By Rea Samek | Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Lifestyle Collection
My office has had many different views. Sometimes it has been the ocean, sometimes a hotel lobby or an airport lounge, and sometimes simply a small table somewhere in Asia with my laptop in front of me. I have never really followed the traditional idea of what a businesswoman’s life should look like. I built my business while travelling, often with my son by my side, moving between countries and cultures and learning to make things work wherever I happened to be.
Today, I am the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lifestyle Collection, an international luxury travel and lifestyle magazine. In many ways, my work and my passion for travel have become the same thing. But it took me time to understand that this was actually the life I wanted.
Entrepreneurship can easily consume you. There is always another email, another deadline, another proposal or another opportunity to pursue. I have had periods where I worked far too much and worried about where the next opportunity or revenue would come from. But travelling gave me perspective. I realised that I didn’t want to spend my entire life working towards some future version of freedom. I wanted to experience that freedom while I was building my business.
That changed the way I see success. I don’t want to build a company that requires me to sit in one office every day. I want to build something that allows me to move, explore, meet people and experience the world while still being ambitious about what I create.
Bali has been an important part of that journey. Living close to the ocean and surrounded by a completely different pace of life made me question what success really meant to me. I started asking myself what I wanted my days to look like, where I wanted to wake up and, most importantly, what kind of life I wanted to create for myself and my son.
My answer became clear: I want both ambition and freedom. I want to build an international business, but I also want time for my son, new experiences and the freedom to discover the world. I no longer see those things as opposites.
Travelling with my son has also taught me to become more flexible. There are no perfectly controlled workdays when you are travelling with a child. Sometimes you have a deadline when your child needs your attention. Sometimes the schedule simply doesn’t work. I have learned to prioritise, to decide what really matters today and what can wait until tomorrow. Flexibility has become one of the most valuable skills I have developed as an entrepreneur.
I also want my son to understand that there is a whole world outside the environment he grew up in. Different languages, cultures, perspectives and ways of living. I believe that curiosity and an open mind are some of the greatest things we can give our children.
The more I travelled, the more I noticed stories everywhere. A hotel was no longer just a beautiful place to stay. I wanted to know who created it, what made it special and who was behind the brand. I met entrepreneurs, hoteliers, designers and women who had completely reinvented their lives. These became the stories I wanted to tell through Lifestyle Collection.
In that way, travelling helped me understand my own business better. The more of the world I saw, the clearer my editorial vision became. I realised that luxury is not only about beautiful places. It is also about people, stories, authenticity and the freedom to create a meaningful life.
Travel has also taught me to trust myself. When you constantly find yourself in unfamiliar places, you learn to rely on your instincts. You learn when something feels right and when it doesn’t. That has translated directly into entrepreneurship. Not every partnership is the right partnership, and not every opportunity deserves a yes. Sometimes the smartest decision is to walk away.
Moving between countries has also made me comfortable with uncertainty. I don’t always know where I will be six months from now or which opportunity will become meaningful. I used to think I needed to have everything figured out before moving forward. Today, I know that some of the best experiences happen precisely because I didn’t plan everything.
Perhaps the most important lesson for me as a woman is that we don’t have to choose. We can be ambitious and present. We can build businesses and families. We can want financial independence and freedom. We can create a life that doesn’t fit the traditional definition of success.
It isn’t always easy, and there are certainly moments when I question whether I am doing everything the right way. But I would rather build a life that is imperfect and truly mine than a perfectly structured life that doesn’t feel like me.
Looking back, I realise that I could never have planned this exact life. The countries, the people, the magazine, the unexpected opportunities and even the difficult moments have all shaped me.
I don’t travel because I am trying to escape my life.
I travel because it has helped me create a life that feels like mine.
Today, I measure success not only by what I have built, but by the freedom that building it gives me, the experiences I can share with my son, the people I meet and the stories I get to tell. I still don’t know exactly where the road will take me next. But after everything travel has taught me, I no longer need to know.
I have learned to trust myself enough to find out.
About Rea Samek
Rea Samek is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lifestyle Collection, an international luxury travel and lifestyle magazine exploring the world of exceptional travel, design, wellness and inspiring people. With a career shaped by
curiosity and a deep passion for discovering new places and perspectives, Rea has built her business across continents, connecting with visionary hoteliers, entrepreneurs, creatives and destinations around the world. Today, she combines her entrepreneurial spirit with her love of travel, creating a life and a business defined by freedom, meaningful experiences and the belief that success should leave room for living.