In this episode, join host Allison Boyle as she continues part 2 of her adventurous reinvention story of how she went from a conventional engineering career to a fulfilling life as an outdoor educator and life coach. Discover how embracing failure, adventure, and personal interests can lead to transformative life changes.

Key Points Discussed:

• Reflecting on her journey of going from engineering to life coaching and outdoor education, highlighting the lessons learned along the way.
• Decision to leave a stable job for a year of travel with her partner, Michael, and their life-changing van living experience.
• How Allison started She Dreams of Alpine and the Backpacking Badass Program - which has now served over 1,700 women in becoming confident hikers and backpackers.
• How embracing failures has resulted in significant personal growth and learning.
• Importance of focusing on life’s journey, experiences, and personal development, rather than just the destination.
• Insights into creating a life of freedom, creativity, and belonging in the outdoor community.

Where to learn more about Allison:

• She Dreams of Alpine Blog
• Instagram @shedreamsofalpine

🎁 FREE GIFT: Grab the Outdoor Backpacker Starter Kit for FREE here to get started on your journey with backpacking.

🥾 BACKPACKING COURSE WAITLIST: This is our signature program where we teach you how to become a safe, confident, and self-sufficient backpacker. It's an online course, coaching program, and community to support you in your journey to becoming a confident backpacker and step into your adventurous identity.

You're listening to the Adventurous Reinvention podcast. I'm

Alison Boyle AKA She Dreams of Alpine and this is the

show that's dedicated to all the adventurous spirits out there who have either

been transformed by the outdoors or interested in what it

looks like to step into a new adventurous and courageous kind

of identity in their life. It doesn't matter what your background is in the

outdoors, what age you're starting at, or where you grew up. If

you're curious about the outdoors and using adventure as a way to

reinvent yourself, you're in the right place. I'll be

sharing all kinds of personal adventure stories, lessons I've

learned from the mountains, teaching what I know about the outdoors and leadership,

and interviewing some amazing adventurous women all along the

way. I've been coaching women on becoming safe, confident, and

self sufficient backpackers and leaders of their own adventurous lives

since 2018. And I know exactly what

big fears and self doubts can pop up along the way. I have

so much to share with you, so let's dive in.

Okay. Hello, my friends. Welcome to episode 2 of the

adventurous reinvention podcast. I'm so happy

you're here. If you are new to the show,

welcome. I did a kind of part one

version of this episode, which was about kinda, like, my

personal adventurous reinvention. I wanted to kinda share that behind the

scenes and what that looked like for me and my story. So today

is part 2 where I'm gonna talk about my

adventurous reinvention going from being a full time engineer

and to what I'm doing today, which is a full time outdoor educator and

coach. So if you missed episode 1 where it was more

talking about my adventurous reinvention, like, becoming outdoorsy and

adventurous because I used to be from Texas, basically,

not outdoorsy at all in any way, and then moved to

California after college. And after I had gotten a divorce at a young

age, I did a year of yes, which took me to saying yes to my

very first backpacking trip. That is the first part of my story, so

definitely go check it out if you missed it. But this episode is

gonna be all about kind of how I got into

outdoor education, becoming a coach, and building she dreams at

Alpine, which is my business that I have today. So

during all of that time that I was kind of, like, growing

and exploring my new adventurous identity after, you

know, going on that very first backpacking trip, that I did in Half

Dome, I was also an engineer working a

classic kind of 9 to 5 corporate job. So,

basically, I worked on spreadsheets behind the scenes. I did project

management, and I did a lot of financial forecasting,

just boring engineer stuff. Right? So I was an

engineer by day and then as I was getting into the

outdoors and, like, falling in love with the outdoors and adventure and all those

things, I was exploring that love for the outdoors by

weekend. So I was your classic weekend warrior.

I would work all week and then as soon as I could because at

that time, you know, when I was at first an engineer at least I was

single at first and then I didn't have any

kids. I just left after work and I would go to the mountains. I wanted

to spend as much time as possible learning and

honing my craft and getting more experience in the outdoors, going on more

adventures. I really had gotten into like mountaineering and rock

climbing and obviously backpacking as well and hiking

as much as possible and like kind of starting to build my

adventurous community as well and doing as many learning opportunities

as I could. I was just all in and in pursuing that

lifestyle. So that is kind of

what I did. I did engineering by day and then,

you know, the adventurous thing by weekend.

And for about 6 years into my engineering career, that's

all that I did and I just was all in on kind of building that

identity, building my skills, and just really enjoying being

that person. Right? And then about 6 years into my

engineering career, I went on a backpacking trip with my

now husband, Michael, and my best friend, Ashima, and

her husband, Karthik. We went on a

trip to do the Trans Catalina Trail which

is a really amazing trail in California. I

always recommend this to my clients and my students if they're looking for a good

first time backpacking trip experience that feels a little less scary,

it but still feels like wild and beautiful and all these things, it's a great

trail to start on because you go to this island and there's not really any

like animals you need to worry about or be concerned about. You

know, the water situation is fairly easy, the campsite

situation is probably the trickiest part to figure out but you just get permits,

there's designated sites. I just think it takes a lot of the mind drama out

of backpacking where you can still go and experience the

trail. So that that's like a little bit of an an aside. I think it's

a great trail. It's beautiful. It is a little harder physically

than you might think it being on an island, but

you can still train to do that where you can do sections of it. It's

a great place to kinda dabble in hiking and backpacking. So

we went and did this. It had been a bucket list trail for me

and my friends, and I had gotten all the permits or the

campsite permits, and we did this in April of 2018.

So it ended up being one of those, like, amazing weekends. The

trail was as beautiful as we had imagined. We had great weather.

I was with amazing people. Like, I was with Michael. I was with my best

friend. These are people I would spend every day with if

I could. Right? And I remember I was

walking with Michael. We were kinda, like at a pace where our

friends were somewhere else maybe ahead or behind. I don't remember. But I was

walking alongside with Michael and we just started dreaming

about, like, talking about how amazing

that experience was and I remember I said to him

something to the effect of, like, I wish we could do this all

the time. Like, I just wish like, I felt that longing. It was

just, like, this deep internal longing that just appeared

to me. Of course, like, I had thought that before. Everyone does. People

who are outdoorsy, they, like, want to do that all the time, but it was

different this time. It, like, felt a little bit different. I wish we could do

this all the time. And, like, Michael and I spent time talking

about, you know, as we hiked all the places we still wanted to

go, all the places we still wanted to climb and hike at and backpack

at, and then we started talking about like wanting more

location freedom. Me in particular, like with my job, there

were only certain places I could work. You know, time wise, this

was before remote work was even really a thing, and I don't even know if

this would have been possible for what I was doing. But I wanted more

time flexibility. Like, you know, if it's a beautiful

Wednesday morning and I wanna go for a hike, like, I wanted the

flexibility to do that instead of having to, like, adhere

to this really strict schedule. So I was craving those

things. We talked about the countries we wanted to visit and, like, how we'd

like to live in a van for a while. And one of our dreams still

to this day is, like, owning a sailboat, doing that, being adventurous

with a sailboat. So we were talking about all the things and it was really

building up that desire to do it, right? So

after that backpacking trip, like, there was just a shift. I

knew this is something that I wanted to explore and I couldn't, like,

drop it. Like, it wasn't something that I could, like, not pay attention to anymore.

So I came home and being the engineer that I am, like, I'm a numbers

person. So I came home and I was, like, do the numbers. Does the

math, math. And so I, like, got my spreadsheets out.

I was thinking about, like, our budgets and, and, like, you know, how could we

make this happen? Because at the time, I didn't have any kind of side hustle,

any kind of job, extra income. I had just the engineering job. And so I

was, like, okay. So we would need to save money,

for this to happen and it would save money, for

this to happen and it would probably look like a year

off to travel. So that's kind of where my head was

at when I went home to crunch the numbers. But in general, like, I

feel like I had gotten to this point where it sort of felt a little

bit silly to me that I was nearly 30 at that at that time.

And I was holding on to this idea that I had to, like

I kind of just felt this urge. I was, like, do I, like, do I

have to be realistic? Do I have to keep a steady corporate draw job? Is

this steady corporate draw job? Is this really how it's the only way that it

can be done? Like, I don't know. I was really grappling. When I when I

became an engineer, I kind of just saw that this was

the thing that I was gonna like do for life. And I just come from

a really traditional, you know, Texas conservative background

and people, you know, got a good job and you stuck with it for

like 30 years and you didn't leave. So that's how I I always thought

but I think my reinvention into having

a more adventurous identity also opened up this possibility of, like,

is it true? Like, do I have to do it that way? So I

was kinda getting tired of thinking that way. I was like, other people do these

really cool creative things. Like, why not me? Why can't

I, like, maybe even take a year off and just go travel? Like, I

don't know. I was thinking differently. I was following that, like, line

of thinking in that path. Right? So shortly after that trip,

crunching the numbers, I decided, like, we're

going all in on this dream of taking a year off to travel.

Thankfully, Michael was all in. He

was at least mostly in on my all in ness. I have this

ability to have a lot of optimism. And

when I set my mind on something, I'm good at, like,

this is the way we should go. Like, it is gonna be

amazing. Like, I I have that optimism for myself and

so, like, I'm able to convey that optimism with other people.

So he was in. I had showed him the numbers

and I was, like, let's do it. Like, we we should do

it. And we were really excited about it. And at this point, I hadn't

even considered building my own business. So that wasn't even really,

like, part of the discussion. What I originally thought was,

like, we're gonna save up, we'll downsize our belongings, which

I also was really interested in. You know, I feel like we had

collected so much stuff, it felt, like, freeing

thinking about having less things in our life. We also

knew we wanted to get a van, you know, years prior to this since we

had been really outdoorsy for, like, 7 years at this point

or I had, you know, Michael's story is a little bit different than mine, but,

you know, he was my partner. You know,

we Michael and I spent almost every when I met him

gosh. What year did I meet him in? 2014, we

started dating, I think, which was, like, shortly after

I started going all in on the outdoor stuff. Where was I going

with this? Oh, yes. We were spending, like, every weekend together in the outdoors

and he had his Jeep and I had my Subaru at the time and we

would go to these places, go climbing and we would sleep in the back of

our Subaru and our Jeep. So we knew a van and

we would camp. It would be pretty, like, low key, like, not

anything fancy. So we knew we would like a van. A van was

an upgrade. We were not concerned, would we like a a van? We were just,

like, wow, this will really be a lot this will be an

amazing thing to have. And so we were gonna get a van,

and we thought we'll do it for at least a year, like, take a year

off from working full time and just travel and see

the US in our van and see where it leads us. And I kind of

figured I think at this time, I figured I'd probably end up going back to

engineering after that year off of travel. But as curiosities and dreams often do, one

thing led to the next thing. And,

often do one thing led to the next thing.

And before I move on in the story, like, I kinda wanna have a little

mini rant or, like, emphasize something again before I move

on. I wanna emphasize that that quote,

one thing led to the next thing. And I think so many

people, they often look at, you know, they might look at my

story which is somebody's, you know, 5, 6 year transformation

at this point and think I could never do that. But all you need to

do for any kind of transformation is to decide

that I'm going to follow this one thing that I'm curious about and

this one thing that interests me and kinda like lights me up and gives me

that excited feeling, maybe even a little bit scary, a little bit like

uncertain, I find that they kinda follow each other and trust

that it'll lead you to the next thing, whatever it is. So

for example, like, I love, like Carla's

program, the 50 2 hike challenge, you know, hopefully, we'll have her on the

podcast at some point but it's like this one thing

people can, like, latch on to, like, I wanna get more into

hiking, I wanna hike one hike every week and it's simple and it's

small, it's achievable and it's something that can get you going and

it can lead to the next thing. And you don't have to start that challenge

knowing what your transformation is going to look like, you can just know like I'm

going to go all in on this transformation and let it lead you to the

next thing. Or similarly to people who join our backpacking badass

program, it's like I they come in, they're like,

I just know that I want to stop waiting around on other people to invite

me along on adventures, and I want to like be the leader. I want to

take ownership of my adventures. I want to learn how to

backpack. That is like the one thing that leads them

to the next thing. So you don't have to have, you know,

all the pieces figured out. Just am I curious enough to explore

this and let it lead you to the next thing. So that's my little

mini rant and kind of something I really wanted to emphasize

here. So for me, the one decision of

taking a year off to travel in our van led me to

thinking about, well, what if I could make some side

income so that we could support our travels a little bit more?

Which that thought led me to being like, what

does side income look like? Right? So I,

at the time, had this job well, my it was the same job,

but the particular role I was in had me driving

45 minutes out to a field in the morning and 45 minutes out

back to where I lived. So every day, I was, like,

driving almost 2 hours a day and maybe sometimes 2 hours if there were bad

traffic. So I started binging podcasts, like,

the ones that I was listening to at the time, I listened to a lot

of Tim Ferris and there was also this podcast, I

have no idea if it's still around, I don't listen to it anymore, but it

was really great for me at the time and it was called I think it

was called Side Hustle School. And for me, this

was like my entry into hearing other

people's creations, like what they had done

to build a side hustle, you something on the side

to bring in income for themselves. And the Tim Ferriss podcast

was more just like opening me up to like people living wildly different

lives than I was, which just was exciting

to listen to people talk about creativity in a different way,

taking risks in a different way. I was really opening myself up to this kind

of realm and space that I'm really passionate about now, and those 2

podcasts were really monumental. I remember when I was going through this phase, I also

gave myself like, okay, at some point, Allison, you need to stop consuming and you

need to start doing. And so I gave myself like a month to really just

think about all the

ideas I was getting from listening to these podcasts. I was keeping a list, right,

and then I was, like, you need to decide and go all in on one

thing, like, not having your feet in 10 different things

and not really giving anything a chance Because for me, I don't know what led

me to thinking this way, but I was, like, I will never make money if

I don't really, like, go all in on decide on something.

I just need to choose. And so shortly after that,

I decided that I was most excited about

starting a blog, which might sound boring. If you're listening to

this, you're, like, starting a blog. But I was really inspired by people

who were doing it already. So, like, pinch of yum, it's a

food blog, and Barefoot Theory are 2 of the people that come to mind that

were, like, that shaped me in wanting to do this.

So if you don't know Barefoot Theory, she's also in the outdoor adventure space. She

had an outdoor blog. She was making money with her blog. Pinch of Yum is

a food blog. They used to publish these income blog. Pinch of Yum is a

food blog. They used to publish these income reports. I don't

think they do it anymore. But it was really interesting to see the behind the

scenes of their blog and how their how writing made

them income when they wrote. And I was like, I can do that. I love

writing. And I already actually had a

blog because when I had, you know, kind of just

started backpacking and I was getting in all these adventures, I had this place where

I was kind of more like dear diary ish, writing

about my adventures and the places I went. But I was like, okay, I'm gonna

take that. I'm gonna refresh it and I'm gonna start

using it as a place to, like, really give value to people, publish

trail guides, tips and tricks. We still actually have the

blog today. Blog is still a big part of our business

or not a big part, it's still part of our business. It's a way that

we now in particular, not necessarily like still we still

make some money from that, but if you're in the space like Google AI, that

has kind of transformed what that looks like. But space like Google AI that

has kind of transformed what that looks like but it's still a place for us

as a team where we can provide value and free content

because, you know, when not everyone is able to

necessarily invest in our programs right away, or at all, and

we still want to have a place where we can teach and, like, the podcast

is this as well in our social media, all the things where we can give

free value and offer that kind of value and mentorship about the

outdoors. So we still run the blog and

so I was like, I'm gonna start a blog and so she dreams of

alpine blog as a business was

officially born. So that was, man, I

don't know exactly the timeline of it, but it was shortly after this kind of,

like, trans Catalina conversation. So,

yeah, I had been passionate about the outdoors and backpacking for

7 years at around 7 years at that point. So I knew that this is

something that I could talk to to talk on. I had already

mentored so many of my friends in this space, and I was, like, let's do

it. Let's go for it and, figure it out. So

as I started getting into that, it kinda led me to the next

thing. So as I was getting curious about running a

blog, running a business, I was learning all the things. I was

being really scrappy. Like, I just I knew nothing about

running a business. I didn't take business classes in college. I had no idea I

was an engineer. So I was

really just figuring it out. And I was joining groups. I was signing

up for programs to learn more. I've always been a big believer of,

like, know, standing maybe this isn't the right phrase but

like standing on the shoulder of giants. So like people who had done the thing

that I wanted to do and learning from them, I like to learn that

way because I don't like to just spend a lot of

time, like, wondering if I'm gonna learn something from a

random YouTube video that I'm watching because I just found that that

wasn't useful. I wanted, like, somebody with their method and their path

and I wanted to be able to just try it for myself because it

had worked for them and see if it worked for me. And that's not always

the case. Like sometimes you try things and it doesn't work exactly the same way

for you. But for me, it's like somebody's framework that I could

follow and implement for myself. So I was doing like that, joining different types of

programs. And I remember, I think it was August

of 2018, I went to an

Amy Porterfield event. Amy Porterfield teaches about

digital courses, online business, business, especially, she was good for me for, like,

at the beginner stage of building my business and she had this, conference.

And I went to it and I met these amazing people there. I was so

nervous to y'all. I went to this event. I

felt like such a poser and like

a fraud. I was like, I have a blog. People were talking about their businesses

being coaches. I was like, I'm a blogger and I write about the outdoors.

So y'all do it even if you feel

like an imposter. So I definitely had major imposter syndrome but the people

were so nice there and it really opened me up to so many

ideas and I knew from

that event and talking to people and attending, like, different

speaker conversations, that's when I knew I wanted to

be more than just blogger. And I wanted to help

women feel more confident in the outdoors in a way that was,

like, more useful than a trail guide or a few tips and tricks on an

article because you could only share so much on an article, right?

And that is where that event was where the idea for the

backpacking badass program. And it was kind of like one of those similar feelings I

had had on the Trans Catalina Trail. It was like the

idea came to me at the event and the

backpacking badass program, like, even the name, I was like,

this like, I must bring this forward into the world.

Like, I just had this knowing that it needed to happen.

And, yeah. So then I was, like, okay. I'm gonna build

this course, the backpacking badass program. And it's I

knew, like, what I knew about is, like, I knew we needed

more women mentorship in the outdoors because that is something, like, all of

my past, you know, friends that I went backpacking with and

hiking with were mostly male. My mentorship was

mostly male. And I was like, those

people are great. They taught me a lot. But like so many times

I felt like not seen, not understood,

and that I had to like keep up. Like I had to

prove myself. There were so many moments where I felt like, you know, if

I don't prove myself at this adventure I was invited on by

these guys that invited me, then they would never invite me back.

Like, so there was a lot of pressure, and I wanted

to create, like, more

focused program for women, with women mentorship so that

they all these women don't have to worry about that and be afraid of,

like, these things and people looking down on

them, all this I want them to be their own leaders so that they can

have control of their own adventurous futures to say the least. And

I wanted to, like, be someone who, like, could help

them understand their fears, their unique anxieties, their

unique self doubt around everything, all these things that are really

normal and natural to feel when you're just starting out on the trail and even

as you grow. Like new level new devil is something I always tell

my clients, as you're growing in the outdoors, you're going to reach new

levels and you're going to encounter new fears, new anxieties, and

new self doubt. So basically, I wanted to create the

program and the mentorship that I wish had existed

when I first started in the outdoors and was super awkward and

didn't know what I was doing, I didn't feel outdoorsy or adventurous at all,

and I felt silly half the time and I wanted to, like,

create that what I would have loved to have and wish had

existed when I started. So that program

was a full body yes for me. Like, I knew

it needed to happen and I got to work. So I came home from that

event and I was still working my 9 to 5 y'all so, like, that's still

happening, I'm still an engineer and now I'm also building this

business on the side. And building

a business period and building a course was probably one

of the hardest times I've ever worked in my life.

I would just to give you an idea of, like, what my day started to

look like at that point, like, in August is I started

to at first, I was really struggling to, like, get momentum, but then I

realized, like, I need to commit to this dream in a really tangible

way. So I kinda, like, went home one day to Michael and I was, like,

okay. I really wanna take this business seriously that I'm

building. So on Mondays and on Wednesdays after work, I'm not

going to be coming home. You're also on your own for dinner, like, just figure

it out. I'm going to go to Starbucks, I'm going to work for

a few hours and at least 2 or 3 hours on my

business. And then I will come home, it will probably be late, I'll go to

sleep and I'll go to my engineering job in the morning. And so

I committed to at least have 2 days a week where I would be working

at least 3 hours. And then at some point I was also working a lot

of weekends. So I was sacrificing at that time my time passionate to

get this thing up and running and I could see, like,

the vision for putting in the effort and I was really

driven by that. So it was so funny because at this time it

was, like, this thing I didn't even know if people really wanted,

and people were telling me, like, people thought it was cool that I

was doing this thing but they didn't really take me seriously.

They saw it as just this little side hustle and I kept talking about how

like I was gonna build this business and then hopefully after my year off of

travel, like I'd be able to stay with it full time. And I just don't

think anybody really believed me. They were always talking about, like, well, what are your

backup plans? Will you come back to engineering if you don't make this work?

Nobody really thought I could do it. And I honestly, I wasn't making any

money. Maybe I don't even think in August I was making, like, $50

a month. I was making, at the end of that kinda, like, season, maybe

100 to $200 a month from our blog, which is not enough to

live on. And so I didn't really have any evidence that it was

gonna work either, but I just knew I had to give it a

shot. So I worked my ass off. Yeah. I worked really

hard and I thought it was I'm like I held space for it being

worth it. So in April of 2019,

after kind of, like, working a whole season building this course, getting it ready,

learning how to sell a course. I had never sold

anything in my life and that's something you have to do as a business owner.

You have to learn how to sell. You have to learn marketing. You because

people, like, if they don't know how to work with you, then that's

your fault. You have to be able to explain how people can work with you,

what you offer, all the things. So I was learning that as

well. And in April 2019, I opened my program, the backpacking

badass program, for the very first time and we

enrolled 12 women into the program and I was

thrilled. 12 women took the

leap of faith to learn from me, a blogger,

a part time business owner, and full time

engineer. And I will be forever grateful to those

12 women because that was all the proof that I

needed to keep going, to keep

pursuing this. And I was stoked. Like, that was, I think,

even more than I had hoped for. I was, like, oh, if I just get

3 or 4 people to join this program, I would have been stoked.

So in that same month, I had also planned, like, when I launched

when I launched that enrollment, to open up the backpacking badass

program, I also knew I was gonna be quitting my job. I had already

saved up. Michael and I had saved up for a year. We had enough in

the bank to live off of for a year so that we didn't have to

put so much pressure on my business to make money while we were traveling.

And I was hoping by the end of that year and the end of that

savings, I would have enough to live off of or I would have figured out

the business stuff so we could keep doing it. So that same month, I quit

my job, so did Michael. We left the

security of our full time

corporate paycheck, and we leapt greatly into the

unknown. So I had to give this dream the

shot it deserved. That's what I was thinking. And even though I had no

idea what I was doing and there's really no manual for this kind of thing,

especially if your dream is very different, and

not other many not many other people were doing it in that particular way.

So I was just figuring it out as we were going. And we had

gotten our van officially in March, month before, and Michael

was putting finishing touches on the van so that we could live in it full

time. And at that time, I was like, literally developing the

backpacking badass program or delivering, sorry. I had

enrolled 12 students and in May, I was delivering the program as like a

live cohort to that first group of women. So we did like live

coaching calls, we worked through the program curriculum together. We

still do live cohorts from time to time in our our

program now, but a lot of times, it's, like, self paced and then we have

ongoing coaching calls. But this first cohort, I did, like,

everything really live, because it was my first

group. So, I'm even, like what's funny is

I'm still even close to several of those women today. Like, shout out

to Heather who has also gone on some of our She Dreams of Alpine

retreat. She's also one of our ambassadors now, which is, like, basically a

mentor inside of our backpacking badass group. So, yeah, that's

a really special group to me that I, like, think about all the

time. Going back to kind of, like, the timeline of

things, so that was May delivering the program. We had

quit our jobs. And and then in June that year, Michael and I flew to

South Africa to go to the rocklands. It's like an area in

South Africa where we were going to spend a month climbing with some of our

friends. That's the trip we had planned and we were

super excited about. And then we officially hit the road in

our van full time in July of 2019.

So we didn't know what life would look like for us after a

year. We weren't sure, like, would we run out of money? Would we

hate living in a van full time? We hadn't done that. We had lived in

it, you know, for weekend things. We were wondering, like,

would we regret leaving our 9 to 5? All of it was

a huge question mark but we wanted to give it a shot. All that

I knew was that, like, I was willing to give it

everything that I had in order to figure out how to build my own

business, how to be financially independent, location

independent, and to have more autonomy over my time

because this was, like, this was my big dream. So

even if it meant that I got to my end of my year off of

travel and I had to get a 9 to 5 job again, until I figured

out how to create a business that could support me, like, I was

still all in on the dream no matter what because I believed it would

be worth it. So the mountains,

I really believe, like, one important part of this story that, like, I haven't really

talked about is I think the work that had done being outdoorsy,

adventurous stepping into that identity, the mountains had prepared

me for this moment. The mountains had taught me about risk, they taught me

about failure, they taught me about navigating low

moments and picking yourself back up when you fell down.

Backpacking, like, backpacking in the outdoors, it taught me a

lot about following my curiosity because if you remember from

part 1 of the story, you know, that paid off big time for me when

I went and backpacked Half Dome, so why not follow my curiosity

starting my own business? So that hadn't let me down. It taught me about that.

It had led me to some beautiful adventures, and this was kind of like a

life adventure I was embarking on. Backpacking had helped

me, like, fear failure less. Like, you fail so much in the

mountains. You don't make summits, you have a bad trip, you learn

a lot of lessons. In climbing, in particular, you fail all the time,

like, you have a goal climb you wanna want to do and it's just you're

not there yet and you'll fall, you'll fall, you'll fall, you'll fall repeatedly.

This is just something I really learned and started to embrace as

like part of the journey and I'm really grateful

for. It also showed me that there's this concept I

talk about a lot and I'll probably do a episode one day on this but,

the fifty-fifty, it's kind of like life is

not always good, not always bad. It's this

kind of mix no matter where you are in life. There's no fantasy land where

it's always great and always wonderful. The mountains taught me that in

in a, like, very tangible way. You go out on the trail and

it's fun, you're like, this is beautiful, and then you get on that uphill and

you're like, this sucks, right? There is balance. Like, we're gonna

have all of it and that's all part of the adventure.

So for me, I was thinking about that like, well, if it's always going to

be kind of like a balance of 5050 no matter what I choose in life,

I wanna choose the thing that I'm most curious about exploring,

right? It taught me also that life is an adventure in

general and I'm never stuck anywhere. And

one really important thing it taught me was that I'm braver and more

capable than I think I am. Because I remember on that Half Dome trip,

I was like, I have never done anything like this. It was the scariest thing

in my life but I was like, I fucking did it. So that taught me,

like, I am brave and I'm way stronger and more capable than I think I

am. So these are all things that kinda led me into entrepreneurship

which I think were very important things

that helped me along the way. So the trail had been

basically my education for creating a life that was aligned with

what I really wanted which was to have more freedom, to live more

courageously, to do creative work. So I really wanted to do something

that felt creative that was exciting to do and that also gave

back to gave back value to the community that, like,

means a whole lot to me which was the outdoor community.

So I'm happy to report that as you can probably tell because

I'm recording this podcast I'm still here, I'm still doing it. It's

5 years later and we are still, you know,

after that year off, I did figure out how to keep making

money and keep building my business. I never went back to my

engineering job. I was able to

continue being full time as an outdoor educator and

that evolved and evolved and evolved over the years. So

today, I've taught over, you know, 1700 women inside that backpacking

badass program, which is so wild to think about because

just 5 years prior, I was enrolling my first 12 students in that

program. And what keeps me going now today,

because you get to a point where you're like, okay, like, I've done it, like,

I've proved it, right, I think it's really easy to kind

of like get stagnant with things if you're not

reigniting that like excitement in your life. For me, what

keeps me going is my clients' stories and my clients'

wins. And to see so many women from all kinds of backgrounds and walks of

life come into this program and any of our other programs and create their own

adventurous reinvention. And it's like, I get to relive it again through

those people, hearing their stories,

seeing what they're making of it. So I know

that even if I wasn't doing this full time, like, even if, you know,

for some reason I decided to stop doing this and being a coach and supporting

a small team, I know in some capacity I would still be sharing and mentoring

in the outdoors in some way, which is why I think, like, for outdoors in

some some way, which is which is why I think, like, for me, personally, year

after year, I haven't burnt out or I haven't got tired of doing this because

and this is probably really important, like, for me, backpacking

was one of the most transformational moments of my life and I

of the most transformational moments of my life. And I

almost feel like this duty and obligation to share

that with other women. Because for me, like, it saved me, I

was in this, which you can listen to part 1 again, but, like, I was

in this spiral, kind of leading my life down this kind

of direction that I didn't want to go anymore, right? And backpacking

showed me what I was really made of, and it opened up my world to

so much possibility and taught me, like, I could just be so much more and

different than I ever thought I could be. So, you know, as you may know,

today, like, we don't just offer the backpacking dadas

program, we do have other things. As a company, we have evolved

as a company to offering some more intimate coaching programs and

some retreats. We also host, like, free virtual events all the

time. Every year, we at least do, like, for example, we usually host

a summit in the summer. You know, we're always coming up with new things to

give you guys to give you free value to ignite your

journeys in the outdoors. We also publish free content all the time

on our website and our social media to support y'all, but

I'm going to talk a little bit more about that, like our current offerings,

how you can work with us, our programs in the next episode. That way, it's

just in, like, one place that you can find if you're ever curious about how

you could work further with me and my team at she dreams at alpine.

So I'll save that more for then. But

one thing has led to the next thing still really holds

true. And I'm really excited to see where that kinda

leads me 5 years from now. And even as I'm starting this

podcast, like, I never thought I would ever start a podcast, but here we are.

Right? So as we wrap up this episode,

I wanted to leave you with just a few final

thoughts. Right? So I've left you a lot of thoughts in this

episode, so this is just a few more. Some of them are repetitive.

The first one is decide who you want to be and become

her. So deep down, most of us know, like,

there's something we wanna do, something we're curious about that's calling

to us, someone we want to become. Right?

But the thing that kinda holds us back all the time is the unknowns around

it, the uncertainty around it. Right? But we aren't getting

any younger, you know, and the one thing we can't create

more of is time, which I'm sure you are all aware of.

And I remember when I was sitting at my corporate

engineering job and I was at a meeting and

we were in a room with a bunch of managers because I used to do,

like, financial forecasting. So I used to have to present to a bunch of, you

know, higher ups in the company. And I was looking around the

room and somebody was celebrating their

30 plus years with the company, like, their anniversary with the

company. And I had personally just reached my 7

year, like, recently reached my 7 years at the company. And

I in that moment, I had a moment where I was just like, I

don't think I'm meant to be that person. Like and this is no shade to

somebody. We all do what we need to do

for whatever reason, and sometimes it is, like, we really just love

what we do. But for me, I knew, like, I'm not meant to be here

for 30 years. Like, I think I meant to

do so much more than that. And

I don't know. Like, there was a lot of uncertainty around it, so, obviously, I

didn't pull, you know, like, get going right after that

thought, but the Trans Catalina did pull that courage out of me, and I

knew, like, I had already been thinking this. So whatever it is

that's on your heart, just go for it. It will

feel scary. It will be uncertain. You will not know

what's gonna happen. Every great adventure

is uncertain. And if you are outdoorsy, if you do get

out on the trail, you know this to be true. You can have the

best trip plan created, and this is what I always

talk about with my clients, like, the skill of pivoting in the outdoors is

one of the most essential skills that you'll learn as an adventure.

Every adventure has its own agenda. We don't know

what it's gonna be like. Right? So if it feels scary, it feels

uncertain, and you're, like, wanting to live the kind of life that

is making you feel more alive and aligned and adventurous, just know

you're on the right track. Like, oh, this feels scary and uncertain,

probably doing it right. Right? So don't live

your life being too scared to fail, to take

leaps into the unknown. And I'm not gonna sit here and pretend,

you know, you know, there's a lot to this story that, you know, I didn't

cover in this episode, and you can feel free to reach out and ask me

questions if you want on Instagram or something. But I'm not gonna pretend that building

a business was easy. I'm pretend that building a business was easy. I had to

overcome a lot in the past 5 years, but especially in that first couple of

years, like, figuring out how to balance work and travel, managing our

finances, trusting the process of growing a business, trying things,

managing our finances, trusting the process of growing a business, trying

things and then failing, feeling like people weren't listening at all, like

weren't interested in you, going big even when it

felt scary. These were all things that are happening all the time in my

business. Now I have a team, it's like supporting a team, the

pressures of being the one where it's all on you. There are a lot of

things to learn as when you're building a business, right?

And so I really had to come to terms with the word failure

repeatedly as I set many goals and

completely miss them again and again and again. And to this day, I

often tend to be an optimist as I mentioned at the beginning of this

episode. I'll often set goals and I often don't meet

them because I'm just really optimistic sometimes.

But each and every one of those failures or quote, unquote failures

has led me to a new discovery. It's taught me something valuable and has

ultimately made me stronger. And as I've grown, you know, like, in my

own personal development and, you know, also becoming a life

coach which I did a couple years ago, I got certified as a life coach.

I'm just starting to understand a little bit more that, like, sometimes we're in

such a hurry to see this success. Oh, sorry, see the

success, like, stumbled over my words there, of our

pursuits. But then when we when we only focus on the

destination, we, like, miss all of the things

that are happening in between. So these days, like, I'm really just

leaning into the seasons of life that I'm in, the things that

I'm learning, where it's leading me next, and that has brought me so

much peace. And, yes, of course, I'm I'm still setting big goals and I'm

still, you know, shooting for the stars and believing in myself

and failing and all the things but, like, I'm just I'm kind of

enjoying that a little bit more than I used to. That's definitely

taken time, for me to kinda get to that place.

So, that's it, y'all. That's

today's episode. I'm sure there might be questions that you have,

but I hope this kinda gave you, like, a little overview of kinda my adventurous

reinvention as far as it goes with building my business, how that I got

here, how did I become an outdoor educator, a life coach,

all these things. I hope you enjoyed it. Since I

am still a new podcaster, I would love it if you could leave me a

review if you enjoyed this episode and let me know what you thought.

So I will see you next week and talk to you soon.

Bye. Hey. I wanted to thank you real

quick for tuning in to the show and listening all the way to the end.

If you love this episode and you want deeper support in becoming a safe,

confident, and self sufficient hiker and backpacker, then head over to shedreamsofalpine.com/waitless

to learn more about our backpacking badass coaching program where I teach

you absolutely everything you need to know to be self reliant on the

trails and stop waiting around on others for the adventure

invite. So I'd love to help you more in your journey of stepping into

your adventurous identity, and that program is the

absolute best place for us to start working together. So, again,

that's she dreams of alpine.com/waitlist, and

you can learn all about it there. So that's it for today, folks. I

hope you get to spend some time outside this week, and I'll be back

very soon with a brand new episode. Bye.