For some people it can take decades to discover their true passion, but for Ross Dempster, managing director of Beyond Adventure, an outdoor adventure company in Perthshire, Scotland, he knew from the get-go that he wasn’t made for a life clocking up the hours in an office. In fact, it wasn’t long after university that he made the bold decision to switch his career.
“I tried to work in an office for a short time,” he says, recalling a stint with his father at an Edinburgh-based financial services company. “I was described as the man who looked the most uncomfortable in a suit.”
Having given up his office job, Dempster became an adventure sports guide, taking thrill-seekers out on trips, including sea kayaking and mountain biking. And after spending three years as general manager for an outdoor exploration company, he joined Beyond Adventure 17 months ago as MD, working alongside senior instructors Mark French and Grant Dolier.
The business, which has been running for 20 years, specialises in paddle sports from its base by the River Tay in Aberfeldy. It also coaches and guides new trainers, as well as working with several Scottish schools on their DofE award schemes.
“The main ethos of the company is that we have an inherent belief that people should be outdoors. People gain huge amounts of social skills and confidence when they spend a bit of time outside and disconnect from the rat race,” says Dempster.
“One of the things we always notice when people come up from the central belt or from down south is that over the course of a day [with us] they just completely mellow out. It’s amazing to see.”
It’s a business the father-of-two is clearly passionate about. But when the coronavirus crisis began it wasn’t long before he was questioning what the future for the company could hold. As school trips started to cancel and the news cycle became bleaker, it was clear that they were going to have to shut down operations for a period of time – a huge blow for the seasonal business.
“For us – and it sounds very selfish when I say this – but it was just terrible timing,” Dempster says. “When you come out of the winter, you really want that spring season to start floating your business again. We invested a lot over the winter. We employ staff full-time; a lot of businesses don’t do that. But we wanted to be the kind of business that supports people. It was hard knowing that all these amazing bookings that you’d worked so hard to get in place were just going to fall by the wayside. And you’re completely powerless to do anything about it. One minute, you’re trying to have some positive impact on your workforce or your products. Then all of a sudden it felt hopeless.”
Worried about what he could do to support his team, Dempster says the furlough scheme announcement was a jaw-dropping moment. “I thought, wow! This is giving me a vision of a future. As an employer, a lot of the pressure I was feeling was responsibility for the guys we employ.
“We were looking at the spreadsheets before the furlough scheme was announced and I thought, this isn’t looking pretty at all. We’d promised the guys that they would get full pay for March, and we’d work out what we were going to do from then. It had just been such a huge hit: the loss of business had been incredible. But straight away we thought, OK, instead of looking at just weeks ahead, we can look months ahead.”
Dempster’s next hope is that a flexi-furlough scheme will allow the team to start planning what to do next. “We could get back to work maybe part-time, do a couple of days’ work on the business. That for us would be pretty important as well, just so that we’d be ready when we get the OK to start again.”
In the meantime, though, he’s been helping out in the local community. “We started off by offering to do people’s shopping, or walk their dogs. And then straight away some great local organisations sprang into action as well. One guy started Feldy-roo (like Deliveroo but for Aberfeldy) to provide meals for the over-70s and people who couldn’t get out of the house. We’re quite rural, so Feldy-roo does deliveries all around, over a massive area. They’ve been delivering 300-400 meals every evening. People are volunteering time and helping out. One of our team, Mark, has been driving for them.
“In everyday life, before this happened, people loved to have a gripe, or a moan. But when there’s a real crisis it’s unbelievable how the community just backs each other up,” says Dempster.
The government furlough scheme: key facts
The UK government announced the employee scheme in March and has recently extended it until the end of October.
7.5 million workers and 1m businesses have been protected by the scheme across the UK.
Already the UK government has received claims for more than £10bn.
Workers across the UK now have the peace of mind that they can receive 80% of wages – up to £2,500 – until the end of October.
This is part of the multi-billion pound package of support and loans that the UK government is making available to workers and businesses all across the UK.
This advertiser content was paid for by the UK government. All in, all together is a government-backed initiative tasked with informing the UK about the Covid-19 pandemic.
