What a joy to record an episode with Fabienne & Benoit.
First off, I don't know how they do it but they practically never cut each other when speaking, they somehow magical know when the other is done. It was a pleasure to listen to their stories. And they have many! They've traveled so much, met so many people, they were Digital Nomads before it was hype, and before they even knew it and ended up in a coliving because of crappy wifi.
Fabienne and Benoit in their own words:
We are Ben and Fabienne. We are both in our late thirties and grew up in Switzerland. We met back in 2008 and quite quickly we got bitten by the travel bug. After our studies, we decided to move to Vienna (Austria) and worked there for 2 years. In 2013, we left for what was supposed to be a 1-year backpacking trip around the world. The trip turned out to last 19 months and the least we can say is that this gave us new perspective on our life and careers. We were no longer attracted by the corporate world and started dreaming about a more flexible, filled with human interactions and entrepreneur life. Financial reality however made us go back to an office job after returning from the trip. We both took a job in a tech start-up in Zurich (March 2015). In August 2016, barely 18 months after signing our contract, we resigned and founded our own company and started travelling again.
After being fully nomad for a little more than 2 years, we pushed the doors of our first coliving in December 2018 (Nine Coliving). This has been a game changer and we started to spend about 50% of our time in coliving spaces across Europe (nine coliving, cloud citadel, Anceu, Re-Station, Bansko). In 2023, we're now opening our own space in the Swiss Alps.
We've been running our travel blog since 2013 and a wordpress-SEO blog (novo-media.ch) since 2016. We love writing hiking guides (books as well as ebooks)
Keep up with their adventures: https://www.instagram.com/alpiness_coliving
Check out Alpiness Coliving: https://alpiness-coliving.com/
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S3 - E14 - Ben & Fabienne - Digital Nomads by accident