We are back with a new episode of the Piper podcast, How I Grew My Brand, where Mary speaks to Neil Lapping, Founder & CEO of Macs Adventure. They have been specialists for over twenty years in self-guided walking, cycling and adventure holidays across more than 40 countries. Macs plan everything for you including transferring your bags from one stop to the next, ensuring active travel isn’t an endurance feat. This unique proposition, developed from Neil’s wanderlust, has now grown into a global business with over 500 tours taken annually by more than 24,000 travellers and is well on its way towards the £70m inflection point.
Mac, Neil reveals, wasn’t meant to be an actual person. He says, ‘It was the worst piece of bad branding that anyone had ever come up with.’ They were going only to do trips in Scotland, where every second person is a Mac-something, and ‘It was meant to be a pun on MAX, as the tours were going to be maximum and really exciting.’ A very different proposition to the global all-level hiking and biking holidays they offer today. But despite these origins, Macs has developed over the years into a brand that is meaningful to their customers, ‘It’s become its own identity and I get emails every so often saying, Hi Mac… having that name, that sounds like a person, is fantastic in terms of giving the brand a personality.’
Travels and life experiences are the moments we remember, and Macs Adventure’s brand purpose is to help you create those. Being authentic to this means that the business does something that many others wouldn’t, they list all the details of the trips, from routes down to accommodation specifics which other tour providers often keep hidden until purchase. ‘I meet people all the time that say, “Oh I use your website to plan my trips”, and I say “great because eventually, I’ll get you”… Of course, there is going to be leakage, but overall we are hooking people into our way of travel.’
Having run a business for more than twenty years, Neil recognises our 7,17,70 inflection points. He recalls how it took them 10 years to reach 10 employees, then just six years to hit 110, and is open about the change being difficult to navigate, ‘The 17 to 25 inflection point is when you stop being a family.’ But as we have discussed with many founders, not embracing the shifts can be worse, ‘’What happens is the frustration levels start going up massively, you can’t get things done, there is a lack of agency across the organisation, and I think you need to change four things. 1) The people, you need to bring in different people or promote people, or look at yourself, are you the right person to run the business? 2) You have to change the structure. 3) You have to change the processes, and 4) you have to change the culture.’
One way to ensure you are prepared for these changes is to bring in external opinions. Neil says, ‘Probably one of the things I wish I’d done earlier was bring a board in, it’s been unbelievable in terms of the value add.’ When Mary asks why he didn’t get one in sooner, again the answer is one we hear often at Piper, ‘I kind of thought they were going to tell me what to do and I really didn’t want to be told what to do… I think you’re also trying to prove it to yourself… now I’m a bit further on in my career, I love helping.’
He is also frank about his reasons for getting funding, ‘We probably could have survived without funding, but I wanted to run a growth business so I could create opportunity for my team, we could create fantastic experiences for many more customers, we could change the way people travel and if we hadn’t taken funding we would have just been always on the edge. If something had gone wrong, we could have lost it all.’ But he does admit he wasn’t certain at first, ‘I really did wrestle with it, but as soon as it was done I was like, why didn’t I do this five years ago… Instead of being the solo entrepreneur where everything was resting on your shoulders, I have a business partner now, I have a board, I’ve got people who are supporting.’
Throughout the podcast, Neil speaks about the brand being driven to share active travel and adventure with everyone. When Mary asks him about success, he speaks about sharing that as well, ‘Success for me is, have I made an impact, reached my potential and helped other people reach their potential.’ This is all while building a brand that despite its impressive scale, remains humble and small at heart to its customers. The Macs around the world would be proud.