Welcome to our 10th episode! Color & Curiosity founder & CCO Megan Zink interviewed Sognatore Collection founder Megan Kain about solo travel and how the feelings of empowerment it gave her drove her to launch a brand, tips for solo travel and more!

Wider Worldview is a new live podcast hosted by Color & Curiosity founder Megan Zink that explores the power of travel – how it can change the world: spark new ideas, foster different perspectives, catalyst curiosity and lifelong learning. Join her for interviews with entrepreneurs, educators and explorers and get inspired to tap into travel as an experiential learning and empathy building tool.

Head over to this link to catch the full audio recording with Megan Kain & Sognatore Collection – but in the meantime, here’s a snippet of the conversation. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Megan! I cannot wait to talk about solo travel – we actually had that as a requested topic at one point, so I was really pumped to fuse these two things together. And congratulations on your launch of Sognatore Collection; you just launched on Tuesday!

I did. Yes, thank you so much, I am just so passionate about traveling, and it just makes me so excited that I get to share that with the world.

So, Megan, solo travel can be a really scary thing – at least for me it is. I honestly have never officially traveled solo. Can you share a little bit about your first solo travel experience; the good, the bad, the ugly, and then maybe the experience that inspired you to launch your business?

Even when I’ve done it for so many years, it’s still daunting – that fear doesn’t really go away. But how it all started was, I had graduated college back in 2016/17. And I knew I just wanted to go on a big trip to explore the world. That was my first time feeling like an adult and embarking into adulthood, and I was super excited to go out into the world. I had always envisioned that I’d be doing it with a big group of girlfriends, you know, kind of like what you see in movies, like, the Sisterhood of Traveling Pants, going out to see the world.

Talking to some of my friends, what I had realized was that there was this perception that you needed to have a lot of money to travel and it was kind of this luxury, something you thought you would do later on in life – but coming from a family where my dad was always taking meetings for work, to explore different cultures at such an early age, that was just something I was hungry for.

So I knew I wanted to go somewhere, but I didn’t know if people, or females, could even solo travel safely. I reached out to a cousin who told me they’d seen all kinds of solo travelers out there, and I could stay in a hostel, and it’s a great way to meet people – so that’s exactly what I did. And I had envisioned myself going to Asia or Europe, thinking it’d be a little bit safer – that was kind of the dream, traveling across Europe. And my dad had brought up a really important point to me – that when you’re young, you’ve got this livelihood in you, and you don’t always get that, maybe later on in your life, and it’s great to take advantage of and explore. So that’s exactly what I did – I decided to take two months to go backpacking across North America. I started in Virginia and by the end of the trip, I’d ended up in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It really brings such a liberating feeling when you put yourself out there willingly to observe all the beauty that surrounds you and make connections – that joy every time I would solo travel – I just felt like that was a gift I really needed to share with the world. And so I wanted to do that through my brand and through the {Sognatore} collections, inspiring people to be connected to one another – and evoke that community feeling I felt – through travel.

When you’re young, you’ve got this livelihood in you, and you don’t always get that, maybe later on in your life; it’s great to take advantage of and explore.

Wow – when you say you were in South America by yourself – this is showing how naïve I am and how much I still have to learn – but was there any point you felt scared? What happened, what did you learn?

Honestly I was so frightened, I had gone to the bookstore right before my trip and pretty much read every travel guide on how to be safe, how to take taxis from one city to another. And wherever you’re going, there’s going to be safety precautions, even if you’re in a place you know; it doesn’t really matter where you are. But I would say once you’re in the city, you feel a little bit more comfortable, make friends, and explore. I was afraid of being that young, naïve American girl who doesn’t look like she knows anything.  But I’d met a bunch of other solo travelers from Asia, and it’s actually a pretty common thing in Asia and the Asian culture to solo travel. So I tried to come across like I was an experienced traveler; whenever taxi drivers would ask I would always say I was from Taiwan and I’d been there two or three times, and it gave me a sense of security.

That’s so smart – that sort of fake it ‘til you make it mentality – it’s wonderful to hear that you experienced it, because I think a lot of times we get scared of what we don’t know. I love the whole idea of this solo travel experience and empowerment and confidence that you shared with me. Can you tell us more about Sognatore Collection, which just launched a few days ago, and how you were inspired to start it? What was your biggest challenge?

Sognatore Collection is a resort wear brand for women who travel. Our collections are inspired by different destinations around the world. I had always known I wanted to be in fashion, ever since I was a little kid – it was my way of expressing myself – and once I got older that was something I knew I loved. I love solo traveling, just talking about it makes me feel so passionate – every time I’m exploring something new, I feel like I’m truly living. You just really put yourself in that present moment; you’re not thinking about the future, or constantly thinking about what’s next. It was such an amazing feeling, and I saw that there were women that maybe wanted to or miss travel, because of the fear, or maybe lack of confidence, so I really wanted to blend the two together. So that was really the essence behind the brand.

Can you tell us a little bit about Sognatore Collection – I was reading that it’s sustainable, made with recycled fabric, small-batch manufacturing.

We have a hybrid model – the swimsuit is manufactured in Bali, and we use regenerated nylon to make all the swimsuits. Seeing where the market is, trying to be a little more conscious of how we produce garments. I wanted to be mindful of that and create a conscious way of producing clothing that is sustainable. I picked the fabric for the skirts myself, and also employed a local seamstress and be conscious of not producing so much.

I have been hearing in the news and reading articles that fashion is one of those industries that is the guiltiest of creating waste and using up resources. I love that you started from the ground up, already sustainable and employing local artisans and using materials from all these places.

So, both in solo travel and launching a business, it’s easy to think about doing it, and then it is another thing entirely to actually do it. Do you have any tips from how to get to that brain space of just thinking about it to that seemingly hard-to-get-to a place of actually doing it?

I think, even being an entrepreneur, it’s something you don’t always achieve – I’m still always trying to navigate that space. To give you some background, it wasn’t some overnight thing where I had a dream and then I went out – I actually spent 4 years at my job in construction always wanting to be in fashion and wanting to create something but not totally having the confidence to do it. I actually have the pandemic to thank for that because when 2021 came around, I really just wanted to do something new and for myself. I had been talking about a dream in fashion and hadn’t really done anything about it – I was starting to feel like the girl who talked the talk, but didn’t really believe in herself or doesn’t have the confidence to do it.

And it’s so funny how we can just be inspired by people around us – we actually have all the resources we need, just by talking to family or with a friend and getting in touch with those who we may have lost touch with. And so, I reached out to them, to ask them about their journeys, how they got started. It’s really making connections with the people like that in our own community, our own circle, where we can feel inspired.

Every time I’m exploring something new, I feel like I’m truly living. You just really put yourself in that present moment; you’re not thinking about the future, or constantly thinking about what’s next. It was such an amazing feeling, and I saw that there were women that maybe wanted to or miss travel, because of the fear, or maybe lack of confidence, so I really wanted to blend the two together.

So, Megan, for those of us out there who are interested in solo travel, do you have any tips, or do you feel like there was anything that you wish your future self would have told you about solo travel?

Joining Facebook groups – there are so many Facebook groups these days – that really encourage and inspire confidence for women who want to get started. There’s a group called Solo Female Travel Network – it’s a great way of making connections. I think had I known there was already a community out there, it would have given me a little bit of comfort. And I like to not over-plan – you can do a little bit of research, but opening yourself up to all the opportunities, and once you get there, it’s a remarkable thing. 

Actually, that was something that Susan Macbeth of Adventures by the Book had said in our last episode: some of the most magical things happen because they’re unplanned.

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