2014, nothing existed for people like us. Group trips meant either boozy beach getaways for people in their 20s or sedate coach excursions for retirees. Travelers in between — professionals with disposable income searching for global inspiration and like-minded souls — fell through the gap. Our mission was to reinvent the excitement of travel for this demographic with a curation of thrilling worldwide escapes. However, right from the start, we came within a spitting distance of failure. We had a great concept but no proof. Having bootstrapped our business from scratch using our own money, cash was fast running out. The solution? Lee and I decided that he would climb to the top of the Christ The Redeemer statue in Brazil and capture a world-first selfie that quickly went viral, creating 1.5 million hits to our website in two days and pushing our company to the top of Google. It was that tenacity that I needed to call on again when — after growing Flash Pack to a global company of 55 teammembers and a valuation of $55 million — COVID-19 struck in March 2020. Overnight, inquiries fizzled to zero, and hundreds of our customers were stranded abroad. The venture capitalists who had been fighting to bid on our company just days before went silent, and once more, we were face-toface with failure. As a CEO, two things got my business through that horrible period. Firstly, I decided to be as transparent as possible within the Flash Pack team and our wider community. Second, I was honest with our employees about our precarious situation, eventually cutting back to a skeleton crew of just 15 people. The same approach went for customers seeking refunds. We wrote open letters to our audience via email and across our social media channels. We explained that, as a small business with no investor backing, we simply couldn’t issue refunds to everyone straight away. We owned our vulnerability, trusting our tight-knit community would respond in kind — and for the most part, they did. Our posts describing the challenges we faced drew hundreds of supportive comments from ordinary people who could empathize with what we were going through. Secondly, I used a lot of determination and again acted on instinct to face each barrier as it arose. In the early days of the pandemic, I set about working every hour of the day to find a good investor. It wasn’t fun — I had to send my toddler away to stay with my sister so I could put in the grueling hours required. It was a lost cause from the start. Many people I spoke to just wanted to know our business plans without committing. Meanwhile, Lee focused on contacting every customer with a refund issue to help them get their money back. We had no idea whether our business would survive when it came to this vast and complex administrative task. But just like the launch of our business, it felt like the right thing to do. By November 2020, I was forced to put the company into administration. But I knew a thing or two about resilience by then. I didn’t hesitate to remortgage our home, buying back our business assets with the released assets. A fewmonths later, I found a brilliant investor who understood our business vision, and Flash Pack V2 was back on track with significant Series A funding. Failure is daunting, but it can also be an invitation to connect with the essence of what makes you and your business tick. Flash Pack has always been about community. Leaning into that community with an open and hands-on line of communication during the pandemic paid dividends: 93% of pre-COVID customers say they’d book with us again, and we’ve had hundreds of bookings since our relaunch in mid-2021. Many former staff have also returned, having ridden out the storm at other jobs. The fallout fromCOVID-19 has redoubled my commitment to two of my greatest assets as a CEO: grit and the ability to listen to my gut. If I hadn’t put my head down and followed an instinct that said, “We’ll get through this,” my company would no longer exist. We wouldn’t have our investor who said “yes” after countless “nos.” I would have frozen before the big, scary gamble of remortgaging our house was about to get approved. My advice to fellow entrepreneurs is not to shy away frommissteps or paper over the cracks that will inevitably emerge during your business journey. Instead, use them as an opportunity to shine a light on the strengths you never knew you had. n Radha Vyas is the cofounder and CEO of Flash Pack, an award-winning travel company that connects like-minded professionals in their 30s and 40s and sends them on global adventures together. CEO SUCCESS 64 REAL-LEADERS.COM / SUMMER 2022
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