Startup journeys take at least ten years before founders can even really think about taking their hands off the steering wheel
In an industry as widespread as travel, things are changing constantly. The ‘sharing economy’ didn’t even exist before our lifetime but now we’re carpooling through an app and staying in strangers’ homes (whom we met online) instead of hotels.
Equally so, jobs in travel have evolved far beyond traditional tourism and hospitality. The industry is bursting with tech startups, keen to change the way we get from A to B. Working remotely isn’t just an ideal, it’s a genuine possibility.
Yet despite how much jobs have changed, the basics of how to get involved and on your way to building a fulfilling career you genuinely love are very much the same.
In my (admittedly few) years in the workforce, these four have helped shaped my budding career the most.
Be Patient & Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
This part is critical. Repeat it to yourself before you go to sleep at night. There is no such thing as an “overnight success”. Even the world’s most successful entrepreneurs started from the bottom. Startup journeys take at least ten years before founders can even really think about taking their hands off the steering wheel.
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As travel goes digital, it feels like there’s an app for just about anything… from checking into your flight to an audio translation service on your smartphone. We live in a fast-paced world where it’s easy to get bogged down by the illusion that all you need to hit the big leagues is one solid idea and a tech developer to execute it.
In truth, startups involve more blood, sweat and tears than a Taylor Swift concert. I remember a conference I once attended where Rod Cuthbert (Founder of Viator and CEO of Rome2rio.com) remarked, “no battle plan survives even the first day of battle”. The same goes for starting out in your career.
If some of the biggest names in the industry didn’t have a smooth journey, don’t expect yours to be any different!
Just like writing, the process of conceiving an idea to bringing it to life involves a whole lot of editing and revision. It will hardly ever be perfect from the get-go. Your career is going to zig and zag in more ways than you can ever anticipate… the end point may, at times, seem unclear.
No one’s journey is flawless and all great leaders have a story to tell. Some were fired, others had their businesses fail… but all these experiences fed into the people they are today.
Networking means putting yourself out there
This is an obvious (and hated) one that often gets overlooked. However, networking is not just about showing up to a high profile event and showering everyone in the room with your name card, before collecting theirs.
Networking is ultimately pointless unless you make the effort to maintain the relationship over time. Establishing a connection is a great way to not only seek other opportunities but it will also help you find your footing in the industry.
I am the first to admit that I was terrified the first time I attended a travel conference. Even just saying ‘hello’ was nerve-wracking. As a ‘token millennial’, I was convinced I simply didn’t belong in the bigwig world of corporate travel and I had nothing valuable to add beyond being a fly on the wall.
I was totally wrong. In being a millennial, many of the older professionals actually showed interest in my personal perspectives on travel. Suddenly, I was a source of ‘insider’ knowledge. Everyone wanted to know “what is it exactly that millennials want?”… a topic that still perplexes many.
As I have said before, the travel industry is constantly evolving. Every fresh perspective is valuable no matter how long you have ‘been in the game’. This is especially true in tech. Innovation drives the whole machine. Progress relies on a constant stream of fresh ideas and outlooks. Everyone in the room has a purpose and is ultimately on the same team when it comes to ensuring that the industry continues to thrive.
Over time, faces in the field will become increasingly familiar as you go to more and more work events. People that may have once seemed totally unapproachable, you’ll greet as an almost familiar friend.
Find a mentor that helps you develop as an individual, not just a worker
Not everyone is so lucky as I was to find someone who will willingly take you under his or her wing and teach you valuable lessons about the industry you are joining. But what might seem surprising is that there are way more people willing to help you build your career than you might expect.
If someone offers to mentor you, consider the proposal seriously… but don’t jump at the first person to come your way.
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A mentor isn’t necessarily the most famous or successful name in the industry. The smartest person in the room isn’t necessarily the best teacher. It is not someone who simply tells you everything they learnt back when they started out, or expect your career to develop in the same way as their own.
A mentor is willing to invest his or her own valuable time to guide you and help you find your stride as you develop your career. It needs to be someone who works on similar wavelength similar to your own, or at least understands how you tick.
Perhaps most importantly, a good mentor must challenge and test you in order to help you grow and fulfill the potential they believe you have, as both a member of the workforce and as an individual.
With all this said, what makes a great mentor is someone who equally appreciates what you can teach them. By all means, embrace all the knowledge they have to offer but the most ideal mentor-mentee relationship is reciprocal.
Push yourself beyond your limits
Dare to experiment. Take on tasks you’ve never tried before. Push yourself beyond your comfort zone and simply try. Experience is experience, good or bad… and no matter what, its inherently valuable.
The same goes for building a startup or even trying to expand your job role in a given company. Chances are, you can count your founding team on one hand… but the tasks you will face will extend far beyond anything you’ve ever tried before.
As terrifying as it may sound, putting yourself out there is probably one of the fastest methods of figuring out what your own strengths and weaknesses are and what to work on. If things work out, great. If not… switch up strategies and try again.
When I first joined Siew Hoon full-time, we struggled to come up with a job title that didn’t limit me to just being a writer. She and I both knew that I wanted to get involved in far more than churning out articles from behind a desk.
She settled on the title “Anything Can Do”. Admittedly a difficult position to publish on LinkedIn, it essentially reflected my role as being open to taking on tasks of all sorts.
Of course, there is plenty of stuff I cannot do… but in giving me this ‘open-ended position’, I had to be ready to take on any task that was thrown at me. Within the first few months, I had to learn how to design a website, help plan an industry event, market it and even host a panel discussion – all tasks I had never tried before but now know I am capable of.
If you are considering building a startup or entering a career in tech, travel (or both), the fundamentals are roughly the same wherever you go. New job roles are being created all the time, and we’re arguably more empowered than ever to take direct control of our futures.
That is much of the reasoning behind organising Tern, our travel careers event on Aug 27, 2016. As excited we are to show off just how dynamic the travel industry is becoming, we also want to arm bright-eyed graduates, young executives and mid-career professionals with the tools to build a career you actually love.
Marissa Trew is a writer for Web In Travel and part of the organising team behind Tern, which take place at Novotel Singapore, Clarke Quay. View programme here and book tickets here.
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