Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

Europe Through the Back Door (ETBD) is a complicated business employing about 90 people, often through turbulent and challenging times. Like many fun and entrepreneurial companies, it was started by a person who’s not necessarily a great businessman. Perhaps luckily for ETBD, I’m in Europe for four months a year (and on the road speaking in the USA for another month or so). Considering the strong leadership team we have at Europe Though the Back Door,  my extended absences may well be a boon to the company.

At ETBD we have 90 employees, 15 department heads, and a “business team” of five that functions as the “virtual CEO” when I’m gone. This photo was taken during a short Business Team retreat we had at my house between my two trips this season. These people have been partners of mine for 15 to 20 years on average, and ETBD has grown over the last two decades with their vision and leadership. As I abandon my business for another two months while I’m in Europe, I’d like to introduce you to them.

Rich Sorensen is my marketing right-hand man and builder and protector of the brand. He came to us before we understood the concept of departments. Rich and I have spent many days going back and forth on the Edmonds-Kingston ferry hammering out the vision and marketing strategy of our company. Rich and I write marketing copy as if one.

Karen Scholl is our CFO. We had a hard time finding a good fit to run our accounting department until Karen came. When she joined us, I didn’t believe in numbers. Accounting bored me. Today, I’m a believer. And, regardless of the goofy business storms that slap against her office, she emerges with smart and reliable numbers — and with business wisdom keeping us both legal and thoroughly in the black.

Brooke Burdick started our website back when websites were novel. He has overseen its growth as we’ve morphed from a primarily brick-and-mortar company to a national enterprise with a $50 million annual gross and a quarter-million traveling customers on our email list. Today Brooke is our tech visionary who oversees and maximizes the digital amplification of our content.

Mary Romano is our human resources queen who has masterfully built a staff of 90 that functions as a caring and productive team. It’s a challenge to have an idealistic culture of 20 in a business, but it’s really tough to grow to 90. We still manage to make 1+1=3 when it comes to getting the work done. Mary keeps us all following our “cultural code” — great people who are enthusiastic about their work and their colleagues — so we can all take pride in our accomplishments while maintaining a work-life balance.  At ETBD, our summer staff picnic is considered a get-together among friends, not just a gathering of workers and managers.

Anne Kirchner manages ETBD. She came when we had about eight employees and is to ETBD what a keel is to a sailboat — and what George Martin was to the Beatles. If this company has a mother, it’s Anne. She provides the sanity and stability for a gang of travelers. Anne complements me like a match made in heaven and without her, I can’t imagine an ETBD. Every time I’m about to shoot myself in the foot, she intercepts the bullet.

A key to our business happiness is that we are privately held (that’s me) rather than publicly held (which would mean we’d have to change our ethics to meet our stockholders’ profit needs rather than practice our fun-loving style of guerrilla capitalism). And we’d not be able to produce what we do for our travelers without these five friends and partners — the Europe Through the Back Door Business Team. Rich, Karen, Brooke, Mary, and Anne: Thanks. I’ll send postcards.

After a short but delightful break back in Seattle, I’m returning to Europe today. It’s my first time on Icelandair, connecting through Reykjavík. I find sharing my experiences and lessons learned on this blog — and reading your comments — curiously enjoyable. I’m sure I’ll be blogging furiously over the next sixty days of travel.

Here’s the plan: I’m flying to London today, sleeping in York, then hopping aboard one of those Rick Steves Best of Scotland bus tours (under a pseudonym, so the group doesn’t know I’ll be joining them). Then I’ll spend a week in Berlin and Prague before meeting my co-author, Steve Smith, in Alsace to work on our France guidebook. Steve and I then join producer Simon Griffith and the crew to film two new TV shows around the Loire (shows we’re nicknaming “Great 17th-Century Cribs”) before I meet up with Trish Feaster to be the first to use our brand-new Rick Steves’ Northern European Cruise Ports book (which will be overnighted to me, hot off the press). We’ll jump ship near the end of the cruise in St. Petersburg for a Russian adventure before flying home (with a two-day layover in Iceland).

These itineraries are a tricky balance of guidebook and bus tour research; scouting for upcoming TV scripts I plan to write and produce; actual TV production; and just flat-out enjoying the fun places my travel dreams are taking me. For this trip, along with producing two new TV shows in France, I’ll be working hard on our next new guidebook — Rick Steves’ Scotland. And I’ll be scouting upcoming TV shows in Scotland, Berlin, Prague, Alsace, and St. Petersburg. (This work is never-ending. You’re welcome to send me comments of sympathy.)

I hope you and your globetrotting friends can travel along with me this summer. Please share this link without anyone you think might enjoy it. You’ll next hear from me in Old York.

Ciao,

Rick

Each year, my art and marketing team put together a 96-page, full-color booklet that showcases our tour program. We could have the best tours in the world (actually, we do) and not sell very many without the help of that team’s amazing talent to help show them off. Their work is made easier by the wonderful photographs of Dominic Arizona Bonuccelli.

A fun chore for me is to survey the possible cover photos and help pick the best. Here you can see our favorite shots for the last three years (top row), and the six top suggested photos for the cover of our 2014 tour catalog. Which of the six photos makes you want to buy a tour?

We ended up choosing Porto — that’s the one with all the old boats that ship kegs of port wine down the Douro River to Portugal’s second city…and a real Back Door.