William Wu Personal Blog

I love travel and have been faithfully following the Dalai Lama’s recommendation, “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” In addition to many fun memories that my family collected along the way, there are some lessons that I learned from these trips that seem to be applicable to entrepreneurships.

1. Who you travel with makes all the difference.

First and foremost, it is all about the people you meet along the way. Great travel experiences come from the great people you share them with: your fellow travelers, fascinating guides, great local people and the unique characters you meet along the route. Wherever you go, the people make the difference. This is what the Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson meant when he said, “We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is our honest friend.”

I recall times when our tour was not organized well. Planes were delayed; bus rides were way too long, the scenery was boring, and so on. However, every time when these situations happened, they provided me with great opportunities to chat with my fellow travelers in a more intimate way and also allowed our family to spend good quality time to chat and play games together.

An entrepreneurial venture requires a team of people that are willing to hazard the journey and share the good times and the bad times together. Sir Ernest Shackleton knew this well when he put a recruiting notice for his 1914 Antarctica Expedition: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter Cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” You really need a team of people that you are willing to bet your career on and trust them to be able to share the ups and downs along the way.

Like Tim Cahill said, “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”

2. Your attitude determines what you see.

Before you travel to your destination, it is important to set a realistic expectation of what you hope to see. Every trip that I have been on always had some unforeseen surprises and not all of the surprises were good. Unfamiliar culture, jet lag on long flights, and constantly changing situations can put a lot of stress on a person both mentally and physically. Maintaining a positive attitude enables you to really appreciate what you experience – good and bad, for the duration of your travel. A short story illustrates this well:

“An old philosopher was tending his front garden on the road between Thebes and Athens.

A passing traveler hailed him over the wall.

“Old man,” said the traveler, “I am heading for Athens and have never visited. What are the people like there?”

The old man stands up: “How did you find the people back in Thebes?” he asks.

“They were the worst people you can imagine; you can’t trust them and they’d steal the clothes off your back,” said the traveller. 

“Ah. I’m sorry to tell you that you will find the people of Athens exactly the same,” said the old man, and bent back to his work.

A little later another traveler passes the front gate.

“Old man,” said the traveler, “I am heading for Athens and have never visited. What are the people like there?”

“How did you find the people back in Thebes?” asks the old man again. 

“Ah, the best of folk,” smiled the traveler. “Kind, welcoming, good company…I will miss them.”

“Then I am delighted to say,” smiled the old man, “that you will find the people of Athens exactly the same.”

A business is a true reflection of the leader him/herself. Good entrepreneurs look in the mirror everyday and know ‘You see the world as you are, not as it is.’

If you can have a team of people that is keen, committed and involved — and these attitudes are supported, respected, encouraged and rewarded by the entrepreneurs themselves— your journey is more likely to be successful.

Like Nikos Kazantzakis said, “Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.”

3. Which path you pick does matter.

John D. Rockfeller Jr. has this famous quote: “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” Sometimes you need to be willing to go to places where it is less crowded and less traveled to really understand and appreciate the local cultures. This means you travel just a bit farther than the heavy tourist areas, even a 30-minute train ride to a nearby town will often surprise you and make your journey all the more memorable.

The secret of picking a different path however, should not be done randomly. To really know where you are going without getting lost in a foreign land requires plenty of planning in advance. You need to be willing to research and understand the risks before you go.

Or if you truly want to be different, you do what Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

4. How and where you travel is a function of what you are willing to give.

How you travel is really dictated by 3 basic factors: time, money and health. Starting a business requires the same ingredients. Going to see the Pyramids requires a complete different scale of time, money and health than, say, a visit to your nearby state park in an afternoon. Both could be fun. But if you are planning to take a long flight to a far away land, be sure you are well-prepared – do it when you can since time waits for no one; save enough money to at least get you going; and do it because you have the physical strength to walk, bike or climb to experience the thrill since many of the best ancient wonders in the world that I know unfortunately were not designed for accessibility.

As an entrepreneur, you must be willing to give up your evening or weekends in exchange of time required when the opportunities demand it. You must have enough funding and be able to sustain it long enough to see it through. And, from my personal experience, even after you have spent all you can, you may still come away from reality that everything does cost twice as much, take twice as long and yield half of the results you expect.

So judge your success not by how much you have accomplished, but by how much you have to give up accomplishing the success.

5. Be a traveler, not a tourist.

G. K. Chesterton said, “The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” It is important to recognize that elsewhere in the world; the pace is often not what we are accustomed to. For example, planes and trains don’t necessary follow a schedule; traffic mess in Seattle is no comparison to sharing your 2-lane roads with 4-lanes of vehicles of all kinds plus donkeys, cows and camels in other emerging countries. To truly enjoy the journey, you need to learn how to adapt and enjoy every moment. Be a real traveler, and not a tourist. A traveler adapts to the environment and a tourist expects the others to adapt to him. Have you ever heard of “when in Rome, be a Roman?”

Starting a new business is like traveling to a thrilling place that you have never been before. There are many things in life that will catch your eyes but in the end only a few that will catch your heart… make sure you pursue those heart-felt opportunities. A famous Arabic proverb says it best, “The dawn does not come twice to awaken a man.” Learn to adapt and learn to seize opportunity. Like great travelers, smart entrepreneurs appreciate every opportunity. They turn every set back into a great learning opportunity and every win as a small celebration.

Measure your travel not by the miles that you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.

Finally, some people just don’t enjoy traveling at all for whatever reasons. They know how to find ways to enjoy life without going far. So ask yourself, do you have the passion and what it takes to go on a potential life-changing trip? If you don’t, then it is probably a waste of your time, energy and effort. This is what Martha Graham meant when she said, “Great dancers are not great dancers because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.” Great entrepreneurs know that they start a business because they have the passion to do it better than others. The do what they love and they love what they do.