Now that it’s been a few weeks, I’ve really had time to think through my September trip & the incredible experience presented by the British Airways Face of Opportunity Contest. When I read a tweet from Inc. magazine mentioning the contest, I flagged it to review later & spent the next few days thinking about the opportunities that a trip to London & the Far East would bring. More specifically, the terms of the contest really fit right in with FreeTextbooks & what we’re trying to accomplish (on a tight budget) over the next year.  So, keeping the deadline in mind, I began drafting a few ideas & finally submitted my entry.

Essentially, the contest was searching for small business owners who could really benefit from a face-to-face meeting anywhere British Airways flies. In our case, we had some preliminary contacts in Hong Kong for designing & manufacturing a digital book reader (e-reader), and really needed to meet to test functionalities & offer suggestions. The one problem: travel, especially to Asia, is very expensive and hard to squeeze it out of our tight budget. The contest seemed like a perfect fit for our business needs – now, all I had to do was win.

Fast forward a couple of months and, of course, we were all very excited to find out we were lucky enough to win. I scrambled to put together an itinerary in the two weeks leading up to the trip, making more contacts, setting up additional meetings, and even finding a friend to stay with in London.

Contrary to most of the winners from the JFK departure, I wasn’t from New York or even the Northeast.  Most lived in New York & read about the contest through a full-page ad in the New York Times. Me? I just happened to be following Inc. magazine on Twitter in little-old Birmingham, Alabama. So, I arrived a day early on a Delta flight from BHM-LGA, had an airport transfer to JFK, and checked into my hotel. After killing a day in NYC, I was excited to get an early start the next morning. Upon my arrival to the BA Terminal, I checked in, cleared security & was directed to the BA Terrace Lounge. I had no clue what to expect – how many winners there’d be, the pre-flight activities, or when we were actually leaving. I just knew that I was going to London first, then on to Hong Kong.

Upon arrival into the lounge, I enjoyed a huge breakfast & meeting many other contest winners. It was a true melting pot, as winners ranged from an educational puppeteer to the founders of a leading marketplace for illiquid assets. Speeches from BA’s EVP of the Americas, Simon Talling-Smith, & the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, entertained us through breakfast and made for an enjoyable, relaxed morning. As I boarded the plane with the 220 other winners (learned that at breakfast), I was extremely excited to find that I’d been upgraded to business class, from which the level of attentiveness & service was the best I’ve encountered (10x better than Delta’s). Really, I didn’t want to get off the plane. It wasn’t long before we arrived to London’s Heathrow Airport, where we had a reception & complimentary hotel room at the Sofitel Heathrow and a host of speakers & business seminars the next morning. The highlight of the following day was the panel of speakers, which included Willie Walsh, CEO of BA; Lord Digby Jones, former Minister of UK Trade & Investment; Andrew Sherman, small business expert & partner at Jones Day; a Harvard Business Review researcher & other BA staff. Each spoke on topics related to understanding foreign business practices & achieving business progress through face-to-face meetings, all of which were supremely informative.

With all the BA festivities over, I was on my own in London until my flight left five days later. When I made my booking, a flight to Hong Kong was unavailable, so I had to book a BA flight to Bangkok & then a semi-cheap Air Asia connection to Hong Kong. As such, getting to Bangkok was only possible on specific dates, so I did have the few days to kill in London. I had only one obligation – a meeting/tour with the bookshop manager at Imperial College.  Being back in the city was very refreshing. I spent close to eight months there during college, and it’s certainly one of my favorite places. Best part – one of my closest friends just started grad school at King’s College, so I was able to stay with him & catch up all week.

Part 2 will cover Hong Kong, getting a Chinese visa, crossing the border, and my meetings…

_____________________

FreeTextbooks.com is an online textbook buyer and seller with a real-world presence at the University of Alabama, Samford University, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Auburn University, Birmingham-Southern College, Union University, and UT-Chattanooga. Providing substantial savings over a campus bookstore, FreeTextbooks.com offers cheaper prices, a higher buyback, the convenience of searching by course, cashback on referred orders, and free shipping or campus delivery. FreeTextbooks.com is also a social venture, helping to meet the underprivileged’s most basic needs – food, clean water, clothing, education, and health.