Finding Balance: Rethinking Work and Adventure in a Busy World

Taking a vacation changed everything. After two weeks away—first helping my mom launch her book in Montana, then mountain biking through the red deserts of Moab with my family—I returned with a revelation that's transformed my approach to business and life.

For years, I've resisted the "busy" badge of honor our culture celebrates. My mantra became "if it's not a hell yeah, then it's a hell no," yet I still found myself caught in the quantity trap. I was pushing out weekly newsletters that felt like inbox pollution, cranking out multiple YouTube videos weekly because "experts" said it would boost my channel, and filling my calendar with back-to-back adventure trips.

Then came the experiment that changed everything. Instead of producing two quick videos, I poured my energy into creating one exceptional video about Nalgene water bottles. After 24 hours of silence, it exploded—7,000+ views and 200+ comments within a week. The message was clear: quality creates exponential results through deeper connection.

This revelation sparked meaningful changes at Hike Like A Woman. Monthly newsletters will replace weekly ones. YouTube videos will come once weekly, crafted with care. And I'm reducing our 2026 guided trips to three extraordinary adventures—Scotland's West Highland Trail, Tour de Mont Blanc, and Kilimanjaro—allowing me to truly know the women joining these journeys.

What might happen if you created more white space in your life? If you're feeling overwhelmed by commitments, try slowing down. Focus on excellence over frequency. Sometimes the path to greater impact requires doing less, but doing it extraordinarily well. Ready to join me on this journey to quality over quantity?

Learn more by visiting our website at https://www.hikelikeawoman.com

Chapters

• 0:26 Back from Vacation
• 1:56 Rejecting the Busy Life
• 3:50 YouTube Experiment: Quality vs Quantity
• 6:28 Rethinking Business Approaches
• 9:13 2026 Trip Announcements
• 11:54 Creating Space and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome back to the show. Last week I was on vacation with my family and the week before that I was in Montana visiting my parents. My mom has written a book and she's getting ready to publish her book, and so I went up to Bozeman and hung out with my mom for a weekend and did a whole bunch of marketing. So if you love podcasts and want to go listen to my mom's podcast, it's called marketing. So if you love podcasts and want to go listen to my mom's podcast, it's called Montana Nurse and I'll link to it in the show notes. But I helped my mom get a podcast set up and a YouTube channel set up. And then I came back and I had to get my taxes done, which took a long time, and then my family was off to Moab for spring break.

Speaker 1: 0:54

We love to go to Moab, utah, for spring break because it's the desert. We love the desert in the spring and my kids and my husband love to mountain bike and my kids are on the mountain bike team, and so it was just a really fun week of mountain biking and hiking and exploring. We didn't go into Zion or Canyonlands We've done those parks a lot and this was a trip where we just were focused on making sure that our kids got some good time on their mountain bikes, that they got some good training in. We've got a couple of mountain bike camps coming up this summer and it was just kind of like a little sneak peek of what the summer is going to be like and it was really great. But I say that because I fell a couple weeks behind on my work and usually I have podcast episodes and YouTube videos scheduled a couple weeks in advance but I did not. I was so far behind that I took my laptop, my microphone, my cameras all the things on vacation with me and I had every intention of working, but I didn't. Instead, I just took the time to relax and play and hang out with my family, and that's exactly what you're supposed to be doing when you're on vacation. This morning, when I was out on a walk, I was thinking about taking time off work and going on vacation and really spending a lot of time resting and relaxing and having so much fun.

Speaker 1: 2:23

And I don't like to say that I'm a busy person. I don't want to be busy. I don't want my life to feel chaotic and out of control. There's been a lot of times when it has felt way too busy and way too chaotic and way out of control. Way too busy and way too chaotic and way out of control.

Speaker 1: 2:38

And I am working hard to do a few things. The first is to say no to opportunities that come my way, and my mantra is if it's not a hell yeah, then it's a hell no, because I don't want to overextend myself by saying yes to everything and yes to everyone, and I talk about that a lot here on the pod. The other thing is I want to make sure that what I'm doing, what I'm producing here on the pod, what I'm producing over on our YouTube channel, is quality and not quantity. I want it to be good. I don't want to play the numbers game anymore. And the other thing that I'm trying to do is really create space. For me, creating space means having white space on my calendar, just with nothing planned. Creating space means that maybe I can slow down my schedule a little bit.

Speaker 1: 3:35

Let me give you an example here. Earlier last fall, I was really focused on growing my YouTube channel, and that meant that I was listening to all sorts of YouTube gurus talk about how to build your channel and build your following and my whole goal is to get my YouTube channel monetized. I spent all this time and listen to all these people talking about YouTube and it was like at that time I was trying to just get out one YouTube video a week. And they were talking about how if you do two videos a week, then it will potentially double your views and double your engagement and twice as many people will see your videos. And so then I spent all this time trying to kick out two YouTube videos a week, which is a lot of work because you know, there's like brainstorming and scripting and shooting and editing, and I do all of that myself. I don't have a YouTube assistant helping me out with my channel, and I would work really hard on a video and I would publish it and I would promote it and then, like 30 people would watch the video or 50 people would watch the video, which is great I mean, that's 50 people watching my video but I've had my channel for almost a decade and that doesn't match anything and I thought, okay, well, I could produce two videos a week that are both getting 50 to 60 views, but what if I were to maybe slow down my production quality. Only produce one video a week, but try to make it really, really good, then what would happen? Good, then what would happen? Because even if only 100 people saw that video, it would still be better than if I produced two videos that only 50 people watched. So the math was not mathing.

Speaker 1: 5:38

So I did this thing and two weeks ago I published a video. And I only published one video that week, and it was a video about Nalgene water bottles of all the silly things to do a video. And I only published one video that week, and it was a video about Nalgene water bottles of all the silly things to do a video about. I spent a lot of time scripting the video, researching, shooting video shooting, b-roll, so like supporting video footage. I spent a lot of time on the thumbnail, the description tags, all of the things on this channel, and I published that video and for the first 24 hours, nobody watched it. And then, all of a sudden, the video took off and a week later, over 7,000 people had watched the video and I had over 200 comments on the video, which was by far the biggest video that I've ever shot and ever published on my YouTube channel. This confirmed to me the importance of doing quality work, not quantity work, and I kind of I've been thinking about that video for the past couple of weeks and thinking about what went well with that video, also watching it and kind of being a feeling a little cringe because there's some things I don't like about the video. But it was all this grand experiment in doing a lot of research and putting a lot of time and effort into one video and then seeing what happens. I really enjoyed that process of just going and really focusing on one big thing that week and as I was traveling with my family and spending a lot of time outside walking through the desert, riding my bike through the desert in this beautiful Southern Utah landscape, it really confirmed to me the importance of quality not quantity. So I'm going to change a few things here at Hike, like a Woman, with regard to that concept.

Speaker 1: 7:45

So in the past I've been trying to produce a newsletter every single Monday. Every single Monday at noon Mountain Time, I've been kicking out a newsletter and, to be quite honest, I don't really enjoy the newsletter. I don't enjoy writing the newsletter. I feel like I'm interrupting people. I know my inboxes are insanely full and I don't want to be contributing to the inbox pollution that so many of us feel. But it's also important when you own a small business to talk about what you're doing, and the newsletter was by far the best way for me to talk about our group trips. So I thought, okay, how can I wrestle with this email thing? I don't want to send out a ton of emails, but I know it's an important part of my business. Last week I made the decision that I'm just going to send out an email newsletter once a month, the first day of every month. Then I can make it a really good newsletter instead of just kick out something random every single Monday. So you can expect to see a newsletter on the first of every month for the next I don't know three, four months. I like to really experiment with things. So that's what's going on Our YouTube channel new videos just going to drop once a week.

Speaker 1: 9:07

And then I was looking at our travel schedule and I have. We have group trips to Costa Rica in April, then Southern Utah in June, kilimanjaro in August, patagonia in October, and that's going to be five, five group trips this year. Wait, yeah, no, iceland. Costa Rica, utah, kilimanjaro yeah, kilimanjaro, patagonia five group trips. And I'm looking at my calendar between group trips and family activities and there's just not a lot of white space on my calendar. I decided I want to actually lead really, really good trips and I really want to spend a lot of time getting to know the women who are booking these group trips with me. I really want to spend a lot of time getting to know the women who are booking these group trips with me and I've decided that instead of leading four or five trips in 2026, we're just going to do three group trips and I'm going to kind of slow down that schedule and that's okay and I'm I'm comfortable with that decision. So just a little quick sneak peek about our upcoming group trips in 2026. I do have dates locked in. I have guiding companies interviewed and selected and hired and right now I'm just waiting on final pricing from these companies before I launch these group trips, final pricing from these companies before I launch these group trips. But in 2026, so a whole year away.

Speaker 1: 10:41

But you know we have to plan ahead here. So we're looking. June 3rd through the 12th, we are going to be doing the West Highland Trail in Scotland in August. August 23rd through the 29th we are going to be headed to Europe, to the Alps, to do the Tour de Mont Blanc and then in September probably September 20th through the 29th we'll be back on Kilimanjaro doing the seven day Machame route again. I think that that will wrap up the 2026 guiding season. So the next two years are pretty much planned out. So right now we have a few openings for our Kilimanjaro climb this August, august 20th through the 28th. We have a few spots opened up for our Patagonia trip in October, october 18th through the 25th, and then pretty soon you'll be able to book those trips to Scotland to tour Mont Blanc and Kilimanjaro. If you're feeling busier than you want to feel right now, I would encourage you to slow down a little bit and create some space in your life and then see what happens. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I will see you next week.