Hi, listeners and happy holidays! In the mood for a holiday vacation? Today’s episode will be all about exploring your dreams, adventure and discovering your “aha” moment. Let’s talk travel. Picture this. The start-up Pack Up & Go wants to plan your 3-day weekend. The catch? Your destination is a surprise. This innovative idea and business was conceived by Lillian Rafson. Lillian, CEO and Founder of Pack Up & Go, wants you to embrace the unknown and as an entrepreneur, she’s quite spontaneous herself! Listen below to learn more about Lillian’s start-up story, her go-to advice and her own “aha” moment.

SHOW NOTES:

Lillian quit her job to discover what she wanted to do. She traveled and back packed and ran into to two women who were on a surprise vacation. She realized that the “surprise vacation” market wasn’t as prominent in the U.S. (1:10).

She launched Pack Up + Go within the 6-8 weeks left in her trip in 2015, researching and interviewing the locals and tourists along the way. On January 1st, she launched her Squarespace account and let her friends and family know. At that point she planned only a handful of practice trips. A friend featured her launch within Business Insider and the rest…is history (3:00).

How you find capital or fund for your big idea? Lillian’s biggest costs at the beginning were the domain name and Squarespace account. The best part of Pack Up + Go is that it’s a cash flow positive organization, full owned by their team without venture capital assistance (5:50).

Lillian was always inspired to study what made her happy in school. She went to NYU for gender studies, marketing and French. She values her hands-on experience that internships provided her while in school (7:00).

She believes that traveling forces you out of your comfort zone and gives you the ability to explore new things. She loves that her travelers are willing to let that control go and explore new things and push their own boundaries (9:19).

One of Lillian’s favorite customer stories highlights a woman that was celebrating her 70th birthday that was traveling alone. She came home from her trip and sent 50-75 pictures from her trip and that she had the best time on her trip (11:10).

Curious as to which cities are the most popular to travel to this year? Nashville and Charleston are both booming. Lillian’s favorite cities to travel to? Savannah, New Orleans and Chicago (13:16).

Let’s talk travel must-haves. Lillian’s top 3 are: a rolling suitcase, a pair of comfortable and cute sneakers, and an external battery pack for your phone (14:30).

Lillian’s go-to message and source for inspiration, an Israeli term…”YALLA” (16:30).

“Yalla! Let’s go! If not now, then when? Let’s just do this.”

— Lillian Rafson, CEO and Founder of Pack Up & Go

Next steps for Pack Up + Go is to expand domestic city trips and to continue to support small business in the U.S. while creating multi-city trips for customers (18:35).

Thank you readers, to tuning into the Brava Podcast. If you like the show please leave us a review on iTunes!

What from our conversation inspired you today? What do you hope to hear next? Tweet or message us on Instagram @BravaPodcast to tell us what you want to hear, even if it’s your own story!

For today’s discussion, we’re going to take a step into the start-up space. Whether you have your eyes set on an entrepreneurial venture in retail, finance or technology I hope that our conversation will ignite a spark within your own career path.

Let me introduce to you a powerful serial entrepreneur. Today’s guest is Erica Amatori. She’s the Director of Marketing at Burrow and Co-Founder of TheBit at the impressive age of just 23. Tune in below!

SHOW NOTES:

Erica is the VP of Marketing at Burrow, an e-commerce start-up that is changing up the furniture space. Their value lies in that their furniture is extremely comfortable and adaptable. She’s also the co-founder of thebitdaily.com a source from crypto-education and a crypto-community (1:26).

On knowing when to invest her time or money on a start-up, Erica first needs to believe in not just idea, but also the team (2:50).

“To know whether a start-up is right for me I act like my own venture capitalist firm.”

Start-ups are a roller coaster. The highs are high, the lows are low. When you don’t think there is a market for your service or product, you have to be real with yourself and move on (5:12).

“It’s not a failure, it’s a learning.”

— Erica Amatori

Book recommendation by Erica: The Dip by Seth Godin ß Click here to check it out.

With an idea, is it better to be authentic or original? Erica says neither. She thinks you truly need is product market fit. A demand and audience for the product (7:15).

To Erica, “innovation” means to find opportunity gaps and fill them. Finding a broken process and fixing it (9:00).

Innovative ideas come from innovative people. Character traits such as curiosity allow you to question the current processes and finding new solves. Practice this by always asking questions (10:20).

“Behind every successful person there are a lot of unsuccessful years.”

— Erica Amatori

Want to get start in your start-up now? Erica advises to go out there and start doing market research and find if your product or service is valuable (13:20).

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