The Audacity to Build Luxury from the Ground Up

When Chidi Ashley launched Luxe Tribes in 2018, she wasn’t chasing an algorithm or a viral moment—she was building a movement. What began as curated group trips for women eager to explore the world has evolved into a global luxury travel brand generating over $27 million in revenue and reaching 300,000+ travelers worldwide. Her journey from corporate analyst to global entrepreneur is a study in courage, community, and the art of scaling without compromise.

Listen to her Legacy Diary Podcast Episode as she details her journey and story what she will be memorialized for; and the next phase of impact.

Origin of Audacity

Chidi Ashley did not start with a grand speech or a glossy deck. She started with a carry-on bag, a remote work agreement, and a promise to herself that comfort would not be the reason she played small. New York skyscrapers in the rearview, Bali humidity in the air, she opened her laptop at a café table and wrote the first line of what would become Luxe Tribes. One trip at a time. One story at a time. One woman saying yes to the world, then telling her friends.

Leaving a stable business analyst role in New York, Chidi chose an unconventional route: she negotiated to work remotely and moved to Bali to build her vision—Luxe Tribes, a travel company that would make luxury adventure accessible to working professionals.

Instead of paid advertising, she bet on community and storytelling. That decision paid off. Luxe Tribes scaled to multi-million-dollar revenues organically, expanded into new markets through a seven-figure acquisition, and set the stage for a reimagined travel experience rooted in connection and culture.

Chidi’s Creed

“Audacity isn’t about recklessness—it’s about clarity. Once you see the path, commit to it fully and execute relentlessly.”

The early trips felt like a group project with high stakes and higher heart. Flights booked at midnight, vendors found through whispers and DMs, rooming lists rewritten when a cousin decided to join. Chidi took the calls, not an assistant. She remembered birthdays, food allergies, the traveler who loved sunrise and the one who feared boats. The brand lived in spreadsheets and voice notes. It also lived in the way guests hugged each other in arrival halls, in the way strangers became tablemates, then travel family. What the internet would later call community looked like a welcome dinner where a lawyer from Atlanta laughed with a nurse from Lagos as if they had grown up on the same street.

There were no billboards, no splashy ad buys. There was a string of Instagram stories shot in warm light, a caption that read like a letter to a friend, an inquiry form that filled faster than expected. Deposits followed. Then waitlists. When the first cohort flew home and started posting unprompted itineraries in their group chats, Chidi knew she had found the engine. Not virality, not hacks. Trust, repeated. The numbers grew because the nights were unforgettable. Multi million dollars in revenue followed because the mornings were thoughtful and on time. More than 300,000 travelers touched the brand because someone felt seen on a trip and invited someone else to feel that way too.

No Myths Just Truth

The myth says audacity is loud. Chidi’s version sounded like quiet decisions that compounded. Negotiate income continuity so the risk does not drown you. Choose Bali so your costs are lower, your sunsets are free, and your content writes itself. Hire operators who can lead a group through customs and a storm with the same calm voice. Build a playbook that teaches the tenth trip to feel as intentional as the first. That discipline made room for a seven figure acquisition that extended Luxe Tribes into new markets, without diluting its promise. Connection first. Culture always. Luxury with a human fingerprint.

It was not clean. In Greece a hotel error cost forty two thousand dollars and a week of sleep. Guests were rebooked by morning, not because a policy said so, but because that is what you do when your name is on the welcome sign. The hit hurt. The lesson stayed. Set two people to verify every booking. Install red team reviews for peak season. Systemize the fix so the team never has to white knuckle a night like that again. Leadership is not the absence of mistakes. It is the speed and integrity of the response.

Audiences, Assets & Audacity

The audience grew into an asset because Chidi refused to costume the story. She showed the airport floors and the perfect villas, the early wins and the reroutes. Over time those posts became a living archive. Email lists deepened. Referrals climbed. The brand’s margin on attention improved, not through a trick, but through consistency. People followed a person doing the work. They bought from a company that remembered their names.

At twenty three she chose to make a move that looked reckless from the outside and rigorous from the inside. Villa Olori, built in Bali for four hundred fifty eight thousand dollars, backed by months of research and local partnerships. She ran the numbers like a trader and walked the site like a carpenter. Occupancy held near ninety percent. Payback arrived in roughly three years. The villa funded itself and signaled something larger. Luxe Tribes was not a moment. It was an operating system for hospitality.

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The next chapter would scale that system into luxury boutique hotels, including a flagship in Marrakesh, a property designed for travelers who want a story to live in, not just a room to sleep in.

The Inside View...

Inside the company the work looked like rhythm. Weekly retros where the team named wins out loud. Daily huddles that started with the traveler, not the budget. Clear owners for every segment of the journey, from visa support to the playlist at the rooftop dinner. When growth tried to outrun quality, Chidi called a timeout. Slow down to strengthen the foundation. Rewrite the SOPs. Tighten vendor SLAs. Teach new hosts how to read a room and read a weather map. The decision bought resilience. The next sprint moved faster because the ground held.

Chidi’s philosophy did not arrive in a single quote. It arrived in small choices repeated across years. Choose clarity over noise. Reduce risk with structure, not superstition. When you miss, fix fast and protect trust. When you win, document why, then scale the part that created pull. Measure the story, not just the spend. Ask customers to tell you the truth, then pay attention when they do.

The legacy work sits in the open. On her podcast she names the early doubts, the line items that almost sank her, the mentors who gave her hard feedback, the joy that keeps her moving when the flight delays stack up. She is explicit about the balance sheet and about the feelings. Money matters. Memory matters. Both deserve world class operations.

Audacity Up Close

What does audacity look like up close. It looks like a woman in a Bali café sending a message to a traveler whose father is ill and arranging a surprise toast for him on FaceTime at golden hour. It looks like a team lead in Marrakesh who knows the market vendor’s daughter by name and asks about her exam results before negotiating spices. It looks like a spreadsheet that reconciles deposits with an elegance that would make a CFO smile. It looks like a community that protects its standards and expands its table.

This is not a story about running toward the algorithm. It is a story about running toward people. Luxe Tribes became a multi million dollar cross border brand because it treats luxury as a conversation. What do you need. What do you dream about. How do we design a week that lets you feel like the most alive version of yourself. The answer changes by city and season. The posture does not. Listen closely. Build carefully. Deliver like it is your name on the door.

Reflection

Chidi’s creed is short. Audacity is clarity plus commitment plus relentless execution. Everything else is theater. The company she built proves it. The next properties will scale it. The travelers will carry it forward, one reunion at a time, one story at a time, one welcome dinner filled with strangers who will not feel like strangers for long.