Season 3, Episode 102 : James Thornton – Intrepid Travel

00:02
James, thank you so much for joining the green element podcast. I'm really looking forward to talking to you because I know, along with probably many of our listeners exactly who intrepid travel is, and travel is that it's not an elephant in the room. But you know, we all know that travel has got implications, but there are so many positive things about travel that, I think outweigh the negative. And so, therefore, having organizations like you in the world is a really positive thing. So be great to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about who you are, please.

00:38
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. Well, it's great to be here. So, James Thornton, I'm the CEO of intrepid travel. intrepid is one of the world's kind of, I suppose, largest event travel companies. We really try and do two things as a business we try and operate fantastic sustainable experience-rich travel which is covered have our kind of core focus if you like. And then the second thing that we try and do is operate a business that balances having both a strong purpose but also delivering profitability. And hopefully proving a business case that you can be a whole purpose business. But you can also be a sustainable kind of successful business that generates a profit for shareholders as well. And that, actually, the more good things you do in the purpose space, the more that helps you grow. The more growth you do, the more that helps try and drive a better purpose. So, I've been lucky enough I've been with intrepid for 15 years and been lucky enough to be the CEO now for three and a half years. I kind of work my way through the business based in the UK originally, which is where I'm from Australia back to the UK and then Australia for the last seven years. So yeah, super lucky to get to lead intrepid, we're a certified B Corp, one of the few travel companies out there that are and obviously navigating a pretty tricky time at the moment with the COVID pandemic but sure We'll get to that later.

02:01
Yeah, I think yeah, I think possibly I've tried to steer off COVID but I think it really has impacted your business and organization I think talking about it could well be quite a useful thing to talk about because I would imagine navigating through it has opened up areas that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of opening up.

02:23
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's been Yeah, it's been of course the most challenging time for our company and indeed for any global travel company out there so but yeah, it does open up some new opportunities but just looking through to getting out the other side, I guess.

02:39
Can you tell us a bit about how you engage your staff and suppliers customers about your mission and purpose?

02:46
And, yeah, it's just something it's something that's so embedded in what we are and who we are, you know, I kind of a lot of people often towards me around this, this notion of purpose, being kind of a nice to do thing, something that we, you know, and it is linked to this COVID environment because I keep getting asked, well, in a post COVID environment, surely sustainability will drop off and actually you'll just go back to driving, you know, an economic model of having to get more pastures in like I do keep trying to say that actually, we find our sustainable business model a competitive advantage. And actually, it helps providers with competitive advantage that helps actually drive revenue and sales and in turn them profitability. So, you know, our sustainable business model is at the heart of what we do. It's really why we entered the B Corp certification two years ago. That was a three-year journey for us to go on and why we pursued that was because it's very easy in life to talk about how you grow a business or you operate certain products, but how do you prove Do you have a sustainable model? How do you prove the offer for-purpose business, and intrepid? We wanted to find something that wasn't necessarily industry-specific, but kind of went right cross-functional through every aspect of our company and look to the way in which we work with our people, the way in which we interact with our customers, the impact we have on the environment, the way in which we try and benefit our shareholders, and really went right through the journey. And that's what and that's what drove us to perceive B Corp certification and took us three years to get to that point to make it happen. So yeah, it's just it's a good kind of evaluation of our overall over overall business and what we're trying to achieve.

04:42
And how do you think touching on B Corp? How do you think that has affected your business in the way that you run? I mean, do you have, do you try and highlight different areas of the world for people to visit or you know,

05:00
And then not so much. But the thing B Corp did for as well was, was changed the way it helps improve some of the things that we do in the organization. So, B Corp methodology essentially assesses your across 200 different touchpoints in your organization. And it says it's really robust criteria and the modeling economy get, you know, naught point two, five points towards a certain issue and, and so it highlighted to us, for example, that from a people perspective, we didn't have sufficient diversity in the leadership space. And that was often caused by the fact that we didn't have a maternity and paternity leave policy. So B Corp methodology helped introduce for us the notion actually if we had a maternity and paternity policy that would help us retain more and more senior females in the organization, and they in turn would then not be dropping out of the work workplace when they were previously dropping out. And that helps us then address the diversity issues that we had. It's other things like having in Egypt, for example, we, we always negotiate with our suppliers. And often it might be a cooking school run by a female, yet the male would come in and negotiate the commercial arrangement of working with the cooking school. And we'd say, well actually be caught methodology rewards you for doing contracts directly with females and males in equal fashion. And so, it prompted us to review our kind of ethical supply code in terms of the way in which we work with some of our local people on the ground. So, I know just it was lots of lots of small things that I think have helped make us a better business and a better business for the people that work with us. The people that work for us, and hopefully for our customers, too. And it's this great thing you have to do. You have to be reassessed every three years, and you have to meet certain credentials, and we kind of use as a benchmark to say, well, every three years, we want to try and improve by four or five points. And we get then compared against every other B Corp out there in the market is three and a half thousand vehicles around the world. Some are very big, you know, the body shops, the Patagonia's the world. Some are very, very small organizations. But we will we'll discuss the kind of comparative scoring between us which is, which is yes, pretty goodness, it's very transparent, and hopefully gives customers and all our stakeholders a good view of the things we do well, but also all the things that we don't do well, and it's any company doesn't, doesn't do certain things, as well as it could and needs to improve. And so, it's been good for that.

07:34
Yeah, I think that's um, we've been a B Corp now, since 2015. And what it brought to us was structured similar to yours, but it's interesting that you have brought in it's how you communicate with your suppliers in the separate countries because that has such a powerful message that is sent through to people, won't it?

08:00
But just to add one point there, I think it's a really good thing as I hope, you know, I'm sure you found and we've certainly found, there are lots of people with great intentions out there, you know, and there are lots of great companies trying to do lots of really good things. But unfortunately, there's also a degree of greenwashing that goes on as well sadly, where things are just good marketing, unfortunately. And I think you know, when you are when as a consumer, you're out there trying to pick a company, and should I work with this company? Or should I buy this company's products? Or should I be employed by this company, trying to define the difference between good marketing and actually what really is a business that is designed to be a fee for good is often hard to do and we certainly found that B Corp certification does help provide a point of distinction?

08:45
On that so I'm kind of an that I have not looked at it in massive detail, but kind of company per hundred thousand or per thousand people. I think Australia, New Zealand have more B Corps than any other country in the world, including the UK and the UK is fairly strong on B Corp. Yeah. And I think, I was looking at stuff the other day and thinking, Wow, that is a lot of B corpse in Australia and New Zealand. And it was up there with the UK and we know that there is more population. So, what do you see your customers picking you over others because there's more knowledge around B Corp in Australia?

09:32
And so, I mean, firstly, 50% of our customers are Aussies and Kiwis 25% of Brits 25% are Americans and Canadians. That's our kind of global split. You know, in Australia of the three officers of the three and a half thousand B Corp globally. 10% are in Australia in New Zealand. So is a disproportionate amount by head of population. to your question, do people pick us as a direct result? I don't have any tangible results. Will that say yes, I can't. I can't sit here now and say, because we are a B Corp, that then generated me an extra 20% of customers, I can't tell you that. All I can tell you is that in the last four or five years, we've been back in under the ownership of our founders and our staff, we have about 70 shareholders, so our two co-founders and about 68 of our staff and our shareholders, which is fantastic. And we've pursued two things growing the market, sustainable experience-rich travel, operating a business that balances purpose and profitability. The more things we have done in the purpose space, the more that and we've talked about that the more that has helped us grow. And the more we grow, the more we're able to do good things in the purpose space. And we do believe that is cyclical, and that has helped drive the 21% compound average growth rate that we've had over the course the last four years, and the record level of profitability we've had, you know, our B Corp, our sustainability Issue, things that were involved in, they cost quite a bit of money. But we tangibly believe they help drive our growth better as an organization and not just drive our growth better as an organization, will they help us attract better people? And I really, you know, really what we do know this as one tangible thing, we are able to employ a higher quality of talent than we would not ordinarily be able to attract into our organization because we are a certified B Corp. And particularly millennials want to work for companies actually stand for something. So, I think that's really helped us as an organization. So no, it hasn't. I can't give you a metric size driven customer outside of our results, which suggests it probably has, although indirectly, but it does help us attract talent into the organization.

11:48
Yeah, okay. That's interesting. Just I think it's that concentration equals I kind of look down. Well, wow, that's actually quite interesting that it really has, the communication is just really worked really well.

12:00
Yeah, it's ready.

12:02
And responsible travel, could you... you've got a lot of information about responsible travel on your website. What is your view? What is responsible travel? And how can people travel more responsibly?

12:17
Fairly responsible travel to me and this I've been with intrepid for 15 years now I remember when I joined Intrepid and in 1999 we recruited our first responsible travel manager 2002 we started the intrepid Foundation, and we've gone on to reach some other pretty impressive benchmarks since then. Back in 2005, when I joined, responsible travel was a real niche thing you know, Pete, you'd go out and my job was, I was kind of a sales rep in the UK going around to travel agents in the UK and, and selling the intrepid programs and or half the time, more than half the time people would look at you with a bit of a puzzled face thinking you were a bit of a treat, hugging hippie and yeah, nice to do that, who on earth cares? and off you go, you know, go forward to 2020. And I think any company that doesn't have strongly talked about as responsible travel philosophies or sustainable travel philosophies is frankly, you know, a mile behind the times and people often say, Well, what did was responsible travel for intrepid? How does that make you different? And how can other people become more responsible? And I almost do it to this notation of a supermarket when you go into a supermarket and they have a health food aisle. It gives the connotation that every other food in the art in the supermarket isn't healthy. And I think of that a bit like responsible travel now so you know, designer, intrepid, the responsible tour operator, so does that mean everyone else or other companies that don't market themselves as responsible tour operators are not responsible in a fashion and I think the big thing that we are increasingly trying to do and the big work that we've done over the last four or five years just actually advocates for Responsible travel not being a niche anymore, but just being the norm. And being the norm of the way in which people want and should try and travel. And I think a lot of people hear the words responsible for travel and I think, oh my goodness, I don't even know where to start. And it sounds so intimidating. So, in fact, I might just make up some marketing and bury my head in the sand a bit. And what we're incredibly trying to do is to share as much as possible, some of the successes that we have had as an organization. So for example, we just open-sourced an animal welfare kit, talking about the steps we've taken to improve animal welfare experiences on our trips and share that with the industry so that they too can start to take some steps because it's a bit like technology or artificial intelligence for non-technology person like myself when someone says artificial intelligence I kind of freeze and so getting this may I'm not quite I don't even know where to start. But as such one who explained to spend artificial intelligence to me said, well, when you ride a bike, you don't start by doing wheelies, you start by doing little bits and pieces and really respond with responsible travel, we believe it's about picking up something that means something to you as a brand, and then starting slowly and building and improving on that. And to be honest, that's all that intrepid has ever done. We started, you know, it was really a kind of ethos of Darryl Boyd and Jeff monster, our founders. But you know, then with our first responsible travel manager in 1999, and then since then all the steps that we've taken, all we've ever tried to do is try and improve a little bit year on year on year on year. And the fact is, we just started in most cases, probably 10 or 15 years before most other companies, which is why we now have a bit of a head start now but it just is ultimately about trying to get some incremental improvements and also recognizing as well, well, that things we've done in the past one weren't quite right in the past and putting your hand up to that and, you know, we've talked about that a bit with the steps we talked about elephant riding, you know, we did that for 25 years and, and then became one of the first tour operators to battle for writing in other areas where in the past we've done things that weren't quite right, and it's addressing kind of wrongs you've done and trying to improve on them. And move forward. I think.

16:12
I think learning from your mistakes and learning from others is absolutely key in this whole sustainable because it's not, it's not black and white, nothing is black and white changes, it changes fairly regularly as well. And that's another really hard thing to talk about, isn't it? It's that change of actually now we know more information in this so therefore, we should probably change that even though we've been advocating this in the past.

16:35
That's why and I think people shouldn't be afraid to say, Oh, we actually got it wrong. And now this is what we're going to do about it and with anything, it's the more educated you become over the course of time makes you realize that things you did in the past weren't quite right. And now you can take steps to move forward with it. So again, there's a way it's one of the things to be called methodology. Well, I'm sure you found it is you know, promotes opens this honesty and transparency, and, you know, you've got to be open, honest, and transparent. And that involves recognizing that sometimes you don't get everything right and when you do put your hand up, and then work to make it better.

17:15
Yeah, I think that openness and transparency is so key to any business conversations that we should all be having now. Going on to that. So, running an ethical and sustainable business, what would you say your biggest struggle so far has been? And can you tell us a bit about how you overcome?

17:35
Biggest struggle... isn't easy to just balance all stakeholders? It's a very nice line to roll out. Sounds very good. But it's really hard. You know, I mean, you know, I guess I'm funded by people sometimes say, Well, why don't what a work intrepid 15 years later and why am I proud to be the CEO of the company and it is because I think ultimately, one of the key drivers SME is trying to prove a business model or a business model that you can be for purpose but also for profit. And there's a notion isn't there that if you're a for-profit business, you're kind of an oil refinery, you know, churning out dollars in dollars in dollars at local people's expenses and the expense of the environment. And that's what a poor for-profit businesses, it must be screwing someone somewhere. Whereas if you're a for-purpose business, well, you've got to be an NGO. You know, the only way you can be truly for purpose is if you're an NGO, and I just think actually, both are rubbish. And why can't there be a model where you can, you can drive strong purpose outcomes, but that in turn, you can drive a strong growing profitable result. And that's, that drives me a lot. I really, you know, I'd love to wrap my time with intrepid and say, you know what I was, I was actually able to prove a business model that a company could do both and report on that openly and honestly and transparently. So that's probably one of the biggest challenges because if it were easy to do well I presume more people would just do it and like someone why said to me once if everything if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. And so and so it is hard it's hard to balance all stakeholders to ensure that you know, you're looking after your customers as best you can to ensure that you're looking after your employees as well as you can to ensure you're having a positive impact on communities and, and any environment and a good example of it well and a classic example is when Coronavirus hit, and intrepid was quite under the microscope for a few weeks around and not responding quickly enough to customer refund requests. And then as we work through the refund requests with our customers and customers being quite frustrated that we were sticking to our terms and conditions around certain elements and saying well You say you're a for-purpose business. Yeah, this is just a profit grab. And you know, it's not those two things, you're really just trying to balance all stakeholders and make sure that you run things as openly and as fairly as you possibly can. But there are times that things coming to come up against each other and you have to make as best decisions you can under that, that the court methodology, which does quite clearly promote the one we are a for-purpose business, but we are also a for-profit business. And so that's probably the biggest challenge. I think we'll try to align with all stakeholders as best we can.

20:38
If you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners to help them with their purpose, what do you think that would be?

20:47
I think I would say to find something you really believe in when it comes to purpose. I think you quickly get found out if you're not genuine. Will, I think I get frustrated sometimes and you wait companies jump on the bandwagon or of every single thing that's going on. And so, you know, I've been accused sometimes Will, why are you speaking wrap up around this event? You do not care about that. There's interested not care about it. And you think, Well, yes, intrepid cares about it, and I care about it. But it's not necessarily our place to speak up about every single issue that goes on in the world. I think it's very important to pick the issues that are close to your heart, close to your business, mean something to your customers, into your employees. And then do as much research as you possibly can and set yourself some targets of what you want to achieve and then speak up about them and share about them. So, I think it's just encouraging people to pick something they believe in, be robust around it, speak up about it, and not try and be something to everyone. I think that that would be the key thing for me.

21:59
Okay. And I'd like to move on to environmental management and carbon footprinting and understanding sustainability as an organization. Have you? I mean, what have you done as an organization from a carbon footprint point of view or environmental management?

22:15
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, I guess our carbon journey for intrepid dates back to 2005 was where the where it first came to our kind of attention. And in 2005, our founders got many of the managers in our organization to read Tim Flannery's weather makers book. And it was a bit of a kind of aha moment for us that hang on a minute. We are a we're a travel company that's advocating to get as many people across the world as we possibly can to experience fantastic cultures. But in doing that, we are having a detrimental impact on the thing that we actually get to show off which is the earth and we might need to change tact here. And then in 2007, one of our co-founders did our Was climate training. We actually ended up getting about 150 of our staff to go and watch the Inconvenient Truth movie, we got 2000 customers to go and watch the Inconvenient Truth movie. And we asked our customers what they thought about the movie. And they said they wanted intrepid to do something about, about carbon. And carbon is going into the atmosphere as a result of intrepid travel activities. And so, in 2007, as a result of that we made or 2008 I think it was we made a commitment to want to become a carbon-neutral organization. And, and we managed to make that happen by 2010. So, you've been a carbon-neutral business for over 10 years now. I think it's a great example well of something that 1012 years ago seemed like we were a kind of market leader in the space of doing it and we still, I still do talk about it proudly now that we became a carbon neutral business in 2010. And that we've You know, offset more than x over 300,000 tons of carbon emissions and the way in which we have revised our reporting methodologies in line with the National carbon offsetting standards. But the Frank reality is that being a carbon-neutral company is not enough in 2020. We have to go more. And what is that methodology going to be for us? Last year, we talked a bit about wanting to become a climate-positive business. Personally, I'm not convinced that that's the right terminology or even the right way to be talking about things. I think what we've got to do is go right through our imply entire supply chain and work out how we're actively going to be reducing just reducing the amount of carbon that we create, forget neutralizing it, just the carbon we create, we have to have an active reduction plan. And that's something that we've been trying to work on or saying we're trying to work on in the lead up to COVID. I'm 14, our attention has been a little relayed by trying to work through the COVID world that we live in the last few months. But once we get back on top of that the other side, you know will be challenging, it's around. It will be around the reduction of carbon for us rather than the neutrality of carbon. So sorry, a bit of a long answer there.

25:50
No, it's a really tricky one, particularly for an organization like you because and I inferred this in my opening gambit the I personally think that what you do by sending someone to a remote area in Kenya or in a responsible fashion actually does more for the planets than carbon, the flight itself. We've got, we've, I wouldn't say world peace, but we'd certainly have much more peace from understanding each other's cultures now than we ever used to. And it's that understanding cultures and understanding who we are and where we all fit in within the world is incredibly important to the worlds and you know that and that's where flying works. Whatever anyone says about flying, it works in that we understand each other. And yes, it's great that we're talking to each other. You're in Melbourne, I'm in Edinburgh, and we're talking to each other over the internet but face to face, you can't travel that way. And you know, so you've got to have face to face. You've got to have people communicating with each other in a more meaningful way. And yeah, I think I think it's hard. I don't really know what I'm saying. But I think it's,

27:19
it is hard, isn't it? Well, because, you know, we've, during this COVID pandemic, and it's, you know, the world has been essentially forced to stay at home for its health, haven't we? And you know, moments like that, I suppose the transformation of Venice's canals and sea turtles thriving, thriving in Thailand. And being able to see the Himalayas from villages in India and Nepal, which have been out see them for, you know, a number of years now. They're all really positive signs as a result of is being forced to stay at home. But there's also some serious negatives in staying at home too. And, you know, what is the impact of these local communities, so many local communities around the world that benefited from tourism? What is the negative impact on the fact that…?

28:06
I do still fundamentally believe that getting out and seeing the world provides you with a better perspective and, and hopefully a more peaceful perspective and a realization actually, people are incredibly similar in their desires, whether they have a different religion, a different related race, different belief systems, actually, when it comes down to it, we are ultimately quite similar and getting out and seeing the world and understanding that gives us a, I think, a slightly better outlook. And the benefits that therefore come with that. So, you know, it isn't cut and dry is not black and white. It's a very, very gray area. It's a very difficult area. I think, just for intrepid, it's the recognition that, you know, we've really advocated around carbon neutrality for a long time. I'm really proud of the work that we've done in kind of leaving the space over the last, you know, 10 to 12 years, but a recognition that it is no longer enough, and We need to do better. And like all things in life, we need to do better and try and keep improving. And that will be an important area for us. But at the same time still wanting to get people out and seeing the world and having the benefits of that. But, you know, there's other ways we can do it where we can, you know, remove flying from some of our itineraries and have more local transport. And, you know, we have always been a local transport provider, we tend not to run our own, you know, buses ourselves. So, there are other methods to in terms of reducing the impact there's still allow people the benefits of, of traveling to

29:32
Yeah, I think that's Yeah, I'm it's really important. The talking about carbon neutrality. I mean, I remember my first car I was, I did a carbon offsetting project back in 2004 2003 for a company and you look, it was so rudimentary, I literally, you buy renewable energy, and you've got lots of taxi you minus one by the other and that was our carbon offsetting project and things do move on. And more and more research is now available for people to be able to understand the implications of carbon offsetting. And what we should do. And we, we know that 73% of carbon offsetting projects are don't negate carbon. So, therefore, um, I mean, where do you see, and I know that I've kind of just thrown this into you. But I bet you've already inferred that carbon-neutral was brilliant 10 years ago, and then we're learning as we go on. Where do you see yourself going on and you may not be able to answer this because it is ever-evolving and it's ever moving.

30:48
Yeah, so where do we go from here? There wasn't the first thing the intrepid did? Die. I'm trying to remember how long Suzanne has been with us so that 18 months ago, intrepid recruiters first climate scientists so actually on our payroll is a we have a doctor Dr. Suzanne fit she is a qualified climate scientist. And what Suzanne has introduced increasingly introducing to intrepid is working towards science-based targets. So, you know, we're kind of moving away from this notion of carbon neutrality and moving towards setting emission reduction targets in line with climate science, that that's, the move in which we're trying to do. Now. I'm not an expert in it. And if Suzanne was here, she would be, she would be ridiculing me for what I what I'm saying she

31:39
would know she wouldn't. You're saying, Yeah, I didn't want to bring science-based targets up just in case you'd hadn't. But that's, I think that is absolutely the way forward. We help an awful lot of organizations through the science-based targets and we have it ourselves that green element, and it's brilliant to hear because I think aligning herself with the global goal of net-zero by 2050. And the 1.5-degree increase by 2030 is incredibly important.

32:08
And so, the challenge for us was just understanding and getting rigor around our scope, one, scope, two targets, and then classifying those, and getting the rigor behind them and getting the reductions in place. And so, Suzanne has set for us and comes to our leadership team and says, right, you know, we need to reduce our scope one by a certain percentage over the course of the next five years. And we do this on an annual basis by this methodology and our scope to in this manner so that that's, that's ultimately what we're working towards doing at the moment is the SP t eyes and an implementing that through the organization has been slower than we would have liked because of COVID. But, you know, having her leadership help us through be critical on that journey for us. I said,

32:49
Science-based targets is such a fascinating way to look at reductions because of the fact that aligns yourself with what actually should be going on. Within the world, and that one point, it's that critical 1.5-degree increase after the fact you have to include 70 73% 75% of your emissions, a total emission within that, which means you really have to, you've got robust targets. I've sat in so many meetings where what targets we do next year 20% 5%. It's like, Man, I wish but you can understand the ambiguity. And you can, what do you set?

33:36
And that's and probably will, that's where we would have gotten if we hadn't, you know, recruited Suzanne. And it's just been important, you know, back from 1999, when we had our first responsible travel manager to now having a responsible business department and now being a purpose department, which now has our own dedicated climate scientists’ team. It's how we become better and we didn't go from nothing in 99 to suddenly having this setup that we've got now. Is that progressive and incremental improvement? And back to the question of what can businesses do, it's, it's getting that and that that incremental improvement and also will, taking responsibility yourself, you know, I'm not a, you know, my background was not to become a purpose or a climate guru but as a leader of a for-purpose business, you have a responsibility to educate yourself and understand, understand better in the same way you do around financial management as a CEO, you know, as you increasingly have to do around digital transformation. Well, same as you're going to have to do around purpose and around being responsible business and around climate science. If you know you've got it, you've got to take it as seriously as some of those other metrics. I think.

34:43
I think that

34:45
We work somewhat in your industry, and I know that your company has a huge amount of respect, but lots of people aspire to be injected or you know, so You're clearly doing all the right things. And for my friend, you are and I think we need more organizations like you, in order to be able to better ourselves and to, because you aspire to be the best person don't you're the best organization. And if that barrier bar is really low, then that aspiration is going to be much lower, but you're setting that bar really high. And I love the fact that you are wanting to continue to improve and better what you are doing. And it's just really refreshing to hear. And I guess it shouldn't be your vehicle. Your purpose-driven business, it shouldn't be a surprise.

35:40
Yeah, yeah, like just it's it for us. You know, growth is very easy to measure, isn't it? We measure growth THROUGH revenue improvements through customer satisfaction through profitability through staff enjoyment, you can really measure growth, but you know, you've got to have the same rigor around purpose. Otherwise, it's just window dressing. It's greenwashing. And that's what we try and do and, and I think but also admitting that we are not perfect and we know everything you know, and I think that's really, really important too is I think, you know, when you see great companies doing good things, when they become a bit holier than holy, it's when you start to lose a bit of respect, or you don't quite buy into as much and you know, we produce an annual integrated report using integrated reporting methodology. And, and we are we try and be as open as this Yeah, this is what we've done. These are the successes we've had; this is what we've learned. And this is what we're going to try and improve on going forward. And that's what we've, what we've always tried to do. We've kind of links back to the kind of people we want to have intrepid when we have this notion of hungry, humble, and smart. That's ultimately what we're looking for. And I'm not sure I fit any of those bills but

36:53
I'm sure you are trying.

36:57
I'm finally I guess what would be great is if you've got any advice or learning for anyone listening to this podcast?

37:04
or advice or learning? I feel it's probably reiterating whatever he said, Well, I think I think the key thing is to find something that you are, you're passionate about something that you really believe in, I have a strong belief in life that if you are, if you are passionate about something, chances are, you've got the best, best possibility of being successful in it. So, you know when it comes to issues of sustainability, they are not going away. They're going to be even more at the forefront of Business at the forefront of life. And so, so educating yourself looking at people or businesses, they're doing well, and learning from them, starting small, trying to do it, try not to run before you can walk, trying not to do everything all at once not being afraid to fail, not being afraid to speak up and not always get it right. You know, I think they The key things and, you know, I think increasingly we are going to see, and we have seen it, we've seen in the 15 years I've been intrepid that responsible travel or sustainability, it's going, it's increasingly gone from being a niche to increasingly being mainstream. I go and speak at conferences. Now. It is often at the top of the agenda at conferences, and that's only going to increase and more and more people are going to want, they want variances and authenticity, and they want it to be done in a sustainable fashion. And so, you know, it is increasingly going to be an important area for all of us in business and the way in which we can consume products and the way in which we live our lives. So yeah, that's, that's probably my last Gambit. I don't know if any of that makes sense.

38:45
It makes complete sense and it's really refreshing to hear what would you say would be the best way to connect with you and learn more, obviously, all of the Twitter handles and everything will be on our websites.

38:57
Yeah, look, we've we're pretty active on the social media space. Particularly Twitter and LinkedIn follow it follow intrepid Phil and myself we try and post and share as much as possible we have just shared a couple of open-source documents around them around climate management around animal welfare and reach out to our teams as well you know, we're pretty happy to share our experiences and try and help other companies too and other people to try and go on the journey as well. So, you know, reach out to us directly through our social channels and the intrepid websites and now intrepid travel offices all around the world. Brilliant.

39:35
Brilliant. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. James. It's been an absolute pleasure having you and listening to you talk about intrepid and what's what you're doing there.

39:45
Perfect. Thanks a lot. It's been great. Have a great day.