Meet Jennifer Stewart, the brainchild behind Future Female Travel, a Wellness and Travel Business created specifically for women, to help them travel and maintain their healthy lifestyles with simplicity and ease. Future Female Travel offers women health & wellness information and a Global Community, providing a safety net and support system of other like-minded amazing and inspirational women with the same lifestyle.
Making the first step towards change is often the hardest thing to do, so by providing clients with the right tools and knowledge, Future Female Travel helps clients manage their busy travel life through the specifically created 4 Pillar Travel & Wellness System to unleash their potential, avoid burnout and allow them to function as the optimal version of themselves paving the way towards both personal and professional success.
It is great to have you with us, Jennifer! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Yes of course and thank you very much for having me, it’s amazing to be part of this amazing network that helps to support and promote rising female entrepreneurs. My name is Jennifer and I’m originally from the UK but at the moment I go between Oslo and Edinburgh. I’m the founder of Future Female Travel, which is a Wellness Business created specifically for women, to help them travel and maintain their healthy lifestyles with simplicity and ease.
In terms of my background, I spent many years in London firstly as a luxury fashion buyer for Armani and the Selfridges Group and more recently I worked with the Global Trend forecaster and consumer research WGSN, as a director managing the Nordic Region. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, however, haven’t until now decided to set up my own business. With Future Female Travel, I aim to support the increasing number of entrepreneurial women struggling to maintain their hectic lifestyle and to live and travel well to avoid burnout mentally and physically.
On a personal note myself and my partner, Nicholas recently got married in Barcelona this summer, having both lived there it’s a city very close to our hearts. I’m also a huge coffee lover and slightly dog-obsessed and I actually dog sit on the weekdays when I’m based at my Oslo office.
Can you tell us more about how you how and why you launched Future Female Travel?
Having spent over 15 years in corporate travel and after experiencing burnout myself I wanted to help other women to avoid this. To support them as the Future Female Travel core brand value states to; Live Well and Travel Well.
Every brand has a story right, and I guess mine started later on in my career and life. I loved the busy corporate life with a dizzying 150 mph pace and the constant whirl of business trips, dinners, and expenses. I managed to maintain this lifestyle for a long period of time, but it was 2 years ago whilst living in Copenhagen with my partner Nicholas, that I became ill suddenly and I suffered from acute appendicitis. While this was a routine operation or the worst thing that could happen to someone, for me it shifted everything. Being in another country shook the normally confident me who thought I could handle anything that was thrown at me and someone looked back at me that I barely recognised. That coupled with a recovery that was far from routine, had an irreversible effect.
Going from 150mph to 0mph in a matter of days had a profound impact on me both mentally and physically. Something that I didn’t actually recover from until over a year later. The realisation that, as the cliché goes ‘your health is everything’ and ‘you don’t know what you have until it’s gone’ came with it a total forced review of my lifestyle, and physical and mental health.
It was at that point I decided to quit my corporate career after suffering what I see now was complete burnout and then stepping into the – at the time very real and very scary total unknown. I went from being the most confident, self-assured woman at work to a physically and mentally weak one.
What drew me out of this state I managed to find myself in, was the desire for a new direction and to really help women like me avoid the trap I had fallen in to.
Studying at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition healed me in so many ways and meeting like-minded people and with the focus on both Primary (Of the mind) and Secondary Food (physical food) was a perfect combination for me.
Having studied Psychology at university I’ve always had an interest in how our mind works and how this is also linked to our bodies. Future Female Travel is the result of my experience to date but especially from the last couple of years which really helped to clarify my desire to help other women like myself. We have increasingly busy lives with more and more being expected of us in this interconnected world and my goal is to help support women in order for them to thrive.
My vision now is to support busy women who travel and to help them live well and travel well. Future Female Travel implements a 4-pillar system to ensure you can maintain your desired weight, manage your stress levels, support your immune system and most importantly manage your sleep levels.
I want to use a combination of the Future Female Travel community and 4-pillar approach to work together and help women become the most efficient, healthy and strong version of ourselves to thrive in this busy, global world we are faced with today.
Can you tell us what problem you are currently solving for women within the travel space?
Women-owned businesses are reported to now employ over 9.2 million people and generate over$1.8 trillion in revenue. Female business travellers make up a large share of the Business Travel Market, with 48% travelling purely for business. With these numbers on the rise each year, women are being faced with increasingly hectic lives. Whether it be a chaotic family life at home and dealing with travelling across country or often different time zones, our lives are becoming more and more stressful leading us to seek support in terms of our mental and physical health and wellbeing.
Frequent travel can present a myriad of problems, for instance, what are the implications of getting ill before, during or after a trip? This can often have a profound effect, it may mean you have to miss the work meetings you actually went on the trip for, or it’s taking you a full week to recover when you return home which means your family life suffers, Frequent Travel can also increase stress levels, women who travel also can often feel effects of loneliness from sitting in hotel rooms night after night. Battling the scales and watching the weight creep on after one too many restaurant dinners and glasses of wine on a weekday can also be an unwanted by-product of too much work and travel. Future Female Travel helps women to maintain their wellness levels across the 4 crucial pillars (Weight, Stress, Immune System, Sleep) and to help manage their hectic schedules for the long term. Using a combination of mindset and practical techniques I help you create the perfect routine to manage your hectic lifestyle with ease.
The Future Female Travel growing community offers women health & wellness information and a Global Community, providing a safety net and support system of other like-minded amazing and inspirational women with the same lifestyle. Connect, learn and grow with each other, take the loneliness out of travel and connect with women who travel to the same cities as you regularly. The idea is to provide a network to tap into where women can link up an instead of sitting in hotel rooms alone at night, working for the third night in a row for instance, and to have instead a safe travel buddy to have coffee or a glass of wine with perhaps even dinner. Why eat dinner on your own when you can connect with a like-minded woman with an entrepreneurial spirit who has a similar lifestyle to you.
What are your marketing methods for Future Female Travel Tribe Community and what platforms are you using to raise brand awareness?
As Future Female Travel is still very new, at the moment the new website is just launching, and it will be further developed towards the end of this year. There will be features such as Q&A interviews with our Community Members, where you can read about how other women travel, some of the issues they face and what their favourite tips, tricks and hacks are as well as their secret weapon products that get them through any trip!
A number of FFT package options will also be launched for 2020, which you can choose to suit you, depending on your specific area of need and will be based around the 4 core pillars; Weight Management, Immune System Support, Stress Reduction and Optimal Sleep. Following this a membership site is being developed and will be released for 2020, this will connect like-minded women and provide important connections in our digital age to help combat loneliness and also ensure we can support and learn from each other.
Facebook, Instagram, and Linked In will be key social media channels for the Future Female Travel Network and community to grow. Using a combination of video and features on our community members Future Female Travel aims to tell the story of women across the world that strive every day to be the best versions of themselves and function optimally maintain their lifestyle and health wellness levels at the same time in order to avoid burnout and exhaustion which eventually forces even the best of us to stop in our tracks.
Can you give us 3 tips on how we can travel & maintain our healthy lifestyle with simplicity and ease as a busy entrepreneur?
- Help to support your immune system while you travel, I always aim to eat foods high in Vitamin B&C as well as staying well hydrated but it’s not always possible on the road. Make sure you start taking some additional supplements before your trip, during and afterwards, this will ensure your body has the best chance of getting the nutrients it needs and can fight off any unwanted attacks.
- Research, research, research. One thing that can really help you to maintain a healthy lifestyle with simplicity and ease is to research the place you are going to in terms of the food and drink options that are available. Especially if you have any specific nutrition requirements. Often before I travel, I even look into the shops and restaurants at the airports I will be visiting to see the options available to help me maintain a healthy diet.
- Travel Snacks and Smoothies! There are many great options available now you can take with you in your suitcase and handbag to ensure if you do run into trouble in terms of the food/drink options available in certain places you can minimise the impact on your diet. Check out the NEW Future Female Travel Website for the best travel blenders on the market and bulletproof coffee options to take with you as a start!
Who is the most influential female powerhouse that you admire and why?
I have many entrepreneurial women I admire such as Sara Blakely, Emily Weiss, Reshma Saujani, however, if I were to pick one it would be Natalie Ellis of Boss Babe. With humble beginnings in Newcastle, she’s a self-made success story with an entrepreneurial spirit and has managed to scale multiple businesses across different industries and all before the age of 26!
What I really admire about Natalie is her ability to put her vision into practice and bring it in to reality, she’s straight-talking and focused, has never had a 9-5 job as she always wanted to run her own business, has worked hard for everything she wanted and my favourite story – once pitched to Richard Branson at University!
The best lesson learnt throughout the business building so far?
I think the best lesson I’ve learnt throughout my business-building so far it to manage to overwhelm. Our mental health is so important as an entrepreneur, it can really affect the health of our business and the success of a business can often hinge on this, especially if you are a solo entrepreneur running things yourself. The business can only thrive as long as you are.
What does #BEYOUROWN mean to you?
To me Be Your Own means, listening to yourself. There is a lot of information out there and opinions but if you have your core values in place this strong foundation won’t be moved or shaken easily. It will mean the decisions you make are easier and you won’t be easily swayed if you hold your core values at the forefront of everything you do.
What does 2020 look like for you?
First of all, can you believe it’s the year 2020 shortly, that futuristic-sounding year is actually materialising! 2020 will be the most exciting year for Future Female Travel yet – the brand will be launching formally, the community growing, and exciting developments are on the horizon!
Instagram: @Futurefemaletravel
Website: www.futurefemaletravel.com
Join BEYOUROWN Membership Club to connect, network and feel inspired amongst many of our like-minded ambitious women just like you.
