619: Airline Charged Me $65 - So I built a $250M Competitor | Adam Ewart

Hey, founder fam. I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with Omnisend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for ecommerce founders. We've been recommending Omnisend to founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to 7 figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, Omnisend customers make $68 for every $1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment? And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50% off your first three months with the code founder 50. Just head to omnisend.com forward / founder without the e to get started. Alright? Now let's jump back into the show. What if getting charged 50 pound for excess baggage on a short flight became the spark for building a $250,000,000 company that now operates in a 145 countries, all while staying bootstrapped and profitable every single year for fifteen years. Well, today's guest is Adam Hewitt, founder of Send My Bag, the international luggage shipping service that's moved over 250,000 bags annually with just 32 staff by ruthlessly automating everything. After watching frustrated travelers get gouged by airlines, Adam tackled this problem head on, with just a 100 pounds to build a basic website and zero coding skills he launched by cold calling local journalists about his young entrepreneur story, landed on TV, and got his first customers without spending a penny on ads. Then came the real test, Brexit, COVID, Trump visa bans, and freight cost surcharges that added a $180 to every shipment, all while never laying off a single employee. This is a master class in building global logistics businesses through scrappy PR, systematic automation, and turning the travel industry pain points into a 9 figure opportunity. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chen. Chan. Alright. Adam, welcome to the show. The first question I want to ask you is, can you take us back to the pivotal moment in 2010 where you were charged €50 for excess baggage on a short trip to London, Gatwick? Yeah. Absolutely. So my girlfriend at the time, now she's my wife, I used to travel to England from Northern Ireland to help her bring stuff home at the end of the university terms. And we were coming back that this one summer, and we got charged We were a couple of kilos overweight and got charged £50, as you said. Couldn't really believe it. It wasn't really a thing at the time that we were aware of, you know, these high charges with the airlines for just such small amounts of access with. And I I just couldn't believe it. I saw other people in the queue for the check-in also paying extra amounts, and lots of people feeling annoyed about it. And …