In this episode of the VulnerABILITY Podcast, Marisa Donnelly welcomes good friend and Founder & CEO of PlaneAhead, Alex Malebranche. In this episode, both Alex and Marisa dive into the foundations of being a founder: What it means to start your own company, find (true) work-life balance, create healthy boundaries, and allocate your time to all the things and people you love. Alex also talks about the challenges of starting a small business in a time of travel restrictions and how his dive into business ownership shifted his vision of family and fatherhood.
Highlights From the Episode:
[2:45] "My foundation for working hard and what I needed to do in order to get my family to a place that they were going to be comfortable really started from that place of seeing my mom work so hard."

[3:55] "I was actually on paternity leave on one of my corporate jobs, this year in 2021, and I was trying to save some money on a flight—because, you know, having those more those humble beginnings, even though I made some good money in my career in tech, I still have some of those same habits—so, dollars on a ticket... and I realized I saved a few hundred dollars."

[4:40] "I started working at PlaneAhead, really so I [could] take advantage of the changing rules and expectations as far as travel goes now. And give the opportunities to people like myself who are looking to stretch their dollar a little further."

[5:50] "PlaneAhead is the first company of its kind that, so far, that takes full advantage of no-change fees. So, how we do that, is we track purchased itineraries for members of ours, and as their itinerary goes down in price, we actually exchange the tickets automatically for them, and then send them the airline credits back from the change."

[6:15] "If I bought a ticket today from Houston to L.A., and it was $500 today and two months later it goes down to $300, we will exchange it on your behalf, and then you'll get an email from PlaneAhead that says, 'Hey, there's $200 of credits on that trip that you booked.'"

[6:35] "When I started it I was really focused on millennials that are my age as well as families that are strapped for time, strapped for resources. Pay $100 for the year and we take care of all of that... You sign up and we'll take it from there."

[9:00] "It's one thing to start a business... now, imagine [starting] this in the middle of the global travel pandemic!"

[10:20] "I think people don't realize the frequency of the changes from the airline perspective/how many times they change, and they also don't realize how greatly they fluctuate... Before this opportunity, with what PlaneAhead is doing, we wouldn't have known that."

[11:25] "The hardest part has just been understanding what my boundaries are as a person, and what I mean by that is, all of us have twenty-four hours in the day, and so I need to allocate that effectively and efficiency."

[12:00] "Understanding my boundaries as a person [means] what can I allocate for business, what can I allocate for time with my family, and what can I allocate for sleep?"

[12:15] "The tradeoff that I've got to consider every single day, and I gladly do, is I'm going to forgo sleep and some of the things that would make me comfortable so that I can spend allocated time with my family. And I do my entrepreneurial stuff through the night."

[13:00] "When it comes to splitting your time as a founder or when you're at a startup company, there's this stigma (and rightfully so) that you're just going to work 16-18 hours of a day, especially at this early stage... so I make sure to tell employees that it's my company,  it's my job to take that burden on. Anybody that comes on should be able to have work-li...