The Portal co-founder is building urban sanctuaries where wellness, creativity, and community converge. Her vision is rooted in a simple belief: the more technology transforms our lives, the more valuable genuine human connection becomes.

In a world where we can work remotely, socialize through screens, and rely on technology for an ever-growing number of daily tasks, something essential can still feel missing: the experience of belonging to a community.

We may have hundreds of online connections, yet struggle to find people who notice when we disappear. We can fill our calendars with meetings and social engagements without necessarily finding a place where we feel genuinely known. And while technology makes communication easier, it cannot always recreate the spontaneous conversations, shared experiences, and collective energy that emerge when people gather in the same room.

For hospitality entrepreneur and community builder Anwen Baumeister, this is more than a cultural observation. It is the inspiration behind her work.

As CEO and co-founder of The Portal, Baumeister is building urban sanctuaries designed to bring people together through wellness, thought leadership, arts, culture, and meaningful social experiences. Her vision is to create spaces where people can work, learn, recharge, express themselves, and build relationships that extend beyond the walls of the venue.

Speaking with Jules Schroeder on Unconventional Life, Baumeister shares how her upbringing between the United States and China shaped her understanding of community, why she believes physical gathering spaces will become increasingly important, and what entrepreneurship has taught her about trusting her intuition.

Her journey also offers a reminder for anyone building a life outside conventional expectations: pursuing what genuinely matters to you may require taking risks, confronting fear, and learning to trust a vision before everyone else can see it.

A Childhood Between Two Worlds Revealed What Community Could Be

Baumeister’s vision for The Portal began long before the business existed.

Growing up in the Bay Area, she spent her summers in China, where half of her family lives. Moving between these two environments gave her an unusual perspective on how culture influences the way people relate to one another.

In China, she remembers communal parks and bathhouses where people gathered and participated in everyday life together. She experienced a sense of connection that made her feel part of something larger than herself.

Returning to the United States often brought a contrasting experience. The transition from China’s communal environment to life within the American nuclear family left her feeling isolated and alone.

That contrast stayed with her.

Baumeister came to appreciate what each culture offered. She sees the United States as a place where individual freedom, creative expression, and personal independence can thrive. At the same time, she believes American individualism can sometimes go too far, placing personal autonomy above the relationships that help people feel supported.

China, meanwhile, places greater emphasis on the collective. While that emphasis can also reach extremes, she recognizes the sense of belonging that communal traditions can provide.

For Baumeister, the question became how to bring the strengths of both worlds together.

What would it look like to create an environment that celebrates individual expression while giving people a deeper experience of belonging?

That question eventually became part of The Portal’s founding philosophy.

Rather than asking people to choose between independence and community, the company aims to create a space where both can coexist. Members can pursue their own interests, develop their talents, and explore new ideas while remaining connected to a larger group of people.

It is a philosophy shaped by lived experience, not simply a business concept.

The Portal Is More Than a Membership Club. It Is an Experiment in Belonging.

Baumeister co-founded The Portal with Tim Chain approximately two years before the interview. The company’s first location opened in Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area, with an expansion into downtown Austin planned for January 2027.

The concept brings together experiences that are often scattered across different parts of a person’s life.

Members can participate in yoga and other movement classes, attend fireside chats, explore conversations about artificial intelligence and human optimization, enjoy live music, join immersive dinners, and spend time working or connecting in shared spaces.

The planned Austin location takes that vision further with a 15,000-square-foot, two-floor facility featuring a restaurant, bar, co-working lounge, movement studio, rooftop pool, sauna, cold plunges, live music stage, and DJ area.

The idea is to create an environment that supports the whole person, including their physical well-being, intellectual curiosity, creative expression, and social life.

Baumeister describes it as an adult campus for continuous education, where a member might begin the morning working, attend a yoga class midday, spend time in the sauna, join an evening discussion about longevity, and finish the day over dinner.

Yet the amenities are only part of the equation.

The deeper intention is to make community an integral part of everyday life rather than something people must constantly seek out.

That distinction matters because Baumeister believes meaningful relationships require time and consistency. The Portal’s membership model includes a minimum one-year commitment, allowing people to develop relationships that extend beyond occasional introductions or passing encounters.

She illustrates the difference with a simple example.

Imagine telling another member that you want to deepen your movement practice and attend yoga or Pilates three times a week. They see you consistently, then notice when you stop showing up for a few months.

A member who asks where you have been is doing more than making conversation. They are demonstrating that your presence matters.

Over time, members begin to witness one another’s lives more fully. They celebrate anniversaries, welcome new babies, get to know each other’s families, and become familiar with the personal milestones that happen outside the club.

That is the kind of connection Baumeister wants The Portal to cultivate.

Community, in her view, is not merely having somewhere to go. It is knowing that people have your back.

Why the Future of Connection May Be Offline

As artificial intelligence and social media reshape how people communicate and work, Baumeister believes physical gathering spaces will become more valuable, not less.

She is careful to ground this conviction in her own experience.

At 22, she opened her first restaurant. Although she had not set out to become a brick-and-mortar entrepreneur, she quickly saw how strongly people responded to having a place to gather.

Later, after the COVID-19 shutdowns in the Bay Area, she became a co-owner of a yoga studio and event space. Once people could return, the venue was packed, reinforcing her belief that the desire for in-person connection had not disappeared.

For Baumeister, these experiences demonstrated that physical spaces fulfill a need that digital platforms cannot fully address.

Online communication can be efficient, but being together in person creates opportunities for unplanned conversations, shared discoveries, and relationships that develop organically.

At The Portal’s Marin location, those connections have led to new relationships and businesses. Members have also used the space to share talents that might otherwise remain hidden behind their professional identities.

A venture capitalist, for example, might reveal that he is also an accomplished guitar player who used to perform in a band. Within the community, he can offer to play music rather than being known only for his work in finance.

These moments allow members to express more of who they are.

The value of bringing people together becomes even clearer when a community rallies around a shared purpose.

Baumeister recounts a film screening hosted at The Portal by an outside nonprofit. During the event, the organization shared that it was $60,000 short of its annual budget.

Within approximately 10 minutes, people in the room stepped forward and raised the money.

The moment illustrated something that extends beyond hospitality. When people gather in a setting where they feel connected, they can mobilize their resources, relationships, and generosity to support a cause.

Baumeister believes people want this sense of purpose beyond themselves. Personal success and individual well-being matter, but they do not necessarily create a fulfilling life in isolation.

The Portal’s Marin location hosts more than 250 events a year, many of them shaped by members who volunteer their expertise, propose gatherings, and contribute their interests to the community.

This approach allows the club to become something its members actively create, rather than simply a venue providing services to paying customers.

The result is a model in which the value of the space grows through the people who inhabit it.

Building a Business That Reflects Your Own Definition of Success

Creating a community-focused hospitality business comes with practical challenges. Physical locations require significant investment, and bringing an ambitious concept to life demands people, resources, and a willingness to navigate uncertainty.

When Schroeder asks how she has learned to trust her vision, find the right people, and bring her ideas into reality, Baumeister returns to a principle that has guided her since the beginning: trusting her intuition.

Her entrepreneurial journey has not been without difficult moments. She admits there have been times when she wanted to give up or questioned what she was doing.

But she has learned to return to her conviction about the life she wants to build.

That conviction began when she chose entrepreneurship at 22, despite her parents’ preference for a more conventional career.

Growing up, she was expected to pursue a path such as law or medicine. Her decision to start a business instead worried her parents, particularly because they could not financially support the risk.

Baumeister understood their concerns, but she also recognized that following their expectations would not necessarily lead to a fulfilling life.

She knew that a conventional career might make her parents happy. What she questioned was whether it would make her happy, too.

Looking decades into the future, she imagined the possibility of building a career around someone else’s expectations and eventually being left with a life that did not feel like her own.

For her, the risk of entrepreneurship was worth taking because it offered the possibility of building something aligned with her own calling.

That decision established a pattern she continues to follow: listen to what feels true, even when the path does not make immediate sense to others.

The Conviction Behind a $5 Million Fundraising Round

Baumeister’s philosophy has also shaped how she approaches leadership and fundraising.

She and her co-founder self-funded The Portal’s first location. For the Austin expansion, they pursued their first public fundraising round and raised $5 million in an oversubscribed round.

Baumeister describes the process as a significant journey, one that required her to remain firmly committed to her belief in the business.

She recognized that brick-and-mortar ventures can be challenging investments. Nevertheless, she believed The Portal addressed a real and growing need.

That belief became central to how she communicated the opportunity to potential investors.

In her view, leadership requires strong conviction in what you are building. People need to see that the person leading a venture genuinely believes in its purpose and potential.

This does not mean ignoring challenges or assuming that passion alone guarantees success. Rather, it means understanding why the work matters and being able to communicate that purpose clearly enough for others to see the possibility in it.

Baumeister also distinguishes between building something purely for financial gain and creating a business rooted in a deeper passion.

Money may be part of the equation, but she believes a more meaningful purpose can provide the motivation needed to keep going when difficulties arise.

Fear, she acknowledges, will continue to appear. The goal is not to eliminate it entirely, but to develop practices that prevent it from making every decision.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, her experience offers a useful distinction: believing in a vision does not mean the journey will be easy. It means having a reason to continue when the outcome remains uncertain.

Four or Five Years of Morning Meditation, Without Missing a Day

Behind Baumeister’s entrepreneurial conviction is a personal practice that has remained remarkably consistent.

During the episode’s rapid-fire round, she shares that she has meditated every morning for four or five years without missing a single session.

Her routine is straightforward. She sits with her tea, settles into silent meditation, and incorporates mantras or meditation practices shared by a teacher.

The practice helps set her up for the day.

It also reflects a broader theme in her philosophy: building an ambitious external life requires attention to the internal habits that sustain it.

Entrepreneurship inevitably brings uncertainty, competing demands, and moments of fear. A consistent practice can provide an opportunity to pause, reconnect with oneself, and return to the work with greater clarity.

For Baumeister, meditation is not presented as a shortcut to success. It is a daily commitment that has become part of how she lives.

Her advice to her younger self reflects a similar orientation toward trust: believe that things are working out for your highest good.

That outlook connects her personal routine to her entrepreneurial philosophy. Both involve remaining grounded in a sense of direction even when the next step is not entirely clear.

What It Means to Live an Unconventional Life

When Schroeder asks what living an unconventional life means to her, Baumeister gives an answer that brings the conversation back to its central theme.

For her, it means living in her joy.

She describes the freedom that comes from stepping outside the conventional paths laid out early in life and discovering what becomes possible when she follows what genuinely excites her.

The shift changes how she experiences daily life. Instead of feeling that everything is an obligation, she begins to see more opportunities as things she gets to do.

Her answer prompts Schroeder to share a deeply personal experience of her own.

In 2020, Schroeder was organizing a $2 million event intended to bring 500 thought leaders and creatives together on a cruise through Italy. When the pandemic disrupted those plans, the event fell apart almost overnight.

The professional setback coincided with serious health challenges. Schroeder describes experiencing extreme fatigue and symptoms associated with early-onset MS, leaving her struggling to perform even simple activities.

The experience forced her to reconsider how she was managing her energy, what she was prioritizing, and whether the scale of her ambitions was serving her well-being.

She realized that building something bigger did not automatically mean building something better. Nor did serving more people require sacrificing herself in the process.

During recovery, joy became something she could measure in small increments.

At first, it meant sitting outside for five minutes. Then it meant walking to the cul-de-sac. Eventually, she could walk for 15 minutes and, later, around the neighborhood again.

Each small improvement became meaningful in its own right.

Looking back, Schroeder reflects on how those moments accumulated into a broader recovery and a new understanding of what mattered. Making space also allowed new possibilities to emerge, including her music career under the name Jules King, inspired by her mother’s maiden name.

Her story adds another dimension to Baumeister’s philosophy.

Following joy does not always mean taking a dramatic leap or building something ambitious. Sometimes it means slowing down, listening to your body, and finding meaning in the smallest steps forward.

Both women arrive at a similar realization: the life worth building is not necessarily the one that looks most impressive from the outside. It is the one that allows you to feel connected to yourself, to others, and to the experiences that make life meaningful.

A Different Kind of Success Begins With Connection

The Portal’s growth reflects Baumeister’s belief that community can be built intentionally.

Its spaces bring together wellness, professional collaboration, intellectual exploration, arts, culture, and social connection. Its membership model gives relationships time to deepen. Its programming invites members to contribute their talents and create experiences for one another.

The business is also a tangible expression of a personal philosophy shaped by her upbringing, entrepreneurial experience, and willingness to pursue a path that did not match conventional expectations.

As the Austin location prepares to open, Baumeister is betting that people will continue to seek places where they can do more than work, consume content, or interact through screens.

They will seek places where they can be known, contribute to something larger than themselves, and build relationships that become part of their everyday lives.

For anyone considering an unconventional path, her story offers a reminder that the process begins with understanding what matters to you, then having the courage to build toward it.

And for anyone wondering what the future of human connection might look like, Baumeister’s answer is already taking shape in the spaces she is creating.

In an increasingly digital world, perhaps one of the most meaningful things we can build is a place where people can simply show up for one another.

Experience The Portal: An Unconventional Life Giveaway

Anwen Baumeister is offering one Unconventional Life listener a full-day experience at The Portal’s upcoming Austin location for themselves and two friends.

The giveaway includes a full day at the members-only club, plus $300 in dining house credits to enjoy a meal during the visit and experience the club’s amenities, including the pool and sauna.

Connect with Anwen

• Website: theportal.house

• Instagram: @theportal_house