What was the moment when you decided to leave the finance world to become an entrepreneur?
I’m not sure if I can define one moment but after a year of having different experiences and being frustrated about it, within a month, I did an online course in Social Entrepreneurship that required a real-life case study.
I started this real-life case study for this business that I am now working on. Towards the end of this course, it became so compelling and obvious to me that this was what I had to do. I had to make this case study real.
It was not a single moment. It was a combination of things.
Tell me about this frustration that you mentioned.
The first was as an annoyed traveler/banker working in finance who found it difficult to book a vacation to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.
The second one was learning about the exploitation of porters working on Mt Kilimanjaro which really touched and frustrated me especially after meeting the people and hearing their stories.
Thirdly was realising that telling the world about what I saw would actually get my local guides and others into trouble. I started to realise that this was not just about me.
So, you resigned from your job and left the finance world?
Yes! *laughs* But it was a process of one year and a whole month. I was ready to do it.
What was scary was going into a completely new industry which you know nothing about, especially if you’ve been quite far up on the corporate hierarchy. You suddenly become very vulnerable as you are starting from scratch again.
You completely need to change your social circle. People you may have hung out with and your old colleagues may not understand why you are making this step.
Don’t just fear other cultures. Be broad, open. Be human.
Can you share some challenges that you have faced?
I’ve heard many people say, oh, yet another one. And rightfully so, especially in the travel startup industry. People are sick of yet another travel platform, of people coming and going. People would tell me, you are going to fail, you won’t succeed.
It was more about breaking through this cultural barrier and keeping firm, staying with my vision and beliefs, despite what others had to say.
How has coronavirus impacted Fair Voyage?
As no one is travelling and there are no new bookings, the whole travel industry is just doing administrative work, dealing with cancellations and rebooking.
We are fortunate that we didn’t have any cancellations and we have sufficient funding. We have used the time to do a complete strategy review. We are thinking about how we can go to the next level, what kind of new products we can develop. We will refocus on our client strategy.
What have been some of the highlights in your journey thus far as an entrepreneur?
The biggest highlight is realising that becoming an entrepreneur is a tremendous personal growth journey. There is no way that anyone can become a successful entrepreneur without going really deep with personal growth.
Almost every day I keep learning, how to be a better communicator, how to be a conscious leader which I aspire to be, how do I deal with my emotions better, how do I not get frustrated, how to keep up the positive energy.
This constant personal growth is tremendously exciting.
Who or what has shaped who you are?
My travels. I am very fortunate that in my 20s I have been able to travel a lot and have lived in 9 different countries. My travels to Africa, climbing Kilimanjaro and perhaps even more so, cycling from Cairo to Cape Town, have fundamentally changed me.
I did a lot of research regarding the cycling trip to determine whether it was safe. I even wanted to cancel beforehand as I was particularly concerned about safety in countries like Sudan. Despite my supposed extensive travel background, I still had this prejudice for certain parts of Africa.
Yet, when I cycled through, I never felt afraid, except once on a highway, but that would’ve been the same even if I cycled on a highway in Switzerland. From a people point of view, I was never afraid. People were so honest. When someone lost their wallet, people would bring it back to us.
It was completely different from common perception. It helped me remove my last barrier of prejudice inside me. Don’t just fear other cultures. Be broad, open. Be human.
Invest in yourself, in your own personal growth, make time for yourself.
What is your view on failure, and can you share some experiences on failure?
You will fail. You just need to reframe things. My current approach is, every time something negative happens, whether I fail or get negative feedback, I don’t allow myself to go into this negative mode, to feel frustrated. I train my brain to immediately think about what I can learn from it.
It takes time but it is essential to see failure, not as a failure, but as a learning opportunity. It is essential as you cannot grow without failing.
In our case, we had to learn a lot about how the industry works and what kind of business model would work. When I started Kiligate, I was really naïve. We built this transparent, open platform, where you can see the local companies, make everything really cheap. That just didn’t work.
My assumption was everyone is as honest, responsible and ethical as I am. The problem is when you work with companies in certain other cultures that may have a different definition, or in general, people who do not have the same moral compass, you can easily get circumvented which is a big problem. As soon as they know who your local partner is, they go around you, so you end up with nothing, despite having done all the work.
That continues to be a big challenge.
I was also naïve to think that companies that got business from us would tell us. I was very naïve about that. Also, about the ability to make business work at very low prices. There, I learnt that it doesn’t work that way.
Lastly, we are very much about doing good as we are all about impact and sustainability. But we need to keep a business sense about it. Otherwise we cannot go very far. The reality is there is no sustainability without financial sustainability first. Despite all the talk about impact VC and funding out there, it is not that easy to access. You don’t just get money to do good. It is not how it works.
What is your hope for Fair Voyage?
My hope for Fair Voyage is that one way or another, we can make a positive contribution to the world and we will always keep the end goal in mind – which is that I want to live in a sustainable and peaceful world.
It can be very dangerous when one is too focused on one way of doing something and is unable to see that another approach may have a bigger impact. People in the sustainability field can be too narrow focused, focusing and optimising single KPIs while ignoring potentially harmful catastrophic side effects for other things that we don’t measure.
My hope is that we will always have a bigger perspective and that we always maximise our overall impact rather than just a few numbers that makes some good.
Any advice for other budding entrepreneurs out there?
- Get the right social network. Only surround yourself with positive people that support you in your mission. Go out and rebuild that network if you don’t have that yet. Stay away from naysayers because they will kill your optimism.
- If you don’t have one, get a good coach or mentor and pay for that as that is worth a lot.
- Invest in yourself, in your own personal growth, make time for yourself. If you don’t make time for yourself, you cannot do good work in the long run. You don’t want to be a slave in your own business. You want to be happy. So set these terms from the very beginning. If you work 24/7, you get a burnout. We should stay healthy and enjoy the journey.