The importance of self-belief
Lakeland Mountain Guides
Name: Matt Le Voi
Business: Lakeland Mountain Guides
Location: Lake District
Key takeaways
Price your time accurately
Brand doesn’t have to be dependent on you
Listen to what your customers want
The VAT threshold doesn’t have to be a killer
Introducing Matt Le Voi and Lakeland Mountain Guides
We first met Matt a few years ago at one of our business workshops and I was struck at the time by his energy and vision for his business.
Many of the guides featured in this blog are focused on creating a business that builds relationships for them personally with their clients, with no great desire to grow beyond being a sole trader earning a decent living – and, don’t get us wrong, that’s a great ambition. Matt is a bit different – he’s spent the last 10 years building a brand around his business (not himself) and he’s now at the point of stepping back from guiding to take Lakeland Mountain Guides (LMG) to the next stage in its growth.
Starting out
Based in the Lake District, LMG offers ‘a premium service of outdoor activities across the UK’ with an ethos of ‘Live for the now’ behind everything they offer. Matt set the company up in 2012; he’d graduated a couple of years before with a degree in Adventure Tourism Management and then worked as an outdoor guide for a company in Ambleside. When that job came to an end, with the confidence and self-belief that are his hallmarks, he thought “I can do that better” and set up LMG.
Although there were some things he’d do differently now, one thing he definitely feels he got right was having a strong brand presence from the outset.
“I had logos everywhere on me, on the car, on my kit. My friends would joke that if you stayed near me long enough, I’d stick a logo on you. But it did work – people would see me out on the hill or my vehicle in a car park and get in touch.”
The thing he changed quite quickly was his approach to pricing and packaging what he does. Like many start-ups keen for business he priced his guided walks cheaply, without properly pricing his time. He also copied his former employer by offering a programme of scheduled guided walks for groups. However, he fairly quickly worked out that private bespoke guiding was more popular and more profitable so focused more heavily on that.
In recent years he says he’s gone back to offering group scheduled walks and, although he charges at double the original price, revenue is not always the reason for running them: “As long as they break even, and provide some work for my team, I’m happy because they are great marketing for us. People who come on a group walk will often then organise a bespoke trip or it leads to corporate work.”
Building the business
Over the last 10 years, there are a few clear factors that have contributed to LMG’s success. While the range of activities that the company offers is not unique, Matt’s entrepreneurialism does stand out. In particular, his ability to respond to market demand: “It’s easier to sell people what they want!”. This has led to him offering adventures all over the UK, often in response to corporate or charity clients’ needs. “They’ll have done Helvellyn, and then they ask if we can guide them on the Yorkshire Three Peaks, or the national Three Peaks, or Snowden, and we say yes!”
LMG is able to respond in this way because Matt has built a trusted team across the UK, and this is another factor that makes the company different.
“LMG isn’t all about me: I’ve got a core team who live and breathe the company almost in the same way that I do. They share my ethos, and my approach to service and safety. Clients are buying the team, not me.”
Client testimonials on TripAdvisor bear this out – the glowing reviews cover all the different guides in Matt’s team, and everyone talks about the great experience they’ve had and the friendliness and approachability of the guides. This quote is very typical:
“We had a fabulous day walk with lead guide Carol and assistant guide Sara. Both guides were great fun as well as being professional, reassuring, knowledgeable and competent. The day was definitely 5 star+++. Thank you.”
Premium pricing
After his early experiences of pricing cheaply, Matt took a completely different approach. He says,
“Quite early on a friend said to me ‘if you’re not going to be the cheapest, there’s no point in being the second cheapest, so you might as well be premium’ and I took that to heart.”
Recently he’s had the challenge of crossing the VAT threshold which means an immediate 20% hike in costs but he’s found that he can increase his prices without ill effect because clients are willing to pay for his premium offer. He’s also been able to reduce the effect because he’s put a lot of effort into building up corporate work, both through the referrals from private clients, online marketing and direct sales activity.
The question of finance
At this point in the conversation, we take a detour to talk about the broader financing aspects of running an outdoor business. I’m curious to know how Matt funded his business at the outset, and how that might have changed over time.
His first comment is that for the kind of work he’s doing, the kit list isn’t huge so there wasn’t a significant upfront investment: “As an outdoor guide, you probably already have a lot of the kit you need, like walking boots!” However, he adds that in different sectors, such as watersports, a new business is probably going to need more funds to invest and that’s either going to come from savings, or loans from family or friends. It certainly bears out what our experience at the Adventure Collective tells us, that more formal finance in terms of bank loans or external investors is unusual in the sector, particularly when starting out.
The costs Matt lists for his start-up were minimal, and included insurance (an essential), constructing a website, transport – and the costs of a designer to create his ubiquitous branding! Plus of course, Matt’s time.
Since he started, he says the business has been entirely self-funded and he intends to keep it this way, even as he expands. At the outset, he was glad to have the ‘safety blanket’ of a job in a shop providing some basic income, but he adds that taking away that safety blanket and giving up the job was actually a ‘turbo-boost’ for LMG because all his energy went into his new venture, with the knowledge that he was financially dependent on it.
The biggest cashflow challenge as LMG has grown has been ensuring that there is always money to pay the team, which is Matt’s number one financial priority in terms of maintaining staff loyalty and his reputation as an employer – “I’ve seen too many businesses get shredded on social media when they don’t pay their staff on time!”
He concludes this part of our discussion by saying that getting a firm of accountants was “one of the best decisions I ever made”. Although it costs him in the region of £1,200 per year to support his two businesses, he says it’s essential in making sure his company accounts are done correctly, and VAT requirements are met, and it takes away a whole load of stress.
Diversification
With his entrepreneurial hat on, Matt picked up on the demand among his clients for international adventures and in 2018 set up LMG Treks and Expeditions to cater for this. Offering guided trips to Nepal, Tanzania and Morocco, Matt says that initially he saw this as an opportunity to fill quiet autumn months with work but he’s now looking to develop this business and we’ll talk about this more in part 2 of this LMG blog.
The other string to LMG’s bow is now LMG Personal Training offering tailored, personal training programmes. Again this venture was driven by conversations with clients about their need for coaching for treks, expeditions and personal outdoor goals, Matt says
“Initially I set this up as a side hustle as it’s something I really enjoy doing: I love helping people focussed on mountain challenges. But demand for personal training programmes really grew during the pandemic and now I’m looking at how to expand it.”
Key learnings and advice?
“Believe in yourself” is Matt’s biggest piece of advice to guides starting out.
“Create a strong brand and put your faith in it, and believe in yourself enough to price your time accurately. When I think back to the time when I was charging around £20 per person to guide up Scafell, I realise I was totally underselling myself. If you know you have a premium product then charge accordingly.”
His other piece of advice is to be aware that it can be quite lonely if you are running a business with all the management responsibility. “There’s constant pressure, and no-one to share that with – that’s why it can be good to get a mentor or coach, or someone who can act as a sounding board.”
Stepping back into the business
When we come to talk about the future, Matt has exciting plans for the LMG group of companies and we’ll come back to this in a later blog.
His strategic goal for this year is to change the role that he plays in the business. After 10 years, he recognises that in order to grow to the next level he needs to decide where to focus his time: to continue to spend the majority of his time guiding and bring others in to handle the management, marketing and admin. Or to take himself out of some of the guiding work and focus on building the business, as well making more time to spend with his young family at weekends.
It’s a dilemma that most small business owners will face as they grow successfully, and we’re looking forward to hearing how Matt is approaching the challenge.
Key business tips:
Decide whether your brand is built around you as an individual or about the company
Be flexible about pricing and packaging what you do and test what works
Don’t undervalue your time and your skills
Corporate work lessens the pain of crossing the VAT threshold
Get an accountant
Believe in yourself!
Related links:
https://www.lakelandmountainguides.co.uk/
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