Traveling to Success with Jen Rubio
Today Equalman sits down with Away CEO, Jen Rubio, who discusses how she navigated her journey through success and what helpful tips can help us achieve the same.
Jen Rubio is an American-Filipino businesswoman. She is the co-founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Away, a luggage manufacturer and retailer. Rubio has served as head of social media at Warby Parker and global director of innovation at fashion company AllSaints.
5x #1 Bestselling Author and Motivational Speaker Erik Qualman has performed in over 55 countries and reached over 50 million people this past decade. He was voted the 2nd Most Likable Author in the World behind Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling.
5x #1 Bestselling Author and Motivational Speaker Erik Qualman has performed in over 55 countries and reached over 50 million people this past decade. He was voted the 2nd Most Likable Author in the World behind Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling. Qualman is also the inventor of the bestselling board game Kittycorn.
Need a sneak peek? Below are the main takeaways from the episode.
Traveling to Success with Jen Rubio
Episode Preview:
“For hundreds of years as luggage companies, these are major companies we think about Samsonite. It always makes me laugh when I say the word Samsonite, because it reminds me of the Dumb and Dumber scene… there are a lot of established players with deep pockets. So walk me through why such a difficult industry to break into.”
“So the idea came from a broken suitcase, I was traveling and my bag exploded in Zurich airport, which is quite embarrassing. And when I got home, I asked my very stylish, very well-traveled group of friends for a recommendation. And these are I’ve literally the most annoying friends, they have recommendations for everything. And nobody had one. I think, you know, every people who are on planes every single week, they’re like, “Oh, actually, I don’t know what brand I have,” or, or they’re like, “I got this as a gift or as a hand me down for my mother.” And it really got me thinking about how just in the luggage landscape, everything was either super expensive, and not very practical or more affordable, but you knew it was going to break. And I chatted with Steph who’s now my co-founder about it. And we also realized that there was a gap in the market for a travel brand that really thinks about travel the way all of us in this room do, and a travel brand that cares about experiences and not just the actual product itself. So I think those two things, thinking about the gap in the market for a specific product. And then the brand that didn’t exist really led us to create a way to what it is today.
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Steph and I learned really early on that the way we could succeed faster and do better as a team is just like through humility. As we know, our goal is to just hire people who are way better than us in the things that they do. And I think you know that that’s a huge part of our culture. Like we hire people who are experts at what they do. For example, our team that works on content and influencers, I think rivals any influencer, you didn’t see out there, but they just got to work on our brand the whole time. And because of that, we’ve just built these amazing pockets of like, really deep talent in the organization. And we just like empower them to, to run with it. And I think, you know, people talk a lot about empowerment and internal cultures. But for us, we don’t want someone to start it away and say like, Okay, what do you want me to do? We want them to be telling us what we should be doing in their field. And we’ve done that from the beginning.”
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The Super U Podcast is hosted by #1 bestselling author and Motivational Speaker Erik Qualman.
