Meet Jay Ternavan

We were lucky to catch up with Jay Ternavan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jay, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I found a job in Prague, with a relocations agency, in the early 2000s, a time when Central Europe was awash with expats being posted abroad, and it was during that time the inspiration for my company came to me. I’d been arranging trips for friends and family to come and visit, enjoying the hours of internet research that was only just becoming viable into new places to visit, as well as taking them to places I’d already been and knew they’d love. Someone called it ‘traveling the Jay way’ and that’s how it started.

Like many Americans, I have European grandparents and great-grandparents and I was able to pursue that route to getting citizenship in an EU country, making it a lot easier for me to build my business.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I started the company in late 2006, with 2007 being the first season we had guests, and Croatia, a country I’d fallen in love with and visited many times when researching, was our first destination. I worked late into the night Europe time on the phone with potential clients in the US putting together trip proposals, relying on word of mouth and PPC ads to get inquiries. After selling trips in the first few months of the year I moved to Dubrovnik for the summer to make sure everything went well, and continue exploring the country and wider region, with an eye to offering more destinations in Croatia.

Working 18-20 hour days clearly wasn’t going to scale, so I approached a local destination management company and they assigned me a contact who would take care of the things on the ground while I focused on sales and development. That contact was Ana, who nearly 20 years later runs all our local operations across Europe.

The ethos of traveling the Jay way hasn’t changed, in fact, I think it got better when I learned to delegate the on-the-ground part of it to locals who know their countries far better than I ever can.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I wouldn’t have ever thought about doing something like this if I wasn’t instilled with an appetite for travel by my parents. We’d always be going somewhere, whether it was locally at weekends, or big trips to Europe. That appetite for travel is why I spent a semester abroad in Madrid, and jumped at the overseas posting for the wine producer. And once there why I enjoyed showing the places I’d experienced to others. Some of this the ‘follow your passion’ angle – my advice is to give in to your (healthy) desires. You only live once.

After I started the company, it was definitely sheer determination to make a go of it. Long nights (I still had a day job in early 2007!) and then pushing myself to combine looking after guests with researching more destinations to be able to offer more of Croatia and neighboring countries, as well as the next additions, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. Putting in the hard work is easier when you’re young – make the most of that opportunity. I made some sacrifices in terms of social life at the time, but it’s paid off now.

Finally I think a combination of knowing my limitations and the instinct for finding good people to do the things that I didn’t excel at. This one’s all about knowing when to delegate. There’s no way you can do everything better than anyone else. Consider what you can outsource, or hire someone to do. Or these days, see if an AI tool can do it better than you!

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

I transitioned from being the sole salesperson and local support person to deserving the CEO title I gave myself on day one and it was the early hires at JayWay, who are still part of the executive team, who’ve always helped me towards that. I’ve learned a lot from them, and we’ve all grown as a result.

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Jayway Travel

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