Gerdi with Nuno Santos Fernandes on how a long walk led to an important decision
My guest, Nuno Santos Fernandes, is Portuguese and has had a very varied career.
He is the owner of the renowned dog hotel Quinta del Sol near Portugal’s capital Lisbon.
Through international benchmarking, he was able to create a successful business model that has served as an example for other pet hotels throughout Portugal.
Very interested and ultimately involved in sustainable agriculture Nuno was the executive vice-president of the non-profit AFLOPS Landowners Organisation for 6 years.
He is a managing partner in a real estate management firm through which he manages his family’s real estate, both urban and rural, ranging from individual apartments for rent, to commercial properties and agricultural and forestry land in and around the greater Lisbon area.
In 2017 Nuno founded and became president of National Council of the political party, Iniciativa Liberal, whose aim is to reduce the weight of the State in the lives of its citizens in order to give those citizens more freedom and more options.
Somewhere along his life’s trail, my guest found himself in a phase that required some very serious reflection.
By chance or luck, he joined Walking Mentorship founder and guest on an earlier Daring Leadership episode (listen here), João Perre Viana, on a pilot of a Walking Mentorship program, where he found the time and space needed to find answers he was looking for.
What he found on this walk was not only those answers but also a new branch on his career tree: a partnership in Walking Mentorship. He has become the other mentor in Walking Mentorship and a co-host of the Walking Mentorship ‘Keep Walking With Me’ podcast.
Like his Walking Mentorship partner and fellow podcast host João, Nuno can regularly be seen walking while on the phone with one of his mentees.
The story of how all this happened is an interesting one and worth a listen.
