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Co-founders and co-owners
of Somnio Hostels

As Featured Lady Lee Gonzalez can attest, sometimes it takes trying to inspire the ideal business. In 2004, she landed a position at a bank on Wall Street in New York City and quickly realized that it was not the line of work for her. Lee and her then roommate soothed their career frustrations by dreaming up possible businesses. When the roommate suggested they try entering some of the many venture capital contests, the partners got a welcome boost of confidence. Their plan for a high class, low cost chain of international hostels was chosen as the winner of the Ladies Who Launch Business Idea Contest.

Victory was sweet, but both roommates soon decided banking wasn’t so bad and put their business plan aside. Their idea may have been on hold, but the dream was still very much alive for Gonzalez. In 2006, she decided it was time to take action and enlisted her sister Lauren Gonzalez as her new launch partner. After much debate, the two travel fanatics settled on Barcelona as the perfect location for their first hostel, as they spoke the language, the dollar was strong, and the city had a booming tourist economy. The two set of for Spain that fall. The first-time entrepreneurs found it particularly challenging to launch a business in a new country. But they persevered, learned to laugh at delays, and opened Somnio Hostels in March 2008. They’ve since welcomed legions of weary travelers, including one loyal devotee who has stayed with them three times. They next plan to open locations across Europe.

What we learned from Lee: “First of all, you have to have a solid plan. And there has to be something you think you’re bringing to the market that no one else is, and obviously, that’s the part of the plan [to which] you need to hold tight. But in terms of [the best way to] adapt your plan; I think that sometimes you don’t realize things aren’t working until you actually start. On paper, in written form, in the idea form, everything works. But, I think, until you actually do things, a lot of times there are things you don’t realize don’t function until you actually try it out.”

We Can Talk It Out

Loren: “Lee and I actually just gave a talk last week to other budding entrepreneurs, and one of the big things that we always tell people is just to get out there and talk about your plan with everyone. I think that, speaking about your plan with other entrepreneurs, you get a lot of feedback from people. People either want to help you pick your plan apart, or people react to it so positively that you think, ‘Oh, man, maybe this is a really great idea.’ For us, it was a pretty long process of thinking about it, talking about it, telling everyone we’d ever met about it. It’s been five or six years we’ve been working on this plan.”

It’s All in the Details

Loren: “And then, you just have to start doing more of the technical research to figure out whether it’s going to be viable, what your competition is like, what your projected income is. For us, I think we had the confidence from talking with everyone about it. And then, we started to study it more and more critically, to see if it could be something viable before we took the leap to launch.”

Communication is Key

Loren: “We’re in a unique situation, being sisters, that I think the communication is a lot more open with us. We’re not afraid to say exactly what we think to each other. I really think just making sure everyone is on the same page [is important]. We’ll sit down for coffee every so often and just officially ask, ‘Okay, are we on the same page with everything here? Is everything going how you think it should be going? Are you happy, still?’ So I really think it’s just a lot of communication.

Are You Happy?

Lee: We do have that conversation every few months: “Are you happy?” That’s really the biggest question. And it’s something that you maybe wouldn’t think to ask of a normal business partner, because it doesn’t seem like a professional thing to do. When I was working at Goldman Sachs before, I don’t think I would have ever turned to my associates and said, ‘Are you happy today? Are you happy with how the business is going?’ But because, as an entrepreneur, your business is your life, I think that’s a really important question to ask, which I’m sure I wouldn’t necessarily think to ask, were I not working with my sister.”

These Are the People in Your Neighborhood

Loren: “Networking was just really the best way to form some roots here, by meeting people, and meeting people who had a similar frame of reference, who were also starting businesses.”

Patience Is a Virtue

Loren: “The second [most important piece of advice] would just be patience. Doing business in Spain, especially, you deal with a lot of bureaucracy. It took having almost a sense of humor about it. If things didn’t happen in a day, you could just take a step back, appreciate where you are and what you’re doing. I really think patience is a big thing, because things aren’t going to go like you thought they would go, or like they would go in the United States necessarily.”

Expect It to Be Hard and You Won’t Be Disappointed

Lee: “I think it was key for us to set appropriate expectations. Everyone knows that starting a business is difficult. Layered upon that is the fact that you’re starting a business in different language, a different culture, a different country. Obviously, it’s going to be more difficult. When we came in here, I expected it to be hard. I expected it to be very hard. People kept asking us if we were surprised, if it took longer than we expected….To be honest, it didn’t take longer than I expected because I expected it to be very, very difficult. And it was.”

Have Humor, Will Travel

Loren: “[When you’re travelling], you really can’t take anything too seriously. It’s kind of the same with opening a business. Anything you’ve planned will ultimately go wrong. You’ll miss flights. You’ll wind up staying somewhere that looked a lot better on the Internet than it does in real life. And you just have to laugh. If you’re travelling by yourself, you have to be able to laugh at yourself and the mistakes that you’re making, or you have to be travelling with people you can just look at and say, “Okay, this didn’t go well, but we’re still together, and we’re having fun.’”

On Traveling and Launching

Lee: “My advice for people travelling would be the same as for people opening a business. You have to have a ton of patience. Your expectations have to be set so you’re not disappointed by any mishaps or problems along the way. And then, you just have to communicate well with the people you’re travelling with, and make sure you’ve found a good partner.”

This Featured Lady was profiled by Sarah Tomlinson, a freelance writer in Los Angeles.

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