Will Bamber
The People-First System That Keeps Clients Coming Back
Will Bamber is the fifth generation behind his family's New Zealand hunting safari — a former sheep station, wool presses still hanging in the lodge, that his family turned into a red-stag operation in the early 1980s. But he's not a typical lodge owner. He's a professional racing driver in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo and a GT championship in North America, he came up racing go-karts in New Zealand and five years professionally in Asia, and he builds the company's software himself. The result is a roughly six-person core team — twins Tom and Angus who started at fifteen, his wife Sarah on the US side — that runs like a far bigger outfit: a cloud ERP that turns a custom, fully branded proposal around in seconds, post-hunt invoices that go out on a button-press, and AI that pulls invoice data and client research so nobody is buried in admin.
What makes the episode land is that the systems sit on top of a culture, not the other way around. Will is adamant that people come first — take away every tool and "if you just do the fundamentals well, you're going to be in a really good place." The data backs the instinct: red stag is 71% of revenue, return rates run 60 to 70%, and the calendar is booked to 2030, so the family can now choose which trade shows actually generate long-term clients instead of one-offs. The second half is the trade-show grind — two months of back-to-back Safari Club dinners, beer in the booth, and the realization that the relationship beats the trophy every time. The most-talked-about thing on the stand isn't the 700-inch red stag; it's the possum and the wallaby. And the through-line Will keeps returning to is that protecting the team for the long haul — and keeping a multifaceted life — is what makes the whole thing sustainable.
People first, systems second — do the fundamentals well.
Will is blunt about it: take away all the software and automations, and if you just do the fundamentals well, you'll be in a really good place. The systems amplify a great team; they don't replace one. The best feedback the safari gets is almost always about the people.
Build the system so a six-person team runs like a big one.
Will built a cloud ERP that turns a custom, fully branded proposal around in five to ten seconds instead of an afternoon of PDFs, sends post-hunt invoices on a button-press, and lets the accountant track everything instantly — all without adding overhead or convoluted departments to a lean team.
If you don't track the data, you don't really have a business.
With real data, Will can tell you red stag is 71% of revenue, which trophies are taken most and when, and — crucially — which trade shows generated the best long-term clients versus one-offs. That visibility is where the marketing and operations decisions actually get made.
Use AI where it removes the admin drag.
The biggest AI win isn't in the field — it's the back office. Vendor invoices get their details extracted and tagged to the right project automatically; client research and even personality cues help the team communicate better. For an outfit with heavy single-transaction receivables and an aging founder doing the books, that's real time back.
Your past clients are your best marketing channel.
Return rates run 60 to 70%, people come back every couple of years, and they bring friends. With no Africa-style species count to lean on, the repeat business comes from the experience bundling together — good product, good guides, and a genuinely fun time worth recommending.
At the trade show, the relationship beats the trophy.
Two months of back-to-back Safari Club shows, beer and New Zealand wine in the booth, and the people Will catches up with every year include clients who haven't hunted in decades. The approach isn't extract-and-sell — it's genuine connections that pay off in word of mouth.
Differentiation wins attention — the possum out-draws the 700-inch stag.
The family had a 700-inch red stag on the booth and almost nobody asked about it — there are stags and elk everywhere. The possum and the wallaby stopped roughly 150 people cold. When everyone has the same trophies, being different is the whole marketing edge.
Protect the team for decades, not just the season.
With an average team age around 30 and guides starting families, Will is getting ahead of burnout — working later in the season so people can take real weekends, cycling time off, and building succession. Happy team, long-term business.
A multifaceted life lowers the pressure and raises performance.
When racing was Will's only thing, the desperation — "if this doesn't work I've got nothing" — actually hurt his performance. Knowing the ranch and other ventures are there freed him to work as hard as he can and let the results come. Different avenues keep him relaxed and sharp.
Welcome back to the Hunt for Success podcast. Today I have Will Bamber. Will and his family own one of my favorite places in the world — a hunting safari in New Zealand. Will, how long has this been in your family?
It’s gone through its iterations because of the family history. Now being fifth generation, the land’s in a trust through my great-grandfather. The original trading company was actually called AU Trading, and you may have seen a lot of the old history in the lodge — the wool presses from when it was a sheep station. The safari side came about in the early eighties.
That was interesting to me when I met your dad and was at your lodge — it’s been in the family a hundred-and-something years. Before we get into the lodge, you’re an interesting guy. Tell people how you got into racing and what you do.
“Interesting” is probably a decent word. I live a very multifaceted life. I have a professional racing career — we grew up racing go-karts in New Zealand, it’s been a big family thing all our lives. I lived in Asia for five years racing professionally, then came to the States around COVID to find new opportunities, met my wife, and now I race in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo and a GT championship in North America. My brother races too, so it’s a big family thing. And I also do a lot of software development for the company — ERP and CRM, a lot of automations to make our small company as efficient as possible.
I’d love to be in a business like that — working inside something you love. Do you ever worry it becomes work?
In each field I’m a creative person — I like new challenges and making solutions with people. On the hunting side, it’s cool to have equity in building something special; the return on that time is amplified. The team in New Zealand is very young and very close — my wife, the twins Tom and Angus, their partners. A small core team, always a group chat flowing. You could get burnt out, sure — some of our guides used to hunt all year round. But over time they’ve taken more joy in passing it to guests, taking new people out, than in doing it themselves. I do the same with racing — I coach a lot, and there’s more reward in passing knowledge through to other people than in another perfect lap.
Your team feels like a family, and your dad sets that tone.
It’s a reflection of my dad — he worked the land, he’s a hard man, the type who can meet you off the street and you immediately don’t want to disappoint him. But day one it’s been about people. In the off-season — New Zealand summer — old friends from his high school days come over and they’re grilling outside; that place is never empty. The hunting slows down but it’s all about sharing. That culture is reflected in the whole team now.
We built a cloud ERP to handle everything — CRM, admin, sales, leads and opportunities through the pipeline to finance. Now we have data, so it’s really cool to see the return rates: 60, 70% of people come back, often every couple of years. There’s no Africa-style species count, but people want to come back and they bring friends because they have such a fun time. It’s all bundled together really well at the moment.
You’ve built a great culture and now you’re layering systems on top. How much emphasis do you put on the systems to grow?
People always come first. You can take away all these systems, and if you just do the fundamentals well, you’re going to be in a really good place. We can’t do it without great people who know our land. The most feedback we get is about the people. The hunting industry’s tricky — a lot of people have great trophies — so it’s really about where you’re doing it and who you’re doing it with.
The software has been very undervalued in the hunting industry. Say you ask me to bring a group down — in the past that was an email, a PDF, a manual quote. Now we produce a customized, fully branded proposal in five to ten seconds. Post-hunt, instead of Dad or me making an invoice, the team fills in what you took — all the products and pricing are in there — and presses a button, and you get your invoice automatically. The accountant tracks it instantly. A very lean model with a lot of transparency.
I talk to a lot of business owners — numbers and data are the big thing. The more you can look at it and tweak it, the more you control your marketing and operations. If you don’t track the data, you don’t really have a business.
Exactly. Right now I can tell you red stag is 71% of our business, down to the value. I can tell you what trophy sizes get taken most and when, where we see elk, how to look after herd numbers. And even with acquisitions — which trade show generated the best people long-term, not just one-offs. It’s putting a method to the madness after all these years.
I’m lucky that from my own software ventures, AI is becoming very useful — mostly in processing and admin. We can do lookups so we get to know who a guest is, even personality traits so we communicate better. And instead of someone manually typing a vendor invoice into the accounting system, we use AI to extract the details, make it usable data, and tag it against a project so we can see profitability. With heavy single-transaction receivables and Dad getting older, that’s where technology helps the most.
You guys have such a good thing, but at the Safari Club show I didn’t realize how much competition you have on your island. Every aisle, another New Zealand outfitter.
There are 38 or 40 at SCI now, which is wild. Maybe five to ten are the original, significant outfitters doing 50-plus hunts a year, and a lot are smaller — ten or fewer, which is where everyone started. It would be very hard to get started now. I’m lucky and blessed for the groundwork my parents did being over very early. But the networking side is tough, and I don’t think Kiwis realize how much is involved — if you don’t get out and meet people at the bar or the restaurant, you’ll end up by the bathrooms in the corner. Our US marketing expense from catching up with people over dinners is insane, but it’s the least we can do, and it’s fun.
I was watching you guys — the shows start in January and run through February. It’s also a party. How do you do it?
Our culture is to be fun — we’re a luxury lodge where you can kick your shoes off, have a margarita outside, and speak freely. Our booth always has beers and New Zealand wine. But honestly, we’re lucky to make these connections — people from different industries all over the world, genuine relationships we keep for decades. Of course it has to be a mutual transaction; there has to be a sale. But we catch up with people every year who haven’t hunted as clients in decades, and that relationship is genuine. The smallest guest and the largest hunter get the same experience — that’s how Granddaddy taught us to do it.
Last time I want some possums — you had one mounted at your show and I said I want one.
The possum and the wallaby are single-handedly the most stopping thing at a trade show I’ve ever seen. Possums in New Zealand are invasive — no predators, so they breed fast and destroy the forests. Frankly the best thing for numbers is to hunt them; when we were kids we’d shoot 50 to a hundred a night and pluck them, because possum is about the second-warmest wool in the world. Last year we had a 700-inch red stag on the booth, and almost nobody asked about it — there are stags and elk everywhere. But the possum? I had maybe 150 people stop, talk, and want to come down. It was all the possum.
What’s the story with the cage your dad built?
Classic “why I love my dad” project. He wanted to bring the possums to the people — if you feed them they’re actually pretty kind, they’ll jump on your lap. But they’re feral, so the domesticated ones get beaten up by the jealous ones. So Dad built this cage — not just a cage, basically Fort Knox, all custom steel, so big and heavy. And it never worked; the possums always got out, they’re sneaky. So where you saw the possum cage is now a very expensive chicken coop.
One thing Dad and I are getting ahead of: I’m now married and trying to have work-life balance and start a family, and a lot of our guides are starting families too. Our average age is about 30, so we have a group who could be doing this for decades — and we want to protect that. Even something simple: next year we’ll work later in the season when it’s colder, so people can get a real weekend. You drop guests at the airport Friday and then spend time with your kids and your wife. All over the world people just jam it in as long as possible and get burned out fast. Happy wife, happy life — so we’re building that balance for the long term.
It’s really cool what you’re doing. You’ve got a great business, you’ve been in other businesses, and in the hunting world it’s not every day the lodge owners are also business people. And of course it’s pretty cool to say you race for Lamborghini.
It’s very lucky. My wife Sarah helps me keep things balanced. When I just did racing, I’d get a lot more nervous — you go down a desperate path, “if this doesn’t work I’ve got nothing, my life is defined by this.” Doing other things changed that. Now I really appreciate it and just enjoy it, and that’s actually raised my performance significantly, because I’m not worried about what people think — I’ll just work my ass off to see how good I can be. Knowing the ranch and other ventures are there is a blessing. Different avenues keep me relaxed, and it helps with burnout — I can change the mindset and balance around a bit instead of just hunting, hunting, hunting.
Well, I appreciate you being on the show. I love your company, I love your place — it’s one of my favorite places in the world — and I’d love to come to one of your races. Thanks, Will, for coming on.
Let me know when the next time is going to be. I’ll be right here with you, mate. Thank you.
Will Bamber
Pro Racing Driver & Co-Owner, Family Hunting Safari (New Zealand)
Lives a deliberately multifaceted life. Will is a professional racing driver — currently in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo championship plus a GT championship in North America — after growing up racing go-karts in New Zealand and spending five years racing professionally in Asia before moving to the United States around COVID. He's also the fifth generation behind his family's New Zealand hunting safari, a former sheep station the family has held for well over a century and turned into a red-stag operation in the early 1980s. On top of both, he builds the company's software himself — a cloud ERP/CRM and the automations that let a roughly six-person core team run like a much larger one.
Grew up hunting from bikes and horseback on the family's remote ranch from the age of two or three, in a New Zealand town of about 40,000 people. These days he barely pulls the trigger himself — he says he gets more of a kick out of seeing animals in the wild and watching guests take the trophy. Knows the land's numbers cold (red stag is 71% of the business), grew up shooting 50 to 100 possums a night and plucking them for their wool, and counts the possum and wallaby — not the 700-inch red stag — as the biggest draws on the trade-show booth.
Will is the rare hunting-lodge owner who's also a serious operator. He talks openly about building a cloud ERP for a tiny team, using AI to strip the admin drag out of invoicing and client research, and why data — not gut — now drives which trade shows the family works and which trophies they manage for. Underneath all the systems is a culture his father Paul built: people first, fundamentals first, and relationships that outlast any single hunt. The throughline he keeps returning to is that a multifaceted life actually lowers the pressure and raises his performance — on the track and on the land.
“From our land, it's genuinely very pleasurable to see the animals and watch guests appreciate them. I get more of a kick out of that than personally pulling the trigger anymore.”
Keep hunting.
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