Jim Lutz is the Founder and President of Vaya Adventures, a company specializing in tailor-made travel experiences to destinations around the world. After starting his career as a lawyer, Jim transitioned into entrepreneurship, combining his passion for travel and deep knowledge of Latin America to build a thriving business. Since its founding in 2004, Vaya Adventures has expanded to offer custom itineraries across South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and beyond, focusing on creating meaningful and personalized journeys for travelers.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [2:07] Jim Lutz talks about his background and his younger years
- [8:39] What led Jim to leave his law career behind and pursue entrepreneurship in the travel industry
- [14:08] The story behind the founding of Vaya Adventures and its early challenges
- [19:00] Balancing the tension between customization and scalability
- [20:41] The profound impact of the pandemic on the travel industry and how Jim adapted
- [26:41] Strategies for mitigating risks in a volatile and unpredictable industry
- [28:01] Jim shares his expansion and future plans for Vaya Adventures
In this episode…
Building a business around your passion may sound like a dream, but the journey is often filled with challenges and unexpected detours. Is it possible to turn your passion into a thriving global enterprise while navigating obstacles like economic downturns and a pandemic?
According to Jim Lutz, a passionate traveler turned entrepreneur, success is possible, and it starts with a genuine connection to your vision. He explains that leveraging his own travel experiences and knowledge of Latin America helped him identify a niche and create personalized, high-quality trips that resonate with clients. By staying true to his passion while learning to adapt to market changes during uncertain times, he grew his business steadily. Jim emphasizes that building a thriving enterprise also requires surrounding yourself with the right team and remaining focused on the value you provide to customers.
In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, John Corcoran is joined by Jim Lutz, Founder and President of Vaya Adventures, to discuss his journey from practicing law to becoming a travel industry entrepreneur. Jim shares how he transformed his love for travel into a successful global business, the role adaptability played in overcoming challenges, and the strategies he used to expand into international markets.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- EO San Francisco
- EO Accelerator
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Jim Lutz on LinkedIn
- Vaya Adventures
- Death Row Records
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
Quotable Moments
- “I realized at some point flying out of Rio de Janeiro, I’ve been down here enough, I could start a travel company.”
- “I spent one entire day with Snoop Dogg in a small courtroom related to a lawsuit brought by Suge Knight.”
- “You don’t have all the answers at your fingertips, but you can do the research and you can figure out most of it.”
- “Some of the things they did traveling will be some of the most meaningful things they ever did.”
- “You don’t know. And you live with that in this industry, I think, which is the nature of it.”
Action Steps
- Embrace diverse experiences: By traveling and exposing yourself to different cultures and environments, you can gain new perspectives that enhance your ability to lead with empathy and understanding.
- Develop resilience through change: Like Jim Lutz, who transitioned from law to entrepreneurship, embracing career shifts can teach valuable lessons in resilience and adaptability.
- Cultivate a growth mindset: Pursuing continuous learning and education enables leaders to stay ahead in their field and innovate.
- Build a strong network: Cultivating a robust network helps leaders overcome isolation by surrounding themselves with like-minded individuals who can offer guidance and new opportunities.
- Focus on team building: Hiring and developing a skilled team is crucial for scaling operations while maintaining quality.
Sponsor for this episode…
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We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Co-founders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, FreshBooks, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran 0:13
All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran, here, I am the co-host of this show where we feature top entrepreneurs and business leaders sharing their stories. Got lots of great episodes in the archives, so check them out here. And of course, this episode, this particular episode brought to you by EO San Francisco, which is the Bay Area chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, which is a global peer to peer network of more than 18,000 influential business owners with 200 chapters in 60 plus countries. So if you are the founder, co founder, owner or controlling shareholder of a company that generates over a million dollars a year in revenues, and want to connect with other like minded, successful entrepreneurs, eo is for you. And the EO San Francisco chapter, which has been around since 1991 today, has over 100 members in industries ranging from marketing to agriculture, tech, professional services, you name it. To learn more about how it works, or to come to a test drive with us. You go to eonetwork.org/sanfrancisco. And of course, this episode is also brought to you by my company, Rise25 where we help B2B businesses get clients, referrals and strategic partnerships with done for you podcast and I am a member of the board and also a member of Entrepreneurs Organization, proud member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization. And my guest here today is Jim Lutz. He’s the Founder of Vaya Adventures. He, like I, is a recovering lawyer who went into entrepreneurship. So we’ll talk about the perils and the benefits of being a recovering lawyer and becoming an entrepreneur. Jim, such a pleasure to have you here today. And I love to first start by learning a bit about what people were like as a kid. And you were a competitive swimmer. Worked really hard at that, and actually ended up going and swimming at Harvard, not too shabby, except if you have to do it in February, in an outdoor pool, I imagine, but tell me a little bit about what that was like growing up, you know, were you just like every day in the pool kind of thing?
Jim Lutz 2:07
I grew up in New Jersey, so it couldn’t be every, you know, every single day in the pool, at least, you know, outdoors as it is out here in California. But there was when I was young. It was mostly summer leagues. And then, as I got going into, you know, later grades, it became swimming in the winters as well. And then by high school, it was swimming two hours every morning, from 5:45 to 7:45 and then from 6:00 to 7:30 at night, five days a week, and two hours on Saturday morning. So it was a lot of it was, it was a lot of swimming. And that was my life, yeah, through high school. But, yeah, it was, it was great. I happened to live three blocks from the team that was state champs in the high school, state champs in New Jersey. So it was nice to, you know, have just be able to fall into that program, really. And then, you know, everybody kind of pushed each other and motivated each other. So we it was, it was a lot of fun. We used to all shave our heads for state championships.
John Corcoran 3:07
And you also were raised around a lot of lawyers. You had a lot of lawyers in your family, so you didn’t see entrepreneurship in your future. You saw practicing law in your future.
Jim Lutz 3:18
That’s true. I come from a family of lawyers, my dad, my brother, my uncles, my cousins, all lawyers. There is not a single entrepreneur that I could name in my family, no one in business, really at all. And that was the path I thought, you know, I would follow, and that I would want, that I wanted to follow. And so, yeah, I never really thought otherwise, and only later, when it was when, you know, when I got in there and was was practicing law, and realized, yeah, I’m not sure this is for me. And you know, there’s, there’s more to the story, but I had, I had traveled around, you know, after I got out of college, I spent three years outside the United States. I was going to spend one year outside the US and just go learn Spanish in Spain. So I went over there, spent a year over there, got pretty good, you know, good in Spanish, spending one year just intensively studying Spanish, traveling around. And then I just, I realized the at the end of that year, I went to Morocco, and then I and then, kind of, the lights went on for me as far as travel and seeing the world and what the world can offer and and then I said, You know what, I don’t think I’m ready to go to law school yet. I think I’m gonna see if I can find a job in South America where I can get the Spanish to some more level of greater fluency. And one year turned into two. I ended up getting a job that was like a Peace Corps type job in Quito Ecuador. And those are two great years. And then I did go to law school at the end of that, but at that point, I had now sort of laid a foundation for the for the future of the travel business, I think.
John Corcoran 4:55
But without even knowing it, you realize there’s a lot bigger world than you. The Garden State, and it seems like you’re a bit, kind of, you’re definitely bit by the travel bug. If you This Was Your Life, if you lived abroad for three years before going to law school.
Jim Lutz 5:10
Yes, for sure. I mean, I was definitely bit by the travel bug and and, you know, just getting out into the world and seeing more of it. I mean, when I, when I went to law school, I thought, you know, I had in mind international law, which, you know, I thought sounded it had that sounded good international law. It was a little bit of a, be careful what you wish for. I think on that one, because international law can be a lot of things. Some of it probably great. Some of it is big corporate, international business deal law, which is a lot of documents and not that exciting, not as exciting as it sounds like it might be Yeah, not as exciting as Yeah, as the as the label.
John Corcoran 5:50
Probably actually requires more office, more hours in the office because of its complexity.
Jim Lutz 5:58
Yep, it was, you know, it did get me to travel a little bit. I took a firm with a summer position with a New York law firm that did a lot of international project finance. They sent me hours half the summer in New York City and half the summer in Delhi, in New Delhi. Okay, so at the end of that, I got to go up to the Himalayas. Got another little taste of what really getting out into the world can be and, you know, I just, those are the times when I felt like I really came alive. Was in all of that, I eventually went, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t really love the corporate. I didn’t like the corporate, you know, project finance stuff. And then I in the law, I tried out some different things. I worked in the DA office in LA for a while, for a year, and and then I worked for a entertainment litigation firm that had various clients, such as my boss, had a lot of big entertainment industry clients, like Axl Rose, Snoop Dogg. I worked on a lot of a bunch of different Snoop Dogg cases.
John Corcoran 6:55
A bunch of different Snoop Dogg cases. Now we can’t avoid Snoop Dogg. He’s in every single advertisement on television. It seems like he’s he’s done quite well with his personal brand. He’s everywhere. Any crazy stories and any crazy entertainment, interesting stories, you don’t have to name the name of the celebrity if it’s if it’s if you can, repeat if you can. Don’t have to.
Jim Lutz 7:15
I mean, the reality is, I did interact with Snoop Dogg. I spent one entire day with him, one time in a small courtroom related to a lawsuit that was brought by Suge Knight. I don’t know if anyone remembers Death Row Records, but Suge Knight was the one of the founders of Death Row Records, and his his wife was Sharitha. Knight was claimed to be the personal manager of Snoop Dogg. He said she really never acted as the personal manager. So it was a lawsuit over whether or not he owed her money. There was a lot of litigation around Snoop Dogg in this type of thing. And, yeah, you know. And none of it, you know, it was a lot of it was not, you know, there was just like any other lawsuit wasn’t necessarily the the sexiest, you know, thing going on. And, sure, in LA, you know, it was la law, for sure, given the people involved and everything else, and but it was, you know, pressing law, bare knuckles litigation in Los Angeles, which, you know, again, I did that for two years and realized this wasn’t sure this wasn’t for me.
John Corcoran 8:22
And meanwhile, this is so this is 99 This is the.com boom, all over California. You’re in LA at the time, and did you feel like, Okay, I gotta go pursue this. I’m gonna miss this opportunity. What was going through your mind as far as what you’re gonna pursue then?
Jim Lutz 8:39
Yeah, this is late in so I started practicing that firm in the late 90s. And then as as as it got into to, you know, really the late 90s that, yeah, the.com you know, bubble was really very inflated. I saw a lot of people leaving the law, a lot of people going doing things like biz dev. That was the phrase a lot of people use for what you can do. As a former lawyer, and I, you know, at some point, I realized I just don’t want to do this, and I don’t have the time to figure out what I can, you know, what I’m going to do next, but I need to get out of this and then figure it out. So and I left the law, I picked a date, went into the My partner’s office, and I not knocked on the door and said, Bert, I can I talk to you? And he said, Oh, and very smart guy, very perceptive, and and I, and I told him that I wanted to leave it. He was very supportive, you know, and I ended up, I ended up leaving the law and ending up going, I left there and went to Chile. I decided to go work for a nonprofit in Chile that was in Chile that was working with entrepreneurs. Figured I’d get back to South America, see what I could, you know, maybe I could figure out a company I could work for. Then .com bubble burst. You know, I was there. I was in Chile in early 2000 and by May, I was sometime around May, June, .com bubble burst, yeah, over eight. April 2000 or something was like the, yeah, exactly, April 2000 and then all the jobs dried up. All, you know, there wasn’t really anything to be, to be, you know, getting a job in there. So I decided to go back to school. I had, you know, had no experience in business, but I thought business could be fun, and it’d be an opportunity to take a couple years and figure out how I can pivot into that and maybe study entrepreneurship and, yeah, figure out a business that I could start. And that’s what I did.
John Corcoran 10:26
So you figured Harvard, then law school, more schooling will certainly on top of all that, will solve all my problems.
Jim Lutz 10:34
See, it does seem like too much school that sometimes, when I think about it, on the other hand, it, you know, it helped me figure it out.
John Corcoran 10:40
So, and that’s what I say about, you know, being recovering lawyers, you you figure out that you can figure out everything. You know that no matter what the challenge is ahead of you, you can do the research. You know, you don’t have all the answers at your fingertips, but you can do the research and you can figure out most of it. You know, I think that it gives you a lot of confidence, as far as that’s concerned. Does it help?
Jim Lutz 11:02
Definitely helps with problem solving and critical thinking, yeah, type of thing which, yeah, has been valuable all in the way.
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