Guest Bio
Brian Schon is the Co-Founder and President of True Colombia Travel and Cannúa. With ten years of experience leading travelers around Colombia, Brian is an expert in Colombian tourism and hospitality. He is focused on True Colombia Travel’s commercial and administrative departments, and is also one of a small number of internationally certified rummeliers (rum sommeliers) in Colombia. Brian grew up in the United States and earned an MBA and an MPP from Brandeis University.
Show Summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Brian about the beauty and diversity of Colombia, the importance of authentic travel experiences, and the challenges and opportunities in the Colombian tourism industry.
Brian shares insights on the role of destination management companies (DMCs), the significance of building trust with travel agents, and the mission of promoting sustainable tourism in Colombia. The conversation highlights the cultural richness of Colombia and the need for travelers to embrace the local experience while navigating the complexities of the travel industry.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Colombia is a biodiverse country with unique travel experiences.
- ✓ True Colombia Travel focuses on authentic and custom travel itineraries.
- ✓ Building trust with travel agents is crucial for success in the travel industry.
- ✓ Sustainable tourism can be luxurious and responsible at the same time.
- ✓ Cannua is Colombia’s first high-end sustainable ecolodge.
- ✓ Travelers should be open to cultural differences and expectations.
- ✓ The Colombian countryside is integral to understanding the culture.
- ✓ Cooperation among travel operators can enhance the tourism experience.
- ✓ Travelers should explore beyond major cities to truly experience Colombia.
- ✓ The perception of Colombia has changed significantly over the years.
What You’ll Find on True Colombia Travel
- ✓ Curated, authentic experiences across Colombia’s diverse regions
- ✓ Custom travel itineraries inside Colombia tailored to individual and group interests
- ✓ A strong commitment to sustainable and responsible tourism
- ✓ Deep local partnerships that provide access to hidden cultural gems
- ✓ Guided travel that emphasizes connection, learning, and exploration
- ✓ Expertise from local and international professionals passionate about Colombia
👉 Visit True Colombia Travel Official Website to learn more about Brian and his work.
Learn more about True Colombia Travel and Cannúa and connect with Brian at:
https://truecolombiatravel.com/
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Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Jason Elkins (00:00.9)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. We’ve got a treat today. We’re going to talk a little bit about Colombia and anybody that’s listening to this show before knows that Colombia has a special place in my heart and it’s actually where I’m at right now. Today we’ve got Brian Schon. He’s the co-founder and president of True Colombia Travel and Cannua. Did I say all that right, Brian? we, we, we.
Brian Schon (00:25.392)
That’s perfect, Jason. Thank you so much.
Jason Elkins (00:27.942)
We practiced a little bit before I hit record and I’m happy that we got that straight. So it’s a real pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
Brian Schon (00:35.488)
No, it’s an honor and pleasure on my end. Thank you for the invitation.
Jason Elkins (00:39.086)
Now, are you you’re actually in Colombia right now as well.
Brian Schon (00:41.998)
I am, I am. live right outside Medellin and I’ve been here for about ten and a half years.
Jason Elkins (00:45.978)
Yep, so you’re pretty close to me. I’m in Envigado, which is basically Medellin. That’s part of Metagen. So I’m a little embarrassed that we haven’t met in person yet, but I suspect that will change really, really soon. So in the meantime, we’re doing kind of a virtual thing. I can see you on the screen. And it’s a pleasure to meet you this way.
Brian Schon (00:51.447)
Is it?
Brian Schon (00:55.298)
Thank
Brian Schon (01:04.756)
Absolutely, you know, it’s my pleasure. And I lived in Envy Gala for six years. It’s a wonderful place as well. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:10.032)
Pretty great, isn’t it? Yeah, we’re gonna go off on a tangent. Maybe listeners don’t care, but you said just outside of Medellín, so tell us more about that. Where are you?
Brian Schon (01:13.976)
That’s it, guys.
So I live up in Rio Negro. So a lot of people actually this is interesting. This is good. People should know this. There are two airports in Medellin. There’s the International Airport, which is up here in Rio Negro, and then there’s the Municipal Airport, which is down in the city. Here’s the confusing thing. The name of the International Airport here is Jose Maria Cordova. So everybody here calls it Jose Maria or Jose Maria Cordova, which has the code JMC, but the actual airport code.
Jason Elkins (01:25.499)
Hmm?
Brian Schon (01:46.186)
is MDE. So when people are flying in, they’re flying into Jose Maria Córdova. That is not in the city. That is actually about 40-45 minutes outside of the city. The airport that is in the city, Olaya Herrera, is only used for the shorter flights. They’re generally without, with one exception, they’re generally, you know, prop flights to go out to the Pacific coast or to go to smaller cities or smaller airports. anyways, I live about 15 minutes from the airport.
Jason Elkins (02:12.143)
Right, right.
You do. OK, very familiar. Well, I don’t know if I should say I’m very familiar with Rio Negro, but it’s a it’s beautiful. I understand why you live up there. Little little cooler weather for one and maybe a little bit more laid back lifestyle, I guess. And we may get into that further here. But anyway, so for our listeners, just real quick, let’s give them the 30 second elevator pitch for kind of, you know, what is true Colombia travel? What is?
Brian Schon (02:18.801)
Hahaha.
Brian Schon (02:27.65)
Exactly.
Jason Elkins (02:43.75)
canoe. Give us the 30 second elevator pitch and then we’re going to go back and discuss you and then we’ll get back to kind of where you are now.
Brian Schon (02:44.236)
Yeah?
Brian Schon (02:52.428)
Okay, perfect. I’m gonna steal 30 seconds from you on each side. So, Colombia Travel is a full DMC operator. We do custom FIT trips and white label trips throughout the entire country of Colombia. We are one of only two virtuoso DMCs in Colombia. And we are particularly known for doing things that you just can’t find. We spend a lot of our time doing…
Jason Elkins (02:56.229)
Okay.
Brian Schon (03:17.022)
research investigation and we go to a lot of places that other people just don’t have access to. They’re not destinations. They’re not touristic destinations. They’re places that have opened just to us. And our main goal is that everybody who comes to Colombia says, wow, that is one of the best countries I’ve ever visited. We are just constantly looking for those wow moments and the most authentic places you can visit. There is a ton, a ton of misnomer with Colombia and things that people think.
that are authentic or important and just aren’t. And so we’re constantly looking for those things that are under the auspices that they’re not our vacations, they’re not our trips, they’re other people’s trips. So we’re looking to make it perfect for them. So that was a little more than 30 seconds. Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (03:56.422)
Very cool. And I want to expand on that a little bit because we’ve got a wide variety of people to listen to the show. So just real quick, let’s understand what you mentioned three things. DMC, FIT, and white label. So just real quick, bring us up to speed on what that all means.
Brian Schon (04:10.287)
Mm-hmm. Yes, correct. Perfect.
Okay, a DMC is a destination management company. Basically, travel advisors, people who are looking to plan trips all over the world can’t be experts in everywhere. So they look to companies like ours. We’re experts in Colombia and we operate everything. when our travelers come to visit Colombia, we don’t want them having to think or worry about anything that has to do with logistics. We want them just having an amazing time.
So we literally manage the entire trip for them. What makes us a little bit particular is that a lot of the companies like ours don’t actually do the operations. They just make a lot of the relationships, but we do. operate the entire country. Our staff takes care of just about everything. We try to subcontract as least as possible. Obviously there’s certain things like we have our own fleet of vehicles here in Medellin, but we don’t necessarily in other places, but we have relationships with companies that we’ve been working with.
for years and years and years. So we’re the ones who make sure that trips are seamless and that clients have 24-7 contacts and people who are making sure that everything are perfect, so in real time. So if somebody needs a new reservation, if they want to stay somewhere longer or less time or whatever, we’re making sure that everything is settled at that moment and making sure that everything on their trip is taken care of. FIT.
Jason Elkins (05:35.684)
I’ve heard people say, use the term like boots on the ground, or you could say you guys are the ones operating the trips. In a sense, you’re not selling and you’re not marketing and selling directly to the person taking the trip, but you’re handling all the operations. Obviously you do some sales and marketing, but when you do sales and marketing, it’s directed towards other businesses that then are handling the sales and marketing.
Brian Schon (05:55.651)
Right.
Brian Schon (05:59.758)
correct.
Jason Elkins (06:02.51)
for the actual travelers. I say that right? Okay.
Brian Schon (06:04.814)
Yes, I think that’s perfect. There are small locations where we do direct to client sales, but I mean, that’s probably 1 % of our business and it usually happens to do with very specific cases. But that’s right, we’re generally operating for other businesses. FIT, literally, mean, fit travel, which we call it literally is just the industry term for bespoke or custom made. So we try to custom build every itinerary.
to each traveler based on their likes and dislikes. And that’s just a fancy way for saying that.
Jason Elkins (06:36.922)
Which, almost like to say what an FIT is not is not a, hey, we’ve got a big bus that picks up everybody on Tuesday. We’ve got 32 spots. You’re welcome to book one in. We’re gonna do this itinerary the same and come back and drop you off the following week. That would be a group trip as opposed to an FIT.
Brian Schon (06:45.004)
you
Brian Schon (06:57.442)
Right.
Jason Elkins (07:00.152)
I don’t really like I’m going to I’ll be vulnerable. I like I always thought it was for individual travelers. I don’t really actually know what FIT stands for, and I’m not going to ask you if you know, but it’s just always called FIT. So FIT for individual travelers. So I’ll go with that. But we know how to do it, so that’s all that matters. All right, so.
Brian Schon (07:02.958)
Hahaha!
Brian Schon (07:13.74)
Yeah, I feel like I knew at one point and I forgot. Yeah, exactly. It just means private and custom-made. That’s it, yeah. And then white label, right?
Jason Elkins (07:26.33)
Yep, yep. Okay, very cool. And then you mentioned white label, which kind of almost ties the two together, right? Or will you tell me what you think?
Brian Schon (07:34.602)
It can so about 10 % of what we do is under the label of other companies will be doing that’s going to go up this year because we have a major very exciting contracts coming in. But that basically means that you know another company has their name on the trip. It could be that they’ve designed or stamped what they want for the itinerary and then we just actually operate it. So for example, we work with a couple of.
very well known photographers and they come down a couple of times a year where they bring invite only clients with them. And we have co-constructed the itinerary that they want along with them. And it’s under the name of the photographers. They’re technically the trip leaders and they’re the ones who sort of direct everything. But we’re the ones who take care of all the transport. We often have guides to add, you know, extra context or information to things. We make sure that the trip runs.
seamlessly, but it’s under their name, which is totally fine by us as well.
Jason Elkins (08:38.338)
Okay, which is kind of almost more like a group trip, but they’re putting the together themselves and when they show up.
They’re leading the trip, the transfer driver that picks them up, maybe even has their company name on the side of the van on a magnet or something. I’m not saying that that’s how you have to do it, but that’s kind of the concept, right?
Brian Schon (08:59.66)
Yeah, right. Right, so it can be that or it can also be, know, sometimes you have really well-known travel advisors who want, you know, their specific name on something. you know, they want to say like, this is, I’m just going to make up a name. We’ll just use a sort of a Colombian name. Yeah, I’ll say, I’ll say like Felipe Jaramillo wants to have their Felipe Jaramillo trip.
Jason Elkins (09:19.482)
Good luck picking something that hasn’t been used. Go ahead.
Brian Schon (09:28.738)
and they’ve got a family that’s coming down and they want to say, look, this is offered by me for you. That’s fine. We’ve oftentimes said we’re the ground team for company X and that’s not untrue. I have very, very, very good relationships and close relationships with a lot of the agents and agencies that we work with. And that’s important. We’re really committed to long-term relationships.
Jason Elkins (09:53.734)
So that could look like one day you meet a group and you’re, don’t Felipe, whatever that company was you mentioned. It’s like, yes, we’re the, you know, I am the transfer driver for such and such company. And then the next day you might show up and meet some more clients and you’re the transfer driver for a different company as opposed to maybe a tour operator in the U S or a travel planner in the U S that puts together group.
Brian Schon (10:01.681)
Hahaha
Brian Schon (10:06.592)
Exactly. Exactly.
Brian Schon (10:12.974)
for another one. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (10:22.862)
Obviously, their branding is all over their website and all over everything, but then they send the trip planner and they say, we’ve partnered with, you know, True Colombia Travel. So we’re going to have a representative from True Colombia Travel there to pick you up. so it’s just, I mean, the experience should still be the same, right?
Brian Schon (10:30.776)
Right.
Brian Schon (10:39.81)
What’s important to know, what’s important to keep in mind, and I think this is part of the recipe of success, is whether our name is on it or not doesn’t matter. Well, but it is, but no, no, no, no, no. What I mean is, what I want to say is actually the opposite. It’s we are stewards or representatives of whoever is the face to the client. if, you know, we get travel advisors who are very clearly like, I’m working with True Colombia and that’s fine, but
Jason Elkins (10:49.124)
Your name’s on it. In a sense, yeah. Well.
Brian Schon (11:09.364)
I’m not the hero. the end of the day, it is the travel advisor who’s going to be booking this client for another country in the future. And so I am the team of this person. And my job is to make sure that they have one of the best trips of their lives, but that that credit goes to the travel advisor who steered them to coming here to work with us.
Jason Elkins (11:30.502)
I’m happy you clarified that because that wasn’t actually what I was thinking when I say your name’s on it anyway. It’s okay. The client may not see your name, may not make the connection, whatever, whatever. You’re representing the tour operator back home to book them. And the tour operator that is back home to book them is your client. So you gotta perform either way because…
Brian Schon (11:44.685)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Schon (11:50.627)
Right.
Brian Schon (11:54.701)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (11:55.15)
because that’s your client also, it’s kind of weird, you know, we’ve had two levels of clients. you’ve, so you better do a good job. You better treat that client at least as well as somebody that books directly with you or somebody that, you know, there’s all different scenarios. But I think what you’ve mentioned was great. was like, we want to make sure they go home, having a great trip. Weather. Yeah, absolutely. And of course you’ve got a passion for Colombia as well. And like you said earlier, you want to make sure that people experience Colombia in that way.
Brian Schon (12:13.952)
Absolutely.
Brian Schon (12:22.23)
Right. And there’s a lot of pressure to that. mean, like we get very high end clients. We get people who spend exorbitant sums of money to come travel and see the best. And that creates a lot of pressure every single time that we have a group. It’s like putting a theater production together and we have to re prove ourselves to ever to whomever that advisor or company is back in country X. They trust us, which is why they brought us another client. But it
you know, just takes one bad one to lose that trust. So every single time we’re reproving ourselves. And it’s great, it’s exciting. There’s also a lot of stress involved.
Jason Elkins (13:00.422)
Well, and doing it, because I’ve been on kind of both a couple different sides of this. And when you’re partnered with a travel agent or a tour operator back home, there’s that interdependence between the two of you. You two need to work well together as well as far as setting expectations. It’s like everything. The root of all disappointment is expectations. So you’ve got these expectations. And how do you communicate with the client? How does the
Brian Schon (13:15.926)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Jason Elkins (13:28.75)
Maybe a tour operator has never even been to Colombia and they’re the one on the phone having these conversations about what to expect and what kind of things do you guys like to do? So it’s like a magical thing that when it comes together that, know, as I’m sure, I guess I want to ask you this question because sometimes it’s really hard for some agents.
I’m curious what your experience is. Some agents are like, hey, this is a great friend of mine, or this is a great client of mine. I’ve sent them on a bunch of trips. This is kind of the type of thing that they want to do.
But I’m perfectly happy having you have a conversation with them to vet it, to discuss expectations. And so can I set up maybe a three way call, a video call or something like that? And then you’ve got other travel agents that are like, no, I don’t want you to have any connection with my client whatsoever. Like I’m going to tell them that it’s, you know, it’s true Colombia when they get there. I’m going to tell them that we partner with true Colombia, but I don’t want you to talk to them until they get there because I don’t want anything coming in between my relationship with them.
But of course, in reality, that’s fine. But in reality, that client’s going to come spend a week with you and your team. And you’re going to develop a tremendous relationship because hopefully they’re having a lot of fun and da da da da da. And maybe they’ve never actually met this travel agent in person anyway. So I’m curious what your thoughts are if a travel, because I believe there’s a lot of travel agents listen to the show. If you’re speaking, you know, let’s imagine we’ve got a travel agent out there listening and has strong opinions one way or the other.
Strong opinions to just work with them, I’m sure. But what would you like to say to maybe a new travel agent when it comes to how you handle that stuff? I know it is. you’re a smart guy. You’ll figure out how to play with it. But I think it’s important for people to see a different perspective because I’ve been on both sides.
Brian Schon (15:06.382)
Powered and loaded question. Right, yeah, no, absolutely.
Brian Schon (15:17.838)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. um, look, and then, you know, I haven’t addressed Cannua yet, which also gives me a different perspective into things. Um, what I will say is it’s a, it’s a strange industry and there’s a lot that is based on honor systems. And there’s a lot that’s based on like, I’m going to trust you to do something or I’m trusting you because somebody that I trust told me things. And I think that there are a lot of sort of internal unspoken culture.
want to come culture work with sort of cultural issues that occur. What do I mean by that? A lot of agencies and advisors are affiliated with a bunch of different brands and sort of umbrella agencies within the world, right? Those umbrella agencies also have their own cultures and those cultures change over time. Sometimes they’re more cutthroat, sometimes they’re more, you know, communal, sometimes they get acquired by other countries and by other companies and
those things change over time. And so within those, you get agents that have different cultures that they’re used to working with. And sometimes those are more trusting and sometimes they’re less trusting. You know, I’ve had travel advisors where I have to be like, Hey, look, we really need the last name, right? Or like, I can’t put them on this flight or this boat if I don’t have their passport. Like it’s just, it’s just not going to happen. And then we’re going to have problems.
Jason Elkins (16:32.873)
Hahaha!
Jason Elkins (16:41.456)
Eh?
Jason Elkins (16:44.772)
Mm.
Brian Schon (16:45.39)
And then there’s others where like, we’ll call each other up. You know, had an advisor call me up a couple of days ago just to kind of like shoot the breeze and see how things are going. Right. And those are the best. And I can assure that they’re going to have an amazing trip, but I get it. Like a lot of advisors, they don’t know me or they don’t know Colombia, which is very common. And they’re used to working in a lot of other countries where things are a lot more.
And a lot of these people have been burned before and when you’re working with a lot of the clients where you know a lot of these clients come to the client and chargers or sometimes they’re charging within the country. I mean and that’s just this element right? This is their vacation money. So you imagine the world that these clients are coming from where the smallest thing can can you know be a giant bomb going off right? Like I’ve had clients get upset.
Jason Elkins (17:39.206)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Schon (17:41.388)
because there’s no space for a reservation at a restaurant in X City in Colombia. And they’ll be like, make somebody else cancel the reservation. But I get it. There’s a lot of people who come from that world. And that’s not everything. That’s the exception, right? But it happens. And so I get why there is that tension. I get why there is that sort of sometimes lack of trust or needing to build that up.
Jason Elkins (17:55.622)
You
Jason Elkins (18:00.454)
Mm-hmm. Great.
Brian Schon (18:11.494)
What I would say on our end is again, like our goal is to make that other company or that other advisor the hero. And I’m just looking for the data that we need in order to make sure that their trip is absolutely outstanding. And we try to be as transparent as we can with absolutely everything. And yeah, I mean, that’s what I would say on that side. So the goal is to try and put people at ease.
Jason Elkins (18:37.68)
Cool. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think you mentioned a lot of things that are super important. And some of it’s just etiquette. We can call it etiquette, but my idea of etiquette might be different. We know that. both, you’re living in Colombia. I’m living in Colombia. I wasn’t born and raised here. And sometimes I get reminded, wait a minute. You have to say, good morning. How are you before you jump into anything? And you got to wait for them to respond. I’m what?
Very well, thanks, Scott. Thank God. And how are you? And you got to have that back and forth. And I’m typically a little bit more like, let’s just jump to the point.
Brian Schon (19:16.993)
Well, and that, and I apologize for interrupting, and that’s one thing that’s important for lot of people to understand, and they don’t sometimes get it, is that’s how it is here in the Andes, right? But the coast is a different world. So, you know, people will talk, let’s use the United States for an example, right? There’s a big cultural difference between the West Coast and the East Coast and the South. But there’s still lot of norms that exist throughout the United States, right? In Colombia, Cartagena,
Jason Elkins (19:27.942)
That’s true. Yeah, that’s true.
Brian Schon (19:46.08)
and Santa Marta are totally different than Medellin or Bogota, which are totally different than say Pasco or San Agustin, which are totally different from the Pacific Coast or the islands. And so there’s things that are, I mean, the language is different, the sling is different, and then the style of work is different. So like, yeah, you pressure me you need to know if there’s availability at a hotel in Medellin, I’ll get back to you later today or tomorrow.
The best hotel in Cartagena may not get back to me till next week, right?
Jason Elkins (20:20.59)
Yeah, yeah,
Brian Schon (20:24.238)
That can be difficult.
Jason Elkins (20:26.264)
Mm Which which actually reinforces the value of somebody like yourselves doing this. I think a lot of people are like, you know, never maybe they haven’t been to Latin America or they haven’t been to Colombia. And even then they’re like, yeah, I probably don’t really want to try and put this together myself. But the people that have spent time in Colombia even understand even more why you wouldn’t maybe want to do it yourself, you know, and it’s.
Brian Schon (20:33.326)
Right.
Jason Elkins (20:52.358)
I just don’t think you end up saving that much and you have such a better experience. I’ve wandered around a lot of places on my own by myself, but that’s just because of some of my own life choices around money.
Brian Schon (21:03.906)
Yeah, I think what happens with Colombia is it depends on how much you want to get out of your trip and in what amount of time. So there’s places you can go, Colombia is a hard country to navigate and there’s not a lot of other language besides Spanish. And so to learn about a place is difficult. There’s not good signage. There’s not good guidance.
and you’re very likely to get lost. So if you’re okay losing a couple of days on your trip and that’s part of the experience too, I mean, that’s one thing.
Jason Elkins (21:39.568)
Just depends on your threshold, right, or your comfort level with.
Brian Schon (21:41.646)
Well, if you’re an executive who’s got 10 days a year to do vacation with your family, you don’t want to that risk. You’re not going to mess around because you’ve got to make sure it’s perfect because that’s your vacation for the year. And we internalize that pressure. I know what they’re giving up in order to come visit our country. And it’s an honor to have those people here. I mean, 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
Jason Elkins (21:54.383)
Right, right, right.
Brian Schon (22:05.954)
You know, we didn’t have executives, we didn’t have ambassadors, we didn’t have celebrities, we didn’t have bankers coming to visit, we didn’t have a lot of like, you know, high-end retirees who wanted to know about like the deepest parts of the culture. And so to be able to change the perception of Netflix and the news and all that is to us, it’s part of the mission. It’s part of the draw of doing what we do.
Jason Elkins (22:28.986)
That’s that’s very cool. I. Let’s let’s jump on. Let’s jump on. Let’s move forward to canoe and give us. We’re going to try and do the 30 second. Well, try not to ask you too many questions. We’re going to come back to canoe, but I want to really get back into your history and figure out how you got to this point. So give us the 30 second elevator pitch on your place. Can you?
Brian Schon (22:34.764)
Okay.
Brian Schon (22:48.12)
Sure, absolutely.
Brian Schon (22:52.962)
Canoa is Colombia’s first high-end sustainable ecolodge. It’s the first hotel in the world built primarily out of compressed earth bricks that we made on site from the same soil that we’re on. It’s one of the most responsible, it’s one of the most sustainable, rather, hotels in South America. It is designed and built based off of permaculture principles. Our restaurant, which is mostly fed by vegetables and some fruits that we grow on site.
or purchased locally has twice been a finalist for the best restaurant in Colombia. We are a National Geographic Experiences Collection Hotel. We are listed in the Michelin Guide and we are a Mr. and Mrs. Smith Hotel as well. And we are located up in a North Indian cloud forest about an hour and a half outside of Medellin or about 45 minutes from the International Airport.
Jason Elkins (23:47.556)
That’s very, very good. Let’s permaculture.
Brian Schon (23:50.702)
Great question. Every the concept is so important and so difficult that every reservation comes included with our permaculture talk where we give the base of the philosophy. I’ll tell you what it is in a second and we also walk around the entire property seeing how we’ve reforested tasting all sorts of crazy strange plants learning about the impact that we’ve had on attracting animals back to the property and stuff like that. So.
Permaculture at its core is a design philosophy based on the observation of nature. So it turns out that most modern forms of design, especially construction, are based on imposing human will to the environment around them. And while that might be fast, it’s not efficient and it’s not
It is not long lasting. so permaculture looks to see how we can work with nature. And the idea is to regenerate soils and regenerate the world so that we don’t run out of resources. the part of the focus with Kanua was to be able to show that sustainability could be high end and that you didn’t have to sacrifice luxury in order to have responsible travel.
Jason Elkins (25:12.358)
OK, very cool. I appreciate you. I appreciate you sharing that. OK, so we’re to come back to that, I’m sure. And how the heck did you get to this spot in your life? I don’t know how far we need to go back. People always hear me say, how far should we go back? Should we go back to your childhood? Usually it’s something in childhood. But you tell me where you’d like to, you we don’t need to cover every step along the process, but.
Brian Schon (25:35.182)
No, that’s okay. Let me give you a two minute version. my mother was born in a camp in Eastern Europe and my family grew up in the United States. My dad’s side was one generation beyond that. So I’m first generation American on my mom’s side, second on my dad.
Jason Elkins (25:42.434)
It’s an hour long podcast. You can give us more than two minutes.
Brian Schon (26:05.242)
And my parents moved to Arizona where I was born and my father was a physician who opened up the first medical clinic on three of the Native American reservations in Arizona, including being the first doctor to treat the Havasupai tribe at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And so I sort of grew up under this idea of like giving access, doing things, but sort of doing them with the focus of helping people.
I left Arizona when I was 18 and I moved to Boston for college and grad school. And, you know, I was working, I was at a pretty young age, became really well versed in global health systems and in a particular element that was very important to sort of controlling costs. And then I also burned out at a very young age.
Jason Elkins (26:53.84)
Well, what did you hang on? Hang on one second, because I want to touch on. like, let’s just say in high school, where where in Arizona were you living? you? You were. Yeah, I actually was in Phoenix before I came here. So we’ve got a few. We’ve got a few connections. But anyway, so like when you were in high school, did you envision living in a different country or doing anything close to what you’re doing? OK, so what did you end up going to school for was health system?
Brian Schon (27:03.084)
in Phoenix.
wow. OK. How interesting.
Brian Schon (27:16.13)
No, never. Never, never, never. So I’ve always been a little bit of a like, I don’t know, rebel’s the right word, but definitely sort of like going against the grain. You know, my folks wanted me to go to one of the good high schools in Phoenix and I fought them tooth and nail against that. I really believed in sort of public education and not having sort of that leg up. I went to Central High School.
written this Heart of Phoenix. And then, you know, I did fine. I ended up going to a good East Coast school. I went to grad school and then I burned out. I had, you know, my whole five, 10, 15 year life plan. For some reason, I thought I would be less burned out moving to Washington, D.C. So I moved there for a couple of years and I was very, very lucky through a fellowship that I had won. got to meet some very
influential people in my life. And part of that was I was able to spend a short period working for an extra secretary state and an ex secretary of defense of the US. that secretary of defense was named Sandy Berger. And I walked into his office one day and I said, Sandy, hey, look, I’m young, I have a great career. And I am burned out and I’m thinking of quitting everything and joining the Peace Corps.
And I went into his office specifically expecting him to talk me out of this. And I barely got the last word out of my mouth and he said, go. And I like my eyes opened and I said, He said, I would never tell anybody not to do that. That’s amazing. You should absolutely do it. And then he says something that I will just never forget for the rest of my life. And he said, look in life, it’s okay to have a point A and a point B, but life is very boring when you go like this. And it is much more successful and interesting when you go like this.
Jason Elkins (29:11.781)
Yeah.
Brian Schon (29:12.11)
And this is interesting because I’ve met a lot of people in travel and I’ll get to how I got there, but I’ve met a lot of people in travel who are doing a second career or who are shifting or who haven’t been satisfied in the first thing that they were doing, which is amazing. So anyways, I went, I got ended up getting sent to Ukraine where I was from about 2012 to 2014 when the whole country got evacuated due to
conflict that was going on during that period of time. I got back to the United States for a short period. ended up through long story, a of different things that happened back in Arizona. And one day I found myself with a with an immigrant family who spoke not a lick of English and I spoke like 14 Mexican curse words. I had learned playing baseball growing up and I was like, I said
Jason Elkins (30:07.27)
you
Brian Schon (30:10.188)
probably not say these words. Anyways, I had this horrible pain like very deep inside of me and I said, this is insane. Like I literally grew up in terrain that we historically, you know, stole from Mexico. My high school was 70 % Hispanic. The state has a huge Latino population and I speak Ukrainian, Russian, and this made up language in Ukrainian and in Ukraine. And I, I can’t communicate with, you know, half the people that I grew up with.
And so I said, okay, I actually got this amazing job offer back in DC. And I said, no, I said, I don’t feel like I can continue with my career until I sort of check this ethical box for me or something that was important to me. And I decided to come to Colombia and that was for three reasons. One was I didn’t understand how a country could change so fast. So this was back in 2014.
where in 2007, you know, the city where we live was the most dangerous city on the planet. And now by 2014, it was winning all these international awards for innovation, for travel. And I thought, I need to understand this. Two was obviously the biodiversity was amazing. And then three, going back to what we do, Colombia at that time, and I believe still had the lowest English proficiency of any country in Southern America. And that was exactly what I wanted. I wanted sink or swim.
Jason Elkins (31:08.869)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Schon (31:31.406)
I didn’t want to be able go somewhere where I would find a community or be able to survive. I was like, I’m going to learn the language. I’m going to learn the language. I had.
Jason Elkins (31:40.102)
You are this resonates so much, I’m the same thing. I left Arizona. I couldn’t speak any Spanish. I got to Medellín and I was and I kind of knew it was going to be the case. I was like, OK, this is great because I’m outgoing. I’m an extrovert and I don’t want to hang out with the expats. And there’s one particular part of the city that some expats go that I just don’t want to hang out there.
Brian Schon (31:43.042)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (32:04.9)
So I’m like, I’m going to go hang out where there’s no nobody that looks like me sounds like me and I will learn Spanish. And you know, I haven’t. Yeah, OK, it’s the same thing. And I didn’t take any classes. I just was like, I’m going to learn the hard way because because if I just went to classes, I might learn Spanish.
Brian Schon (32:13.144)
Which is also why I moved to Envigado, which is where you live in. Right, exactly.
Jason Elkins (32:25.232)
But if I tried to learn Spanish by actually connecting with people, then I’d be connecting with people and speaking Spanish or learning Spanish. So, but anyway, go ahead. I’m sorry. It just resonates.
Brian Schon (32:31.384)
ready.
No, no, no, that’s okay. You know, I think the one thing that I’ve learned is, you know, people learn languages in different ways and you have to find what works for you. I definitely have ways that I’m successful learning ways that I don’t and I didn’t learn until I moved abroad. But anyhow, I had a plan to stay here for two months and those two months ran out about 10 and a half years ago.
Jason Elkins (32:40.516)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (32:59.718)
Yep, I’m on your trail. I’m right on your tail there, okay. All right, so very cool.
Brian Schon (33:03.85)
Yeah. So Colombia, Colombia used to have a tourism slogan. We can hop on this for a while. They change it every year, but they used to have one that translated to Colombia. The only danger is that you won’t want to leave, but they had to quickly scrap it because one of the translations into other languages was Colombia. The only danger is we won’t let you leave.
Jason Elkins (33:30.214)
Okay, all right. It seems like a pretty good slogan if English is your language, but yeah, okay. All right, so in a nutshell, I don’t know if there’s a nutshell answer, but why did you stay?
Brian Schon (33:30.286)
Yeah.
It was good, yeah. Yeah.
Brian Schon (33:44.15)
Okay, no, I stayed because I fell in love with Colombia. I Colombia is insane. It’s the only country where, know, 10 years later, doing this professionally and traveling a ton, it’s the only place that leaves me with my job just on the floor. just a primer on Colombia in terms of biodiversity by square meters, it’s the most biodiverse country on the planet. It’s number two after Brazil.
It is the only country that has three ridges named Andes. They’re born here, they extend down to Argentina. It’s the only one in South America with Caribbean and Pacific. We have two deserts, we have snow-capped peaks, we have plains, we have Amazon, we have the best coffee regions in the world. And that in addition to amazing big cities like Bogota, in Medellin and Cartagena, have nine, I said we have 17.
quote unquote patrimonial villages, but there’s probably more that could end around that. We have nine UNESCO World Heritage sites. There’s more fruits and vegetables cultivated here than anywhere else. There’s more indigenous tribes. There’s more orchid species, more bird species and on and on and on. And you just completely, you just keep finding the stuff that is insane. So like right before the pandemic, for example, Ana, my business partner and I, we were just like running around the country doing investigation and research. And we decided to go to this in-
This village, which is hard hit during the violence, it is about five hours from Medellin. There are some local flights that go there. And Ana, my business partner, is a licensed veterinarian. And some of her old colleagues told us that this village has the last two communities of Magdalena River manatee. And so we decided to go there. Ana, that’s what I mean. It’s like you live here for years and you go, wait, there’s Magdalena River manatee?
Jason Elkins (35:24.218)
Hmm.
Brian Schon (35:32.446)
And yeah, and so we fly out and like all of a sudden, like I’m holding a baby capybara and seeing these manatee in this little swamp where there’s literally these moving islands where you go in and then the island moves and cuts you off and you have to push the island out of the way. And then there’s monkeys and jaguars and indigenous and these crazy villages. And then we ended up seeing one of the oldest hotels in the country that nobody knows exists because today it’s a military battalion.
Jason Elkins (35:38.811)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Schon (35:59.918)
but they let us in to see all this incredible historical architecture. it’s like, maybe I’ll take somebody there one day, maybe not, but this is so cool. And someday I’ll have the answer to a trivia question. And sometimes those are the things that you have to see to be able to understand what you’re talking to people about. Because sometimes being able to say no is just as important as being able to say yes. And sometimes to say no, you have to go somewhere. So anyways, that was a long rant.
Jason Elkins (36:08.048)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (36:11.781)
Yep, yep.
Jason Elkins (36:25.978)
Very cool. What? No, what I, what I heard there, like what I came up with was because I feel like it’s the case for me is like, this place is like ADHD paradise for anyone. The ADD there’s so much stimulation. There’s an like legitimate, honest, healthy stimulation, regardless of whatever anybody thinks about Colombia. You can come here and you can see new things every day. I, if I’m working in my apartment or coworking space and I’m just like,
Brian Schon (36:38.51)
you
Jason Elkins (36:56.26)
I just feel a little bit bored or it feels whatever I’m doing feels a little tedious. I can just go walk around the block and I’ll see something. And I’ve been here most of the last three years. And it’s like, I can pretty much always find something new and unique. And you know, I’m in this apartment in Envigado and this morning I wake up to the sound of the big parrots. We’ve got a bunch of macaws hanging out here right now. And you know, I can see them right, I mean.
Brian Schon (37:17.9)
The macaws, the red macaws, yeah. I miss them.
Jason Elkins (37:23.174)
I don’t know they’re out there right now, but I can see them right off the patio. I’m like, that’s so cool. I don’t even have to leave the house, you know? And there’s just, like you said, there’s so many different things to see. You can get on a bus and then one day go through over mountain passes that are spectacular in the cloud forest. And then you’re in a desert canyon and then you’re on the beach. It’s even possible.
Brian Schon (37:30.124)
Right.
Brian Schon (37:44.474)
Mm-hmm. 100%. You can see, you can see. So there was an old slogan, sorry, going back and then I will tell you one other thing that’s interesting. you know, there used to be these old slogans like, I’m going to butcher it a little bit, but it was essentially like, if you want the Andes, go to Peru. If you want the beach, go to Costa Rica. If you want the Amazon, go to Brazil. If you want the desert, go to Chile. If you want all of it, go to Colombia, right? But there’s so much
Jason Elkins (38:09.306)
Got it, yep, got it Colombia.
Brian Schon (38:13.448)
bad or misinformation here and that’s part of what we try to dispel. I’ll give you two just very very big examples right. So one and my wife gets so mad whenever I talk about this she’s from a town called Manizales right Manizales is part of the coffee triangle. The coffee triangle or the coffee region which everybody writes about which is Unesco World Heritage site right which everyone wants to go to is not even one of the six top coffee producing regions of Colombia right. It is not even one of the original reasons.
Jason Elkins (38:25.062)
I love money’s all. Yeah.
Brian Schon (38:42.37)
regions and coffee is all over. Where, and there’s a question for you, where is the very first commercially producing coffee farm in Colombia?
Jason Elkins (38:54.036)
boy.
Jason Elkins (38:57.518)
I have no idea. I would just guess. Is it? Okay.
Brian Schon (39:00.214)
It’s near Medellin and Antioquia is the second biggest producing region in the country after Willa, which is way down in the south. Right. And there’s so many incredible places to go. And these are places that we work with that they’re not touristic destinations, but we spent like a year creating a lot of these relationships to do things like go to the very first farm, which has had three presidents of the country as part of the family, which were the founders of the coffee Federation. It’s in Fredonia.
Jason Elkins (39:10.17)
Really?
Jason Elkins (39:26.394)
Are we talking like, is that Fredonia or where it is Fredonia? Okay. All right. Interesting. Okay.
Brian Schon (39:29.646)
It isn’t in Fredonia. Absolutely. The reason why Manizales and Pereira in Armenia exists is because these families from that region want to help the coffee conquest into the interior and be able to take coffee out near the Calca River, right? And get it up to the Gulf of Urbana and send it over to Europe and stuff like that, right? Or there’s other things where, you know, one of the things that frustrates me a little bit is the country has really sort of devoted itself to mass tourism. And I’ll just give you a very
Jason Elkins (39:43.813)
Okay.
Brian Schon (39:58.21)
Quick example, one of the most famous places in the country that you’ll see in almost every promotion for Colombia is this place called Guatapay, right? Which has got its huge lake systems, this rock. I’m sorry, there’s nothing historic about Guatapay other than the fact that it’s named after an old kasi’ke, an old indigenous chieftain from the region, right? The town is not historic. The lakes are man-made to feed hydroelectric power.
Yes, the rock is beautiful and it’s a great place to go to take a selfie, but it’s not a great place to go if you want to understand Colombia. If you’re in Medellín, you can go two hours to Guatapé and learn nothing, or you can go an hour to Santa Fe, Antioquia, which is 500 years old. It’s three years younger than Cartagena.
It was the first capital of Antioquia. It’s one of the major important spots in the country for gold and for Indigenous history and for political history. And it still looks like it was cut out of time from 500 years ago and it’s recognized as one of those patrimonial villages. But where does everybody go? To block the pay because it’s easier to take a selfie and because it’s what everybody promotes. it’s the Instagram thing.
Jason Elkins (41:04.134)
It’s the Instagram thing. It’s that, you know, that, hey, we gotta go there. Everybody’s, you gotta go to Guatapé. You know?
Brian Schon (41:10.158)
And it’s laziness. We have guidebooks from back when we started the companies from major companies, from major companies. And the guidebook will say, oh, the main plaza in Guatapé was voted as the most beautiful in South America. Well, first of all, doesn’t say by whom. Secondly, I can tell you it’s not even one of like the top five most beautiful in Antioquia. I’m pretty sure it’s nothing but beautiful in South America. And look, Guatapé is beautiful. I’m not taking anything away from Guatapé. It’s really, really beautiful.
Beautiful. There’s just so much to see and so much to do in Colombia. And with that little modicum of extra push, you can see things that are so beyond what you expected. And I think that’s sort of the magic of this place.
Jason Elkins (41:48.762)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (41:55.81)
I agree. And for me, I mean, some people listening to this, maybe you’re able to pick up and go to a month or two to Colombia for a month or two and, you know, stay in Airbnbs and take buses. And there’s other people that have like you mentioned, you know, they’ve got 10 days they’ve been they want to take their family. They don’t, you know, they want to make sure they’ve got a great experience. But I’ll tell you one of the things I mean, I’ve left, I came to Colombia, I was going to be here for a month and I ended up sticking around for
at least three months before I left and then I came back for another three and then I’ve left a few times. But every time I leave, I’m like, oh, I miss Colombia. And then so I’m back in Colombia and then I’m thinking, well, maybe I need to get outside of Medellin. So I’ve gone and stayed in other places. I love them. But I’m like, man, I really miss Medellin. And it’s because we’ve got you can I can go.
But it’s still Colombia. I can go anywhere in Colombia I want on a bus, really. I mean, it’s like, we’ve got all these Pueblos up in the hills around Medellin and Guatapay is just one of them. But you can go down to the bus station just randomly, just pick a bus, just walk up to a window and say, hey, I want a ticket. Where to? I don’t care. And you go get on a bus and you can come back and you can go everywhere you want on a bus for like three or $4. It’s amazing.
Brian Schon (42:51.704)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Schon (42:55.778)
Give it!
Brian Schon (43:14.176)
Absolutely. that is a very Colombian thing to do as well, right? There’s a local verb, is Pueblear. And Pueblear is literally down the weekends to go visit different villages because they’re fun. quite frankly, and this is another big mistake people make. Look, everyone wants Rome, Florence, Venice, right? Rome, Florence, Venice of Colombia is Bogota, Medellin, Cartagena. But I always tell people.
Jason Elkins (43:25.082)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (43:38.438)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Schon (43:40.494)
If you want to understand what Colombia is, you want to understand Colombians, leave the city. There was this horrendous violent period from about 1950 to around 2007. That was sort of the heart of it, right? Before that 1950 initial point, we’ll call it, and this is a little bit of a generalization. 80 % of the Colombian population lived on the countryside, only 20 % in big cities. That is including some people who are still alive today. So everybody in Colombia is
very, very attached and connected to the countryside. And you see that even within their lives in the cities. You know, it’s common to go walk into a house and see a mango tree or people growing on their balcony or, you know, lot of things like that. So definitely like if there’s one big piece of advice that people get out of the cities.
Jason Elkins (44:30.79)
Yeah, no, I agree completely. I I I do well living in the city because it’s easy to get around the metro co-working spaces, stuff like that. And I can go out and just see different stuff. But absolutely. Like weekends are all around. It’s like I want to get out or I’ll take a week or two, you know, and even the Book of Ramon guy. No, it’s still a city, but it’s different. There’s different places. There’s little just so many, so many places that I feel like.
Brian Schon (44:37.154)
Sure, absolutely.
Brian Schon (44:58.894)
for sure.
Jason Elkins (45:00.038)
I’d here the rest of my life. I’ll never run out of places and things to go and see and do. So I know we’re, I know this is not the Colombia podcast per se, but I think it’s good to share. I like if somebody listening to this, here’s the thing, anybody that’s listening to this show and decides to come to Colombia, I think they’re going to have a great time and welcome them with open arms. There’s some people that come to Colombia just because they just want to party. They think that that’s the thing to do here.
Brian Schon (45:01.748)
Hahaha.
Brian Schon (45:09.71)
No, that’s okay. I gotcha.
Jason Elkins (45:28.976)
They’re not listening to this show. So anybody that’s listening to this, on. The other thing, too, is just that awareness of like, a lot of people my age grew up seeing that violence on television. Like, Colombia is like, man, how can I ever go there? My parents were very nervous when I bought a one-way ticket.
Brian Schon (45:30.796)
Right, exactly.
Jason Elkins (45:52.644)
mean, it’s like any place you gotta pay some attention. I’m not gonna say you can come down here and do whatever you want and there’s no risk of anything bad happening. But man, if you like come here with an open mind about just exploring and connecting with people, learning some Spanish, not hanging out in areas where people go for illicit things, it’s like, you know, I mean, the fact, the fact I can go get on a bus or I can get on the Metro and go to the bus station, go get on a bus.
There’s no great other. I’m going to say gringos. There’s no gringos on the bus with me and I’m perfectly fine. I’ve met some amazing people. There’s almost never gringos on the bus with me. Maybe a young backpacking couple or something. And I I constantly find myself thinking, man, there are so many people that are missing out on this because of stories they have in their head or images that they saw years and years ago. And anybody could be doing this. Come on. This is so cool. I guess I’m happy they’re not all doing it, but.
Brian Schon (46:23.715)
Right.
Brian Schon (46:46.446)
Absolutely. mean, right. But there’s a lot more. mean, look, Colombia had well over six million tourists last year. There’s a lot to say. There’s a lot of statistics that we can cite in terms of safety here. And over the last 10 years, it is largely unchanged, which is great. That means there’s stability in this. What I would say is like, if you go to Bogotá, you’re going to one of the 20 biggest cities in the world.
Jason Elkins (46:49.884)
You
Brian Schon (47:16.414)
If you come to Medellin, the statistics are a little less certain on this. There’s somewhere between like three and five million people here. These are big cities. So use big city rules. If you don’t speak the language, if you don’t know where you’re going, mean, don’t, can whip out a whole bunch of cash or be really, really flashy. And I would tell the same thing, somebody from Colombia going to a lot of cities in North America or Europe.
Jason Elkins (47:24.282)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (47:43.962)
You know, this might be interesting for listeners. I can’t tell you how many Colombians I’ve had conversations with that are terrified of going to the US. A lot of them have family friends. Some of them have been. But typically, when we talk about our differences and where I’m from, where they’re from, it’s not about
Colombia and how their Colombia safe dangerous or whatever they’re like man. What is going on in the US? This is usually in Spanish, right? But you know like I wouldn’t go to the US I’m afraid if I went to the US I’m gonna this is gonna happen to me and this is that’s gonna happen to me and you’re right I mean every place has its own risks, but We let our minds get so wrapped up in stuff and it’s like I don’t know man, you know the chances
Brian Schon (48:15.821)
Right.
Brian Schon (48:23.692)
Yeah, we let them wander. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (48:32.602)
Doing the stuff I do, I feel like the chances of me really having major problems are really low. But I also feel like if I don’t do the things that I’m doing, the chances of me being depressed and regretful is really high. So you got to balance things out. And whether it’s here or at
Brian Schon (48:39.767)
I agree.
Hahaha
Brian Schon (48:50.024)
I think it just comes down to basic things. Just be a good person and the very, very grand probability is things are going to be just great.
Jason Elkins (48:59.824)
We tend to get back kind of the energy we put out. I mean, yeah, if you want to show off your wealth and try and impress the young Colombian ladies, and that’s your purpose for coming here, you’re probably going to attract negative stuff. If you come here, man, I want to learn the language, I want to explore, I want to see authentic things, then authentic things just have a way of showing up for you.
Brian Schon (49:03.032)
Yeah.
Brian Schon (49:12.078)
Thank
Jason Elkins (49:27.032)
You know, and it’s so cool. And I mean, I’ve had people stop me on the street because I cash hanging out of my pocket. Like, senior, senior, they’ll stop you, you know, and tell you or you drop something, you know, or I had when I first got here, I left some change on it. I went to one of the penetrious coffee, you know, coffee shop was called that. And.
Brian Schon (49:37.859)
Right.
Brian Schon (49:46.894)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (49:49.094)
I always used to go to the coffee shop with my grandparents and always leave a few coins on the table for the waitress. And I think the first time I went to a coffee shop here, I went and paid and I left a few coins on the table and I walked out. And you already probably know what happened. The lady chased me out. She’s like, hey, you left your money. It was just like, they’re so sweet. mean, I’m sure there’s some bad ones, but I haven’t met any.
Brian Schon (50:05.12)
Yeah!
Brian Schon (50:10.018)
I think the important thing to know, no, I think the important thing to know, and this is true with a lot of countries, is look, there is extreme poverty in Colombia. There’s also extraordinary wealth, right? And I think a lot of people come down here thinking that the extraordinary poverty is the norm and that they’re going to be able to impress people, you know, by flipping out their wallet and thinking that that’s great.
That’s not true. Yeah, you’ll impress some people, but look, Colombia has phenomenal education, excellent healthcare, know, really intelligent industries. And most of those people are not impressed by shenanigans, right? Like they just want to their lives like people in any other country. And I think, you know, just got to understand what you’re getting into.
Jason Elkins (50:53.914)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (51:01.978)
Yep, yep, so, all right.
Brian Schon (51:04.428)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (51:06.178)
Okay, so you came here 10 years ago. When and you started the business? How did that kind of come about? You’d mentioned that you’d spent some time with your partner, exploring around, looking for places. Just what’s
Brian Schon (51:09.067)
I did.
Brian Schon (51:15.33)
Sure.
No, no, no. was, so I came in, I didn’t know anybody. I ended up meeting my business partner, Santiago and Ana. And back in 2014, we were very sort of upset with two big things that were occurring. One was that the vast majority of tourism that was coming to Medellin in particular, Colombia in general, was illicit tourism. So people who were looking for prostitution or drugs, Pablo Escobar, those types of
right? And sort of ignoring everything that we spent the last hour talking about. And then the other thing that we noted, sort of two elements we’ll call it, A and B. A was that people who were looking for ecotourism were not coming to Colombia, even though we’re, you know, number one or number two in ecotourism, based on how you judge it. They weren’t going to countries that are a lot less biodiverse, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Thailand, things like that. And the other thing we noticed
was the immense potential for tourism to be one of the main two contributors to the country’s GDP. We saw this very sort of delicate flex point where the country could really bounce forward or bounce back. And what we wanted to do was be part of that impulse to push things forward. And what we realized was a lot of people weren’t coming here because there wasn’t a good tourist infrastructure for it. There wasn’t good
places to, there weren’t good places to stay outside of the big cities. There weren’t good, you know, routes or people to guide beyond sort of those main destinations. And so we took it upon ourselves to be part of that sort of, we’ll call it like a new van card of people who were doing that. And that was really our impulse in, in designing Canoa. And our philosophy is look, our competition is not Cartagena, our competition is not Medellin, our competition is not the hotel down the road in Marinilla.
Brian Schon (53:13.376)
We have told people, we’ll help you put something else because that’s what’s going to help create a market and bring people in. Our competition is Costa Rica. Our competition is Peru. Our competition is Ecuador. We want the people who go to visit those places and who consume those products to come to Colombia and do those exact same types of activities, not the exact same type, but within those sectors. We want them to do that here.
we believe in something called cooperation. So instead of a cop, and the idea is that we cooperate within our competition, right? So even with like canoe at the hotel, we started, we were co-founders of the soft brand alliance called Secret of the Colombian is soft brand alliance, some of the best boutique hotels in the country. And we work together, we share best practices. Sometimes we share our booking systems, we help sell each other. And we’re not.
directly affiliated. We don’t share books, but those best practices are what’s helped all of us get, you know, move the needle forward.
Jason Elkins (54:12.102)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (54:17.808)
Right. Because if you’re one of only a handful of operations, you’ve got a great operation. But the first barrier you got, I don’t know if I want to call it a barrier, but the first point is get people to want to go to Colombia. Because it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a great eco lodge in the middle of Colombia. If Colombia is not on the eco lodge radar, it’s the same reason that, you know,
Brian Schon (54:33.292)
Right. 100%. 100%.
Brian Schon (54:40.384)
If people don’t want to go to Colombia, yeah.
Jason Elkins (54:46.214)
I still see it sometimes, but I remember growing up, remember one of the first questions I had about business was like, why is the McDonald’s right across the street from the Burger King? I remember, God, that made no sense. You should put the Burger King a mile down there. But that intersection becomes a place where people go, I want some fast food. I haven’t decided what fast food I want yet. But I know that up on the corner of main and third, there’s
Brian Schon (54:56.984)
Right.
Jason Elkins (55:15.558)
Wendy’s a McDonald’s a Burger King and an Arby’s so I go there looking for food. I don’t know if this is great or not but But if people aren’t thinking Oh Colombia is where we should be going to do eco stuff then It doesn’t really matter and the only way you’re get people to think of Colombia is a great place to go do eco stuff is not If there’s a bunch of eco lodges or eco operators, it’s if there’s a bunch of good and great
Brian Schon (55:23.458)
Yeah, it’s perfect.
Brian Schon (55:43.734)
Right. Correct.
Jason Elkins (55:44.46)
Eco operators because they because here’s the thing, you know, and you know that you’ve already thought this out I know everybody listening to this has thought it out, but I like to talk so if you know somebody goes to Colombia To and does an eco tour type thing in Colombia and then they go home and they tell their friends Hey, we went to Colombia. It was amazing. We had this amazing experience that plants a seed their friend goes on maybe a year or two later, they’re like
Oh, I remember someone. I may not even remember who it was. Someone told me Colombia was great, ecotourism. And they’re not going to necessarily go back to the same lodge. You’re going to go to Colombia. They may end up back at the same lodge. I guess what I’m saying is if your competition or your co-opitition, if they’re doing a good job and people are going back raving about Colombia, then that’s good for you too, right? I mean, that’s the concept.
Brian Schon (56:34.766)
Absolutely, mean look people have a big barrier to entry with Colombia first of all They have to hear about it and most people don’t know about it Then they have to get over their own preconceptions about what it is about safety and then you have to get to the point where they get here without there being some major thing coming out of the news because people will look for any excuse to try and cancel whether it was Zika whether it was you know a visa tiff between the US and Colombia
Jason Elkins (56:56.184)
yeah.
Brian Schon (57:04.098)
whether it was things going on along the California, I don’t know, the California, along the Venezuelan border. You know, we just had people who were very concerned about what was going on with Venezuela very recently. And this has actually happened every few years. And I can explain to them, you know, there’s fires going on in Los Angeles, and that’s absolutely horrendous. It doesn’t mean you can’t travel to New York, right? So it’s sort of the same thing here.
Jason Elkins (57:16.09)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (57:28.038)
or even Arizona or Nevada or even other parts of California. Yeah. Yeah, it is. is.
Brian Schon (57:31.424)
or even Arizona. Right. But that’s hard for people to internalize. People have been hearing bad news coming out of Colombia for a really long time that, you know, they like hearing the good news, but it takes a while to sort of accept it. And you’re right, that’s a huge task at hand. And it takes a lot of people and takes a lot of good properties and a lot of good operators in order to redo that reputation and a lot of good travelers.
Jason Elkins (57:49.638)
you
Jason Elkins (57:58.374)
And the flip side is a bad operator can undo a lot of work. One bad operator sending home a person every few days that had a bad experience that’s going to go on social media. went to Colombia. The people there were rude. Nobody spoke English. All this stuff. Because we all know that the unhappy person is much more likely to talk.
Brian Schon (58:03.628)
Yes.
Brian Schon (58:24.247)
time.
Jason Elkins (58:24.976)
than that, I think it’s like 10 to wine or something. It’s like, you know, yeah.
Brian Schon (58:27.566)
Well, and look, the good operators too. mean, stuff happens and this is not Western Europe. And so like, you you get consumers of 20 star hotels in Europe who want to come here, which is awesome. And those are the types of people that we want, but there is a level of expectation setting because there’s not, we’ll call it, I’ll be 100 % honest and this is the clientele that we work with.
Jason Elkins (58:31.365)
Well, yeah.
Brian Schon (58:55.18)
I can charter planes, can get private yachts, I can shut down museums and go around with the curators, but there’s not going to be a hotel that’s the equivalent of JK Place Rome or JK Place Paris in Colombia. It just doesn’t exist, right? And I’m going to do everything within our power to give you the best activity and experience and service that you can possibly get. But, you know, the travelers have to be a little bit open to things as well. And sometimes
even though we do everything correct. There’s just. There’s some things that are out of right?
Jason Elkins (59:29.326)
You can’t remove some of the stuff that people are going to see on the side of the road. Or when they go out on an excursion, you can’t control everything. So then the question, OK, do you want authentic? This is Colombia. It is what it is.
Brian Schon (59:44.94)
Or even like, even at the high end, like I won’t name names, there was a really expensive, very well known, very high end hotel in Colombia that charged clients an exorbitant amount during festive, which is the last week of the year. And we had a family that paid quite a sum to come down, right? And, you know, they come in and, you know, was a grandmother, her daughter, and then the grandchildren.
Right. And they all come in and they show up and they say the grandmother doesn’t have a room. And all of a sudden, you know, they’re calling the agent furious. The agent’s calling me going, you know, what the F and turned out that the, hotel just didn’t, they put the last name in wrong for the grandmother because she had a different last name. And so they put it under a different reservation and
Jason Elkins (01:00:19.492)
Mmm.
Jason Elkins (01:00:27.376)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:00:38.63)
Bye.
Brian Schon (01:00:42.218)
Even though we booked everything together and it’s like, got resolved, there was no issue. In Colombia, those sorts of things happen.
Jason Elkins (01:00:49.446)
That’s a tough one because people are, everybody in the world is different, but we’re mostly alike. But I have noticed definitely like, if you ask for something, who knows what kind of response you’re gonna get. And you may have to figure out three or four different ways to ask for the same thing.
or find somebody else to ask the same question to, get a completely different answer. And it’s not because they’re necessarily being lazy or rude or whatever. It seems very, I don’t want to be careful what I say because I live here. It’s not always a lot of creative problem solving going on. Oftentimes, it’s just kind of, no, this is the way it is. And I remember just a short like,
I just remember like I went to Panadriere or whatever and I was asked in my best Spanish I could if they had any like lemon lime soda like a Sprite or 7up or whatever and she’s like, nope, no, you know, no tango, no tango, no I, no I. I’m like, so what’s that? then like, que es eso in the cooler and she opens it up, pulls it out and says this and I’m like, yeah, and she said it’s lemon water.
Brian Schon (01:01:48.45)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:02:06.982)
I’m like, okay, I’ll try it. So I bought it. I opened it, it’s carbonated. It’s seven up basically. So you gotta, you know, and like, okay. But it’s part of what I love about, I have to remind myself sometimes. It’s like, okay, the things I love about Colombia can also be the things that can be a little frustrating at times. But yeah, yeah. But you’ve been dealing with it. You’re doing business here. You know better than I do.
Brian Schon (01:02:13.814)
Yeah!
Brian Schon (01:02:26.382)
Sure. I’ll give you another quick example. Yeah, I’ll give you a quick example. I love soda water, gassy water, right? There’s one brand, if you ask for Agua Congas, there’s a brand called Britannia. For whatever reason, locally, that’s not considered to be Agua Congas, even though that’s exactly what it is. You have to order a soda.
Jason Elkins (01:02:35.289)
Hmm?
Jason Elkins (01:02:41.2)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Schon (01:02:51.758)
Or you might walk into a place that only sells Britannia and you say, you have Alba from Goss? And they’ll say, no. And then you’ll look and you’ll be like, can I have a Britannia? And they’ll be like, yes, of course. And it comes down to exposure. mean, like you go to a place like Paris and they’ve been doing luxury for centuries, right? And Colombia has not, and that’s okay. That’s part of the, it’s part of the adventure. It’s part of the journey and it’s great. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:02:58.918)
you
Jason Elkins (01:03:02.95)
It sounds so familiar.
Jason Elkins (01:03:13.531)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:03:18.406)
It’s charming, you know, yeah, it’s it’s it’s it’s charming. mean, I I’m not 100 % sure I got this straight, but they’ve got Aguila beer here and they’ve got Aguila light and then they’ve got Aguila original. And my understanding, whatever I’ve been able to figure out, maybe you can help verify this, but if it’s Aguila original or original in a can, it’s Aguila original. If it’s in a bottle.
Brian Schon (01:03:28.088)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:03:45.496)
Even though the label says Aguila Original, it’s ordered as Aguila Negra, which is dark. But my understanding is it’s the same beer. It’s just whether it’s in a can or in a bottle. But if you ask for a Negra, they give you the bottle. Is that right? Am I missing something? Or do even know?
Brian Schon (01:04:03.182)
So Aguila Negra is the original and Aguila Light is the light beer which absolutely nobody should drink because it’s disgusting. So if you ask for Negra, you’re asking for the original. Whether it’s in a can or whether it’s in a bottle. What is weird is that it’s not a dark beer. So Negra would be like a dark beer and it’s not a dark beer. No, no, no.
Jason Elkins (01:04:09.627)
Yeah.
Right?
Jason Elkins (01:04:26.18)
Well, that’s and someone told me, it’s because the bottle is dark. I’m like, okay. So if it’s in a bottle, it’s negra. If it’s in a can, it’s original. And if it’s okay, thank you for clarifying that. And it’s, and just the fact that it’s so hard to figure that out because, because I’ve asked 10 people, this is, you’re not the first person and I’ve gotten 10 different answers. So I kind of extrapolate. I remember someone saying the bottle was dark and that’s why it’s called negra. Okay. And then I say, is it the same as what’s in the can? Yes.
Brian Schon (01:04:40.492)
Yeah. Right.
Brian Schon (01:04:52.386)
No, no. Aguila light and Aguila.
Jason Elkins (01:04:56.262)
Anyway, that was a tangent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s pretty much it. There’s a lot of pointing going on because yeah, and you know every every little market or every little person seems to call the same thing something different. And you know, especially if you change cities, you gotta start over again. But anyway. OK, so can’t talked about your business. Why you did it?
Brian Schon (01:04:58.51)
When all else fails, just point.
Brian Schon (01:05:13.271)
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
Jason Elkins (01:05:27.162)
Canoes kind of this along the same lines. Is there anything specific that you want to share that kind of about your decision to to do canoe or I think we’ve already touched on quite a bit of it. And by the way, I met your I met your partner Santiago, you know, and at an event a couple months ago, which is really how you and I had connected. And he’s great. He’s just he’s super, super cool. So yeah, yeah. But I he spends most he spends a lot of time at the lodge, right?
Brian Schon (01:05:42.061)
Yeah.
Brian Schon (01:05:50.84)
Yeah, he’s awesome.
He’s there just about every day. he’s there about every day. No, I mean, like we started these to do things right, to do things the way that they should be. know, canoe is special because it’ll get you to a small corner of the country that you would never have a chance to see otherwise. And really authenticity is what we look for. And we try to…
Jason Elkins (01:05:57.998)
Okay, all right. All right, so I’m gonna…
Brian Schon (01:06:21.006)
give people experiences that they would never be able to access or find on their own, whether that’s at the lodge or whether that’s with true Colombia. know, Canoe was a way to show people that things could be done differently. recently the Colombian countryside has been, I don’t know if threats the right word, but it’s had this danger of takeover either by corporate farming or overdevelopment. And a lot of children,
of farmers don’t want to be farmers anymore. And they want to move to the big city and get other jobs. that increases sort of that, right? And what we wanted to do was protect the countryside, reforest. And what we’ve done is look, it’s an ex-conflict zone and we have third families that depend on the job that we get at Canoa. And you can do those sorts of things in Colombia. You can have an incredible, unforgettable experience.
And you don’t really have to sacrifice anything from what you’re doing. And the amazing thing with it too is when people are putting together itineraries, you can stay in Medellin for a few days, then you can go up to Canoa. And it’s like you’re getting two totally different destinations without having to go to the airport. And so that’s what makes it. Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly. So, yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:07:24.069)
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:07:35.672)
With the same with the same flight. It’s very, cool. Brian, you know, I gotta I gotta share that when you and I right before I push the record button, I asked you if you’ve got any hard stop times after this, you’ve got anything and you told me you said, Jason, I’ve got about 45 minutes. I’ve got this other call, but I can be a little late. And I said, I’m going to I’m going to keep an eye on the clock and about 40 minutes or so. I’m going to start wrapping things up and.
Brian Schon (01:07:56.205)
Eh.
Jason Elkins (01:08:02.566)
I realized, Brian, is hopefully it was worth you spending some extra time with me because what I realized was this was a fascinating conversation. I totally lost track of everything else going on in the world. And so I really appreciate your patience with me. And I’m going to ask you, is there anything else that you want to throw out there before we actually wrap?
Brian Schon (01:08:06.636)
It was. It was.
Brian Schon (01:08:18.667)
thank you.
Brian Schon (01:08:23.842)
No, this is great. We should wrap up so I can actually make the phone call. But I appreciate the extra time on your side as well.
Jason Elkins (01:08:30.829)
Thanks, thanks Brian. I really appreciate you coming on the show and please apologize to the person that you’re getting ready to jump on the call with. I’ll see you soon. Hopefully here in Medellin or up at the lodge. All right. Bye bye.
Brian Schon (01:08:35.918)
I will. No, thank you. I appreciate it.
Absolutely, look forward to it. Take care. Bye.
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