E102 - James Thornton from Intrepid Travel

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Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast, where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. 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 are. And travel is that— it's not an elephant in the room, but 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 it'd be great to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about who you are, please.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me, Will. 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 adventure travel companies. We really try and do 2 things as a business. We try and operate fantastic, sustainable, experience-rich travel, which is kind of 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 for-purpose business, but you can also be a sustainable kind of successful business that generates a profit for its shareholders as well. And then 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 bit of 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 3 and a half years. I've kind of worked 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 7 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 is, and obviously navigating a Pretty tricky time at the moment with the COVID pandemic, but I'm sure we'll get onto that a bit later.

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.

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 yeah, just looking through to getting out to the other side, I guess.

Could you tell us a bit about how you engage your staff, suppliers, customers about your mission and purpose?

Yeah, it's just something, it's something that's so embedded in what we are and who we are. I kind of— a lot of people often talk to me around this notion of our purpose being kind of a nice-to-do thing, something that we— 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 an economic model of having to get more passengers in. I do keep trying to say that Actually, we find our sustainable business model a competitive advantage, and actually it helps provide us with competitive advantage that helps actually drive revenue and sales and in turn then profitability. So, you know, our sustainable business model is at the heart of what we do. It's really why we entered B Corp certification 2 years ago. That was a 3-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 that you have a sustainable model? How do you prove that you're a for-purpose business? And at 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 looked at 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 drove us to pursue B Corp certification and took us 3 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 business and what we're trying to achieve.

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 try and highlight different areas of the world for people to visit?

Yeah, not so much. But the thing B Corp did for us, Will, was change the way— it helped improve some of the things that we do in the organization. B Corp methodology essentially assesses you across 200 different touchpoints in your organization, and it says, and it's really robust criteria and the modeling, it's kind of, you get, you know, 0.25 points towards a certain issue. 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 that 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 workplace when they were previously dropping out, and that helped us then address our diversity issues that we had. It's other things like having— in Egypt, for example, 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, B Corp 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 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, hopefully for our customers too. And it's this great thing you have to do. You have to be reassessed every 3 years and you have to meet certain credentials. And we kind of use it as a benchmark to say, well, Every 3 years, we want to try and improve by 4 or 5 points. And we get then compared against every other B Corp out there in the market. There's 3,500 B Corps around the world. Some are very big, you know, the Body Shops, the Patagonias of the world. Some are very, very small organizations, but we've all got this kind of comparative scoring between us, which is, yeah, it's pretty good. And 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. any company doesn't do certain things as well as it could and needs to improve. And so it's been good for that.

Yeah, I think that's— we've been a B Corp now since 2015, and what it brought to us was structure 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 then sent through to people, won't it? Absolutely.

And I think, well, 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's 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 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 for good is often hard to do. And we've certainly found that B Corp certification does help provide a point of distinction.

On that, so kind of, and I have not looked at it in massive detail, but kind of company per 100,000 or per 1,000 people, I think Australia and 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 Corps in Australia and New Zealand. And it was up there with the UK. And we know that there are more population.

Sure.

So do you see your customers picking you over others because there's more knowledge around B Corp in Australia?

So, I mean, firstly, 50% of our customers are Aussies and Kiwis, 25% are Brits, 25% are Americans and Canadians. That's our kind of global split. You know, in Australia, of the 3,000— sorry, of the 3,500 B Corps globally, 10% are in Australia and New Zealand. So it 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 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 4 or 5 years, we've been back under the ownership of our founders and our staff. We have about 70 shareholders. So our 2 co-founders and about 68 of our staff are now shareholders, which is fantastic. And we've pursued 2 things: growing the market for 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 of the last 4 years and the record level of profitability we've had. You know, our B Corp, our sustainability, um, uh, things that we're involved in, they cost quite a bit of money, but we tangibly believe they help drive our growth better as an organization. And, and not just drive our growth better as an organization, Will, They help us attract better people. And I really, you know, I really— well, and we do know this as one tangible thing. We are able to employ a higher quality of talent than we would ordinarily be able to attract into our organization because we are a certified B Corp. And particularly millennials want to work for companies that 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 to say it's driven customers outside of our results would suggest It probably has, although indirectly, but it does help us attract talent into the organization.

Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. I think it's that concentration of B Corps that I kind of looked at and went, wow, that's actually quite interesting that it really has— the communication has just really worked really well in Australia. Responsible travel. You've got a lot of information about responsible travel on your website. In your view, what is responsible travel and how can How can people travel more responsibly?

It's funny, responsible travel to me, and this, I've been with Intrepid for 15 years, and 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'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 selling the Intrepid programs. And half the time, more than half the time, people would look at you with a bit of a puzzled face thinking that you were a bit of a tree-hugging hippie and yeah, nice to do, but who on earth cares? And off you go. Go forward to 2020 and I think any company that doesn't have strongly talked about its responsible travel philosophies or its sustainable travel philosophies is frankly a mile behind the times. And people often say, well, what is 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 aisle, in in the supermarket isn't healthy. And I think of that a bit like responsible travel now. So it's either Intrepid's a responsible tour operator. So does that mean that 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 4 or 5 years is just advocate 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 travel and they 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 then bury my head in the sand a bit. And what we're intrepidly trying to do is to share as much as possible some of the successes that we have had as an organization. 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 a non-technology person like myself. When someone says artificial intelligence, I kind of freeze and say, oh, goodness me, I'm not quite— I don't even know where to start. But as someone who explained it explained 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, 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 Wade and Jeff Manstra, 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, Will, that things we've done in the past weren't quite right in the past and putting your hand up to that. And we've talked about that a bit with the steps we took to ban elephant riding. We did that for 25 years and and then became one of the first tour operators to ban elephant riding. And other areas where in the past we've done things that weren't quite right, and it's addressing kind of the wrongs you've done and trying to improve on them and move forward, I think.

I think learning from your mistakes and learning from others is absolutely key in this whole sustainability, because it's not black and white. Nothing is black and white. It 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 than this, so therefore we should probably change that, even though we've been advocating this in the past.

That's right. 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, it's one of the other things that B Corp methodology will, and I'm sure you found it, is Promotes openness, honesty, and transparency. And you've got to be open, honest, and transparent, and that involves recognizing that certain times you don't get everything right. And when you do, put your hand up and then work to make it better.

Yeah, I think that openness and transparentness 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've overcome it?

Biggest struggle. It 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. I mean, I guess I'm funded— people sometimes say, well, why do I work in Intrepid 15 years later and why am I proud to be the CEO of the company? company. And it is because I think ultimately one of the key drivers for me 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 churning out dollars and dollars and dollars at local people's expenses and the expense of the environment. And that's what a for-profit business is. 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 drive strong purpose outcomes, but that in turn you can drive a strong, growing, profitable result? And 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 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, Will, I presume more people would just do it. And like someone wise said to me once, if everything— if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it.

Yeah.

And so it is hard. It is 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 the environment. And a good example of it, Will, and a classic example is when coronavirus hit, Intrepid was quite under the microscope for a few weeks around not responding quickly enough to customer refund requests. And then as we worked through the refund requests with our customers, 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, yet this is just a profit grab. And, you know, it's not those 2 things. You're really just trying to balance all stakeholders and make sure that you you run things as openly and as fairly as you possibly can, but there are times that things come into— come up against each other and you have to make as best decisions you can under that B Corp methodology, which does clearly promote that 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're trying to align to all stakeholders as best we can.

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

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. Where companies jump on the bandwagon of every single thing that's going on. And so, you know, I've been accused sometimes, well, why aren't you speaking up around this event? Do you not care about that? Does Intrepid 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 and to your employees, and then do as much 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 would be the key thing for me. 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?

Yep, yeah, absolutely. So I guess our carbon journey for Intrepid dates back to 2005, was 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 The Weather Makers book. And it was a bit of a kind of aha moment for us that, hang on a minute, we are 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 to the thing that we actually get to show off, which is the Earth. And we might need to change tack here. And then in 2007, one of our co-founders did Al Gore's climate training. We actually ended up getting about 150 of our staff to go and watch the Inconvenient Truth movie. We got 2,000 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 carbon and carbon that was going into the atmosphere as a result of Intrepid's 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 we managed to make that happen by 2010. So we've been a carbon-neutral business for over 10 years now. I think it's a great example, Will, of something that 10, 12 years ago seemed like we were a kind of market leader in the space of doing it. And I still do talk about it proudly now that we became a carbon-neutral business in 2010 and that we've offset more than, I think it's 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. If we are going to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement or the Paris Accord, then being neutral is not going to suffice, unfortunately. And so as an organization, we have been challenging ourselves quite a bit over the course of the last couple of years to say, well, hang on a minute, carbon neutral was fine 10 years ago. And actually, it's better— our belief anyway is it was better to be carbon neutral and do something than do nothing.

Mm-hmm.

But now it is no longer enough. And we're not going to stop the intention of being carbon neutral, but we have to do more. We have to go more. And what is, what is that methodology going to be for us? And 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 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. And we have to have an active reduction plan. And that's something that we've been trying to work on, or certainly were trying to work on in the lead-up to COVID. Unfortunately, our attention has been a little, 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, we'll be challenging. It's around— it'll be around the reduction of carbon for us rather than neutrality of carbon. So sorry, a bit of a long answer there.

No, it's a really, really tricky one, particularly for an organization like you, because— and I inferred this in my opening gambit— 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 planet than carbon, the flight itself. 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 world. 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 are 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. 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 it's hard. I don't really know what I'm saying, but I think it's hard.

No, it is hard, isn't it, Will? Because During this COVID pandemic, the world has been essentially forced to stay at home for its health, haven't we? And moments like that, I suppose the transformation of Venice's canals and sea turtles thriving in Thailand and being able to see the Himalayas from villages in India and Nepal which haven't been able to see them for a number of years now, they're all really positive signs as a result of us 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 to these local communities? You know, so many local communities around the world that benefited from tourism. What is the negative impact to the fact that I do still fundamentally believe that getting out and seeing the world provides you with a better perspective and hopefully a more peaceful perspective and a realisation that actually people are incredibly similar in their desires, whether they have a different religion, a different 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, I think, a slightly better outlook and the benefits that therefore come with that. So it isn't cut and dry. It's not black and white. It's a very grey 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 leading 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, Will. 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 too in terms of reducing that impact that still allow people the benefits of traveling too.

Yeah, I think that's— yeah, I think it's really important. Talking about carbon neutrality, I mean, I remember my first 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 don't negate carbon. So therefore, I mean, where do you see— and I know that I've kind of just thrown this in to you, but, but 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? And you may not be able to answer this because it is ever-evolving and it's ever-moving.

Yeah. So where do we go from here, Will? Well, the first thing that Intrepid did— I'm trying to remember how long Susanna's been with us. So about 18 months ago, Intrepid recruited its first climate scientist. So actually on our payroll is a— we have a doctor, Dr. Suzanne Etti. She is a qualified climate scientist. And what Suzanne has introduced or increasingly introducing into 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's the 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 ridiculing me for what I'm saying.

No, she wouldn't. You're saying— and I didn't want to bring science-based targets up just in case you hadn't, but 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 at Green Element. That's brilliant to hear because I think aligning yourself with the global goal of net zero by 2050 and the 1.5-degree increase by 2030 is incredibly important.

And so the challenge for us was just understanding and getting rigor around our Scope 1 and our Scope 2 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 come to our leadership team and said, right, you know, we need to reduce our Scope 1 by a certain percentage over the course of the next 5 years, and we're going to do this on an annual basis by this methodology and our Scope 2 in this manner. So that's ultimately what we're working towards doing at the moment is the SBTIs and implementing that through the organization. It's been slower than we would have liked because of COVID but, you know, having her leadership help us through will be critical on that journey for us.

Yeah. Science-based targets is such a fascinating way to look at reductions because of the fact it aligns yourself with what actually should be going on within the world. And that one point, it's that critical 1.5-degree increase.

Absolutely.

And the fact you have to include 70, 73%, 75% of your emissions, of total emissions within that, which means you really have to— you've got robust targets. I've sat in so many meetings where, what targets should we do next year? 20%?

5%?

It's like, man, I wish. And you can understand the ambiguity.

You can, you can.

What do you set? It's a finger in the air.

And probably, Will, that's where we would have gone if we hadn't 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, to now being a purpose department, which now has our own dedicated climate scientist team. It's how we've become better. And we didn't go from nothing in '99 to suddenly having this setup that we've got now. It is that progressive and incremental improvement. And back to the question of what can businesses do, it's getting 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 the leader of a for-purpose business, you have to take responsibility to educate yourself and 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 a responsible business and around climate science. If, you know, you've got to take it as seriously as some of those other metrics, I think.

Well, I think that we work somewhat in your industry, and I know that your company has a huge amount of respect. Lots of people aspire to be Intrepid, so you're clearly doing all the right things. And from what I've read, you are. And I think we need more organizations like you in order to be able to better ourselves, because you aspire to be the best person, don't you, or the best organization? And if that 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 continually improve and better what you are doing. And it's just really refreshing to hear. And I guess it shouldn't be. You're a B Corp, you're a purpose-driven business. It shouldn't be a surprise.

Yeah. For us, 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've got to have the same rigor around purpose. Otherwise, it's just window dressing and it's greenwashing. And that's what we try and do. And I think, but also admitting that we are not perfect and we know everything. And I think that's really, really important too, is I think 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 it as much. And we produce an annual integrated report using integrated reporting methodology, and we try and be as open as 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. It links back to the kind of people we want to have at Intrepid, Will, and 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 we are trying our best.

And finally, I guess what would be great is if you've got any advice or learning for anyone listening to this podcast.

Oh, advice or learning? It's probably reiterating what I've already said, Will. I think the key thing is to find something that you are passionate about, something that you really believe in. I have a strong belief in life that if you are passionate about something, chances are you've got the 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 educating yourself, looking at people or businesses that are doing well, learning from them, starting small, trying 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. I think they're the key things. 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 at 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. I mean, and more and more people are going to want— they want experiences 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 consume products and the way in which we live our lives. So yeah, that's probably my last gambit. I don't know if any of that made sense, but that's—

No, 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.

Yeah, look, we've— we're pretty active on the social media space, particularly Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow Intrepid, follow myself. We try and post and share as much as possible. We have just shared a couple of open-source documents 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 and other people to try and go on the journey as well. So, you know, reach out to us directly through our our social channels and the Intrepid websites and Intrepid offices all around the world.

Brilliant, 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 you're doing there.

Perfect. Thanks, Will. It's been great. Have a great day.