We recently connected with Alex Coleman and have shared our conversation below.

Alex, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

This was the most difficult part of starting the business! The business model, saving money for start-up costs, acquiring new customers…all a cakewalk compared to finding a suitable name! Elise (wife / c0-founder) and I went round and round trying to think of something that accurately captured what we were building. It’s difficult. How do you sum up your business in a few syllables while being memorable and unique? We struggled for several months while getting the business off the ground. Then, on the plane enroute to Cuba for a scouting trip, it finally hit. We were building a company that allows travelers to sit back, relax, and experience a new world while not worrying about any of the stressors that typically come with traveling. In a world where we are often distracted, stressed or pre-occupied, we were trying to give travelers the chance to travel in the Here and Now. So, Here and Now Travel became the name.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My wife (Elise Coleman) and I love traveling. We loved the freedom of solo travel (going where we wanted, when we wanted), but didn’t like the loneliness, isolation, and vulnerability that could accompany it. On the flip side, we loved traveling with friends, sharing the experiences, and having the security of a group… but trying to navigate everyone’s busy schedules, their preferences, and budget constraints made planning and aligning everyone a real headache and a ton of work. So, we decided to create a travel company that combined the best of both worlds. A company that gave people the flexibility of going to their desired destinations at their desired time, without losing the experience of traveling with a group of awesome people.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We started our international group travel company 9 months before a global pandemic. Talk about timing! The travel industry shut down for two years and we survived by keeping our corporate days jobs. On nights and weekends we kept investing in our travel business. We never stopped marketing, growing our email subscriptions, and trying to improve our internal processes for a better customer experience. There was no short-term hope for travel, but we knew when people were able, travel would come roaring back. Small, incremental steps each day for those two years of no travel put us in a place to capitalize on the strong demand that we are seeing now. We have quit our corporate jobs, work full-time on Here and Now, and travel around the world in a nomadic working style operating the business from wherever we can find a wifi connection.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

My wife (and co-founder) Elise and I both worked corporate jobs for 6 years prior to starting this business. Early on in our marriage, we committed to saving as much money as possible from our salaries. We didn’t know what we wanted to do later in life, but we knew something COULD come up and we never wanted money to be the thing that stopped us. That opportunity just so happened to be a group travel company. Fortunately, we were able to quickly take some of our personal savings out and use that for start-up funding. This gave us a lot of freedom and flexibility. With no loans or outside investors, we got to grow the business at the rate we wanted with no external pressure.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hereandnowtravel.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hereandnowtravel/