be very clear vision, yeah.
SPEAKER_01We want to have a bit of fun as well, but it was it was the it was the wrong sort of message, and I and I paid for that as we as we moved forward. But as I said, I was only 19 and I was um also trying to have fun at this at this at the same point. But so did news of that filter through to your bosses by any chance? Probably probably not. It felt probably filtered through in some of the uh questionnaire results that we got back at those at those early stages, but I still did a reasonable job. You know, they uh they still wanted to keep me on the on the ticket for the next year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And as I went through it, you know, as I said, at university, I was I was trying to basically decamp and get out of there. And I joined university, but I was also trying to to spend as much time abroad as I can in Spain and Italy and France with Eurocamp. And I did a number of different roles. I you know, I I did an activity and uh teenage activity coordinator, family activity role for a s for a summer. I gained bigger roles from a leadership perspective. So I think by the time in my third year of university, I was leading one of the flagship sites for the company for that for that summer. Um about 10 people or so um for the for the season. Um all of those kind of things, that that different cultural environment, that uh resilience, the the leadership, the teamwork, the fun, yeah, the customer service and the guest experience really said I I I said to myself, right, well I'm going to I'm going to do this full-time post university.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then that's when I I went and I joined uh Canvas Holidays and I made that leap from a single site running a one site in in France was my last gig for Eurocamp at the time, to an area manager role of eight or nine sites and 30, 40 people again, very young age, you know. I was only uh only been about 21 or so at that point, but doing doing doing that then, and then that that moved on to regional roles and bigger roles, and with Canvas, I ended up sort of running Southern Europe for them with about a hundred staff across across 30 sites or so across um southern France and Italy and and and and Spain, and leading, you know, expanding my remit to lead on things like health and safety for the company or training and things like that. So uh having having a wider impact than just that that patch as well.
SPEAKER_00It sounds super impressive to to have risen that quickly to have got to what is effectively a management role to be in charge of so many people at such a young age. Like w how how aware were you of of the magnitude of all of that at the time?
SPEAKER_01Um the I think I was in I was I was I was enjoying it. You know, I was I I I really did enjoy the journey there. It was I was working abroad a lot, and you know, there were I did have plenty of responsibility, but I was I was enjoying it uh at the same point, and I was enjoying you know working with so many other so many other people on the team and and area managers and that kind of role. So it never really struck me as a magnitude of responsibility, although there were some you know very hairy incidents uh that were that I had to deal with again at a young age, you know, deaths overseas, or we had a we had a what was effectively a tsunami that wiped out a campsite through local flash flash flooding. Oh gosh. Cars floating the sort of thing where there's cars floating around, and but everyone got out. But it was Where was that? That was down in the Côte d'Azur in southeast France. Uh yeah, literally that it was it had been raining for two days and the dam had burst up the mountain and just cascaded through to the river, and the river had swept through the site. We would have had about uh 80-90 people on there. They all got out. There were no there was no loss of life on that one, but ever they they only got out with them, you know. They didn't even get out with a toothbrush or a passport, they just they just got out, and then I was on I think the the flood waters rescinded, and 24 hours later I was walking around the the actual site and it was um yeah, it was apocalyptic.
SPEAKER_00God.
SPEAKER_01But I was again, I was 22, 23, having to coordinate, you know, uh 80 dispersed people and getting them back to the UK and buying them toothbrushes and organising new passports for them. But you know, it was a traumatic incident, but no one lost their life, and I look back at it again and go, Well, you know, what a what a great sort of test of character leadership and organisation at at such a young age.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. So then take us through your career then. You you you've you know reached this point very early in your career, but what happened thereafter and and what were the sort of crucial moments through your career?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that work was great. I I was moving between winters in in Scotland where the head office w was, and from about not even summers, from about March through to November being overseas. And that worked well for three or four years post post-university, but it got to the stage where I thought, you know what, I I I'm starting to miss birthdays of friends and weddings and events and celebrations in the UK and I can't get back, and you know, maybe I want a bit more stability in the UK. And so I I decided to leave. Yeah, that was about 2011. I decided to leave. And I didn't leave without uh I didn't leave to go to a job. I didn't have a job lined up. I just said, right, I'm gonna I'm gonna put my notes and I'm gonna work to the end of the the operating season in in October, I'll say my farewells and I'll I'll find a I'll find a job. And I moved to Sussex. Um my girlfriend at the time, she was working in in Brighton.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so I thought, well, we'll we'll I'll place myself in between London and Brighton and I'll pick up something in London. And it took me two to three months maybe of searching, but I was accepted for Premier Inn, whipped bread, uh-huh, as uh hotel manager of what was at the time their biggest London hotel, a hotel called Premier Inn County Hall, which is right next to the London Eye.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, I know where you are.
SPEAKER_01It's um brilliant location, it was 314 bedrooms. Wow. At that time, it did 15 million in turnover, 98% occupancy across those 314 bedrooms. You know, when it was May half term or summer holidays, it was doing 600 breakfasts in a morning for people. So it was a baptism of fire because there were it there were, you know, at that point, even then, 50, 60 premier ins in London, but they couldn't find a manager to step up. They didn't have an internal candidate to step up and run their the the biggest. So I I'd never done hotels before, and obviously I'd done travel and and facilitating uh holidays that were very similar in looking after people and uh maintenance and cleanliness of accommodation, etc. But I'd never run a hotel. And uh there was a maternity cover who was uh I sort of came in and she said, Right, well, we've got four days and then I'm off on maternity. So four days to train, you were now to run a hotel. Great handover here. Yeah, there was about I think I think we had about 70 staff or so, um, four days to do that, and then you're off and you're um because it was probably one of the most profitable hotels in Premier Inn at that point, along with along with some of their big airport locations, yeah. It used to get a huge amount of executive attention. So every week we'd have a director in, or the CEO, or the MD, or you know, various people within Whitbread would would come and visit, and you know, huge amount of investor attention from the capital markets as well, and they'd bring and show round. So you were always on stage. It was quite, it was it was quite the run-in and baptism of fire, and I had to learn very quickly, but I did learn, and that meant that sort of Whitbread paid a bit of attention to me, and I got promoted a number of times over my sort of four or five years with them. I uh I went to open a new hotel just across the road, brand new sort of project management role. Yeah, um, I went back into Dorset on the south coast um because they knew I was from there, and and that was my first area role with them. I was running eight premiere ins across across Dorset and Bournemouth for a year, and then uh back to London. And I ended up before I left them running about 16 Premier Inns across across South West London. So always, you know, operational delivery again, always experience, always always leadership. That was the that was the sort of bread and butter stuff that I love doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and so how did that then take you to Simpson Traveller? Maybe you can talk a bit about your you've been there seven seven or eight years, something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so yeah, nine years now. Nine years. And I went from Premier Inn. There was a bit of a cultural change at the top and a changing of the guard, and the CEO of Premier Inn, who I had a great respect for, went to be the CEO of Green King Pubs, restaurants, a few hotels, and he asked me to come and join him, or I expressed a desire to see what he was up to. So I went there for a very brief period, about nine months, as uh in a central role. So I came out of a kind of operational delivery leadership role into a kind of side operational support role as head of guest experience. So I was uh mapping out uh strategies to deliver better guest experience in their various brands. They had about 16, 17 brands at that point, while also looking after their contact center, their customer service team in the contact centre, 25 people handling customer complaints essentially from these pubs on cold food or wet times and those kind of things. And that was an interesting chapter because it was a huge uh cultural turnaround plan that he was trying to put in there, move moving that organization from something that was very sort of classic publican sales focused to one that was much more about service delivery and standards and experience. So mine was a new role to to assist in in doing that. And one day as I was um on a way to a meeting, a uh headhunter had phoned me and said, you know, we've got this role, you know, kind of floated past you describing the Simpson Travel Obs Director role at the time. And I said, Well, yeah, it sounds really interesting, but uh I'm I'm own I've only been in Green King six six months, and yeah, that doesn't feel uh right for me to leave. And you know, I've I'm loyal to this to the CEO who's brought me in. And uh I said, send me the send me the job description, and I'll probably be able to recommend a few candidates that for you to call. So they sent it over to me and I read the job description and I thought this is a fantastic role. This is this is right up my street.
SPEAKER_00What appeals particularly?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think you know, when I was when I was doing uh the the sort of area management job with Premier Inn, it was delivery of someone else's plan. You know, here's the plan, here's the standards. You you don't, you know what what's great about Premier Inn, of course, as everyone says, is uh high standards, you know what you're getting, does what it says on the tin, you know, cookie cutter. Kind of relationship with the hotels, but you you have to follow the orders of above, really. At Green King, I had the chance to create the strategy to go, well, I'm in charge now. Well, what what do I recommend? How do I think we should play this, treat this, treat the brand standards, bring what ideas do we think we should bring in? But I had none of the ability to execute it. So you were going to the operations directors and saying, Look, this is what I think we should do, but I can't do it because I'm not in the line management chain.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What do you think? And let's execute it together. And so when I read that that description, it it almost said, Well, now you have the ability, there's no one else, there's no central support team, you're creating the full guest experience strategy for delivery of that, and you're leading it and implementing it. And with Simpson, one of our kind of superpowers really is that we we control a lot of the chain that we deliver. In another travel company, you may get someone book you on a holiday in a hotel, yeah, but they don't control the hotel, they don't control the experience, they have no visible presence on the ground, they're literally an almost a booking agent. Yeah. Whereas at Simpson, we have and and control so much of that chain, and and we have 70, 80 people on the ground overseas. And when I read that and went, well, this is actually, you know, it's merging everything in my career basically today. Travel, the leadership on the ground, the standards, the strategy, uh, high level. So I called them back and I said, Well, I don't need to recommend anyone else, let's engage in the process. And I was um I was successful in that, which was fantastic. And I just so I joined Simpson Travel in 2017 as there as the obstruct.
SPEAKER_00And what a journey it's been to just lead us through some of the highlights of your nine years there.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, it's a growth story with Simpson, which has been great. Excellent to be in a business that has been consistently growing decent compound annual growth rates each year, new initiatives, new products coming on, new areas of operation. So we we we've achieved a lot in that time. And I think the first you know, three three years of that was getting to know my role, getting to know the team overseas, and understanding what what needed to be improved, putting in the vision and the and the purpose of what we were doing. That was very important, and aligning totally the business under Net Promoter, which is which was our number one KPI, it still is our number one KPI of delivering fantastic experience. And we did a lot around that, and we grew we grew that, and then COVID hit. Sure was a huge sort of watermark in the story, really, because we were going from delivering holidays to refunding holidays to not sending people on holidays. The business went into huge reverse, all the cash flows were going were going one way. 2020 was a horrendous year for the business and and and for the team. And sort of at the end of that, we'd restructured and we'd done a lot of redundancies to kind of keep the business going.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And at the end of it, the management team, the chairman of the business, Graeme Simpson, at the who was the chairman at that point, said, Well, you've got a management team of of sort of eight now in this business, and all the other teams have been restructured and downsized. And in 2020, you know, revenues collapsed. I think prior year in 2019, we did about 28 million or 29 million in 2020. We did seven million, which is probably seven million more than a lot of travel companies. But we it was a huge swing, and he took the management team down from eight to three of us. Right. Three of us. I was I was one of the sort of surviving three, and the two others are uh Simpson family members, Simpson children, his children who stayed there as well. So we ran the business from then 2021 to 2023 or so in a in a tripod structure. There was no the the managing director had been made redundant at that point. So there was the three of us acting as executive directors, um, which was an interesting structure to run. Three executive directors responsible for their own areas. And Graham had said, you know, basically you're going to sort out the decisions between the three of you. And if if you can't make a decision, I'll step in and I'll have the casting votes. But really, I don't think he, you know, he ever it ever had to do that, maybe on one occasion in the in the course of those three years. And so we got on well, and and and as we moved through that, I was continuing to branch out because those those eight people and their functions, I had to pick up uh a decent amount of it. So I was I was learning new areas of the business all the time as the kind of de facto COO, really. Yeah. And one of the things that we did in 2021 is we launched a share placement offer to our customers. Okay. So we knew we had a really strong, loyal customer base. They wanted to see us grow, they loved going on holiday with us. Our our repeat rates were kind of 50-60 percent. And and I was an early investor in brew dog crowdfunding. Oh, yeah. Which came to an unfortunate end now.
SPEAKER_00But um it's a great case study though, otherwise, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01But it's a really it they had a uh they had a really interesting journey, especially when they started on understanding the power of community in your customer base and tapping into that and launching various rounds of internal customer crowdfunding. So we kind of borrowed that model really and set about launching a share placement scheme where we'd issue 10% of the share capital to the to the customer base, and we raised about 1.6 million or so from our customers. And it was a bit of a safety net in case COVID was going to go on into 2022. It was a bit of a war chest of, you know, actually, how do we kick start back in growth by using this capital to you know hire back people or look at acquisitions, etc. So a number of different things we we thought we would do with the with the money invest in a CRM system was one. And that was yeah, that was very successful. We ended up with 70 customer shareholders, which was brilliant. Um we we ran that for a couple of years, and the 22 was very strong for the business. It was a huge, you know, the pent-up demand of everyone who didn't travel during the COVID, all came into 2022, yeah, and it was one of our most successful years. And off the back of that, Graham, who who was probably about 76, 77 at the time, said, Right, well, now is the time that I want to take this company to to sale and see see what we can value it at. And I'd led all of that crowdfunding with the lawyers. So it was my first foray into corporate finance. Yeah, we'd done that through the presenting the company with a prospectus and legal due diligence and things like that. So Graham said, Well, you I want you to lead it. I want you to lead the full corporate finance of taking the business to sale. And I, you know, I'd never that was the first time I'd done that. I'd never done anything similar before, but we had a good non-exec director on board as well, who was uh ex-private equity, Anthony Bull, and he uh and he really helped get that going and introduced us to the right corporate finance advisors. And we went from there really, and we launched a sale process in in 2023, which which concluded uh in 2024 with Graham stepping down and and retaining a minority shareholding, but um stepping away from the business and me becoming as the substantive sort of CEO from an acting CEO position for the for the year before and um hiring uh a new CFO, a new ops director, and and and continuing to grow the business on from there, really, with the support of uh a small boutique private equity firm called called Risk Capital.
SPEAKER_00I'm interested to know because because when people talk about companies gearing up for sale, I'm interested to know from your point of view in in this case, what substantively is different about the way that business operates when it's gearing up for sale, did you find?
SPEAKER_01I think you could the first thing I'd say is you can never do enough preparation. Yeah and if you're if you're thinking of selling your business, you're you're starting too too late, really, because the the amount of data that you need to collate and the amount of things that you need to work through, I would say selling a business, especially this kind of business that was, you know, at that stage we were 30 million in revenue or so, really is the best part of two years of thinking through that prep from the appointing of the advisors to getting everything in order from contracts to data to policies. Where's our policy on data protection? Where's our policy on human trafficking? Where's our policy on cybersecurity, etc.? Not just writing them, but implementing them, collating what you need, thinking through your banking plans, etc., uh, your financial data, of course. So it really does take a huge amount of effort before you even get to the perspective of right, actually, who are we trying to see if they would like to buy this business? Who's our sort of target list of acquirers? So there's a huge amount to work through. And in hindsight, probably we we might have up weighted our our financial resource to do that. The financial burden when we're trying to operate the company and deliver holidays on our finance team to surface this data was probably too great. And if I'd if I'd have replayed it all again, I'd probably have had an additional financial head in there as a kind of financial controller on this project or a or a project manager to help surface the data and cut it in different ways. Because as you, you know, it's not just getting to the perspective of writing that prospectus after you after people see it, they have a million questions. So you're getting bombarded with, okay, here's here's 10 companies that would like to buy us, and each of those 10 companies have got you know 50 questions that they want. Can you cut the data with a three-year view? Can you cut it with a five-year view? Can you add in this? Can you subtract that? So you end up working through a huge amount of questions to to enable those potential acquirers to answer the question as to whether they're going to bid for your for your for your business or not. So it it is a fast-paced time and one that is totally consuming. I remember one of the corporate financial advisors you know said to me, you know, if you're going to go on holiday, go now because you won't you can't go on holiday for the next six months. And I think I you know, I ended up speaking to one of our corporate bankers pretty much every day through 365 days, maybe Christmas. We didn't speak on Christmas Day, but basically every day we would speak, and uh there'd be a question or there'd be a discussion or there'd be a different approach. So it is it is all consuming, and and really to your point, Paul, you you've got to have the backup in there and the resource to to ensure that the business can continue hitting its numbers, can continue delivering fantastic experiences and and growing guest pool, customer pool, etc., while all of this is going on.
SPEAKER_00And how would you see the business today? And how how different is it since the sale versus before?
SPEAKER_01I mean, the investors that came on board with us, one of the great things was that the lead investor there, who's a serial hospitality and travel investor, uh an entrepreneur in in the in the country called uh Luke Johnson, who sort of was a man who took Pizza Express from nine units to 200 and went to IPO. So he he he turned Pizza Express into a household name in the 90s. And he'd been on holiday with us two or three times, so he really understood the ethos of the business before he ever knew that we were for sale. So they invested in the business on the basis of they really liked what we were we were doing. They liked how we placed service and experience at the heart of it. They liked the loyal customer base that is a part of the business. They just wanted to for us to attract more customers and and go to more areas, really, to grow to do more of the same as to what we were uh as to what we we had been doing. So the business has grown since then. The values are still the same. The values, the ethos, the service delivery, the teamwork, the the ability to drive great team engagement, which wins that Sunday Times award. All of that is still the same. But what is different is the fact that we've been able to, with their with their guidance, push forward to unlock new areas. We went and did an acquisition last year, which created a Portugal as a new part of our program. We're looking at further acquisitions again with their with their support and guidance. It's obviously what they do on a day-to-day business buy and sell companies, so their MA guidance and how to approach and structure de deals, etc., is always very, very valid. But equally, their their expertise on um they're very very consumer-led, you know, in their in their pea house. Some pea houses are agnostic and they will say, well, we'll invest in anything from industry to AI to travel, risk capital. Uh they know their sort of swim lane of consumer hospitality, travel, that's their deep expertise, and that's what they can bring to the table. So we've been able to sort of benefit from their experience with that as well.
SPEAKER_00Right. Ed, this is the part where I'm going to ask you to leave your modesty at the door, please, because I want to ask you particularly about you and thinking back over the totality of your career. What do you think it is about you? What skills, knowledge, talents, or character traits do you possess that have allowed you to succeed where perhaps others wouldn't?
SPEAKER_01I think it is good to have a purpose and a vision. You mentioned that earlier, Paul. You know, you've you've got to really set the scene in the context, and you've got to be an optimist to get there as well. You know, you've got to you've got to believe you can do it and try and get rid of those limiting beliefs that you can't do it. I remember, you know, when we first when I first joined uh Simpson, it it even appeared to me that there was no way to we had a 20 percentage point swing on our MPS over those first couple of years. A huge swing, up to 80, 85% of MPS, which is you know world-class industry leading. And you know, you've got to believe you can do it. Optimist optimism first and the ability to set a kind of north star guiding point and go, look, we're we're we're we're gonna go for that, and and we're all gonna coalesce around a a mission and an objective. So I think that's uh hugely important. I think you know what I've learned from because I've operated in FTSE businesses like Whitbread or family businesses, as Simpson was private equity, is it now you know diplomacy is important. I credit my dad with that. He was he he was a deputy head and he r really showed me the long game and the ability to appreciate diplomacy. I studied politics at university, I never wanted to really be a politician, but one of the greatest elements I took took from it was you know political strategy and international relations, etc. And international relations is kind of the the kind of final god stage of diplomacy, right? Because you can't get any any countries to interact and behave with each other unless you approach it, well, not unless, but in the vast majority of cases, and if you approach it from a diplomatic standpoint, understand the different balances of power and things like that. So I think diplomacy uh as a part of my leadership style has always has always served me well.
SPEAKER_00And what about the other side of the coin? So if you think about you being the hero, if you like, of your own story, but every story also has an anti-hero, and it needn't be people. I'm not asking you to name names unless you really want to. But what what stood in your way through your career? What other sort of I don't know, it might be systems or structures or prevailing ideas that you've had to overcome to succeed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think you've definitely got to find your tribe and find people who believe and sign up to what you believe. Because even in hospitality, and I've worked with with people before who have been on a very different agenda and page. I I you know I mentioned a business I've been involved in before, and it was it was very sales-oriented, but not you know, I'd approach sales as sales through service. You deliver a fantastic service, you you you deliver a brilliant experience, and people naturally want to come back. Whereas there is the flip side of delivering service, which is just get them in the door, just get them in the door, and everything else doesn't matter. As soon as you've got someone's money, everything else, you can fall away. And it's always about chasing the the first point of interaction where you can get people's money. So, you know, I've clashed with people before over that philosophy, and I've left a business on that basis because I I've seen that the person right at the top has a philosophy that is completely opposed to my to my one around service and experience where they're where they're just trying to get people through the door and sign what you know, it doesn't matter what happens, what happens next. No standards if people have a poor experience, then it doesn't matter to someone lining up next to come in. And yeah, that's that's been hard because you're you know to leave a business and you're making huge life changes on that basis and declining, you know, that business try to tempt me to stay, you know, try to say, well, you know, come and do this, we'll give you even more money, we'll give you a new role, etc. And you just kind of go, No, you know, it's not right for me. I'm gonna go and find my tribe and find the people who are aligned on that vision and mission of from whatever you believe, really.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, it's that expression, it's not a principle until it costs you something. Yes. It just sounds like that's happened to you. And it's sort of it sort of touches on what we might call values. Like would you say you have a a particularly strong code of conduct or certain rules that you like to live your professional life by?
SPEAKER_01I think service is key. I mean, you know, both both of my parents were teachers, public so public sector teachers in various forms. They they they grew into leadership roles in different ways, but they were public sector, you know, volunteer police officers as myself. I kind of followed them through, you know, over the years. I've done various um trusty non-exec roles for charities or be involved in different, you know, charities, um, like Springboard, which is a uh London-based hospitality charity, taking people who are on the cusp of even homelessness or certainly that unemployed and don't have any skills and training, and giving them a career in hospitality very successfully. Always looking to deliver on those things and give back to society and the community has been has been a part of what I've done and really permeates through the values that I that I hold hold dear. And I think so much of what I've tried to do from a leadership perspective in the roles that I've done is be in service to others, you know, to recognise that actually there are a lot of good people with a lot of great ideas right on the coal face, or how do I enable my team to be the best versions of themselves they can be, or to explore new ideas, or to push themselves forward? You know, I'm there to to serve and facilitate them and to further their goals and objectives rather than sort of further my own, really. So that's th those are the really core things that I try to to live by and give give people you know autonomy over what they're what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And what does that look like? What's what's your kind of happy ending, you might call it, when when all of your mission and purpose and your values all coalesce and and manifest themselves in the real world? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_01Well, I guess you know, the one of the beauties of the travel industry is that is that we're resetting every year, which makes it fun and frustrating in equal measure. Because you know, we trade in Simpson from Easter to October, and then we shut down. We don't have anyone on holiday to the next year. We close down all the villas, all the hotels, but then you've got to you know recruit some new team. There's a change of change of a few faces, not met not many, lots of people come back, but a change of a few faces, go through that all again, another bite of the cherry, set it all up again, reinvent yourself, you know, and and that's that's brilliant. It kind of creates this never-ending cycle of you know, go try again, you know, yeah, a bit like sports, really. You play a match, you debrief, and then you get a chance to play another match and be an even better version of yourself. And hopefully, as you go along, you can rise to the top of the Premier League and the Champions League as you as you as you as you go forward, really. We go again, I like it. You go and you go again, but you can constantly reinvent and you can constantly you know create little pivots and do new things and have the ability to have some thinking space and launch, you know, in our case, new destinations or new uh new types of products. So really, we're gonna keep doing that with private equity. Of course, there is always the knowledge that all private equity companies do not hold a company forever. At some point, there is a transaction, and and it's my job as the CEO to develop the strategy ultimately to provide shareholder value and to deliver, you know, to deliver the environment and to deliver the results that will that that will result in a transaction in the future at whatever point that might be, and then and then it'll be up to me to to kind of decide or potentially the new new new acquirer to decide what what happens next.
SPEAKER_00How much has that appeal been, that going through that process again, potentially in a year or two, or haven't we?
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's quite exciting, I would say. It's it's it's stressful, it's hugely stressful, and it's a huge amount of work, but there's no other ultimate validation really than than someone coming along saying, right, we we we we believe in you, we believe in the business, we believe in your team or your mission or what you're doing or whatever. The way we want to be involved, and here's you know a multi-million pound deal to go to go along with it. So I think it's um it's a stressful time, but it's uh it's a hugely rewarding time both personally and professionally at the end of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So what is next to you? It could be next week or next month or five or ten years' time. What's what's on the horizon?
SPEAKER_01I you know, with Simpson, we've still got a long, long journey. So I'll I'll I'll keep building that and uh developing the company and hopefully you know being able to deliver more holidays to more people in more destinations for us around, particularly around Europe, and is key. And MA I I I do like MA on the buy side as well. So you know, we did a MA deal last year. We'll hopefully do further MA deals in the future, which is rewarding as well to bring companies together and to learn from uh another company and to and to unlock new areas for us as well. So that will um that will keep me interested in going for the foreseeable future, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like you're gonna be very busy for the foreseeable, absolutely. Outside of work, then Ed, we'll uh we'll we'll take as red that family and friends and loved ones are are important in your life, but outside of all of that and outside of work, what are your sort of passions and hobbies and interests?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I'm a big, big, big barbecue fan.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01So uh outdoor cooking generally, specifically good quality, and I'm not talking burgers and sausages, I'm talking, you know, I was I was doing my Christmas turkey outside uh on a spit this year in a Take it seriously. Yeah, yeah. So I've got a great bit of kit called a big green egg which sits on my deckings, very good, yeah. Uh a ceramic uh oven style barbecue, or I've got a pizza oven next to it, etc. So any kind of any kind of outdoor cooking I find is a is a brilliant way to de-stress, to take my mind off things, to uh to create something from scratch, to again host, you know, hospitality, yeah, you know, in in my work life, but I also love to host and to have people around and to entertain and to and to have picked a nice bottle of champagne or sparkling wine and to pick a nice cut of meat for people to enjoy. The summer there's no better time to do it.
SPEAKER_00So uh it does sound quite vocational that that you're like that naturally as a person, and that's sort of what led you into what you ended up doing as a career as well, which is which is great. Final, final question, if you don't mind, since we're on a podcast, would you have a podcast recommendation for me and and the listeners?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I'd have to I'd have to probably recommend the last podcast that I was that I was on, a podcast called Swim Against the Tide, uh-huh, that is full of interesting businesses up and down the country and um how they've positioned and grown their businesses and some great business leaders on it. So yeah, that would be my that would be my recommendation.
SPEAKER_00Oh, terrific. We can we can compare and contrast your your appearances on on the respective shows then after this. Listen, thank you for that recommendation and thank you even more for coming on and and sharing a whole host of uh great insight and great stories from your career, um Ed Pike. Best of luck with the next chapter. Thank you. Join me next time on the Amber Moment, when we'll be hearing another story of another remarkable career. Until then, stay amber.