The 6-Star Entrepreneur - Adam Schwab, the CEO and Co-Founder of Luxury Escapes [S6.E9]

Adam Schwab is our guest on Scaling Up, the CEO and co-founder of
Luxury Escapes – a travel marketplace with almost $1b in bookings
annually.


Adam’s story is that of a quintessential and accomplished
entrepreneur – one of trial and error, learning from mistakes and
applying it to the next chapter as is always required. Luxury
escapes and its coming to being is exactly this – the twist and
turns of a variety of businesses, over almost a decade, that
eventually spun out something that was scalable and incredibly
capital efficient.


While the scaling story is largely unknown but none the less
incredible – it is a story born out of customer obsession, and
providing consistent value to both sides of the market place What
comes next for Luxury Escapes is been exciting enough to get Adam
back from 18 month sabbatical, and we not only discuss the many
iterations of the business and its future, but also how Adam has
thought about his own journey as a leader.


Buckle up, this is a fast paced and frenetic end to another great
season of Scaling Up. We will be back in 2023 with another
series, a new format and hopefully many more lessons for business
builders, executives and investors alike.





Chapters:


(02:39): The Founding Story of Luxury Escapes


(09:30): Business model: Part 1, The Flash model


(16:20): Business model: Part 2, Building trust in the brand


(23:09): Business model: Part 3, Scaling Product and TAM.


(29:58): Business model: Part 4, Horizon 3 and the billion dollar
question.


(35:51): People and Culture: Journey and Philosophy


(40:02): Retaining Talent and views on remuneration


(42:05): The Roles of Coaching, Mentoring, and Managing





Show notes:Adam with a longer version of the
start up years and founding story Adam on work from home - Adam's
podcast "From Zero"





Adam's podcast "The Contrarians"