The woman changing Pakistan travel
and taking on the male-dominated tourism industry
In today’s newsletter: the woman changing Pakistan travel, the crazy genius of entrepreneurs, and Melissa Joan Hart. This month, a portion of the profits from paid newsletter subscriptions will be donated to Womankind. Previous organizations we’ve supported include Girls Write Now, Women for Women, Heart of Dinner & Black Mamas Matter. If you’ve found your way here but are not yet subscribed, let me help you with that:
This week, I interviewed a woman by the name of Summer Poulsen who opened My Sister’s House, the first dedicated women’s hostel and community in Sayulita. After purchasing the property and designing the space, Summer triumphantly opened her hostel in February 2020 to sold-out reservations. Of course, we all know what happened next. As COVID-19 swept across the globe—from Asia to Europe to the United States—the residents on Mexico’s Pacific Coast began to anticipate the worst. A month after opening My Sister’s House, Summer was forced to shut down.
Female entrepreneurs are no strangers to obstacles. In the countless times that I’ve interviewed female founders for various publications, I am always in awe of the tenacity these women have in the pursuit of their dreams. Too often, female entrepreneurs are underestimated as they go up against male-dominated industries, blatant sexism, and disadvantages in approaching investors. Add a pandemic on top of that and, well, you’ve got yourself a real sh*t cake.
For this reason (and admittedly my own curiosity), I love to ask these women what their number one piece of advice is to those looking to emulate their success. For those of us who are, say, sitting at home in pajamas, watching reruns of Happy Endings, and making Aperol spritzes, I like to extract a golden nugget of inspirational wisdom to carry forth. When I asked Summer this question, she replied:
“If I only have $5,000, I’ll put all $5,000 down and make it work, somehow. I’ve never really been a planner. I think if you have enough heart or love for any business, you can make it work.”
What I love about Summer’s answer is the honesty of it. Too often the answer to this question is one filled with platitudes. Believe in yourself! Follow your intuition! Build that field of dreams, baby! But here is an answer that really teeters on the edge of crazy and genius. You can almost picture Summer emptying her wallet, pushing that money across a desk, purchasing the hostel property, and repeating the mantra: “I’ll make it work, somehow.”
If you go behind the curtain of some major companies, you’ll find this “throw caution to the wind” moment. That moment when—without funding or following—the entrepreneur faced the choice between jumping off a cliff or abandoning their endeavor altogether. Airbnb, for example, used cereal boxes to get themselves out of debt. When the idea for Airbnb first formed, founder Brian Chesky found himself in $20,000 of credit card debt used to finance the initial idea. Brian believed in his company, jumped off the ledge to chase it, and got creative in the most unexpected way. Today, Airbnb is worth more than $31 billion.
I love these stories. I’m not interested in the founders who come from trust funds or well-connected families. No, I want to hear about the college kid who clawed his way out of debt using cereal boxes and went on to find a Fortune 500 company. I want to hear about the founder who was determined to create a women’s hostel and held tight to that idea amidst a global pandemic. I want to hear about the Pakistani woman who had enough of the male-run tourism industry in her country and decided to launch a women’s travel company (more on that below).
At some point, every start-up founder (whose last name isn’t Rockefeller) has their own “Jesus, take the wheel” moment. That near-mythical time when they—as Summer put it—just made it work, somehow. In the early days of Unearth Women, I sat firmly at the crossroads of “genius” and “crazy” with my idea for introducing a women’s travel magazine. I had just been laid off from my job as Travel Editor, I had virtually no savings, and I had never published a magazine before. But I had passion, determination, and people who believed in the project. Nearly six months later, the idea for Unearth Women was pulled out of my brain and into existence as a physical magazine sold in over 800 Barnes & Noble locations nationwide.
Admittedly, when it comes to Unearth Women I hardly consider myself an entrepreneur. Call it imposter syndrome or insecurity, but I feel about as comfortable parading around the title of FOUNDER as I do wearing the skin-tight leather pants I impulsed purchased years back. Although Unearth Women is the love of my career, it lives in an open relationship with my editorial work, my freelance writing, the book I’m currently writing, and other projects I’ve got going on. That said, I’m always dreaming up ways to grow Unearth Women, but too often will let those ideas fall to the way-side because of perceived obstacles.
Summer’s advice reminds me of those early days when — without funding — I got creative and simply made it work. Were there hard lessons learned along the way? Absolutely. Were there times I simply didn’t make it work? You betcha. But, in the end, it’s about tenacity and determination. About the drive of chasing an idea rather than hanging up your hat before you even step out the door. It’s about the myriad of obstacles that litter the path of dreamers and saying, ‘you know what, I’ll figure this out, somehow.’
As you can probably guess, Summer’s women-only hostel and community did in fact make it work. The hostel did eventually re-open and is now fully operational.
Meet the woman changing Pakistan travel
This week, I published a story on Unearth Women by writer Rahma Khan, which spotlights a female entrepreneur in Pakistan by the name of Aneeqa Ali. Aneeqa is the founder of The Mad Hatters, an experiential travel company offering customized trips to remote areas of the country. As Aneeqa explains it, Pakistan can be a difficult country to navigate for both local and foreign women. In an effort to open up Pakistan travel and make it more welcoming to women, Aneeqa started her own tour company. Changing the way a country does things is difficult enough, but add to that the inherent sexism that exists in Pakistan’s male-dominated tourism industry and, well, Aneeqa has her work cut out for her. Read Rahma’s full interview with Aneeqa here.
5 reasons to become a paid subscriber to this newsletter
Melissa Joan Hart, Cleveland’s balloon festival gone wrong, and the Suez Canal
Decide to rewatch some of your favorite movies from the 90s, including Clueless, Drive Me Crazy, and Save the Last Dance. I know that last one came out in 2001, but if Julia Stiles and her stiff hip hop moves don’t scream 1998, I don’t know what does. After your nostalgic movie marathon, go down a serious rabbit hole reading about Melissa Joan Hart’s current career. Imagine if someone had gone up to Melissa at the height of her popularity—following Drive Me Crazy, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Clarissa Explains it All—and told her that 20 years later she would be stuck in a vortex of made-for-television Christmas movies (one of which is actually called Feliz NaviDAD). Life can be brutal.
Make this spaghetti carbonara by Alison Roman and then decide it’s finally time to order a Peloton Bike. To reward yourself for taking the first (very expensive) step in reinstating a regular fitness routine, order a Nutella tiramisu. Listen to this podcast episode about how the travel industry is supporting the Black community since last summer. It’s all too easy to make sweeping proclamations on social media about justice and equality, but this episode looks at what’s actually being done to support the Black travel community today.
Shameless plug alert 🚨: sign up for a 1:1 virtual session with me as part of the upcoming Women in Travel Summit. For one hour I’ll divulge every tip I can muster to help you pitch a travel story, launch a travel blog, or break into travel writing. Or, we can spend the hour talking about this short film of a balloon festival gone terribly wrong in Cleveland. If the last scene of this film doesn’t perfectly sum up America, I don’t know what does. Finally, play this interactive game that has you sail a ship through the Suez Canal. I crashed thrice and now sympathize with the captain of the Ever Given.
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The tangent about Melissa Joan Hart cracked me up
Great newsletter. Very true about that moment that entrepreneurs have.