10 Travel Insights That Transform Business and Life: An Entrepreneur’s Journey
10 Travel Insights That Transform Business and Life: An Entrepreneur’s Journey
Traveling offers more than just new experiences; it expands the boundaries of our lives, allowing us to adapt what we’ve seen to our personal and professional worlds. This is precisely what Snezhana Suryaeva, an entrepreneur and owner of the veterinary clinic VetMedCenter, has done. We spoke with her about how traveling can reset your mindset and help you discover new insights for yourself and your business.
My First Journey at 18
I embarked on my first journey at 18, saving money for an entire year. Traveling wasn’t the most popular form of recreation in my family. The first country I traveled to alone was Turkey. It might seem like a typical tourist destination, but during that trip, I met a hotel owner who showed me a side of Turkey beyond the usual tourist spots. He introduced me to local traditions and connected me with his relatives and partners. This was an interesting, interactive experience that allowed me to see the country from a non-tourist perspective.
Since then, I’ve realized that traveling isn’t just a “mini-life,” but rather events that change you. I believe that without traveling, I wouldn’t have become such an interesting and multifaceted person. A single trip can sometimes replace hundreds of books and years of experience. For me, traveling isn’t about tourism; it’s a call from the heart to be free, to live a full and multifaceted life where I can write a book in a Japanese garden one day and climb a mountain the next.
No Return Ticket
When I set off on a trip, I usually don’t have a clear plan or a return ticket. This approach comes with experience. I tried living in Europe, moving to Prague in 2012. My trip to Prague during Christmas ended with me moving there three months later. In my opinion, you need to spend at least six months in a country to understand if it’s suitable for living. Around this time, the initial charm fades, and you start dealing with more long-term everyday issues and tasks. This becomes apparent when you interact with local authorities and encounter bureaucracy.
In 2021, I packed all my belongings and my dog and moved to the USA, having already researched life there in 2018. I don’t romanticize the experience of moving, so I always honestly talk about the “side effects” of emigration.
Visiting All Countries in the World
I genuinely believe that traveling is a hobby, and I plan to visit every country in the world. So many exciting stories have happened to me during my travels that they could fill more than one book. I’m the kind of traveler who, after visiting popular places, becomes interested in exotic and distant countries. For example, last year I went to New Guinea after seeing photos of the Papuans online. I read on the internet that there are still cannibals in the country. Experiencing mixed feelings of fear, judgment, and wild attraction, I couldn’t resist. It takes my breath away, and I feel a strong desire to see people who haven’t yet been touched by civilization.
Imagine stepping into the daily life of people who still believe that visitors come from a huge hole (that’s how they refer to the vast ocean). How can you not want to experience that? The thought that this isn’t a masquerade show and that there’s possibly only a little time left before everything changes, urges me to act now.
Traveling Fosters Tolerance and Acceptance
I first came to the USA in 2018 and immediately felt immense excitement. For many years, I had walked these streets, visited these cafes, and experienced stories that I had only seen in movies. Now, I was becoming the main character of those very films: seeing, touching, and smelling everything that I had seen thousands of times through a screen. The experience was emotionally overwhelming!
Once the initial emotional excitement fades, you start noticing less obvious nuances in the country: homeless people, drug addicts, unemployment, protests, lack of customer service, social problems, illiteracy (like when a gas station employee can’t calculate simple change), and the sales books that are icons for our business seem not to work in their market.
People often idealize or mock, judge or deny experiences they haven’t had access to, but I tend to live my own experiences without exaggeration.
Global Trends and Business Success
Visiting developed countries shows where the world is heading, at what speed, and in what direction. When you see that many things are already implemented in another country and progress is faster than in your own, you start analyzing the needs of your market.
In 2021, when the world was experiencing the Covid epidemic, global business was going through tough times and quickly adapting to the new reality. Suddenly, numerous online products emerged, so I thought about how to make a completely offline product accessible remotely.
My attention to global trends allowed me to take the company to a new level during the pandemic. I developed the first product of its kind in our market—online veterinary services. The product was so successful that I received the Forbes Woman Award for my contribution to economic development during the pandemic.
