The Luxury Travel Founder Creating Escapes That Change Your Life

So welcome to Dawn of a New Era, the Billionaire Brain podcast. And today I have a very special guest, Nadine Brady, founder of Travel Love. So for anyone, Nadine, who has not met you or had you in their glorious world, can you share sort of a little bit about who you are, what you built with Travel Love, and your sort of 16 years in travel and how that's shaped the founder that you are today? Hello, everyone.

Thank you for having me today. Very excited to be here. I started out in travel, as you said, over 16 years ago. I actually married an ex-footballer who is now also an ex-husband.

We split up about eight years ago. But about 20 years ago, we decided to start a concierge business. And back then, nobody really knew what concierge was. It wasn't anything outside of the hotel lobby.

But we set something up for his network, and we built it from there. We built it from scratch with no experience, no money behind us. It took us a long time to get anywhere. But about four or five years into it, we were starting to get traction.

We were starting to get some premiership players, thanks to my ex's network. And I decided that I would—I went from being very much back of house. I was admin, systems. I came from a business background.

I say that my parents were in the fairground. My grandmother was in the circus. So I grew up in that family business environment. And I decided about four or five years into it that I would like to do more on the travel side.

I'd always had a passion for travel. Travel's kind of in my DNA. When I was younger, we lived in a wagon. And we travelled around from place to place in Scotland.

And I always loved travel. It was always that one holiday a year where my dad was less grumpy and we weren't, you know, all involved in business every day. And you could feel the sun on your skin and the food was better and we weren't in this kind of grey miserable place that we lived in in Scotland. And I just had a massive love for that excitement and that experience.

So I learned how to be a travel advisor on the job, basically. I made tons of mistakes. I got a GDS system, which is where you—it's like that blue screen. I don't know if you remember going to travel agencies when you were younger, Lunn Poly, and they had the blue screen with all the coding on it.

They still use that, believe it or not. Oh wow. So when I started to learn that, I was like, what is this antiquated system? And actually it's still the same antiquated system, but I do actually love it now because I understand the language and I can control the flights.

I can book flights, exchange. When anyone's at the airport and their flight gets cancelled and they're having to stand in line for the irate airport staff, they can WhatsApp me and I can change their flight there and then. So yeah, I learned on the job. I started to travel more and more and more.

As a luxury travel advisor, we get invited to go on what's called fam trips or familiarity trips. So I've done plenty of those. I've stayed in lots of beautiful five-star hotels and seen the best of destinations. On these fam trips, you meet a group of travel agents at the airport, and then you might spend the week with them in some amazing place doing some amazing activities, life-affirming activities, and then you kind of share everything about your world to these people that you just met.

And by the end of the week, usually there's a WhatsApp group and we're all best of friends. So it's been an amazing journey. We've looked after half the England team, for example, at one point, all individually for their personal travel. We've had, and still do look after, a few entertainment clients, high net worth individuals.

I've attended travel conferences over the years all around the world, met some amazing people. The people in this industry I love. They're adventurous, they're hardworking, they're open-minded. It's a great industry to be in.

It's very hard work. It's very demanding, especially at the level of the clients that we look after. But it's one of those kind of work hard, play hard environments, which I love. And yeah, I can't quite believe that it's been over 16 years of doing this, actually.

So I still feel new in some ways, but I also feel like I do have a wealth of experience which I can call upon when there's some kind of incident that happens. You know, I've probably dealt with it before. I have a team now, partly in the UK, partly in the Philippines. And I also, I quit alcohol three and a half years ago.

So I had my divorce. We're not quite divorced yet, if I'm honest. We're almost divorced. It's been eight years where we've just kicked the can down the road.

But we separated eight years ago after I had a panic attack because I wasn't respecting my own boundaries at the time. And I've learned a lot on that, both with clients and with my ex-husband, actually. We're still friends. But I've been through some tough times with that, as we've all had our tough times.

Him and I never had kids, which also allows me to do what I do because I can work from anywhere and I can travel. I mean, I travel pretty much once a month. Where am I going with this? I've lost my train of thought.

Quit alcohol, and I think this is a really interesting one. Going back, the one connection that we had, a mutual friend introduced us. And what I always love about podcast guests is there's always something that connects us, that we were meant to speak. So when you talked about your family business and the Cadonas, etc.

, this was, as a fellow Scot, I was living in Dunblane and my grandparents were in Aberdeen. So my favourite part of growing up was going to the funfair. So it's kind of like we're all automatically tied in somewhere. There's a six degree of separation, and we connect.

But going back to the entrepreneurial journey, I love how you actually started doing something organically based on the network. And I think a lot of founders that I see who are sustainable and successful and who still love what they do, it's when they've tapped into something that is just naturally aligned to their day to day. So I'll come back to the alcohol bit in a second, because I've met a lot of founders who have had love-hate relationships with alcohol, with obviously their businesses. But you're working with high net worth clients all of the time, and you're creating these ultra high-end group escapes and retreats.

Now that's a lot of pressure, because I know what it's like to run retreats and to work with very flamboyant personalities. But what successful trait do you think that you have that allows you to really piece the experience together? Because it's way beyond kind of the luxury and the transfers and the hotels and the locations. It's an experience that they're looking to tap into, and that's quite different from a traditional travel agent.

What is that that you've got that has allowed you to kind of really nail that? So I think having gone through divorce, and this, I mean, my life was completely tied up with my ex-husband. It was my friendship circle. I'd moved to London.

My family weren't here. It was the work situation. It was everything. And one of the things that I found that helped me to get some perspective on my life and where I was at was going on these trips, was getting out of my everyday and gaining a new perspective and meeting people both from the UK and from other cultures that just kind of opened my mind to the world outside what was going on for me, which was very restrictive at the time and felt very difficult.

So I know the power of travel from that point of view. I know how travel has helped me, the human connection, the sitting somewhere beautiful and having a conversation with someone about what's going on for you back home and kind of recognizing that you're more than you think you are and you should, you know, have more confidence to face whatever's going on for you. So yes, I have stayed in so many amazing luxury hotels and absolutely beautiful hotels. But for me, what I was starting to see was, you know, for people that have money who get to stay in these amazing places, you know, we'll book the best beach clubs for them, all the CNBC places, best restaurants.

And then it's almost like, okay, you go and do that. You stay in these beautiful places. And sometimes these hotels are designed to keep you in the hotel. So you could be in an amazing destination, but the way the hotel is designed is to keep you in this comfort bubble and this, you know, wonderful, and it is wonderful.

But what I was starting to think was people do this. They go on these amazing holidays. They hit all the, you know, the checkpoints that they're supposed to do and take, you know, all the pictures they're supposed to do for Instagram, myself included. But at the end of it, you know, what have you changed at all?

You know, you've spent too much, you've eaten too much, you've drunk too much. You come back, and then you go back to your life, and actually, has anything changed really, or are you just now back in the same situation, the same person waiting for the next holiday to roll around to escape again? And I think travel is capable of so much more than that. And I know that from, you know, the most memorable things for me, having stayed in all these wonderful places, and I'm not paid for it, but the most wonderful things for me is when I go and have an experience like...

Morocco, I went to see a Berber family in their hilltop home, very modest, and they taught us how to—they dressed us up as Berbers and taught us how to cook, what's that Moroccan dish? Tagines. Tagine, that's the one. Or when I went to Cambodia and stayed at Song Saa, which is a beautiful private island.

But they are very—they're working with the local people there to educate them to look after the environment and, you know, don't overfish and all this kind of thing. And they took us across to—and I'm aware of the white woman savior scenario thing—but they took us across to meet the local schoolchildren, and we gave them pencils and pens and, you know, their faces, and they've not got much, but their little joyous faces. It just really gives you context for your own life, I think. And just recently, actually, I went with 33 female founders and we drove a tuk-tuk from Chennai to Goa over six days.

And again, we went through deepest, darkest India and met some amazing people. So I think those kind of experiences, actually, when you come home from a trip like that, you're almost like, okay, what am I going to do differently in my life? Like, I'm inspired now. I'm inspired to be different in my own life.

So that's where the excitement for me is. You know, we still do our bread and butter bookings. You know, we're very good at booking, you know, Santorini, Ibiza, Mykonos, Majorca, USA, all, you know, Caribbean, Maldives. We're very good at that.

We know what we're doing back to front. But what we're interested in doing more is to create these amazing experiences and have people come back and tell us just how much they've changed or grown whilst they've been away. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm just back from Marrakesh hosting my Female Founders Retreat.

I do three a year. So for me, I always think about travel as very expansive, very aspirational, inspirational, not just obviously for the people who are watching what you're doing, but for us, because when people arrive at a location, it gives people the headspace and downtime, and I think you think, feel and live differently afterwards. For me, the transformation point is a huge part because from being a founder of multiple businesses, I kind of got into the cycle of just work, work, work until I kind of hit burnout, I guess, and was running multiple businesses. I was busy like six, seven days a week travelling, and there was a difference between that travel and the travel that I do now.

Mine is much more curated. It gives me space and distance. So Mykonos, we've got our next retreat, and I think visiting places around the world is beautiful. And I guess from people seeing it on social media, they're thinking, Nadine, this looks amazing.

But on the flip side, obviously the podcast is about the good, the bad and the ugly. What are the worst moments you've had in business? Something that really shook you that you feel like you've grown resilience from, but you just kind of weren't sure that you were going to get through. It's funny because people often say to me, they follow me on Instagram and they say, You're always on holiday, and I'm like, I'm never on holiday.

I literally am never on holiday. Yes, I travel a lot, but my laptop is by my side, my phone is by my side, and I'm constantly switched on because we're a really responsive service. And, you know, obviously we've got people in different time zones. If their flight gets cancelled or they get to the hotel and they don't like it, we have to, I have to be on.

You know, I have a team, but they work more specific hours. I have to be on. All times of the day and night. And it doesn't matter if I'm at a family wedding, you know, whatever event it is, if something is happening, then I have to be available to deal with that.

As I said, I don't have kids. I'm single. That does help. It is a lifestyle for me, and I make good money.

So, you know, I'm not complaining. I'm not down the mines every day. So, but in terms of resilience, definitely. When I started out, I didn't have a huge amount of confidence in myself.

And I remember that my ex-husband, who was more confident, he was more kind of ballsy when it came to networking and things like that. He would say to me, if I was having an issue with a supplier, say, just get on the phone to them. And I would hate getting on the phone. I absolutely, I don't want to phone them.

I'll email them, you know, I don't want to phone them. And it's amazing the number of situations that I've had to deal with over the years, you know, the amount of resilience I have now to whatever situation happens. It's been worth it. It's been worth the pain of that growth because shit's always going to happen.

And that's what I've learned as I've got older. You know, you're not going to have a life free of it. You know, life isn't just the being on the beach going into the nice beach club. Life is the tougher stuff, and it's absolutely about how you handle that.

So I'm quite glad. Yeah, I'm quite glad that I've been tested in that way because now I feel like I can pretty much handle anything. And I used to get quite irate. I used to get, you know, getting on the phone to airports, airlines, sorry, is the worst.

Customer service, people that are not probably paid that much and not given great training and all that, and you get on and they can't do anything. And I used to get so frustrated and irate. And over the years, I've kind of learned to calm down and just, you know, you can only control what you can control. Yeah.

Yeah, this job has absolutely grown me as a person. Yeah, I really believe that the more that's thrown at us, we kind of become unshakable. I mean, there's so many things, like as you're growing and scaling, there is just different challenges as you get to different points. And it would take quite a lot to kind of to push me to the point where I was at 21 when I started my business, where everything hurt.

And I can, you know, look back and remember some of the really difficult and painful situations. Money is a big part when any business is starting, and that tends to be one of the biggest impacts on a founder in terms of, like, their health, mindset, and things like that. If you think about the way that you react to people, one of the things I always say is have positive intent about everything. So even if you're driving down the road and someone drives in front of you, cuts you up, I just always go, well, maybe they're in a rush.

Like, you know, not sweating the small stuff for me has been a big part. And, you know, I just kind of think, well, other people's actions are theirs to have. And that for me, honestly, I was about mid-twenties when I realized that I didn't have to take on the world and I didn't have to put my beliefs on others. What's the biggest technique that you use to kind of push through in a positive mindset?

It's funny you're talking, I mean, mid-twenties, that you got that lesson at mid-twenties. That's really early, I think. I didn't get that lesson until I'd say the last five years, pretty much. I've read a lot of self-help books over the years.

More recently, I've kind of got back into reading about Buddhism, Buddhist principles, which I always thought when I read it when I was younger, in my twenties, I always thought this is the most sensible religion. And I've kind of got back into it recently. And also, what you're saying there reminds me of Mel Robbins. She brought out a book called Let Them, didn't she?

Which I didn't read the whole book, but that kind of just let them. You know, somebody is on the bus next to you and they've got their headphones really loud. Either say something to them or move downstairs. Funnily enough, I actually got that on the bus.

I went to an event at Melia, the hotel group had a summer party at Me London last night, and I decided to get the bus home, the 91 to Crouch End, and I sat upstairs and two girls at the back were smoking weed, and it was the strongest smell. And I was like, what do I do here? Do I just sit here? And I just thought, just let them and go and sit downstairs.

And I just sort of thought it was kind of funny, you know. I just know over the years that when I have got into situations that I've got really, really stressed about and I've got irate with people, but it's seeing the bigger picture, isn't it? You don't know what that person's going through. You don't know the customer service agent is maybe really limited in what they can do for you.

It's not their fault. So getting, I kind of like also with my ex-husband, when you start to get irate or your voice starts to get raised, you're actually no longer communicating and you're not going to get anywhere. So these are the little, you know, lessons that probably took me a long time to get over lots of different situations, but eventually it has sunk in that there's no point in me getting upset because then I can't function. And when we've got a client somewhere who needs us because something's going on for them, if we get irate with them, you know, we can't think clearly on what can we actually control here and how can we get this client out of the situation?

So that's been a massive and very useful lesson for me. Yeah, I believe a lot in silence and silence is power and just allowing the person to fully unravel their end to kind of get to the point where... It's hard to hold emotion, so when you give space and time, it's very difficult to stay angry. So I have a five-minute rule on anything.

If I open an email or a text message and I can feel the panic or the fear, I just walk away, and I'm always in a much more rational way when I come back to it. I think the next place I want to explore with you is the alcohol. I speak to so many founders who have either given it up, limited it, and one of the things I see as a pattern is that as we grow, our understanding of what

We are entitled to do as founders, kind of creeps and creeps and creeps. You probably see this in clients where we don't have the same functional day to day, especially if we're traveling. So, like maybe Monday doesn't have the same meaning as Friday would in someone else's life. So talk to me about the alcohol journey and where you're at with it now.

So I was always a binge drinker. I remember being this unconfident teenager at school, and I think I was probably about 15 when I started drinking, and I went to a private school, actually. So we came from like a fairground background, but my parents did reasonably well, and then we were like the first generation to get a proper education, so we went to private school in Dundee. And I remember at 15 going to somebody's house party and we brought alcohol with us.

And I remember getting drunk and feeling like, oh my God, like I can be funny, I can be confident. It was like it became like a, it felt like a superpower for me to drink. So I had a love for it from a young age. Plus I grew up in Scotland, and we know what the drinking culture is in Scotland.

Oh yeah. So I had been a binge drinker pretty much all my life. And the travel industry is very boozy. I know there are other industries that are also boozy, but we get invited to a lot of events and you walk in and they're serving champagne and it's unlimited free alcohol.

And that would be quite dangerous for me because I'd go in with the full intention of like, I don't want to make a tit of myself. I'm just going to have so many drinks. But once I had a few, I was just like, wahey, like keep going. And I got to, just after my, about four months after my 50th birthday, I went to Rome for a travel conference, a three-day travel conference, and they had a beautiful event.

They had like pianists and it was very fancy. There was a singer, we were dancing, and there was like a free cocktail bar, and I just kind of went for it. I'd wine at dinner, and then I had all these cocktails. And then I made a bit of a tit of myself that night, and I can't remember fully what I said.

But the next day I woke up, I was supposed to do meetings the next morning, and I couldn't get out of bed, and I was like, This is horrendous. And I think that coupled with menopause, and I was experiencing more anxiety, and then to have a hangover, it was like mentally, emotionally, physically, it was like I cannot stand this feeling. Now, I'd had a lot of incidents over the years, and I'm not saying that this happened every time I went out. I mean, I could go for dinner and have one or two glasses of wine, you know, but it was just this intermittent thing where I would just lose my shit.

So I woke up the next morning. I lied about having a stomach upset, which the organisers knew wouldn't be the case because they'd seen me the night before. I think actually they've actually banned me from that show for the next... They were so sorry, but somebody had made a complaint about me.

Wow. And I don't know what I was saying, but, and I didn't want to know. Like, I don't want to know what I was saying. But they said, You can't come back to this show for a year.

We're really sorry, but somebody had made a complaint. So I was like, This is not who I want to be, especially at the age that I'm now. You know, it's maybe fun and cute when you're in your twenties, but it's not cute when you're this age. So I got the bus back to the airport, sat at the back, didn't want anyone to see me.

I think I was puked in the airport toilet, not in the toilet, it was fine. And I got back and I sort of started going down this social media hashtag sober curious thing, and I just started absorbing myself, like the new generation. The younger generations, this is like, you know, it's acceptable not to drink. And so I just thought, just absorb yourself in this, all the reasons not to do it.

The thing for me is I couldn't trust myself. Like, I was getting invited to different countries and to go to all these places, and I couldn't trust that I wasn't going to do something stupid. And that's a horrible place to be. And I don't know why it took me so long, because when I actually did decide to quit, I mean, you have all your firsts in the first year.

You have your first wedding that you go to, your first Christmas, the first birthday celebration, all without alcohol. And it's all like, you know, how am I going to manage this? Three and a half years into it now, I don't even think about it. I feel like it's a superpower, and I can trust myself.

And around the same time as I quit alcohol, I also set up a WhatsApp group for about 15 female luxury travel agency owners all around the world, and it was to be a support group. I always felt that I didn't get much support when I started out in the business, and I just want—I'm all about women helping women, and, you know, magical things can happen when women get together and collaborate and, you know, don't compete. Absolutely, absolutely. So this WhatsApp group was 15 people at the start.

We're now three and a half years into it. It's called the Travel Sisterhood, and we have over 70 of these kick-ass female luxury travel agency owners based all around the world. And what's great about it is we've got this WhatsApp group and a Slack group, but when anything's happening, so like when we had the troubles with Dubai recently, and it was end of winter or whatever, and Dubai is like the go-to, and then Tenerife, the weather was shit. There was snow in Tenerife, and it was like, where to go, what to do?

And then we had clients in Dubai. What do we do with these clients that are there? How do we get them out of there? Our group was just pinging all the time.

We've got people actually living in Dubai who could really... Give it to us straight what the situation was without kind of listening to the news and not knowing what to believe. Yeah, all the propaganda out there. All the propaganda.

So, you know, as agents, we can't know the whole of the world. So sometimes someone will ask a question in that group and I think there's no way anyone will know the answer to that. And someone will come in and say, Yeah, I've done this. I know this.

I know the person to use. I know the hotel to stay in. So I feel like I couldn't have run something like the Travel Sisterhood. You know, I'd always been behind the scenes, and all of a sudden, when we had our first lunch a year into it, people were coming up to me saying, This has been great.

We've really appreciated it. And I had to do a little speech at the table. Again, public speaking has never been my forte. And I had to step forward into the light, you know, and that's put me on a path which has led me to being out there more on social media, you know, not being the person behind the scenes but being the person in front of the camera and talking about, you know, the mountain of value that I stand on, that, you know, all the lessons that I've learned over the years, all the experience that I have.

It's given me the confidence to do that. Had I still been drinking, I would have been too worried that, you know, I'd have controlled it, controlled it, and then we'd have had a Travel Sisterhood event and I would have got really drunk and made a tit of myself. And then I'd be like, people would be like, Who is this? You know, they wouldn't have had respect for me.

So it's been the best thing. I think, like, there's a lot of value in the honesty that you're sharing because a lot of people will relate to different elements, and everybody's had a circumstance that they would wish to replay in a slightly different manner. And I think I love what you've become and the growth that this has given you because I don't know about you, but when I started my business at 21, I felt so alone, so alone because I was 21. Everyone else was kind of like in university.

Everyone I was hanging around with was like 20 years older than me, and, you know, my life path was quite different because I stepped away from— My community, and it was like rebuilding all of my friends again in my twenties. And everyone else was going off on holidays, and I was going off on work trips, and I would never change any of it. But what I've loved is working with female founders and having that community. It took me a long while to truly step into that, and it's been glorious since 2017.

If you were to give one piece of advice about scaling your business and what a founder can look to, be it a podcast, a book, a piece of advice, what would that be that you can gift our listeners? I think self-belief is the main thing here. You know, I didn't believe I was capable of what I have actually ended up achieving for a long time. And maybe if I'd had—and it's, you know, it's easy to say now—if I'd only had the self-belief when I was younger.

But it is, it's absolutely true. Whatever stage you're at in your career, know that you're more capable than you even imagine. And then I think it's just putting one foot in front of the other. So it's having the self-belief.

It's kind of—I'm not one for five-year plans or anything like this, but just kind of starting to have a bit of direction. I think you said earlier about, you know, when you get irate with somebody, you know, you need to calm down. I'm a big believer in sleeping on it. I always think, you know, whatever situation you've got, if there's something you can't solve, if I can delay it to the next day, I'll say, Right, I'm going to sleep on that, because I feel like when you wake up in the morning, if you don't pick your phone up straight away, there's something that happens to your brain if you pick your phone up as soon as you wake up.

Yeah, that's it. If you don't do that and you just lay there and breathe and maybe look out the window, I find that little intuitions come in, little breadcrumbs come in, and I feel like they've led me to where I am now. So, yeah, little shifts, aren't they? They kind of give a little glimmer or that snippet of the next thing.

Yeah, when you wake, basically your brain is in theta. It's the time that you're most going to be receptive or be able to reprogram a thought, and it's a great way for setting an intention for the day and changing your state. Yeah. What has been the funniest or most embarrassing part?

I mean, obviously we've covered a few and we've all had lots, but I always like to finish my podcast with one genuine story, be it funny or embarrassing, that's happened in your business journey.

So you told me this just before we came on, so I've had no time to prepare, and I feel like I have, I could write a book about embarrassing situations. But the one thing that popped into my head was I went to stay, and I don't, I can't believe I'm saying this in public, but my friends would say, like, I kind of feel like I've got Tourette's because I don't, I have no filter. No filter. Anyway, we went to stay at this hotel called Teranka in Formentera, which is an island just off of Ibiza.

Yeah. Really beautiful island. And it's got, there's a certain plant that found its way into the water there, so it grew on land and then it somehow managed to survive in the water. But that plant cleans the water.

So in Teranka, sorry, in Formentera, they have really white sandy, like Caribbean white sandy beaches and beautiful turquoise waters. Anyway, we had been invited to go to Beso Beach Club, which is the kind of place, it's on the beach, so your feet are in the sand, and it's the kind of place they've got a DJ, an amazing sound system, and people are like waving the white handkerchief, the white serviettes and things like that. So before that, our booking was at 4 p.m.

, so they'd taken us, the hotel looked after us, they took us, I'm say us, myself and a group of travel agents, luxury travel advisors, I should say, to the beach for a picnic. And I ordered, there was a guy there on the beach selling cups of fruit, so I decided to order this cup of fruit. So I ate the fruit, and then I drank what I thought was the, like, fruit juice at the end of it, but it tasted rank. And it was actually, I think what it was is like the ice, so it would be tap water ice melted, and I was like, oh, that didn't taste very good.

Anyway, 4 p.m. we go to get our table at Beso Beach, sit down, have a delicious lunch, waving our serviettes, listen to music. It's a real vibe in there, it's brilliant.

And then I was like, Oh, my stomach feels a bit bloated. I'm going to go to the loo. So I go to the loo, and the loo is basically, it's two cubicles, one outdoor, one for men, one for women, and there's a massive queue. I think because people were going in there to do coke.

Like, there was two people going in there at a time, so it took ages to get to the front of the queue. Get into the toilet. I think, Oh my God, my stomach's not right. Sit down on the toilet, and the world falls out of my ass.

And I'm like, Oh my God. And it was one of those that you think I could do with being here for like an hour, but I can't because there's a queue outside, and there's one toilet for the girls and one toilet for the boys. So I'm going to have to clean up, get up, get out. So I do that, wash my hands, and I'm walking back to my table, I'm thinking, Oh God, like I wasn't done.

And I'm thinking, What do I do? Because there's no restaurants beside it. There's no other toilets, and I can't get back in that queue again. What do I do?

What do I do? I had my bikini on under my dress, and I thought, I'm just going to have to head for the sea. So there's beautiful turquoise waters that I just told you about. I just, I go and take my dress off, go into the water with my bikini, get in deep enough, pull my pants down, and the world falls out of my ass again.

And then I'm like, but then it all starts to come up, and then I'm swimming away from this to go back, to put my dress back on, to go back in the thing again, back in the restaurant. And this was actually when I was sober. Seamless. I love it.

Never known. But you'd never known, but then I told everyone because I'm... Sharing is sharing. I don't know if that was the sort of story you were after, but that's the story you got.

Do you know what? I've had so many different stories. I mean, we're like 200 episodes in, and I've had, honestly, tears in my eyes always when people tell me the stories, because mine are always bad. And people used to say, like, when they met me and they'd maybe seen things online, they were like, You're so different.

And I was like, Really? But there's certain things you can say on Instagram and certain things you can't. So I'm always telling stories of things that have happened to me and crazy stories of going into boardrooms and catching my shirt on door handles and walking in. And it was the days when Wonderbra was out, so you know when you've got, like, the whole cleavage thing going on and just no shirt, and then a boardroom of 12 people.

So my stories are equally as bad. I think everyone's got these types of stories, but not everyone is brave enough to say them. Exactly. You know what?

The good, the bad and the ugly, it's all part of the journey. And these are the things that, honestly, they are the foundation for keeping us going. Like, some days, you know, if you can't laugh, you'd cry, because being a founder is not for the faint-hearted. Especially when businesses have got huge payrolls, there's environmental factors that are happening and having an impact on people's businesses.

If there was one book or podcast that's really helped you in your journey, what would that be? Oh, no preparation on this. I really liked—what's the one about habits? Atomic Habits.

Yes, Atomic Habits. Yeah, I really like that. Atomic Habits, because I feel like that fits in with what I was saying about you can't achieve everything in one go. Whatever you're trying to achieve, or whatever you're trying to unravel, when I was not getting on with my husband and wasn't getting on with the people in the office and thinking, How do I get out of this?

I thought, All I've got to do is take one step at a time. So I used to get up and go to the park, have a walk around the park. And I'd see nature, and I would notice how everything just happens in its own time. The leaves fall off the tree, they go back into the earth.

Nothing is rushed. Everything just happens one thing at a time. And it really made me think, wherever I'm trying to get to, I don't have to figure it all out today. And atomic habits was one thing that, it's like, I'm probably not going to explain it very well, but, you know, you set a course for something, and you just adjust it a little bit every day to get to where you want to be.

So I thought that was a really good book for me. Yeah, micro habits. And I think for me, I'm very much into Japanese wisdom principles. And I started in the Japanese wisdom principles probably like twenties, early thirties, really understanding their way of life.

And kaizen for me is all about these micro habits and just the 1%. Like, if there's a problem, like what can you do to just make it 1% better and just take the edge off? Or what can you do to get 1% closer? And it's all this compound effect that I love because that's what causes ripple effects.

So, yeah, if you were to think about one thing that you are going to achieve and you want to set your intention for 2026, say it, claim it, and so it is on the podcast, and we can follow you along on Instagram. What would that be? It's the retreats. It's the travel, love, the life edit for me.

It's really pinning those down. What I'm finding is our first part of the year, our first six months is really busy. We've had the World Cup, so we've had families of footballers traveling, and it's been really, really intense. And where I'd like to step back from my business sometimes, I've had to be back in and help my team.

So as soon as that kind of slows down, I want to get back into focusing on this for the tail end of the year. So I think that's going to be my pattern now from year to year. Yeah, my regular travel business at the start of the year, and then I can focus on the retreats in the second part. But really getting that pinned down and getting that message out to people.

I'm also working on my branding and my website at the moment, so I'm looking forward to getting all that tied up and kind of being more of the finished article. Fabulous. So if people want to find out more, follow your journey, where can they find you, Nadine? The best place would be on Instagram, Nadine Brady, N-A-D-I-N-E B-R-A-D-Y.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining. It's been a pleasure, and thank you for making it fun and being honest and sharing the true life of a founder. Thank you so much, Dawn.

I really enjoyed it. Thank you. See ya.