Successful hair stylist + successful market researcher = perfect recipe for a travel concierge, right?
Ok, so maybe it’s not what you’d expect – but here’s the story of how Unleashed came to be.
A little background:
- Alicia has a 12-year career as a hair stylist
- Erika has been in the market research industry for 12 years
- Both of us have worked our way up to become successes – we’re good at what we do
So, how did we get here, to Unleashed?
2013: With encouragement from one of the top travel advisors in the world, Alicia started dabbling in the world of travel. Turns out, her ability to grow and maintain a loyal following of hair clients, as well as her experience as a connector (and good listener) from being behind the chair were a perfect fit for travel. She started creating a loyal following of travel clients while connecting with an exclusive portfolio of travel suppliers.
Dec 2017: Alicia was named as a 2017 Trendsetter by Luxury Travel Advisor! Click the image below to go to the article!
Alicia had already been thinking about transitioning more to her travel career, but this really kick-started everything! Still, she knew she couldn’t do everything on her own and continue to provide clients with the highest level of service that they had come to know and expect.
Enter Erika…
Erika’s loved to travel for as long as she can remember, and she enjoyed hearing about Alicia’s travel adventures during their long marathon training runs. Little did she know that she’d soon be able to make a career out of her interests. Alicia always saw Erika’s drive to make her market research clients satisfied. And, she knew immediately that it was a good fit for the travel industry, which is also focused on committed client service. On top of that, many of Erika’s other skills in the market research world are ideal for travel and complimentary to Alicia’s skill set. Specifically, she has an insane level of attention to detail (nerd alert!) and also knowledge of the marketing industry.
Fall 2017: Alicia and Erika started throwing around the idea of someday working together – pie in the sky kind of thing. We didn’t have a timeline, and we weren’t in a rush (since we both had good jobs already).
Dec 2017: We both realized that with Alicia’s announcement as a Trendsetter, the time was now! Did we have a specific timeline in mind? No, but the timeline didn’t matter so much; we just knew we wanted to make this dream a reality. We didn’t know how long creating a business would take – but we knew we wanted to get started. So, we got to work and rolled up our sleeves, determined to figure it all out.
Feb 2018: After a lot of work and entering the throws of small business ownership (ask us if you want to learn about LLC vs. S Corp!), we became official. The timeline was in place, with a goal of launching our website by sometime in April. And, being in Grand Cayman when we announced our brand gave us an ideal time to practice the social media skills we’ll need to become experts at.
So, here we are, the dynamic duo of Unleashed, ready to take the travel world by storm!
To learn a little more about us, check out this page of our website.
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