🔥 “It was the first time work became the purpose of my life”

Q. Hello, Lia! Could you introduce yourself briefly?

Hello, I am Lia of VACATIO.

Along with service planning, I do all sorts of other things.

Q. As you said, you take on all kinds of work the team needs. Is any of it hard?

I do not think I have really found the work hard so far.

I used to want to do impressive work, but now I want to be the person who makes things happen.

There is so much that has to get done anyway, and even if it does not look impressive, it is necessary — so when I think, “ah, this will help our team,” any task feels good. That makes me want to do even more.

And since the work I do is work someone absolutely has to do, I figure I only need to focus on doing it well, and that let me concentrate even harder.

Q. We met you through LEAP, and Will and Sean really wanted to work with you. You joined VACATIO quickly despite being busy — was there a reason behind that difficult decision?

Honestly, until my Insiders activities I had lived pursuing stability. Up to then I only did what I was already good at, and I lacked the experience of giving something everything I had. So I worried about whether I could blend into VACATIO’s atmosphere.

But I was lucky enough to experience it first through LEAP, and the team saw that favorably. It became the occasion for discovering a side of myself I did not know — one that throws everything at a goal. That gave me the confidence that I could do it.

Q. Right, you seem like someone who gets everything done. So what are your strengths?

I have high resilience. Even when I collapse, I have the strength to get back up.

And my tenacity is strong. Honestly I do not think I have much natural talent, but when I have a goal or something that has to be done, I have the tenacity to see it through somehow. In a way, maybe that is a talent in itself.

Q. Is there any other side of yourself you discovered after joining?

It turns out I am a fairly bold person. Even with things I have never done, I feel like I can do them and want to try.

Doing walk-in sales at hotels, I got rejected a lot. It may sound like nothing, but you do not get rejected that often in life, and back then it was daily. It was hard at the time, but I got through it somehow, and looking back now it seems like nothing.

The meetings with Japanese YouTubers as well — I communicated with major YouTubers in Japanese, which is not my native language. Leading several meetings at a time, I thought, “wow, when push comes to shove, I can do it.”

Q. Two months into working at VACATIO, how satisfied are you?

Absolutely satisfied.

The other day I worked late and left after nine, and I was so happy working at VACATIO that I was grinning to myself on the way home. It had been a good day at work, too. That had never happened to me in my life. I had lived a life where work was always just a means, and it was the first time work became the purpose of my life — I loved that.

Q. That’s great. So is there anything on your mind these days?

Until now I mostly looked at good references and adapted them, or used them to make something my own. But this service planning involves a lot of starting from zero, and I feel a bit weak at that, so it is on my mind.

Q. Still, you really wanted to try service planning. Does the work suit you?

Before I got interested in startups, I was very interested in marketing. I wanted to work in advertising because I liked creating touchpoints with consumers and seeing their reactions. But once I actually did that kind of work, a lot of it differed from what I had imagined.

When I thought about what work truly considers the user’s perspective, it seemed to be building the service itself. A service requires you to think about the entire journey from the moment a user opens the app to the moment they close it. I think I became curious about service planning because I felt I could dig deep into users.

Since it is completely new to me, I try to build a service I myself would want to use. I plan the service with the mindset of becoming its biggest fan. I am very satisfied with the work!

Q. Good to hear. Then what direction do you want to move in?

Hmm, talking about direction implies looking far ahead, and honestly I am not the type to look that far.

So I think I will keep living focused on the moments right in front of me. Right now I focus on making what VACATIO does succeed, and when it does, on how we can grow it further.

Living that way, focused on what is in front of me and burning like mad, I think we will end up a team that everyone in the world knows.

Will dreams of a future where we become a global team and the current members play important roles. Reading that interview made my heart race too.

Q. What do you see as our team’s strength?

That we band tightly together toward a goal. Everyone’s tenacity about achieving the goal is really strong, and when it adds up the synergy is enormous.

Also, all of the members are wonderful people — each in different ways. I think that has a positive effect on one another. Maybe that is how everyone keeps drawing energy and moving forward without burning out.

Q. Then I’m curious what kind of teammate you would like to work with.

Someone who does not make excuses. Making excuses was actually my old self, and rather than someone who has a reason why everything cannot be done, I want to work with someone who says they will give it a try.

We have so much to do that instead of someone who dwells on why it will not work, someone who gets something done in the time they would have spent dwelling fits our team better and helps us move forward.

And above all, I hope for someone honest in communication — someone who can openly share the difficulties they have and talk through concerns together.

Q. This is the last question — is there anything you have not said yet?

2024 was a turning point for me, because that is when I learned about VACATIO.

I was not a person with big dreams, but joining VACATIO gave me a big dream for the first time, and I started looking forward to the next ten, twenty years. Sincerely. So this is a group that means a great deal to me.

It is a brutal thing to say, but if the product does not work out, we are finished. And I do not want to imagine that. So whenever I get lazy, I will think about that and work desperately.

This is something I want to say to myself: I hope I never lose my original resolve.