Purpose Before Profit: Maria Elena Price of ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours On The Benefits Of Running A Purpose-Driven Business
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Be consistent in how your brand shows up. This is part of creating trust with your clients as well. In travel we are often pressured to sell available spots at the last minute with discounts. Yet as a company, we have a strong value that we don’t want to reward travelers for last-minute planning. We think everyone should pay the same price whether they booked a year out or one month before the trip — unless of course they were able to take advantage of our early booking discount, which happens once a year. So, when we are feeling tempted to cave to the idea that we could sell open spots for less, we remind ourselves of our value to be consistent.
In today’s competitive business landscape, the race for profits often takes center stage. However, there are some leaders who also prioritize a mission-driven purpose. They use their business to make a positive social impact and recognize that success isn’t only about making money. In this interview series, we are talking with some of these distinct leaders and I had the pleasure of interviewing Maria Elena Price.
Maria Elena Price is co-owner, along with her sister, of ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours. She manages the ExperiencePlus! headquarters from its office in Fort Collins, Colorado. Founded in 1972 by their parents, Rick and Paola Malpezzi-Price, Maria Elena and Monica grew up first ‘joining’ tours as children, then leading tours as teenagers and young adults throughout Europe. They took ownership of the business back in 2008. In 2011, Maria Elena and Monica were both selected by National Geographic Traveler to be featured in their Top 10 Guides in the world.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us your “Origin Story”? Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours was founded in 1972 by my parents, Rick and Paola Malpezzi-Price — they combined their passion for cycling and travel to offer guided bicycle tours in Europe. My mom is Italian and was a high school exchange student in Oregon in 1966 when she met my dad. She then returned to Italy without another thought about returning to the U.S., but it turns out my dad had other plans! He kept finding ways to show up in Italy and Europe.
In that process, he ended up studying abroad several times to make sure my mom didn’t forget about him. When she finished her university degree, they decided to cycle from Pisa to Forli, Italy (her hometown). They then got married and moved back to the USA. But travel was in their blood, and now as poor college students, they needed a way to fund their travels. So, in 1972 they advertised a 10-day biking tour that was a re-creation of a trip they had done from Pisa to Forli. That first year they ran four trips with a total of 25 people.
They took a break to continue studies and start a family. But in 1985, they revived the idea. From then until 2008, my dad worked full-time on the company while my mom was a professor at Colorado State University. In those years, my sister Monica and I grew up traveling all over Europe by bike as my parents grew the business. We would stay with relatives and sometimes also join them on tour and then always join them to scout new destinations. And, over the years, the company grew beyond offering trips in Italy to now offering guided and self-guided tours across Europe and South America. I grew up guiding tours in Italy and Spain as my summer job during college and now recognize how lucky I was to have that experience.
In 2008, my parents decided they were done owning an international company and so ownership of ExperiencePlus! transitioned to myself and Monica. Taking over a company during a recession isn’t always the easiest task but we pulled through, and today, we have two different bike tour operations. One based in Italy, which serves as the operational arm in Europe, and one based in Colorado, USA which manages all the sales, marketing and customer service for ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
It’s hard to pick just one, but I would say the most interesting thing, and what I marvel at every day, is that I work in an industry that is truly about expanding and enriching people’s lives. It is a leisure industry, so I sometimes feel “guilty” about that, but I know that when people travel and truly connect with other people and places, their lives are expanded — and that motivates me every day. Sometimes when I’m sitting at the computer and I haven’t been out on my bike, I have to remind myself of that.
We often learn the most from our mistakes. Can you share one that you made that turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned?
I learned that it is okay to make mistakes, but that it’s critical to understand how the mistake unfolded. Sometimes, what led to the mistake was lack of information or not fully understanding the situation — or just a lack of foresight!
I made a mistake several years ago regarding a technology decision. And as a company we’re still feeling the effects of that mistake. My belief is it is okay to acknowledge that mistake and — while you still must live with the repercussions of it — to move forward and not repeat it. That means reflecting on and absorbing what you may or may not know or imagine to be true. It’s also very true that you don’t know what you don’t know. As humans we’re imperfect and mistakes will happen. You can’t beat yourself up when you don’t foresee certain outcomes. You just have to analyze it and move forward.
As a successful leader, it’s clear that you uphold strong core values. I’m curious what are the most important principles you firmly stand by and refuse to compromise on. Can you share a few of them and explain why they hold such significance for you in your work and life?
I believe transparency and trust are key. If you can’t be transparent with your staff, your clients and yourself, then you aren’t trustworthy. And if you can’t be trustworthy, you won’t succeed. It is very important that people understand where you are coming from and when they do, they will trust you and will support you when things get hard and when tough decisions have to be made.
What inspired you to start a purpose-driven business rather than a traditional for-profit enterprise? Can you share a personal story or experience that led you to prioritize social impact in your business?
Like I said, I am constantly in awe that I get to help people plan vacations and expand their horizons. Sometimes we make decisions about running a trip not because it makes financial sense but because we want to make sure we don’t cancel the trip. Obviously, we can’t do that all the time, but in some cases, we even do it when considering what destination or activity we decide to do on a trip.
For example, our decision to add Cuba to our portfolio fits in this category. Cuba is a complicated place to travel to — for many reasons. From our part, the trips don’t really “make” much money. But, having a destination like this is important because it helps people travel out of their comfort zone. When it comes to Cuba, it is also true that we sometimes wonder if our impact as a company bringing travellers to that destination is positive. We’ve also had to evaluate the other side of the coin. Are we negatively impacting people by using scarce resources? We’ve concluded (for now) that there is a net positive for everyone — in terms of purpose and social good — for us to maintain trips in Cuba.
Can you help articulate a few of the benefits of leading a purpose-driven business rather than a standard “plain vanilla” business?
Our mission is to help people connect to new places in a way that is engaging and immersive. We believe that by doing this our travelers become more tolerant of difference — whether in culture, food, dress, language, or just everyday living. We think that makes a big impact. If we didn’t take this perspective, then we’d just be planning bike rides from one nice hotel to the next and insulating people from the world. So, for us, we must constantly remind ourselves how to not take the easy route and truly help people have an immersive, and as such, impactful experience.
How has your company’s mission or purpose affected its overall success? Can you explain the methods or metrics you use to evaluate the impact of this purpose-driven strategy on your organization?
We think about our mission of creating meaningful connections anytime we design a trip and train our tour leaders. In our training, our vision and mission take center stage because it is a very valuable way to create a common language for what we expect the customer experience to be on tour. And this expectation is across all our trips and destinations. We know this is successful because that consistency of experience is what people now look for and why they keep coming back on tour over and over again; customer return rate and net promoter score are key metrics we look at. We have an over 60% return rate every year and ask for feedback on several elements of our trips.
Lately we’ve been digging into the carbon footprint of our business operations and tours. It is a huge subject to tackle and we recognize that a lot of our footprint has to do with our suppliers (hotels and restaurants), so we’re aiming to engage with them as much as we can. As part of this effort, we participate in industry-wide efforts to evolve and adopt strategies that help us measure and understand our sustainability. We’re part of a greater whole, etc and we’re trying to improve.
Can you share a pivotal moment when you realized that leading your purpose-driven company was actually making a significant impact? Can you share a specific example or story that deeply resonated with you personally?
As mentioned, we have hundreds of people who return on our tours every year. They love how we run trips. I think that says something. We have one family who started to travel with us in 2012 and since then he and his wife have taken 26 trips with us! They routinely bring friends and family with them back and often they return to the same itinerary. They have been on our classic Venice to Pisa tour (an itinerary similar to the original tour my parents ran in 1972) more than five times. They have forged such an amazing connection to the places we visit on that tour that they just keep coming back. This couple is just one example, albeit a bit extreme, but we have hundreds of people who have done five, 10, 15 trips with us and that makes me feel like we must be making an impact on these folks.
Have you ever faced a situation where your commitment to your purpose and creating a positive social impact clashed with the profitability in your business? Have you ever been challenged by anyone on your team or have to make a tough decision that had a significant impact on finances? If so, how did you address and reconcile this conflict?
Our commitment to design local and authentic experiences can sometimes clash with the comfort and desires and requests of our clients. For example, in northern Europe, there are many small, locally run hotels that don’t have bedroom air conditioning because historically, the climate didn’t require them to have AC. But now, with the volatile changes in climate, sometimes we find ourselves in a heat wave and staying at a hotel with no AC. Some people really have a hard time with that.
One answer would be to switch to the larger, corporate, chain hotels, but that would degrade our desire to stay in smaller, locally run hotels. Although this doesn’t feel like a significant change, doing this across all our itineraries would impact where we spend millions of dollars each year. So, we’re always evaluating our desire to spend local money with what our clients demand or expect. Usually, we end up deciding that we won’t change our approach unless this truly diminishes the comfort and experience of the customer. We work hard to set appropriate expectations and be transparent about why we stay where we stay.
What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs who wish to start a purpose-driven business?
I think the key is to understand all the pieces of your industry and market. If you know the levers that make your industry tick, you can figure out how to make an impact and make a difference. Part of the learning process is understanding the full picture, but sometimes you just have to jump in and start where you are.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Purpose-Driven Business.” If you can, please share a story or example for each.
1. A clear understanding of your mission and how you execute on it. I think the examples above have some stories on that.
2. A good understanding of the customer experience. Personally, I like to make sure I understand what our customers are hoping for, looking for, and experiencing so that I can make sure our messaging and trips align with those expectations. Usually, we hear about it in evaluations or from our tour leaders and customers if we don’t.
3. Create trust in your team. I was lucky enough to train several of our current long standing tour leaders and so built trust by working alongside them. Now that I’m not in the field as much, I have to build trust in other ways, and I strive every day to do so.
4. Think about the long term while making short term decisions. This is harder to execute on. I feel like I’m finally (after 15+ years of ownership) now able to understand this myself. For some the purpose of the business is more personal so thinking about how it affects your personal life is important as you plan and strategize. Personally, I’m missing not being on the road (Covid and a new child helped keep me home). So now, I’m trying to understand how to get back out there so I can continue to connect with my clients.
5. Be consistent in how your brand shows up. This is part of creating trust with your clients as well. In travel we are often pressured to sell available spots at the last minute with discounts. Yet as a company, we have a strong value that we don’t want to reward travelers for last-minute planning. We think everyone should pay the same price whether they booked a year out or one month before the trip — unless of course they were able to take advantage of our early booking discount, which happens once a year. So, when we are feeling tempted to cave to the idea that we could sell open spots for less, we remind ourselves of our value to be consistent.
I’m interested in how you instill a strong sense of connection with your team. How do you nurture a culture where everyone feels connected to your mission? Could you share an example or story that showcases how your purpose has positively influenced or motivated people on your team to contribute?
The same way we instill trust in our customers: by being transparent. We are a small company overall. The largest and most fragmented team segment are our tour leaders, and we meet once a year to connect and update each other. This is not a small investment on our part as a company, but we’ve found that this tour leader gathering helps create a strong sense of community and understanding (in fact, many of these people work with our competitors). And yet, because we are open and transparent with them, we find they are open and transparent with us and those who appreciate that come back year after year to work with us. Which ultimately means we spend less on new tour leader training and people stay for longer.
Imagine we’re sitting down together two years from now, looking back at your company’s last 24 months. What specific accomplishments would have to happen for you to be happy with your progress?
One of our biggest challenges is reaching out to a “new generation” of travelers who we believe want the experiences we provide, but who are hesitant to pay for it, or don’t think a group tour is for them. So, we’re trying to find new ways of reaching these folks and new types of trips to help them get out to explore the world by bike. Hopefully in 24 months we’ll have a diverse portfolio of tours and clients who are all having amazing experiences traveling the world by bike.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Slowing down and experiencing the world at a slower pace not just for the Instagram highlights but to actually connect with a new place would be my wish. Obviously, I think this is best done by bike — so more people out cycling and traveling!
How can our readers further follow your work or your company online?
You can follow our updates at www.experienceplus.com
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator.
Purpose Before Profit: Maria Elena Price of ExperiencePlus Bicycle Tours On The Benefits Of Running was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.