Aleix: We were burned out. Everything that we created was a file somewhere in the cloud. We wanted to do something purely joyful. We don’t use the word meeting, and we use rituals instead. We are trying to move away from all this toward a corporate kind of lingo.

 

Anya: Our main driver is not to build a business, but more like to build the lifestyle.

 

Fidel: We turned off all the lights of the castle. If the zombies catch you, you become a zombie. So we had to stop them at some point, like, okay. And stop catching people because they will not manage to do so.

 

Aleix: We really like controversy. We like certain topics that are a bit more sensitive. Talking about this is complicated.

 

Anya: It’s a cult.

 

Fidel: Check. Instagram. Check the website and you will get a better idea. Not a full picture. But. Yeah. We’ll leave these for when you come.

 

Cesar Alberca: Welcome, everybody, to Colliders Club. Here we have today, people. Anya, analise from one lower house. Hello. How are you?

 

Anya: Oh, I can’t complain.

 

Cesar Alberca: Wow. Yeah, it’s cool living in Barcelona, in the outskirts. It takes like, one hour drive.

 

Unknown: Fidel

 

Anya: Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: But coming here in itself is a whole trip, a whole journey, let’s say, because it’s a very special co-living. And from the moment I step into it I could feel the magic. And even you, Anya, you have a wand here which represents very precisely the spirit of the co-living. Yeah. So it’s two, Fidele y wonder house.

 

Fidel: Wonder how you mean as a name or a living.

 

Cesar Alberca: Maybe. Let’s start with the name. Yeah.

 

Fidel: Okay, so it’s a name. Oh, that’s a complicated question. I think it was one of the toughest decisions. We were discussing that for many weeks and months. Is anyone asking for help from France? Even? We had, like, one workshop, remember, with a friend of a friend that was a caliber about choosing the name. I think it inspired by things that we want to evoke. Think like Alice in Wonderland. We were like thinking about Wonderland co-living, but maybe it was a bit too obvious. And I think that it’s, a theme that it has been used too often, so we wanted to keep it as a hint. Also, we fell in love with this house. So while we were looking for a place, we were not even expecting to find such a beautiful, awesome house and we fell in love with that. And you know, when we found it, it’s like, okay, like this is like the wonder House. It’s full of small things, details, beautiful decorations and things that you will find, outside of it that, well, sort of, brings these.

 

Cesar Alberca: This area and it attracts, wonders, you know, in The wonder and people that wonder.

 

Fidel: Yes. Actually. Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: Good for marketing.

 

Fidel: Wonderland. Wonderland was possibly the second, master of both. That option. I think now we were between Wonderland. Wonder how like we like to have this concept that.

 

Aleix: Also everything else was taken.

 

Unknown: Anya

 

Aleix: We searched for domains and that was like the shortest and the coolest one that we could find, sadly. But, yeah, like, we wanted to do something around Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland and all that stuff. Yeah.

 

Anya: I think the essence of wonder House is, surreal experiences focus on the bizarre, the magic. And that’s very interlinked with, Alice in Wonderland theme. So that was kind of the inspiration, and we thought it would be a good name for people who don’t know us to kind of get the gist of what we are just from the name.

 

Cesar Alberca: Okay. And what are you then?

 

Anya: We are a lot of things.

 

Aleix: Yeah. I think that like, the main inspiration was that we where burned out at some point, like we the three of us work in tech, and at some point we were like, we couldn’t spend like one more minutes in front of the computer, and we wanted to change and and. Yeah, like, we wanted wonders in our lives, you know, like, because, like, everything that we created was a file, somewhere in the cloud. And we wanted to, you know, to believe for real and to do something purely joyful, you know, like. And we like games a lot. We have done, like, many games in other evenings and it was completely out of five. And when we were living in Barcelona, we were trying to do like a lot of parties, like psychedelic parties or, you know, like many different parties. But it was super complicated because in Barcelona we never had a place to do it. And I think that, like the main focus on the co-living was like, we need a place to play games and, and throw parties and that’s pretty much it.

 

Anya: Yeah. Well, we also like, a lot of the concept of experience design. So I think for us, what we liked about going to other co-living. So at least what stayed the most in our memory was these experiences where we shared some special moment together, some crazy themed dinner. So that’s kind of what we really wanted to, to replicate in our own co-living, have these bizarre experiences that, of things that we like to do. Like Alice mentioned. Well, like costume parties were like games with like playfulness. We do like experimenting with psychedelics from time to time. So all of these things that we like bring it to people who would probably enjoy it as well and create these shared memories that will stay with the people who visit us. And yeah, hopefully become our friends as well.

 

Cesar Alberca: Oh, and I feel like this place that you guys created, it’s filled with creativity and and passion, like you see the little details and we will get to that with the rituals. What meetings. But you guys call it rituals.

 

Anya: Or.

 

Cesar Alberca: So I think it’s you are guys doing wonderful with the space and the setting that you, you create. So one thing that I think is challenging and you find yourselves in this challenge, let’s say, is communicating to others what you do, and, and you do it in such a way that you attract like minded individuals. So how do you think about overcoming this challenge when communicating about what to do or what is this place about so.

 

Fidel: Well, it’s definitely one of the biggest challenges that we have now. So we have different ways of addressing this. First of all, in the social, media like Instagram, we are trying to hint more or less the activities that we were doing. Like last week, for instance, we had one that was like, because every week we do like a theme, okay, so every week has a theme and with it for instance, toxic masculinity that was picked randomly while it looked like, okay, this is a bit of a risky topic. We had like a lot of fun. And it’s something that we showed in the, in the Social Network. So basically we did like, some activities, some Friday that was, the measuring competition. We were very conscious about what we were doing. And, you know, one of the task was about doing mansplaining. So everybody had to mansplain and that there was a story to see who needed who that that better, or kept calling, you know, this sort of thing, but also at the same time, at the end of it, we had like some debate about, okay, how did you feel like that? And, you know, we try to bring some, some morals into that. But in terms of curating the community, well, now we’re starting. So we need to keep it open for absolutely everybody. We hope that word of mouth will help us here. We believe that it’s already helping us. We have social network. Plus also what we do is every time that people come, they have to feel like a connected card, something that it’s, similar to, you know, like if you had a role playing character, how about with strength and with charisma and with all those things, but also there we try to understand if that person is comfortable with a few things, such as, maybe political incorrectness. Okay, maybe we need to be a bit more careful about certain topics. And it’s something that we try to assess every time that somebody comes to see what we can bring up to discussion. And also make sure that, everybody’s comfortable with the things we do, and then, well, we’ll have to calibrate with the vibe based on this or that.

 

Anya: Well, as Fidel mentioned, we are just starting. So we are also in in the learning phase. But in the long term, I really like what, shadow does, for example, because they have like this themed months. So you can also start curating the community based on specific themes. And because we have a lot of different themes that we like and different hobbies, I feel that we could, yeah, easily create like a year around different themes and that way attract the right type of community for each topic that we’d like to explore.

 

Aleix: Actually, like this is a big topic for us because like, our vibe is, I think, very different from other Bolivians because like as I said before, like we come from a very burnt out background. So we wanted to move away from anything related to work. So our workshops are not related to work. We don’t promote people to do synergies about, like, their work, even though you know, like they happened and they might happen naturally, but we don’t promote that kind of stuff. We are trying to move away from all these start, corporate kind of lingo. That’s why we don’t use the word meeting and we use rituals instead. It’s not that we do any sacrifices yet.

 

Anya: Because. Yeah.

 

Aleix: But yeah, like, it’s very complicated for us to communicate all these things because they are very different, especially because most of the call events, I think that they are more focused on, you know, like all this startup kind of thing, creativity, innovation, that kind of stuff, synergy. But for us it’s more about being playful. You have to work, but it shouldn’t be like the core of your life. And we are trying to make everything a bit more playful. So communicating that message is more complicated. Especially because, like, we really like controversy. We like certain topics that are a bit more sensitive. So for us it’s been, you know, complicated. And we are still learning about like how to deal with these and how to communicate all these things so we can bring people in and they are not like super scared about the stuff we do here because like at the end, like what we do here is it’s not too much. But talking about this is complicated.

 

Fidel: So yeah, I would like to add something that add to the challenge that it’s that particularly the place certainly. And sometimes unfortunately, it’s too well-located. I have to say, like, I think it’s one of the very few columns that we have in Catalonia. It’s in Montaigne, it’s one hour from Barcelona, which is a great asset. And we know already from people that basically they are looking for a place to stay now close to Barcelona so they can go, maybe on the weekends. Catalan is beautiful, it’s well connected, but we don’t want to have the location as a highlight. Despite it’s it’s truly awesome. Like you can have many hikes from here. So this is another thing. So we need to really be careful about exposing this message. Entail hey you are coming here for the ceiling. Nice for the fan. Mainly which is totally, compatible. Plus also the website. I think that we did a good job with the website this. But it was done very quickly. I think that it sort of explains more or less it gives some hints of what we are doing. So anybody joining? Please check the Instagram, check the website. You will get a better idea of the things that we may be doing. Not a full idea for a full picture. But yeah, we’ll leave these for when you come.

 

Cesar Alberca: So yeah, I love that there’s a lot of Easter eggs here in the evening, and I can only assume that you will look at more and more and more, Laura and, the, the co-living. So that’s that’s wonderful. Talking about the rituals. I really like the family ritual. Let’s say that you do once a week. So in these rituals, you start by, doing, Well, first of all, Alice will wear a robe. Very, very cool robe. I that’s like.

 

Anya: It’s a cult. It’s a cult.

 

Cesar Alberca: It’s not a cult. Okay, we don’t say it’s not a cult. It’s like from, So it looks like a ceremonial robe now. And that’s the scene. And you put music, so it’s super cool. And then we recap with, what’s been, the past week and all the things that happen, how people feel. And that’s amazing because you create space for people to really sit down on, okay, how things are going. Because I feel like when you go to a co-living, sometimes it’s too intense and you don’t really have time to process, right? So creating the space is amazing. And I really like the idea of having a theme for the week. So everyone writes down, in a paper there a theme for the week, and then they put it in a bowl and it’s random, right? It’s random. Yes. It’s random. Somewhere. And then Pixar, a topic. And this means that people now have a focus for the week and also for this Friday activity. And here this week it was the spa week.

 

Anya: Which is amazing.

 

Cesar Alberca: So had a meditation like kind of like related to the to spa. We have to the massage workshop. Friday we need to think about that. An activity that is related to that. Tomorrow we’re going to a spa. Yeah. So that’s like super cool, very, very cool. And moreover, during this family meeting, family rituals.

 

Anya: Sorry,

 

Cesar Alberca: People propose activities, right? Because I think this co-living is, co-living, that people feel energized. So I’m calling this, you go on like nobody says anything but this because of, you know, like you are also part of the co-living and the essence is there. Right. So I wanted to ask you, where is this idea of having a theme for the week? Come from?

 

Anya: Well, actually it kind of so a big of a bit of a backstory of how we met. We met, in a evening. We met in and so four years ago, I mean, me and Fidel met before that, but we we met in cell, and it was a very interesting encounter because we didn’t spend that much time in Fidel came to. And so just for three weeks, for the first time, it was actually our first co-living experience. We immediately connected with the Aleix over mainly silly themed activities like there was. Also at that stage there was a scene for the week and there were a lot of controversial scenes as well. So I think it was really an example of how even in the short time, you can blend with someone or connect with someone on a deeper level, just because you will like, open up and play together and have a lot of fun. So I think partly the inspiration comes from there. Yeah. And overall, like what we already mentioned, we like rituals or routines. So we kind of like to explore this theme and oftentimes like it can be anything. Right. So spy is this week’s theme. I think this one is a more detailed example. Usually we go for something a bit more, controversial. But yeah, we also try to to balance. But yeah, it’s a nice opportunity for people to find a bit of a creative angle, play together. Also, sometimes put up a character like we have a lot of activities that, yeah, require a bit of, acting or putting up a role. So all of this kind of is just an excuse to connect on a deeper level and to have fun together. So that’s that’s how it came together.

 

Aleix: I think that at the end, all that is coming from, experience design, I really like this example that, like, you can have tea, you know, like you just like, grab a mug, put hot water is put tea and you drink it. Or you can do something super complicated like the Japanese, like drinking ritual. And it’s the same thing at the end of the day, you’re just like drinking tea. But because you are adding meaning to everything, suddenly tea is the less important thing. Is what you are creating now or like on top of that. And I think that like one of the cool things about having this theme week is that it allows us to have like this thing on top of every activity we could do, like a workshop. But when you add a theme, suddenly you are adding like a lot of meaning on top of whatever you’re doing. And that’s like the core of experience design. And, you know, partially that’s why we are doing these things. So, instead of doing something like normal, you can actually like do more and connect more and use that to create tighter community. That at the end of the day, is our main goal. So yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: And Fidel, what are some of your favorite themes that has happened in the past months?

 

Fidel: Okay, so yeah, I mentioned the one for toxic masculinity. This one is quite recent, but it was lots of fun. Also even funnier it was that we had some people arriving that same evening and they arrived and they found this like wearing us very like manly classic where we had these girls dressing up as a cowboy, you know, like everything was super manly occasions too, right? But he had a lot of fun. And now he’s connected very well. I can very well, I’m not going.

 

Cesar Alberca: Thought like a satire to show, case. Like, what is toxic masculinity? What it really is. So you understand better so you can fight it right?

 

Fidel: I guess also that.

 

Unknown: Anya

 

Fidel: Like, honestly, I think we do most of the things for silliness, but also like, we like to have all those discussions and, and in the end, I think that’s, that’s good for everybody. And also, if we can have some takeaways from that, it’s, you know, something that we can add to the whole experience that was also on the tail of that was the gym, bro, week. So basically we end up, we, we built a gym. So we have a gym, by the way, and working quite well.

 

Cesar Alberca: And it’s working out.

 

Anya: It’s. Yeah.

 

Fidel: You lovely things. It’s working out. So to celebrate that, we had the, gym bra week on. Well, we had some activities during the week on Friday, which is like normally the biggest activity. What we had as dinner was several stations with very classic gym food that was like chicken, just basically cooked, boiled eggs, broccoli, some protein bars and other things with protein. It was not the most delicious dinner ever, but it was do okay and fun. And we had like one minute to sit at every stop, you know, with the beep. So you have to jam it for one minute. Then you have, I don’t know, like second rest and then you have to go to another station and keep. And we had to very dressing up as gym bras or it was like very classic gym outfits like Eva and, you know, 80s that we sort of vibe and that was, that was super fun. And also Alicia is very good at theater. So he was the, you know, doing like the trainer, like classic trainer, motivator. Yeah. Yeah. So that was super fun. But yeah, we did to other things. Which other ones did we do?

 

Anya: I really like the Midsomer one, but it was like a big party that actually, like, we invited even people from from outside the gleaming. So yeah, it was on Summer solstice, and we all like, dressed up this forest creatures and elves and fauns and nymphs. And we went to see the sunset up the hill with some nice music. And it was a really, like, beautiful night. We danced a lot. We had a lot of fun. So. Yeah, I see you like adding costumes or seemed to them gathering really adds, some magic into it. So that was a lot of fun.

 

Aleix: We have a room full of costumes, so, like, whenever, whenever we need to do something, there are like a few boxes there, and people just, like, dress up and it’s awesome. It’s it’s a lot of fun.

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah. So the costumes are used because whenever you, when you go into the living, you have this character sheet you need to, write down, your strength, your intelligence, your, like, kind of like stats. No. Yes. You have a little story about yourself, but in that way that it seems like a video game now. And one of the things that you need to take a picture, no, on people in there because they are dressed up. So. Yeah. So, so from the very beginning, you are you’re.

 

Anya: Getting into character from the text. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: And so also, then the board games, that there’s a, you guys have quite a lot. No. And this is a part of a of the co-living spirit and escape rooms. Right. You guys like escape rooms?

 

Fidel: We love escape rooms. Like we love escape rooms outside killings. But also in co-living. So some of the best experiences we had was at the chateau co-living, building. Our own, escape room. It in with zombies. Yeah, it included zombies. So basically there were like 1 or 2, some bees in the castle that were quite scary because if you have been at the shelter, you know, you know what?

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah, it’s scary already. Oh, so they’re like, going in to the kitchen in the. Yeah.

 

Anya: Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: That corridor is.

 

Anya: So full of zombies in that corridor.

 

Fidel: And so now imagine because Emmanuel joined for the night and he just decided, you know, this is not scary enough. We just kept a few lights open and he just, turned off all the lights of the castle. So there was no light, and there were like 1 or 2 zombies making noises, and you had to go out and find, you know, several kitchens. And there was a map of the things that you had to do. But also, if the zombies catch you, you become a zombie. So you have to put some makeup on. Then there are three zombies. And then for, towards the end of the of this game room, it was like the whole, living room full of something, like we had to stop them at some point, like, okay, and stop catching people because they will not manage to, to escape like most of them, because we have too many. And one of the most amazing things was that then after the chateau, we want to, you know, we want to some other colorings and then talking to other people like, hey, to which places have you been at the chateau? You know, talking to some somebody else. And then they highlighted, like we had a lot of fun, like they played this some big game. I like.

 

Anya: Fun. Yeah.

 

Fidel: We were the ones that that brought the top on the store at, So we had, very interesting folkloric one with, dressing up as, as, oh, it’s the.

 

Anya: Priest doing black mass. Yeah, I guess so.

 

Fidel: Yeah. That’s something that we really love, that we are inspired by. Inspired by many cool, escape rooms that we have been doing our typical livings, specially horror themed ones like we have been doing many, many recently. And we have many of the. So definitely we’ll make a few here like for Halloween. Definitely. We want to do many, many things. So there are still some from for October, but the.

 

Anya: Beginning not a lot. So. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: But I mean, come here to work on their house.

 

Fidel: So yeah, we’ll definitely do quite a few.

 

Cesar Alberca: I think it’s just a really nice way to get to know the house. Right? Because with an escape room, even for the tour, you can think about a small escape room, like with different tasks to take people from the. And you can do like, menial tasks like, oh, you need to watch the this is not oh, that’s part of the escape game, you know.

 

Anya: And if you don’t get to your rooms, yeah. Sleep on the couch.

 

Cesar Alberca: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s true. Okay. The. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s super cool. And, you mentioned that you want to do escape rooms in the future. Are there is any plans for the future regarding the colony?

 

Aleix: And we are going to have a Jacuzzi at some point. This is some. I could see the sauna. This is something that at some point we will have because, like, I.

 

Cesar Alberca: Personally have it for the spa week.

 

Anya: That’s really like,

 

Aleix: My bad. Yeah, I don’t think about it. But. Yeah. No, I think that, like, in the future, like, we don’t want to expand too much. Like, maybe like, make the house better, like, with more facilities. And I think that in general, like, we are pretty chill and we want, you know, like, we, we like to be comfortable. So we want the house to be, like, as comfortable as possible. So we will, you know, keep adding more stuff to make it even more comfortable. Like for the future. What I hope is just like we have a lot of fun. We play a lot of games and yeah, and we make a lot of friends and family. That’s pretty much it, to be fair. Like, I don’t know, have any other goal in my in my future. So yeah. Yeah. And we have to prepare for suicidal collapse as well. We have to build a bunker and all that.

 

Cesar Alberca: Of course. Yeah.

 

Aleix: A different conversation.

 

Anya: So we can, The mentioned.

 

Fidel: Yeah. You mentioned she can also. So now we have many plans actually that they, they not when she can, but the for you you want at that culture.

 

Anya: I wanted that. Yeah.

 

Fidel: Okay. Will happen soon.

 

Aleix: Does is released.

 

Fidel: Up a ping pong table is arriving, but they are, like, small additions. So I think that the house is ready the way it’s like, you cannot like people who are not staying too long. Like they don’t have enough time, like they are telling, like, okay, like there’s too many things to do here. Like only in terms of hikes, like the natural pool, like, you know, like we have lots of board games, we play some video games. Which many movies. So keep planning things for. Having more activities is good. But in the end I think it’s more about making everything more comfortable. I was saying if any.

 

Aleix: In general, I think that we’ve been very lucky finding the property. Like we spent like two years trying to find something with, you know, the stuff we had in mind. And it was super complicated. But at the end, like somehow we found this and it’s like super ready. It’s like a very good co-living, the layout of, you know, up the room sunsets and the facilities is pretty good. Everything is ready and it’s like a very comfortable, you know, co-living. So yeah, there are not that many plans apart from trying to make it a bit better and focusing on the community and yeah, make friends and family. That’s my goal, definitely.

 

Anya: I think, adding on, focusing on the community, what we want to do, in the future is curated the community more. So I mentioned like one idea that we have is having more, like themed months, to attract, the people who are into a specific topic. We are also considering doing, like, more prefilled filtering, like asking people some questions before they book to kind of tech and do the vibe tech and also, yeah, maybe potentially in the future, like match the group together, you know, do this, conscious work of putting a group of people that we think would really work together well. So yeah, in the long term, I think that’s something we, we want to do in the community building side as well.

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah. Let’s talk about the facilities and the co-living. It’s huge. Like a nine rooms more or less. I think up to 20 people maybe at some point. You have a natural pool. You have a Balinese, bed. I think it’s it’s probably that, it’s very good. Not the gym. You have the layout for the main room with a co-work. It’s amazing because it’s fuzed together, like. Yeah, you have a lot of different spaces and a lot of potential because you also have a shared now for the two. So that can be potentially become in the future. You I think you mentioned, a ceramic workshop.

 

Aleix: Well that would be like the other room like like we have.

 

Anya: Yeah. We can so many and so yeah.

 

Aleix: Like many things. Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah yeah yeah. The sacrifice room. Oh no sorry about that. But so many spaces for example here in this room that we’re now here we were watching the other day, and in the end, nobody would move, which is an amazing idea. And then you have also this other side room, which is the tea room, or what is it called.

 

Fidel: Games room. I think, like we have this table that it’s, foldable. So it’s very good for playing board games for that. Also, it’s like a oh my tea room or.

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah, wingspan one feet.

 

Aleix: So if you didn’t really like this table people really chose it. It’s this is a thing like this stable.

 

Fidel: Took me it took me a while to convince them. But when I saw it like, this is a perfect table, and now everyone is saying that, this table is outside. Like I told you, it’s also it works as a library that, that room. So, yeah, we have. Yeah, yeah. Four, five, six shared spaces, like only in the house. Plus also the gym, storage room, plus also the garden and the barbecue areas. We have a part that we are ignoring with another barbecue.

 

Anya: Yeah.

 

Fidel: Area which.

 

Cesar Alberca: You know, and also the, the attic, which is the costume room.

 

Fidel: Okay. Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: Of course. Oh, and this room for where we did the meditation yesterday, which is with couches. People put candles. Yeah.

 

Fidel: Disappointing. Or zero. No.

 

Anya: Thank you.

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah, yeah. So so many spaces, so many possibilities. So. Wow. Okay.

 

Aleix: Well, we were looking for a place with, you know, many spaces because we know that, like, sometimes when you are working, you probably, like, spend a lot of time in the co-working space, but sometimes you want to just, like, chill somewhere else or have a meeting somewhere else, or you just like your writing and you want to be like in a quieter place or something, and, and you want to go somewhere, you know, in your own. So having different spaces is super important in our co-living. And we wanted something with a lot of spaces. However, like I thought, like in the beginning I thought like, oh yeah, as big as possible, as many spaces as possible. But now I found that we have so many spaces and sometimes like, hey, what is Fidelis like? I don’t know, calling.

 

Anya: Where is my phone? That’s the key question.

 

Aleix: Oh yeah, that’s another thing. Like if you leave your phone somewhere, you are going to spend like half an hour going through all the possible places that your phone could be. So yeah, like it’s, it’s very big and it’s cool because, like, you have a lot of privacy. You have a lot of room to be with people, but you do have a lot of privacy if you want to take it, which is cool. But yeah, like if you lose your phone, your.

 

Anya: Yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: You can potentially have careers here. They should be gone, but they got to stay over things. You would never find that out there.

 

Anya: Yeah. No, that’s true. I think like, Alicia also mentioned that it took us a long time to find the right place. And we saw a lot of places that were, like, previously was a hotel or something like that, which is like, okay, it’s big enough for a girl living, but the layout is really not the right thing. And because we are so obsessed with like community and, you know, we really for us, it was a project that we wanted to do not because we want to make money, but because it’s a lifestyle that we want to leave. So, we were looking not just for co-living, but also for a home for us. So yeah, when we saw this place, we just immediately fell in love. And we had to like daylilies to put more of a poker face and not just like, oh, cool, but.

 

Fidel: Getting the this, it was like I come on like this felt like it’s a very terrible negotiation of.

 

Anya: Skills here. Yeah. So we were really lucky and yeah, the the house just keeps surprising us. And it’s really cool to see like that with so many different spaces. It also gives possibility, gives opportunity to people to maybe in one room there is someone playing a board game and then in another room someone is doing a meditation. So it really gives a lot of potential to for the community to, to do stuff together.

 

Cesar Alberca: Right. Another kitchen. Yeah.

 

Anya: Oh, I never used.

 

Fidel: About the, about the ground floor, but we don’t mention anything like we have on the room that we don’t know. What is it, another storage room. We have the balcony also, which is awesome.

 

Cesar Alberca: Balcony.

 

Fidel: The balcony, the one up was the attic square, you can see.

 

Cesar Alberca: Okay. Yeah, yeah, we’ll.

 

Fidel: See some of.

 

Aleix: And then.

 

Fidel: He has the right to another one never.

 

Aleix: Use. And it’s in my room. I like.

 

Anya: Yeah.

 

Aleix: Like we have a lot of spaces inside.

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah. Wow. Okay. And this begs the question. How did you find this place.

 

Fidel: We had been looking for.

 

Aleix: At least?

 

Anya: Yeah.

 

Fidel: It was here the least. I had the alerts, on on the moment it came, it was like. That doesn’t make sense. Like, based on on. I had to explore all the internet and one more, for, for many months. And we were almost giving up because we kept the budget and nothing was within that budget. It just came, the alert started, like in 30s, like, guys, what the hell? It’s like, call, call, call. I was calling two minutes later. We were the first ones to visit the place, and I think the only ones visiting the place. So, long story short, what happened is that there was a woman with old, wanted to build. It. Has a great road out through some place, but they think that in the end she got a bit tired. She was a bit older, and she didn’t want any more troubles or problems. Wanted to go back to London with her family. Was so it’s like, okay, you know what? Like let’s let’s sell it. I want to, get rid of this soon. And she brought down the price a lot. We found out that there was a previous ad from a few months ago that was 40. Now, 40% more expensive, even more than 40%. I’ve been to, like, 50% more expensive. And it was, weirdly ad, advertised like only five rooms for bathrooms. So I think that didn’t gonnaget all the attention. It showed. And the moment that they, you know, brought the the prices down with the right, description, it’s like this place doesn’t make sense and we still don’t think it makes sense, but here we are.

 

Cesar Alberca: So, well, amazing.

 

Anya: It was a combination of luck and us being very fast.

 

Cesar Alberca: Yeah, but it took a long time. Two years for, Yeah.

 

Anya: Yeah. That was like, partly because we’ve seen so many places we really knew like that it was really good for the price. And when you also what we wanted. So it came from experience.

 

Cesar Alberca: And you guys started, I think in March.

 

Anya: Oh. We moved here officially in March. End of March. Yeah. My birthday is end of March. And it was the first big party here. And yeah, we’ve been preparing the place for opening for 2 or 3 months, and we had our first delivery coming in June. So it’s been it’s only been even two months, but it feels like it was it was a very intense two months.

 

Cesar Alberca: So regarding, being new in the co-living world, in the sense of being owners, what are the biggest, lessons that you guys are learning right now?

 

Aleix: Well, in general, like, to be fair, like, I know I’m a very realistic person, like, this is not my first company, and I know how hard it is to, you know, start a company. And then in the beginning, like a few months ago, I was sure that we were we weren’t going to have like a lot of qualifiers in the first year, like maybe 1 or 2. But Allen has been doing like an amazing job, like promoting the, the, the co-living online, like, setting up the, like all the social networks and such. And so far it’s going very well. I’m not sure why.

 

Anya: But.

 

Aleix: It is but yeah, like, it is complicated because the, the co-living world is like a very, it’s, it’s very close, you know, like, there are like a bunch of qualifiers, in the world and they go to places that they already know. So having this, like being part of this co-living community or like in the industry, it’s complicated. But since we already had, like a lot of experience, like going through a lot of co-living and we had like we met a lot of people we know a lot of in that industry. And I think that that somehow helped. And also like, we knew pretty well what we wanted to do. Like we had like a very clear picture of the co-living. We wanted to be. And yeah, like, I think that the mixture of these two things is working out very well. Yeah. A lot of, you know, promotion on social media in the sense of just showing what we do, pretty much. But like what we do is like a it’s different and I think it’s attracting people as well. We have a lot of friends and they we bring them over, with them out. Yeah. Like all that’s but yeah, like now our goal is to trying to be bigger part on that industry or the community, like internal community in the industry, to be part of the circuit of, you know, colleague versus like running around, I think. But yeah, so far it’s going well with this stuff we are doing that is pretty much being ourselves. So yeah, pretty good.

 

Anya: Yeah. I think, taking from what I said, it’s a bit of interesting balance because as I mentioned, like our main driver is not to build a business, but more like to build the lifestyle that we would enjoy. Sometimes the complicated bit is like finding the right balance, because obviously we like people who come and pay, so they have some expectations. But at the same time, we don’t want to sacrifice our identity or, or like, censor ourselves. And become something else or something like generic just for the sake of, of business. So yeah, it’s a bit of a balancing act and we are still learning. I wouldn’t say that it’s a lesson that we’ve already mastered. But yeah, I think, like coming with, authenticity and being ourselves. Being more clear on what we are and what we are. And, even before people come here. So, like, spreading the message, across Instagram and other channels, then that’s like the, the main challenge for me right now. And yeah, like, am I attracting the right crowd? Because we know that we already have some believers who already left, and they left, with a lot of, like, wishing to come back really soon. So we know that if we attract the right people, they will enjoy it a lot. So now it’s just a matter of, Yeah. Attracting the right crowd.

 

Cesar Alberca: Maybe we can tell the audience what is for you guys. The person that will fit the this co-living. What are the personality traits or people?

 

Aleix: Crazy people.

 

Cesar Alberca: They find crazy.

 

Anya: And, I think the main thing, honestly, is, open mindedness in, like, all the senses. So maybe you’ll come and and it will be the measuring contest this day, so.

 

Aleix: Well, really? Not literally.

 

Cesar Alberca: No, no, I mean is say that it was, a game. Yeah. Not.

 

Anya: Yeah. No, no, but there will be some bro. The bizarre activity or game or something. Yeah. Something weird, something that maybe makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. But if you are open to it and you’re like, okay, let’s take it with the playfulness and yeah, with curiosity, I think that would be the yeah, like just curious attitude and open mindedness.

 

Unknown: Anya

 

Fidel: And everything is optional. So no worries if some day you find some very weird activity planned that’s so far everything was quite. Yeah. Entry level.

 

Anya: So yeah, I would also mention that we are part of Bernard community. So to give some context, Burning Man, the big festival, in the US, we haven’t been to Burning Man. We only have been to the local burn in Spain. That’s called nowhere. So we get inspired a lot like this, festival is a very unique one. It’s not the music festival. I don’t even know how to properly define it.

 

Fidel: The self-expression, weirdness, experimentation of art.

 

Anya: Yes.

 

Aleix: Yeah, yeah.

 

Anya: So it combines all these and. Yeah, there are a lot of workshops and where that that also very weird and sometimes very challenging. And yeah, a lot of times, polemic let’s say, but a lot of fun. So yeah, we kind of like the, the vibe and want to bring it to the living as well. But yeah, people who go to Norway are generally very open minded and very curious and very playful. So I think that’s the the perfect Gulliver that would really enjoy wonder House.

 

Cesar Alberca: With all the things going on during the first year and activities and open in this co-living, I’m sure you guys will take a rest during the first year, right?

 

Fidel: So not really. No, not well now we live here and no, actually we want to to try. How is this place for the whole year? So will be opening. Winter will be open for Christmas. So we don’t have a place to stay. Jonas will. It can.

 

Anya: Be a family.

 

Fidel: Finally. So, yeah, at least for the first year will be definitely here. Yeah. No matter.

 

Cesar Alberca: What. Yeah. I can totally picture Alice dressed as the greens.

 

Anya: That’s like. I mean, it’s not.

 

Aleix: Like we’re we’re going to be like the the three wise men,

 

Anya: Anyways, but. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Aleix: Like, Daniel will be the black.

 

Anya: Oh, okay.

 

Aleix: And then probably like, well we’ll see, we’ll see.

 

Anya: How much.

 

Fidel: Hair.

 

Anya: Oh yeah.

 

Cesar Alberca: It’s better than the week a week.

 

Anya: So but we have a big week collection. So. Oh.

 

Cesar Alberca: Okay. Oh, it has been, very interesting episodes. Thank you for taking the time. I think I would enjoy later the massage workshop. It would be super nice to, to follow with this theme of the the spa week. So. Yeah, let’s, let’s practice the movements. So, yeah, thank you for being in another episode of Calibers Club. Powered by Macmillan. And. Yeah, see you. See you next time.

 

Anya: All right. Info coming.