Guest Bio
Sam Bradley is a seasoned professional in the adventure travel industry, currently serving as the Head of Finance at Cookson Adventures. With a passion for exploration and a commitment to sustainable tourism, Sam has dedicated his career to creating authentic and immersive travel experiences that connect travelers with diverse cultures and natural environments.
Show Summary
In this episode, Sam Bradley discusses his journey in the adventure travel sector, sharing insights into the challenges and rewards of curating meaningful travel experiences. He emphasizes the importance of responsible tourism practices and reflects on how adventure travel can foster personal growth and environmental stewardship.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Responsible Tourism: Embracing sustainable practices is crucial for preserving destinations and supporting local communities.
- ✓ Cultural Immersion: Engaging deeply with local cultures enriches the travel experience and promotes mutual understanding.
- ✓ Adventure as Growth: Challenging oneself through adventure travel can lead to significant personal development.
- ✓ Environmental Stewardship: Travelers have a role in protecting natural environments for future generations.
- ✓ Authentic Experiences: Prioritizing genuine interactions over superficial tourism leads to more meaningful journeys.
What You’ll Find on Cookson Adventures’ Platform
- ✓ Curated Adventure Tours: Expertly designed itineraries that offer unique and immersive experiences.
- ✓ Sustainable Travel Options: Trips that minimize environmental impact and benefit local communities.
- ✓ Cultural Exchange Opportunities: Programs that facilitate meaningful interactions with local populations.
- ✓ Personal Development Journeys: Adventures that challenge and inspire personal growth.
- ✓ Environmental Conservation Initiatives: Opportunities to participate in projects aimed at preserving natural habitats.
👉 Visit Cookson Adventures’ Official Website to explore their offerings and learn more about Sam Bradley’s contributions to sustainable adventure travel.
Learn more about Cookson Adventures and connect with Sam at:
https://cooksonadventures.com/
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Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Jason Elkins (03:06.41)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast. Today we’ve got a, I’m going to say a cool dude because they do some really cool stuff and I’m looking forward to having this conversation. But we’ve got Sam Bradley. He is the Finance and Operations Director for Cookson Adventures. Sam, welcome to the show.
Sam Bradley (03:16.738)
Hehehe
Sam Bradley (03:26.954)
Thanks for having me, Jason. I’m excited to chat to you. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (03:29.086)
Yeah, this should be a lot of fun. First of all, where are you at right now? Where are you calling from?
Sam Bradley (03:35.81)
So I am speaking to you from London, where I now live. You’ll probably tell that my accent is not British. I grew up in South Africa, a small little apple farm incidentally, just outside Cape Town, but I’ve called London home for the last seven or eight years now I have a British passport. So I feel more British every day.
Jason Elkins (03:52.758)
All right, very cool. Well, we’re gonna discuss a little bit more of that background and we’ll go back as far as you wanna go into your childhood to figure out how did you get from where you were to, you know, in South Africa to where you are now. And yeah, you already started, let’s just jump in right there. So I think that our listeners oftentimes like to hear the story of the people that we’re speaking with because frankly, most of the folks I’ve interviewed, most people that work in the adventure travel space
that’s sometimes it’s pretty direct and other times is all over the place. So let’s go back as far as you want to go and tell us how you got, you know, where did this all start for you?
Sam Bradley (04:33.25)
Yeah, sure. I’ll try to add a bit of me to the bone. I think I’m not the typical adventure person and that by training I’m actually an accountant, which is normally a pretty bad start for adventure. My dad was an accountant as well, so I guess I learned pretty early that that’s just how my brain works. I kind of like maths and solving problems and nerdy stuff like that. But when I was at university, this was at Stellenbosch, which is close to Cape Town and famous for all the wine farms. It’s a great place to study.
I got a student job working for a travel company up in Zimbabwe. It was a sort of a tour company. We talk in those big travel vans that have got the tents on the roof and the fold-out kitchen at the back and you go through all the game reserves and everything. And it was the best job I ever had. I absolutely loved it. I mean, you work incredibly long hours. It’s a tough job, but every day is an adventure and you have so much fun doing that. And I remember finishing that.
Jason Elkins (05:28.079)
When you say student job, help me understand, is that like a summer break or I don’t know in the Southern Hemisphere if you call it summer break, but is it just one of those deals where you go work for a few months or?
Sam Bradley (05:35.484)
Yeah.
Sam Bradley (05:40.834)
Yes, yes, for barely any pay. But the joy of being a student is you do get a lot of holidays. I think it works out to, I don’t know, four months of the year or something ridiculous. So I put that holiday to good use and did that. And a lot of the trips are actually kind of leading students or small groups around. And that was mainly Zambia’s and Barbwe, Botswana, a bit of Mozambique, South Africa. And it was such a cool job. I loved it. And I thought, well, you know, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. But I also knew that.
looking into the future, maybe the nerdy account inside within me was looking ahead and going, when I’m 50 and got a family, I’m not sure I’m going to want to be on the road all the time. So let me cover my bases a little bit here and carry on studying, not throwing the towel and become a tour guide straight away. And sort of try and approach it from a different angle. And I know I want to land up in the tourism industry, but I also know that qualifications and things like that, you know, they can’t do any harm. So let’s try and do both of those.
And that is why I am involved in a finance role, but for a travel company. I think that’s probably where it all started.
Jason Elkins (06:44.046)
Pretty, pretty good mix. So you ended up graduating then with a degree in accounting. Is that right?
Sam Bradley (06:49.866)
I did. No, that’s great. The process in South Africa is very regimented. You don’t have that much choice. If you wanna become a CA, a chartered accountant, you have to study for four years, you have to do three years in a firm. I landed up at Deloitte, I did my time there. It’s not that much fun while you’re in the trenches, but when you look back, there are some good memories. You’re all kinda going through it together and it is fun.
And I did that and I enjoyed it. And then we moved over to London a year or two later. And again, not a great place for adventure. It seems miraculous that I’ve landed up in adventure in London somehow. It’s a great place. I mean, there’s a lot of finance jobs out there. It’s just hard to find adventure. But I did manage to find a company that does some pretty cool adventure stuff by the name of Cooks and Adventures. And…
Jason Elkins (07:27.554)
Seems like a good place for an accountant though. Hahaha.
Sam Bradley (07:41.942)
I’ve been here six years now with no intention of leaving. I love it.
Jason Elkins (07:45.91)
Now, how long were you in London before you found that job?
Sam Bradley (07:50.746)
Two years, and during those two years, I worked for a retirement home community, which again, is pretty far from adventure.
Jason Elkins (07:57.886)
Yeah, all right. That’s, that’s why I feel like you’ve kind of taken the responsible measured approach and managed to get yourself into a pretty good spot with that, so it worked well. It sounds like it worked well for you.
Sam Bradley (08:10.034)
Yeah, I think the hardest part was when this job came up at Cooks and Adventures and the travel industry is notoriously badly paid. So having to go and negotiate with my wife and say, I’d really like to change jobs. How do you feel about this? And once I got past that negotiation, I think the interview was pretty easy and comparison.
Jason Elkins (08:30.906)
I want to dig, I was going to go that direction and ask you kind of how your family felt about you making the shift because I can imagine there was some financial implications at least in the beginning. So tell us more about that negotiation. What are you willing to share with our listeners realizing that your wife might listen to this conversation at some point? So what are you willing to share?
Sam Bradley (08:53.087)
Yeah, yeah, sure. All of it. Basically, the way I looked at it is in 10 years and 15 years or I don’t know, all the way to on my deathbed, what is the decision I’m going to be happiest with? And yes, I could stay working for a retirement company and probably make more money and I don’t know, buy a house or whatever the dream is meant to be. But looking back later on, what are you going to be happiest with?
Jason Elkins (09:17.858)
looking back later on when you’re, when you are a client of the retirement company. Right, yeah.
Sam Bradley (09:18.271)
And also, I’ve got the opinion.
Sam Bradley (09:24.046)
Exactly, exactly from the rocking chair. And I also feel that you’re going to be best at what you’re most passionate about. At the end of the day, if you really, really love something, that’s going to shine through in the job that you do and you’re going to have more chance of being successful. So overall, I think once I sort of looked at it from that point of view and my wife did as well, it became an easier decision. For those looking to get into the industry that might be listening in, I can say the travel industry, I mean, every single person in our company.
Jason Elkins (09:27.223)
Yeah.
Sam Bradley (09:52.142)
could probably leave tomorrow and find a job in a different industry and earn another 15, maybe 20%. It is not the best paid industry, that’s just the way it is. But I think the perks that you get in this industry are second to none. We get something called fam trips, which some people may have heard of, familiarization trips. And that’s basically lodges or resorts or tourism boards coming to companies and saying, look, we really want you to sell our product.
Why don’t you come and spend a few nights or come spend a week, come see it. And so that’s always a source of great excitement in our company when those emails or phone calls come through. We’ve got a big kind of chart with everyone’s name down and who’s top of the list, who hasn’t been for a while, who gets first dibs on this trip coming in. And there’s some that are very popular. Something comes in for Hawaii or I don’t know, somewhere really exotic that everyone wants to go to. Everyone’s suddenly vying for it and trying to state their case.
So yeah, there are a lot of perks that make up for the lack of salary.
Jason Elkins (10:52.034)
So when you were sitting there looking at the, you know, the overall, the total compensation package, you know, you mentioned that you could, you know, anyone in this industry could probably go into a different industry and make 15, 20% more. But when you look at the value of, yeah, make 15, 20% more and then pay for one or two vacations a year, which kind of brings you right back about to the same place anyway, doesn’t it?
Sam Bradley (11:18.342)
Yeah, for sure. And I think everyone who works in our company, we work here because we love travel. That’s probably true of the whole industry. That’s why we’re here. So you almost place a greater emphasis on those trips and get into see cool places and do cool things.
Jason Elkins (11:32.49)
I remember when I was in a similar situation with my wife at the time and, you know, I had the opportunity to go work for Oros Travel and it’s all I could think about. We’re all the amazing places I was going to go and see and do and all these things. And like, I guess I can say it now because it’s behind me, but I’m pretty sure they could have.
offered me almost nothing and I still would have done it. You know, my pay was okay, but I did not even try to negotiate the pay. He said, it’s 50,000 to start and I’m like, okay, I’m in. I don’t know, whatever.
Sam Bradley (12:04.643)
Hehehe
Sam Bradley (12:09.566)
Sign on the dotted line.
Jason Elkins (12:11.566)
And as all my wife wanted to know, well, does the insurance cover maternity? That’s all she wanted to know. Because I hadn’t had insurance for a while before that. I was doing fishing guiding and doing all this other stuff. So she was happy because we had insurance and we could have a baby. And I was just imagining all the different places I was gonna go and things I was gonna see. And it worked out.
Sam Bradley (12:22.912)
Yeah.
Sam Bradley (12:32.102)
I think there’s a lot to be said for enjoying your job, loving your job. I mean, not many people do. I think it’s 10% of people actually do love their job. Sorry, I don’t know whether you heard that call coming. That’s actually my wife calling, incidentally. Sorry about that. You’re a master in an inquiry. Yeah, maybe. Give a completely different story. Anyway, sorry about that.
Jason Elkins (12:49.074)
Should we, we should maybe we should patch her in and include her in the conversation and see what she thinks, what she recalls from this negotiation and how it’s worked out for her so far. Actually I’m curious because that was the next question I wanted to ask you was, you know, I just mentioned, I shared a little bit of my story and what, you know, my wife’s perceived benefit of me taking the job was. So for your wife, what
If I were to have a conversation with her, what changed in your world when Sam took this job, either both for the better and maybe there’s some things that were not better. How would she answer, do you think?
Sam Bradley (13:29.046)
Yeah, that’s a tricky question. I’m trying to think over exactly what she would think. Overall, I mean, looking just at the very short-term materialistic point of view, those fam trips I was speaking about that are great. Sometimes you get to bring partners along, and then she’s very happy with the decision. So we were pretty lucky. We got to go to Galapagos for a week. It was a really strange one. I hadn’t been at the company long. I’d just started. We worked with a cruise company out in the Galapagos Islands quite a lot, and they phoned.
phoned up our office saying, look, a trip departs in, I think, three days. There’s one cabin spare. If you can get from London to Ecuador in the next 48 hours, it’s yours. And I mean, obviously Galapagos, you know, it’s like the Holy Grail of travels. Everyone around the office is wanting to make it happen. And it just because of the schedules, I think it was December. It was just before Christmas. No one else could do it. So me, the newbie, had only been there a couple of months. I was like, I’m free. And I was the one.
Jason Elkins (14:22.102)
Because you didn’t have as much on your plate as all they did, they were so busy. And you were still kind of the new guy, huh?
Sam Bradley (14:27.994)
Yeah, I mean, yes, from a work point of view, it definitely helped. It was our youngest daughter was turning one years old. I do remember we missed her first birthday for this job, which a lot of people sort of frown at the parently decision made there. Personally, we don’t regret it. A friend came and lived in our house. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (14:45.686)
Well, that’s the one she’s not gonna remember. There’s one or two birthdays that you can skip without any real negative ramification on the kid, because they don’t know. Yeah, yeah. I mean.
Sam Bradley (14:55.562)
I love it. I love it. Exactly. That was our thought process. Two a T. We’re all good. Can’t miss the later ones, but this one’s fine. So we dashed off. We got there in time. Had a fantastic week on the boat. And so, yeah, my wife generally is very happy. She knows that I’m pursuing my passion and in a job that I love. And so she’s willing to grant me that. I think the tough times are there is a bit of travel to this role, obviously, being a travel company even.
even with me doing the finances, there’s still a bit of travel involved. And so those weeks where I disappear off on a trip somewhere in a lovely part of the world doing something fun and she’s slogging through work and looking after the three children, I think there’s some tough moments there. But on the whole, she’s great about it and yeah, it’s fine with me doing it.
Jason Elkins (15:41.758)
So when you’re off in some exotic place working and she’s home working and taking care of the, of your kids, um, do you ever feel like you have to kind of overemphasize the fact that you’re really working like kind of remind her like, Oh sweetheart, I worked, I was up.
with guests this morning from 6 a.m. until midnight. I’m totally exhausted. Oh my gosh, this trip is so difficult. This is one of the more challenging, or because I remember doing that. I remember I’d be gone for three weeks in Africa or something and I would come home and my wife was feeling overwhelmed.
Sam Bradley (16:08.303)
Thank you.
Jason Elkins (16:20.55)
She wasn’t real sympathetic, you know, she didn’t really appreciate the fact that I was on a work trip for three weeks where if I was, you know, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, installing air conditioning units for three weeks, you know, I think she probably would have looked at it a little differently.
Sam Bradley (16:23.415)
Yeah.
Sam Bradley (16:37.714)
Yeah, yeah, there’s definitely a large part of that. And there’s also the element of the photos somehow can make things appear a whole lot better than they are. Like, when you’re the host behind the scenes and you running around sweating buckets to get this in the right place or do this or do that, and then the guests enjoy the perfect sunset, you know, overlooking the savanna or whatever it is, that’s the photo that you maybe don’t wanna send to your wife because it looks all idyllic.
Jason Elkins (16:45.518)
Yeah
Jason Elkins (17:03.315)
Yeah.
Sam Bradley (17:03.498)
You actually have been working hard, but there’s no photos of the hard work and all the stress that goes in behind the scenes. So yeah, I’m quite careful.
Jason Elkins (17:11.654)
That’s a really good point that you bring up, and I’ve noticed it with the guests as well. Your wife or whoever’s looking at the photos might not see all the work behind the scenes, but oftentimes your guests.
don’t see all the work behind the scenes. They don’t see the scouting trip that you took before they got there. They don’t see all of the stuff that you’re doing. Well, they’re off on their adventure. Maybe you’re, you know, working with the ground provider to fix some last minute things, to change tires. I mean, all kinds of stuff. Do you, I’m curious, do you have any stories or experiences where like…
Sam Bradley (17:43.308)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (17:47.806)
the clients just were totally oblivious to what almost happened or what actually happened, but they just like don’t even realize it. And of course, you’re not going to even maybe share with them.
Sam Bradley (17:59.726)
Yeah, I think so. Two or three weeks ago, new Christmas and New Year is always a very busy time for our company. And and a couple of weeks ago, we had quite a few trips come in very last minute. And so I got roped into host one in Norway and we had the coldest spell. I’ve got a friend who lives in Oslo and I crashed with him for a night after the trip. And he said, this is the coldest in Oslo has been for the last 10 years. And we just happened to be there that week. And he’s probably guests from Australia. And one of them.
had never been in the snow before. So to go from never being in snow to minus, I think the one day was minus 25 with a wind chill factor as well. It was absolutely freezing. And a lot of the things setting up, I mean, a large part of the trip was indoors and cozy with fireplaces and things, but we did do some really cool outdoor things. We did dog sledding and snowmobiles and a lot of fun outdoor things. And just getting everything in place, for example, the dog sledding, the snow was too thick.
There’d been too much snow falling and it was just piled really high and the dogs couldn’t even get through it. So we had to clear a track with a snowmobile first, a kind of seven or eight kilometer track for the dogs to then run along. And so that’s all great. You know, the clients arrive and the dogs are getting distracted and off you go on the route. And they didn’t realize that me and this other host had been driving the snowmobiles around making the track. And the other host, the Norwegian guy, he’d actually got frostbite. I mean, he did most of it. He grew up on a snowmobile. He was great at it. So he did most of the work there. And he’d actually got frostbite.
the skin underneath of his foot had just kind of burst open. I mean, I don’t know much about frostbite. I hadn’t seen it before, but it literally just sort of like popped like a grape. And that was kind of the end of his week. He had to spend a fair bit of time recuperating. And that’s another thing that the clients, you know, they’re not going to see that or know that. But yeah, I guess it’s the work that goes on in the background. But I can just report that he is absolutely fine now and he’s got a good story to tell. So it’s a happy ending.
Jason Elkins (19:52.318)
So what I hear you saying is any of your guests, your Australian guests that were on the trip, if they were to listen to this podcast right now, this would be the first, this would be the first they’ve heard of the guide who burst his foot open because he was out early trying to clear the trails for them so they can enjoy their sled dog. Oh, okay. That’s cool.
Sam Bradley (20:08.052)
Exactly. They’ll suddenly understand why he wasn’t around as much for the second half of the trip as he was for the first.
Jason Elkins (20:17.747)
I think that happens a lot and I love that you shared that story with anybody that’s listening that enjoys going on these trips Maybe has never worked in the business but enjoys these types of trips to kind of get that kind of peek behind the curtain or whatever and
Sam Bradley (20:31.998)
Yeah, I mean, I think I cut my teeth out on the African safaris, the one that was a student job, and there’s no chaos like African trucks. We did a lot of trucks where it was, we take 100 exchange students at a time. There was a large American contingent that comes out to study on exchange to the University of Cape Town, and we would do these trucks 100 at a time, and you get these big overland trucks and 25 to truck, and off you go four trucks in a row, and it’s sort
Jason Elkins (20:37.616)
Oh.
Sam Bradley (21:01.15)
Each truck has got, I think, two guides, a chef, and a driver. So you’ve got a team of four on each one, and off you go on this adventure. And anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And I remember one week where the one truck broke down, and it was not getting fixed. So the other truck had to drive double the route every day, to drop off one truckload in Botswana, and then drive back over the South African border, pick up the next 25, and on we go. And you’ve got border officials that confiscate most of your food.
you got wild animals to contend with. It was just, it was one particular week where everything happened. There was no hiding it from the clients there. I mean, you can’t pretend everything’s going well when you’re doing shifts to transport people from one camp to the next. But I think if you get people with the right attitude and people that know, hey, we’re traveling in Africa, we’re here to have an adventure, as long as you keep the spirits high and they keep the spirits high, you’re gonna get through it and you’re gonna have a good time.
Jason Elkins (21:53.278)
I think flexibility is a really great thing for anybody that’s into adventure travel. Just understanding that the more of an adventure it is, the more likely it is to be an adventure. I mean, it’s almost…
Sam Bradley (22:04.674)
Definitely.
Jason Elkins (22:05.89)
part of the mix. I can relate to your story. I remember my very first guide trip. I’d never been on a guide trip as a client. My very first, it was a fishing, you know, I was in Montana. I own a drift boat. I went and bought a drift boat and I had a little car that I pulled it with, a little Dodge Neon that I pulled my drift boat with. And I was just so excited to be a guide. I’d floated the river quite a few times, had my guide license, but you know, the shop I was working at, they were like, yeah, you’re never going to get
You’re way on the bottom of the list. And then one day I showed up and they said, hey, the guy that was supposed to take these folks didn’t show up today. Are you ready? Do you have your boat? And I’m like, yep, I’m in. I took these people out for the day fishing and I was terrified. I…
It was on a river. I left my, usually you leave your keys with your car so somebody can come move your car from point A to point B. So it’s there when you get out. I forgot to leave the keys in the car. I had them in my pocket, floated down the river all day along with them with the last, you know, I went with the subway sandwiches from the store, whatever. And we get to the takeout and I walk over and there’s my car. I.
Sam Bradley (23:04.302)
Ha ha.
Jason Elkins (23:17.558)
But then I reached in my pocket and felt the keys in my, why are my keys in my pocket and how did my car get here? So the behind the scenes was the.
shuttle driver calling the shop, calling my wife, you know, who was 30 miles away and had to quit, you leave her job for the day and come over and bring keys over all these things that had to happen for my car to be there so I could get my clients back to their car at the end of the day. And I get them back to their car and they looked at me and they said, well, you know, we’ve never been on a guide trip, but you really set the bar high.
And to this day, I regret that I didn’t take the opportunity to say, you know what, I’ve never been on a guided trip either. And you guys were great. You set the bar high as well. So, and I share that story because it feels so good when you know all the stuff that’s going through your head and all the things that could happen, shit, whatever, and the client’s just oblivious to it. That’s when you know you did a really, really good job.
Sam Bradley (23:49.158)
Wow, congrats!
Sam Bradley (23:57.134)
Hahaha
Jason Elkins (24:17.106)
And it’s and sometimes, you know, and I drove home just thinking, wow, they had no clue what was going through my head all day. But anyway, so those things, that’s what happens. All right. So.
Jason Elkins (24:31.847)
Let’s jump into, okay, so your wife overall still satisfied with your choice. She’s still there. You guys are still married. Ha ha ha.
Sam Bradley (24:39.838)
Yeah, yeah, she, we still very happily married. She’s also an accountant, but a very, a very different mind when she looks after tax for large corporations, which is not something I could do all day, every day. So we’re both very happy in our respective careers.
Jason Elkins (24:58.134)
When she does travel with you, it sounds like she enjoys traveling with you. What is that like when you’re on a fam trip? Does she ever go with you when you’re around clients or is it just on the fam trips? So what does that look like?
Sam Bradley (25:10.718)
Yeah, mainly fam trips. And then I do have a bit of a side hobby as well, which is travel writing. That’s something I got into. I was at Deloitte. I just started doing my training articles there. And when you’re a newbie, when you’re a first year, you get quite a lot of free time because you don’t really know what you’re doing yet. And I put that free time to good use and started a bit of travel writing. I had taken a few gap years between school and varsity. So I had a few places to write about.
I just started doing that as a hobby and it’s something I’ve kept up in the background for the last, I don’t know, 11 or 12 years now. So occasionally, places will say, hey, can you come stay here and return for an article in a magazine or newspaper or something like that? And the press side of it. So occasionally I get to bring my wife or our whole family and the kids come along as well and we go on a trip. So that’s fun. We all love traveling. My little kids really enjoy it, even if they don’t always know what’s going on at the moment.
The client trips that we do for Cooks and Adventures, that’s a lot more intense. The hours are very long and you are fully focused on making sure the clients are having a good time. We talk about it around the office. If you get to do 1% of what they do, you’re still having a really good trip because we do amazing trips of very cool things. So, occasionally you get to jump in the helicopter with them and off you go because you also need to move from point A to point B. And so sometimes at the end of the trip, you look back and you go,
Jason Elkins (26:12.173)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Bradley (26:36.862)
while I just got to dog sled through Norway and minus 25 degrees. That was pretty cool. I mean, the only reason I was on the actual dog sled was because there was a spare space and I needed to take some photos of the clients while they were doing it. So, it’s sort of incidental, but you still get to do some amazing experiences. But the client trips, no, to answer your question, that’s we don’t really mix family travel with that.
Jason Elkins (26:57.578)
Yeah. No, I can certainly appreciate that. I’m curious because I can think of as listening to you. I thought of one memory that I had and I suspect you probably have had as well. Or experience of being in the field, doing one of those amazing things, you know, being on a helicopter, uh, being on the dog set, have you had moments where you’ve reflected and said, wow, this is amazing that I’m doing this. And.
I really, really wish that my wife was here or I wish my girls were here. And we’re almost to the point where you get a little bit like, oh, this is amazing, but I’m sharing it with clients. I love clients, but I’ll just share, I’ll tell you, I was in the helicopter in the Andes, flying next to volcanoes to go back to this liveaboard yacht that we were staying on with my clients. And I’m in the helicopter with these oil executives from Texas.
and I’m looking at across them and I’m like, this is cool and I’m sharing it with these guys that they’re great guys. I’m not knocking them if they’re listening to this. They were so much fun and thinking, man, I wish my wife was here. I wish, you know, my mom, my dad, my brother, somebody like that was here as well. Do you run into that every once in a while?
Sam Bradley (28:17.022)
Yeah, definitely. I think everyone does. I mean, when you’re sharing it with people that you love and your friends and your family, it is so much better. But I think the advantage is you get to your trip with your clients can become your recce trip, it can become, hey, you can go discover it. And then you can show your family and you know what’s really cool. And you know what’s not. My kids are young enough that I can still, you know, show them a little video or show them a few photos when I get home or, you know, bring them some gifts from somewhere. And they’re still excited by that. And in the really special places I do obviously.
make a mental note and go, wow, would it be great to take them back there someday or organize a holiday and try and make it happen somehow. I think the biggest thing I’m trying to do is just install that love of travel and install that confidence in my kids that they will do that when they’re older and take gap years and travel and hopefully have some sort of job in travel and want to discover and explore as well.
Jason Elkins (28:48.551)
I need to come back.
Jason Elkins (28:52.823)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (29:08.522)
What are the age ranges of your kids?
Sam Bradley (29:11.659)
So three girls, my oldest is 10 and then I have a seven year old and a five year old.
Jason Elkins (29:18.382)
Okay, so what’s the most recent trip outside of the UK that you’ve taken with all of them? Or the most noticeable, I’d like to kind of hear what that was like.
Sam Bradley (29:25.851)
At last!
Sam Bradley (29:31.63)
Yes, so I mean, there’s a bit of a split. Yeah, the trips that we do for our clients are very special and sort of, you know, on another level. And then the holidays that we do as our own, as employees, we always kind of laugh about around the office, you know, it’s suddenly easy jets and Ryanair flights to, you know, so somewhere local. It’s on a completely different level. What we did do last summer holidays, my kids love campaign.
Jason Elkins (29:49.194)
Hehehehe
Sam Bradley (29:56.266)
Offer them a five-star hotel or camping. They’ll choose camping every time. That’s all they want to do. We went to France. We did drive, which felt like a massive gamble, 10 hours in a car with kids that aren’t used to that amount of time, but it did work out. We drove and caught the ferry over to France and carried on driving further south. We went on a canal boat for a week through a company called The Boat, really great company.
So you pick up a boat and you sort of self drive, you go along the canal along the south of France, so through towns like Carcassonne and Bezières. And it was just a completely new experience for us. So we did that for a week. That was, I was writing an article for them. And then we went camping for a week with some friends as well. And to the kids that, I mean, nothing could be better. That was an absolutely amazing holiday. And the next one we planning is a Portugal road trip coming up in a few months time over Easter. It’s gonna be the same thing, ferry over to Portugal.
drive on down and then a camper van and we’re planning to do a sort of a loop of Portugal and the kids are getting excited. We buy the guidebooks, try and teach them a few words of the language, you know, really make it a valued experience, you know, build up to it in the months before and yeah they’re looking forward to it.
Jason Elkins (31:06.87)
You know, as you kind of set the stage for that story, you know, oh, well at Cookson we do this really cool, grandiose, big, big stuff. And, but you know, family, it’s a little different, Ryanair, whatever. But the trip you just described is really cool, right? So like, I thought you were gonna say, you know, I thought you were gonna say we went to Disney Europe or Disney, I don’t even, I don’t know very much about Disney. I don’t even know if there’s a Disney there. I think there is. But yeah.
Sam Bradley (31:23.842)
Thank you. Yeah, we think so.
Sam Bradley (31:30.787)
Yeah.
Sam Bradley (31:34.53)
There is one in France, yes.
Jason Elkins (31:35.57)
Yeah, so what you described is really, really cool. And I can tell you, I’m sure anybody listening to this is like, wow, that’s a, it’s, it’s fairly ambitious. Um, and just cool. I mean, that’s, that’s. I love that.
Sam Bradley (31:48.362)
I mean, it’s a very non-exotic, exotic moments to spend in 10 hours in a car. Um, and I don’t know, making your own food as you go and camping, uh, camping can be very simple, but at the end of the day, it’s, it’s the time with family and friends that, you know, sitting around having a meal together, watching the sunset, um, the camping with, yeah, with all the friends, they, they all loved it. We’ve discovered that camping in France is, is amazing. We spend a long time camping in the UK, which is normally just sort of.
a field somewhere and everyone stacks their tents in a row and you can still have fun but the French know how to do it properly. The campsites there have got swimming pools and a river and tennis courts and the kids run wild. It’s a very cool experience.
Jason Elkins (32:31.438)
That’s cool. And that is one fun thing with kids is, I mean, they’re usually pretty flexible. Even just sitting in the car for 10 hours might be difficult.
But honestly, sometimes you can put a kid in a car, they’ll be happy for 10 hours more than a lot of adults. I mean, you know, I’ve been in relationships with people that wouldn’t wanna get in a car for 10 hours, but I have many memories of times with my kids, you know, traveling around the US in a car or, you know, my son travels with me in the summers. We spent, I’ve been traveling full-time for two years. In the first summer, we went to Central America and…
took little buses that, you know, chicken buses and through Guatemala and did not stay in nice places. I mean, it was almost camping and ate street food and it was great. So it didn’t have to be that expensive or quote unquote exotic for him to have fun. And then we did the same thing in Southeast Asia this past summer. So I think it’s, um, I think it’s great that you’re getting your girls out early and young and
Sam Bradley (33:26.668)
Yeah.
Sam Bradley (33:33.658)
Yeah, forced family time. They don’t have a choice. They sort of have to talk to you. My one daughter absolutely loves 20 questions. So, I mean, after three hours of playing 20 questions, I wanted to shoot myself, but she’s like up for another round of 20 questions. And it is good family time. It is good memories, even if you’re not loving it at the time.
Jason Elkins (33:37.48)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (33:56.502)
No, I get it. Are we there yet? I’m hungry. I gotta go to the bathroom. I’m bored. She’s on my side of the seat. You know, she won’t, you know. Yeah, I get that. Have you? I’m curious and I had this conversation with someone recently about this. I guess it’s a game called GeoGuessr. It’s an online game. And if you haven’t heard of this, you should.
Sam Bradley (34:00.951)
Exactly. All of that.
Jason Elkins (34:24.106)
consider looking at it and introducing it to your daughters. But what they do, you go online, go to GeoGuessr, and they drop you randomly into a Google Street View somewhere. You don’t know where it is. They just drop you randomly into a Google Street View. And you can use the little arrows to navigate yourself around. And the point is to try and guess where you’re at.
Sam Bradley (34:26.318)
Thank you.
Jason Elkins (34:48.47)
you know, there’s some time limits and you know, you can kind of race and try and get it as quickly as possible. So they drop you in on the street view and you just, I’m going to say, drive around and just look for clues, look for signs, look for, you know, street signs or markings on cars and try and figure out where in the world you are. And it could be anywhere. It could be, you know, South Africa, it could be Russia, it could be wherever. And I’m sharing this because my son is completely addicted to it.
And he just loves to do it. And it wasn’t that long ago that he, he sent me a screenshot and he said, dad, they dropped me in front of the. The pedal pedaling street in Kuala Lumpur where we had been this past summer. And he’s like, we stood right on this spot and that’s where they dropped me on all the places in the world. They could have dropped me and he immediately recognized it. And he said, oh, that’s Kuala Lumpur. And, and he’s, you know, so it’s, it’s just kind of a fun thing, especially if your kids are into traveling, they might see a place in France.
You know that you went over, you know, yeah, it’s pretty cool so and I’m sharing that for anybody else that obviously is listening to this and So that anyway, that’s kind of fun thing Alright, so what let’s discuss a little bit about the travel business kind of what you have seen change You’ve been with cooks in how long you said six years?
Sam Bradley (35:48.9)
That sounds great. Thank you. I’m going to make a note of that. That sounds like a cool game.
Sam Bradley (36:09.246)
Um, yes, coming up on six years at Cooks and Adventures now, yes.
Jason Elkins (36:13.086)
Okay. So you’ve seen some things change and in the middle of that six years was a pretty profound period of time that really changed a lot of things, both about travel, adventure travel, but also just the workplace, you know, you and I have had a conversation before discussing about, you know, remote employees and what that looks like in the travel industry. And so I’d love to just have a conversation about that. So what have you seen? Where would you like to go with that?
Sam Bradley (36:20.811)
Indeed.
Sam Bradley (36:39.57)
Yeah, sure. I’ll give a brief summary on some of the listeners might not know much about Cooks and Adventures. So we are a high-end tour operator. We’re based in Notte Hill, which is in a part of London. We’re relatively small. We’re about 20 to 25 employees, 22 employees at the moment. We organize what we think are very special expeditions and holidays. We operate all over the world, so we do trips.
Antarctica, Africa, Galapagos, Greenland, I mean, you name it, we are happy to go there. And there’s no off-the-shelf standard trip with us. There’s no repeat trips. Every single client who walks through the door, we build a bespoke trip for them from scratch. So we really try and work out through chatting to the client exactly what do you want to do? Is this a, you know, what sort of celebration is it? Is there something you want to accomplish? Maybe you want to climb a mountain that’s never been climbed or ski somewhere.
really new and exciting or whatever the case is, and we build that trip from scratch. Like you said, there’s been some massive changes in those six years I’ve been in the company. I mean, the world changed for everyone in 2020, but I think it changed the most for the travel industry. So we went from being a successful roaring company that we’re doing all these exciting adventures, and suddenly the whole world just stopped, and obviously being a travel company. I think the hardest part for us is that we were still really busy.
just not bringing in revenue. This is the finance part of me speaking, was that you had all these trucks that needed to be cancelled or postponed or refunded or you know, you still had to work with your clients to work out what to do with these trucks and make a plan going forward, but obviously not charging them, charging them cash for it, especially if you postpone in the truck by a year or two. So there’s some really tough times getting through that. I think we were incredibly lucky being a travel company that operated everywhere.
If we were just doing trips to Italy or just doing trips to China, we would have been in a lot of trouble. So thankfully, we weren’t. Sorry, that’s my phone going again. I’m so sorry that’s connected to this line. Sorry about that. So because we were operating… It’s not my wife this time. Anyway, so because we were operating trips everywhere, we were still able to help some clients within their own country. We’ve got clients that are based all over the world as well.
Jason Elkins (38:44.99)
Well Sam, we… go ahead.
Sam Bradley (39:02.198)
So we were still able to help them with local things. And then some countries opened sooner than others. So we went through probably a six month period of not doing any travel at all. Iceland was one of the early countries to open. I think we were actually the first company to operate a trip in Iceland again, sort of as soon as they did open. We had some clients that were desperate to go. So they all did their COVID tests and we were able to put something together for them. And then the bounce back.
after that was amazingly strong as well. They’ve kind of revenge spending and all that pent up frustration from being locked inside. 2022 and 2023 just absolutely exploded and demand was so high and clients wanted to go everywhere and they wanted to upgrade on everything. You know, they hadn’t had a holiday for two years and now they wanted that extra yacht and they wanted to do crazy things. So that was also an incredibly exciting time to be in the industry and putting these putting these memories together for everyone. So, yeah, that is what keeps me busy on a
on a day-to-day basis.
Jason Elkins (40:01.334)
That’s pretty cool. And a couple of things you mentioned that I want to ask for clarification, because you mentioned where you’re at in London and I heard you say when they walk through the door and I want to make sure our listeners are really clear. You do not need to go to Sam’s office in order to book a cooks and adventure. Um, because your clients, as you mentioned, are all over the world. You probably don’t really actually have anybody walk in the door. Do you? Okay. See.
Sam Bradley (40:26.05)
That is true, yes. That was purely under metaphorical sense. These days it’s all Teams and WhatsApp and online.
Jason Elkins (40:32.302)
So you’re not in a shopping center somewhere with a big neon sign out in front saying Cookson Adventures come in and we’re okay. Yeah, different world now. But and let’s discuss how COVID kind of shifted your the workforce there at Cookson. And we’re going to kind of assume that maybe other operators similar to you have had similar experiences. I’ve heard a lot of conversations about, you know, a lot of people left the industry.
Sam Bradley (40:38.726)
And thank you, that was a very good point.
Jason Elkins (41:01.018)
or were forced to leave their roles. And then kind of as we came back and got busy again, I think a lot of operators were scrambling to find the right people and more willingness to work remotely. And I think that’s almost every industry has seen more remote working employees, that type of thing. Did you guys have any experience with that? Did the look and dynamics of your team change?
Sam Bradley (41:27.498)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I remember it as an incredibly scary time. Firstly, you had this virus going around that we didn’t understand at all and that was scary. And then you had the economic effects of that and that was equally scary. You know, when everyone’s jobs are on the line and you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you don’t know what the future holds. It was just incredibly frightening. And we were in a position where we’re a small company. Everyone works together every day. These are your buddies, your friends.
and you try to make decisions for the best interest of the company and for every single person as well. And I just remember it being a really tough time. We were, like I said, we were incredibly lucky. We were still able to operate. We had a time where we couldn’t, but it was pretty short in comparison to other travel companies. So we also benefited a lot, but the UK government was pretty quick to act and bring in things like furlough. So
for any listeners that aren’t based in the UK, the furlough scheme, I think America had something quite similar where the government would pay people’s wages so people could stay at home and be put on furlough and everyone got 80% of their salary. So there’s still a bit of a cut, but at least you still get in a salary every month. So what we found the biggest effect was actually our British employees, there were a lot of people, I say most.
Jason Elkins (42:41.012)
well.
Sam Bradley (42:52.95)
Most British employees had come from different parts of the UK, maybe Cornwall or Bath or Manchester or something, and they’ve all come to London and are loving it and living there and working there. Then something like COVID happens and you locked up in a pretty small house because London properties are tiny. Exactly. You’ve got family not that far away. Most of the employees that quit during that time were British and able to go home.
Jason Elkins (43:10.545)
And you’ve got a financial strain. Yeah, yeah.
Sam Bradley (43:21.394)
So our workforce did change. We did also then benefit from the fact that you’ve got a massive bounce back coming afterwards. You’ve got this huge demand and a lot of travel companies have suffered a lot more than we did and have had to let go of people unfortunately. So you had a lot of amazingly strong handed that suddenly looking for work and all this demand, all these trips. So we were able to get really good talent through the door and working for us and get them busy straight away. So
Overall, we walked out of COVID pretty strong, but we’ve all got friends that work for other travel companies or just other industries that weren’t so lucky. So overall a horrible time, I’m very glad it’s over, but definitely a memorable experience overall.
Jason Elkins (44:04.502)
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing, sharing all of that. Um, I think anybody that’s listening to this, that’s maybe thinking about getting into the travel industry. There’s, you know, you can go on LinkedIn or, uh, indeed, or whatever, and find tons of travel agent jobs that I’m not even sure. I don’t even know how legitimate a lot of those jobs are, to be honest with you. There’s are tons of them. Um,
that appeal to the person that went through COVID and is like, you know, maybe they lost their job, their, their desire to travel the world, um, was reawoken or whatever. And so now they want to get into the travel industry. They see all that. And which is why I think there’s so many jobs for travel agents because they’re commission-based and I think a lot of those positions, you got to pay into some sort of, uh, um, organization to get your license and all that. Anyway, I, um, so I guess my question is,
Sam Bradley (45:00.009)
I know the ones you’re referring to, yeah.
Jason Elkins (45:00.954)
Yeah, I know you do. And so what is your advice? Like if you had a friend that was an accountant or something, somebody that’s like, man, I really want to get into, I love adventure travel. I’ve been on a few trips. I would love to work in that business. What would be your best general advice that you would give them?
Sam Bradley (45:19.187)
There are so many factors we look at when we’re looking to hire. So the way our company is structured is our project team is probably the sort of core part of our business. You know, they’re the ones at the cold face, these project managers. They’re the ones putting the trips together. So we get the initial inquiries, they come in from clients, there’s sort of back and forth and then once that trip is confirmed and it’s serious and it’s going ahead.
it’s then gets handed over to one of our project managers. So we’ve normally got six or seven project managers. They then going to live, eat and breathe this project until the trip happens. That might be in three months, that might be in six months time. That is the project that they are doing. So let’s say now, I don’t know, a client wants to go and explore Bhutan and it gets handed over to Jason. Jason, you’re the project manager, plan everything, work with the suppliers there.
put the whole trip together. There’s gonna be many boring days in the office where you’re checking everyone’s passports and working out the budget and booking plane flights. You’re probably gonna go out and wreck it. You’re gonna go out to Bhutan, which is great. And then you’re probably gonna host the trip as well. It might be behind the scenes hosts where you’re running around doing crazy hours to make the trip a success. But that’s all the kind of elements that go into being a project manager. So for people wanting to break into the industry, the skills that we look at, I mean, there’s the…
Jason Elkins (46:23.555)
Mm-hmm.
Sam Bradley (46:36.618)
There’s the things that you can’t really put on a CV, but are you able to work well as part of a team? You know, we’re 22 people all in the same office. Yeah, how well do you collaborate? How well do you work as a team? There’s things like how organized are you? Attention to detail. You know, all that stuff that doesn’t go on a CV, but is pretty important. Passion for the job is obviously crucial. It is long hours, you know, just before that trip happens and during the trip, but it is crazy long hours, and there’s a lot that goes into it, so you need to love travel. And then people that come with
qualifications and experience, obviously that’s a massive plus. You know, if you have been a tour guide before, or if you’ve got some sort of health and safety requirements or you happen to be a para guide or a scuba diver or a kayak guide or you know, whatever, that’s definitely not going to hurt. And then we also hire people that have done something similar that we feel can, is parallel enough that can translate well into this industry. So maybe you’ve been a film producer and working on a set.
putting forms together, that’s not too dissimilar to travel, or you’ve been working in the event space, or kind of anything where the skills can translate. Often it helps actually people coming from those slightly different industries. If you come in and you’ve been working as a extreme event producer, you’ve been doing events for Red Bull, you’re gonna come in to our company and you’re gonna bring all your ideas from what you’ve been doing and we can teach you the more specific travel things.
Jason Elkins (47:56.501)
hehe
Sam Bradley (48:04.982)
So yeah, we’ve always had an interesting mix of people working in our company. We’ve had a lot of British Army experience come through. They’re always passionate about the adventure stuff. There’s always been quite a few of those. And yeah, just a wild bunch that somehow all work together to make it happen.
Jason Elkins (48:22.174)
I noticed that specific to cooks and adventures when I went through your website and looked at some of the, you know, the, the team and their bios. It was quite impressive. A lot of, you know, like I think helicopter pilots, uh, boat captains, uh, you know, scuba diving, uh, scuba instructors and, and all of these different things. And it was like, okay, that’s why I wanted to have this conversation with you, Sam, because, um, yeah, that’s, that’s
Sam Bradley (48:45.006)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (48:46.43)
That’s pretty cool in any organization that’s able to line up a team of folks with that interesting mix is like, okay, that’s you got, you got my attention. Um, and one of the things I heard you say in there is like, you know, if you have, you know, if you’ve been a guide, I think you mentioned, you know, scuba divers, scuba instructor types of things. Those are maybe some, I guess I’m reading into what you said, but maybe those are some good starting places.
you know, depending on where someone’s at in their life. You know, obviously if we’re speaking to someone that’s just out of college or in college, maybe, you know, a job like what you had, you know, in Southern Africa, and, you know, a great place to get started is to go be a guide. I mean… I mean, I think that’s a great way to start.
Sam Bradley (49:14.947)
For sure.
Jason Elkins (49:33.426)
A lot of the people, most of the people I’m interviewing, most of the people I’ve run into in this industry, started there on some level, whether that was guiding people on a big tour bus or back wilderness backpacking guide, that type of thing. So I think that’s all good. And I brought up the travel agent thing, I think for a reason, because I spent enough time looking at all this stuff and speaking to people and…
Jason Elkins (50:04.566)
I would probably my advice to people would probably not be go on to LinkedIn or indeed and, and just randomly, you know, look for anything that’s travel related because you get inundated with a lot of these, these scheme type things. And they’ll use names like, you know, tour planner, you know, outdoor adventure, marketing expert or whatever. And then when you, you know, you get into the details, you’re like, Hey, wait a minute.
Sam Bradley (50:32.337)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (50:32.57)
So, so, so I think my advice would be, you know, go to the reputable companies and figure out, you know, especially adventure travel companies are usually smaller, usually kind of more hands on, look for opportunities there, volunteer, go do some just, just show up my, my first job really in the adventure travel space was
managing a lodge on the Bighorn River in Montana. I just, I went door to door. There are a few lodges up there. I just went and knocked on the doors and said, look, I just want, I’ll do anything. I’ll dig holes. I’ll do anything. I just want to be here. I just want to learn the stuff. And eventually, you know, I ran into one. They said, yeah, our manager was killed in a car accident six months ago, and we’re getting ready for the season. We need someone to manage the lodge. And they gave me the keys and I never done anything like that. And you know, so it’s just, just put yourself out there, create connections, you know, start a podcast, you know,
Whatever just have got just have conversations with people. So anyway, you know what Sam appreciate all your insights and everything you’ve shared with our listeners. I’m curious. Is there anything I forgot to ask you should have asked you or anything else you want to make sure our listeners are aware of either about you cooks and adventures any parting thoughts that you want to share with them before we wrap up?
Sam Bradley (51:26.333)
Definitely.
Sam Bradley (52:13.4)
Um, no,
Sam Bradley (52:16.926)
And those changes are carrying on. We’re seeing people probably book more carefully, I think is probably the way to put it. They’re not, there’s less sort of casual weekends away or quick little trips. It’s now more meaningful travel. I’m still going to catch a flight to Japan where I’m still going to do some cool travel, but I wanted to have an impact. I wanted to be meaningful. This is maybe my, you know, I’m doing less trips, but they’ve got to be awesome. I want to fully immerse myself in that culture.
I’m obviously emitting a bit of carbon by taking this flight to go there. So let’s make it a good trip. So I think we’re going to carry on seeing. I mean, our industry obviously we’re based in the adventure side of it. You’re a lot more out in nature, you’re a lot more seeing the world as well. So we see in the effects of the climate change, there’s a lot of things that we can’t do anymore because they’re disappearing. There’s a lot of things that are changing. There’s seasons that are changing. There’s a lot of nature.
that’s changing what animals you can see when and what their behavior is. So it’s an industry that’s pretty exciting because that’s the forefront of that change. You see in it is obviously the cultural side as well. You know, how involved do you get in visiting indigenous people or nations? And what effect is your trip having on that? Should you shouldn’t you? How should you be involved? How much of your money is landing up in that country? Or are you just visiting them? But all the money is disappearing out.
So there’s so many challenges to it. There’s so many things that make it really thought-provoking and really interesting. So yeah, to anyone listening who’s thinking about getting into it, I think it’s a really fun industry to work in. And yeah, one that’s got challenges as well.
Jason Elkins (53:53.25)
Very cool. Thank you. I appreciate that. You’ve shared a lot of wonderful insights. It’s been a fun conversation and look forward to doing it again and collaborating on some other projects together, Sam. So thank you so much for joining us. All right, have a great day. Bye.
Sam Bradley (53:57.007)
Great. Thank you for having me out.
Sam Bradley (54:05.046)
It’s been great. Thanks, Jason. Thank you. Cheers.
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