Today we would like to introduce you to Aisling Carlson & Jenny Pellicer.
Hi Aisling & Jenny, can you start by introducing yourselves? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Aisling & Jenny: Oh, we love this question.
Aisling: Mainly because it reminds us of a beautiful wedding in the south of France that we were both guests about….
Jenny: …Five years ago (seriously time truly does fly!) You see, our mutual friend – Chiara – was getting married to her long-time love and she had been telling me about this lovely, amazing woman called Aisling that I simply had to meet because she was thinking of moving to LA…
Aisling: Yup, I had a pipedream of moving to LA (I was living in London at the time). So Chiara seated Jenny and I at the same table cause Jenny was living in Venice Beach and she thought that Jen would be able to give me some tips about LA. Little did she know how tight we would become…!
Jenny: And, about two years after the wedding I get a message on Facebook…
Aisling: I sent her a message that said something like “remember me from that wedding two years ago? Well, I just moved to LA… and btw, do you know of anywhere to rent? I need to find a place to live.”
Jenny: It was such serendipity because I had just spoken, literally moments before, to a friend who had told me he desperately needed to find a roommate…just down the street from where I was living. I couldn’t believe it!
Aisling: So, long story short, I ended up moving in next door to Jenny and we became firm friends… And now business partners.
Jenny: Yeah, it’s been quite a ride.
Aisling: Mmmm, We would counsel one another on our very different careers… Jenny: I was working as an actor and producer…
Aisling: …and I had been in the tech industry… but the challenges we were facing were pretty similar in many ways. We both felt a sense of loneliness to a certain extent.
Jenny: We are both foreigners. I am Mexican / Norwegian and Aisling is Irish / Australian. We are both far from our families and even though LA is such a warm and welcoming place, we hadn’t really found a community and network that was pushing us to grow and learn in a way that we were seeking.
Aisling: So…we decided to start our own community and thus Faura was born….! Basically, we wanted to bring people together – originally over great food & wine, in an interesting setting – to forge new friendships whilst debating and learning about an interesting topic.
Jenny: This community we started, suddenly, started to grow, very organically and quite fast!
Aisling: Yes before we knew we have to find bigger spaces and well, things were getting very exciting and then Covid hit.
Jenny: And we pivoted online 😉 We just knew we had to keep going. We work so well together and what started off as a friendship has evolved into a wonderful business relationship as well. (Who knew?!)
Aisling: I think it’s our shared passion for helping people to form meaningful relationships and connections…
Jenny: A great way to do this is by participating in an experience together. Such as a Faura Talks, Chew the Fat, Faura Book Club – if you are learning about something or speaking about something together as a group, it’s so much easier to form a connection with someone when you have a shared mission, goal, conversation, experience….
Aisling: Yes, we believe that the best way to form a connection with someone is through engaging in a shared activity or learning experience. By focusing on a third thing – in this case discussing a book or topic – the participants are able to get to know one another through sharing their opinions, dreams, fears, etc. but it doesn’t feel so ‘on the nose’ as a blind dinner date might feel… where both parties feel pressured to come up with interesting conversation. The salons take the work out of making friends and allow it to happen in a more natural way.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Jenny: Smooth road? No, we would describe it more as a wonderfully wild ride. Right?
Aisling: Absolutely. Starting a company is never easy. It takes a tremendous amount of work and time and the road is most definitely not always smooth. Having said that, the challenges we have faced, the bumps in the road have brought us closer as business partners and friends. We have learnt a lot about our abilities to pivot, especially recently with the pandemic….
Jenny: 100%. Pivoting online when the lockdown hit was rather scary. We had no idea how it was going to work but we went for it, starting with our book clubs. We realized very quickly that if we honed the methods we used for gathering in person and adjusted them for an online experience, we could give people a sense of connection, even in the zoom room.
Aisling: And bumps in the road add spice to life. They force you to get better, try new things, to improve. We like the bumps!
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Aisling: Well, our company, Faura, is an online community platform that seeks to unite people and create experiences online for those that identify as curious, lifelong learners and those that are seeking some form of meaningful connection in their lives. As Jenny mentioned earlier, we started off super small, hosting dinners at each of our homes, and as this grew organically, we realized we didn’t have space in our homes to host these gatherings!
Jenny: We branched out and hosted larger and larger events in art galleries and vodka distilleries…all sorts of interesting places but always with the mission to ensure people would connect, that the focus would be on being present, learning and maybe even making a new friend. We think that this really resonated with people because we set the stage for all sorts of conversations to arise and serendipitous moments to arise. It’s never been about hosting an instagrammable gathering but more about hosting a powerful one.
Aisling: Yes, we are known for designing and hosting impactful, unique and intellectually stimulating experiences and for encouraging conversations in order to make sense of and ultimately better this ever-changing world. We want people to walk away from our events and feel that they have been part of something great, something that has led to a spark with another human because we believe that these types of interactions, these sparks of connection, are what give meaning to all our lives.
Jenny: It’s funny, Aisling and I talk often about how we are so connected via technology (these days more than ever) and yet it seems that we simultaneously lack connection as well.
Aisling: In fact, loneliness is a global problem and therefore, we always ask ourselves, “how can we create meaningful connections online that reflect real human experience for everyone
Jenny: ….and “how can we eliminate the exclusivity present in so many online platforms?”
Aisling: We are really quite pedantic about this and sometimes it’s hard but we pride ourselves on always working towards growing an inclusive and diverse community. Jenny: We will make mistakes, this we know, but we will keep striving to be better and this, we are proud of.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Aisling: Our company sits at the intersection of multiple industries. We are event designers, content marketers, and community builders. And we do all of this in the digital realm. Our company probably couldn’t have existed in a pre-pandemic world so we are certain that in a year from now our industry mix will have evolved even more!
Jenny: I also think that the way we gather will evolve tremendously. We are in the midst of a huge shift when it comes to how we work and socialize. We went from working in offices, seeing friends at restaurants and bars to now spending most of our days on zooms, google hangouts, etc. As such, we have to think of new ways to engage in the online realm, and here, well, the world is our oyster. We look forward to seeing how VR impacts this too and cannot wait to bring more and more people together from every corner of the world.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.faura.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fauraco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fauraco
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Fauraco
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClZYOwGjOrPpz306wErHyeg
