E185: Talking with a climbing CEO, Ged from the Hangar offers his views from the other side of the aisle

Hello, welcome to the KELAS TALK CLIMING PODCAST. Hello and welcome to the KELAS TALK CLIMING PODCAST and it's an episode of the KELAS TALK CLIMING PODCAST that I never intended to make. What happened is I recently did a podcast with three independent Jim owners and one of the things that comes up a lot when speaking to independent Jim owners is this feeling like you're playing on a different playing field to the big chains because you've got to make money in order to spend money and even if you're doing quite well as a small business you're not making that much money so you cannot match or even come close to matching the amount of money that the Jim chains can spend because they have gone down the dark arts of venture capitalism or private equity funding which means that in theory they don't necessarily need to turn a profit every year because they don't need the profit in order to keep the lights on. So quite often they're looking to just rapidly expand, expand, expand, expand, expand more sites, more sites, more sites, then get profitable then sell. That's quite often the strategy. But anyway, yeah so I had that chat but it just so happens that the CEO of one of the largest Jim chains heard it and that's Jed MacDernall. He is the CEO of the hangar and he reached out to me and said, "Herd you podcast liked some of it, didn't like all of it sort of thing" which is, I mean that's what you want to hear, don't you know point getting someone on who's just going to agree with everything you said. So I originally spoke to our Patrunes actually and I said what do you reckon I should do here? Because I was a bit reticent to speak to Jed because I've never met him and my feeling was that he would probably put a veneer in front of anything he was going to say in order to make it sound one way, you know to ask as the climbing public and then we'll be saying stuff that's completely different to his backers at Verlinvest. And so I was like, "Well you know I don't really necessarily want to talk to a person who might be lying to me for a while." But in the end I thought well you know go ahead and then if it's rubbish I can just put it in the bin. But actually I have to say I really enjoy Jed's takes. I think Jed was much more honest than I thought he would be. And you know yes it's not all, well I think we referred to it in the episode as Cumbia and the fact is it isn't, you know sometimes the small independent is going to fall away if it doesn't have the business model to live up to a gym chain and that's just the nature of things. But yeah I really appreciate Jed for coming on and being so honest and providing his side of the argument. I'm not going to say any more about that because you can all make up your own minds as to where you fall. But I thought Jed came off really well and he spoke really well and he made his point really well. So I can fully see why Jed is the CEO of a climbing gym group. It's still I think the question of whether we want that in climbing will always rumble on. And I think from some of the stuff Jed says he would have been making these points himself. Probably more aggressively than almost anyone else from the sounds of things. Had he not ended up in his position and I think how he's ended up where he is from where he was is actually a fascinating story and a little bit of a loop. Which yeah it seems like a certain amount of gymnastics to end up in the position he's in. But I think he explains it pretty well and it almost more sense than I was expecting. So yeah I'm rambling now but long the short of it is I thought it was really good and worthy of being a good guy. And worthy of being an episode of the podcast. So yeah a huge thanks to Jed for coming on and giving up his time. And yeah here's the episode. And if you're enjoying the podcast and would like to help support us then please do consider joining our Patreon page. And as you can tell I guess these things kind of go inside because once upon a time until you're a little anecdote now, rambling a bit longer. Once upon a time when we started we actually joined one of the climbing walls that we own now quite late in the process when two other guys who went on to build a vegan food empire were starting it up. And what they were really excited about was building a hundred sites and they were never interested in building one independent. And what they wanted to do was go down venture capitalist funding and essentially try and do what Jed has now successfully done. But when I joined I didn't want to do that and I said quite clearly I don't like that I don't want to be Mr. and Ropoli of climbing I don't want to own 30 sites. I don't want to have that much of a sway over a sport that I really care about for fear that I'm going to make mistakes or that my is going to be impossible for me to know what I don't know. And for me to serve people who don't see climbing the way I do and climbing to board church. So I didn't want to do that and we ended up going an independent route in the sense of just building it one organically as they say one one site at a time which could end us we could end up in trouble with that model sooner rather than later but anyway. But these two things are connected because also when we're running this podcast I said I don't want to do adverts I think adverts break up the flow and I absolutely hate listen to a podcast and hearing people advertise things to me that I don't believe they believe in. I don't think anybody who's well anyway I won't cast this version is about the specific things but yeah I always felt it was important that we don't advertise to you because then when we say something's good or we say we really like something then you know that we've not been paid to say it and so you might actually value the opinion a little bit more. But it does mean that the podcast doesn't make as much money as it would. But a factor of quite a lot. So these two things are related. But if you are enjoying the podcast and would like to support it financially then please do consider checking out our Patreon page. We get access to a little bit of extra content. You can join our fine community of Patrune's on our Discord channel and most important you can kind of keep the lights on and try and help us keep this going without advertising to anybody. So yeah the model is essentially a kind of pay if you think it's worth something and if you like model. Yeah. Well that's that. No I don't normally talk for so long in the intro so that's plenty enough of that but yeah thank you very much for listening. And if you're not from the UK then don't think this doesn't apply to you because I think the same model of independence versus gym chains. I think we'll hold true wherever you are in the world and whoever your chain is I'm sure we'll have a lot in common with the stuff. Jett is saying and yes maybe there's a future where we can coexist or maybe at some point we're going to struggle as independence but we'll wait and see. And I'll let you make your own mind up on that but yeah big thanks for Jett for coming on he didn't have to I did ask a few kind of tough questions and I think he was it was very sporting and that he gave everything a go answering we didn't get any kind of you know I'm not going to answer that or like you know we didn't get any kick back he gave a go answering all my questions I appreciate him for that. And yeah thanks very much for listening. How are you doing? Well actually I feel like crap to be honest. I've got a very bad cold and I get allergic rhinitis and yesterday it gave me a proper kick in so like today I'm not feeling my best but there you go it's part of the deal. So you're still up for having a chat. Yeah let's have a little bit of work all day so you know just stayed at home in the office train not to infect my colleagues. Wow is there a separate office now? Yeah I mean I would have loved to have kept it one of the Liverpool wags but actually they've got the down in space for an office it's like sensible and the one in the middle of town is right by train stations. It means we can have people from all over the country like come in and out of the office like a lot easier so the actual practicalities of being a transport hub are overwhelmingly good so that's what we do. Fair enough. Okay so what are we talking about today? So you listen to the podcast I did right I put out this week where I was talking about talking to independent walls and I don't know in your position at how much time do you spend talking to owners of independent walls do you have an opportunity to talk to them much? Well not so much I mean I guess if I'm out on a battle so try and rest the chance for people so I'm a regular like big. Deppo climb over in Manchester because it's absolutely lovely climbing and the new Big Deppo is pretty sensational. I see Steve D there, quite a bit. He coaches the Academy there that his daughter's in. So, and funny enough, like if you're like a chain wall loan out, you don't have many people to talk to actually. There's not many people who are in the same situation. You know, see a pool of people to share your woes and hopes with is a bit smaller. So like, I mean, up until recently, Steve and I really spent with each other and stuff, we've got mutual mates from living in the same region. But yeah, now we sort of like swap ideas every now and again, which is quite nice because yeah, it's not like we've got a lot of benchmarking data or anything like that in the industry. So yeah, it's good to have someone chat too. Yeah, yeah, well fair enough. Well, I spent a decent amount of time talking to independent wall owners and I can't remember a time where on the whole, they felt less optimistic about the future, I would say, as a group. I think it's getting to that like awkward position where a lot of independents are in that worrying phase where it's like if we make, if we do any worse, we can't continue. And so it's like they've been on a bit of a slump for a little while and now it's kind of, I mean, maybe their revenues got up, but costs have gone up faster. You know, and a lot of people in the independents scene and you know, there obviously is a kind of temptation to put a certain amount of blame for this at your door and the the the feet of the change in. So when we having these kind of conversations and like I did try and say in the episode, like I don't want to get into a kind of changing, bashing situation. That's not that was never the point. I was trying to lift lift independent gyms up, not push anyone else down. But like are you aware that you kind of get thrown in as like this kind of Jeffrey Bezos of climbing? Oh, me. Yeah, yeah, totally. Like, I mean, I'm, I feel like Darth Vader this year, like you know, given as a, as I said, you know, I've been like anti corporate anti commercial, like my entire life, right? I've been to like G, say like anti capitalist G7 marches and so on, you know, because I actually think that power and the use of capital and how it's done in our world is really, really bad. I think it's bad for people generally speaking. So it's interesting, as you can imagine, it's a reasonable existential crisis for me being in my position most of the time. So, but yeah, but I mean, I guess what I know is, is things like, I know how bad the industry is being across Europe, like in the last 18 months, right? It's not an indie problem. That's a climbing thing, you know, and but also that's because I'm in investor land now, you're much more connected into consumer trends and those things, you know, when, you know, all of the weird stuff used to be on the telly, you know, like people will talk about consumer confidence and things like, sadly, I kind of know what that is now. That's, you know, some like weird nerdism that's come my way. But you're like, okay, you know, say there's winds of chains and death. Sorry, winds of change. And definitely the chains of, I've got a role in that. And I'm never going to come and defend a chain like I think that would be silly. And I think massively hypocritical from somebody who's helped my views over the years. But I think there's, well, no, I guess if I hadn't felt your conversation with Miro, send a block fit was so balanced. So not Miro. Um, who's the third? You have a different block fit. The has a, as if they've seen from rise as well. Like it was balanced, right? Everyone was sensible. You know, and there was a few things to disagree with naturally, but on the whole, people are just talking about really challenging times and what it means for an industry to grow up. And I just thought it would be good to participate in the conversation. So that's all right. Yeah. No, totally. So obvious question for you is like, how have you, I, you must have heard this question a hundred times. So I'm not, I'm going to kind of try and speedrun it a little bit. But how have you ended up in this position? Because you used to be an independent, you know, used to be just a guy with, in the same position as the people I was talking to with one gym and you were like, you know, famously sleeping in the back office or whatever, like trying to make it work. How have you got to this point? But the the burning question that I've really got isn't really as much as the how it's the why. Yeah. Why did you want to get to this point? Is that the question for me is as important as the how, but I'm interested in both, obviously. Well, I think one feeds the other, right? So the short track is at the beginning, it was, we had a bad actor, there was three directors, one of them is very bad and he lied to me and Chris and, um, and, um, we got absolutely stuffed, like really badly stuffed. So I'm going to add to our, like, within a few months of the business starting, we had to pay a lot in legal fees and an exit fees to get him out of the business, right? And that meant I was brutally crippled by debt for like eight years, right? So like I was in a bad way and like a lot of time, you know, so they, they, I'd like to think it was the back office. We called it the crackdown, which is where I lived. So and that probably does it a service to your average crackdown. It wasn't a good place to live. And, um, so, but in the end, it's because it couldn't afford to live somewhere, right? Now, all of that just meant that I pushed really hard to be the best independent I possibly could, but in the end, by about 2015, 2016, I could see that climbing was in like, it was on the up, right? Things were happening, right? More people went into the door and I didn't think it was me and my amazingness, you know, obviously, and then come as there for people listening, um, you know, there was driving all of this extra people coming into the front door, right? And I thought, well, if I didn't turn on the tap, I'm probably not going to be the person that turns it off either, right? So I probably need to figure out what I'm doing. And the other side to that, so I was also sharing with myself in reality, because my nearest competitor was Steve Dunn, right? And I knew that he was part funded by Jeremy Wilson, I knew to be extremely wealthy, right? And I thought, I'm skinned, right? I've got nothing. If those guys come and open up and live abroad, which is the next obvious city in my paranoia ridden mind, you know, like, I'm stuffed. And I was like, right, so I best grow this business. So I don't have to go back and look for another job. So any style of climbing wall, seems to be a secondary school teacher, and instead hard. And I don't think I was good enough. I think I was doing the kids of the service, right? So I thought, let's just get back to climbing that I love. And then I just thought, for day and no, what to do, I'm going to get rents. I'm going to lose my business. And probably they're not much that I have. So I thought I'd try and grow it. And that was, so that was kind of the catalyst. So I then want to place on that Goldman Sachs 10,000 bought small businesses scheme, which is really kind of shaking hands with the devil, you know, in that way. But it was immensely useful because I learned that I knew almost nothing. And I learned a lot more about business cycles. And I was like, right, okay, I actually need outside investment to grow this. Because it's not, I'm not from the sort of background where there's any cash to call on in any way. So, I mean, I think I had to sell my mountain bike for a few hundred pounds of my surfboard to start the hangman the first place to give you a sense of the sources of funds at the beginning. So, yeah. And then started to grow the business from there. I was, you know, found the right people, learnt the right things, built a business plan. And then 2018 landed my first round of PE investment, which I think was the first PE investment into climbing in the UK. Yeah, actually funny enough, at this point in the story, I identify with you an awful lot because we've also been in that same position in that we've gone from one site to three out of, from my end, nothing really but fear. Like the simple fact is we own, we do kind of like medium size walls, small to meet small medium sort of that kind of phase. So, we are not in a position necessarily to compete with a huge depot or whatever opening up in one of our cities. So, the answer was to be like, if we have three sites that are close together, then we've got three sites for our membership. But, you know, like I have also received, you know, that I know there will be some people who listen to this and I'll be interested to hear why say to try and get me in a gotcha because one of the things we did is we bought out an independent and we re-skinned that independent to make it look like us, which won me no friends in some circle. So, like, you know, so I get that like I'm kind of coming out this from the pro independent side, but there will be some people listen to this that they're, well we liked our independent until you gutted it. So, and the reason why we did that is because, you know, we need to get the numbers up. So, with investment, if we're rebuilding it anyway, then we want it to look more like ours. But, you know, I do understand, from this point I understand, but like surely, it's scary, the concept of going into the big investment circles is that you have to give up a lot of agency over your own business to do that. I mean, they take on, you know, a lot of the kind of, they get final say on a lot of stuff, right? I mean, more or less. I think, I think in all honesty, like this is the bit where, I know, this probably board is on a degree of arrogance on my part, so, of all of T that criticism up there, which is that when, in 2018, when I was going into that process, it's a bare mind, what I felt my other option was is potentially get put under by a more sophisticated operator that was, you know, like i.e. a debt by a wall, something like that. So, that was just my fear. So, in the end, I was playing a game that was not to lose, rather than to win in the first instance. So, giving up some agency versus the possibility of potentially losing your business or taking the real beating didn't feel like too much of a problem. However, given what I was saying about my sort of anti-commercialisation, anticorpitalisation sort of like, you know, that's kind of the seen up in my whole life. I guess what I thought I could bring to it was, okay, I know the world of investors don't know anything about climbing, right? So the guy I knew, the guy who helped me raise the money, he's a corporate finance investor, he's also a dedicated client who's been climbing his whole life. And he was explaining to me, they've got no idea how to get into climbing. There's too many gatekeepers, there's too much specialization, they just don't really know how to how to come in and do the thing. So we sat down and we hatched a pretty sensible plan, which was, well, if investors come in and I put a harness around it, spare my like, I love climbing, like I think I owe most of the good things in my life to discovering climbing. And I thought, right, surely there's a moral duty on me to do this well. But also the recognition that climbing was growing, it was already massive in the States, there was loads of P or P back to operators in the States already, anyway, and in France too. And then like so, they're coming at some point. So why not get in there first and shape it? Because they tend to be a bit heard like as well, the investors. So if there's already a successful model out there, they will imitate this successful model and try and do it better, cheaper, bigger, faster or something like that. They tend not to innovate, they tend to replicate and use the power of capital, right? So, when we took on investment, we changed all of our sourcing to ethical, we got rid of Luke saying, "Cocacola, we basically removed every single corporate from our supply chain, did on modern slavery, ordered, when, like, went through this whole process to kind of decorbitize the business with the exception of the source of capital, right?" So I'm not going to pretend that's perfect. There's a variety of epoxy built into that. But in the end, that we had the capability of doing that. And then whether or not we set the pace or otherwise, certainly like ethical sourcing, locally roasted coffee, those things were on trend anyway. I'm not going to pretend that we kind of lit the torch paper on that. But certainly we started to do that at scale. And that then seemed to inspire a lot of other people to do that as well. Like you can imagine I keep a reasonable view on what's happening in the market and what other people are doing. So yeah, I mean, I thought, if I do this well, if I do a really good job, hopefully I can protect climbing and prevent what I would call extractive capitalism and just, you know, putting in the cash in and running, you know, before it sets on fire. Obviously, you're one of the people that people are afraid of, you know, at the end of the day. You know, you're also, you know, we've said, we've thrown, you know, the depot in there and the LCC group. But the other candidate is a hanger. You know, people say, we don't want a hanger to turn up next door. But one of the things that you're kind of known for that's least popular amongst the independent chains is if it's a hanger that turns up, they'll probably do a 15 pound membership offer for a set of months. And that's impossible to compete with because we just can't match that and and make a make a profit. You know, do you feel it is, is that like kind of the more like slightly more businessy thing that you do that because that feels like slightly aggressive? Ah, see, no, funny enough for my notes. I wrote down the word aggressive because I knew that was going to be work. That gets chucked to me quite a lot. Now, interestingly, I tried not to use it as well. You saw me start, I tried to think of a less like combative word and fails. I'm just used to anyway. But listen, let's take a point. Like I did say the point and I think the first thing is like I designed our pricing structure in 2017 and I did that right because I thought, I thought climbing was too expensive in reality. I went down and I thought, you know what, a lot of climbing walls, pretty dusty, pretty young clean, the toilets are in a sorry state, customer service is generally shocking unless you are a known person or climber. You might get a grumpy nod or something like that. You know, say in reality, I thought the level of service that we were delivering for the membership price in the marketplace and for me, the marketplace was leisure, not climbing was really, really poor, right. And I thought to myself, well, you've got two things to play with when it comes to price, right, which is volume and price. And I thought, well, I'm going to experiment with low F and I would defend our position and say that I think our pricing is accessible and it allows people to get into climbing, which grows the marketplace. So, and I think the reason climbing exists in the way that we do now is because of the budget gym chains. They came in on the back of the financial crisis and they brought millions of extra people into exercise. And then a few years later, those people diversified away from gyms because they wanted to have more interesting to do. And I think we picked up a lot of the net benefit of that as the yoga I used to ultra run. And I remember the explosion in ultra running. There was just like people, just everywhere, you suddenly wanted to run 50 miles or something and it was completely bonkers. You know, whereas much like climbing, it just used to be a couple of like core weird obsessives like gut slot, right. He enjoyed suffering and now it seems to be more of a great activity. So, I think we got the net benefit of people understanding the price point, like to bring somebody into a market. And I just think that if I'm completely bad, I just don't think a lot of people have done the maths on their pricing and any real depth and, you know, ran a whole series. Not much of, must have ran 50, 60 different pricing tests over the years, you know, and we'll never finish because the market's always moving, right. So, the idea that is aggressive, I can understand why people would say that. But an introductory offer for something that's launching is like the most ordinary thing, you know, like people you love call pricing, don't they? Or whatever. I wondered like if you could speak to the independent who's scared of you, the most, you know, what would be your message to them, if you think? I think, well, I think number one, if you run a business, the first thing is your business discipline's got to be really, really good. Like, if you depend on it for your financial security, like, and I suppose this is the hanger is the tail end of me panicking, right. Like, the hanger in its current form, like the inability I couldn't afford to lose what I had, right. So, like, it just would have been too catastrophic. And my goal is not to ruin anybody else's opportunity to do that either. Like, that's simply not setting out to do that. Like, it's as far away from what I'd like to do. Now, in the end, we will benefit from a healthy marketplace, right. But in the short term, the competition for that is fierce, right. So, and that's kind of, I think to some extent, that's an unavoidable marketing dynamic, a so market dynamic. I think whether it's an independent opens in your territory, right. And there's some incredible independence out there. If you think of, I mean, Dave from Blockford was talking about substation opening up. That's not a chain wall, right. So, but that probably gave him a proper kicking. So does it matter to some extent, is it the hanger or substation that's taking your income? In the end, your business needs to have enough resilience to survive. Like, I mean, that, that just has to be part of the playbook. But then, I think in the end, if I think of people like, you know, Sen Walls or Luma and Bath, these are outcomes of a bigger marketplace, right. You know, that's diversification because we all got bored of the same cookie cutter type thing. Oh, here's the, you know, how much difference is that between a depot and a hanger, I think I could give you what I think the truth is, but I'm sure customers will give you a different view. Whereas we are only in Sen, something completely unique. But you couldn't have done that 10 years ago, I imagine, but you can do it now. But it still has to have the resilience to survive in the current marketplace, surely. Yes, yes, I see. It doesn't sound very come by, are they, Jed? No, no, no, it's, you know, it is absolutely not come by, but also, I don't think it can be anymore, right. Not to say that we can't be as collaborative as possible within a competitive environment. Like I think that is an essential thing. Like, you know, the ABC stuff, you know, like, you know, I'm an ABC board member, you know, in these competitors, like, it's people that I am directly competing with. And we're sat around the table looking at the health and professionalisation of the industry, writing white papers, trying to make sure that everybody's doing the right things and no one's getting sued, you know, all like practices are safe. So there's like a form of collaboration, but, you know, like, who would be the person to say, okay, right, we can't have any more wars in Coventry, you know, it's no longer allowed. Samoan's Coventry, that's his place, you know, like, and that would be great for you, presumably, but like, is that, who's the gatekeeper there? Who determines, you know, like London's mad, didn't it? You know, like, supply has radically outstripped demand. Now, I didn't do that, you know, like, I have a wall there, but I'm not going to put any more in London because for the last couple of years of thought, London's going nuts. I don't live there. I don't understand it. The transport network is too good, you can go anywhere you want as easily as anywhere else. It's not like it has the same dynamics as a regular city. So yeah, we just stayed out, we didn't understand the marketplace. So, I don't know what the answer is. Is there a, is there a combiare? No, probably not, but I'm actually, I am glad that you're not. So one of the things I was afraid of talking to you, Jad, is I was worried that you were going to try and pretend that there was when there isn't. So I'm glad that, I appreciate the answer and I appreciate the honesty. And one of the other questions I have, do you ever sit, you know, in the silly watches of the night? Do you ever lie around and think if there was a world where this version of Jad arrived in Liverpool where the original version of Jad, have you sort of become the thing you were afraid of? That's a very good question. I think, yeah, probably, you know, so, and the unfortunate treat is once you get on the investor into the investor process, like exiting tricky, you've got a lot of work to do to get back out again. And in the end, growth is the mandate, that's why you're there. Right, so you get on and there is a, you know, a fee to exit and that fees growth and success and you have to hit those metrics. Right, so, but there's not a week that goes by where I don't wish I still just had one. My life was so much easier. I had so a lot of freedom and creativity. That was phenomenal. I was resetting on Friday for the first time since I can remember for our 15th birthday, we were like, Shawna and Psych and everyone, and it was the best day I've had in so long, you know, getting some blocks in the one, then climbing with people was, and then we had a rave obviously because that's what we used to do a lot. So, and but, you know, on the other hand, scales give me some other good things to do. We know whether it's our refugees projects, you know, all those different ways that I can have impacts and scale can bring some leverage, but it's still not come by our, but it's also not some kind of way of making myself feel better. It's just if I have this platform, how are we going to use it as well as I possibly can? So, recognizing, you know, the contradictions that are inherent within them. And the inherent contradictions within yourself, I suppose. Yeah. Because I imagine the early version of Jed probably would have been quite critical of the modern version of Jed. Like, you know, you might have had a few things to say, which are actually much more negative, than what some of the other people say if you are a handicapped list. Yeah, yeah, with that doubt, you know, and, you know, it's interesting, you know, I suppose I would try to detour on my best the same conversation with that version of myself, you know, but in the end, I think there was a lot of ignorance about my position, you know, like, so the investors that we have, the reason we're with them, you know, they've got Tony's Chocoloni, you know, they are in the business to remove child's slavery from chocolate, right? And I'm not going to go in like, defend like a four billion pound fund or something like that, you know, they can do their own self-defense, but, you know, they don't, they don't have to invest in slavery for your chocolate. They could put that money in tobacco or firearms or, you know, oil or something else, but they don't. They're trying to veganize milk, trying to get slavery out of chocolate, you know, recycle toilet paper or whatever it is, you know, there's so many big corporations in that portfolio, you know, and the people that I get to speak to, that I can ask questions of, which is, you know, like, how do I do stuff that's going to make my daughter proud, for instance, like when she's growing up and she's laying into me, right? You know, how do I hold my own then? You know, so I might not be as in the good books of my form myself, but I'm going to try and be in the good books of my daughter. Okay, but if you don't hit your targets that Verlin best we're hoping for, could they replace you as CEO? Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Does that keep you up at night? Oh yeah, yeah, man, if that doesn't shit you up a little bit, you're not paying attention. That's awful. That would be, that would be really sad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it is scary, you know, so, but on the other hand, you know what, I really like a good trad onsite. I love the intensity, like the intensity of that kind of experience of having to execute under pressure is something that I really take quite a lot of pleasure from. So there is something about it, you know, like I've got an agenda to really understand how Ru setting connects with our strategy. Like I'm unhappy that I feel like I don't understand it, like you know, my set has done amazing jobs. So like, Dan Knight, our director of climbing, I think, is one of the most mature, low-ego, you know, like reflective, like people that run setting out there, but in the end, I don't know if we really know how it affects our business, you know, like in terms of like day to day, you know, so like listening to Sen walls or Dave from BlockFee, you know, and people have got their opinions, that's lovely, right? And I would see there's like, well, that's their product, like if you want some good quality hard climbing, right? BlockFets can be your home. I wouldn't say we say easy. We might set more easy problems, but we don't say hard problems are easy because that's lying and also we don't have grades, we just have colours, which are a great proxy anyway, but you know, we're not trying to set soft to massage anybody's ego, but at the same time, I don't think we understand the relationship between customers and Ru setting as well as I would like, you know, so there's still plenty of work to do. No, I totally agree with that. Like, who do you, do you consider yourself to have like set competitors? Do you consider like the LCC group and the depot as your main competitors? Not really actually, and not because of capability, but because they're chains like me. I guess I know, I think I've got a deeper understanding of the limitations and opportunities that are chain as, whereas having run an independent, of course, I know how agile and responsive an independent can be. So in reality, the thing that would always worry me the most is an independent, because an independent can do things a chain can't. So in that sense that the ability to play a different game is there. So, and I think in reality, the competition comes down to the territory that you're in rather than anything else. Like, no one's got market dominance, no one has IP or a real genuine USP or something like that. You know, it just comes down to facility by facility, and then what do they do when they when they open the doors? And do you want market dominance? No, that mean that's not necessary. But you do want, was it 30 sites by 2030? Well, it's in very much goal is to have the number one climbing platform in the world. So that is the actual goal. And I would have thought the UK will hold at least 30 to 40 climbing hangers without any trouble. Do you think? Yeah. It doesn't feel like there's like, it feels like climbing isn't in the position it was three or four years ago. It feels like climbing is maybe slipping backwards in the nationals like Geist. And we're losing out to paddle and pickleball and some of the other things at the minute who are kind of experiencing that boom of growth that we had a few years back. It doesn't feel like that's carrying on. Do you do you see it differently? No, I think you're absolutely correct. Like, that isn't carrying on. But I think if I was the analysis I'd put on that is there was a rising tide and we received it, right? But we didn't do anything with it, right? So if I look back at our say Google search demand for like last year, the peak around the Olympics was humongous, right? But what it didn't do is translate into a lot of extra business, right? And that's because we weren't set up to receive it or convert it. And what's happened with climbing is we've moved away from being a relatively niche thing into a fairly mainstream thing. I think active lives would seem bigger than cricket, for instance, you know, a national level, right? But where's those participation programs? How do we keep people climbing for longer? Where do people leave and come back? And we've all got loads of anecdote, right? But the problem with the anecdote is it's coming from a source of probably less than 50 people, like in facilities that probably have more than a thousand people use every single week. You know, and this doesn't matter like whether it's an endear a chain, right? So our data source of why people are coming and going is relatively weak, whereas if we were David Lloyd or if we were Virgin active or something like that, we would have a much more sophisticated system for capturing that demand and then sustaining it. Whereas what's happened is we were on trend and now the trend has moved. And in that meantime, what happened is we bought a lot more dual-text massive macros, but they were reinvested in their their marketing team or data analytics. So it's, we don't know where the demand came from and now we don't know where it's gone. Where is, which can imagine with someone like Verlinvestigiebacca, what we're doing is a lot of work and figuring out of well, where is that demand gone and who was it and how do we get it back. And I can look to a lot more mature leisure operators, you know, you know, whether that be gyms or tennis or something like that. And you can say, okay, well, what cycles have they been through and how did that work and how can I go and learn from parallel sectors? So and in reality, we should be able to do that. I don't think climbing is lost out. I just don't think we were set up to capitalize if you like on becoming mainstream, which is necessarily if you're an operator of our size. I don't think it's necessarily if you're an Indian in an independent, you can probably make a really good go of keeping and having like modest growth on a core audience. But that, you know, with that doubt, paddling big alert eating quite a lot of our lunches at the moment. But I also think the fact that so many 18 to 25s have lost their job over the last 18 months, there's a huge part of it as well. Yeah, no, totally fair. I mean, it feels like the people who are most who need climbing to keep growing the most are the change in terms. You know, because you're the ones who are trying to grow exponentially. Whereas like if you're an independent, you've got one wall. Actually, in some ways, you could benefit if climbing shrinks back a bit. If it means that you don't get a big brother down the road that you would otherwise have got, you might actually be better off if climbing doesn't keep growing. Whereas like for you, there's no world where you're better off if climbing stops growing. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, and you know, you think about those market conditions and, you know, I think that's a nice new one's look at it, isn't it? You know, it's not obvious how things are going to pan out. And I think it's not just the change. I think anybody who's built a really big, shining new facility independent or chain in the last 18 months, they're going to be hurt in the most. If you built your chain, if you built your facilities four years ago, you'll have been through quite a lot of your finance payments. You haven't made any massive new investments. So, those new investments that were made just before the decline or that contraction in the marketplace, that's where the pain is. You know, if you haven't done anything to your wall for 10 years, it's probably just the same as it was a little bit before, except your profit margins have shrunk a little bit. But if If you have an increased your cost-based loads, then you'll probably be okay. Do you think if with the situation where it is now, do you see the future of getting hold of more sites, there might be more purchases in your future and acquisitions, or is it you purely focus on building? No, acquisitions are a good route as well. So, but normally you want to buy somebody that's in a good state that is doing well actually rather than suffering, but would like to exit. And I think last year, sadly, so a lot of people who wanted to sell because it was hurting, but in the end, their business wasn't worth very much because you tend to look at what's the value of their depreciated assets plus if you've got a declining profit line, if you're a buyer, obviously you're looking at as a risk like where's the bottom of that curve, and you're taking a big bet on where the bottom is. So, we had quite a lot of trapped founders, I think, or we may still have quite a lot of trapped founders in the sector. In some, you probably know this yourself, right? We got into it when we're younger and energetic, and now if you've got families and things, sometimes it feels a lot like a job. Not quite so much like just being completely immersed in the love of climbing. Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly, sadly, I've had some very sad conversations in the last year or two, and there are a lot of people hoping for a sell with a valuation, which is not realistic. You know, a sell valuation. The number they're hoping for is just not realistic. You know, people talk about the money they've put in, and unfortunately, that's not how you, as you would know. Yes, now you value your business. It's based on your ebit darn, your profit numbers and everything, not how much you've spent on it yourself and the blood, so it's what you put in. Unfortunately, it doesn't really sound truth. Yeah, and there's one, there's a couple of people who are particularly angry at me, and that's quite, makes me pretty sad, because I really like them and respect them. And there's stuff like that. It's the tricky part of business. You can't just open a facility somewhere that does something that other people already do without having some impact, you know, and for a long time, you could do that, and maybe for six months, did weather a little bit of a storm, but then the size of the pie would grow and stuff like that. But then that just changed very suddenly. You know, obviously, I didn't make that change, but I'm now part of other people's misery, and that's kind of not, you know, that's never something I was hoping to create, but it was a, some extent, there's an inevitable consequence of serving. Yes, so I'm going to make a guess, but I know when people try and figure out what's going on, you know, some of the groups that have done, not maybe not so well, or looking to wrap up more sites, one of them was John Dunn's group, has kind of come close to wrapping up almost the whole operation by selling it to various bits and pieces or closing walls. And someone pointed out that basically every single wall that he has has had a hanger turn up in the last like couple of years. Like, is that something that, do you notice that? Do you notice like, oh, we've sort of accidentally opened up a wall across this person? You know, we're kind of eating this guy's lunch, we've opened one up next to his whole organisation. Well, I mean, number one, obviously, we have to say that isn't true. John had four walls. He opened his London wall after I acquired the one that we had in London. And it was definitely the death of the day. It's his lunch in Manchester, because there is no hangover in Manchester. But Reading in Southampton, that is true. So, but you know, I guess, yeah, like, I mean, the thing is you don't, you know, you never wanting to take something from someone like that's, I mean, that's just absolutely not my reason for like doing what I do. Right. You're trying to make climbing amazing. I'm trying to do a good job by climbing. Right. Now that's got pros and cons in it. But I guess if I was, if I was being brutal, you know, like, you know, John's business was in business for a long time. You know, and he had some extremely wealthy backers and it took a long time, like to innovate. I guess it wasn't until climbing started to grow, did, did John and the team there start to change and innovate and had they have done that beforehand. Like, if you know, if you're in regular business land, of course, anybody would say if you're standing still, you're going backwards. So, and I think probably for the longest period of time, climbing did Dan still, because most of us, as long as there is like, Ming and Crimson's up, we're fairly happy, right? And then it changed. Yeah. I mean, some things were better then. But, but I know like, it's very easy to think back and a time when climbing was more simple and there were few of us who did it. And forget that yes, we had a brilliant time, but it wasn't incredibly non-diverse section of people having a great time, you know, it was all basically white people from the same roughly the same sort of background, mostly blokes. So, I do have to throw that out there when we kind of, you know, dream back of those Halcyon days. Because it was great for us, but it's easy to forget that it's not necessarily great for everybody else. So, I think it's so different to point that out. Do you lose any sleep at night, the idea of falling off someone like John's Christmas card list? No, no. I mean, no, I mean, well, for the simple reason that, like, I mean, it's tricky enough, you know, being critical of corporate and power, right, working with an edge of tea, right, without, like, I know I have to, I know I'm a variable, getting to piss some people off, like I don't want to, but I can't, like, it's an unavoidable part of the trajectory. The only thing, the only way I'm able to help myself, like, navigate through it is, I need to do an incredible job by climbing, I need to not take the piss out of climbing, like, I've got to bring more people in and not do anything that harms the progression of the sport overall. Because in the end, that is the power of the chain and of the capital is to grow the sport in a positive way and to grow it in a protective way, like I said, non-extractive. And if you can do that, and I think there's plenty of examples of that, I think not like I've done a good job in skateboarding, I think Red Bull on the whole of done a reasonable job in action sports, you know, like people like Sean O'Malley, we wouldn't have had the career potentially that they would have had if it wasn't for Red Bull, you know, so I think there's plenty of places where corporate power has been exercised well and with quite a lot of diligence, and I'm hoping to continue to like steer that in the right way and be part of that picture. So, you know, I guess is that making myself feel better potentially, but I also think that is the job, I think that's the anyway, the resilience of the climbing higher can be there with climbing carries on being healthy. How many sites do you have now? Is it 11? Yeah. 11 sites. How come none of the groups, and perhaps like you'll know this better than me, not just you, all of the chains. How come none of the chains are wrapping up a site? How come none of them? Because I know for fact that some of these chain sites, not yours, but I know for fact that some of these chain sites are not profitable. How can we not seeing them say, okay, I want to wipe out that one at the bottom? That is a good question. All I can say is I think the answer to that question will be different at the end of the year. Okay, so you think that some will be closing? Yeah. Yeah. So closing or changing, I think that's inevitable, but also that just depends on what's the business plan? You know, because depending on how you do business, you can keep something open if it protects market share or protects the value proposition for something else. So let's say you had a multi-site access, and you knew that lots of people from Jim A were using loss making Jim B, then you're protecting the value proposition, you might combine the incomes of A and B to kind of go, well, actually on net, those guys are making profit overall, so we won't change it. Because I was thinking when I was coming up with ideas, one of my ideas was if you are talking to the likes of Val Invest and saying we're aiming to have 30 sites by 2030, closing bad sites might be a good business decision, but it gets you further away from that albeit arbitrary goal. Yeah, so we wouldn't tolerate loss making sites. So that's just not part of the plan. So I think it's kind of one of the consistent misunderstanding of having a private equity backer is that they don't fund site losses. Right, sites have to be profitable because ultimately that's what's scaling. So your head office technically, if you like, is loss making, because what you're doing is you're doing a lot of testing and learning, there's a lot of what had its marketing work, what are the analytics to, you know, so and that's, you know, you might have experienced this with having three chains is the efficiencies and the cost sitting in the back office, right, the site is kind of relatively uniform, but you know, once you've got 90 people on your staff list, like with freelance part time and full time, now you need payroll and then you might need a decent finance director or so on. So your back office costs scale pretty radically fast to create the ability to scale. So yeah, certainly tolerating loss making at a site level is not something I hope you'll have to do. Okay, all right, that's interesting. So you're doing something right then if you've, you've hit 11 times, that's, that's impressive. Yeah, and the other side, I think private equity certainly wouldn't touch you unless you were doing really well. So I think, you know, not to blame my intrampe, but you've actually got a bit have a really robust business. like that's doing well and consistently, like demonstrably so, to get them in. Because they don't really take massive risks, you know, in the way that you do when you do a startup business. They wait until Crazies like you and I do that, and then it stabilizes, and if it lasts long enough, well then they'll put some cash in. Yeah, so what do you think is your kind of secret source there? What do you think it is about the hangers that have kind of outperformed industry standard? So I think the first thing that we did, there's not sure anymore, I think the industry's like grown up quite a lot. So when I opened it, I said there was no such thing as a real climate, right? So, and this was like back in 2011, was like, you know, we're not saving babies, we're not curing cancer, right? So I think Dave mentioned that on your last episode as well, right? So, and I was just like, if we're leaving the ground, right? And that's what we're doing, right? We're all in the same group of slightly unusual people and we should be aiming for a little bit more collectiveness, right? So just push quite hard on customer standards. So like customer service, if you like, and acceptance and being welcoming, as like the number one, and for a long time in climbing, that was a unique value proposition, right? Was that people would be nice to you when you came in, even if you were new, right? So, and I think we had this idea in climbing land that we were all dead nice, and we were to like people like ourselves, but you know, obviously I've got a lot of secret shops, got those early climbing walls, and had a tracier service at the every well-emigurity of them up until the last couple of years when everybody realised it was nice to be nice to people, so and actually get the business. So that was it initially. And then, you know, I think most people do this as well now, just think about your setting, how do people even get into climbing in the first place? And then why do they stay in climbing? And how does your climbing product help people get into climbing and stay in, you know, me and my mate, so climbing, everyone's been climbing for 20 years plus, you know, why are we still going down the wall? Is it just for a lack of a better idea of something else to do, or you know, there should still be stuff for us to get to get us really sites, you know? We should still feel like we're playing the same game that we always have and still loving it. So, you know, this setting has to be responsive whilst the market plays changes, you know, our audience is so different now. So, yeah, and then after that, I think that's probably the vast majority of it and then quite a lot of back office discipline, you know, just asking ourselves religiously, what do we believe? How do we know it works? And if it doesn't work, take it away. And if it does work, do it better. And just repeat, repeat that process fairly endlessly. Take nothing, do I suppose? Okay, so I've been obsessive climbing for a long time and I care a huge amount about indoor climbing, even though I really want to go outdoor climbing, but I care a huge amount about indoor climbing. And yet, I have found myself making bad mistakes. I've made a bunch of different decisions since we've, you know, we've been going for almost 10 years. And in that time, I've made a list of bad mistakes, which only became clear in retrospect. I fear that mistakes that you were to make if you had 30 to 40 sites, it would be almost impossible to avoid inclinement. Do you worry about the mistakes you make or do you feel like do you feel like you're not making mistakes? Are you more confident than me? Ah, no, absolutely not. So, I just take mistakes as a fundamental part of what we're doing, you know, and it's, I guess, I mean, we have made like, it's an agos catalog of mistakes, you know, over the years, like, and there's probably a few more of those to go, you know, but the, you know, you're going to be making mistakes because you're often starting with an assumption. So, and that assumption, if you're honest and diligent, you can normally flush out what you don't know and what you need to know to like back that assumption I'll put a killer. So, but then you've kind of got to put your assumption to work in the world and then against the benchmark and how does it work? Did it do what you thought it was going to do? Did it not? Are you explaining your way results that you don't want to see because you just want to be right? You know, saying, I think we've all been guilty that, especially because, you know, when you love the things so much, and I think especially because we're all in a unique position, our friends participate in our workplace. So, our work is on public display in the most intimate way, like everybody else just goes to work and comes back and it's not in deeply embedded in their social group. Whereas I have people, what's at me? Like when the settings were on, you know, like the red circuit, my local hangar, like we call it shredding, it's red circuit, right? Because my mates just think it's so whack. Like, is it a V2 or a V10? So, like, constant barrage of criticism. But the problem is, is I think that really can blind us because what you end up doing is you listen to your friends and the possible shame or response of those core mates of yours that you're climbing with, I think can inadvertently drive some of the decision making and you've got to get into a place where, well, you don't care about that, but you can control for that, put it in a little box and say, yeah, you know, the loudest people on the right as people or the closest people on the right as people. And I think that drove a lot of my ignorance for quite a long time. And it's probably had to mature a little bit and get a slightly thicker skin to kind of get out of that. So, I think, yeah, I wouldn't say I'm more confident. I think we've probably just got a more transparent process for like testing new stuff and then killing it, but it doesn't work. Do you feel like how much do you leave it to other people to manage? Like, if you go down to a hangar and you're like, oh gosh, the setting down here is not very good. I don't like it. Are you on the phone or, you know, are you talking to the setting manager yourself? Or do you go like, I'll leave that to someone else? I'd normally, I'd be able to speak direct to people by their site teams, but we've got a North and South regional manager saying so it's Mike Hart in the North or Psych, as he's more locally known, you know, and OJ and the South and in Dan is sort of their line manager. It depends on what it is. Like, if I think it's something pretty fundamental, I'll probably discuss it with Dan first. Check that I haven't just climbed, you know, like 10 problems and arrived at a stupid decision, you know, or something like that. So I guess that's the other sort of function of being in the game for quite a long time is tempering my own decision and making sure that I'm not reacting myself and making sure that people are very happy to tell me that I'm wrong. So, but yeah, if it's something minor, I might mention it. If it's something a bit more fundamental, I'll just go through the chain of command because essentially that's what it's there for to keep things coherent. You know, say if you're a reset, you shouldn't really think that I'm your boss. Like, that doesn't make any sense. I'm not close enough to it. You'll be arrogant. And I think for a little bit for me just to sort of like start to dive in on people's workday. When you when you went to open a climbing wall, I imagine like most people went to open a climbing wall. You did it because you love climbing and you want to have a job that's a role for around climbing. And in the concept stage, it probably felt like it was a more climbing base thing to do than it turned out to be later on. But like, it also thrusts you into the position of being a manager. Yeah. When, you know, and I'm going to absolutely harpoon my future CV option, opportunity when I'm applying for you for a job in the future to be manager of the hangar Scarborough. But I'm a bad manager and I only found that out afterwards. I find it very difficult to work with people. You're now in a position where you are sort of managing a lot of people. And unfortunately with that comes stuff that you don't want to do. Like, sometimes you have to fire people and that sucks. How is that coming into a role like position where you're in, especially where you could be doing that slightly more regularly because you got just by the law of having way more people in your employee. How did you find that? How do you find managing? I mean, I absolutely did test managing. I think in a tracious managing. So, and again, I mean, this is this might have to be semantics to someone, I'm a bad manager, but I think I'm a good coach. Like, I'm good at listening to people and helping them navigate. Particular problems or help them turn their thinking around to fight new solutions. But I don't think I'm a good manager in that sort of structured, ordered sense that helps people know what's expected of them and kind of like work through in a key way. So for me, one of the real, perhaps the best thing about being able to grow the business is to find really brilliant people to run key areas of the business. So, you know, like our chief financial officer Hannah, you know, and literally worship the grand she walks on because not only she outrageously clever, but she's very humble, very kind and has helped even our most old school members of the team do a much better job and like really grow their own sort of like professional development in a way that's incredible. So she's a manager, part excellence, like she's something else. So you've got these key people that you can start to back and feel with like I can go out and I can find incredible talent to run parts of the business. And that is that's the best part of the job. But I mean at this stage, I still try my best to be as close as possible like if we need to make redundancies or if someone has to be sacked or anything like that. I try and do as much of the dirty work as I come myself because in the end I still feel that's my responsibility and I feel that again the thing problem with power as power gets too far away from the dirty work, you know, so you can just feel like you're the general. So that's somewhere sacrificing people and I think that sort of behaviour is really quite questionable and you've got to stay close to it the whole time. We left quite a few people go when the year just gone and I wouldn't say I'm over that. Like I still remember the first person I made redundant and I'm not sure I'll ever get over that because I did it very badly so it was very Young in my journey and that's possibly my most traumatic work experience and I'll carry that all right, for the rest of my life. So yeah, well, yeah, I just, yeah, yeah, I've tried my best and probably fallen short on that a couple of times myself. But have you, when you say that, that interests me, that idea of like some of these things that kind of, you know, you still think about them and it stays with you. So you're obviously not someone who can just shake off mistakes. Do you feel like there are any mistakes you've made that you still think about? Um, let me say, I'm just trying to think of the one of the most current ones at the moment. Yes, no. Um, I think let me see. Yeah, overall, the thing that I know is, it's sort of been like a little bit of an ongoing mistake, the best way to describe it. I don't think it's over. I don't think I've fully made it yet, which is evolving, which is sort of, which is like classes in coaching, right? So I used to be a coach and I love it. There's nothing like seeing the penny drop for someone when they figure something out. But there's something about climbing coaching and classes at the moment where the economics are quite challenging. So and it's like, we can't pay coaches enough because if we, if they were paid a lot more, then you'd have to judge like a lot more for the class and then it'd be quite exclusive. So once one in group coaching hasn't really taken off in climbing in a big way unless you're a well-known coach or a former pro athlete. So and it just seems that that's a really challenging space and given that a really value, what coaching is on it does for people. The fact that I haven't dedicated the right amount of time to that to try and come up with this sensible answer. And like we've got squads and stuff, you know, like the stuff that all of us have been invariably, your coaches have got to go and get, you know, like a proper job right and inverted commas so they can buy a house or start a family or something like this. So like, like not solving that particular equation, I find really problematic because it's, it's the way in for climbing and it's like, and there's just some absolutely stonking people that become climbing coaches for all the right reasons and not being able to build them a really good career. Yes. Oh yeah, okay. So one part of climbing that I, that makes me think of is setting where setters are incredibly talented, you know, the really good ones are incredibly talented. Both artistic and also manual labour is a difficult thing to guide. That's a strange mix of person to be able to do both of those things to a high level. And yet their day rates, whilst it goes up, you know, year by year and it's a lot higher than it was a few years back, it's still lower than it would be if they were like a plumber or even lots of manual labourers would, you know, they could ditch the setting sign and be a manual labourer for the same sort of money. Like, is that also in your fears in that like again, like you were saying with coaches, and climbing a forward to pay setters what they're kind of worth? So and I think that depends on where you're benchmarking the cost set. So I know, you know, like depends on where we are in the country. So like I've seen London freelance rates at £350 a day. I don't know how much that's. Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen that. Okay, I haven't seen that. Yeah, I don't know how much it, but freelance plumber is in London. I mean, I think everything's expensive down there, right? But yeah, so, but I mean, I see an a fairly normal basis, like say a 200 to 250 pounds a day rate. And I know most of the skilled carpenter's that we would use would be in the 150, 175. So I think on a freelance basis, my experience so far is that root-serying come has gone up. But what we do is we use very few freelancers. We've tried to enhance everything as much as possible. And again, I believe that's because you it's the main thing that we sell. And therefore we should have some control over it. We should have a how style. We should have an understanding of what it is. Whether or not we've achieved those things, you know, like I think that's an ever evolving journey. But then what is slowly changing in root-ser-er land is a feeling of like commercial responsibilities. The reason we stopped using freelancers is because they would argue with you as to whether or not the product was right, which for me, I used to, like once per time, I was a chef. So my first business was in Sheffing, you know, so my root, my, any of my setters that are listening to this will be laughing now because the thing is like for the chicken salad and you give me a pizza, right? It's not chicken salad, right? It doesn't matter how good the pizza is. You know, whereas you'd have people arguing with you, it's like, yep, that's absolutely V4, you know, and there's like V8 climbers who are falling off it. We could debate that part all day. But in the end, what I needed was to build out people who were responsible for how things worked out for the thing that they created. They're like closing the loop on what was happening and that didn't happen in the freelancer world. And it took a long time to embed for our in-house team and then the training that we do with people when we apprentice them is to close that loop, you know, to make sure that people realize they're not artists, right? They're more like a chef or a carpenter, right? So what they're doing is creative, highly technical and skilled, but it has an output that needs to be as close to quantum four-hible as possible. So because that informs what we do next and that is, I think that's key and I think the faster root setters can get out the curve on that, then all of a sudden, instead of there being a sort of a clashing of heads between the commercial requirements of the centre and the artistic expression of root setting, root setters and operators can get a lot closer together and say, okay, what are we doing? You know, we're making the right thing for the right people, you know, the V10 climate needs something different from the V2 climate. So and I'll be doing the right thing for all of them and it feels to me like, I don't really understand the conflict actually a lot of the time. Like I don't understand why anyone would have an issue with saying lots of easy problems, unless I said we need to pretend that that's a V5 when it's a V3, right? That's a problem because now you're lying for whatever reason, just set enough of the right climbs so everyone can have a great time, like that doesn't feel like there should be a conflict there and getting everybody onto that page feels like the goal and then I think you can map root setting and commercial outcomes closer together and build a better career for root setters. It does slightly rely on the talent in the local area that you've just opened up of course because I was actually, I've been to a few hangers and I was a hanger Southampton when I had a chat with a chap who was a setter and I'm terribly sorry to this chap because I know he listens to the podcast because he told me and I've forgotten his name. He was a setter at the other Southampton wall name, also gone out of my mind. I've recently had a child and my memories. My second child has absolutely turned my brain into Swiss cheese so everything's going out. Boulder Shack, thank you, Jeremy. He was setter there and he would say the issue they were having at this hanger was that there weren't really many setters who were in the Southampton area. There were some offers that went into some setter, there was a setter who I think applied for it from Boulder Shack but they were saying actually some of the setters at Boulder Shack were getting offered jobs to do some at the hangers Southampton because there wasn't a big scene there so there wasn't really any setters. That's surely a bit of an issue when you open up in areas that aren't Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds or Sheffield or somewhere where there's a huge climbing population already. Yeah, definitely. And the one talent that's in absolutely critical short supply is root setters. You know, so the industry can't grow faster than the number of people that can put the blocks on the wall to a high standard. So yeah, an area like Southampton, that would be a key factor. What have you found to be the big bottleneck with creating sites? Actually, since COVID, it's been building supply more than anything else. So getting the right building at the right price, as we all know, post-Covid, warehouse prices went up massively because so much stuff pivoted to online. So, you know, like even pretty chunky warehouses, something got quite expensive. And then, Lord, look at some dude with like a bunch of shelves and some forklifts and it's like they're more a bunch of us-lock, we're going to put in chillades of plywood. And I, oh, what happens if these guys go the wrong way? So, you know, the distribution people are way less risk. Yeah, buildings, supply of the right kind of building at the right kind of price is absolutely the bottleneck. So, and then, of course, since then, costs, you know. So, it's, I look at that and clearly sometimes when I think about, you know, like whether it's chains or the problem, you know, and I look at say maybe the, you know, effective duopoly on hold production, you know, and I look at the massive increase in prices and halts. And I'm like, okay, like I didn't do that, you know. I didn't eat that off your bottom line. No, that's very true. And actually, it's something that Ben and I have spoken about my brother that if we could go back in time, it kind of wish we'd started a whole business because that's, that is, they've done, they've done all very well with the climbing boom, but they're going to have the same problem that if, you know, if you expand your capacity to produce and then climbing plateaus, holds maybe do wear out a bit. But they actually, PE holds last a long time, you know, it's not, you know, if climbing walls aren't getting built, there will be a big reduction in holds being ordered. So it's, you know, we're all in the same boat really and they are again more at risk, yeah, of climbing dipping off. What, what are you, how, how worried are you for the state of climbing? Like are you worried at all? Um. I suppose no. It's the honest answer. I think climbing had a boom. I think there's a contraction. Like I said earlier, I just don't think we were, the whole industry is mainly people like you and I, right? And a lot of the industry doesn't have, you know, analysts, marketers, market research reports, you know. So I think this would be like a really, if I was being dispassionate, I think this is gonna be quite a hardcore shakeout for the next year or two. And then what's gonna happen is the people with a good plan and like good discipline are going to punch through and then there will be a next wave of better walls that are run with them as soon as like a much tighter business discipline. So, and I think, you know, if I look at the right skate parks or whatever, you know, like more snowboard, whatever, that's been through this saying kind of, it was super niche, it went big, everything skis and loads of people hate each other, then it crashed and then it grew again. You know, I think this is a cycle that every other action sport has been through in some shape or form. And we have to look to the brands like Burton that came through snowboard and said, well, what did they do? You know, it's not the end of climbing, the things that made climbing cool and like so many people had to go are still there. And unlike 10 years ago, when birthday parties with the main reason people thought climbing existed like kids were open parties. And now it's because they've actually been bolting, like our kids will grow up climbing, like my daughter's in a after school climbing club with all of her climbing mates, like climbing them is as normal as going to the swimming pool. So the next phase is a population of the UK that are completely inter-climbing. They've all done it. Now we've just got to keep them coming back, you know, so I'm not saying that's gonna be easy, but we're in a very different world now, you know, in way more people than ever before, know what climbing is and like it as well. - Hmm, yeah. So you're not worried at all that we could be skateboarding that had a huge boon but fell off incredibly steeply and obviously has maintained a part of the counterculture, but they have not managed to kick out of counterculture. At one point it looked like they were going to and they kind of haven't, they've fallen back. And if you look at the kind of graph of skateboarding, it had huge plummets, you know, big, big, big peaks, huge plummets and it comes back and it goes again. Like you don't think we could be that, we couldn't be, we could be standing on the edge of a climbing precipice. - No, I don't think so, the thing is because there's some massive differences between us and skate in the end and that's because like skate's hard, right? Skate one is like a bit like surfing like it takes a long, long time to be even remotely competent, right? So, you know, I've a couple of more mates who well into skate and they were like, it was two years before I found my flow at the local skate park, right? That's a big investment. So where is all doing? If I think so, this 15th birthday of it on Saturday, I'm there with a bunch of mums and they're all showing me the pictures of their kids who now work for the hangar on the country, uni, you know, like going back to the thing, most of the mums climb, you know, and there's kids, you know, you've just got multi-intergenerational participation, even though the dominant market is still young people in Boulder. In Bouldering's easy and you can have a great time in your first go, you can come back by yourself, you can do it with people. So the things that make Bouldering really, really accessible are still true. And I think that structural element of Bouldering that means a lot of people can do it in different ways, is fundamentally different from skate where you have to be able to skate effectively to participate. So, and that's the difference. Like I've just not seen that many old people skating. I don't see a lot of intergenerational skating. There's some, but nothing like what we would get. - Yes, okay, I fully agree with you. I think that's a good point. I do sometimes worry though that for a time being, people thought we were cool and they're discovering that we aren't. And I don't know if that could be an issue. Whereas you're right on skateboarding is that also with skateboarding, as you didn't say as well, is that it's dangerous. And it's very hard to do it in a way that's not at all dangerous. And it bloody hurts to fall off and you will fall off. Whereas with Bouldering, we offer that kind of safe adventure where technically some people will call us an extreme sport, but you're not really much danger to be honest. And that actually plays hugely into our hand because it makes us sound like we're a little bit more than we are at times. But we're not very cool. And I worry that it's great that your mum can do it, but your mum doing it doesn't help the kids wanting to do it. You know, could that be a potential pitfall? - I think it could be. So the way I would think about that is this then comes back to like, well, what's your offering? Like how do you want things to work at your particular facility, right? So the problem with core, the danger with core, is being called as hard, right? And being core requires a lot of codes and understanding those codes implicitly and then understanding those codes as they change. And I think, you know, climbing, the current climbing boom, or what the one that maybe has just passed, right? It was spotted by a bunch of millennials, right? So for a period of time, we were probably in touch with the codes and the cultures we were using Instagram at the right time, but then as that moved on and the ship sailed and then it's Gen Zed or an alpha or whatever, we're not in touch with those codes in the same way. Like there's a new language, there's a new digital behaviors, you know, it's a significant portion of the audience is different. So like, cool for who is a key question. And also it's like climbing culture and reality. I think it's quite weak in terms of how it's represented, you know, so like, hipster culture, never really got into climbing, even though so many climbers were essentially hipster, if you like, we were all well into coffee or whatever, right? But there was just not that many rolled up jeans. We had beanies before beanies were cool, right? So, you know, it's, but like if you like, there's never been a climbing fashion that's never really taken hold, unlike in surf or skate, which are fundamentally like expressive and creative sports, but climbing is still quite functional and athletic. And I think that lends it resilience in a way because there's not a unified identity anymore, which means you got a bigger group of people that can do it, more people could feel welcome and at home. But if you want to be cool, you have to narrow your audience. So maybe more or more, say, or block fit, I think those people could much more effectively, like target and hold on to a really, really loyal audience in the way that a chain wall is probably never going to be able to do, because it's necessary for us to have a broad audience, which, hopefully, creates the space for independence to be cool and focused in a way that we never can, 'cause we just can't go into that space, like it's not possible. - Hmm, something else I've noticed about the hanger is that you don't go in very hard for elite climbing in the sense that you don't hold a big blowout hanger competition every year. You don't sponsor a bunch of team members or something. It doesn't seem to be core to your business model. And I know you sponsor Shawna, but that might be partly 'cause she's useful as a kind of figurehead character as well. - Well, she's also hanger employee number two, so after me, so there is that. - I didn't know that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Shawna used to save petrol money from driving over and sleep on my safer in the crackdown. So, you know, back in the cool. - Wow, that's a story people will probably don't know. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, back when we were all skinned. (laughing) So, but yeah, like, you know, but to your point, we're just quite on that because in the end, it's quite a busy space the elite side. There's loads of people doing stuff there. You know, if we were to hold another big blowout comp, when do we stick it in? Like when do we do it that isn't conflicting with somebody else or so, there's quite a lot of activity there. And I think in the end, I think other companies are much better set up to do it. And I think I would, if I was being as come by, I was possibly could, right? Thinking about the whole ecosystem, I would like the hanger to be really, really good at generating loads and loads of climbers and keeping climbing mainstream, right? So there's loads of people doing it. We're just that they're regular gym. And by growing the number of people doing it, we then end up with like loads more diversification. There's loads more people getting into youth climbing and stuff like that. So, can maybe the top of the funnel, if you like, for the whole industry, would be pretty good as far as I'm concerned. I think we can do a good job of that. And I mean, we'll Bozy, and if did is a video the other day, like, you know, these are the hardest indoor blocks in the world, you know, he was going around some of our things in Sheffield and maybe just didn't have the right beat it, but you know, they weren't that hard according to Mike's bike. So I don't know if that shot's fired or not, but, (laughs) But yeah, I suppose it's just choosing your place in the market, you know? You know, if you're interested, you know, for instance, like you've got the works in the school room, you know, do you really want to try and compete with those guys for the elite? I think it's inappropriate, you know, there's no need to do that. So you can just occupy a different part of the market. But I mean, you could, I mean, because the hangers tend to be in pretty good size units, and you don't need a big amount of that space to have a really good training offering. And some hangers have actually a pretty good training offering, but it doesn't seem to be the focus. - Yeah, so like in Hangers' Share field, we have a lot of elite athletes trained there, and the feedback from them is they train there because it's quite like when they're there, and they can go there and because people don't expect them to be there, they get a quite training session. I don't know if I've blown their cuff an out, but you know, it's that, so rather than be the place for them to be, they go there because it's not the place for them to be. You know, we've got, you know, like massive gyms, kilters, finger boards, just things everybody else, but probably a little bit more on the gym side of things. And certainly there should be enough hard blocks for them to go out, you know, to do something interesting. So, um, but yeah, you're right. We could, but I think there's a danger there in like trying to be all things to all people. And again, that would generally, I think then you are competing much more directly. Hmm, in certain places, you know, where is it's not essential for us to do that? So therefore, do we have to do it? Should we do it? You know, could we put our energies more productively, more collaboratively elsewhere? Hmm. And when you went, when you listened to our independent episode, you said that there was some things that you liked, but some things that we got wrong. Can you think of what we got wrong? Like, what did you listen to and think now that's yeah, you're off the money there? Well, well, I think we've covered most of it. So one of it is on pricing. Um, I think a lot of it is about market dynamics. When I listen to those guys talking, you know, and they're talking about sort of the, you know, how optimistically are about the future. I don't think that should be characterized precisely as like an independent issue. Like, I think that's a genuine market issue. And there is room to collaborate. Like, I don't think it benefits me. It's really doesn't benefit the hangar if like, we'll start collapsing. That's a really bad sign. You know, actually, there being more facilities and more growth in the market is what costs here, if it carried on, that would be better. You know, so there's that being. There's also just kind of, I suppose if you've not worked in a chain, particularly kind of like an executive team, you don't know that you actually have way less flexibility. You're held to an exceptionally high standard of like financial prudence. You know, your ability to make decisions quickly is very, very hampered by governance, all of those sorts of things. So it's, um, yeah, the flexibility and power of the chains is often not in where people imagine it to be. And I think that that misunderstanding means that independence aren't operating as effectively as they can be like in terms of how they compete and how they think about their own strategy. You know, so and also as well, how do you feed off the ecosystem that a chain creates? Like I said, you know, it would be, could we act as a feeder operator if you like, for someone like Sen, Murrow, Blockfit, you know, if we decided we're not going to deal with that part, what we'll do is you say, okay, guys, you've hit this level now, we recommend you go over here. You know, so there's, I don't know how that's been thinking out loud, right? But, you know, the pricing side of things, I just don't think they're the sectors very sophisticated on its pricing. I don't think people don't have and put the time into understanding how that works. But nearly every client who has exactly the same product said exactly the same prices, regardless of how big their facility is or where it is in the country. This tells me that there's no relationship between people's prices and how many people are coming into the door or their base costs. I think that's totally right. And I think that comes from the fact that we don't really know what we're doing, to be honest. We're trying to figure this out as we go. We all started this because we wanted to go climbing. And now we're trying to figure out these things and we're doing it with gut feel and kind of looking over our shoulder at what someone else is doing and then just copying it if we don't know. We're copying other people's homework. And yeah, it's not necessarily the right way of doing it. But there's no entrance exam to opening a climbing wall. So, you know, and like I'm totally straight, I was in exactly the same place until about 2017. And it was the fear that drove me to like, okay, do I really want to be homeless if not, okay, go and find out what you don't know and then start to plan for that. I mean, I think it was four or five years ago. I was presenting at the ABC conference and I was there, you know, doing, you know, to the whole room. And I was like, you know, like who's sensitising their cash flows like to minus 20% you know, for when the bubble pops. And I was told like directly, I was fear mungering, right? That no one needed to think about that, you know, and here we are. So, you know, where is, you know, from quite a long time ago, we were factoring in what happens if we lose 20% of our business. Right. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. We mentioned London pretty briefly as a city that seems to have reached saturation point. And you said briefly there that you're not looking in London for any more hangers. I'll come as a relief to a few London based independence. They won't see the ghost, the specter of Jed hanging around their local warehouses. But like, how about something like Bristol? Because at one point, you've opened one in Bristol. And at one point, it looked as though all of the previously feuding walls, like it's a weird space, I'm Bristol. They all kind of weirdly hate each other. There's loads of politics. You're not allowed to climb at all the different ones because there's so much history there. I'm not from Bristol. People have explained it to me and it's a very weird situation. But at one point, it looked like you were going to bring them all together and they were all going to buy each other out. And it almost sounded like just so they could compete with you. Did you see that coming? I mean, I did see it coming into my Instagram. But then I think it pulled out on Instagram as well. Yeah. And that was unfortunate. I grew up just south of Bristol and cleaved in. Right. So I learned to climb and undercover rock. And that led to climbing and even gorgeous stuff. So I've got a lot of fondness for Bristol and also is very familiar with it's as a city like it's deeply anti-corporate stance. It's an incredible place in that regard. And there we were wading in as the corporate evil. So I did expect some kind of response. And I suppose people unifying to be stronger. Ultimately, that's the kind of thing I agree with even if it, not instance. It wouldn't have been in my favour. I do think that that's how people should be thinking. The world doesn't benefit from fragmentation. Benefits from collaboration and as having common solutions to problems. So I don't like thinking of myself as the problem, but I can appreciate how it works. Yeah. I think it fell through in the end, although I'm not completely up to speed with you. But would you have been worried if they had done that? If that had gone through and they'd put you in a position where it was kind of you versus all of the other worlds in Bristol is one banner. Not really. And I think that's because when you're in the industry, you can see it like that. But if you know when you're a customer, when an Aldi opens up within walking distance of your house, it's not quite the same. But you can't, well, that's convenient. You're not thinking about the Tesco versus Aldi Dynamics. You're like, there's a thing that is useful to me that is closer and more convenient. And what you find in territories that are very busy, like there's quite a lot of operators is, and we would be the same as dedicated climbers. You don't really want a climbing one place. You might have a home gym if you like, but then you move around because you're climbing to your friends who prefer other places. So growing the pies quite important in busy territories. But I guess in the end, you've just got to be prepared for whatever competitive dynamics emerge. That's, yeah, it probably would have been tricky, but I guess we would have found a solution. What's my expectation? Okay. So I'm coming to the end of the questions that I, well, I'm just been making them up so I go along as the conversation has been going. But I'm going to give you an opportunity now to re-light the candle of your previous self as the teacher. Do you think I'm asking the right questions? Yeah, I think so. It's been balancing. We've kind of covered a little bit of what's the chain do. I think ultimately we just, the most important question is where is climbing going. That is the current that all of us are swimming in. And I think focusing, you know, like with the vaccine conspiracies, this might feel like a bit of attention. Instead of criticizing government policy or Pfizer and Pfizer having patents to publicly funded vaccine technology and things like that, we've got conspiracy theories instead, right? So when we look at climbing, like climbing exists so comprehensively on TikTok and Instagram. My big tech platforms, the profit for some pretty nefarious activities. And we all benefit from that. Right. So we're benefiting from corporateization in many, many different ways and training all of our firepower at chains, right? And I'm not obviously trying to say, oh, don't criticize us, right? But it feels like it's the wrong balance. Like where's climbing going? What's it going to look like in 10 years? How are we all still going to be here? You know, how do we bring people into climbing and keep them there? And you know, like I said, when I had that, there's no such thing as a real climate vibe like at the beginning. You know, that's because like when we talk about like authenticity, there's no such thing as authentic. Like it's made up like culture moves, ebbs and flows. And what authentic does is say who's in the in crowd and who's in the out crowd? And I really don't believe that that helps us. I think we need to be, we need to recognize and celebrate our culture, but also get one foot into the future. And like where climbing is going to end up and try and be as proactive, protective and as positive as possible about getting into that place. And like the hangar can't do that by itself. That's ridiculous. Right? Even if we had 30 sites, right? That's still chicken feed. Like in terms of big business, right? You're not Nike, you're not in the North Face. You'd have no marketing budgets of anything like that scale. So we can only go growing climbing together. To give you the opportunity for the last word, is there anything else you'd like to add that we've not said or anything else you'd like to say? I guess not really like climbing. I hope that comes through in the end. I mean it because I love it. I've got a training board and my garage. But because I work too much sometimes and get in one and a half kilometres down the road to my local climbing. It's too much of a stretch. Yeah, I mean, I genuinely believe if we can stick to a lot of the things that make climbing what it is in the first place, and like a really nice industry to work with, largely full of people like ourselves who really love it and wanted to be amazing forever, the more we can keep that, like hold on to that, the better it will be in the end. And that's recognising that we are going to piss each other off. We are going to compete with one another, like, but all of those things are true, right? You know, like when climbing was in the Olympics, we all should have recognised this is going to go bigger and that contains opportunities and threat at the same time. And that will always be true. So, but it doesn't mean you have to hate each other in the end. Okay, well, thank you so much, Jair. I appreciate you're a lot more honest than I thought you would be, if I'm honest. I thought we were going to get a lot more of a kind of veneered answers than you gave. So I really appreciate that. Thank you very much for giving up your time. Yeah, well, I really appreciate the podcast. I love the balance and everything about it. You know, it's good fun. Nearly everybody I work with listens to it and it's always a regular source of conversation. So in the end, it's what makes it all fun, right? So how do we keep as much of that? So like I say, if anything, you guys were really balanced in doing a good job. I wouldn't have gotten touched to say I'll go on and let's have a chat. Well, that's good. There's some benefit.