Living, Working, and Exploring on Your Terms: Unveiling the Secrets of TALA's Ultimate Digital Nomad Lifestyle - Nathan Bauer, Ryan Warnken! S4E31

Delve into the distinctive lifestyle offered to digital nomads by TALA

Appreciate this new adaptable and assured living arrangements.

Explore TALA's tailored services for the unique needs of both Gen Z and Empty Nesters.

Here what it takes to think outside the box and create your own unique business!


The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Introduction, 

00:03:05 - Nathan's Background in Real Estate, 

00:04:19 - Ryan's Real Estate Service Businesses, 

00:06:29 - Building a Community with Tala, 

00:08:13 - How Tala Works, 

00:15:10 - The Origin of the Idea and Lack of Similar Models 

00:17:03 - Overcoming Hurdles 

00:27:40 - The Market for Remote Working, 

00:30:01 - Addressing Loneliness and Well-being, 

00:31:57 - The Journey to Starting Tala, 

00:40:47 - Expanding into Europe and Asia, 

00:41:49 - Balancing Exclusivity and Growth, 

00:43:56 - Overcoming Challenges as an Entrepreneur, 


The resources mentioned in this episode are:

Learn more and/or apply to live with TALA - Visit their website and submit an application to become a member and have the opportunity to live in different cities throughout the year. www.travelandliveanywhere.com

@travelandliveanywhere

Join me and 15+ other top female entrepreneur experts for the Rise of the Entrepreneur - Navigating the Entrepreneurial Landscape for Female Professionals 5-Day Summit!  Click here for more details and to register for this free event!

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Matthew 5:14-16 is the inspiration for this podcast.

Transcript

00:00:00
Today's episode was a treat to record for a couple of reasons. One was it was kind of a surprise for me. I had no idea what to expect. I was approached by a podcast company to have Ryan and Nathan on my podcast and never met them, so I didn't know what the conversation would be like. But I said yes to this.

00:00:21
Having them on the podcast because of what they are creating, they have taken the digital nomad lifestyle that so many people want today, and they're making it easier for that person. They have created Tala, which stands for Travel and Live Anywhere. And Nathan Bauer and Ryan Morkin are exceptionally young gen zers who have an entrepreneurial spirit. They're willing to step outside of the box. They're patient, they're smart, and what they are creating is so honestly, I just think it's really super cool.

00:00:59
And you'll hear why inside today's podcast because not only are they creating a unique way of living, but they're really checking off a lot of boxes that so many people are looking for today. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Ryan and Nathan as much as I did, having it with them and just hearing about this very unique business that they've created to provide an awesome opportunity for so many people.

00:01:31
Welcome to the discovering your Calling podcast. I'm your host, Sheri Miter. I'm here to help you unleash your strengths and get clarity on your calling. I believe when you find your purpose in life, fulfillment, joy and success will follow. If you're ready, pop in those earbuds, hit that follow button, and join me on this journey toward discovering your calling.

00:01:55
All right. Welcome back, friends, to the Discovering your Calling podcast. This is your host, Sheri Miter, and I am really intrigued about today's conversation. And I'm joined by Nathan Bauer and Ryan warkin. I don't know if I said your name right, Ryan.

00:02:10
Did I get it right? Yeah. And they have created a very unique business, and again, I'm going to let them explain what it is, but I think it really fits with what I believe in, with creating that lifestyle that gives you freedom and flexibility so that you can my goal is to live on a boat. Other people's goal is to travel. So I think it's going to be a really insightful and fun conversation.

00:02:40
So welcome to the podcast, Nathan and Ryan. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Absolutely. So I would love for each of you to just introduce yourself, tell me a little bit about who you are, what you do, and whoever wants to go into after we do introductions, the details all about your unique business that you've created.

00:03:05
Fantastic. So my background is in it started with photography and videography, and I quickly transitioned that into bringing that photography and videography background into the real estate market. So I would shoot photography for houses, commercial buildings, and I'd work directly with agents and landlords. And that's kind of how I first integrated myself into the real estate market by providing content and media. From there, I went out and marketed myself as a property manager.

00:03:39
I thought there was a lot of businesses to be had there if I undercut kind of the commission rates compared to bigger property management companies. So I got into short term rental property management. So that was kind of my second stepping stone into the real estate sector. And then from there, I've done a handful of real estate investment deals and kind of just trying to dip my toes in all of aspects of real estate. And then from there, I met Ryan about three years ago, and we ultimately clicked because we had a lot of synergy within our real estate businesses we've started before, which Ryan will get into about his health, and we've always kind of thrown ideas back at each other.

00:04:19
And Tala kind of came from a fun idea, but we made it a reality, and that's something we've been working on for the last year. And I'll let Ryan kind of take over from. So, you know, when I grew up, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I was really excited about that. I really got really passionate about it.

00:04:36
And then I found myself in the summers working as a real estate assistant for a bigger agent here in La. And I realized that I noticed that there was a lot of real estate service businesses that were lacking. So, like, real estate any any services that would benefit real estate agents that's sign placement, any kind of flyers, anything that kind of like they really need on a day to day basis. And so I opened up my first one and then one turned into like six right after that. So I have six now that I currently manage.

00:05:04
And then right while I was doing that and growing some of these other businesses, I realized that Nathan was doing very similar stuff. So we met in and then I want to say about a year ago, I approached Nathan for the Tala idea and said, hey, listen, I got this idea know, we can start looking at remote workers and seeing if they can kind of be as flexible as their jobs are right now. And because they can work from their laptops, they can work kind of from anywhere. Let's see how we can incorporate this into daily life, because where I'm looking at it, you either buy or rent, and there's kind of no flexibility between the two. Let's have a new option where these people coming out of school or having a career change in their lives, they're looking for something completely different, completely radical, and let's try to kind of see how we can incorporate that into the work.

00:05:49
You know what Tulla is, is not just looking at digital. Nomads, because there are places where digital nomads can go live and travel around. But we really wanted to hone in on the community aspect of it as well. So creating a membership only platform with Tala is really important because we want to have this community that is like minded, very similar, curated towards younger people having great experiences within our community itself. So it's not just the living situation, but we have great experiences that we provide for the members, and that's kind of how it came to be.

00:06:29
And we've built on this living experience very much so. So now we're doing private events, we're doing tasting experiences, all that stuff. So that's kind of how it came to be. And we're still growing as well. Yeah, that was the thing that when I was asked to have you guys on the podcast, that I kind of did a little research on it.

00:06:50
It's like, oh, okay, you have incorporated what your generation? And to be honest, I know I'm not your demographic, but my generation even, because I'm in the Empty Nest club now. So it's kind of both ends. The people who aren't really raising kids right now, they're not raising a family yet. They're either in the beginning of their career stage of life or that ending could be there too.

00:07:15
But they want community. You've got that. They want experiences, you've got that. They want to live someplace, but they may not necessarily want to own right now. And you've taken care of that for sure.

00:07:30
What's been really fun for Nathan and I is looking at the different demographics who have been kind of experiencing it with us. So we kind of came out and thinking that we were looking at this thing from like, okay, we're looking at somewhere from like 20 to 30, but we actually looked at it, and like, 35% of our business is actually Empty Nesters. It's the people who have kids, just went to college or let's say they're divorced. They kind of do part time. This is exactly kind of the person.

00:07:54
So we've realized that it's been really fun for us to watch kind of everyone kind of looking for the sense of community and a sense of belonging, and they kind of wanted to be with like minded individuals. So for us, it's been like a really fun experience to kind of witness this. Yeah. So explain to the listeners, how exactly does this work? How does the living part of this work?

00:08:13
Yeah, so pretty much how it works is you apply to live with us, so you submit an itinerary and submit kind of all the other basic requirements that it takes to kind of rent an apartment. We look at your Itinerary and we try to see we fill you into units that are there. So pretty much you could live in La. For two months, miami for two months, austin for two months, new York for two months. And again, you can just kind of go from month to month all within a one year lease.

00:08:38
So however, you're going to kind of break it down. That's kind of how that works. And so you also get access to our concierge system that gives you access to all these private experiences and restaurants because the majority of these people are traveling to maybe cities they've never been to for the first time. So they want to know what's the hotspots? Where can they go get a nice drink, where can they meet other people that are like them?

00:08:59
And so we kind of set up these different environments where they can kind of go to those places. It's the living and the concierge aspect. So it's kind of like you submit a lease, you kind of go from spot to spot all within that one year. So are people, they're signing up for a year lease, but that year isn't necessarily spent in the same city in the same apartment, like our traditional rental agreement would be. Correct.

00:09:25
So the unique thing about it is that you can live in any city that we offer all for the same fee, the same price, so there's no seasonal rates involved. So if you're in New York during the winter, it's not going to be less than it is in the summer. It's all the same. So this really helps with people planning their year in advance because let's say you go to another short term rental company, there are seasonal rates and you don't know exactly how to budget yourself for that entire year. You know exactly what you're getting into.

00:09:53
It's structured. You are living with us for the entire year, but you're living in different cities throughout the entire year. So we're not losing any clients. Let's say if there's a recession or something like that, where a short term rental company, they lose 85% of their business. When there's a drastic change in the economy, they're still locked into that one year with us.

00:10:14
Yeah, we like to say flexibility with structure. I like that. Flexibility with structure. My husband, we always laugh and say that he has spontaneity. It just needs to be planned into the day.

00:10:32
So in the apartments, do you call them apartment, do you call it a condo? Like what do you call it? We call it residences. Okay. And these residences so let me go over that fixed fee again.

00:10:45
So that fixed fee includes your rent, all the major living expenses that come with living, so your utilities, your WiFi cable, that stuff. And then in addition to that, there's furniture that we furnish these units with. And also incorporated into that is this unique concierge service that gets people into very sought after restaurants and events and experiences that you couldn't really typically get from looking it up on Google or something. This is going to the best restaurant in New York, best restaurant in La. That you can't really book on open table or resi.

00:11:17
We have these connections that get people in, so creating that exclusivity within the membership is really important for us. And you also do the events right, where you gather some people together. What does that look like? Yeah, we did one last night. We had around 30 people who kind of sat at one of the events and kind of just kind of were all talking about similar things that they're interested in and they were all kind of the same age group.

00:11:42
I believe it was kind of a 50 to I would say 60 plus, would you not say, Nate? So it was like a really fun little thing there. And then a couple of months ago we did one that was a little bit younger, from like 20 to 25, 26. And so we kind of just are constantly doing these little events at different areas. Again, kind of getting people and members to be with people who they are very similar to and are living lives that are very similar to and what.

00:12:04
The events look like are kind of private dining experiences. So gathering an intimate group of, let's say, 20 to 30 people that we think would mesh well and having a private dinner for that. So whether it's last month we did a four course meal with an open bar, you pay a fixed fee and you get the whole night prepared for you. And that was a great experience. It kind of turns into a dance party after that was with a younger demographic.

00:12:30
So it was great to just have this open bar and people started getting pretty fun and it was great mingling experiences, experience. And they were able to meet some new people and create some new connections. And those were all members within our Tala umbrella that we brought together. Now, can somebody that maybe they don't need the residential part of it, can they join to just be part of the community? Is that an option?

00:12:57
Yeah, so we're looking at that. Go ahead, Nathan. Sorry.

00:13:04
A lot of the members we have signed up right now who are kind of in with us right now, some of them just use the concierge service. They don't really need the residences. So we're looking at this at a way where once the units come out, we're going to be able to capitalize on those people who live locally and they don't have the flexibility of living in different cities. We're going to offer them this concierge service which provides all the events and the sought after restaurant reservations that we offer. Yeah, when we soft launch this thing to get the kind of party started, I'd like to say, and get people kind of interested in the idea.

00:13:42
Before we could launch the residences, we've been just doing the concierge aspect. So we already made the connections with these restaurants. We already started the private events and so we've started just been shooting out that way. And we've been able to kind of educate people in the market, educate them that there's a new living experience that they could live today if they're working remotely or living a hybrid life as well. And so we said, hey, listen, let's try to do this concierge aspect.

00:14:04
And we realized we've gotten a great response from the actual living aspect and we also got a great response from the concierge aspect. So again, once we launch the units, we plan to kind of launch a local membership for those people. Which leads me to the next question. When are the units like, do you have units yet or when is that coming out? Yeah, so we're looking at an August to September launch right now.

00:14:26
So those will be out right around that. And what cities are you going to have? It's La. Miami, New York and Austin for the first four. And why did you pick those cities?

00:14:37
I'm just curious. We sent out a survey to a bunch of our members and a bunch of other remote workers and we're like, list us your top 15 cities. And we got a bunch of replies, a bunch of responses, a bunch of DMs, and we just found the top four and picked them up. That's pretty much how we got them. Cool.

00:14:55
And where did this idea even come from? I'm just really curious. Is there another model out there that looks like this in America or another country? Or was it just something you thought of? Where did it come from?

00:15:10
Yeah, so I was looking to buy a house here in Los Angeles. The market was so hot, I think I put in 16 offers to buy a place here. It was a nightmare. I finally got one, but it took me forever. I went to some of my friends who were making decent money a couple of years out of college.

00:15:26
I was looking at them. They were working either at like Deloitte or another consulting firm or accounting firm that they were completely remote and they were living in apartments and they're paying a lot of money for rent with no flexibility. Let's say they got a new job in Chicago, Austin, New York, anywhere. Or they were looking just for a different experience in life. They were stuck for that one year.

00:15:47
And then again, if you own a house, you're stuck there for more than one year. So I realized that there kind of has to be a better way. And I was looking at a bunch of different models that kind of went through this. I looked at WeWork I looked at all the different models that kind of have this flexibility of moving from place to place in an office space or even in living. And when we explored this, we realized that there's actually not one single company out there that offers this sort of flexibility like the way we offer it.

00:16:15
There's different companies where you can live with them for short term, so you can live with them for a month, two months, three months, but you're on the hook for the next two, three months. So if you go to another city, you pay more or pay less. And so you're kind of stuck in this if you're trying to plan out that year, you're stuck in this. Unknown of is there places available in the hot city that I want to be in? And if there are places available, are they three to four X what I'm paying now in my current place?

00:16:39
And we realized it was almost nearly impossible to live this lifestyle. If you're living a normal life, paying, getting a check every two weeks, you cannot plan out your life if it lives like that. And so for us, we were like, let's try to see how we can incorporate that with some structure. And so I think that's kind of where we found this, our North Star and our business model here. Nathan, anything you want to add to again?

00:17:03
I mean, I think seasonal rates are kind of the biggest hurdle for a potential renter who wants to live this lifestyle. So when Ryan and I looked at this, we tried living this lifestyle with a different short term rental company who offers different units in different cities. And like Ryan said, some rates are four X of what they were in a different month. So being stuck with potential, no inventory, not a desirable location, and a more expensive location, it's really hard to plan out. And if someone wants to be in a certain place throughout the year at a certain time, they want to know how much it's going to be, but they don't know how much it's going to be because of these rates.

00:17:47
That's where we come in, by offering these fixed fee memberships. So you know exactly so if you want to be in Los Angeles in December with your family for Christmas, you know exactly what you're going to pay and the location you're going to be at. It's not going to be a random location that could be booked months in advance. So it's going to be, again, flexibility with structure. I like that.

00:18:10
And I could see because my husband and I are in the we sold our house eight ish years ago when our kids like I said, we're empty nesters. We have three grown sons. They're gone, sold the house. We've rented three places since, all in the same general local area. We just kept finding something better.

00:18:31
But there's always the cost of the move or begging the friends to come over and help move, help. And we're about to totally downsize and move on to our 42 foot sailboat on August 1. For a year, we're going to travel on the boat. So it is very big on my mind right now of packing up the furniture. What furniture do we want to keep?

00:18:57
How much is the storage room going to cost? All of those kind of things and then eventually finding another living space. The other thing I'm thinking of, we just have other friends of ours whose daughter just graduated college and she's got a well paid like she would be in that demographic you're talking about, except for her job, is more locations centered. But they spent a couple of weekends driving to Newport, where she's going to live, looking at apartments, trying to find the right apartment for her. Is it a safe neighborhood?

00:19:36
All of those things, too, that fall into that that you have to look at and you have no idea sometimes what the neighborhood is going to be, where you're going, right? Totally. 100%. So I see where your idea checks off. A lot of these boxes, you don't have to worry about packing and moving furniture.

00:19:55
You don't have to worry about just. Bring your clothes with you. That's all it is, your toothbrush, right? Yeah. You don't share your toothbrush and your clothes.

00:20:02
Exactly. Yeah. There's some sort of brand trust that we were able to build early on. So when we send out our weekly emails, we have a great list of reservations and experiences you can go out and do that. We book for these members.

00:20:17
And these are very high end, great places where it's sought after people want to be at, and it's exclusive. So building that brand trust, we've already done. So we expect that to kind of feed into the apartments and just say, have a member sign up, let them trust us, and we'll put you in the best spot with very nice furniture, in a great building with great amenities in the city center of wherever you are. So that's kind of what you're alluding to, removing those moving costs, the search for a rental, we want to make that seamless for the so just, you. Know, those practical things I'm thinking you you've also taken out of.

00:21:03
But then there's the fun side of it that you get to live in all these really cool cities and travel with that. So, Nathan, you had said you guys kind of tested this out. What did that look like when you were testing it out? To see what this kind of lifestyle would look like or what the short term rentals look like. What did you guys do to test it?

00:21:23
Like I said earlier, we looked at different rental models and different rental companies that offer this lifestyle where you can go in and out of different apartments. So like a minimum night stay of three nights and maybe a maximum of a month. So we looked at that and our model offers a minimum of one month stay and a maximum of six months. So it's kind of filtering into that medium term rental, not short term rental, but looking back at a short term rental going from month to month, again, the seasonal rates were different, and that was the biggest hurdle for someone who's looking to live this lifestyle. Going back to that again, what we want to offer is the seamless flexibility and predictability of these expenses.

00:22:09
And just everything kind of encompassed into one thing where you're not scrambling to get that place last minute. You might have to go into a short term rental for a week while you wait for your next one in two weeks. So that's kind of the model we looked at and saw the problem with. Yeah. So when we were testing in the waters, nathan and I were looking at kind of, like, what we could do if we exactly live this model and how we could play around.

00:22:36
Then we realized that one month, we're paying 4000 a month, and we're like, okay, this is fine. 4000. The next month, you're paying 4000 a month. Again. We're like, okay, cool.

00:22:46
Then the next month, six grand, and then the next month's, like, eight grand, and then it was, like, 13 grand, and then it was, like, $12,000, and then it was, like, ten. And we were just like I don't know how anyone could ever if they're trying to pay money for something like this, I have no idea how they could ever live this lifestyle. As well as in the hot, like in La. In the summer, let's know. You're left with two places left.

00:23:07
There's only two that are living the same requirements. So two bedroom, two bathroom, laundry, just the same normal accommodations that you're looking for. It's nearly impossible. And if it's not impossible, you have to have big budgets to pay for these rooms that are still they're not, like, five star accommodations. These are four star accommodations.

00:23:27
You're just paying, again, four, five, six X for. And so we were just like, this is just it's nightmare. It's terrible. And are all the accommodations are they all going to be, like, in a luxury type apartment building?

00:23:42
What did you call it, Nathan? Residential residences. Yeah, residences. What's the goal? To have them all look like or be like.

00:23:52
Do we keep doing that? So the furniture is supposed to when you walk in one of our units, you're supposed to feel the city that you're in, as well as kind of that same tall of feeling that you walk into. So all of our units at the moment are going to be furnished by Soho Home Studios, which is the new Soho Home furniture. They're going to be furnishing all the units in our buildings. And so walk into a really nice unit that's completely taken care of for you.

00:24:19
Like I said, so everything's there and made for you. It's all spotless and clean. Again, I think for us, there's so many different companies now that are incorporating tech in their businesses. And what we looked at it, we were like, I think that's fantastic, and I think that's great, but for Nathan and I, we're really on the experience. We would actually much rather have the most comfortable bed than have the most complicated app or the most high tech app.

00:24:44
We really focus on how that member is going to wake up in the morning, go to their job, and then go and do four or five other things at the end of the day, how can we incorporate their life for better? Is the city locations that we're located in, are they unique? Can they go and walk and get a coffee? Can they go and walk and get a glass of wine? And so these things that we try to focus on, we focus on in every single unit.

00:25:06
The fine details, I think, for us are super important. So when you walk into a tall unit, you feel like home. And in every city, you kind of feel like home. So you get that same feeling you walk into it's not a hotel style furnished where you kind of walk into this thing and you're like, I could see myself being here for five days. It's really nice.

00:25:23
But after a week of being there, you're like, this is not really home. And so for us, Nathan, I really, for the past six to eight months, really focused on how we can design these apartments and really make them feel know you're at home at every time. So I think the minute you walk into that's kind of the focus point that we focus on. Yeah. So it's not like walking into an airbnb someplace that may or may not have all the necessities of home.

00:25:50
You just never know, right, what you're going to get with a brbo or airbnb. Totally. I love that. What are you hearing? Because we all hear it in business from the naysayers.

00:26:03
What are the naysayers saying? Or what are even the doubts you may have for yourselves with this business concept? Nathan, go ahead. I'd say the naysayers say, oh, remote working is done, COVID's over. But no, for sure, people yearn to have this flexibility, work remotely, travel, be in any place they can if they want.

00:26:25
We've done the research. Quarter of the population is going to be remote by the end of the year and with the trending upwards. So that is something that the naysayers kind of pointed us like, is remote working here to stay? We think it is. And we're not capturing a giant part of the market.

00:26:43
This is an exclusive members club, so we're looking at, let's say, 100 to 200 members for the first few years. We're not looking to capture thousands of people with thousands of units. We want to keep this exclusive. We want to keep this member experience enhanced. And the way to do that is to kind of keep the membership program small.

00:27:08
So that's kind of the one thing that people say is, who can live this lifestyle? There's people out there, we like to coin the term. Henry's, which is high earners, not rich yet. These are people who don't own a home, but they're making six figures or more and can pay for that $30 drink, that elevated apartment or luxury apartment. So that's the demographic we're going after and there are a lot of them.

00:27:40
And we've sent out surveys, we've done research, and that's why we're progressing with this business plan over the last year, because we've seen the market. So again, we think the remote working is here to stay. Any other things that you're hearing on the downside of it, or the people, like the pushback that you're getting from other people? Yeah, I think logistically people are very confused. I think education as well is really hard for us because I think people immediately are like, you're a timeshare, and we're like, we're not a timeshare, it's not how this works.

00:28:12
You live with us for a full year, you're with us for twelve months, and again, we feel like when they're with us for twelve months, we can kind of make different experiences happen and we know exactly where they're going to be at all times. And for us, it kind of focuses and helps us logistically as well. So for us, the logistics and education, for us, I think we've noticed that we're constantly educating the market. I feel like all of our marketing materials coming out past six months have just been education. Our marketing team kind of tells us constantly, like, let's stop making the nice pretty videos, let's just kind of straight up and educate the market here.

00:28:44
And so that's kind of what we've been doing, just educating. And then logistically, I think people get confused. Like, how can you manage? Again, a couple of hundred people going from spot to spot every single month. Like, it must be crazy.

00:28:55
But again, we're super confident. We've tested a bunch of the management tools. So I think for us, we're really confident. So I think for us, we'll see what we do when we launch, but we're really bullish on this next couple of months. I love, you know, going back to what you said, Nathan, about people going back to work, I think the only one who thinks that's remote work is here to stay for those that want it.

00:29:18
Not everybody wants that, and that's okay. And like you said, that's not your person, that's not your market, so that's okay. Yeah, I think our market, again, is the person, like Nathan said, who can afford a $30 drink but just doesn't know who to drink with. It's not age group, it's not necessarily anything like that. They want to communicate with people.

00:29:39
Maybe they're lonely or moving to a new city. They don't really know who to kind of hang out with. And so for us, we're trying to create those experiences as best we can. No, and I really love that because again, well, being right now is something that we have to look at. And since COVID the well being has gone down because people are lonely.

00:30:01
Totally. So to be able to take care of that, and I don't know if that was top of the list or that's a byproduct of what you're doing, but I think it's going to be a very valuable one that it does give people that experience. And again, I'm thinking of the same person who just helped their daughter move. They have two grown daughters who would be Henry's. They have very good jobs.

00:30:25
They did well for their education and knew what they wanted to do. But I also know them. I've watched these girls grow up, and they don't want to do the bar scene thing. They don't want to go clubbing, necessarily. That's not who they are.

00:30:41
But they want to have friends that are in the same place in life, I guess. So I think that's smart to provide that connection for people. Yeah. And sending them to the right dinner spot where they can get that awesome exclusive experience, it sounds like something that your friend's daughter would love, because they don't want to go out to the bar or the club. They want to just go to a nice dinner with some friends, have a great drink, have a great meal, and then they can end up going back to that awesome apartment where they can hang out with unreal furniture and experience that we provide.

00:31:18
Right.

00:31:21
Anything else you want to talk about when it comes to and Tala stands for travel and live anywhere, right? It does, yes. Okay. Anything else around that? And then I would love to just kind of do a little backstory on how you guys met, how you got here, and talk a little bit about that.

00:31:42
But anything you want to add about the whole business concept of Tala first? I don't think so. Nothing for me? No, nothing right now. All right, so tell me how you guys met and how did you get to this place that like, yeah, let's do this.

00:31:57
To have the confidence to do this, because you are stepping way outside the box, which I applaud. I love that. I'm all about stepping outside of the box and creating that thing, despite what anybody else might say. But we normally don't get there right off the get go. So what did that look like for you guys to get to this place?

00:32:18
I know that's.

00:32:22
Rewind, Ryan and I met through our fathers who are in the hospitality business. We met about three and a half years lunch. Our dads thought, okay, they have similar interests, so why don't they just grab lunch? So we grabbed lunch, kind of just hit it off from there. We had really similar like minded ideas and businesses that we ran, and from there we always kind of just threw ideas at each other.

00:32:47
How can we start another business? Let's do it together. We think this would be a great partnership. So that's kind of how it started. And then fast forward to my last year of college.

00:32:57
I graduated in May 2022. Ryan kind of approached me with this digital nomad flexible living experience, and it was at first just a real estate play, and there had nothing to do with concierge and experience and focusing on the members and the customer experience. So from there, we kind of built on that. And ever since there, for the last year, we have been pivoting and focusing on what really matters to a member and surveying how can we make this the best experience possible. And it's taken us about a year to be able to launch this.

00:33:39
And traditionally, I went to a great school. I studied business and real estate development. I could have gone through a path to working as an analyst at a real estate company. I chose to take the risk and be an entrepreneur. I did not want to do the traditional route.

00:33:59
Luckily, I was able to start businesses in college that would provide less risk by not going to a traditional I said, you know, screw it, I want to try this. And Ryan and I, right when I graduated the day business, this was the plan. So that was kind of my Pivoting story, is not going to the traditional job path and doing tala, and then Ryan will go ahead and talk about his path. Yeah, so my path was really know, both my parents were really hard on me to go school. That was never an option.

00:34:35
I don't know. My brother went to school. I have a younger brother. His plan was go to school. I meant, say, university, college.

00:34:42
And then once I kind of tiptoed myself into a business, and I was again, my first business was doing signs. So I was doing the open house this way signs that you see on street corners. I was doing those out of my mom's minivan at midnight after my shift at work, and then I was also going to school full time at the same time. So I was, like, fully swamped, and I was just kind of going crazy on this thing. And I was realizing that it just takes a little bit of effort in little time if you can kind of push through and find something you see a gap in.

00:35:12
And so I started doing that, and now we place around 7000 a week, so we place a lot of those now, even after I stopped doing them myself. But I realized that I can kind of just continue doing this. So I begged my parents for about a year to drop out of school. I dropped out of school and then just kind of continued getting lucky and kind of finding gaps in markets. And then I now opened up a brokerage where we buy and sell real estate and just kind of continue doing different stuff, like that.

00:35:40
And then once I met Nathan, I realized that Nathan is exactly not the opposite of me, but we have very opposite strengths and cons. And so I feel like we really kind of lift up each other, and his pros are my cons, and my cons are his pros. And I just think that's where it really worked. And the other two thing as well is we stayed truly, truly focused. I think that's the main thing because we were doing this idea, we had so many friends, family members who are like, do this, do that.

00:36:07
And I think that's the problem is you get a lot of people who are constantly telling you to push one way, and I think saying no and staying truly, truly focused to what you're focusing on, I think that's what gets you the furthest. And I think that's kind of where our success came from. I love both of your stories and so many great nuggets. If somebody's listening to this, I hope you can pull those pieces out there of just trying things. First of all, you both did that.

00:36:32
You both just started. You have to start someplace. A lot of times where we start isn't where we're going to end up, but it leads us to that next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And I love Ryan, that you said about just being focused because it's so easy today to get distracted 100 million ways and places or hear how somebody else wants to add to your idea and make it better. But you have to stay focused and listen.

00:37:00
I mean, sometimes there are good ideas out there, right? But, oh, totally. Stay true to what you believe in your heart and soul is what that thing is. And I love the partnership, too. Piece of having somebody that complements you, not imitates you is the best partnership.

00:37:21
So you can play off of each other and be the know and and have what one sees the other 1 may miss and vice versa. So I think that's so smart to have a partnership that you aren't the.

00:37:36
It'S it's been it's been so great for Nathan and I to see that. And it's also again, looking back, we live in a world of instant gratification. You go on your phone, you can get pizza delivered to your house in five minutes, right? You can look at anything you ever want on your phone in seconds. And for us, as an entrepreneur, too, you have to realize that that instant gratification is not here to stay.

00:37:55
That's not really some get lucky. That's the exception. But the rule is not that. The rule is kind of like, again, almost like a farmer. You plant constant seeds and hope know, come springtime, they all grow.

00:38:06
And so for know, Nathan and I have really kind of honed in on that and really, again, for the past year, kind of stuck our heads down and focused on what we got to do, and I think that's been great for our partnership and great for great for yeah. Yeah. And the small victories go a long you, for sure. Every week. We always want to look back at what we accomplished.

00:38:23
Great job. The rest of the team, thank you for doing this and end it off really strong so we could come back the next week and keep it rolling. Yes. Nice. And just one question on that.

00:38:36
So you did say you have a team. What does that look like? What does the team look like? Yes. We have five full time guys working on this.

00:38:45
Nathan I included those five, but it's been really fun for us to kind of see that a majority of them are older than us, which just kind of makes sense. But it's been really interesting and just the communicating styles, understanding kind of, like, what it I've been a manager. Nathan has as well, for the past couple of years. But just this is much different. I've never had someone kind of work with me side by side for the past year.

00:39:06
Majority of the guys I work with, they work on a different level full time. So, for me, it was really interesting to kind of play around with those management tools and try to see kind of how we can work together. And there's a lot of personalities, a lot of egos. That sort of thing comes up as you're working together. And so, again, it's been really fun.

00:39:24
I think Nathan and I constantly are talking and discussing and showing who we think has a different skill set. And what we've been doing now is I think this is the best structure, especially in the startup. It's not really like, who's the boss? Who's this? It's kind of five arms to a business.

00:39:41
So what is your side of business? What can you tackle? What are you the best at? And then letting that person go full throttle on that side of the business and then finding the next guy. Okay, what's your strength?

00:39:50
What's your weakness? Okay, so this is probably your section of the business, and then we kind of just all pick up wherever we need to pick up from. And I think for that, that's kind of where we've gone the furthest, and that's kind where we are here today. Yeah. I love that.

00:40:02
And, of course, when you start talking strengths and weaknesses, I'm all about that, because you want to stay in your own lane. Right. And that's where the joy comes from when you can work in your own strengths. I mean, there's always part of being an entrepreneur we don't enjoy, but for the most part, if you can, say, 80% of your day living in your strength zone, that's a pretty good day. It's a pretty let me just check my notes.

00:40:28
If there was any other questions that I had wanted to ask that we didn't get to. What do you foresee in the future? Have you thought that far ahead? What's your hope five years down the road from this, this takes off the way you want it to. What do you hope it looks like five years from now?

00:40:47
Have you thought about what that would look like? Yeah. So I think for mean, I'm sure Nathan has a different opinion here, but for it's I love to know Europe and Asia incorporated in there. I think that's where I think we'll know a different type of business. Again, Nathan said we're not looking to be the next airbnb, we're not looking to be the next mega big company here.

00:41:08
We're looking to build a small community of people who are like minded and looking to do similar stuff that we're focused on. And so for think, you know, those people again, they're working from their laptops, they're working remotely. They want the experience know, say living in the south of France for a month while paying that same fee that they have in New York. The problem with going on vacation nowadays is you're stuck with your normal expenses and then you have to pay for the hotel that could be 200 and 5300, 400 a night, as well as your rent or your mortgage or whatever expenses you have back home. And so for us to incorporate this new style of living so you can pretty much bring your apartment and pay that one fee if you're in the south of France and don't have to worry about all the other stuff that comes with that, I think for us that's something that's huge.

00:41:49
And I think that's where I'd like to be, even honestly in the next year or two. I think I'd like to be a little bit more in the global expansion. Yeah, I love that. And finding that fine line between exclusivity and being out there in the public is really important because we do want to protect the people that are with us, the members, and make sure that they feel special once they are accepted into the Tala membership. If we are just giving out units and living situations for any person, it kind of defeats the purpose of what we're trying to do, offering this exclusive flexibility.

00:42:25
So I think down the road, just looking for that fine line as we continue to scale and not scaling too quick is great. And we plan to do a self growth for the first few years and reassess. Do we want to have a rapid expansion or continue with the self growth and monitoring this exclusivity aspect of it? But ultimately I do not want to lose that for the foreseeable future. I love both of those forecasts for the future, especially the European, that would be on my bucket list to be able to travel to Europe and do different pockets that would sign me up for that one, for sure.

00:43:10
Anything else that we didn't cover that you would love to share Ryan or Nathan about just being an entrepreneur, stepping out of your comfort zone or about Tala. Yeah, I think being an entrepreneur again, I think I've done it for so long now that I think my mom was an entrepreneur as well. And so learning from that, I think I've realized that it's funny when you're growing something and you're trying to build on something, I've realized there's just so much hate or there's so much different focus, because again, it's so much easier to, after you graduate school, go and get a normal job, as Nathan said. And that's what 99% of Nathan's friends and my friends did out of school. And so when one of your friends is focusing on something completely different or completely new, it can come off as different.

00:43:56
And people hate different in this world. They just do. And so for us, I think us keeping your head down, staying truly, truly focused on what you have to accomplish, that is what I think will set you apart. And that's what I think sets the good entrepreneurs for the bad ones know, understand that it's not going to be instant, it's going to take a while. And I think that's what will get people coded the far.

00:44:18
And I think Ryan and I live the lifestyle of a Tala member. So we're per se the modern digital nomad. We work from anywhere. Every day is different for us. I'm either driving around or I'm going to a place to go shopping for the furniture for Tala, or I'm on a call on zoom in the car, whatever it is.

00:44:39
So it's having that unique flexibility with the apartment, but also the job. I think it really provides value to my life and Ryan's, because every day is different for us. And it's kind of nice having the unknown every day, not going to the same office, doing the same work, same project. I'm getting calls at twelve at night and it's like, we got to do this tomorrow morning. Like, all right, let's do it.

00:45:07
So there's kind of a thrill to this flexibility that we've jumped into with our jobs. And that's something that, I don't know if everyone likes, that people like traditional career paths, but if advice to someone is try it out, doesn't work out, and I also think it's the best time to try it when you're, Ryan and I's age, so we're 23, 24, right out of college, take the risk, try it out. If it doesn't work, you're still so young, you can go out and go back to that traditional job path if you need to. Right? And I don't think it is for everybody.

00:45:40
Being an entrepreneur is not for everybody. The digital nomad lifestyle definitely is not for everybody. But for those of us that it is for. I love what you guys are creating and what you're providing, because, again, I can see where it's not just about a place to live that you're checking off a lot of those boxes and giving an easier way to create that ideal lifestyle for those of us that do want to have experience as part of our life and not just go to the nine to five drudgery of every day, Totally. Well, thank you both so much, Nathan, Orion, for being here today.

00:46:22
I wish you the best of luck. I will definitely be following the progress here to see how things are going. Let me know when Europe opens up.

00:46:36
By then we'll be done with our sailing voyage. A we're staying america. I'm not sailing to Europe, so that's not happening.

00:46:47
So thank you again for taking the time to be on the Discovering Your Calling podcast today. I appreciate it. Thank you. So really appreciate it. Thank you for spending this time with me.

00:46:58
My hope is something you heard today inspires you to take action toward discovering your calling. I just have two favors to ask of you before you go. One, if you found value and enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or spotify, and you might hear your review read on a future episode. And two, can you share this episode with three friends who will also enjoy it as much as you did? By doing these things, you will help us grow the podcast to make a bigger impact on the world.

00:47:27
And until next week, remember you been created to live a life of fulfillment, freedom, purpose, success, and joy.