As any company grows, it is subjected to lots of different pressures from all sorts of angles. My belief is that if the founders haven’t deeply cemented the founding values into the brand, those pressures present a real risk that the company morphs into something it was never meant to be.
That’s why Pete Davis, Getaway co-founder, and I decided to document the values and beliefs that underlie this company in our new book, How to Get Away: finding balance in our overworked, overcrowded, always-on world.
The book makes the case that we are over-connected and overworked; that we suffer from social and technology overload. It shows we rarely experience the joy of solitude or respite of nature. In short, we are always on.
That is the problem we cared about solving when we started Getaway. But we really didn’t want to talk just about ourselves, and so most of How to Get Away is not about our company, but rather so many other amazing people and organizations helping to create a better, more balanced world.
How to Getaway is part origin story, part cultural history, part contemporary research into questions like, “When did we get so attached to our phones?” and “Why is it so hard for us to take a real vacation?” And finally, “What hope do we have for a more balanced future?” (A lot!)
Thank you to so many people who helped make this book into a reality.
Happy reading,
Jon, CEO + Founder