3 Things No One Tells You About a PE Exit as CFO

STOIX: Being exit ready is something that many CFOs underestimate. Today we sat down with Dominic Wilkinson, CFO of TeamSport Go Karting. We discussed the brutal economics of running a people heavy consumer business in 2026. We also discussed planning and forecasting in an era of constant disruption and war. Thanks for watching and please enjoy the episode. Domin, you've been the CFO of team sport now for circa seven years.

Dominic Wilkinson: Seven years, yeah.

STOIX: Uh, including taking the business right up to almost exit.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah.

STOIX: Um, what, what are the things that people don't know about exit readiness?

Dominic Wilkinson: I think the biggest thing for me is, um, the amount of time that it takes to get ready. You know, we didn't, we couldn't have done it with just our own resource that we have. You know, you need to get external support so that people can focus on, on the day job. I think for anybody, when you're looking for an exit, the most important thing is that the business continues to trade really well during that period. Um, so having people distracted is really not great. Um, so I think getting the right level of resource in place would uh, be my number one tip. Um, and I think a lot of that also comes from the world's quite different now. I did M and A in my previous career and when I look at the kind of how data driven things are now and the amount of information that people want and are able to consume is materially different and quite often is the kind of data that you don't deal with when you're running the business day to day because of the volume of it. So it is, um, you know, you learn a huge amount. Um, hopefully it all accords with what you think you know about your own business. But um, it's. Yeah, it's very, it's very different. The level of particularly you know, when you're dealing with private equity and people who are very financially focused.

STOIX: Yeah. And when, when do you start that process?

Dominic Wilkinson: Not soon enough. Um, I mean we, you know, I think when you are private equity backed, you know, you have to be constantly ready, um, at any point. Um, and so uh, for me it's about identifying what the key KPIs that you think people will be looking for to maximize value, uh, and therefore making sure you have a focus on those kind of all the time really. Um, to be able to work out when is a go or a no go at any point. Um, and those things will change over time and some will become green and some will be red and then it will all change around as the market Changes. And so I think it's working out really early what those are. Um, but I think, you know, in terms of time, as I say, I think it, for me now, uh, it's. You constantly are looking at it, making sure everything's in order. But I think when you think you might, you're talking probably six months as a minimum.

Co-host: Is there a real huge value in just getting an external viewpoint on how the business is viewed? Because I guess when you're internally, you think of the business in a certain way and it's hard to maybe get that sense of market perception and that it really gives you that kind of elevated lens of what the market actually thinks versus what the internal management team might, might view.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah, I think, I think that's right. But I think it also depends the sector you're in. Um, if you're in restaurants, there's lots of comparables and there's lots of benchmarks. Um, with something like team sport, where I am now, um, we probably have in the UK 10 times the number of locations as anybody else. So there isn't really a market as such for people to have a view on or it's a lot harder I think, for external parties to have a view. Um, so a lot of it is about making sure that we're curating that story, um, when you're doing it. But yeah, things change all the time. So it's difficult to, you know, the story changes sometimes as the market changes.

STOIX: Yeah. And why and how go karting?

Dominic Wilkinson: Um, kind of by accident really, I suppose, rather than by design.

STOIX: Um,

Dominic Wilkinson: I've been asked that a few times. Uh, and I think the point is, and I think this is the beauty of being a CFO is actually the, the final end product in a way, doesn't really matter. Um, before go karting it was restaurants. So fundamentally it's multi site leisure and it's around how look at the business, how you set the business up both operationally but then also for reporting, um, and everything else really. So there isn't really a difference. Um, I am a bit of an F1 nut. So, um, the idea of go karting did appeal. Um, and it's an amazing fun sport. It's, um. But yeah, no, I didn't set out to say I want to go and work in go karting.

STOIX: Yeah. Um, and tell us a bit about. Obviously we've been through very challenging decade or more in as a consumer and in the consumer space, it's sort of been permanent one crisis after another. This year it's war. Um, Kicking off, um, how do you navigate those challenges in a consumer business as a cfo?

Dominic Wilkinson: Um, so we have, um, we have a very tight, ah, leadership team. We work together, um, all the time. If I think of our coo, I probably speak to him two, three times a day. Um, and we're constantly thinking, okay, as soon as something happens, what we need to do. As soon as, um, the Iran crisis kicked off for us, the biggest thing is, well, what supplies do we get from uh, China? How's that going to be impacted? Therefore, how do we need to get as much stock as quickly? How do we need to manage fuel supply? Uh, it's less relevant now because we're, most of our sites are electric, but we still have um, petrol. So some of it then is immediately how do we kind of um, guarantee stock of fuel? Um, so a lot of, for us you can't plan for everything. But we do have an awful lot of, um, we have a very detailed, um, business interruption plan that tries to cover off most of the issues that you might expect. But um, you know, things like a war in Iran is not something that was necessarily identified but that, you know, the things that could happen and therefore how we would react to it are very much laid out. So we've got a very set process and I think we, you know, we learned a lot from that through Covid. You know, look at that. That was a huge test. We were closed for a significant number of months during that period. Um, I think something like 12 out of 15 months. And so we had to do some pretty drastic actions to manage the business through that process. And I think we've learned a huge amount from that. And it kind of makes you realize that the things that you think might happen but you think will actually never happen can, um, happen. Um, I mean, I think, you know, when I look back, I think, uh, if somebody was to do a film about COVID in the whole world chatting down, you'd probably say this is a bit far fetched. Um, but that is the reality. Uh, so I think we've learned a huge amount from that.

Co-host: Has the leadership team. You sort of talked about how close you are and close to the COO is that kind of learnings over one thing after the next after the next just brought you all closer together as well and almost made you think about the impact across the whole team. So, you know, the CFO knows what's going on for the COO and the CEO, et cetera, et cetera. Has it kind of all brought everything together?

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah, it is. And um, you know, we're quite a small team. Um, and so, you know, we always bounce ideas off each other very quickly. It's not like we've got huge departments where we would consult within our departments and then, you know, a department goes off and does something. We're very integrated in how we look at the business and run the business. And we try to be incredibly collaborative so everybody will think about the impact on their bit of the business, but also then how that impacts and who they need to bring in. So, you know, our projects will be people from all departments rather than, you know, we'll have an owner to it. But, you know, we try and make sure that everybody knows we have the normal updates, but, you know, we don't wait for an update meeting to, you know, get together to work away through a problem. Um, you know, we recognize that we have to do that collaboratively and very early.

Co-host: Yeah. Um, in terms of that, the team's been consistent for a long time. Um, Neil and I have been discussing this a lot about hiring and getting the right team and the right blend.

STOIX: Are you.

Co-host: Do you think strategically yourself when you're bringing people into the business to kind of consciously fill almost gaps in personality types or cognitive diversity and things like that, or is it less about that and more about personality? How do you think about things like that?

Dominic Wilkinson: I think we, um, I wouldn't say we kind of go out with a. We need this particular type of person. I think when we're interviewing you, when you're talking to somebody, we'll look and think, okay, well, how is that going to gel in our culture culturally? Is that a big fit? We have a really, I think, enviable culture within the business. It's incredibly strong. Um, and actually having worked in a number of places, I was quite taken aback actually, when I joined about, you know, just how strong the culture in our business is. We have a number of. A number of values that we have across the business. And actually if you go onto our internal Facebook page, you know, the, the person that's working in the track as a marshal, he will be talking about hashtag1 or hashtag2 and that they. Everybody in the business speaks the language. So there is a, a really strong cultural fit within our business. And that's something that we kind of. That we really value. So it's, it's making sure those people are not completely, uh, outside of that.

STOIX: Yeah.

Dominic Wilkinson: And the way we do that is, you know, if I'm recruiting, uh, but I'm recruiting a. Ah, you know, uh, I Don't want to mention a name because that person might think that happened more recently. That would be awkward. Um, but you know, if I'm recruiting for my team I would still get the coo plus uh, you know, all the people partner, uh, to kind of come and meet them as well to make sure that you know, I'm not being blinded by somebody who I just think is great with the spreadsheet. You know, we want to make sure that culturally they're going to work well, that they can work about. Yeah. How they can work with operations, how they're going to partner with, with hr. So I think it's having that blended view before we make appointments. So we have a really balanced perspective.

STOIX: Yeah. And on the topic of hiring, you've recently hired a head of AI. We've been talking about that in, in recent weeks which is um, seems quite sort of proactive and forward thinking given where the world is going. Tell us a bit more about that and um, how that is. Um, yeah, how that's going to supercharge your business moving forward.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah. So we, what we've actually done is we've taken on a fractional head so they work on a, um, set number of days in a month. Um, and it was really to make sure, you know, to hold us to account really. Because I think when we, when we look at it there are uh, we're a very entrepreneurial business and so when we suddenly see something like AI, we think of uh, 150 different ways that we might be able to use it. And so the key thing for us was having somebody who could help us look at the business and say okay, what are the priorities? And then it becomes a balance of um, what are the really high value but longer term strategic things and what are the smaller short term things that would deliver some value so that we can kind of prove the concept, um, and almost self fund um, having um, that fractional head come in. Um, and so part of it has been, we're quite early days with it and it's been about scoping out what are our systems like, what are the barriers, barriers to using AI in different parts of our business. Um, but you know we're starting to use it. So we've um, you know we built a forecast model um, so that we can look at the weather and um, see how that impacts on our sales based on history. And again that's all being tested in trial. Um, but it's quite exciting to see where that may take us because it is um, you know, that we can be very weather dependent. And you know, at the moment it's about forecasting, but ultimately I see it as it's forecasting and then if it can do that forecast, we know it's accurate. How can we do that to support our rotor planning and so on and so forth. So there's kind of no end to it. But, um, I mean the other thing we've done is we um, we sell a lot, A lot of people have vouchers and come, come, uh, on a voucher. And so we'll get so many people that lose their voucher and they phone up and they're trying to find it, um, and that, you know, they're then phoning up and clogging up, you know, other people who are trying to book to kind of say I've lost my voucher. So, you know, we're just trialing now. We've got a voucher bot that will actually be able to do that and answer some of those questions. So it's, it's really just we at the moment is, as I say, very early days, but we're trying to look at those things where there's some really early efficiencies just to kind of prove the concept. Um, and then we've done a bit of blue sky thinking and we've then got a whole host of areas where we think it could work for us. But early days, but it's, it's um, you know, I personally use it a lot and yeah, I find it um, it's incredible what it can do. It really is. Um, but also it's not just that. I mean, the other thing, the reason, you know, we wanted that in is we're very conscious of our data and data privacy and data protection. So also it's kind of making sure we've got somebody who can talk to us about the pitfalls to make sure that actually when we use AI, we're using it in a really secure way and not inadvertently sharing information that we don't really want shared.

Co-host: Yeah, I think the adoption thing's really interesting, isn't it? But I think the thing I'm hearing, and I listen to a lot of AI podcasts for, uh, my sins, is that actually it is so early still. You know, the fact that you are in, you're starting to think about this, you've brought in someone to dedicate time towards it is a lot more than a hell of a lot of organizations are doing, frankly. So it kind of speaks to kind of the forward looking nature of the leadership team and yourself. I guess in that respect.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah, I think, I think you have to. I mean it's um, it's not going to go away, is it? And um, I think uh, I just find it quite exciting actually. It will change the way we do things, but I don't think it's necessarily going to mean um, that we lose a load of roles. I think what we find is it's actually making people more efficient and actually we talked earlier about um, the volume of data and the granularity that people want. Some of it I think is using AI to actually enable even more of that, to give us even more insight. But then it's still about how we use that information rather than just thinking, oh do you know what? We're going to have AI and that's just going to mean that we can lose a load of heads because I don't think that's how it will work in our, in our world. Um, and if we, if we did take that path, I think we really get the value for it.

STOIX: Yeah. So you're generally an optimist on it overall versus some of the more doomier forecasts out there of sort of widespread job losses, etc. Or is that just specific to your, your industry?

Dominic Wilkinson: More to our industry. I mean, um, yeah, my, my daughter is, is currently doing her ah, law conversion to become uh, ideally a lawyer. Um, and you know that is quite scary to look at how some of those roles may work. Um, you know, where that you've had people sitting there writing contracts and now you know you can go on to AI and that's done pretty accurately. I worry more about some of those roles and perhaps the way it might work entirely in our business.

STOIX: Well, I was reading something the other day saying that actually, because you did think that was certainly one of the professions that is going to be massively impacted. But um, due to the amount of AI usage now by businesses for all sorts of different things, but also data breaches, etc, etc, actually they're needing to hire more lawyers now to deal with all of the problems off the back of AI.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah.

STOIX: So it might actually go the other way.

Dominic Wilkinson: I think that's right. I think as you say it's such early days and I think we're, you know, uh, we're finding your people will find those teething problems and I think it will evolve very differently to how perhaps we first think. But um, yeah, on balance I think it, I am optimistic about it. Um, I think unfortunately. Well, I say unfortunately you have to be. Um, as I say it's it's not going anywhere. So you can, you could be resistant to it but you probably are going to get left behind. So I think it's seeing what the challenges are and managing it and, and working with it in the best way you can to, to be competitive.

Co-host: Yeah, yeah. I also have this view that actually human experiences is a huge growth area in general because you're ultimately self driving cars in 5, 10 years time you may not get that pleasure from driving in the same way that you did. But that doesn't mean you won't enjoy going go karting and just being a bit crazy on a track. You know, you're going to have those things where actually everything. Even if we lose jobs, uh, in certain sectors, human experiences will grow I think beyond go karting into other areas as well. I don't know if you agree, but I think it's.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah, I think you know, leisure is certainly uh, we are lucky. I think in the experience, you know, yeah, you can go and get some AI goggles and things but I don't think any of those are quite the same as you know, the real thrill of you know, going on a zip wire yourself or you know, going go karting. So I think you know, we'll, we feel strong, you know, pretty positive about that. Um, I think actually we could help augment some of the track experience um, and actually improve it. Um, so you know, that again that for us is, would be a really real positive. But um, and uh, you know, I think actually the growth that's been in experiential leisure for a long time, I think that's the point. People are looking at these things to get more social time, have a better work life balance and so hopefully that means you've all got more time to go go karting.

Co-host: Specifically go karting. Absolutely.

Dominic Wilkinson: There is nothing else.

STOIX: And what are the common misconceptions about business from, from people outside of the industry and the business that they sort of think looking in, do you think?

Co-host: Um,

Dominic Wilkinson: I think um. I mean I get a lot of WhatsApp from uh, the, the mum group, uh, at my son's school because um, you know, their son's been invited for a go karting party and they want to know how dangerous it is and is it okay for him to go and so on and so forth. So I think you know, people, people kind of see this sort of petrol head idea and think it's, you know, it's, it's dangerous. Um, and actually uh, you know, it's, it's not, you know, we it's the number one thing on our, on our uh, on our board agenda is health and safety. Uh, it's the training in our teams is, is phenomenal. Um, but I think that is a conception, a misconception that you know, it's dangerous. But I think, you know, anything's dangerous if you, if you, if you're negligent. Um, I think so. I think that would, that would be my number one thing. That's the biggest thing that you ever get.

Co-host: Um, um, in terms of the longer term, obviously you kind of went towards that exit. There have been things that you've kind of now learned that you're taking forward for the next five years that you're kind of excited about as well. Towards, towards the future.

Dominic Wilkinson: Um, yeah, I mean not aimed at an exit, um, but just in terms of, just within our business. We've got a huge amount of things we're looking at just to make sure that for the next four or five years, well not really even five years, but just for the long term that we build a really sustainable business that kind of um, remains attractive. Um, you know, as I say, we are considerably bigger than anybody else in the uk but we can't rest on our laurels. It's kind of, you know, one thing that we see differently now is we probably many years ago used to look at go karting and people would talk about a competitor being the one man band down the road who's, who's got a go karting track. Actually now it's anything experiential leisure. So you've got all different concepts constantly popping up, um, from you know, indoor, you know, bowls to shooting, you know, whatever it may be. There's so many other things now and I think just more generally, you know, we recognize that we are uh, fighting for consumer pound and you know, that's getting harder and harder for people, um, with inflation and all the things that are going on outside. So for us it's about how do we make our product better and better and better. Yeah. Um, and so we're doing a whole host of things like that. We, if you look probably five years ago we were 95% petrol, um, we're now about 65% electric. Um, so that creates a really different atmosphere in our tracks but it also enables us to do lots of different things. So we just put in a new track management system that kind of acts a bit like the safety car in Formula one or the safety lights in Formula one. Um, so it's things that are designed to actually just give Consumers a better experience when they come to us. Um, so I think that's really where the focus has been is just in terms of how do we take the product to the next level by using tech, by understanding what consumers want and making sure that we deliver it consistently.

STOIX: Um, going back to kind of your career trajectory which was kind of M and A and sort of Big four, which is I guess a common path on route to a CFO role. Um, if you were talking to kind of the, the aspirational CFO market who want to become sort of a, you know, a mid market private equity CFO of which we speak to a lot of people who, that is where they want to be. What would, what are the key attributes and skills you need to kind of pick up on the way? Obviously you get a great training in a big four, you learn kind of what good looks like etc. But yeah, in 2026. Because often I think the, what the perception is is you kind of have to do everything. You have to be able to be very hands on into the detail building financial models one minute and then the next you're, you're at the, the board level talking to the investors.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah. And for me I think that's what, um, that's what makes it exciting for me is that huge variation. Um, I've got friends that are CFOs of much larger businesses where they seem to spend nine hours a day on conference calls, in meetings. Um, and not really that hands on. Whereas I kind of like the kind of diving into the model. It uh, really helps you to understand um, the dynamics of the business and understand how things interact, um, and how the dial moves in one area. If you change something over there. And I think there's lots of things that you get by kind of working in that environment where you are quite hands on. But then it is about the storytelling and about how do I take that information, what can I find from it, but how do I, how do I present it in a way that is interesting but is also insightful in terms of how can we do things differently and better. Um, and I think you know, you talk about the careers before that. You know, it is, that is one of the benefits I think of when you work with the big four and you're. It doesn't matter whether it's audit, whether it's M and A, you work with a whole host of different businesses. Um, and so you pick up little bits from each one and work out how you're going to take that and how's that relevant and how is it not? But I think it also gives you a good idea about standards and just the way different people work. Um, I think you're most definitely, for me, the cfo, um, I think not just in private equity, but I think it's gone from the day where you kind of had the nerdy spreadsheet guy to, you know, who didn't have a personality. And I think now actually you, you have to have both because being able to articulate that and not just to a private equity house, but I think it's how you actually can tell that story to the wider team, um, and get them to understand. We had a general manager conference this week and they are used to being in their sites and they understand their sites really, really well. But trying to tell the story as to why we do things the way we are and how different things that might appear, that it doesn't necessarily benefit the long term performance of their business. Actually, you know, you need to be able to talk to them and break it down to really, really simple things. Not, um, so simple, but, you know, they're not. You know, it's very different when you're talking to a private equity house where you're generally talking to people who are very financially literate. Um, you've got to be able to flex that style and change how you do it. And I think that that's the key thing for uh, CFO today is that ability to be in the detail but also be able to explain it to the board, but also be able to explain to people who are probably not as financially experienced.

Co-host: Is part of the advice then for people that are on that journey to the CFO role is to try to understand what their preferences are. Because as you say, you love getting into the detail and being strategic. You've got friends that are, um, on maybe the conference calls all day. Everyone's different, aren't they? So it's kind of about understanding what type of CFO do you want to be? What are your preferences before you go into a role where it's maybe not the right, not the right thing for them as well.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah, I think, I think that's absolutely right. Um, yeah, there will be some people who don't want to dive into, to the spreadsheet. And um, I know quite a few of those as well. And so yes, private equity probably wouldn't be for those individuals, but I think also for me it is about putting yourself out of your comfort zone. Um, which, you know, um, probably not necessarily by design has happened quite a long way through but it is definitely those moments where I've kind of learned a huge amount and things that I probably avoided earlier in my career actually, I now really enjoy because I've. You've been thrown in and you realize actually it's not quite as bad as you think. So I think yes, you can decide what are your skills, but I don't think you should be afraid to jump outside of that and, and do things differently.

Co-host: Yeah. Take risks, basically, in some ways.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah, measured risks.

Co-host: Yeah, said the finance person. Yeah. Okay.

STOIX: Um, and what else would you say are kind of key things to think about? Being a CFO in 2026 to, I guess, yeah, be really successful?

Dominic Wilkinson: Um, I think it's definitely looking ahead. I think trying to look at what the headwinds are. I think looking within the business and really understanding the business and partnering really, really well with other parts of the business to identify what are the opportunities for growth within the business. So you know that data analytics piece, using that information to really, really look at how you can drive value, how you can drive change. Um, and look at. And sometimes it's. I think it's looking and not it not being afraid to say we didn't do this well enough. Um, we learn a huge amount from the things that haven't gone quite as well as we would have wanted. Um, and I think going back and looking at those things is key. So I think the data driven approach is only going to get more, increase, um, to increase further.

Co-host: Um,

Dominic Wilkinson: But I think it is looking ahead. Change comes so quickly. I mean, I think two years ago if you'd said to people, AI, Yeah, I don't think anybody would have thought it would have happened as quickly as it had it. You know, certainly to me it felt like it came overnight. It wasn't there one day and the next day everybody was talking about chat gbt. And if you hadn't used it, you know, you were, uh, you were behind the curve. So I think that trying to look forward to see what is the next big thing to come through, um, it's not always easy, but I think it's, it's kind of lifting your head up and not just looking internally, but looking externally to say what might change and therefore how do we need to be nimble enough to change quickly.

Co-host: I was going to say on, on AI within the business, it sounds like you're obviously quite, you know, passionate about it as well. Do you also now within the business just have that culture of we, we want everyone to be aware of this tool and the opportunities do you almost encourage usage or is it slightly different in the culture that you've got?

Dominic Wilkinson: I suppose it's, uh, I mean I wouldn't, it'd be not everyone, um, it's um, you know, different people in different roles will need to, will benefit from it more than others. Um, but certainly amongst the sort of senior leadership team where um, we're kind of looking strategically the business rather than, you know, if you're in one of our sites and you're customer facing, you probably don't, you don't need to use it. And that is obviously the vast majority of our, of our employees. Um, but certainly anybody who's running a department or, um, you know, they are looking at it and working with us to kind of put suggestions forward. Um, which is why, you know, we are looking at where we can put it everywhere in our business. But you know, again we have to be measured. We don't want people kind of running off down rabbit holes. We have to kind of have a priority list that we've agreed these are the priorities. But you know, we want people to embrace it and work with us when we're, when we're looking to do it.

STOIX: And obviously yours is a people business as well. It's a people heavy business. Yeah, you've had the challenges of kind of NI increases, minimum wage, all of these bits and pieces that are kind of eroding margins, etc. How do you, how do you think about it from a people perspective marrying that up with. You've obviously got the financial lens and. Yeah, I'm interested how those two things interact in your thinking.

Dominic Wilkinson: Yeah, I mean they have been, um, you know, those two things in isolation have been our biggest cost increases over the last three or four years. Um, and it's, it's been very significant. Um, we touched earlier about the health and safety thing. You know, the answer for us cannot be to, to cut hours. Um, you know that, that isn't ever going to be something we can do. We've got a, there's the health and safety, but there's also the way we all stay ahead of the market and be competitive is to ensure that we deliver the best service, the best customer experience. Um, you know, you kind of live or live or die by your NPS school. Um, and we're very proud of ours. And so, you know, whilst that has happened, we've actually looked at, uh, well, how do, what do we need to do to really drive the trot? I think the moment you start cutting back because of those things, you, it becomes a Bit of a zero sum game. So we're looking at, well how do we, how do we get certain efficiencies in. So we are looking at you know, the style of our sites. Um, you know, do we need some sort of concept site so that, you know, what, what should the customer flow look like? How, how should we do things differently? Um, but, but we focus on the hospitality side of it. You know you talk about go karting. We see ourselves very much as a hospitality business. Um, and so yes it's frustrating when you see costs increase um, in any part of the business. But we have to look at how do we drive the top line by giving people the best customer experience, making uh, them want to come back more frequently than they do now. Um, so that's our big driver. Rather than okay, we've got costs, we need to reduce it because we need to um, have that customer experience and we need to have the focus on health and safety. So um, it's, we have to look at it slightly differently I think.

Co-host: Are there, are there ways that you can offset some of uh, those cost increases by maybe the shift to electric, solar power, wind power, I don't know, other things that you can do that kind of almost drive better results from a sort of cost saving on fuel to electric, solar, etc to help? Or is that kind of just part of the long term plan as well?

Dominic Wilkinson: Uh, yeah, so we, I mean we look at um, you know you have to have a focus on individual cost lines but ultimately it's, you know, we look at each site as a, as a sort of income generating unit and how do we get those economics to stack up? Um, so you know, over, in recent years we've kind of looked at uh, you know we've implemented, uh, we've got a thing called Puck Club that we've put into a number of our sites. We've, if you go to our sites now you see arcade machines and various other things. So we've gone to well, how do we actually maximize the opportunity? How do we maximize the dwell time for our customers in a way that we probably might not have done a few years ago? Um, or certainly it wasn't as such a strong focus. Um, so you know, our food and beverage offering has changed materially and you know, is now uh, really, really good. Um, and so we kind of look at how do we offset that by finding other revenue channels from the same customer base.

Co-host: Yeah, exciting.

Dominic Wilkinson: Um, yeah, I mean we're about to open um, end of this month. I was gonna say next month, but it's 1st of May today, isn't it? End of this month we're opening up in Brent Cross shopping, um, center. And you know, there we've got uh, our uh, ah, normal standard go karting track, but we've also then got a thing called mini vaults, which is for children below 8, which before we didn't service. We can have. I think it's eight lanes of bowling. So we've got full bowling in there. This is a whole load of things that we, you know, you now go see in a team sports site that you wouldn't have seen in, uh, in our legacy site. So, yeah, that's the way we kind of approach it.

Co-host: Nice.

STOIX: Yeah. When you're opening up something that's kind of brand new, what, what's going through your head as CFO on kind of running up to, and leading up to a big opening.

Dominic Wilkinson: Um, I hope my feasibility was right.

STOIX: It's, you know, it's uh, it will be tested.

Dominic Wilkinson: It will be tested. Um, so, yeah, I mean the big thing for us is, um, is that first bit of work to what, what do we need it to, to give us the return we need for that level of capex. And when you're opening something, um, completely from scratch, you are, uh, you know, we've got benchmarks, um, you know, we've got another 37 tracks that we can look at and say, how do we think this one's going to go? Um, but you know, you always, um, have an element of uncertainty and you hope things go the way you want them to. Um, so that's, that's the key thing. I mean they always become as you'd expect. It's a huge team effort. Um, and this one is going to be very, very different from anything else that we've done before. So, you know, it is really, really exciting. It's uh, we've got a meeting there next week, but I've sort of seen videos of it and it, you know, it is phenomenal. It's really moved on our product, um, which has been a big part of, as I say, you know, all these things that we look at. It's, it's a culmination of that. So, and it's a big team effort from, from across the whole business. Um, so very exciting and I'd highly recommend it to you and all your listeners.

STOIX: It's, it's right on my train line actually. So we'll have to, yeah, stop off in Brent Cross one day. Um, are there any, um, pieces of advice that you've had from Former bosses or mentors that stuck in your head over the years that you kind of think about even now as a, as a cfo,

Dominic Wilkinson: um, that's ah, put me on the spot, isn't it? Yes, there are, I'm trying to think, if I can think what they are. Um, I think that the, the, the big thing for me is just being that focus on relationships, particularly as, you know, the cfo. I think it's easy, you know, as we said at the start, to be, to be pigeonholed as a type. But you know, you can go and look at numbers, you know, whether we're acquiring sites, you can look at numbers all day. But actually going in and being able to just talk to people, but talk to them on, you know, at the right level, um, and building that strong relationship, um, is number one, it's that getting that trusted, um, relationship. I've been very lucky, um, in my time at Team Spot, I've worked with two really strong CEOs, and the ability to have that relationship, um, and work with them kind of hand in hand has been phenomenal. And that was when I first went into, uh, left PwC. That was the one thing, um, that I took away from, you know, all of my time working at PwC. Those really strong management teams that we used to work with were always the ones where you kind of used to look and think, well, those two kind of slightly joined at the hip. They, you know, they were really kind of almost interchangeable in terms of the way they work together.

STOIX: Yeah.

Dominic Wilkinson: Um, and I think that that for me was that which I guess didn't come from a mentor, but from my experience of working with teams. That was the ones that always, I always admired, but also the ones that seemed to be really successful were those ones that were really kind of joined in, um, joined up. And you know, when I say joined up, it doesn't have to be that you agree with each other on everything. It's about, you know, it's absolutely great to not agree, but it's understanding why you don't agree and what your different perspectives are because you'll learn something from that rather than just working with somebody where you're completely the same, um, and being able to then accept where it isn't necessarily going to go the way you want it to. So I think that that kind of relationship is the number one for me. Um, yeah.

STOIX: Dominic, thank you so much for coming in today.

Dominic Wilkinson: Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.