[quote]Don’t take things too seriously. You only live once – see it as a game. You can’t win or lose it you can only play it. Have fun.[/quote]
Known by their friends as urban nomads, Carina Schichl and Tanja Sieder have lived in Salzburg, Vienna, Hamburg, London, New York, Stockholm and Munich together. They met while studying Design and Productmanagement in Salzburg / Austria and founded their company NECTAR & PULSE – your local soulmates in 2010. Their focus is on creating characterful, personalised city guides based on insider tips from carefully selected, vibrant individuals around the globe. With NECTAR & PULSE they have combined all of the things they are passionate about: fascinating people, travelling, design, fashion, photography, music, culinary delights and hidden, authentic places.
These young (*1985) bon vivants try to make the most of now. They are hungry for life and play in a world of complex music, intense flavours, exciting places and epic experiences. On their own journeys, it is always the locals themselves who prove to be the best guides: the freaky guy from the subway, the barista who pours the best espresso in town, the fashion photographer who makes you laugh uncontrollably, the DJ who gets the club dancing, the families who welcome you as if you are one of their own… Like pearls, Carina and Tanja collect these people and their favourite spots and meld them together, with their original flair and colour to create a completely personalised travel guide.
What are you working on right now?
We work on creating guides for more cities around the globe. Scouting and selecting new local soulmates. Selling the existing cityguides (London, Stockholm and Vienna). Building up our distribution network and contriving some cooperations.
Where did the idea for Nectar and Pulse come from?
We have traveled around the world but never found a guide, which really satisfied our needs – so we decided to create our own.
What does your typical day look like?
We never have a “typical” day. Each one looks different. We love this adventurous and diverse lifestyle of having an own business. All in all we write and answer a lot of emails, make phonecalls to clients or business partners, drink a lot of coffee, discuss future plans, count numbers, edit our guides, laugh a lot, blog, twitter, facebook, manage our orders, write bills, take pictures and document our journey, pitch to sales partners, book flights, cook, exchange our experiences with our best friends, travel, read a lot about new spots which opened or research for new potential local soulmates. Meet people and test various spots. We never go to bed before midnight.
How do you bring ideas to life?
The ideas come themselves when you are curious and open. The hard thing is to execute them. If an idea is good you somehow feel it in your stomach. It’s important to concentrate on one idea at the time. Discuss it with different people from other backgrounds and then just go go go! Without doubts. 100% persistence.
3 trends that excite you?
Growing of Creative Culture, Urban Nomadism and Individualism, Social Media
What is the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?
Seeing back no bad job or bad experience is really bad, because you learn from everything. – Especially the things you didn’t like at this point.
If you were to start again, what would you do differently?
Hm…Nothing – all mistakes were good experiences and made NECTAR & PULSE and us to the business and people we are today.
What is the one thing you did/do as an entrepreneur that you would do over and over again and recommend everybody else do?
Don’t take things too seriously. You only live once – see it as a game. You can’t win or lose it you can only play it. Have fun.
Tell us a secret…
Well, maybe not a secret any longer but we both tattooed one part of the company name on our wrists. Carina is Pulse. Tanja is Nectar.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Since a while we are joking about creating a designoriented sexguide with various insider tips from all sorts of different people and experts. (Haha – I guess that’s the secret ;)…We will see what happens with this idea…
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read, and why?
Patti Smith – Just kids. About art, true friendship and dreams. We love biographies about characters like Patti Smith who live 100% for one passion.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – by Stephen R. Covey
Making ideas happen – by Scott Belsky
If you weren’t working on Nectar and Pulse, what would you be doing?
Traveling.
Three people we should follow on Twitter, and why?
Our best friend and talented Graphic Designer @AnnaCraemer
Our dear friend and CEO of an award-winning digital agency: @mj_loop
Author of making ideas happen: @scottbelsky
When is the last time you laughed out loud? What caused it.
5 minutes ago. Each other.
Who would you love to see interviewed on IdeaMensch?
Susan Sontag – awake the dead!
Where do you see your business in five years, and how will you get there?
NECTAR & PULSE will become an international lifestyle brand. We aim for having offices in Munich, Stockholm, Berlin and New York. We produce city guides for over 50 different cities and create additional products inspired by traveling.
We will have an inspiring design studio combined with a little café, gallery and NECTAR & PULSE flagship store.
How we will get there? Continue, persist and work hard.
What does traveling mean to you?
Constant personal development.
Connect
Website:
Blog:
Facebook:
Twitter: !/nectarandpulse
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.