Meet Anthony K. Myrick-Lawson | Short Trip Planner & Product Expert

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anthony K. Myrick-Lawson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anthony K., how did you come up with the idea for your business?
Bondz Travel originally began as a way to solve my own problem in October 2020. I’ve always been the Trip Planner in the family, but towards the end of the nation’s quarantine period I felt very connected to how my time was being spent.

I was taking a trip to Colorado Springs from Philadelphia with my (now) fiancee, and a few weeks before our departure our trip was cut short due to PTO restrictions. Our original 8 day trip was now a 5 day trip, and this made time even more of the essence. I needed to not only research what to do and where to eat, but I also needed to provide secondary options (that still fit our preferences) and I wanted to ensure that all of this information was easily accessible, digestible, and adjustable. My original idea of putting our plans into a Word or Excel document just didn’t seem seamless enough. App store apps seemed clunky and more time consuming to populate.

I figured if these plans were in a personal user-friendly app, it would make the trip so much easier. So that’s exactly what I did.

The app was such a time saver and because of the included features it really helped us to make the most out of our limited vacation time. Once we returned I cleaned it up a bit, began to build out onboarding processes, and launched before the end of the year. I now plan trips and deliver itineraries via the Bondz Travel App, and help Trip Planners to give their clients the option of receiving their plans via the Bondz Travel App as well.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Bondz Travel is a passion project that I began pursuing in 2020, but I work full time in Market Research as an Analyst. This industry is actually relatively new to me, as most of my professional experience has been in the tech world with SaaS B2B companies in the Customer Success realm. I graduated from Rutgers University in 2017, and immediately jumped into the world of tech. I took a break from school but eventually went back for my MBA at Rider University in 2020, at the height of COVID, and I completed the program in August of 2022.

The journey hasn’t been an easy one, but I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily at my “destination” yet. The journey is still going. Bondz Travel has helped me to understand my passion for building products, and that is now the direction I plan to take my professional career in.

One of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is that it is ok to pivot and reroute when your initial journey/plan is no longer serving you. Sometimes we go through school, bootcamps, etc. and it’s very easy to keep going down a path that is no longer sitting well with what you want for yourself, because you’re already in it and you’ve put so much effort/time/money into it that you keep going anyway. I think it’s important to recognize the signs when something isn’t bringing you satisfaction/happiness the way that it used to so that you can begin to figure out your next move. Even if it’s just figuring out what exactly is missing. Sometimes you need a pivot and other times you need to regain sight of what was driving you in a specific direction in the first place.

In a nutshell, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is learning how to find comfort in the journey not being as linear as I initially expected it to be coming out of undergrad in 2017.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’m originally from the East Coast but my trip to Colorado Springs was fantastic. I will definitely be going back.

I would 100% recommend the Pikes Peak drive. The view was spectacular, and having donuts at the top is really the icing on the cake.
I would also recommend The Rabbit Hole. It’s a speakeasy that we visited while we were in town. The drinks and food were phenomenal.
Lastly, you have to check out Ted’s Montana Grill. I had a bison burger for the first time there and it did not disappoint!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
This started as a personal project, but the push to show it to the world really came from my Fiancee and my family. I am very much an introvert so too many eyes at once tend to make me anxious (lol). But they ended up helping me to spread the word initially. That approach was successful, and ultimately led to me building out the necessary processes to get Bondz Travel fully up and running. With that said, I would definitely love to give a big shoutout to them for pulling me out of my comfort zone and pushing me to work towards something I’m passionate about.

Website: https://bondztravelapp.my.canva.site/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bondztravelapp/