false 2009-04-06T06:57:09-07:00 <p>I started <a href="http://www.urbanescapesnyc.com" target="_blank">Urban Escapes</a> a year ago. I had this silly notion that New Yorkers actually wanted to leave the city and go sleep in a tent . And who better to lead them there than me, right? I mean, I&rsquo;m an outdoors fanatic, I can rig up a bear bag in any situation, and I love meeting new people. With my finance background and passion for all extreme sports, I figured I was fully prepared to take on the task of starting a company.</p><p>Wrong.</p><p>I didn&rsquo;t realize that even crunchy camping companies needed marketing gurus, top-ranked liability attorneys, insurance experts, and seasoned accountants. And so began my journey into entrepreneurship. I spent the first few weeks slaving away in front of my computer researching different types of liability insurances for adventure travel. Needless to say, brokers weren&rsquo;t exactly jumping out of their seats to sell me insurance for skydiving trips. After many a conference call with my lawyer friends and the insurance broker, I finally found a company who was willing to take Urban Escapes as a client.</p><p>Once I got the insurance sorted it was time to spread the word--but I knew nothing about marketing. So I took out my little black book, affectionately known as my iPhone, and started calling everyone I knew in marketing. There were lots of late nights in Starbucks and more Photoshop sessions than I&rsquo;d like to recall, but we finally had a finished product. A nice logo, a stellar facebook page, and great business cards.</p><p>The story continued like this for many months. Next came the phone calls to my IT friends in search of the perfect (and cheapest) web developer. Then there was that little hiccup with the insurance company. Now it&rsquo;s tax season and I&rsquo;ve never even looked at Quickbooks before, which means my next two weeks are going to consist of me, a glass of wine (or three), and my laptop.</p><p>But it&rsquo;s paid off--we now have multiple sold-out trips every weekend and have led four successful international excursions. And me? I can now tell you the difference between franchises and corporations, I can explain what an umbrella policy is and what limits you need for it, and I&rsquo;m even starting to understand the innerworkings of Search Engine Optimization theories. I spent four years studying Engineering at Dartmouth College, two years trading derivatives on the American Stock Exchange, one year backpacking around the world through 20 countries (I&rsquo;m now up to 42), and I have never learned more than I have in the past year with Urban Escapes.</p> d0sGLwDaiqllvkab8P4pmk false false false true true 2009-06-02T20:27:56-07:00 0 true 1 false true false 1 Get out of the bubble! 2010-01-28T14:54:24-08:00 get-out-of-the-bubble d5dTCcDaaqllvkab8P4pmk UrbanEscapes 804 0 dY1Ghod6ZhRBWr3AL8abBw