Today I got to sit down for a chat with Belinda Bradford. Belinda is Australian and has been surfing for over 20 years now. Despite the fact she utterly rips in the lineup, she has worked in extremely demanding jobs most of her life: from senior managerial positions in corporations such as Qantas and Time-Warner she has also created a bunch of successful startups.
In terms of dream jobs, you could say Belinda has had them all as she always been an extremely driven person so it’s interesting to talk to someone who has had a life filled with demanding jobs and the perks they come with.
“You get those roles, but you don’t get them for free. There’s an expected performance regime. And its highly competitive. So you do work very long hours, you do put a lot into what you do. But I think, in hindsight too, you learn a lot from it. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to do what have in the last 5–10 years if I hadn’t had that sort of discipline at a young age.” — Belinda Bradford
What is also interesting is to find out why and how Belinda dropped out of the corporate world for… surfing?
A couple of years ago, Belinda joined forces with Jenny Boggis and Serena Adams both highly qualified surf coaches and together they created Surf Getaways, a surf travel company for Women. As Belinda said, she used her experience from the corporate world to “put the company on steroids”.
Today Belinda shares her time between Sydney, Byron Bay, the Maldives, Fiji, Vanuatu and Bali of all places so you could say she has created a dream job split between portions of paradise.
We discuss the way Surf Getaways is inspiring and empowering women to reach their full potential through surfing, so it’s really interesting how the process of surfing in a 100% female environment is creating self confidence, and breaking the barriers of fear for women in all sorts of situations.
“You become much more confident with yourself in life. I think that women tend to use that in a really constructive way (…). Women seem, more than ever, to actively encourage their friends to do what they’re doing, because it’s such a great experience they’ve had themselves, not because they want to be competitive with their friend.
They want to really enable them have the same experience.
And from that builds momentum.
Whether it be to travel, whether it be to be more independent and travel on your own, whether it be to encourage other women to do things, whether it be to think about doing things on your own which some women have done as well. They’ve been in businesses, we’ve started with them surfing and the next minute they’ve been launching their own health brand “wow you talked about that when you were surfing, and now you’re doing it!” It’s just an incredible thing that we’ve seen. And the spirit of that is really what we encourage with all the tours we take.” — Belinda Bradford
I love the way Surf Getaways is empowering women to reach their full potential through surfing.
It was also really interesting to talk to someone who’s been to the top of the corporate ladder and survived. It’s thought provoking to think that surfing did keep Belinda going all these years and that she has created a dream life around surfing.
“When I’m not surfing I workout in the gym. Why? Because I want to be fit for when I’m surfing. And you learn all of those things go hand in hand. And for me, age isn’t a barrier for any of these things if you continue to look after yourself, you can surf until you can’t walk anymore. And that’ll be me! Haha!” — Belinda Bradford
Last but not least, remember, you’re never too old to get in the water!
To get hold of Surf Getaways, their website is http://www.surfgetaways.com.au and you can reach them on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/surfgetaways/ , on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/surfgetaways.com.au and you can subscribe to their Youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtpvQCzGi9adCef234XaUJA
Thank you Belinda for being such an inspiration.
Until next week, take care, have fun and enjoy the waves
Ciao!
Imi
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