We recently connected with Richard Cantave and have shared our conversation below.

Richard, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

If There’s one thing I realized being an entrepreneur, is that we often don’t take the time to pause and realize how important what we do is and how many people it affects or influences. It’s such a privilege being in a position to facilitate thousands of people of color to step foot on Africa and discover the land of their ancestors. On the same note, I’m extremely proud to bring so many Haitian-Americans and black people to discover Haiti …a land my ancestors fought to liberate for ALL to be free.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Richard Cantave, I was born and raised in Haiti and moved to NY in the summer of 2003 where I did my last year of high school and attended the State University of Old Westbury from which I obtained a Bachelor’s in Criminology (I thought I wanted to get into law enforcement). Looking back, I remember dating someone who told me one day that they couldn’t picture me working for someone and she saw me as an executive–I laughed as I couldn’t imagine it; one day, a friend reaches out to me asking for advice on where they should organize a party with Haitian Food being the highlight; to which I responded “Why not have it at my house in Haiti?”….As they say, the rest is history! To my surprise, close to 40 people booked their tickets to Haiti and here I was with no idea on logistics, trying to plan for and host all these people. After a very successful trip to Haiti, I replicated that same success in places I had visited or live before such as Cuba & Cambodia.

Six years later, here I am as the Chief Vacation Officer of the Haitian Nomad brand which plans and hosts incredible group cultural experiences around the world from Haiti, Egypt, Senegal and all the way to Antarctica! I’ve traveled to about 70 countries and formed relationships worldwide that help us plan our different group trips but also curate private friends/family trips for our clients year-round. We share our passion for traveling and learning about new cultures with our clients–making it more affordable for them by providing interest-free payment plans for up to 12-18 months and organizing everything from A to Z allowing them to simply show up at the destination and enjoying their trip.

What I’m mostly proud of is the way we serve not as a bridge to connect our guests to these incredible experiences but also the immense lasting change we’re able to make in the communities we visit around the world by employing locals during our trips but also through organizations like Kiva–funding entrepreneurs’ dreams in destinations around the world. In the end, it’s the people before profit methodology that I credit the most for our success, followed by the hard work and integrity of our entire team.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

One of the key things I did when I started taking my business seriously , I cleaned my facebook friends list—I had reached the 5,000 friends limit and I noticed that there were so many people on there that I had almost nothing in common with; I made the conscious decision to remove almost half of these people and added/interacted people who were into traveling. This paid off in a major way as I saw my interaction grow and my bookings grew as well. I created content that was relevant to my following knowing that they’d be more than happy to comment on it and share with their own followers.

If you’re just starting out, you need to be very mindful of who your target audience is and create content to attract them. You want to create content that will get your audience engaging naturally.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Growing my business , I had to understand that while it’s great to have a customer return rate of 98%, in order to grow , you need to tap into and attract new clients. Because my business focuses a lot on dealing with people of all different personalities, we preferred to deliver amazing service to our current clientele and encourage them to refer their friends and families who they knew would be a great match for our company–this ended up being a way for us to “vet” new clients without having met them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.haitiannomad.net
• Instagram: @haitiannomad AND @haitiannomadtrips
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/haitiannomad
• Twitter: @haitiannomad
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/haitiannomad
• Other: www.haitiannomad.wetravel.com

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