Steve Rowbotham 7:54
if you think about it as a Venn diagram, you basically got a circle, which is everything you you are capable of, or who you are or who you want to be. And then sport for me fit over and neatly right on top of that. And the realisation when you come out of sport, particularly into the world of business, is that you’re never going to achieve that again. So I often think about how, you know, JK Rowling felt after writing Harry Potter or Rolling Stones after you’re never you have to accept there’s a degree of acceptance, you’re never ever going to be able to replicate that what you had. And there’s some mourning, there’s a, there’s almost like there’s a loss. Because of that acceptance. The thing for me, that enabled me to transition through it was that I moved from a place where it was all about me. It was my performance, my body, my mind. The world revolved around me into a place into a place of work into into a business where I get my fulfilment through helping others from helping them fulfil their potential as a leader within a business. And actually, that is given me a whole different type of fulfilment and enjoyment, and one that, you know, I really am determined to succeed at. And it’s getting close to that that Venn diagram, but it’s still not quite there yet. And I think yeah, that’s why a lot of a struggle.
Bela Musits 9:20
Yeah, super. So was Navigator the first thing you you sort of dove into?
Steve Rowbotham 9:25
Not at all, no. I came out of university, a few guys college and I’ve done economics. So like most people who did economics thought they were going to go into the city and earn mega bucks in investment banking and stuff like that. And I found myself in investments and straight after the London Olympics, and I was sitting in an office looking out the window going, What the hell am I doing? Like, I can’t cope with this. So I walked away from that I quit. I took a couple of months out. I actually went up and put wind farms or wind turbines for a big German manufacturing business called Siemens, and wasn’t a commercial aspect of that. And that was kind of like calmed me down a lot as a human being, and kind of reintegrated me with my family as a young kid at the time. And then I got a phone call from a recruitment agency that hires people into sport, or from sport into business story. And I’d been working through them were trying to get into Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, etc. And this guy said, Look, Steve, I, I appreciate this as a profession that you that you may well have wanted to choose or chosen. But we met this guy and event this guy called Simon and he wants to see what a sports person can do in his business. So he wants to, he wants to meet you. And it was in media and travel media at the time. So the business that I’m currently in, for 20 of the last 27 years has produced in flight magazines. So if you’re flying united, or American, etc, we did we do those magazines at a time we did as well. And Simon really was, was going to let me be who I wanted to be an effect as much positive impact on his business as possible and give me an environment where I could perform which, which obviously resonated with me greatly, but I never woke up and thought Christ I should be in, in travel or travel media particularly, but it’s more importantly, the environment that nurtures people’s potential and value. And that’s, that’s the business that I’ve been in all the way through to the pandemic, we were, say, the magazine people and the pandemic hit and our lights got turned off. And the business’s dancer today is completely different to the one that was there. And 2019.
Bela Musits 11:35
Yeah, so let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit, kind of that transition, and other sort of ending, right? Things things are going great, you’re happy, and then boom, the pandemic hits and sort of the world changed. And now it’s another transition for Steve. So talk through that, and, and how you coped with that and sort of where you ended up with Navigator. Yeah. So in,
Steve Rowbotham 11:59
we were owned by this quite large American business called, called stock well, which is NASDAQ listed stock. Well, Boeing is the business that navigate exists within stock Well, Boeing in 2018. And I remember the deal was done very early, in early hours in the morning in London. And the very next morning, Simon, the CEO at the time, him and I had coffee, and I basically told him, his business was a pile of crap. And it was, to quote directly what I said, we’re playing in a puddle when there’s an ocean of opportunity. And he had had about 33 minutes of sleep. And he’s like, thank you very much, Steve, what do you mean and, and I had a vision, or we a vision for the business ideas of where I thought it could be playing. And, and a way to get there, right, so we spent the last the next year or so looking into other, expanding the business growing, etc. Obviously, in 2020, that our lights got turned out, we got hit by a nuclear missile, we’re in trouble. Revenue is based on advertising, sales of which was zero. So for the first six, seven months of the pandemic, our turnover went from $100 million, to literally nothing, not not a single dollar dime coming through through the front door. In late 2019, we have picked up this technology, which is now the Navigator Technology, which we can talk a little bit about. But the kind of people that we are is that when we are faced with adversity, such as what we what we found ourselves in early 2020. We we double down on our conviction and belief and the belief was that this business could be incredibly successful Navigator. And it could transform the business that we’re within, in the future. So we invested. So whilst we were haemorrhaging money, we actually invested more money in it because we believed in the vision that we’d created pre pandemic. And we made a promise, I remember standing there in front of the entire business saying to them, we will come out of this pandemic stronger than we went in it. And at the time, if I’m candid, I had literally no idea how, how we were going to do that at the time, but I knew who we were and the type of people we were, were incredibly resourceful. And I can proudly say that’s exactly what we’ve done in the business is stronger as a result of what we did during that period of time. And yeah, we had a pandemic baby in the early part of 2020. We gave birth to Navigator and it’s been it’s been some journey to this point, and no doubt there’s more to come, but it’s been fun in the most part.
Bela Musits 14:43
Excellent. So talk a little bit more specifically about Navigator and what you guys do?
Steve Rowbotham 14:47
Sure, we effectively we effectively connect brands with their customer. And that’s really it for me, it’s really boiling it down to the fundamentals of marketing. I think we live in a world in General outside of, of marketing that is, that is highly overcomplicated. And actually, if we boil it down to the real basics and do those, well, then we generally get good results. So really, for me, the fundamental of marketing is placing your brand in front of your potential customer. And that’s it. There’s no more to it than that. You know, we I saw were the thinking was that when the internet was born, you know, we were made all these promises that finally we didn’t have to waste advertising dollars by putting a billboard by the side of the road and wasting our money on magazine, advertising, or TV or whatever it might be, because the internet is going to know everything about your customer, and know exactly what they’re doing, where they are, etc, and place your brand in front of it. And actually, the reality that Stan said today is completely different to that, whereby we live in a world of mass online marketing, hoping that you’re going to reach the right person at the right time. And it is hoped in a lot of respects. So I just saw a way where we could solve this problem during the pandemic. And we work with the world’s biggest airlines and the biggest travel booking platforms and are able to access their first party data. So you make a flight search, flight booking. And we get to leverage that the innovation that we brought to market was how we access that we don’t we believe in ethical data access. So we don’t believe it’s right that businesses pass and resell your data, and it ends up with 15 different hands touching it, etc. So with our innovation and our solution, the airlines and travel booking platforms get to own their data at all points, and then never ever pass it to us, which is critical. And I think that’s allowed us to scale so quickly. And then we go out there and we find partner advertising partners that want to place their brand in front of their potential customer. So think, in New York hotel, placing their brand in front of a customer who’s just made a flight search into New York, right? That’s as simple as that. And we’re a global business. So we’ve got offices in Miami and New York, in London, Singapore, and Kuala lumper. And data partners in every single continent, and probably because of who I am and how stupid I think we went global straightaway. In hindsight, probably a proof of concept in one region. So I didn’t have to work three different four different time zones. But But hey, yeah, as I say, it’s a lot of fun. And I’ve got to learn a lot about about building a business.
Bela Musits 17:32
Yeah, yeah. So conceptually, I think I understand what you said, right? I am doing a search on a on an airline booking site, and I’m searching for flights to London. Yeah, and I booked one, and then lo and behold, I’m gonna get some adverts for hotels in London. So conceptually, that sounds pretty simple. What’s is there like a secret sauce that makes that work?
Steve Rowbotham 17:56
Yeah, well, you we rely on you know, we will serve you an ad on Facebook, Instagram, or Google or Tik Tok. You know, so it’s all what we call off site. So yeah, like, a couple of hours let you go onto your Facebook feed, you’ll see an ad for that Hotel in London. Yeah. The magic happens on the site, the way you’re making that search or booking that you give that business permission to use their data to market to you and and they’re able to anonymize it that store your anonymized customer data, so that you are, you’re anonymous at all points. And we just come in and then create those custom audiences and highly targeted campaigns and create value for our advertising partners. And that and again, you know, our business is about serving our clients, and the more more that we serve them, the more that we succeed, and the value of the data that we have access to enable us to create some, some magic. Yeah,
Bela Musits 18:52
yeah. So I can imagine, if you go on a sales call, and you’re at a, you know, Marriott, or Hilton chain, and you’re trying to sell them this opportunity, and you know, you make your pitch you you walk out of the president’s office, and you see sitting in the waiting room, is your competition getting ready to go in and make their pitch? So what’s sort of the difference? What, what’s, what separates you guys or distinguishes you from the competition? Because it seems like a very crowded space? Yeah, absolutely. I
Steve Rowbotham 19:25
think, you know, data is more valuable than oil. Now, I think that’s the official quote that’s going around. So everyone’s fighting over knowing as much as they can about and selling that as much as they can to whoever will purchase it for whatever price. So as you write, so it’s a crowded market space. There’s some technological differences, whereby our competitors do get past your data. Which again, we don’t think so. Okay, and we’ll stand by our business we’re not here to, to, to slander anything, anyone Houses businesses, I think we can both live in the same space. But But fundamentally, that’s the big technological difference. And what I’ve what I’ve tried to do is build a business in the right way. And I think there’s a huge cultural difference that I’m, again, doing business the right way, building trust and transparency, servicing our clients. So it’s not about how much money we can make from our clients, it’s how well we can serve them. And if we can create value, then we can make some money at the same time. I think there’s an energy or vibe to our business, we’re an incredibly agile business. And that’s tough to maintain when you start scaling. But I want a business which is consistently agile, and open to opportunity, I want our eyes or ears and our minds open at all points. So that when opportunity comes our way, we’re able to benefit from that. And I think as our competitors have grown, they’ve become a bit more bit more muted when it comes to that a bit more traditional in their thinking. So yeah, we we want a cultural difference and energy and vibe to us. But also there is a there is a key technological difference. And in the age of tricky deprecation and a lot of things that you’re seeing in the market with with Apple and Safari and app tracking, etc. We we’ve built what we believe to be a long term solution to an ever increasing problem that our competitors will be struggling with big time.
Bela Musits 21:24
Yeah, yeah. You talked a little bit about culture there. So let me ask you a question. As you think about hiring people into your organisation, what are some of the? And what are some of the key characteristics you look for? To make sure that they fit into the culture? You have?
Steve Rowbotham 21:43
Yes, great question. Because it’s so important to me. And I feel that I’m a real custodian of that culture. So I basically I stole the Nike 10 commandments, I don’t know whether you’ve seen it. But obviously, when they started, they said, This is the way that we’re going to operate our business. So I stole that, and I wrote our own constitution. And point 10 of our Constitution, funnily enough, I’ve got it in front of me was that you weren’t hired for what you did, you were hired for who you are, be you we celebrate and reward each other for the value we each bring. And that’s the ethos that we’ve gotten our business, we’re a non hierarchical business. So we have a business that’s based on responsibility. And we bring people into the business who we feel great learners, who are gonna not just fit into our culture, I believe in that phrase, it’s more adds to our culture, help us achieve and want to be significant, they get to add their piece, I had a, we’ve got a head of data as a 24 year old woman, who, who’s, you know, been here for a year and, and just absolutely smashed it. And she’s rocked it. And she’s ahead of a global department. And that’s incredible. And I want to reward that value. And for her to be able to be significant. And she was in here with like three or four ideas today saying we should do this. And it’s like, brilliant, that’s good. And that’s again, where I get my kicks out of, but fundamentally, it’s who they are as a human being. And whether they want to go on this journey with us. Because we are different, and we don’t do things necessarily the traditional way. And that’s not for everyone. Right. And we’re okay with that. But yeah, it’s more about inherently whether you’ve got that drive ambition, that, that appetite for learning and growth. And if you do, we can teach you anything, right. It’s I can’t teach you fundamentals.
Bela Musits 23:35
Right. Right. Yeah, that goes back to sort of what we were talking about earlier, about athletes, you know, we know you’re driven, we know you’re motivated. You have certain characteristics that are important in anything that you do. So it’s getting those core characteristics and making sure the person has those. And I liked the way you said, not fitting into our culture, but adding to our culture. I think you’re one of the first people I’ve ever heard say that. So that was that was really nice. So I’m gonna start thinking about wrapping this up a little bit. What words of advice would you give to someone who is considering starting their own business? Other than don’t do it? Other than don’t do it? Exactly.
Steve Rowbotham 24:27
I think there’s been some real key moments in my life. I actually got dropped from the National rowing team. And just before the Athens Olympics, that was one pandemic from a business perspective and a few others. Yeah. And during periods of adversity or periods of like vulnerability, I guess, because when you’re starting your own business, it’s an incredibly vulnerable thing to do. What I do is I look inside myself, and I look to My conviction. And I had a deep, deep sense of conviction that this was something that was quite special. And no matter what was thrown at me, and no matter what doubts I may have had at the time, or others have had of me, I was just convinced that it was the right thing to do. And I think you just let go and do it. And that’s, that’s the, that’s the scary moment. But once you’ve done that, there’s so an increase an incredible ride, you get massive highs, massive lows and everything in between. But if you’re, if I think you’re going, I look back at other periods where I haven’t let go. And I’ve been too cautious, and I’ve been too safe. And I’ve wanted a safety net underneath me, and it just doesn’t work out. And the moments in my life where I’ve just let go and gone, Hey, I just backed myself to find a way, and you just go for it and put yourself into it, then it’s amazing. And even with the Olympic medal, when you build a business, no one’s going to run them, remember you for the money that you generated for the value it was for how many employees you had for any job sites, or where you can’t ever take away from someone and you’ll never be able to take away from me, even if you take my medal away for me is the feeling that I had. By doing it, by achieving it. I’ll take that to my grave. And that’s the special thing. And I feel that within my soul. And and the way that I feel about building this business and the pride that I have no one be able to take that away. And it’s a really special thing to be able to do. And I’m again feel very privileged to to be on this journey and to be able to experience those kinds of feelings and emotions.
Bela Musits 26:45
Wow, very well said. Steven, very well articulated. That was just great advice. Thank you so much for sharing that. So where can our listeners go to find out more about that Navigator?
Steve Rowbotham 26:58
Well, when we started shooting, we’ve just rebranded so we’re shouting as much as we can in the world at the moment. So obviously, everyone’s shot shot window is their website. So it’s navigator.tech. You can get we’re same handle on LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. Anyone within the business, we were writing blogs and white papers around certain things. But yeah, please do find us at navigator.tech and come and follow all of our social channels. It’s a conversation rather than us telling people what they should be doing. And we’re very much in this world to learn as well. So yeah, please come and support us in our journey.
Bela Musits 27:39
Super, super, I will make sure that information is in the shownotes. But Stephen, is there something that I have not asked you that I should have asked you or that you’d like to share with our listeners?
Steve Rowbotham 27:55
Oh, that’s a good question. I think what you’ve asked is, is incredibly insightful and intuitive. Yeah, I think it’s probably about the lessons that we’ve learned along the way and the insights that we can give others there in their journey. And as you say that I think the most insightful one was around, you know, providing a piece of advice for an entrepreneur other than don’t do it. So for me, it’s it’s just about giving it a go and realising your potential. So I value that being able to share my advice around that.
Bela Musits 28:34
Yeah. Great. Great. Well, Steven, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Steve Rowbotham 28:41
Thank you very much. Appreciate you having me.
Outro 28:44
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