5 things travelling can teach you about entrepreneurship
“If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” – Dr Martin Luther King Jr
This quote is true for travelling and entrepreneurship. The idea in both is to keep moving forward. If you look closely, travelling and running a business have a lot of similarities. Travelling teaches you certain lessons that no B-School can teach. So, let us look at five things that travelling can teach you about entrepreneurship.
1. Not everything is in your control
Human nature is to always be in control of everything in life. We would love for things to be in our control. This is possible neither with business nor with life. Sometimes, in business and life, you are put in situations that are simply out of your control, and there is nothing you can do about it. Travel is something that teaches you this perfectly. While travelling, you may come across flight delays, flights getting cancelled, hotels not finding your reservations, the weather might sometimes disrupt your sightseeing plans, and so on. And it is ok for things not to go your way. It teaches you about adjusting and moving on. This concept will make you a better entrepreneur.
2. It’s OK to take risks
Often trips can be adventurous, and the same with businesses as well. Usually, the fear of losing something is what stops one from taking risks. Taking risks now and then is very important both in life and in business. Taking adventurous trips is a reminder of how fruitful taking risks can be. It will help you lose the fear. Risks are what define you as a traveller and as an entrepreneur. Always remember that every failure teaches you something and these learnings make you a stronger person and a better entrepreneur.
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3. Understanding and managing people
One of the outcomes of travelling to a new place is exposure to a new culture – people from different backgrounds, languages, food habits etc. Often care needs to be taken on what can be done or not be done while interacting with the locals. Managing such boundaries while interacting with locals can be a fascinating experience. A similar experience can also happen when dealing with understanding people from different backgrounds and managing them accordingly at the workplace. This is especially significant in an entrepreneurial setup where you are dealing with people from vibrant backgrounds.
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4. To make the best out of the worst situation
Many times, entrepreneurs visualise something as their end goal but mould it according to constraints to deliver the best possible output. Change is the only constant in many start-ups. Especially in the ones involving novel products. Similar is the case with travelling. There are often many situations when the best-laid plans are upset by climatic or geopolitical disturbances. You can either get bogged down or quickly change your plan to spend the vacation differently; hence showing an entrepreneurial mindset. Often these are the things that stay memorable as compared to the regularly planned trips.
5. To keep your mind open
While travelling, we usually have certain checklists in mind that we try to follow; but we have to pay heed to any changes suggested by locals and adapt accordingly to have a good trip. Similarly, with businesses, there are so many people working together that there are bound to be several ideas. So, it is always a good idea to keep your mind open and listen to all the ideas and then make an informed decision. Such decisions can be fruitful in both travel and business.
Entrepreneurs have started understanding this important aspect of management learning and are looking to inculcate a spirit of ‘intrapreneurship’ within their teams. For this reason, team outbounds and off-sites have become a mandate in some companies. If they are coupled with activities, it’s most beneficial to build closely-knit teams.
Vineet Rajan is a Co-founder of ScoutMyTrip. He is brought up in South Delhi. Vineet is today directly managing a team of around 40 members, who look into the core operations of ScoutMyTrip, which is in the travel and mobile tech space. Vineet has road-tripped over 300,000 kilometres on two wheels and four. In 2016, by following his passion, he went back to his love of biking and co-founded ScoutMyTrip with a long-time biker buddy Deepak Anant.
