Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers, with me Elliot Moss bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Oli Broom, Founder of The Slow Cyclist, a cycle tour operator leading adventures across Europe and Africa. In 2009 having left his uninspiring desk job in London, Oli cycle 28,000 kilometres – yes you heard that right – 28,000 kilometres over fourteen months to Brisbane to watch The Ashes cricket series between England and Australia in The Gabba. A life changing adventure the expedition raised over £75,000 for the British Neurological Research Trust and the Lord’s Taverners, a youth sports charity and gave Oli a deep love for bicycle travel. Taking a job as the project director of the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation and part of the team that built Rwanda’s first dedicated cricket ground, Oli spent weekends exploring Rwanda’s natural treasures by bicycle and began hatching plans to share what he saw with friends. But it was in the remote Transylvanian villages with his wife Clemmie, where Oli designed the very first slow cyclist journey, founded on the belief that great travel experiences mean taking the time to get to know a place and its food therefore, its history, its customs and its people. The Slow Cyclist now offers small group cycling and walking adventures across twelve countries, working with local experts and guides for, as they say, curious, open minded travellers with some juice in their legs.
So Oli welcome, um you didn’t arrive on a bike, you’re croc’d.
Oli Broom
I am indeed yeah. Nice to be here Elliot, I did not arrive on a bike, I’ve got a broken ankle.
Elliot Moss
But it wasn’t done falling off a bike because that wouldn’t be cool for a guy who runs a business where you take people on bikes?
Oli Broom
You’re exactly right yeah. I was playing with my kids, forgot I was 45, not 20 and had a fall.
Elliot Moss
But we’re going to go back in time for a bit because when you were a bit younger and you were back in, I think it was 2009, you decided to travel, as I said, 28,000 kilometres, fourteen months to go and watch a bit of cricket.
Oli Broom
I did, as you do, yeah.
Elliot Moss
As you do. I was going to say, what possessed you?
Oli Broom
Not happy in my job, wanted an adventure, thought fourteen months on the road might help me figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Arrived fourteen months later, still didn’t have a clue but had had one hell of an adventure yeah.
Elliot Moss
What does one th…, in all that time, what does one think about? I mean don’t you partly think about getting you know, one, one bit closer to your end goal which is to arrive and watch a bit of cricket?
Oli Broom
Yeah. God you’re going back now like what did I think about?
Elliot Moss
As I say, what were you thinking of or does it absorb you, that sense of I’m exhausted but I’ve got to keep going here?
Oli Broom
There’s weirdly not that much time to, you sort of get into a rhythm of thinking. I’d sort of, I would wake up in the morning and I’d look forward to that thing of being on a bike and thinking about something specific. So I would definitely plan my thoughts for the first half of the day, for the first part of the day and it might be like, right I’m going to think about what I want to do with the rest of my life or I’m going to think about how I’m going to get over the border in a few days’ time or whatever it was but inevitably something would then happen to just take your mind of that thought, that planned thought whether it was a puncture or a man running out offering you lunch or someone desperate that you stay in their house overnight or a car that stops and they want to chat or you just, endless things to you know, whether the rain comes or the snow comes and you have to find a little, somewhere to shelter. So there was, it was weird, it was like I thought there would be loads of time for thinking but it didn’t, didn’t seem that way.
Elliot Moss
And, and preparation uh, bike arrives the night before. For the first time you’ve got panniers on and panniers if you don’t know are little bags that sit either side of the bike where you can store things and then along this journey of course, was it by design that you hadn’t and you couldn’t map out every last stop and every last left and right? Was that kind of part of the plan?
Oli Broom
Yeah so, hadn’t ridden my bike until the day before, you’re right. Um, so preparation was not, not the best and then in terms of like planning the route, I planned, I semi-planned a route through Europe um, along following the blue lines on the map, the rivers because I thought it was flat. I’m really unfit, I’ll start flat and then we’ll you know, it’s going to get hilly as I get towards Eastern Europe so I may as well be fit by then.
Elliot Moss
And this is probably pre proper digital maps, so this is on paper right?
Oli Broom
Yeah I had paper maps all the way and I used to tear off the bit of the map that I had just covered and chuck it away. But yeah it was all paper maps yeah.
Elliot Moss
And the wanderlust, your dad had done a big journey to Cape, was it Cape Town?
Oli Broom
Yeah my dad drove from London to Cape Town in a Land Rover in the early 70’s and his stories and he used to do slide shows on a weekend for us in the house and stick them up on the wall and talk us through all these adventures and they seemed really exciting. So it definitely inspired my travels um, and maybe somewhere deep inside you know, as I was sort of dreaming up my own travels, I wanted to go one better uh, and go on a bike instead of a you know, with the help of an engine.
Elliot Moss
So as much as the cycling may have been coincidental to your life, the travel probably was from a very young age, you, you know, your dad’s there going just look at this and it must have felt magical?
Oli Broom
Yeah it was definitely about travel and then the bicycling bit came later. I remember stories like you know, them breaking down in Ethiopia somewhere and there’s photos of him being surrounded by tonnes and tonnes, you know an entire village basically and then one of them had to go off on a donkey for two days to get petrol and so my dad waited with the car and these villages and you know, stories like that were just to me growing up, were just magic and were definitely a big part of the inspiration for me wanting to go off and have my own adventures yeah.
Elliot Moss
Oli Broom is my Business Shaper, he’s the Founder of The Slow Cyclist. We were talking about fourteen months of time on your own to have space to think about what you wanted to do in life and as he arrived at The Gabba in Brisbane and of course you hadn’t made up your mind. You were in an uninspiring job, you were a Chartered Surveyor which is an honourable profession and then you kind of had this break and then various things happened, the Rwanda piece you went to set up you know, the great cricket ground and all of that. What’s it like finding something you love juxtapose with not being in love with the thing that you do?
Oli Broom
For me it’s really important to do something I love. I, I don’t have Sunday blues you know, whatever, these days. I used to all the time. I need work to be the thing I really, really care about or something I really care about and yeah, it means a lot to me that I couldn’t be getting out of bed every morning if it wasn’t something I was really passionate about.
Elliot Moss
Was it brave or was it just, were you compelled to do something you wanted to do?
Oli Broom
Yeah I don’t think it was brave actually um, I think you are exactly right, I think I just, I was compelled. I just couldn’t go on. You know, chartered surveying was, was fine and actually it’s a really good career and you know, you could see a lot of my mates were sort of thinking, why are you chucking this away, it’s great you know. It just wasn’t quite right for me, it just didn’t, didn’t quite sit right um, so I think it was a yeah, it was that sort of thing of being compelled to do something, to take action.
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Oli Broom
And as I you know, as I said, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with my life but I knew I wasn’t doing what I should be doing long-term.
Elliot Moss
And that moment where it wasn’t on the bike going to Australia, it was in conversation with your wife in Transylvania which has a ring to it – I was chatting to Clemmie and we decided – was there an ‘ah ha’ moment or did it just evolve over, over a few days or weeks?
Oli Broom
It evolved um, as I think lots of the best things do. It was definitely while I was out in Transylvania I realised that it was going to work. Like it was a bit of leap into the dark going to Romania and finding this beautiful place and thinking people would probably come cycling with me there but, but it was while living out there and learning how tourism worked and being a you know, nation tour operator worked that it evolved into something I felt like would be really good fun and that was something I could spend the rest of my career doing.
Elliot Moss
And your minimum viable product, just give me a quick overview of that very first time you took a bunch of people out on a cycle, on a tour?
Oli Broom
Well I invited fifteen friends out to join me. Test, test the product on friends that was the…
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Oli Broom
…idea um and gosh it was very different to what it is now. It was really simple, we were sort of camping in orchards and we were, we were on normal bikes whereas these days most of our guests are on electric bikes but you can see the joy that it gave people just being out you know, in the forests and meadows of Transylvania, somewhere that perhaps they felt like they couldn’t explore on their own too easily you know, seeing bear prints in the forest and hearing bears and you know, it was exciting. So um, I knew I had something from there and um it was…
Elliot Moss
And the faces, I mean I imagine the problem with being an adult is that you lose your sense of play and of, of wonder and you disconnect because you end up in your bubble of life whatever it is that you’re doing. If you can go back to that first campfire and you look at these people, these grown adults, what were you, what were you seeing?
Oli Broom
Well I realised that it was about joy, like we were giving people the joy of being somewhere new, somewhere exciting, somewhere with friends and I think joy is so important. We wake up most days and we know what’s going to happen. When you’re on a journey like the journeys we take people on, you have no idea really what’s going to happen. I mean there’s all sorts of ways that we, we design our experiences like that you know, we don’t share all the details in advance, we, we’re quite paired back in what we provide to people in advance and when I set The Slow Cyclist up, one of the things that I wanted to recreate from my trip to Australia was that sense of serendipity or surprises and of course it’s much harder to do when you’re, you’re going on a journey that you know, someone has planned pretty well um, i.e. The Slow Cyclist but, but we do, it is about getting those little surprises and moments that, that amaze into each day and that from the very start, that was, that was a thing um, so yeah round the campfire, I mean I am thinking now about the singing and music around the campfire on that very first trip, it was, it was joyous.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for joy and serendipity I hope from my guest, it’s Oli Broom, he’s in the hot seat today. He’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Right now we are going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites Business Founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. In this clip we hear from Paul Beastall, CEO of HutanBio, a technology company aiming to decouple long distance transportation from fossil fuels with HBX – what a good name – their zero carbon biofuel.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your favourite podcast platform, we don’t mind which one that is. My guest today is Oli Broom, Founder of The Slow Cyclist, a cycle tour operator leading adventures across Europe and Africa. So here we are nine years later, the things happening, I went on your website, I, I got some FOMO pretty quickly. I’ve got my eyes on Armenia, amongst other places. You’re running a business now. Has the joy and the serendipity gone? How do you hold on to it if it’s, if it’s still there?
Oli Broom
It’s evolved. It’s, it’s changed you know, I used to spend my days taking our guests on bike rides around different parts of Europe.
Elliot Moss
Yeah you were in it, you were the hands on guy.
Oli Broom
Exactly yeah, so it’s definitely changed but I am very lucky that I love, I love all different, love the different challenges so I loved that in the early days but I’ve got a growing family now, well hopefully not growing, but you know…
Elliot Moss
(laughing) yeah.
Oli Broom
…in some ways.
Elliot Moss
Health warning, two children plenty.
Oli Broom
We will remain at four but um, four of us but uh, it’s, it’s evolved. I don’t want to be out on the road the whole time now, I love it when I do but it’s yeah, it would be too much. Um, now I love the challenge of building a team uh, making sure the team are you know, getting what they want out of their careers um but particularly it does remain that my sort of incessant insistence on quality and improvement and you know, I kind of keep going back to like giving joy um, there’s definitely new challenges coming up in the next decade or so of The Slow Cyclist like, making sure that we really have a positive impact on the places that we travel through would be one you know, building a team that are really happy in their, in their careers. There’s all sorts of new challenges coming along all the time so that’s, that’s what I really love.
Elliot Moss
And how do you know if it’s good enough? How do you know if what you are looking at is at the standards that Oli Broom has you know, is it (a) good enough for Oli but (b) is going to be good enough for the people that want to enjoy the rides because that’s a tricky one. You are your own boss.
Oli Broom
Yeah I mean there’s, there’s a reason we’ve grown I suppose at the pace that we’ve grown at and when I say the pace, I mean like relatively slow pace to match The Slow Cyclist I suppose um, you know, a business like ours we, I’m not interested in growing it really quickly. I am interested in growing it at a speed that feels natural, you know, we’re self-funded, we’re not, we’re not trying to grow for growth’s sake. We’re, we’re sort of growing actually because the experiences we host our guests on are really good.
Elliot Moss
And everything’s all included isn’t it?
Oli Broom
And they want to come back.
Elliot Moss
Is that right? You get the number and for that, flights as well or is that separate?
Oli Broom
Flights is excluded but everything else.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
Oli Broom
And actually a lot of the feedback we get from guests is that that’s just an absolute joy, it’s that – we call it a decision detox – so people don’t have to think, they don’t have to reach into their wallets, they just have to enjoy themselves, well they don’t have to but we try to make, we try to help them enjoy themselves. We get that feedback a lot. It’s like, I think, I think you know, we are faced with so many decisions these days in our everyday lives and actually what a joy to be just switching off for a few days and letting us look after everything and you just have to follow the bike in front of you sort of thing.
Elliot Moss
People often say you know, your passion or your hobby shouldn’t become your job because then it’s no longer a joy, it’s actually just a job. Where do you get your decision detox from? Where do you switch off?
Oli Broom
That’s a very good question um, I, I do create time for you know, I mean I switch off actually when I go for a dog walk um, when I go for a bike ride locally. I occasionally, I’ve been known to throw a pot um, as in you know, ceramics, that sort of thing. That, that, playing the piano. That sort of stuff like where I am actually, actually probably a walk is not the best example because I do then still think about work.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Oli Broom
But actually like playing piano or throwing a pot or something like that is you know, focussing on that thing and you can’t think of anything else.
Elliot Moss
Can’t think of anything else.
Oli Broom
And that’s really where I um, uh where I find I am able to switch off um.
Elliot Moss
And a yes, no answer – have you, are you still in love with cycling?
Oli Broom
Yes absolutely, yeah, yeah more than ever. I mean I love being like in the forests of Transylvania or um yeah I mean, yeah, like one of my favourite bike rides is along this chain of volcanoes in Northern Rwanda. I think about bike riding an awful lot and haven’t done it for a few years but you know, I was, loved to be there, I was about to say right now, but I’m very happy where I am.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Oli Broom
Talking to you guys.
Elliot Moss
You can’t go anywhere Oli Broom. It strikes me that leadership I imagine, people working for you would like you. Why do they like you? Why do you think they like you? Why do you think they enjoy being led by Oli Broom?
Oli Broom
Yeah I was about to say you’re asking the wrong person.
Elliot Moss
I know I am and it’s, I’m going to get obviously when, when your team listens to this, they’ll go, you should only know Elliot, why didn’t you ask us before talking to him. But why do you think they might enjoy working for you and the business?
Oli Broom
Actually this question is relatively prescient because we did a session on Monday in the team about appreciation, so everyone went round the table and said why they appreciated a different member of the team.
Elliot Moss
I’d appreciate if you left Oli, that’s what we really want to do but they didn’t tell you that.
Oli Broom
I, I actually can’t think, I can’t remember what someone said about me but I suspect what they might say is that going back to the point I made a minute ago about growth, we’re not growing The Slow Cyclist for the sake of growing The Slow Cyclist, we’re just, we’ve just got a business and it happens to be doing okay because people are loving what we, what we do and I think that translates into how the business operates. You know, we’re ambitious, yes but you know, there is that sense of like we all want to do something that is good. We want to do good, we have an impact, we want to spread joy, we want to you know, dedicate ourselves to really high standards, we want to be unique and I think, I think probably that, like in the beginning it sort of started, it comes from, comes from me um, yeah and maybe that’s made other people say but god, I don’t know.
Elliot Moss
But is it, is there something in you know, intrinsic to cycling and being physical is the sense of you’ve got to do the activity, you’ve got to be in it and when, when we are as humans we do something physical like that and repetitive, we tend to stop thinking and psychologists talk about being in flow and ideally when you’re doing something academic and intellectual you’re in flow but actually mostly it happens when you are doing stuff. Do you still touch that do you think in your business even though people aren’t literally on their bikes. Is that, is that something that’s inherent to the way that you run your business?
Oli Broom
Yeah I think there’s an element of, of like flow to things and I think when you’re standing still it’s not a good place to be for a business you know, actually the rate we’re growing at at the moment feels like exciting.
Elliot Moss
What is that rate just out of interest? Is it a couple of percent growth each year?
Oli Broom
No it’s more than that, it’s more than that. I mean it’s, it’s been up you know way higher than that you know this year it’s, it’s at around 15% but that feels you know, feels exciting and I think as I said, coming back to growth for growth’s sake is not what we are after but moving forward and developing as a, as a team um, you know, we’re big on like everyone coming up with ideas, it’s not just about the directors or you know, those at the top coming up with ideas. So everyone is encouraged to, to think for themselves and obviously you know, so there’s, there’s that yeah I don’t know, maybe there’s something in that.
Elliot Moss
Mm, but you…
Oli Broom
I don’t know, the flow that…
Elliot Moss
… but you enjoy being the you know, the captain of the ship as it were. I don’t mean because it’s the title, I mean because you feel like you’re in that place you want to be and that you want these people to be led to somewhere that you enjoy?
Oli Broom
I do like being, I do like The Slow Cyclist you know, being my baby um and yeah I do enjoy that and I think you know, going back to um, to what I was doing before, one of the, you know chartered surveying for example, one of the things I you know, I just didn’t like working for other people and I didn’t feel like, actually you know my trip to Australia you know, it was my idea, I executed it and I found great satisfaction in that and I suppose you know, we’re getting into psychology territory here Elliot, this is dangerous but um…
Elliot Moss
This is what happens Oli.
Oli Broom
(laughs) The um, I suppose there’s something, I don’t know whether it’s an appealing trait or not but there’s something in the idea of like The Slow Cyclist was my baby, I really enjoy you know, like really enjoy that fact um but equally like I’ve brought people into the business who challenge me you know, endlessly and I think that’s really important. My business partner you know, looks, looks at the world in a you know, in some ways pretty differently although there are many similarities as well but you know, it is important to bring people on who are you know, frankly better than you at almost everything.
Elliot Moss
Mm and different.
Oli Broom
And I have.
Elliot Moss
You have.
Oli Broom
Yes different.
Elliot Moss
Oli Broom, final chat coming up. He’s not available for hire, just to be clear. He’s also bringing in some music here on Jazz Shapers from Jon Batiste, that is what Oli Broom has managed to do, well done. That’s in just a moment don’t go anywhere.
Oli Broom is my fabulous guest, just for a few more minutes. He is the Found of The Slow Cyclist. I think right at the heart of what I hear from you Oli is the sense of the importance of connection. Whether that’s to nature, whether that’s to travel and therefore people, culture, history um, food – which I love food – whatever it might be. How do you stay connected with all of this from the role of the CEO and the Founder?
Oli Broom
Well I still visit all the places that we travel to and although you know, the reason I set up The Slow Cyclist was, was not necessarily to do with all these things but very quickly I realised that it was, and you’ve hit the nail on the head, it’s like, it’s about connecting people from all you know, from all different parts of the world, connecting people with um, these wild and beautiful places that we go to and, and asking them to appreciate these places. So how do I stay connected, I mean you know, I’m involved in the day-to-day running of these trips you know, I was talking to um, someone in Rwanda yesterday, um someone in Transylvania yesterday afternoon as well you know, I have personal relationship with you know, with all the people we, we work with around the world um and I really love that element of it. As I say, I still get to travel um, you know I am planning a holiday, family holiday to Rwanda next summer.
Elliot Moss
Lovely.
Oli Broom
Because I am desperate to go back there for the first time in a few years you know. I, I lived in Transylvania for probably a year and a half for the first couple of years that I started The Slow Cyclist so I feel like a personal connection to some of these places more than others.
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Oli Broom
But it is something I do feel and I suppose the stories just keep coming back and you know, it’s lovely to hear from our guests what they appreciate about, about the place they travelled to and then for us to eke out these stories and to sort of try and find more guests to come and enjoy.
Elliot Moss
It’s almost like I could have another ten hours and we haven’t even touched on the millions of stories that one has that you have had um, travelling but that sense of openness of course enables people to have understanding which then leads to no conflict rather than lots of conflict and honestly that’s just a philosophical um, thing that I think we all would wish um, would be at the heart of the human condition and what’s happening right now. Speed is the other thing or rather the absence of speed. If you could wave a magic wand on society now, what would you do in terms of the, the speed piece?
Oli Broom
I mean I think we’d all slow things down a bit wouldn’t we. This is a runaway train at the moment, lots of stuff going on at the moment and um, and I would like people to spend more time in nature. I think that’s just satonic isn’t it for, for slowing down. I was talking to a guy this morning on my way in to London and he was saying, oh I don’t like London, it’s too fast, I love living out in the sticks and being a bit slower um, I don’t know what my magic wand would be but I think everyone just needs to get out and experience these wild places, there’s still so many of them in the world and actually in our country too and I think that’s going to have a huge benefit for society generally and get off your phone as well!
Elliot Moss
Get off your phone, get out into nature and go slow. Those are the things that we give you here on Jazz FM and it is Jazz Shapers and Oli Broom you’ve been brilliant, thank you so much for being my guest. Just before I let you slowly leave, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Oli Broom
It’s a song that I grew to love during Covid. I discovered Sonia Spence during Covid from a, from a playlist a friend shared with me and um, absolutely loved. The first song I fell in love with was a song called Damn Him by Sonia Spence and um, and since then I’ve, well I’ve chosen today, Let Love Flow On. I just think it’s silky smooth and just magic and I cook to it quite often and it’s just a, it’s a lovely tune.
Elliot Moss
Sonia Spence there with Let Love Flow On, the song choice of my Business Shaper today Oli Broom. At the heart of what he does is gives people joy and enables them to reconnect with themselves and with nature. The sense of serendipity that he brings to people who are travelling. Leaving a positive impact, being light on the environment, critical to him and finally and I really like this, the idea of a decision detox – ‘We take it all away so you don’t have to think about anything, you can just be’. Great stuff. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that addition of Jazz Shapers, you’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search ‘Jazz Shapers’ in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.