After college, I took an unconventional career path. No two-year contract with a bank or consulting firm, no paralegal work, not even a stint on my parents’ couch. I took a contract to teach English in China for a month and decided I’d figure out the rest along the way. Over the next five years, I lived and worked my way through Mongolia, Russia, Thailand, Afghanistan, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Turkey. I taught English, worked as a freelance journalist, wrote analysis for a consulting firm, and threw parties to bring together the fascinating people I met along the way.
Friends openly wondered if I’d ever get back on the career path after “disappearing” for years. What they—and I, for that matter—didn’t realize then is that I was well on my way along my career path of choice: being an entrepreneur. As I found ways to support myself in my travels, and picked where I would settle, I learned several key skills that have served me well in the course of building a venture-backed startup.
Source: Traveling the World Made Me a Better Entrepreneur – HBR
Reading her story, I have to say that becoming a better entrepreneur is only one of the benefits of her travels. A person has to be near genius,certified negotiator, event planner, and be able to pull a full grown elephant out of a baseball cap.
Good points Jane – I can certainly attest to the invaluable benefits of travel not only from an entreprenurial perspective, but simply as an opportunity to capture a “broader” balanced perspective on the world around us…
I confess that when I first read the title of the article I thought for sure it was going to be a personal story of your Denali adventure.
🙂 Be assured that our recent travels have inspired an “outling” for an upcoming Article, as (consistent with the above story), every step we took was a learning experience in so many respects!