Technology has changed the world tremendously. It has made life easier and more convenient. Traveling has evolved with the advent of technology. People are often hesitant to travel because it seems like too much trouble. Planning a trip is a time-consuming process and people often have difficulty finding time to plan the trip. Technology has made it easier for people to plan the journey because it saves time and helps in efficient planning. It allows you to stay connected with the world while you are traveling.
Shaina Shiwarski, a co-founder of Legends, joins Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski in this week’s episode of The New Nomad where they talked about the perks of having an app that makes traveling easier and a lot of fun. They also discussed how important your network is when traveling and why it would be better if there is an app that is accessible to you when you need recommendations from friends and family while you travel. So tune in and be ready to pick up golden travel nuggets from our three seasoned travelers in this episode of The New Nomad podcast.
[3:38] It's a big world out there
[10:13] Ways to communicate with your network wherever you go
[11:50] The role of technology in a traveler's life
[15:51] Trying something new won't hurt you
[19:38] Sharing your experiences with other nomads
[23:24] Help out local communities whenever you travel
GUEST BIO:
Shaina Shiwarski is the co-founder of Legends, an app that is designed for travelers and creates a private community of global travelers inspired by each other’s experiences. Friends would ask us for our recommendations and we had no easy way to share them. We got tired of lengthy emails, spreadsheets, and Whatsapp threads. Together with Stephanie Daniels, they have found an app that would make traveling easier and more fun.
LINKS:
Legends: https://www.livemylegend.com/
Shaina LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaina-shiwarski-850b0ab/
Shaina Twitter: https://twitter.com/sshiwarski
Follow Insured Nomads at:
Instagram: @insurednomads
Technology has changed the world tremendously. It has made life easier and more convenient. Traveling has evolved with the advent of technology. People are often hesitant to travel because it seems like too much trouble. Planning a trip is a time-consuming process and people often have difficulty finding time to plan the trip. Technology has made it easier for people to plan the journey because it saves time and helps in efficient planning. It allows you to stay connected with the world while you are traveling.
Shaina Shiwarski, a co-founder of Legends, joins Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski in this week’s episode of The New Nomad where they talked about the perks of having an app that makes traveling easier and a lot of fun. They also discussed how important your network is when traveling and why it would be better if there is an app that is accessible to you when you need recommendations from friends and family while you travel. So tune in and be ready to pick up golden travel nuggets from our three seasoned travelers in this episode of The New Nomad podcast.
[3:38] It's a big world out there
[10:13] Ways to communicate with your network wherever you go
[11:50] The role of technology in a traveler's life
[15:51] Trying something new won't hurt you
[19:38] Sharing your experiences with other nomads
[23:24] Help out local communities whenever you travel
GUEST BIO:
Shaina Shiwarski is the co-founder of Legends, an app that is designed for travelers and creates a private community of global travelers inspired by each other’s experiences. Friends would ask us for our recommendations and we had no easy way to share them. We got tired of lengthy emails, spreadsheets, and Whatsapp threads. Together with Stephanie Daniels, they have found an app that would make traveling easier and more fun.
LINKS:
Legends: https://www.livemylegend.com/
Shaina LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaina-shiwarski-850b0ab/
Shaina Twitter: https://twitter.com/sshiwarski
Follow Insured Nomads at:
Instagram: @insurednomads
Allen
Hello and welcome to The New Nomad podcast. Shaina Shiwarski is joining us today as a matter of fact, she's joining us from somewhere outside the United States, which we'll share in a little bit. Live My Legend, and a wonderful app legends app that I downloaded, amazing. You know, Andrew, social networking is so important for travelers. Having an understanding of where they been, where they want to go and the community that we serve, always wants to find somewhere new different, they don't often want to go back to the same place again and again, although often they do because of ease, etc. How do you decide where you want to explore next, Andrew? And I think this will come into our conversation with Shaina today.
Andrew
Yeah, that's Thanks, Allen. And thanks, everybody, for joining us for another episode. This was fun having you with us and as because we feel like you're here in the room with us. Those who are listening, this is fun, just to introduce you to friends of ours as we take this journey around the world. You know, I love the Legends app and it's one of those things where it's so needed. I've lived around the world single, married with kids, and finding people to do life with in those places, is sometimes a challenge and figuring out where to go next. Sometimes you want to find people to travel with, or go on a hike with, play tennis with in these places. And that's one of the fun, fun aspects of Legends. And I'm so glad Shaina can join us because this is a filling in a void that is needed in the revolution of travel that we're facing today in the world.
Shaina
Thank you,
Allen
Let's bring Shaina into the conversation and Shaina come to our introduction. Where I've traveled to in the past, it was a combination of things where he had to go on business, that's an obvious one. But on a personal time travel, it's like, you know, somebody came back from a trip and they said, You know what, you absolutely positively gotta go to Maui or Croatia or Ukraine, before the war. You know, you just places that got you excited, or somebody says, gotta go to Oktoberfest. And what you're building, I think, is something that's really unique because if people don't have those people coming back to them, you're giving another outlet for people to find those places. So I'd love to hear your story on global travel, but also how you came to this realization that people want to have some help in this area.
Shaina
Yeah, well, thank you for having me, I'm excited to be here and love, you know, the community that's been created on you know, how we're supporting people to realize that they can live a more nomadic life. Right. And by nomadic I mean, choosing freedom for themselves before you know, freedom for others, right. And what I mean by that is, you know, most of the time, a corporation or location or certain circumstances dictate where we can live in what we can do. And I think we're in an amazing opportunity, where we all have a choice now, and we just need to give people the resources. So excited to be here. And I think, you know, my journey as well as my co founders' journey was very similar in the sense that both of us grew up in very small town. She's from the UK in a very small village. I'm from Pittsburgh, and in a small town and our, you know, growing up our horizons on who we met, what we were exposed to how we thought was very constrained by the environment that that we were born into. And we both ended up moving to New York, obviously, separately and met there, but being exposed to the different cultures, languages, people, backgrounds, perspectives, really makes you start to think like what else is out there in the world. And so you know, at a young age, like I bought, I don't know if anyone remembers, but you could like sign up when the internet first came out, you could sign up for like these books from like Tahiti and Fiji and they would send you like massive pamphlets. So I don't even know how I found it. But one day, my mom was like, I have like 40 books for Tahiti and Fiji for you. And I just, you know, nature was always something in the world and like, being able to, you know, someday go to those places was something I aspired to do. And then somehow fell into studying sustainability in college, but in New York, got into the tech world and didn't know how it was come full circle. And so when both me and my co founder, were successful in our respective careers, I spent 10 years in tech but and the education, content space as well as sales and marketing space and she was in finance. We said, you know, we've traveled and it's helped us evolve and grow as humans and have more empathy and compassion for others, but also, most importantly, self reflect, right? So when you land in that country, you want to go to a place that pushes your boundaries, but how do you go to it safely? Right? And how do you find people that you can connect with that are like you like, we want to grow and evolve. But what we found is as we were traveling, the tools, or the ways that we could grow and evolve, weren't there to support us in a way that brought community into it. And so we both said, you know, like, why, you know, if you look at all the social apps out there, there's so many that focus on different hobbies and different areas, but why not travel. And so, you know, two years ago, we did some research. And then about a year ago, we said, like, Let's build an app for us, that we would use while we're traveling. And that's really how legends came to be.
Allen
It's really cool, because we hear this all the time that people want to find community as they travel. And also, when you find that community, you typically find the unique spot that maybe not all the tourists have gotten to, or you just get to locations, on that, maybe you go into a little bit of the technology aspects. Because what I what I loved when I looked at the app, is that you put your own information in and you share some of yourself with others, and allows others to learn from you. I'd love your feedback and how you built that out and made it very human.
Shaina
Yeah, I think, you know, when we think about community, it's defined a lot of different ways. Everyone defines community differently, right? Um, and also every place you go, you might be looking for a different type of community. And so for us, where it started with was, who are you as an explorer? Right? And how do you first understand who you are? Right? And, you know, I think you referenced the example in the beginning of this that, you know, the traditional way we've thought about getting recommendations or getting connected or going to the next place is we say, Hey, friend, where did you go? It's almost like, when you're you have a house or you're decorating your apartment, like, it's easier to ask someone what they would purchase, instead of you making the decision. Right? Like it's, it's, we look to others to make the decisions for us, because we don't have the information or insights or trust in ourselves, to know where we should go next. And so for us, what we said is, you know, we need to create awareness for explorers to understand who they are, what have they done, where haven't they gone? What have they been exposed to? How do we change the how do we change the thought around why they want to go to something next, right? A lot of friends say, Oh, I just either go to where my other friend just came back from or a place I always go to, because it's easy, and it's consistent. Or I looked at Conde Nast or one of these lists, because like they've done some level of analysis, that it's going to be to a certain expectation. It's not going to be amazing, but it'll be good. And so we created what we call is your travel DNA. And what we do is we automate the process of actually mapping that for you. And so we visualize it instantly when you get into the app. And so your travel DNA is yes, physical places that you've been to. But when you think about the Earth, it's far beyond physical places, its physical geography, so beaches, mountains, lakes, oceans, rivers that you've been exposed to. It's also cultural elements, languages, cuisines, climates, religions. And we give you a stamp of, you know, here's the the percentage of the world you've been to, but also all these different categories. Here's where you've been exposed to, and here's where you have it. And then what we layer on top of that is where your friends have. And so online, how we're creating community is not only your friends that you have, you know, in your existing social community, but imagine being matched with someone in our platform that has gone to the same 10 surf breaks you have, but has 10 that you haven't been to, and like connecting with them on these really personal preferences of how you travel and growing your community that way. Or imagine showing up in New York, and us communicating to your community for you. Right. So, you know, last week I was in New York and four friends were there that I had no idea from other places. Imagine Legend sending me a notification saying, hey, Shaina, like Ariana just landed in New York City, like grab a drink with her. There's a lot of communication that happens that we don't see that information and technology could help us connect more in real life. And that's the type of stuff that we're building.
Andrew
That is priceless. I left New York last week. I was there when you were there. Yeah, exactly. I could have been in that gallery to see the NFT and all that. But I didn't know that you were there. And I had somebody else because I posted a picture, right as I was leaving town saying, hey, how much longer are you going to be there? Because I just saw you're in the city.
Shaina
Exactly.
Andrew
I'm leaving right now but if I had only known.
Shaina
That's what's happening across all these social channels like Instagram, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, when we post something, people that are, you know, oh, you're there, but it's too late. And so for us, how do we streamline that community for people to connect, while they're, you know, switching cities, traveling, exploring with their existing community, and then also, you know, the people that they just meet, how do they stay engaged with yeah, that's, that excites me.
Allen
So it does tie back, Shaina, to the geopositioning tools that you have built into the app. And I think this is one of the big, big improvements is, you know, the artificial intelligence that might push out information, but then geo positioning to say, hey, Andrew is in range, feel, feel free to reach out, maybe go into little detail, because, you know, some of our people in this audience may not understand how important it is, whether you have that Apple phone or Google device, whatever device you have, that I would assume that you need some sort of geopositioning function in there to tie a lot of this together and some of the other items.
Shaina
Yeah, I think, you know, from a, from a tech perspective, we are, our goal for everything we build is to automate for you. Yeah, we're building for the every day explorer, when we say every day, it means the lazy person who isn't getting paid to be a traveler. And I think we've looked at the entire landscape and a lot of the technology that has been created even for you know, the social platforms like Instagram and Tiktok, you have to have a whole content team behind you and a creative team to actually be relevant on those platforms and want to post on those platforms, right, because it's too vulnerable, if your stuff isn't good enough. And so for us, we are building everything and saying, Hey, we're doing the work for you, our tech is doing the work for you. And with the goal of sharing and creating connection, and so everything we build is related to that. And so with same as you know, kind of the the matching and geolocation stuff, we are trying to use the most sophisticated technology that's also efficient to improve that.
Allen
Because it's addressing we feel a lot of inquiries about I really want some an algorithm that helps me self curate my own decisions. And what I like that you brought up earlier with the app is the question I kind of started this with was how do you decide where you want to explore next, and you guys are going to help people find something different? Because you know, how many people just knee jerk I'm gonna go to Paris, London, etc. But they probably would have a better more exciting experience somewhere else as the algorithm fine tunes that this person may not be a city person, you might be a beach person or hiking person. Cetera I'd love. I'd love how you help it. Yeah. You're gonna help slice and dice.
Shaina
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'll go like crazy ones. And then, you know, realistic ones. Yeah, some guys I call a staff is not you know, my co founder, I call her and I'm like, what about this idea? I'm in, you know, a crazy one which I really like. And it's not that crazy is there are things called ley lines, which I'm sure you're aware of, right. They're like energy hotspots around the world, they're, you know, they believe that certain areas in the world, you know, where some of the parent pyramids were built, etc, is where ley lines exist. And they're, you know, spots in the earth that provide certain energy to you. And so there's also these things that are related to your birthdate. And so if you believe in ash, astrological stuff, you could actually put your birthdate in, and your year and your time. And there is a static astrology map that does this right now. Like it's very complex, but it would be easy with technology but where you put your birthdate in, and there are certain cities that actually aligned to me and you to either help us self grow, or feel grounded or feel connected, and so each planet has a has like an energy related to it, related to individuals. And so imagine a world where we could say like, you're feeling like, you want self actualization, like, here's the 50 cities in the world that are lying to you based on your, like astrology data. That's really like a different way to think about it. The simplest way that we're thinking about it right now is where you haven't been. So we believe a lot of people want to grow and evolve as humans, it's in our DNA. And that's where the travel DNA foundation really starts. So with us being able and the user are being able to say, Okay, I haven't been to these areas, but my friends have. And here's their recommendations. And our algorithm, actually, we call it our growth algorithm. It pushes people to grow rather than all of the content sites out there, right now. They push the same information in the same things that a user sees. And so it keeps them in the same bucket, right? So you go on a site and you say, I like surfing. I like mountain climbing. I like this. And I like that. And so it only sends you those things, right? What if it said, Okay, you like these things? Well, similar to surfing is wakeboarding. Right? And this is an area you haven't gotten. They don't have surfing, but they have this type of activity that is very similar and a lot of our surfers like that. And so now we've pushed you to go outside of your comfort zone, try something new, and go to a new city. And like what does the world look like when we start to encourage growth, and encourage self actualization? I think it looks like a more empathic, empathetic, compassionate world. And so that's how our algorithm is developed. And that's something that's important to us for it to be positive and growth oriented.
Andrew
Okay, with the ley lines, just my mind went in a direction thinking, okay, Stonehenge last time I was there, I touched the rock the wrong way. And I went back 400 years. Yeah, I was since that time travel kicked in. And I was surprised with what I learned. No, I'm kidding aside. It's this is the places that we will go, the people will meet through the machine learning, AI empowered aspects of technology, as we advance really opens new new windows of possibility that it's really encouraging because having lived this lifestyle, and Allen too with hitting hundreds of countries, but you're you're close to that 100-country mark, right, Allen? Not too far away from it and hitting all these countries, it is sometimes there's that time of Okay, where is someone I know they're here. I know, I don't know, connection with them don't know their phone number, but they live here. It's having that tool that can help connect without posting it on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn saying, Hey, I'm in Prague today, who else is here? You know, that just isn't appropriate. But finding the appropriate ways to communicate that, well, is vital.
Shaina
Right, like in the simplest is, you know, I was in Costa Rica for three months, and I met hundreds of people, I might have not grabbed every single snap ones number. But if I could have just said follow me on Legends, right? Because then then I'd start creating my community. Think about the amount of people you meet, like, in any given place from the locals to friends to someone you grab a drink with, right? It's the barriers lower to connection. But also, we take so many phone numbers from people, but we don't have a way to communicate with them. Because we don't just want to reach out to them and say, Hey, how you doing? Right? But if we knew they were in the same place, we would and for me community is also this communication problem that we're solving around, you know, how do we create the tools to stay connected, when you're in location, meeting people, and then continue that relationship outside all based on this shared love for exploring the world? And yeah, it's I feel it every day as I'm traveling, not only sharing, you know, recommendations, but also finding people and you know, the sharing part of recommendations is also, if you look, you know, anyone who travels a lot, you have 50 different WhatsApp chats going on at any given time, from your past locations you've been at. But then also, you know, I'm in Greece, sitting with my friend at dinner last night, and we're googling what places to go to dinner the next days, or what beaches to go. And I'm sitting there thinking like, Oh, my God, the app needs to be like, you know, our new version needs to be live tomorrow because we wasted an hour during dinner where we could have been enjoying our, our wine, talking about what our plans are, because none of our friends have been to the place that we're currently at. And so, yeah, I think the sharing is something that also we've created too high the barrier for people to share, like people were still sharing and what like Excel sheets, you know, some people have stuff on Google, they don't emails, personally, the data like it doesn't need to be that difficult with the technology that exists today in the market.
Allen
Well, you've got me very excited because I'm at 75 countries now. I'd like to get to 100 in the next five years, and you know, I hate to say it, the 75 that I visited were probably the easy ones, right? I mean, I've got a couple of quote unquote, easy ones to go, but you're on basic, you know, I need to really look at the map and get a little further afield. And it sounds like, these are also ones that might need a little extra preparation for or might want to have some feedback on the spots to get to. And it gets me excited to have something that would assist me in that area, you know, mean, not, you know, not going, picking England off the list is no hard thing. But you're taking off a small country at some location that you've never been before. And I'm really excited that you're going to have something that's going to help, you know, get that type of focus on there. And the other times that the question is, it's very hard for me now to get people to come with me on these trips. Back in the past, I had some folks I did two round the world trips, and I was able to get some people to come along with me. Is this app going to be helpful? You know, trying to find a fellow traveller? Or is it more a self curated type of experience? Or both?
Shaina
Yeah, great question. Yes. You know, I think we all we all feel that, you know, your friends, preferences changes as life changes, right. And so we have friends that still travel the same way as us, we have friends that, you know, it changes based on where they are in their life and their priorities. And, and so, for us, that's really where our DNA comes in, as well, right? Because of all of this unique data of knowing where you've been, we can match people in such a personalized and specific way, right, like, if you've been to this beach, you know, I've been to this beach called Mompiche in Ecuador, like very off the beaten path, surf break, like, if anyone else has been there, they're gonna like this other Beach, right? And they're gonna connect with this person, because what that beach stands for is authentic community, like extremely local, sustainable, like surfing, right? Like, there's values that certain cities hold that we can then match people and say, okay, they've, you know, experienced the same thing. And they're likely a match, and they like XY and Z as well. And so from a connection standpoint, I think, because of our data, we're going to have such an amazing opportunity to make connections with new people in a really interesting way. And so I'm excited by that as well. And that's why when we think about what's the most important thing for us to do is this foundation of the DNA and getting it really, really, right from the start because it unlocks a lot of interesting things from a community and in a recommendation perspective.
Andrew
Okay, we've reached that spot. That's one of my favorites with every guest. And so could you tell us the most overlooked person, place or experience that our listeners should know about from your perspective?
Shaina
Well, I think, you know, the most overlooked person, I think, is a lot of the locals that we connect with when we travel. I think one of the one of my favorite things to do is, like, deeply make a local connection while I'm traveling with someone, whether it's, you know, a concierge where you're saying a local surf instructor, like, how do you think it's one thing to be a transactional traveler. And I think we see that a lot where people take from these environments, but they don't try to understand or give back. And so I think a lot of the overlooked people are the people who make these amazing experiences for us. The people who show up to bring the food to the grocery store in these small towns like the ones who get up in the morning to teach you how to surf for do you know bring you back grounded to do yoga and so for me, like those are the most overlooked in my you know, day to day that I think about one of the most overlooked places. I don't know if it's overlooked, but definitely no one talks about it and I would say Malta, I went to an amazing amazing experience in Malta. There's an island there second island called Gozo. And it's it's like being in another world. It's a mix between like Africa and the Mediterranean, and the super sdventure, like seekers, rock climbing, scuba diving. A lot of history there too with World War Two and a lot of a lot of history cross country and then super religious as well, just a very fascinating place for a very small, small island that doesn't really promote itself that much to tourism. And then experience? Um, I don't know. I don't I
Allen
just travel you've given us you give us a lot of experiences here we think about Yes. You know, just the experience of eating different food or just meeting other people. And I love what you're talking about getting in local community I've shared on an earlier podcast that what little hair I have let left I let grow out. And I tried to go to a local barber shop in the countries that I'm in and you get different types of hair cuts. You may not even be speaking the same language. You might end up being drinking Turkish coffee, you know, as but you're in the community. And often, people are kind of amazed to see a an American in some of these countries getting a haircut and they take it as a really prideful thing. And of course, you get great different conversations there, Shaina, in that type of environment, you know. It'd be like, even if it's pantomime, like looking and pointing and thumbs ups or whatever, on that. You brought a lot of different items to the table today. How can people learn more about Legends? Where can they get Legends? I went to Apple and just downloaded the app. Please share how people can learn more about you. And about the app and live my legend.
Shaina
Yeah, sure. So follow us on you know, Instagram, we're at Live My Legend. We are on the App Store under Live My Legend as well. We have our beta coming out at the end of July. And so you can sign up for the waitlist and we'll send notifications for for everyone to get that you can find myself on LinkedIn just Shaina Shiwarski and my co founder as well Stephanie Daniel on on LinkedIn. And then where I just livemylegend.com on on on our website.
Andrew
fantast. Right. We'll have these in the show notes. So everybody, you know, just wherever you're listening to this today, share it on social media, invite your friends, and because this is this is cutting edge for what the world is facing with the revolution of travel right now. Thanks for joining.
Shaina
Thanks, guys.
Allen
So thank you, everyone for listening today. As we mentioned, it's just a great world to explore out there. We're happy you explored it with us today. Please just mention our podcast to one other person. Word of mouth is the best way that podcasts get recognized. We want everybody to continue to travel. And we'd like to thank Shaina for joining us today. So please travel safely and we look forward to catching you on the next New Nomad podcast.