Adventurely: The Travel Club & Meetup App For Digital Nomads and Solo Travelers With Mita Carriman | TNN69

Exploring unknown terrain, hearing different languages, and experiencing different cultures, food, smells, sounds, sights, beliefs, and rituals have made people kinder, more adaptable, and more grateful. Rest and reflection are essential parts of a successful and happy life. Travel is a valuable opportunity to process challenges, including loss. Travel heals wounds, physical or not. And it's more enjoyable to meet new people when traveling, right?

In this episode of The New Nomad, Mita Carriman of Adventurely joins our hosts Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski in entertaining and enlightening our audience with the stories of their travel adventures. They talked about the ups and downs of traveling solo and the excitement that meeting new people, in person or virtually, brings. Travel may be tedious, but the benefits it brings to the picture trump all the cons. So tune in and maybe you’ll also find yourself in a situation where your soul screams for travel.

[3:22] A whole new app for a new travel community

[6:16] We have our own ways of dealing with loss

[7:35] The beauty in traveling solo

[13:20] Travel heals all wounds

[18:28] People love variety, especially digital nomads

[20:58] Every place has a rich history

GUEST BIO:

Mita Carriman is the Founder & CEO of Adventurely – a meetup app for digital nomads. Originally a Business & IP attorney from New York City- she spent the past 4 years traveling the world full time while working remotely across 13 countries and creating digital nomad hubs in Barbados with Bajan Nomad Social, and in Playa Del Carmen Mexico with Playapreneurs Summit while growing Adventurely.

She firmly believes that the future of work is the future of travel, and she was named 1 of 16 women inspiring international travel in 2021 by Buzzfeed.

LINKS:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitacarriman/

Adventurely: https://adventurely.app/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mitacarriman

PUT THESE LINKS BELOW THE SHOW NOTES:

Follow Insured Nomads at:

Instagram: @insurednomads

www.insurednomads.com

Transcript

Allen  

Greetings and welcome to The New Nomad podcast. We're gonna be talking about social networking for travelers. Mita Carriman, will be joining us today, founder CEO of Adventurely. This is an area, Andrew, that we hear a lot about is people are excited about traveling to unique places. They're looking for connections. Many of them are solo travelers, and are adventure seekers, etc. How do they meet other like minded people certainly makes it a much better experience. I think this is a really exciting area, not only for us to explore, but also to hear Mita's story. Her herself has been a digital nomad, etc. I know you've moved to some places by yourself with your lovely wife and other opportunities here. It is kind of lonely to go to a really interesting place and not have somebody that you might be able to share coffee with, or a dinner or or get some local knowledge. And I love these, an app that can help us shortstop that process. What's your thoughts?

Andrew  

Yeah, this is this is a very pertinent topic, because people of all different professions are deciding that they can go ahead and cross the ocean, cross the continent, to go to a new place for work. And I'm coming in from another country other than my passport country today, as we record. And next Thursday, I'm going to an event for executives, I only know one person there. And I had no idea that I even knew anyone there. But I was invited, messaged to the coordinator and it turns out, he went to high school with my wife and I met him years ago. So it's, when you're traveling around the world, you have opportunities to go to networking groups, seek them out. And especially if you can find an app or a community, something off of Facebook, even for those who've left Facebook already. Or, you know, other means this is gonna be a fun dialogue today to see how professionals meet up. Just yesterday, I was I was watching a dialogue where somebody said, Hey, I'm coming to the city next month, and I'm looking to meet developers. So they posted that on the social media network saying, you know, if you're a developer there, I'm looking to hire developers in this country. So this is gonna be a fun, fun dialogue today, looking forward to having me down.

Allen  

And you know, it's I also think very important about is that it's a focused social network, not a broad based one, which I think really allows people to get a lot more supportive that and let's bring Mita in, you know, me, you've been working remotely in different countries. If you could tell our audience a little bit about what was the precipitating event that made you really have a deeper understanding of, we need this type of support, and some of the social networking opportunities, I'm sure it was in your travels. But we'd love to hear your story, and how you develop this and your thoughts on the future of social networking for travelers.

Mita  

Thank you so much. And I'm really excited to be here. I really love what you guys are building at Insured Nomads. So basically, when about a year into my digital nomad journey, I just started to see that the same sort of stereotypical tech sites that you would use social networking sites, Facebook, Meet Up, unfortunately, Tinder, just wasn't doing it for me in terms of finding community. And I saw at the same time that there were a number of programs that regrowing where people would create community in person, you know, programs like Remote Year, which are wonderful and Wi Fi Tribe. But I always just felt like there could be a better tech solution for this. And I really believe that this was going to be the way of life. I think the hard part around this time. So this was, you know, 2018. At this time, nomadism had not gone mainstream. I mean, it could be debatable whether most nomadism is mainstream now. I think we're further along in the timeline. But back then it was still niche to a lot of outsiders. But I just saw like, Oh, my God, I cannot sleep because everyone is going to probably going to be living like this and we need to create a better community infrastructure. So that was sort of what really just encouraged me to double down on eventually and trying to bring it to life. 

Allen  

Was it a part of your own experience? Now, in your background, you've worked remotely in different countries. And I know, you know, depending on different times in different cultures, some cultures are easier than others. Have you found that to be the case also?

Mita  

I think that there are some destinations that are more just naturally developed by the local expats, the well, the expats and the nomads that are there. You find some destinations where people just on their own accord decided that they want to create some kind of sub communities and events and things like that, and then you go to other destinations where it may not be as developed yet. And you kind of have to be a lot more of a self starter in that sense to just sort of find your people.

Andrew  

That's, that's one of the aspects, I think that tools can come in to aid people because many times there's a partner that's not as much of a self starter, while one person may be or you go through seasons of mental strength, where you can go find the people, but other times you need to find them, but it's, you're operating from a place of weakness, to where you need a tool to do that. And where it tell us more about the birth and the future and, and some of the programmes that you have, and eventually, if you will,

Mita  

sure. So eventually, actually started in 2016. And it was a travel premise, but the original premise was around solo travelers, because I had fallen in love with solo leisure travel. What ended up happening was, unfortunately, about a year into our launch, both of my parents had passed away from cancer and complications, and just trying to launch a startup. And at the same time, I was also trying at the time to transition out of my regular job as an attorney, becoming a travel startup founder. It just became too much for me to handle. And it was, you know, as a founder, you know, your, your startup is your baby. But I realized that at that juncture, I was, it was a little too much for me to handle with closing up all of their, you know, their life issues with their passing and dealing with the mourning. And it was actually actually those things in addition that inspired me to go on the road as a nomad. So then I about you know, a year after they passed, and when I decided, okay, well, I'm going to close things down with eventually that's when I bought a one way ticket to Medagen to try out the nomad life. And I really, really thought that I would be back in New York in like two or three months. But this journey has been nonstop for five years across, I think 14 or 15 countries now. 

Mita  

And it was in a year after I had reached my one year mark of nomading I was like, I think I want to bring Adventurely back to life. And I know it sounds crazy to have already closed it. But I see this solo traveling digital nomad, very specific subset that I want to try to bring it back to life with. So as scrappy as possible, you tried to revive some of the old code and went out and tried pitching to investors. And a few months later, we got accepted into the backstage capital accelerator. Backstage capital is a diversity fund that was founded by Arlen Hamilton. She's a very well esteemed venture capitalists that great folks and went into the program. The program was summer of 2019. And we had some wonderful things planned for the fall, which we started going on, we actually launched a giant Nomad Fest in Playa Del Carmen in the fall of 2019, where we bought 500, digital nomads for month long conference, basically, sponsored by Adventurely. And we were getting we were sort of iterating on the products while getting, you know, feedback on the app from folks that we were sort of nurturing and the community. And then of course, you know, after you know, the, that big meetup that we through, and that was October, so it ended November of 2020. And we all know what happened in 2019. We all know what happened in 2020. You know, it's like, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Like I just survived my dream being crushed first by losing both of my parents so tragically. Traveling the world having the guts to restart this again. And now you're freaking telling me the entire travel industry is shut down? What? Like there was zero precedents for this ever happening. It's not like I could we could point to a recent note. Oh, yes. This offered to my grandparents. No, no. 

Mita  

So I'm going to try to speed it up. Basically, you know, the first year of COVID was really hard as a travel founder. There were a lot of partners and people that just were very upset rightfully so about even discussing travel, they were so triggered by it in relation to COVID. But there were there was there was specifically one destination: Barbados, which decided during COVID that they were going to launch a digital nomad visa. So I went down to Barbados, I still try to grow eventually as much as I can. Where we are right now with Adventurely is I feel a lot more comfortable. Just sort of talking about travel. I think just by showing what's happening in the news, the you know, the airports are being slammed that we're in, we're in a very comfortable place with travel where people have normalized it as a new normal within COVID. We recently launched when I say recent, I mean like three weeks ago, Mexico, and we're basically offering virtual concierge services to help a group of 10 to 20, digital nomads experience Mexico City, Wahaca, Playa del Carmen over the course of a month, with activities that blend work, adventuring, and play. So those were already starting to get people fill up for those last, that's exciting, we did actually decide to temporarily pull the app down while we make some really exciting updates. And we're gonna have the app backup slated for September. So that's where we're at with things.

Allen  

So So for our audience, some of them are not really familiar with what what is a meetup?

Mita  

Yeah, I mean, you know, meetups, most people talk about within the context of an interesting concept that maybe one day happens over the course of a few hours. It's just a gathering of people. Were calling these things a quote unquote, welcome meetup. And it's extended over the duration of a month. So a lot of the programs that, you know, they, they sort of, it's like, okay, well, we're going to organize your community for a month as a digital nomad, in this destination, we're going to cover the cost of your accommodation, we're going to cover the costs of your co working, it's like an all in one package. What I found in the nomad scene is that there are some nomads who like the community parts of that, but they want to book their own accommodation or not necessarily always happy with the designated accommodation provider that's included in the package, they may want a little bit more downtime. They want may want some more privacy or or just control over where they do their co working, but they really want that community aspect. It's like, okay, well, you know, I'm going to be landing in, you know, carta haina for a month, and it would be nice to know that, oh, I can hit up these hotspots with my folks, we can work together, we can do these things together. And somebody's going to organize this all for us. So my thinking was, you know, while we update our app, and we release it for the fall, I think this could be an interesting new service to offer nomads, and yeah, it's only been out for three weeks, you know, and people have been really receptive to the concept. And so we're excited about that.

Allen  

Let's drill down on something that's a little bit different that really touched me is you after you lost your parents you travelled. And I know any of us have lost loved ones during COVID. But just, you know, just through life. Why don't you share with us because I think it's very powerful the healing power, perhaps of travel, or doing something different because we hear this quite frequently, many of us have experiences and I commend you for taking that tact and probably honoring your parents everyday.

Mita  

I think about my parents every single day I think that they every day. I'm a native New Yorker. And so so much of my day to day life in New York City before I became a nomad was just so inherently attached to my family, just normal things like it was just, it was just too close to just within that first year to have them both gone. It was it was overwhelming everything from you know, riding a bike or going to the grocery or going to the mailbox, and just it's it was just too close. And I needed to be in a different space to just sort of get through that first year. I just I just knew that I was not functioning in a way that felt right unless, and I felt like the only solution to that was to physically put myself into a different location. And I think especially in a place like New York, where you're already over sensitized even if you're not dealing with your own stuff, you're dealing with your own emotions and things like that New York is just a very they're all the senses are there 24/7. The city that never sleeps so that that was very much a healing experience to use travel. I'm sorry.

Andrew  

You know, you touched on something having lost my father this year as well. Oftentimes when living, thank you, oftentimes we're living this lifestyle these you miss the grieving process oftentimes, by not being able to travel back to a funeral of a of a close friend or family member, or a wedding, the positive celebrations you're not there for the birth of your, of a close friend's child, you know that to be to go by the hospital the day after or something. And that's you brought up this this process that we go through when we're when we're adjusting to life changes. But it needs to be, I think, brought to everyone's attention that, yes, we need to be taking care of ourselves while on this journey,

Mita  

and whether we're at home doing that around the six month mark, I started to find my life again. And I felt myself starting to start the healing process. You know, there's several stages of grief. And I really felt that at around the six month mark, that there was definitely a turning point, for me emotionally and also professionally. So, yeah, travel for healing, I definitely recommend it for people.

Allen  

It really is something especially when you go to places and you see glimpses of the people, you know, like there's a certain food that you remember sharing. And I think, you know, moving to a different mindspace on that, during that that the trip was there a particular place that you felt helped you more than others are a kind of,

Mita  

you know what it was, because I always

Allen  

loved to hear from people

Mita  

around the sticks, resonates with them, whether it was getting individual travels, and you know, I was living as an adult, I pretty much was living and working in Brooklyn, I was born in the Bronx. So you know, I'm coming from this very urban, corporate attorney lifestyle. And I had never seen such a simple, beautiful nature as I had in Croatia at that time. And I remember just being on the hill in Ćavar and feeling such an overwhelming sense of peace and just appreciation for nature and beauty. And you know that I had the guts to try this, this lifestyle out. I can't wait to go back to Croatia, again. That was definitely one of the highlights of my trip and a place that my soul just felt happy and joyful.

Allen  

It's interesting, you mentioned Croatia, that was actually the last major trip I took before COVID was to Croatia, and we drove from Croatia, all we have to Kosovo, and then returned, you know, through numerous countries on the way back, and I can understand your thoughts, because it's just a beautiful place. But it's a different pace of living. And I'd like you've lived in New York, where you're always on the move, and going to kind of tie together isn't it kind of nice not only to go to a different place, but to go to a different pacing of life. And maybe your thoughts on that because, you know, I was thinking is your Meetup app is built, you're gonna have different types, you're gonna you're gonna have digital nomads who might be working. 

Allen  

Yeah, I think variety is important seekers. So we're looking in the app. With the previous version, we would sort of try to figure out some of the top things that people like to do when a destination as a digital nomad. So it would be a mix of okay, well, these are the restaurants these are some of the more high end ones, there's some of the more local ones where you're gonna see like a grandma rolling a tortilla, that sort of thing, or these are the co working spaces, these are some of the higher end co working spaces, these are some of the more budget friendly ones or you know, these are some of the like, you know, high adventure, you know, this is going to be you know, kite surfing sort of adventure, or this is going to be like you know, a very, you know, easy hike if somebody wants to do that and just sort of offering a variety of that but it sort of is do the pretty much always going to have a working aspects that people can commune on in addition to all of the fun things in a destination.

Andrew  

you know, we've reached the point in the show to where I get to ask a question that I love to hear the responses from me that would you share with

Mita  

so I will my sort of nomad base these days in your mind about In this side of the world, there's so much hype around to Tulum. And, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big advocate for Playa, but there's, there's also one other place in the area where this particular area used to be like the Tulum of its day back in like, you know, the early the 90s, early 2000s. But it's at this point it's, it's sort of it's sort of underrated. Now. It used to be they used to be the tomb of his day, and that's Cozumel, Mexico. So Cozumel. I'm not sure if you guys have been but for the folks who aren't familiar with it on the show, it's a small islands about 40 to 50 minute ride via ferry from Playa del Carmen. And this island also has a lot of history with regard to Mayan, Mexico, indigenous culture. A lot of really, I've learned that there's been a lot of really interesting spiritual rituals that used to happen here that there was a Mayan goddess, I believe her name was Ixchel. And she was the Mayan Goddess of like fertility and the moon and love and that there used to be like a giant migration to Cozumel to honor her and there if you go to Cozumel, there is a giant statue of her. And a local guide once told me that people go and try to touch the statue for for fertility. I was like I'm not on my agenda these days. But you know, noted. But aside from that, there's this sort of understated elegance to really appreciate it's when I need a quick getaway from Playa. And I just want to soak in some natural beauty. I go there. And I think at this point, it's underrated and I am recommending it to a lot of people.

Allen  

Very cool. I have kind of a follow up question to that is a lot of the people ask Andrew myself, where would be a good place for us to work remotely? And I know you've worked in 13,14, 15 different countries? Do you have a couple of suggestions of places that you found that were very convenient and easy. And as we know the digital nomad thesis have made things easier. But you've you've proved tested a couple of different spots, I was wondering if you

Mita  

might starting out your company would make sense to recommend trying somewhere relatively close to your time zone first. So that would mean different things, whether you're coming from the Americas or you're coming from Europe, or you're coming from Asia, for most Americans and Canadians I'm in touch with who are like, Oh, where would you recommend? You know, if you're sort of that techie who likes to network and be around all the cool hipster things, definitely Mexico City. To me Mexico City these days is just an extension of Brooklyn with more tacos. There's still some really awesome things to do. If you want to sort of experience that cliche vision of you have your laptop with the you know the the backdrop of the ocean then Playa del Carmen, if you're in Europe, I mean, everyone is in Lisbon. If if you don't want to be where necessarily everyone is and I would recommend split Croatia. More so than Dubrovnik. I thought Dubrovnik was a bit overpriced. You know, there's really high walls I thought that split was a little bit more. Yeah, it was was a bit more scenic. Um, you know, I'm gonna say a very controversial thing. I did, I did a brief three months in Asia didn't get to go to Thailand. I really wasn't that much of a fan of Bali. Like a nomad hotspot. I was in Saigon and Vietnam. And for me, I actually enjoy that more. So, long story short, if you're from North America, Mexico City or Playa, if you're in Europe, I would recommend Lisbon. If you're more closer to Asia, I would recommend Vietnam, Saigon.

Allen  

You know, it's amazing. Our paths maybe have crossed I spent a week in Saigon once and I fought thought it was tremendous. was able to get work done. People are very engaging and wonderful. And even including the history of the Vietnam War, people moved on and there's a great infrastructure there. So I actually, you know, Saigon, Phnom Penh are places that you go to just a tremendous warmth there. So really good. I highly recommend are a second to your motion on those locations. It was tremendous. I want to learn more. So the social platforms

Mita  

were actually particularly some gloves since we're trying to grow that new channel out. So yeah, out eventually and then personally, I'm @MitaCarriman. Twitter is probably the easiest place to connect with me these days, I don't really post that much on Instagram personally.

Allen  

Fantastic, well, we really appreciate your advice, your counsel, and also really appreciate what you're building because we Andrew and I can, you know, continue to hear from people. We learn to build connections, people need networking, they, it's great to arrive with friendly faces or people who understand where you're coming from. So Andrew, I always like to throw it over to you for your, your thoughts on what did we learn today? And what can we take with us in the future?

Andrew  

Well, I must say, I had one more invitation casually presented to go to Mexico City. This it's on my on the top of my list. My my wife, business partner has been before and it's at the top of my list. But there's so many things that I that struck a note with me and and I look forward to seeing, seeing these month long intensives grow. Because I think so many people go out and kind of flounder on their own for a bit. And then they decide, okay, I'm gonna buy another plane ticket and go somewhere else, before they really engage locally. And this is a, this has been one of the strong points that I've taken from this today. How about you?

Allen  

Oh, you know, I know we move too. Quickly beyond a bit. Mita brought up Barbados and we've had some guests on that have talked about what a tremendous place that is to work out of, I always love when we have conversations that we can give people ideas of places to go. And, and actually, between Croatia, Vietnam, two of the spots that I would have recommended too so wonderful there. And you know, to our to our audience here, we want people to feel confident in traveling. And when I hear Mita's story about like leaving New York in and really traveling, I hope that gives everybody confidence and I tip my hat for the reasons for the travel to and it clears your mind and you meet other people. And certainly when we lose loved ones, they want us to be happy. They want us to be growing. And you know, we take that with us. So I felt that was a very powerful thought there. So I thank Mita for that. So for our audience out there, we hope that you continue to listen to The New Nomad, people find us by word of mouth, please pass this along to others. We want people that travel competently so we look forward to seeing you in your travels in the future. Thank you for joining us today. And we want to once again thank our guest, Mita, for being with us. Cheers