The layered complexities of commercial development with Joe Dale of The Wave

The Wave Pull Mag podcast is made possible due to support from Wave Pull operators, technology providers, and the growing list of companies doing business in the surf part space. For commercial opportunities, reach out to us at [email protected]. Thank you and stay stoked. And welcome to the Wave Pull Mag podcast. My name is Brian Dickerson. My very special guest today is Joe Dale, head of commercial at the Wave here in Bristol. We're on site today speaking with Joe about some of the innovative ways they have structured revenue streams on their at their at their legume. Super fascinating stuff. Joe, welcome. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on the show, Brian. Been long-awaited. Great. Well, I'm glad we could find the G-ion and work all that out. So it's really fascinating. We've had you in several articles because when we need a quote or perspective on a commercial article, we reach out to several people in the industry, you being one of them. And it's so layered, you'll start to talk, you can describe something. And at some point, it's like, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, it goes over my head. So I'm so glad we have you on the show today so we can drill down and get into the NAD, maybe gritty. Great. Let's start off with a big overview. What is it that you do? So the head of commercial role at the Wave is a role that I've been doing for just over 12 months now. I've been at the Wave for just over three years. And in that time, the structure, the commercial team, the structure, the business has continued to react and respond to the needs of the business, the trade environment that we find ourselves in, but also the growth of a business that is still finding its way and in so many ways leading the surf park industry. And as a result of that, you might think you're stumbling across a formula that is right and then it is usually only a matter of days, weeks, months later, at most, that you go actually there's another dimension that this industry is opening up. And so the head of commercial role here is very much about finding innovative ways to attract people into the Wave Bristol to experience everything that we have to offer here. In many ways and a big proportion at that time is getting people to come and surf in our lake, like any part of the industry where a surf pool exists. That is ultimately the opportunity to drive the greatest revenues, is filling your lake full of people learning to surf, improving their surfing or just finessing their surfing and having a great time doing it. But certainly one thing that has been laid down as a challenge to the commercial team here is how do we ensure that the Wave is viewed and understood as a venue that is about more than surfing? And that is online with our podcast. We did last year with Hazel coming in and see him kind of expanding that. And then when you first open, maybe there is a little more focused on course surf, like a lot of the surf parks. And as the space has matured, you're realizing that's not your bread and butter. So yeah, I think it's the bread and butter in as much as it is the centerpiece, it is the focal point, it is where the most resource and energy goes to delivering a truly memorable unforgettable experience. And that's whether you are at the entry point to surfing, are you coming for a first beginner lesson or you are a seasoned lifelong surfer. And we need to ensure that every time someone leaves here, they've had an incredible experience and taking that right back to the purpose of the Wave and why we exist, believing that anyone who steps foot in and around our lake leaves feeling healthier and happier. And so that remains very much at the core and in terms of the bread and butter, we exist around the surfing lake. So we certainly can't take our eye off that focus. If we did, then that would very quickly be recognized in the commercial viability of the project. What we have to be able to do alongside that is find reasons and sort of ways to excite and inspire people to come and find out more about us and get them over the threshold, get them up the drive through the doors, through those, for anyone who is not being, you get this big reveal moment as you're in the double glass sliding doors open and you just see these perfect endless waves rolling towards you. Yeah, I've seen that firsthand. We're here at school holidays, week and I've seen kids coming to the door and the screen started to see. I see the lake and people surfing and it's really a lot of energy. But I wanted to ask you, do you get people in? I mean, that's the big question. There's so many different nuanced ways you do it. But what are some of your more successful methods? Okay. So we would probably break this down. When you say, how do we get people in? Who are we trying to get in and why and for purpose? So we've in the last few years managed to deepen our data and insight understanding and I think any wave park that is going through the journey, we're coming up to five years of delivering waves now. You truly get to understand your customers, the longer you're open because the data and insight becomes so much more rich. So that has enabled us to then break down our audiences and you would create them in sort of a personality type and a pen portrait of the groups of individuals that will help you with your broader marketing campaigns that will come onto. But truly understanding the nitty gritty of your surf audience, what sessions they surf, how often, what times of day, week, what prices are they paying, how long does it take someone to rebook after they've come the first time? What someone's buying habits when you offer them a same day surf discount? So you think you're actually what you're going to be doing is topping up the last lots in the day, but actually suddenly you initiate behavior where someone knows they're going to surf twice. So they put one and then they race to the door on the day to ensure that they can get their second one on the day half price. And so you try and drive these sort of retention programs to keep people surfing and then the behaviors of your different parts of the sort of segmentation suddenly start to behave quite differently. I have to interrupt you. Yeah, because out in the lagoon during a session, a lot of the servers I talked to, that's their motor stopper on day. It's like book the morning session and then because they're a community member, they can get the second or third session out of discount and people love it. It works, but at some point does that hurt your bottom line? Excuse me. Does it hurt the bottom line? I think what hurts the bottom line most is seeing empty waves rolling in. And so at that point in the day, the only time that you would seriously consider whether that's damaging is on a very busy sort of summer's day, typically summer season, if those final slots are available on those days. But by that point, you've got a pretty decent occupancy across the day. If those last few are being taken up by the same day's surf offer, then there's a question marked to say, well, if we had protected that and you couldn't use it on those days, the occupancy would have suggest you'd have sold them all at full price. But actually, in the majority, we are pretty confident that that will only be helping us rather than dramatically hindering us. I think it's going back to your initial question then around. No, no, the question around what works really well. I think we can define that when we truly understand what those segmentations that we've spoken about recognize in value. So what is value for those people? So we've got to attract day trippers. So what has been, and so to define a day tripper, that's someone who is going to come one or two days per year to the wave. And they are typically sort of half of those people are going to have a go at learning to surf. And then for the others, they've probably got a bit of surfing experience, but they're going to come and do it for an enjoyable day out or they might not always be able to get down up to coast. And so they're not addicted to it. They don't love it to do it every day of the year, but they want to have a go surfing that year. So we tend to attract the majority of those audience is through the majority of a digital advertising campaigns through paid search and paid social. And what we've done really well through this last 12 months in particular is just hone and refine the types of messaging, the types of visual. marketing and creative that we're learning in front of those audiences and what a sort of and this takes us back then so those sort of pinpoint traits of imagine the type of person is going to be receiving this. So you've got family members who are going to want to see that they can take the family for a day out. If you do that through a four pack bundle you can have two parents and two kids that are really good value for your experience in the lake and then recognise that if you come to the way you can spend the rest of the day here you can use the play part for free you can use the skate ramp for free there's an amazing restaurant right on site so you don't have to sort of pack up the sandwich bags you can you can include that and they recognise that all in it's not just your 90 minute surf lesson a day out at the wave is based around the cost of the surf session but the value of the whole experience and actually with those additional things that we started to invest in there's new kids play activities on the track on the way up we're hearing families taking the best part of an hour to get up the track because the kids are stopping at every bit to play along the way and then for a family day out that's true value and in the you know the current financial climate that we're in probably families who who want to be able to go and do days out and memorable days out having to pick and choose which ones they do and so we need to ensure that they leave going the wave wasn't just in 90 minutes and out wave was an incredible day out we could let our children roam and enjoy the space safely we could have some amazing food and we've learnt a new skill that was outdoors healthy and there's an appetite that we want to come back and like I said most of our acquisition and bringing in new customers for that is delivered through a continual honing and optimization of our paid digital marketing okay is there have you had can you name for us some of your more successful programs we launch this spring a new product called Little Rippers so we've had some really great feedback customer feedback and coaching feedback that in our begin lessons you so anyone who is age six and up could take part in the begin lesson you've got to be able to self certify your 25 meters ability to swim and if a child wanted to do it with a parent both of those were individual tickets so you had you know that's that's both people having to pave the experience but what we were finding is particularly that sort of six seven eight year old child the parent was either having to help them a lot so the parents experience they weren't really getting to serve or if they you had the young the children in there on their own a lot of the coaches attention was having to ensure that those children were okay to to follow the you know the flow the session carry their boards big boards and so if you had a full session some of the other customers who were older weren't the coaches weren't being able to give extra attention across the across the whole experience so the coaches went we need something that splits our play in the bay which is a really popular splash about body boards family experience just getting water confident how do we get them from that into a beginner surf lesson what bridges that gap and the surf operations team designed this product called little rippers which plays to the aspirational factor that a kid wants to become a really cool surfer but essentially what the ticket price includes is the the child's surfs and they can do that from as young as four and including the ticket price is an adult who basically comes into the session as part of the ticket price and can be their supervisor and be their supporter their height master their board carrier their their catcher and so the coaches can focus on coaching the key skills to the to the children and pushing them into waves and then the adults are there to enjoy that experience with them wholly fulfilling in terms of connecting adults and children in an amazing experience the kids if they're getting tied carrying the board has someone to afford them and everyone's in it together so you've got to actually a far more connected group of people having the same experience that then moves that group out of the beginner lesson which is historically what we saw from day one and actually we're finding then the gap in the beginning lessons closes a little bit so you haven't got these extremes of a six or seven year old and a potentially well any age we have up to 80 year old surfing and the coaches can then tailor their support in the right way that makes that feel like a more sort of rounded experience for everyone so is that something you came up with on your own or did you see I mean there are a lot of surf parks open now so I'm sure there are a lot of opportunities to borrow to visit and how did that come about yeah it was it was a product that had a similar experience originally up in the surf smudonia park and we over time have had staff join us down here from there and they identified that that product could fit really well into our into our customer customer journey surf a pathway and I think you've touched on a really great point in that there are a lot of us around the world trying to try to really nail the you know the surf park model and we all have maybe ever so slightly different original missions and visions and purposes but I don't think any would stray away from the fact that you want people to leave smiling having had an amazing experience and there are there are finite ways that you can run the settings run the sessions and it's about how you build the experience around it and so I'm sure every surf park keeps an eye on subscribe to the mailing list has a little read because there are some absolute gems of ideas out there and ultimately the more of us that succeed in in growing commercially the bed of bed of the overall industry the really exciting thing for us around little rippers is we've got a we've got a brilliant brand asset with it it's a it's a little frog who internally named we're calling Frankie and actually the very key of the Frank and Frankie the frog who is a is a pretty cool looking frog that is in in a barrel and beautifully designed by one of our own wave makers who is a surf technician who is also has an amazing design well we get on see if the suits I'm going to just up in a Frankie the the prize so so the opportunity commercially there is and you can you can grow a brand within within the way that actually is a very child focused activity so this latterly this year we've we've created and delivered a little rippers sort of surfer journey so what any child who comes in when they check in now they'll receive I can search after they'll receive this little sort of almost checklist of all the experiences that a link so you've got play in the bay you've got little rippers you've got beginner lessons and it's designed for them to keep a track of how they're getting on which ones have they done what are they ticked off and it helps them remind them and dad they want to come back to the wave and get their stamp and then they'll they'll move through the scale so the first there's the whole criteria that Grom moves through from learning a surf to stand up to doing turns and yeah they can go all the way to the point yeah so so this what this one recommends in particular is is where you'd sort of start so if a child comes in and and and we sort of the age range for this is sort of your four to to twelveish so for us we'd call that primary school age in the UK and yeah so we highlight the the different sessions that we think they're best to start off in so you've got your play in the bay and it has a little description these are the things that you're likely to do has all them laid out and the other side is sort of session one and they can write it in today I did playing the bay and my coach said next time I come back I should do little rippers and then on each time they come they can get a nice little stamp and the first one they get a free sticker with their stamp we've brought on pip smoothie as sort of pip organic as a partner who then feature at stamp three so if you then you come back for your third time you get your stamp you get a free smoothie from pip or a commercial partner that we that we list in our F&B and then if you get to five and the fifth stamp you get a little ripper's t-shirt oh that's awesome and that's and it sounds like it's working yeah it probably like I say we've we sort of the the experience itself landed at the start of the summer and so the little rippers have been incredibly popular through the through the summer and then we've been thinking about how we sort of we broaden that to little rippers essentially encompassing kids experiences at the wave so that launch start of the autumn so now because of the temperatures and things that the volume of particularly young children's experiences tends to taper off of it but it's been a great period for us to test are there operational parts of that clarity of who gets it where they get it how they get their stamps all those sorts of things which is so critical for people to feel like it's part of your operational day to day and I think it that can only grow there some amazing merchandise opportunities and and all this then lad ladders back to the way being commercial right and my job and how do the how do the different customer experiences piece together to get people to stay here longer to invest in our retail store to spend money on food and drink can you would you be able to to walk us through maybe a crash course and I open a surf park If there are top three things, the top five things that I need to do, he mentioned everyone leaving with a smile on their face, but there have to be specific programs to make that happen. You had mentioned little rippers. Yeah. I think I came in after two years of learning how to run and operate a surfactory with COVID. So this location has had a steeper, steeper curve as any. I think the number one and her next been a guest on the podcast. If you have absolute clarity for everyone as to why you exist and why you're here, that's your north star, right? That keeps everyone on the same direction and enables you to make decisions and make decisions really. Empowers everyone to make decision ultimately. So we exist to make people healthier and happier with every wave. Underpinning that is our belief that all our decisions should benefit people profit and plan it equitably and they've become our company values. So whilst we have learned over time that not every decision can affect people profit and plan it equitably with that one decision, as long as you are considering those with each decision, one will never become imbalanced and leave them behind. And we achieve B-Corp status this year which first surf park is. That's right. First park in the world and recognise that the rumours that you can explain briefly for listeners outside the UK would. Of course. Yeah. So B-Corp is a. to call it an accreditation would be far too simplistic. It's a movement to ensure that companies set themselves up and measure themselves against objectives and decision making that ensures you are respecting people, the profit and the planet within your business. And the impact that your business has on others and maybe that's just as critical. And so you go through a process of collecting and presenting evidence to sort of the organisation and each of those pieces of evidence will be graded and marked and give you a score that contributes towards an overall score. That score needs to meet and pass a threshold which initiates your status. It is then our job, I mean that's an amazing achievement. It's then our job to ensure we retain that because we will have to continue to resubmit evidence and if that ever comes below the threshold. And you lose your. So it's a criteria but a little more complicated than the little rippers. Exactly. So it's very much around what are you doing that demonstrates that you are considering the impact that your business has on the people that. Not only work for you but the people that are your customers, the planet around you and profit. So that. Yeah, I know environment and doing the right thing is at the core of the wave's mission statement. So that was number one. You know, really clear why does your particular business exist and what underpins that? I think early recognition of the fact that you need a broad audience to want to come and be a part of your surf park. And I think there's probably an excitement, particularly if the project is being led by a surf enthusiast. There's an excitement and a belief that there are enough surf enthusiasts who can afford to surf as regularly as you need to ensure that that is the only, you know, revenue generating audience you have to serve. And we just know now after five years they are an incredibly important part of our customer base, the regular surfers. But in terms of unique individuals, they're quite a small percentage. They deliver greater than the sum of their parts in terms of revenue, but it's still not equitable to the amount of revenue that we get from people who want to come and have a go at surfing and start learning to surf. So early recognition that you need to make sure to your point at the different product and experiences are set up in a way that can allow all ends and spectrums of the surf a pathway to come and use your facility. Then part three is, and it's hard because you don't have this at the start, but interrogate your data to understand how those audiences and customers are coming through because the complexity of delivering what we call sort of the lake schedule and getting the right ways at the right time for the people that are able to use them. You could run one wave that has a huge occupancy all year. So we could run an intermediate wave in a beginner lesson which allows us to get the most people in the lake and therefore sort of the most revenue. You could run that every day of the year and go, "Oh yeah, that makes loads of sense." Because all we've got to do is fill that up and we will be great. But there's no variation in your experience for your people who want to surf, your barrels or your advanced turns, etc. So be aware and be alive to the inside data that you can get on the people that are using your site because that will really help you to steer. And once you're getting your mix of those different audiences coming through, it then helps you evolve your customer experience to the point we made. Because within those groups you will have each other group to a tribute value in a different way. One just needs one amazing surf lesson and to be able to 12 for a long time and for them that's incredible value. Your regular barrel surfer, their value is transaction. It's how much money for how long in the pool and how many waves. So you start to understand how your site can attribute value to everyone who comes through the door. I summarise this in a bit of a sort of slide to our wave makers. So we come together at the start of each season and we go, "Right, you are our front of house, you are our ambassadors, you're talking to hundreds of thousands of people who are going to come to our doors over the course of the next 12 months." And we have this really fascinating challenge of, we've got a really high end, in surf, enthusiast need to feel like this place is truly authentic. Because as soon as it doesn't feel authentic, they'll lose belief that we're here to allow surfers to do what they love doing. We know as surfers, if you were to go to certain surf spots where they believe it's truly authentic, it can feel quite exclusive. So what we can never allow it to become is so far down one end that, "Okay, this might be an amazing hidden surf corner, but if no one else wants to come in because they're like, "Well, I know what these crazy surfers are here." We've then shut the market to the audience who have this aspiration, who they want to learn to surf, they want to understand the good parts of the culture, and they want to become, so we have to have that sort of aspiration element that allows complete newcomers to the sport to come in, be inspired by what they see, but not feel excluded because they don't feel like they can touch the surf culture. It's got to feel like that's something I want to become a part of. It's welcoming, it's inclusive, it's cool, it's all those things. I want to ask you about that because that's fascinating and I know a lot of parks have difficulty with this where they maintain their authentic core. It's easier in some places like Sydney and Melbourne, where there's the core. Surf culture, you have that here, it's a little bit different out on the coast, a couple hours away. What has been, you can give us a success story in terms of branching the core, you know, having a in barrels, riders with the, you know, someone in a Frankie the Frog guest in a midday for the kids. So I'll definitely give one and if it hasn't answered then I'll be able to come up with another, but there's a lady, I won't, I won't name her, she's done her mic chemistry, but I don't have her permission, but I got chatting to her, we hosted, so we've expanded our events that I might come onto in a little while, but I got chatting to her, a surface supper that we delivered last Christmas, which was a chance for our amazing chef team to not just deliver the restaurant food, but deliver them a stunning sort of Christmas menu too, and we invited our community. I saw that, I got the email for that and I thought, is that going to work? Are people going to, because I thought of myself, okay, Christmas dinner right now, it's very British, and it would be a lot of other places. The food was divine, we had about 20 people, sat around a big sort of feasting table. We've done other types of food events since, so it was certainly, it was actually worth doing an understanding, it was one of a number of community ideas that we've had, and they're say others have attracted more people, but we definitely, we've sidetracked me a little but we did a-- We did a different approach to a long table feast with a charity partner where we introduced some celebrity chefs who cooked and partnered with a local charity and that sold out 40 tickets in less than 24 hours. So there are different ways that we are trying to explore this more than surfing idea. But this was definitely around attracting almost regular surfers, come and feast together each year and enjoy that community spirit. Anyway, I got chatting to a lady there who had come with her partner and she had maybe done one or two surf beginner lessons at the coast in the sea. Anyway, when this place opened up, she said about learning to surf. My latest interaction with her was just a few weeks about when we ran our first customer surf competitions and she took part in the women's category on the advanced plus wave. And that's within a few years, I don't know her exact start date. But we've only been open five years. She certainly hadn't been going since the very inception. But in that period of time, she's taken herself and that was on the advanced plus wave. She surfs to barrels and the expert turns. But this place has allowed her to come in and try it and then has enabled her to feel confident enough to go onto the reef to develop her skills in still what is a majority male part of our lake most of the time. But she's felt confident enough to go in hone her skills, develop her skills. And then when we've put on the next community opportunity, which is about we've got some judges, we've got some cool prizes, all you've got to do is use one of your bundle credits or pay to come and have a go at competing. She's come in and she's competed on the advanced plus wave against other surfers who summer, we had some groms come up from Cornwood who were very much on the on the junior surf scene and surfed amazingly well. But she felt ready enough to take part in that scene. Now if you had said customer surf calm, that just must be hardcore surfers who are just here to shred, throw spray, all that sort of stuff. We designed the surf competitions so that there was someone intermediate waves on phone boards, we had a long board category, we had advanced plus and then we had Bowls board at bodyboarding and bow surfing. So even though you might assume surf competitions are about core audience, it enabled some of that aspirational surfer to go, do you know what, I love surfing intermediate, I'm pretty comfortable with this eight foot board. It's under the lights, it's that night, I'm going to go and have a go. What's the worst that can happen? As well as those who we had several people say, my first competition, it was this example for this lady. With others who say it said, I haven't competed in 20 years, this is amazing. And so by finding ways in which we can create above and beyond the core day today, you can truly make an authentic experience, surf competitions, inclusive and aspirational for other people. So that's a great example because I know there does seem to be a kind of disconnect or more of a rift between the advanced and core users of a surf park and then the beginning group that you're trying to nurture. Yeah, and between and I know from conversations with others in the field, there is a lot of like just the one off someone does one lesson and checks it after bucket list and then moves on. Yeah, and your job is to get those people to stay. Absolutely. How do you do that? Yes, there are a few ways. So the the high of surfing that we're fortunate enough to feel regularly because it's what we love to do, we aim that everyone leads on that high. There are lots of phrases that get spread around the industry, the only a surfer knows the feeling and it's true that moment you stand up and you catch the first wave in. The reality is we will deliver an awful lot of beginner lesson experiences to people who might not even stand up. So in its very nature, it's a it's not an easy skill. There are a number of barriers to people even wanting to have a go, the awareness, self awareness around wearing wet suits, the confidence in water, all those sorts of things. So if someone has been brave enough to cross the threshold and come in and have a go, we then have to find as many ways as we can to communicate them to double down on that thrill that they receive when when they that feeling of health and happiness that we go right, you feel that, you see that, come back and get more of it. And that starts very much with the way the coaches are briefed to clearly give everyone an amazing experience, but there will be some who naturally warmth, wet and more engaged and can be seen to be wanting to develop. And our coaches are there to be eyes on how are people reacting to this and where there is a truly engaged and someone who clearly is getting scripts with it. Our coaches are set up to have those conversations. Did you know, right, you're in a beginner lesson. There's a beginner free stuff later on today where we won't be here. You can just keep practicing. And if you head to our customer service desk, if there's availability, you get 50% off for another go today. So capture them while they've got that feeling and retain them there. Whether it's your food and beverage or your retail staff, Hazel has quite a nice way of putting it. You get dry hair and wet hair people. I heard her use that term yesterday. I saw her in the cafe. Yeah. And it said, wow, it's really busy. And she said, yeah, it's school holidays. And she explained that there are a lot of dry hair. It's like grandparents watching the kids during break and they're such like that. Go. But it's bound on that. Yeah, but the rest of the the rest of the staff have conceded those cues. If someone's got wet hair and they're still here, they haven't raced off and you know, they engaged them. How was it? What did you do? Know what might be next for them. So if they I did a beginner lesson, I stood up on every wave. You know why Keke's next, don't you? And it's it's ensuring our staff have that I'm not just here to make coffee. I'm here to make people feel healthier and happier. And that comes through conversation. And I did notice that people asked, oh, how was your session? And you know, one was you're getting water on the floor. If that was the case, that's all they'd say all they are. So, you know, that's the on-site experience. And don't let anyone leave having not had some more flying out on the door, of course. But try and capture people, get that smile out. Just making eye contact, make them feel like this is a place that has really valued their presence during that day. Which is interesting. Jen at Urban Surf Sydney, she's taken over Urban Surf since Damon, but her one of her first things was to have everyone put on name badges just to kind of like make that more. Yeah. Close. So you have your closer to someone or, you know, they're human. They're Jen, they're Mary or Joe. Yeah. Yeah. We I think will follow suit pretty quickly. And so, yeah. And also, there's a bit more emphasis then on if a wavemaker is having a bad day, they might get called out if they're not very friendly. So, you know, it can work both ways right. There's a little bit of jeopardy then. If someone, if I've for whatever reason, you know, not give them the best interaction, there's a chance that if a review pops up on Google or TripAdvisor, which we need and we depend on if it says so and so, wasn't very friendly. Income it. So there's an accountability, I think, the name. So let's talk about that. Can you give me an example of something you've seen on an online review that kept popping up. You know, like, oh, we have to fix this. We need to change this. We would be hiding behind two very obvious things if I didn't, if I wasn't honest about them. We struggle with the car buck and the quality of the car buck. And actually, if you were talking about amazing experiences, if your first experiences are not sure if my car is going to get through this alive, you know, and then drops people down to a load and then starting building them back up again. Now, that's a difficult one for them. For me, so what have we gone away and done? Our ops team are working tirelessly to find ways in which what we are allowed to do can meet the demands of British weather quite frankly. And it is, you know, you can, we've reset it so many times and then you get a week of rain and it breaks it out. So I'll wait, that's for someone else to know. But I had on my way in, I like that that was my first experience. I'm like, oh, I forgot how the parking lot is challenging. Yeah. And then some of you know it. Once you're here, you forget about it. But then there is that like first and last. Yeah. And experience. Yeah. And you know, if you were to compare us to the, you know, the always mentioned in customer experience, the Disney model, you know, their first and last experiences is always truly memorable. So we recognize that. The other, and again, it's linked to us being at the forefront of the industry is the ticketing system, the booking system. And we've made huge strides. And again, that's part of the team I look after to understand and interrogate the inside data that we can get from users and evolving it in a way that makes it as simple for anyone to book their surface possible. And so what you can get to is someone who loves, loves the surf and then you know that because they were willing to battle the online booking system. So we're a, you know, an experiential brand, but we have to remember before the the car. Someone's first touch point is like likely to be a paid ad on social media that they've clicked on and gone through to find out more, then their business looks amazing. I want to book a beginner lesson. I really want to book a beginner lesson and where we've come from to where we are now in the time I've been here and particularly members of my team have put so much time and energy and it's never ending. Digital systems move quicker than anyone, unless you're a tech company and we've got to remember that we have to to some people be performing a level of a tech company to make sure because if people can't book, they're just not going to be done. Yeah, so I wanted to point out this time when I arrived I used the online portal and booked my sessions and it was really easy and that wasn't always the case. Thank you. That's very going for that endorsement. You're right and we've recognised it and worked hard and we also recognised the patients particularly of the very regular users. One of the big, big shifts we made this earlier this summer was around if someone was using a bundle product which is what our regular surface depend on, getting very good value at high quantity of purchase. If they wanted to start the week where I want to come Monday and Tuesday, historically they'd have had to check out for the Monday one, go back to start, check out for the Tuesday one. It sounds simple but I'm not a tech expert and it's often easy for non tech experts say, well, it must be easy just to say, yeah, put them both in your basket at once. We have now done that and we suddenly went from every bundle redemption, could only be a maximum of one. Within that first week, people were redeeming nine in one go, ten in one go because that's how planned they wanted to be and they'd been patient enough with us to go on here and now it was like, we've opened that off you go and they were booking multiple numbers in one go. If there were two or three things, I guess it's the parking is the toughest part for us to get ahead of. Once people get through the doors, all your troubles are washed away to a certain degree. We get amazing, amazing reviews of our surf coaches who, for those being guided in the water, just are an absolute credit to the brand as much as anything else and love what they do. They truly love putting smiles on people's faces through teaching them to surf. We get amazing reviews for the quality of our food and the food and beverage team. In a tough part of the industry in terms of food and beverage and staffing and a whole mix of troubles, what Dan who leads that team prides himself on is being able to bring people in who haven't got a certificate or experience and go, no, you can come and learn with us. You can come and be a, I'm like at the terms of, you'll come be a kitchen porter and you'll be in around a kitchen environment and then you'll step up and you'll get some responsibility in prep and then you'll step up. We've got people who've come through two or three having never lifted up a knife and put on an apron before. He's evolving people's skills in our kitchen to deliver amazing food and beverage. We've got some really cool merch and the brand existed, the visual brand existed way before my time but that's sold as well as ever this summer because it's a really, there's that aspirational piece where anyone comes and goes, I had to go at surfing, I want people to know I went to the wave. And again, from a commercial perspective, that just, it's more layers to someone's overall experience at the wave. And we've just got to keep finding ways that someone leaves here and that was just the best value day out of, I never had. Okay. And then one thing I always ask every guest on the podcast too is like, but maybe we already covered that. Your failures, what hasn't worked. Did you ever, you mentioned you back up a lot of things with data? Yep. So that's kind of your focus. Have you had times when data's wrong? You needed some creative, artistic visionary to make something happen. The thinking of the old Star Trek, you know, Spark for a C-. Emotional Dr. McQuay. What, yeah, no, it's a good way to pose the question. What's the Star Trek reference? Ultimately this year we are growing year on year, which is a really good place to be. We're seeing our regular surface surf more than ever before, which is a really good place to be. We haven't attracted and acquired the volume of first time surfers that we really want to do this summer. So there's a bit of work for us to do through the winter to sort of claw some of that back. But we've got some amazing innovation that's gone in this year to enable us, so that the flood lighting, the opportunity for people to try surfing after dark. In fact, people to actually come and do a beginner surf after 5pm in the winter. If you're brave enough to get through the cold, then we've got a bay, we've got, you know, great intermediate or advanced session out of the back in a beginner bay to learn surf after work all year round, which, so the actual dependency maybe of where we wanted to bring those people in. We've got a bit more scope through the winter to react. So even if we might have had some misses, how do we use the opportunity that we've got to be inventive and redefine the proposition for someone who might want to come and learn to surf after work in the dark in the winter. Have we ever either misinterpreted the data or become too dependent on it? I think it will forever be a balance. No one's going to react to an advertising campaign that tries to put them in a box and says, you are this, you need to do this and you need to come and do these things. We will always need that true sprinkle of aspiration or beautiful site, beautiful some, beautiful waves and someone who's probably a little bit better than I am now, but that's what I want to get to. And that comes down to having a clear marketing and comm strategy, understanding the channels that you're using to attract those different audiences, making sure anything that might be trying to find sort of surfers who've never used the wave, showing them beginners grinning isn't likely to bring them in, showing them someone talking into the perfect barrel when they know the coast has been flat for three weeks. That'll work there. Put that in front of someone who has never surfed before and it's, you know, the mix isn't there. So we work very closely with our media agencies to make sure the right visual cues, the right ass level of aspiration and opportunities sits in front of the right audiences receiving it. And so the data informs sort of what demographics those people might have and where we might find them, we then have to go and inspire them with the creative and visual approach. But in terms of having an asset to create amazing, stunning visual and adverts and campaigns, you never short of some pretty cool things here, whether that's you know, beginner lesson or barrel riding. So yeah, I think we are blessed in the team to have a mix of data led and individuals and very visually sort of creative inspired people. And it's getting that mixed here. So if you had a surf park genie who could like fix one problem for you, goodness what would you have the surf park and you're supposed to get three wishes, better use this one, what would surf park genie fix for you? It wouldn't be the walk, the parking lot, daylight hours, weather, warm water, warm water. And even even that, you know, there's some some wayfalls around the world that have found really innovative ways to heat the water. Yeah, it's a career's a great example of that. So and that probably isn't one. If it was this one here, if you could use the words car park, but in that in tail that it was a little bit closer to the site, I think in the peak of summer, it's one of the most refreshing things to leave your car and to come down and experience everything and disconnect. And a big part of this is about connecting with the blue spaces and the green spaces. So leaving your car half a mile away is fine. We know it will influence a customer's decision. If they are going, I'm going to surf as we, if it's horizontal rain and and you've got to get from the car park to the wave with your with your board and your day clothes going to be wetter than your wet suit. That is a challenge. We'd be silly to ignore it. So yeah, but all things considered to have got this incredible facility to the point where it is there were considerations had you made along the way and that was a consideration at the time that meant we could open the wave first there. And so I still don't think anyone would go actually if we can't get the car park close, we'll never do it. We wouldn't change that at all. So it certainly is a genie which we will continue to mitigate how much that damages anyone's experience and try and overcome it. But unless there's something else you want to say. I'd like to go to the future. Looking future casting, you've come up with your little rippers is doing really well. Yeah. You have your knife surfing now. Last year you had the solar panel, you had the camp, like you're just growing and flourishing. Do you have anything else on the horizon? Yeah, I think it's worth remembering that we get to choose what waves we serve our customers. And what we serve is different from what urban surf serves, which is different from what La Shor will serve. And so we will go through a period of, right, we've had sort of beginner, Waikiki, intermediate, advanced, advanced plus expert turns, expert barrels for a while. Is that still right? Is there demand? Are there things with which we can tweak that gives our current customers another exciting opportunity to come back and try something different, as well as ensuring that anyone about self and their learner surf journey still has that really clear progression through the wave settings. So that's one. We certainly want and will evolve the sort of high frequency bundle model into a membership product, a slightly more, I guess traditional, expected, a type of membership product that is linked to surfers, knowing how many times they can surf for a month. And what is that incredible added value and community experience that we can wrap around that to make the, and to use the community word in a different context, the community of surfers who have become so regular here, feel part of a recognized more formal structure, I guess, and how we can serve them, amazing benefits, reasons to bring more people to the wave to be inspired to take up the sport. So that's on the horizon. I think they're probably two of the big ones. I'm trying to like, go to you and to mentioning something that you'll regret saying. It's too late, dammit. I'm record and it makes a regret, podcast. Yeah, true. Have I said anything? I'm going to walk into exactly Monday morning and go, everyone's going to look at me. No, I don't think so. I think we won't rest in terms of believing that the site is polished and final. The beauty of the wave, the wave Bristol, is it's, we've made no secrets about that we absolutely don't believe the wave Bristol is the only ever wave. So we will continue to test and learn things here as a model that all the regulars at Bristol will be able to take advantage of. And then the things that we deliver best we'll take forward into future sites as and when the opportunity occurs. I think we certainly will have a big focus on understanding the corporate market better. For the end of this year, I'm going into 2025. There's to the data point, when you understand the periods where you really don't want to upset the day to day consumer sort of BTC model, where can you leverage the opportunity to bring in corporate groups, team away days, team building that flood people into the times where you can be a bit more flexible on how you piece together your event space and your meeting space and your food and your surfing. We can be more flexible because there's less consumer demand. So that's a big area for us to continue to grow. And we know that there's a market for more sort of corporate events and hosting big scale events at a site like this, whether they're private or whether they're consumer. And we've had a bit of a delve into that, to 2024. But that will set the precedent for driving more of that into 2025 and delivering more of our own consumer event. So to reel off some from this summer, we hosted the surf show. Our first venture into it was a consumer facing opportunity for brands from across the industry to come and use the wave as the backdrop for showing off their brand in a really, really cool environment. So we had 30 brands across two days and we saw revenues in F&B and retail, double, footfall double, and you go, OK, this is a real opportunity there. And it grows community as well. It gives people to come down. Activity week in the summer, how do we add value that's free or low cost around the site so people come and hang out and how can we partner with other people who can provide additional activities on our site. So more of that next year, for sure, definitely more self-competitions are an absolute well of a time. Yeah, delivering those. And I noticed last night with the the air show-- Yep, there you had a group that started 9 p.m. and the peer was full. I had one had a beer on their hand checking out all the action. It was really, really exciting. Yeah. And it's again, going back to the understanding that the data segments, what experiences should we be putting on to give all of these people a reason to attend? So last night, probably won't attract to someone who's on the cusp of having a go at surfing. But a family-themed activity week that they hear about through a slightly more local, high awareness campaigns and come to the wave this summer, all these things are on for free. That probably will get them over this very soon and bring family. Themes, trails, at season all times of year, we had the Easter trail. We've got sort of the Halloween theme for kids. We can run secondary lower cost activities that linked this time of year. So we've got some pumpkin carving activities for families next year. Do you do corn mases here in New York? We do. So the big thing over here are pumpkin fields. So corn mases. But yeah, so we've pre-supplied the pumpkins for families to come in. But they're doing it in our environment. We've gotten them here. And in a lot of cases, those will be families who might never either have seen the lake almost definitely would have been in it. But getting them here to another reminder, maybe that player in the Bay is what comes next. Maybe that little ripper is what comes next. Wow, I'll be back in the spring, et cetera. So Joe, we're going to wrap it up. And I want you to-- a lot of our listeners for podcasts are people in the industry, people developing their own projects, people building projects, managing, and such. 30-second word of advice for someone. I'm opening my way, Paul. It's happening. What do I need to remember? I mean, I know for every time I visit here, and I speak to someone from the way that I'm really just impressed with how layered and nuanced all your projects are, and so much thought that just goes into them. There's none of this off-the-calf owl. Try this, maybe, yeah. But that's what really impresses me. What advice would you get to somewhere? I certainly would say, test things, learn and learn fast, and don't beat yourself up if you do try something, and it doesn't take off straightaway. And that's probably what enables me to continue to enjoy it without feeling this burden of how do we absolutely nail everything first time is the industry is so young. The nuance of a surf market in different countries will all come with its own idiosyncrasies. And therefore, you have to get under the skin of those to know exactly how to tailor the principles. And I'd imagine anyone setting up, I hope anyone setting them up has done their due diligence and research and talk to the industry because there's a lot of desire to share knowledge because it benefits everyone if we all succeed. But there will be your local surf market and the potential of people coming in versus the people who already are going to love it. Get under the skin of that and once you are familiar with that, that will certainly help. Right on, Joe. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. And it's great to have you on the program. I think a lot of people will get a lot out of this. And as always, it's wonderful to see what you're up to here at the way. Thank you for having me. It's been great. The Way Pull Mag podcast is made possible due to support from Way Pull operators, technology providers, and the growing list of companies doing business in the surf part space. For commercial opportunities, reach out to us at [email protected]. [Music]