Setback to Success: When a Booming Travel Business Meets Covid- 69

Creative Counsel Episode 69: From Setback to Success: When a Booming Travel Business Meets COVID with Kylie Chen of Alcanella Expeditions. Welcome to Creative Counsel with Brittany Ratel. I'm your host Brittany, an attorney for creatives who believes in solid contracts and cute office supplies, and who wants to empower you to be a more confident business owner. Whether you're a creative, influencer, maker, artist, shop owner, or content creator, you are not just a blank. You are a real bona fide business owner. So let's help you own your business and get you legally legit with Brit. Hi friends, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Brittany Rettell, and I'm so excited to share this conversation today. So Kylie Chen is a founder of Akonela Expeditions, the Wander Camp, and the Adventure Dress. She's traveled to more than 121 countries. Dang, girl, travel goals, right? And has spent numerous years both living abroad, hosting tours across Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa. Her international experience and love for impactful travel led her to found her first company, Alcanella Expeditions, a boutique travel organization that curates hands-on tour experiences around the world, and later shifted to Wander Camp, a wandering hotel of glamping hotels across the US national parks. She's been the recipient of many awards, including Utah Business 40 Under 40 and SEGO's World's Fastest Growing Companies in Under 5 Years. Kylie studied business strategy and international development at the BYU Marriott School of Management, attended University of Oxford and University of Cambridge to study social innovation and international development. And so I am so excited to have her on the podcast and to share this conversation that we had with you. Whether we hope, of course, that we never meet another COVID-like disruption in our businesses, especially those of us that do in-person events or are based around travel or hospitality, because it was one of those, you know, world-changing, how can you expect for that level of unexpected, right? But regardless of what you do in your business, I think you're gonna find a lot of gems in this conversation with Kylie, who's someone who's been trying to be very thoughtful and intentional in building her brand and also in learning how to pivot and diversifying her revenue streams and figure out what she loves to do in her business and maybe what she's just good at. And sometimes those aren't the same thing. Please excuse the audio quality on my behalf. We've been upgrading actually a lot of the audio here behind the scenes of the podcast. And despite my husband's many careful instructions about what to plug in and what to turn on when, I completely flubbed it up and went back in time to using my computer audio. So it sounds really bad. As I said to my husband, it sounds like it's one of those third grade talent shows when they're like eating the microphone, you know, when you're like, please, for all that is holy, can you slow down and back up a little bit? So huge apologies there because I know that's obnoxious to listen to, but I promise we will better and can do better in the future to serve you. So without further ado, let's dig into this conversation with Kylie.

Hello everybody and welcome back. I'm Brittany and I'm so excited to be joined by my guest today, Kylie Chen.

Kylie, we're so excited to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Wonderful.

And here we are.

Here we are, you know, making it happen. I'd love to just kind of hear your origin story, especially because you're now in the awesome position of being a serial entrepreneur.

And we got to hear a little bit about your different companies and the things that you're up to, but give us kind of the, you know, 20,000-foot view of your company and where you started and what you're working on now.

Yeah. Well, I'm in Montana at the moment, so we're here renovating a cabin. So if you hear any background noise, that's that. The entrepreneur life.

Yeah.

Real hashtag, real life Montana, you know, van life.

Yeah.

How to put that out there.

But yeah, no, so my background is I, coming out of school, went to BYU, started my first business actually while I was in school. I had the opportunity to travel a bit and anyways, wanted to, wanted to turn my passion into a career. And so my first business I started was actually spices. A lot of people don't know that, Canela. Now it's a travel company. We do trips all around the world, but it started as a spice brand.

Because that's how I thought I wanted to bring travel to people.

I didn't realize I could take people on trips. I didn't realize that was a thing. I thought, ah, these food experiences are cool. Let's curate these recipes and partner with people around the world and create these spice blends and like bring travel to people's homes.

Learned the hard way.

That was my first big pivot that, you know, that certain type of product was not easy to ship. It broke.

No, it was, it was not a feasible business.

But it did allow me to pivot into travel. I actually had a mentor who sat me down, a family member, and said, Kylie, have you ever thought about actually doing trips? The spice business is cute, but I think there's a lot more revenue in that.

And when I started my business, I wasn't honestly revenue-driven, I was passion-driven. And I think both are important.

Now we know. But yeah, started at Canela.

You know, we started just a one-man band.

It was me. Took, I was on a lot of the first trips, realized as a business owner, that's not sustainable. How can you grow? I love traveling. So it was a balance.

But hired my first employee, I think 6 months into the business.

And it was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

I was gonna say, how scary was that?

Yeah.

It was hard, you know, even just coming down to like, how much do I pay them? How, you know, do I want to bring them on full time? You know, should we keep them part time? Because this whole benefits thing scares me. There's just so many things you're not you're not prepared for when you start a business and you start hiring. So I did hire someone part-time, you know, at a wage that I felt comfortable with and she felt comfortable with. And honestly, we were good friends.

So I know some people say stay away from working with friends and family.

It worked. It worked for me. We loved it. I was in Los Angeles at that time, so we worked out of a coworking space. I needed to get out of the house. So did she. And that's actually when we stumbled upon partnerships, then giveaways was a certain category of those partnerships that really took off for us. It was very unique because we ended up getting on a platform with like Conde Nast and Volkswagen and all these big companies, and we had like 500 combined email subscribers and social media subscribers, and I was like, we are going to get annihilated. But we thought very creative. That was one thing that myself and the first girl I hired were very good at. And we thought, you know what? Nobody is, no travel company is in this giveaway space being like the premier unique experience provider for all these big companies. They have to go pitch brands and do all these things. So we became that and we grew so quickly because we would provide the trip. And strategically we actually got them to pay us for it and get all the emails from it. So we were like a solid partner.

So we made money on the giveaways and we grew. And then, you know, the giveaways were different than they were now.

In that 2-year span, I mean, we grew our list to over a million really targeted people because they were entering a travel giveaway.

They wanted to travel.

They were already raising their hand and qualifying themselves that they're interested.

Yeah. That was like, I say, you know, entrepreneurship is hard work and determination, number one, but number two, it's putting yourself out there so you are in the right place at the right time. And that was us being in the right place at the right time. We got that opportunity. Community. And it was like the, the energy that got us to where we were now. Obviously, after that, we started getting smart and, you know, doing other things, other type of partnerships, we continue to grow our list other ways, we started actually sending emails to people. And email marketing has really been one of our number one revenue drivers, like I would contribute our engaged community to about 80% of our revenue. And pre-COVID, since I know numbers are important to people, I mean, you know, we grew from, I had $1,000 in my bank account, we grew the business to over $5 million. Amazing.

So it's different now with COVID We've had some other challenges.

But yeah, just from jumping on that one idea and I started hiring more people.

That was a good experience for me.

And I started hiring more people.

Was it always a good experience?

No. There were some really hard learnings for me not being, you know, making mistakes as a leader. One, and two, you know, maybe hiring people that just weren't a great fit and not knowing how to look for that. So it's been, it's been a role, or it's been a, yeah, it's been a journey.

A journey, ding, you know, and in all the ways. Yeah, to do that. So I mean, you quickly pivoted, like you said, from Spice, realizing, and sounds like you got some great advice, which is always helpful to have someone outside perspective to look at you, look at your talents, and just to pose the question of you know, have you thought about doing this? You know, there's not some special club that you're not part of that would preclude you from doing, you know, a travel business, even though it probably on paper sounds a little scary because you're like in person dealing with moving in, especially internationally and regulations and compliance.

And yeah, it could be a little overwhelming.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I always say this, and I'm sure you, the lawyer side of you just cringes, but the best thing you have as an entrepreneur when you start, in my opinion, is just being naive. Because you're not afraid to start. Then you start to learn hard lessons later.

So you gotta move out of that.

But, you know, just being willing to go and put your foot down and, like, not being afraid of what people think and not being afraid of making mistakes and owning up to those mistakes, knowing that you'll make them right when you do make them, because they will come, right? So, so important. And you learn fast. Like, you learn fast and you fail fast and you brush yourself up and get up and do it again.

Yeah. So no, I agree with you.

Even as someone who's, you know, you know, obviously I tend to be on the risk factor of seeing problems more than probably the average person, but there's a healthy balance because if you let yourself think, I can only do things where I can control the outcome or I can see all the pitfalls, then you're right, you wouldn't move forward.

And that's not helping you. That's not a true spirit of entrepreneurship.

So. Yeah, you'll be paralyzed, won't move forward.

Right.

At least when you're a partner.

Exactly.

So you had and grew this amazing travel business, you know, very experiential based, you know, trying to kind of, be creative in your marketing, using email marketing where maybe a lot of people weren't using that, really looking into brand partnerships, you know, influencer partnerships, different ways that you can leverage a community. And then, of course, we get the sea monster. Tell us about that. What was it like being in the travel industry when COVID hit?

It's funny, because when I used to do these podcasts, it was all a canela.

I mean, I would go into the nitty-gritty, and it's kind of funny now that it's like, We're in a whole nother world right now.

Like everything has changed.

It's like B, you know, it's like A, you know, BC and AD, honestly, like before COVID and after COVID.

Yeah. I was thinking about that. Like if I were ever to write a memoir, it'd be like pre-COVID, post-COVID. Yeah.

So I mean, yeah, I did not see it coming.

I mean, none of us did, but it's just crazy. I think about this a lot looking back 5 years because it was 5, almost at our 5-year mark.

That COVID hit, right?

The start of 2020. I thought, man, if I would have known this was coming 5 years ago, would I have done this? Like, like, am I like, what was I preparing myself for this? Anyways, a lot of interesting introspection.

But I was on trips back to back to back beginning of 2020.

I remember I was in Ethiopia on an airplane and heard the first little like word of COVID like, oh yeah, they found this, you know, thing in Asia and dah, dah, dah, dah.

And, you know, I was like, oh, well, you You know, there are a lot of things going on in the world. But I was on trips so back to back to back to back.

I came home, went on the next one. I was actually in Bangladesh for two, or sorry, Bhutan for two weeks with clients, with like a very high-end client group.

Like hosting, entertaining, being on, you know?

Yes. You know, they had their group leader, very high-end group, you know, it was like a workshop. And I was just there kind of as the face of Canela, not guiding, not doing any of that, but— Right. Talk about pressure.

So we get there, COVID was not really a thing.

Um, by before we left, it, you know, it had been announced by the World Health Organization as the global pandemic. They shut all flights in and out of Bhutan down. I mean, Bhutan of all places to be the most like one of the most protected countries. Um, they were like, they didn't have very many cases because of that. But, um, we were there when the first case came in from an American traveler.

And anyways, I had to really, um, That was a hard time for me because I had to smile. I had to act professional. I had to provide calmness to the group when I didn't know what was going on either. And so, you know, your job in that point, and I was also managing my team from abroad, right? Because there was, we had everything set, we had everything planned. And just like that, you know, people are asking for refunds. People are postponing trips, like thousands of calls coming in. And our revenue numbers just went from, you know, to like overnight plummeted. It was just, it's so, it was so, so stressful. You know, the group, we ended up extending, continuing our trip and going to Bangladesh. This was a very adventurous trip. So, you know, it was anyways, ended up getting stuck in Bangladesh, finally got home. Everyone was fine. Everyone still travels with us. So, you know, that was, that was good. The outcome of the trip was good, but it was so, so hard because, you know, I was trying to manage my team from afar and everything was just tanking.

Yeah.

Everything like was just crumbling. And it got to a point where even the team was like starting to think about their job security. Like, right.

Like, do I need to be jumping ship and thinking, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to be disloyal, but we're a travel company and things are—

Yeah.

And you know, the media, the media was blowing up, right? Airlines were like, I mean, it wasn't too long after COVID hit that you were started hearing airlines were laying off and all these things. So it was in the air. And it was actually interesting because we had just had a huge team shift naturally. Like, you know, people just moved on to other, other jobs and it was the time and season they had been with us. It was the chapter was closed and right at the start of that year. So I looking back, I think, wow, like, you know, we, we were prepared the best that we could be for that moment for however much you could be prepared for that. But we didn't have to lay anyone off. You know, a few people did kind of choose to maybe end the chapter sooner and move on. But it was tough. And I sat there, I came back from those trips and thought, what am I going to do? Every airline in the world is grounded. Every country is closed. That is 100% of my business. We don't do domestic travel. My business is zero, zero in revenue from now until COVID is over. Scary, scary as an entrepreneur.

You have a team, you've hit these goals, you're on track, you're You tried to be smart and creative and all these things. I mean, I mean, that has to have been so disheartening. I mean, like, you know, personally, how, how were you approaching that?

How are you being challenged by that?

The last week on that trip and the first week back was hard. I mean, I, I, I, you know, I went to a therapist. I was, you know, you know, I was just trying to do everything I could because I felt— and this is a fault of mine as a leader, and people should learn from this. You are not your business, but it can be very easy to feel like you are your business. If something goes wrong, even externally, like COVID, I mean, it's— look back on it, so stupid, but I kind of felt responsible. I felt, how could have I seen this coming? How could have I pivoted better?

How I made ourselves so vulnerable. I put all of our eggs in this basket.

Yeah, why didn't I differentiate? Why, you know, you can, you can say that a million times. And looking back now, I'm like, that was so stupid. But also it's part of the— I think it's a part of the the process. And so, you know, I mean, honestly, it's like grieving process. Like, yeah, it is kind of, you know, as an entrepreneur, you hear your business is your baby and it kind of is. As much as you separate yourself from it and grow a team and let go, there are parts of it that are. And, you know, even to this day, I think about Canela and I'm like, you know, where would have it been without COVID? And I've gone past that. But anyways, a week of just knocking down my bed, just trying to think what is going on, I realized I have 2 choices here. I have 2 choices. I can wait. I can sit here and wait and I can mope and I can say, what was me? And you know, da, da, da, da, or I can pivot. I can try something new. I can look at this as, wow, there are all these other things we wanted to try. Never had time because we were so busy growing this. Like, why not try them now? You know, be smart about what we try. There are still people out there that have that want adventure. They want adventure, they can't go. They can't, this was still the point where you couldn't leave your house. Like even all national parks were closed too. National parks, like you were quarantined at home, go to the—

We didn't have toilet paper, guys.

Like let's remember, like it was, yeah.

Crazy. And so I was like, well, we have all these great partners around the world, all these artisans that we work with that now have no work. Let's pivot to product.

We wanted to try product.

I started in product, wasn't a success.

Let's try it again.

So that's where we started launching. We launched like African baskets from some amazing women in Uganda that I know and a bunch of other products. And we also launched dresses from an awesome lady that I had purchased dresses from in Indonesia way, way back when. She made them like in a little hut and now she's like expanded her business. And that's how the adventure dress was born. So I pivoted into product, just trying a bunch of things.

Pivot, the Friends episode, pivot.

Yeah, right?

Yeah, it kind of worked. And the adventure dress for some reason just took off. We didn't start as its own business. We actually just started launching product under the Atkanella brand. We had an email list and we, you know, we were, it was kind of this, and we started doing virtual trips at the same time too. So those were the two things, virtual trips. We partnered with a Utah organization to do them for us who also was in the event space and got hit really hard. So that was really cool to come together. And then we launched product and the adventure dress just took off. And we ran it under the Acunella brand for many, many weeks and realized this is very different than Acunella and COVID's not going away. So let's spin it into its own business. And that's how that was born.

But I love that, that you, you know, more even like you said, not paralyzed and trying to overthink it of let's just try out this product.

Let's see what the response is.

And if it seems like it's gonna be beneficial, then we have some options, which I think is a really great way to approach getting into especially a new area that, you know, is untested, but you're, you're open and wanna see what the market validation is for it.

Yeah, yeah. I've always been a bootstrapping entrepreneur. Like I said, right? $1,000 to $5 million. I just, and it's interesting in the service business because you can do that. You know, if you look at travel, we didn't own any assets. Like it was all relationship-based from relationships that I had from the travels I had done backpacking as a university student. Obviously we stepped those up 'cause not everyone likes backpacking.

Not everyone loves that hostel life, you know, which is a shame, but no.

No. Those types of travelers weren't our target audience because they can go do it on their own. People were coming to us because there was some sort of a barrier for them doing it on their own. But yeah, so I just started it and, you know, I thought, well, you know, I don't think anyone's going to fund a travel business right now. And that had never been my mentality anyways. So I thought, well, let's leverage what we have. We have an awesome engaged email list, people who love to travel. I know a lot of them are women. So we kept that in mind as we launched product and And yet, like you said, you just try until it works. And you kind of know, like I'm a big proponent of try everything. And like you will find the thing that calls to you. You will know what you're supposed to do. And in business, sometimes that is the dollar behind it. You know, that's a good proponent or a good, you know, way to measure for being successful. But yeah. So it just It just took off and we're still running it today. It's a balance right now. It's hard. But yeah, it floated us for many, many, many months during COVID before the next pivot. So.

Right.

So tell me a little bit about the next pivot, which was, you know, glamping.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I learned through those 3 months of doing product, I talk about this idea of passion, right? I love the product. I love the event. I mean, that's why I launched it because I love them. I love the product, but I'm not passionate about product businesses. And it's something I've learned. I really love the service industry. I love creating experiences. And so that was interesting for me to kind of grapple with over those 3, 4 months before the national parks reopened. But once the national parks reopened, kind of a funny story, I got invited to go do a trip down in Southern Utah with very high-end glamping company who we had actually partnered with all the time at Canela. They were a partner of ours. They were doing like a photo shoot and they invited me down to come. So I did that, got to, you know, spend a lot of time. It was so refreshing to be back out traveling. And I just thought, I cannot stay at home. I need to do this. But I also thought when I was there, I'm like, I want to invite my friends to do this. And I thought, none of my friends can afford this, like $500, $600 a night for an accommodation. They have kids, they have a family, you know, it's, that is really expensive. So we actually ended up, I left that experience and I was thinking like, this is an interesting idea. Like a lot of people are starting to travel domestic and maybe that's, maybe that's what we need to do because we have always wanted to do domestic trips. But honestly, I always thought it was boring. I live in the state of Utah and I'd seen everything, but I was such a thrill seeker. I'm like, I want to go to, you know, Russia and all these other places, right? He opened my eyes and I've since changed. I love the United States.

I love Utah.

I always have, but I have a different love for them now. Anyways, um, so we ended up putting together a Canela trip to one of the national parks in partnership with this company who I just stayed with. Um, we sold it out. They didn't have space for us. They dropped our reservations last minute. And I don't want to blame it on the company, you know, you, you understand it happens.

Yeah, you make mistake.

Like, I'm sure they were just You know, things were changing for them. And I just thought, oh my gosh, like our one trip that we put together is now not going to run. Like I have to make this run. So it's really funny how Wander Camp started because that, that was ultimately the problem that I was trying to, trying to solve. And that's where Wander Camp was born. I said, well, there's no companies that do glamping that are available. This is the only one. So I can either cancel it or I can buy all the tents and buy all the stuff and do it myself. And that's what we did. And I will tell you that first trip, luckily most of the people on the trip knew me and they had traveled with us and I was able to make amends with them at the end. It was hard. Like I totally underestimated how hard it would be to pop up 25 tents in Moab with everything inside of them, get working bathrooms with flushing toilets on 200 acres of BLM land that was completely off-grid, completely underestimated.

Once again, I mean, it sounds impossible.

I mean, it's like Fyre Festival level of building out, you know, until after that.

And I was like, it's probably a good thing that you hadn't seen the documentary.

Yeah, you know, I've— my friends, like I said, my dear friends who were on that, I learned about it after. But, you know, um, was it— was it the best trip ever?

No.

Was it necessary? Yes. Yes, we learned so much on that trip. And the one— the one thing that happened, um, there were tons of people that kept passing by us, stopping and saying, I want to stay here, how do I book it? And I thought, you can't. We're only up here for 2 weeks, like, then we're gone. That's the BLM. We're actually only up here for 4 days, but BLM has a rule you can pop up, pop down for 2 weeks. You have to move in between them. So we would literally— anyways, that happened, um, and I, I, I, you know, saved it in my, my mind. And, um, you know, we booked out another Moab trip and another Moab trip. So we would literally pop up for a week, take down, move 30 miles away because that's the rule with BLM, pop up, take down, pop up, take down. Like, that was Wander Camp. That's why we called it— didn't even have a name actually at the beginning, but that's why it became came to be called Wander Camp. The idea was we literally had this wandering camp that like can go anywhere. We popped it up in Zion. We ended up popping up in Yellowstone. But I realized that is a lot of work. Like, oh my, a lot of work. And we were missing out on a lot of opportunity because all these people would stop by and ask to book and there was no way for them to book. We had no idea where we were going to be in the next 2 weeks. And that's kind of where the light bulb moment went on where I thought, naive Kylie, oh, like Let's, let's figure out places we can just pop these down. Like, you know, for 6 months at a time and we can, you know, market them on our website, do our email marketing and fill them. Because there's obviously people wanting to do this.

The interest is here.

We just need to figure out what, what's the system, you know, that we can have that's predictable, you know?

So that was the, that was the birth of Wander Camp.

It was that first trip to Moab and the consecutive ones and then became Zion and Yellowstone. But we were popping up, taking down, popping up, taking down and like an event business.

Awesome.

So I mean, and what was it, you know, that you gave you— because there's, like you said, there's, there's a lot that you have to deal with in terms of when you're dealing with BLM and natural parks and compliance. What, you know, what spurred you forward or said this, this was worth it versus like, this is just impossible, I'm never going to be able to make this work?

I was naive, honestly. I, I, I knew because we had done stuff with BLM, or I personally done stuff with BLM, I knew that, you know, you could pop up for under 2 weeks. And, you know, I knew that. So that's what we did. But to be honest, I, you know, we, we worked with guides, obviously, who had guided in the national parks. So we leveraged their permits. So like, I was aware of things, and we were following the rules. But I had no idea, no idea. Fast forward to now, you can fast forward 6 months from then when we were looking for permanent locations, I had no idea that if you didn't own the land, you couldn't do whatever you wanted with it. I seriously had no idea. I just thought it's America.

Like you buy the land. Yeah.

You get, you know, you, you have to tell the county or tell the city, but then they give you the permit to buy the house. Camping, like we're setting up for 6 months, taking down. That was the biggest awakening for me was just how heavily this industry is regulated. Hotels, camping, anything in recreation.

Anything in recreation accommodation.

Yeah.

Yes, and for good reason. But on the other side, it can be extremely frustrating. So what we ended up doing is, so I'm from Idaho. I know you're from Idaho too.

Yeah, Idaho girls. Yeah.

I called my dad when this came up. I'm like, Dad, do you know anyone who like has a ranch near Yellowstone? Because I have this awesome idea. Like, I want to pop these tents up in Yellowstone. Like, we can't just keep popping up for 2 weeks. So, you know, he did some digging, found some people, and we ended up We ended up finding a guy who was a dear family friend. I had no idea who had like a 1,000-acre ranch, you know, 20 minutes from West Yellowstone. And he was kind of the, you know, the Idaho mentality, just go do it, which I love. And we popped up, no permitting, like we didn't talk to the county, had no idea what was going on at that, at that moment. It's different now. At that moment, it just popped up like 25 tents, put them up on our website, ended up putting them up on Airbnb and booked out every single one. The end of 2020. And we were like, wow, this is something like we, people want this product. They want it at the price point. They love the experience. Were there, were there problems?

Absolutely.

We did not have perfect reviews, obviously, because we didn't know what we were doing. People loved it. And it was those people that just kept saying, where, like, where are your other locations? Where are you wondering to next? That kept this like energy and this, this fire in me. Cause, um, You know, we were, we were making a lot of mistakes. So that was, that was our first location. I mean, we popped up mostly in Southern Utah and then we set up our first permanent seasonal, so not really permanent, but more than 2 weeks location in Island Park, West Yellowstone. And that was end of July 2020. So that was our first one that was like something you can count on, you know, in terms of a locale.

Yeah.

And having a setup.

And talking about compliance, you know, by the end of that year, the county had contacted us, the neighbors had reported us, a lot of different things. And that's when I learned, oh, you know, if you own the land or, you know, so-and-so owns the land and he's leasing it to us, we're paying him for the land, we can't just go do whatever we want with it, even if it's popping up 20 tents. That was a huge awakening to me because I didn't know that.

And you came in with the libertarian perspective, which isn't always wrong, but, you know, lessons learned.

We can't do anymore.

That's the problem.

You can, you know, sometimes it's a little bit of that, like, it's good to ask forgiveness, and you can play that card, you know, once or twice, and then you're gonna need to—

Yeah, so you can play it once in the beginning, and then, yeah, you learn what you need to learn, and you say, dang, and then you, you know, and that's, I think, where a lot of entrepreneurs probably, it would've been easy to quit then, right? When we got those complaints and people said, you can't do this, but my mentality was, okay, Okay, we can't pop up. What do you need from us? What do we need to do? You know, so we ended up having to get permitted with the county. We had to get permitted with the state because it was actually, he was leasing the land from the state.

There were a lot of hoops.

But I had the mentality the whole time, like, you can do it, you can do it. Get the right people that you need in line to make it possible. You know, whether that's, you know, an attorney or a real estate person, whoever for us. And so we made it happen. So we're actually still on that same land in Yellowstone. That's the one location we don't own. But we're legally permitted with the state. We just renewed our contract for 2022 and 2023.

So we'll be under.

Awesome. And you know, we've grown the number of tents and the number of amenities we can have because they do regulate that for good reason to protect the land. But yeah, so that's kind of learned by fire.

Right, yeah. You know, in the best way. How have you balanced in terms of, like you said, knowing that the first time you do stuff, you're going to get, it's going to be a learning opportunity. But how do you balance of like what comments and criticism or feedback do I need to pay attention to? And what's just, guess what guys, this is what the experience is. It is what it is.

I just have to kind of steel myself. You know, how do you balance that personally?

It's interesting because it's been a lot easier for me to handle criticism with Wander Camp than at Canella. And I think it's because from the beginning it was a team effort. Like I can't run all the camps at Wander Camp. I can't be in all the locations. And I think that's a really healthy dynamic. When you start something on your own, it can, at least for me, it's a lot easier to be like, oh, that trip went bad. Like, I managed it. That was my fault. So it's easier for me to look at criticism at Wander Camp and think this is an opportunity to be better. And to your question, we look at all of it. Like we look at all of it and we, we are growing so fast that it is impossible for us to make all the changes that we need right now to be able to fix all of it. And so we kind of just have to be okay. Like, you know, having a 4 out of 5 instead of a 5 out of 5, or, you know, some of our camps were even a little bit lower than that, which we're working on. But we set up so quick. I mean, we did that last year was year one. So we learned a lot of things with the bathrooms, you know, that, that's our number one complaint is bathrooms because we're completely off-grid. We have no septic, we haul in the water, we work off of a solar system. And we also, they're shared, so we can't control the person that goes in before. And so we had a lot of complaints about bathrooms, you know, not being cleaned up to spec. And we realized, okay, we need to have a bathroom attendant. So there are things that every single piece feedback is important. And we actually really value every single piece of feedback. And I think it's, it's the, it's the feedback and, you know, the negative stuff balanced with all the positive stuff. People asking, like I said, where are your other camps? I want to go. That keeps us moving forward. Cause I just look at all the people that love what we're doing. It makes it really easy to continue and look at the people that maybe didn't love the experience and say, we either need to better set expectations. Well, we do need to better set expectations. And we also need to work on all that feedback and like, thank them. For giving it to us because we were so new in this business. And we were taking the approach, what, right? Disruptive innovation, they call it. Start from the bottom and work your way up. People don't really know you're there. You know, you can kind of slide by. Maybe you offer a lower-end product than you originally intend, but you can always, always upgrade it.

And iterate. And yeah. And just don't make assumptions on this is how you have to do something, which, you know, for better or for worse, when you scrap those assumptions, that's what allows you to disrupt.

Yeah. So that's kind of the mentality we're taking. Do we have things to work on?

Yes. A lot. Right.

And really excited for this year because we, yeah, we have taken a lot of feedback from last year and this year it's going to be so good.

Well, that just sounds amazing. Talk to me a little bit about, cause I imagine with this, because it is experiential, it's in-person, like you mentioned, you cannot be the one managing the sites and all that stuff. How have you approached hiring? Uh, hiring's difficult now, you know, as a small business owner and then leading a team and having them get the same vision of this is what we're trying to do and this is the way we do it. You know, what, what are you—

what's your approach there?

Yeah, so it probably would have been easier to start in one location and like perfect it and move it. We, we have 5 locations right now going into year 2. We've had 4 last year. So we kind of learned this the hard way. So, you know, we have to look at— we have 5 locations, you know, anywhere from 5 to 10 hours apart. We strategically chose locations that are within 10 hours of Salt Lake City, where we're based, just because— or where our corporate team now is based, just so that we can get there if there's an absolute emergency. We said no to opportunities further away. I'm excited about those in the future, but we really had to think about our team. We also, when hiring, we've learned a lot of hard things in the national parks. When you hire, there's a shortage of labor and hard to hire a lot of places, but national parks, it's really intensified. So we tried our year one to hire, and, you know, we, that's why, you know, sometimes housekeeping would show up. If you don't have housekeeping, you, you, you can't have a hotel. Like, that's your, that's your number one role. You know, sometimes our, you know, camp hosts, you know, just, just different things. And so we realized very quickly we are gonna have to bring our own people in at least a portion of them to supplement the local talent. And that brings in another problem, we have to house them, right? So we don't own the land, at least we didn't then. So you start to like, you can, you always run into problems.

And I think if you don't, if you give a mouse a cookie, if you—

Yeah, but it's like, okay, we need to house them. Okay, so how do we house them? We can't build a house on this land, we don't own the land, or we do own the land, but we don't have septic. So Why don't we get a trailer? You know, why don't we get a trailer? Why don't we rent, you know, a spot in the trailer park 2 minutes away? Trailer park's a bad word.

RV park, which are really popular right now, have beautiful views and you can go anywhere.

Why don't we hire from work camping sites? People that already have their RVs that are like looking for opportunities.

These guys are all in. They're already hashtag van life. You know, they're ready to go.

And then other places like maybe, you know, renting a room for someone costs this much. You know, maybe we can, You know, like in, we're remodeling a lot of places right now. A lot of people ask why it's actually for staff housing. We use it for staff housing in the season. And then we have off-season revenue. We're a seasonal camp. So those 5 locations from March to October do great. And then from October to February, you know, we still have team members, but we don't have cashflow. So I, I try to solve 2 problems at once. Great. You know, now we have an off-season, you know, accommodation and Airbnb that can also be used for in-season housing. So hiring is tough. And I think, I think sometimes you just gotta learn the hard way. My best advice is, if you hire the wrong person, it's not the end of the world, right? If it's not working for you, chances are it's not working for them either. Have an honest conversation. We've had a lot of these and just say, how's it going? You know, they'll explain maybe what's frustrating on their side, you know, you explain on your side, and then you help them find a better opportunity. There are a lot of opportunities out there. And we've had to do that a lot.. But my philosophy is if you get the right people in there and you don't, don't keep the wrong people in there because it's a hurt to you and your business and it hurts them too, the better. So we've, you know, in the beginning that might mean a lot of, what do you call it? Turnover.

Turnover.

I was going to say transition.

Turnover.

Same, you know, but, but yeah, just being not allowing that because I see that in terms of conflict avoidance.

I think that's, particularly a problem with female entrepreneurs.

I think, I think some of it's our strengths misused against us as a weakness in terms of trying to be compassionate and have a lot of empathy of people in their position.

But there's nothing empathetic about keeping someone in a role that they're not going to succeed in.

Absolutely. And if you approach it that way, it's a lot easier. I don't like firing people, but I also look at— I, I would, I would say I've never fired someone because I've always approached it as How is this going for you?

How is it going for us? And if you approach it with empathy, and I think that is a strength of ours, this is how I do it. You know, you'll, you'll find the best outcome, you'll find the best outcome for both people. And you do have to be willing to help them, right? You can't just be like, you're not a good fit here, like, you know, go somewhere else. And that's where all your connections in the entrepreneurial world is good. Because, you know, at least me, and I'm sure you do, and a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this have a lot of connections, know a lot of other people that are hiring. And, you know, you can refer them, you can recommend them, that type of thing. So yeah, it is hard though. Some of those conversations are, are hard, you know.

Yeah, it's nothing—

it's—

yeah, I don't, I don't think it's anyone's favorite part about running a business, but it's necessary if you're going to scale because you, you're only one person, your capacities are limited. You cannot be in all places and doing all the things, you know, otherwise you're going to be the, the stopper in the funnel.

Absolutely.

Yeah, you will never grow.

Yeah. And you have to be able to give that up.

In terms of kind of leadership, setting vision, are there things that you found that are helpful in terms of— do you guys try to get together as a team in person? I know that's probably hard because of the nature of your work and how much you guys are kind of spaced apart, but anything that you've learned there?

Yeah, honestly, I think, I think, I think of COVID and all the negative things it brought.. But I also think one of the really cool things that it brought was this ability to work from wherever. I think it creates, it does create team. It can separate teams for sure, but how cool for people to be able to work wherever they are in the travel industry. That's great. I have a team member in Germany. I have a team member who was in Zimbabwe for forever. They still can work. You still can be a team. They can spend time with their family in places they love. So for us, you know, we've really taken the approach with Akanela and even more so with Wander Camp that as long as we are connected and we're syncing and we are building team culture, which always doesn't have to be face-to-face at the camps. Obviously it is like the team is there. So they do get that dynamic. So we kind of have, we kind of have two different sides to Wander Camp, fully remote. So we do weekly meetings. We actually do touch base every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, even if it's 15 minutes. And it's a chance for people to like shout out wins, shout out a team member, ask questions, but I'd say it's more so for team culture to just, you know, share the things that are going well and share some of the learnings. You know, and at camps, we do the same thing. We do daily standups. So whoever the camp host is does this daily, daily standups with the housekeeping and the maintenance and our whole team there. And they report back to the, you know, any, any big updates, wins, feedback to our main team. So there's always that cycle. And I think as long as you create systems where there is constant communication. And also everybody has a one-on-one, not always with you. That's one thing that was hard with me with Wander Camp is it was the first business where not everybody was doing a one-on-one with me. So you give up a lot because even at Canela, when we grew, you know, 12, 15 people, you still can do one-on-ones. Maybe it wasn't— but you can't do that with every housekeeper. You can't do that with every maintenance person. So it forced us to put systems in so that people We're still getting listened to and we're still implementing this. Have we done it perfectly?

Absolutely not.

And that's okay. We're improving it. And I think as long as you're improving and you're listening to people, that's what matters. So we're implementing a lot of those. So there's, you know, personal communication going on. There's also team-wide communication and just really, I think with the remote world, just really making sure that the time you spend together is really positive energy and/or giving space. For people to be able to be noticed and, you know, given an Amazon gift card or, you know, do a survey and figure out where they like to shop or where their favorite restaurant is and just randomly, you know, every month surprise someone because of something that they've done because they've, that they've contributed. That's really important stuff. That's what, what we do to build our team culture. And it's not just me as well. I mean, we talk about partners. I, this is the first business that I Not fully, but my husband has joined because it is such a— I'm on the road all the time. So it's like, you know, it's not good to be—

he's right there, by the way—

not good to be doing it by yourself. You should be on this podcast. But, you know, I think having a healthy partner, whether that's a spouse or someone you don't know, but you trust and they're the right person, you know, to have them in helping is really important.

Totally.

So I can, I can see in the background, so you can tell he's doing, he's doing his thing. Well, tell me a little bit about working, you know, with your business and spouse. I have a lot of my clients who've gotten to that point in their business where they've grown and now they've, you know, they've retired their spouse and brought them on. What, what has worked with you guys in terms of, you know, separate roles, not micromanaging, not bringing your work home with you, which can sometimes be hard, you know, and still having different parts of your relationship?

Any, any wins or lessons you guys have learned there?

It is hard, I think, and it will always be hard. I think you just have to be, no matter with any partner, but if it's your spouse, it's extra hard because I think, you know, you can be harder on each other. You can be, it is hard to draw those lines. The first year in Wander Camp was really hard for Andrew and I because there, it's so stressful, right? It is so stressful. If housekeepers don't show up and we're there, guess who's cleaning tents, right? You know, it's, it's, it's hard. And, you know, with any partner, I think much more with spouses because you're maybe you're more open and you're, you know, talk a little bit differently. It can be really easy to just have different perspectives on how you approach things. And you really have to be willing. This is something I'm working on to, like, just let go, you know, let go some of how you want to lead or how you want something to be done and be OK trying something different. And that's, that's how we've been able to function the best together this year. We've— and we've worked on it, we've really worked on it. You know, we even tried going to therapy. Like, there was this person that did, and I'm a proponent of that.

Trying to get more tools.

Yeah, that didn't really work out for us. But I would say we do, we have those conversations.

Together.

And you do need to be able to have time where you can talk about what's working and what's not as a couple, as well as in the business, because it is different. You can be so successful on the business side and your marriage completely falling apart, or vice versa, right? And it's super important to make sure that you're balancing both and not letting what is most important to you go. So I'm still learning, honestly. I would love to hear from other people, like what they're doing, because As your business gets bigger, you, it gets harder. It does. It gets harder for us. We're also starting to bring on more people in leadership, which is super important because when it's just you two, it's a lot easier to stay cool, right? When something's heated versus if there are other people in the room, you're probably going to be a little more professional. So I always just encourage like, just remember what is a business conversation and keep that out of relationship stuff. But right, and, and, and get— go to a therapist. There are a lot of really cool business coach couple therapists that I know people have had huge success with. Try it, you know, might as well try it, see if it works.

So yeah, I'm seeing— see, yeah, just to see if there's other things that you can be doing to try to set yourself up for success. And yeah, so that you can self-confront and not, and not take it personally.

Yes, which can be hard.

You know, I'm going to keep bringing it up. I'm bad about that.

Yeah, you gotta get rid of it. Just let it go. Be like Elsa.

Let, let it go.

Never do that with an employee or a team member.

So yeah, right, it's true.

You, you wouldn't, you know, and so don't—

why would you do that to the person you care about the most?

Yeah, but I will also say it is so beautiful to be able to work with the person you enjoy spending the most time with when you find the right balance, especially in travel, because 'cause it wouldn't be fun for me to be here in Montana by myself renovating this basement or whatnot. My husband still has a full-time job. So he's not fully over to Wander Camp, but he gives a lot of his time and he is a huge reason why we're successful. He's a lot better operator than I am.

I'm the creator. You're the visionary, yeah.

Yeah, so cool. Which is good.

I mean, that's good to zone in, you know, hone in on your strengths too and understand there.

Any other kind of, you know, big picture lessons you found is just being in this space, especially as someone, you know, I think it's what's tremendous about your story is that you got started, you know, soon out of college or university. A lot of time when I think people, you know, like you said, there's sometimes there's some great things about that kind of naivete and not knowing, well, why couldn't I do this? But, well, how have you, you know, is it someone who had dealt with kind of imposter syndrome or had people tell you, you're not qualified to be leading this, or who are you to be leading, you know, a corporate trip at your age? Have you had issues with that?

And, you know, what have you done to try to kind of refill your well?

All the time. I mean, honestly, any time that I would get like a critique or a bad review or anything the first 5 years, really up to COVID, was hard. And it's a balance. You got— I think you have to learn from them. Here's one thing that helped me though. If you really take that stuff personal, another female entrepreneur gave me this advice. Have someone else read the reviews, pull, or that critique, pull out the pieces of information that are like feedback and give that to you.

Because you as the leader need to have that feedback and you need to actively be working on it.

And you need to obviously, you know, if, if a refund or something is due, be able to handle that, especially if your team is small. But there are ways I think that if you really struggle with that, I know I did early on, you can still process that information in a way that's healthy. Same with social media. I know people that have someone else read all their comments and, you know, respond to those. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. You know, everyone's different. I think it's, you just gotta realize that. But yeah, I know I've had many, many people, especially when I was 20, 22 running an international travel company, just like, just be like, what? Like, what do you think you're doing? You know, you, you, you have no resume to do this. You know, you're 22 years old. You're, you know, you're a child, all these things.

And I just—

you can't even rent a car.

Yeah. You can't. Yeah.

You gotta be 25 to rent a car, all these things. And I think for me, it really was, I re—

I listened to the people that people that were in my corner.

And luckily I had a lot of clients that were in my corner. Obviously you have family that's in your corner. You always need to listen to the people in your corner and keep them, keep the energy moving you forward. Because if you have that, you will always be able to read those negative things and approach them and fix them, but not be so overwhelmed. And if this happens too, if you have a day or a week where just everything seems to be negative, because that does happen, it does happen, it's okay to like step away or to go somewhere where you can fill your cup.

Because the—

what the negative people want is for you to quit. That's my true belief.

Like, push you off a pedestal.

Yeah, yeah.

Or—

and it's not like— and a lot of times they're not even personal attacks, it's just how we're taking them, to be honest. Um, but don't let that win, you know? Don't let that win. I'm a very competitive person. I think that's That's what's kept me going. Okay, if someone says I can't do it, I, whatever they say, I'm going to do better. Like whatever that critique is, I'm going to work on that and I'm going to do it better. I think if you take that mentality, that's the athlete mentality in me. I'm a basketball player. That's why I went to BYU. You know, it, it keeps you going. So it will happen and just know it's happening to everyone.

It's happened to me.

It's happened to you. I'm sure it's happened to every entrepreneur out there.

We've all made mistakes, you know?

You're not alone. And no, I love Taylor Swift. She said something— this is really cheesy of me— she said something at an award show where, you know, if you're faced with like criticism and skepticism and all this negative stuff, probably means you're rising. How cool. Keep rising. You want that stuff because it means you're rising. So I think about that a lot.

Yeah, if you're not getting any of that, it probably means you're staying really safe and, you know, uncomfortable, and there's no growth there. For you, not for who you're serving, not for the value you want to bring, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's totally true.

So, oh, I love that. Those are some really great thoughts. Kind of last part I want to talk about is in terms of now that you have kind of a— especially with series, you know, different brands— how have you approached competitors, you know, protecting your brand, people seeing what you do, and, you know, me-too businesses that pop up on both sides of it maybe? Of people thinking that you're copying them or they're copying you. I think it's always interesting to see how that, that's part of that, that gets approached as you start to grow your business. You know, any, any thoughts or any approach that you've, you've done towards that?

Yeah, it's interesting in service because unlike product, you not always, but you typically don't have like trademark or copyright on like actually what you're doing. Anyone can go out and start a hotel, right? You, right, you know, there are a lot more barriers to entry. Same with, um, at Canela, you know, we were kind of this hybrid tour operator travel agency. Um, we curated our own experiences, but we partnered with people who had the licensing and everything ready to go in country, the hotels, the guides, the transport, because we weren't local, we couldn't do that. So, um, anyone could go out and do that, honestly, anyone. And I think that prevents a lot of people from starting a business as well in the service industry. Well, anyone can do this, anyone Anyone can set up tents. Anyone can do this. The way I approach it is, yeah, but they don't. A lot of people don't. A lot of people aren't willing to put in that work. It is a lot of freaking work. And if they do, great for them. We actually partner, and this year we're partnering even more with people who I would say a lot of people would consider them their competitors. And I look at it and say, they have different strengths. We have different strengths. We get into a new market, they get into a new market, our products are different. Sweet, let's do it. That's my mentality. But yeah, we have had, you know, when we first started, competitors on the upper end of us, you know, see what we're doing. We talked about like disruption, right? Starting low and pushing up. Kind of start to notice when we started popping up in a lot of locations, they were like, oh, like these guys are going. And you know, we've had a battle with them. We've had, you know, CEOs companies show up at our camp like scouting, pretending, you know, to see what we're doing, which is, which is honestly so cool. We've had cease and desist letters sent to us for the, you know, honestly the stupidest things.

Um, and it's, I mean, it's interesting. People just kind of just rattling your cage just, just to see, you know.

Yeah. And it's usually the same like couple of, you know, who I honestly don't consider competitors, but obviously they consider us. Um, they could be a competitor in the future, right, as we continue to rise, but we're a very different product than they are right now. But yeah, it's just been interesting. Um, and you know, it's— people approach things differently. But you know, when we get those things, I think a lot of times the first one, actually the first— because we got a couple— the first cease and desist letter we got, I didn't even really know what they were because I'd never gotten one. I'm like, what is this? Like, they want us to take down our camp? Like, how can they say that?

Yeah.

So we into it. And like I said, they were for really stupid things like, you know, you're in the same locations as us. Okay, well, there's only 5 national parks and we're only in 3 of them. Yeah, we're going to be in every Utah national park.

Also, that's not something you can actually stop someone else from doing.

But that's a good lesson. Just because someone put it in an angry lawyer letter doesn't mean it's legit.

Yeah, I think, I think they probably said these guys are naive. They're, they're, you know, just starting. Let's like let's rattle their cage a little bit, like you said. And is that— yeah, that first one I was like, oh my gosh, like, what are we gonna do? But now I've just learned, you know, and even, even things like, you know, when with Wander Camp we pop up in neighborhoods, we get a lot of neighbors come by and express their opinion. You know, they're like, oh, we don't like you here, we liked how it was before. Naturally, everyone is, especially in these areas. You got to deal with that, right? And we're in the business of we want to make our neighbors happy. So, you know, we listen to their feedback, we give them a little gift, we tell them we're seasonal, we show them our permit, you know, we tell them they can come by anytime and talk to us, give us their feedback. And you are going to get that. And sometimes it's going to be maybe a little more scary, like a cease and desist letter. I hope not. I hope none of you guys get that. But if you do, just know, like, it's, it's, it's not the end of the world. Sometimes they have no latitude at all.

And other times you involve someone like Brittany, you know, and to say, is this real? Is this something I need to worry about?

Is this a Is this a real concern or someone just trying to scare me off?

Yeah.

Having, I will say that too, as you grow, having someone in your corner, I would say in both the accounting and the legal side is so, so, so important because I know so many people that have just been kind of too scared to move forward or they kind of just let their, stop their business because they were afraid of infringing even on like a friend's territory or someone else. And I mean, you look at Uber and Lyft, look at Costa Vida and Cafe Rio. There are a lot of companies out there. I mean, look how many glamping companies there are out there.

How many soda shops are there in Utah?

I mean, let's—

It doesn't mean you can't do it. Are there boundaries you need to stay in with? Absolutely. And if you don't know those, that's why you need to have someone in your corner. Right.

So absolutely, yeah.

But there's room. There is a big wide ocean out there, you know? And no one can do it quite like you. Find out what your angle is, what's your approach, what's the unique value proposition position that you're bringing.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And if the competitors know about you, I honestly think it's awesome. I think it's awesome. It means, like I said, if the criticism is coming and the skepticism is coming, it means you're rising. It means that they know you're doing something. So now I'm kind of excited when the CEOs show up at our camps and I'm not excited when we get cease and desist. No, we got two. They were right in the beginning from the same company and we, they were just trying to scare us. We figured that out. But, you know, it's good. It means that you're doing something, which is awesome.

Yeah, you're getting attention. And then that's just part of the journey and growth.

Kind of last question is in terms of your mentorship and leadership, where have you kind of sought out resources in terms of as you grow your business, as you step more into that CEO visionary role, what are you listening to, reading? Are you seeking out, you have a business coach?

What are you doing to kind of uplevel yourself personally and be prepared for, you know, leading your company?

This is such an important thing to do. I honestly love— it's not really like a mentorship podcast, but listening to like How I Built This to get inspired.

I love Guy Raz.

Gosh, love, love him.

But yeah, so many business books. I mean, I frequently reread like Atomic Habits, you know, 7 Habits of Highly Effective people. There are some like really good business books. And honestly, I reread the same ones because you pick up something new every single year. I did have a business coach actually for quite some time with Canela, with Wander Camp. I've kind of stepped away from that because I'm on the road all the time, but it is super, super healthy. But even though I don't have a coach now, I still have that person and many others that I can reach out to for advice. So whether you have a board or a you know, a mock board, which is just people you can talk to who care about you, care about your company.

To be honest, they don't even have to know about business, some of them.

Some of them can just be, you know, a listening ear. But also having entrepreneurs who you can talk to and learn from, whether that's personally or by listening to a podcast like How I Built This, is super important. Because I think starting something, yeah, you could say there's skill, there's, there's skill and determination, it will skill involved, but a lot of it is just being inspired and determined and having grit. There's not like really any, you know, if you don't have a skill, you can still start something great is what I'm saying. And so having people who can inspire you and keep you going is super, super important. So, and my husband is on that list too. I'll say, you know, now that we work together, it's, we're super aware of like making sure that we stress each other's strengths. And, you know, it can be easy to forget that stuff, but it is super important. And, you know, you want to feel good about what you're doing. And so, yeah, that would be my advice. You don't need a business coach to be successful, but you get to that point where you feel like bringing one on is important because they can be expensive. Awesome.

Do it. But there are other ways as well to get that.

Podcast, books, all of it. Masterminds, is that something that you've done or had?

Yeah.

Had a good experience with?

I have done masterminds. I'm thinking all these things. I'm like, wow, I need to get back to this stuff. I've just been so busy.

There are times and phases too.

It's hard.

Yeah.

Seasons. I'm building, like I'm back in the phase of like I'm building something. And so I don't have a lot of time, but absolutely I've been a part of masterminds, something I'll definitely do again. Once again, many, many people in your corner, you get to listen to their stories, their pitfalls, learn from them. You get to say, oh wow, their business is super hard too. Sweet.

I thought it was just me. It's not just you.

It's not.

Um, there's also other groups, like I know there's like, you know, EO, YPO, a lot of, you know, groups that you can be a part of. Um, in Utah, you know, the state where we're both in, there's a lot of like women's groups and things. Um, I, I honestly want to be more active in them. Um, and that, that is the goal of mine, but for me, I'm heads down building right now, but absolutely. They've contributed a lot to where I am because I have participated in a lot of those things and plan to in the future again.

Right.

So, which, I mean, you're in an awesome position where, I mean, you could even host stuff because you're— yeah, I mean, how cool?

Glamping slash mastermind.

I love that.

I've done some girl class retreats before with Econell that have been really fun, but I've thought about that with glamping, even just getting people together in the same— like-minded people to— yeah. Something together, it brings out great conversations.

Yeah, it doesn't even have to be super structured in terms of, you know, the, you know, the curriculum or what they're going to be talking about.

And there's just something about, yeah, sharing physical space.

And, and we, I think we have such a healthier appreciation for that now because, you know, we had so many opportunities that got canceled and still, you know, still seeing.

Yeah, I had an event get canceled last month and I already had like my, you know, my outfit for it. And I was just like, well, Wearing a sparkly dress to church anyway because here we are.

I'm never—

I'm not gonna just let the sequins sit in my closet, but it was disappointing.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, same on the Okinawa side. We're still just— countries closing and so many things, but gotta look at the positive, right?

Right, exactly. That's all you can do. Okay, you know, tell me a little bit about— I want to hear about how the Montana, you know, renovations going on and then where people can find you and connect with you at all, all of your different channels.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's been fun.

We have an off-season now because Canela is still a little flatlined.

So yeah, we've been renovating properties in the off-season for employee housing, for off-season revenue, all the things I talked about. So I'm in Montana, have this beautiful snow-covered view in front of me. We're renovating. We bought some land out here for our new Wander Camp Glacier location. Location. Yeah, we leased land last year. It wasn't the most ideal spot. Got feedback, listened to it, so now we're here. Um, but yeah, there's a, uh, 1,600 square foot, very old, very run-down, lots of potential cabin here.

So we've, uh, lots of charm, lots of character, right? Isn't that what the real estate listings call those places?

Yeah, has a story. I mean, it's the old Glacier Schoolhouse. Half this house is a part of it. So we found old photos. Oh, that's super cool. History, beautiful, gorgeous views. And honestly, just so perfect for us to be able to— we're going to open up on Airbnb so everyone can come stay on it when our camp is not open. Um, and we're going to be doing that on many of— we have the same one in Zion. We have an Airbnb down there, um, along with our camp. But yeah, that's the Gulf right here. We have 2 weeks 2 weeks to get it done.

We're finishing the basement. We just framed and insulated. And I enjoy doing these things. So to be honest, I laid a lot of insulation this weekend. It's therapeutic for me.

I laugh and tell people painting is my therapy. I sit in front of a computer, plan things. But with Wander Camp, it's been so fun to get out in the field and actually like dig holes and put down tents. And a lot of people might say you shouldn't be doing that as a business owner, hire it out. Yeah, there is some truth to that, but I I love it. It's so fun to see the transformation. And I think if it's therapeutic and fun for you, do it. So yeah, we're very hands-on in this renovation, and it's been super, super fun. I've been sharing about it a little bit on my Instagram.

Yeah, it's been fun to watch your stories.

I mean, there's something to it, building something with your hands, creating something out of, you know, what was nothing or what was in a very different shape before. It speaks to us. Yep.

Absolutely.

And where can people find you? You know, if they're interested in one, all of your businesses, if they need an adventure and a dress and, you know, adventures near and far, where can they connect with you?

Oh man, now that I have 3 businesses, I'm like, where do I send you?

First thing, my Instagram, which I probably need to change the name to be my name so it's easier to find, but it's @kytricia. My middle name is Tricia, Tricia, K-Y-T-R-I-C-I-A. I have all 3 business Instagrams linked there. And obviously all of those Instagrams have websites as well. If you're not on social, um, www.thewandercamp.com, W-A-N-D-E-R, like wandering, wandercamp.com is where you can find us. We're also on all major, major booking platforms. So if you go to like booking.com or Airbnb, we're now on all of those. We have a website too. So acanela.com. For in the future when you want to plan your trip. We are doing a lot of trips right now. Actually, quite a few people are traveling, but you know, it's up to each and each person on their comfort level right now.

So right, of what they feel comfortable with. And yeah, and what the options are in terms of internationally and what you guys feel like you can, you know, be there and do it safe and with all parties involved. But I'm sure your vendors and the local people are very excited to have people traveling again.

Yeah, they, they message us every day. Just, they are so ready. So we'll get back, we'll get back there.

Get back out there and do it and do it in the right way.

So, well, thank you, Kylie, so much for being on. This was just such a tremendous conversation. It's so great to see this and just the tremendous phases of your business and the lessons that you've learned. And I think you've got such a healthy appreciation for, for, you know, for failure, for mistakes and growth and then being able to pick yourself up. And like you said, there's, there's something about that persistence, but also learning and moving forward, understanding that's part of the business journey.

Absolutely. I'm so glad we could finally make this work.

I know.

Yeah, I know.

Likewise.

Busy schedules. So this is a pleasure.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for joining me on that conversation. I just had the greatest time chatting with Kylie and just viewing all of the different twists and turns along her journey. And like, just isn't that the truth on just being open to, to different ways of doing business, of serving people? I mean, how crazy is it that she started with a spice company that then turned into a travel company that then turned into a hotel and, you know, hospitality company and has learned all these things along the way? If you're interested in so many of the great resources that Kylie mentioned we've got all of those goodies in the show notes, including the books she mentioned. I also linked the, the famous Netflix Culture deck that we talked about by Patty McCord, which has been viewed, you know, millions and millions of times for good reason, because it's all about, you know, how do you hire grown-ups and make sure that you're having a good team culture with that. So some other resources that we mentioned are just kind of some of the basic things that you can do to protect your business as you grow. Like Kylie said, the reality situation is as your business grows, as your revenue grows, you're a bigger target, um, and you need to make sure that you're taking those steps seriously as you start to hit those milestones in your business. So, uh, no huge shock that if you are interested in getting yourself legally legit, my number one resource for you is to download my Legally Legit Workbook. It literally walks you through step by step what are the questions you need to be asking, what are the tasks that need to go on your list step-by-step how can you start to attack those and cross those off. So you can get that link in the show notes or type in getlegitwithbritt.com. I know I can't be stopped. I won't be stopped with the cheesy rhyming. You can also find links for our legal promotion kit for giveaways if you're doing giveaways in your business and growing like that and you want that, or if you need to get your email marketing leveled up and you need to make sure you have a privacy Privacy Policy in the footer of your website to make sure you're being compliant as you send out marketing messages, or as you're maybe hiring team members and wanting to make sure that your 1099s, those freelancers who are helping you build and scale your business, that everything's protected in that relationship, that you guys have clear boundaries and expectations about how you're going to be working with each other. Find that in my Independent Contractor Agreement. You can get all of those and more at creativecontracts.co. That is my one-stop shop for getting your compliant, industry-tested, attorney-reviewed, easy peasy lemon squeezy downloadable contract templates and resources so that you can grow your business, get legal off your list, and move on with your life and wearing that CEO hat and growing all the things that you need to grow and serving all the people that you want to serve. Thanks so much for joining us today. Make sure to tune in, subscribe, leave a review if you haven't yet. Those are super helpful in helping other people find the podcast and helping me get more and more guests to take us seriously and to take these conversations seriously that can help you build your business. Thanks so much for joining me here, and catch you on the flip side.