Episode 77: The John Muir Trail, Leadership, and Running Toward Adventure with Alex Potts


What happens when you stop running away from the pressures of life and start running toward the life you actually want?

Alex Potts grew up in Sunnyvale, California, riding BMX bikes through the apricot orchards that would eventually become the heart of Silicon Valley. Raised by a single mom who taught elementary school and worked hard to keep their family afloat, Alex learned early lessons about money, service, resilience, and taking care of other people.

Those lessons followed him into a remarkable career.

Alex spent more than three decades helping build what became Loring Ward, a firm that helped pioneer the fee-based model used by independent financial advisors today. Along the way, he discovered that the most meaningful work wasn’t simply about accumulating assets. It was about helping people solve problems that actually mattered.

Then, while still in his 50s, Alex stepped away from the top job.

And that’s where another chapter of his story really began.

In this episode of On Adventure, Alex and I talk about business, family, friendship, endurance, and the pull of wild places. We explore why running became an outlet during one of the most stressful periods of his life, how the John Muir Trail helped reshape his relationship with adventure, and why some of his strongest friendships have been forged while doing difficult things outdoors.

We also get into a frightening day in the Grand Canyon when Alex—despite being in some of the best shape of his life—learned just how quickly an adventure can turn dangerous.

A mile and a half from the top, in extreme heat, his body started shutting down.

What helped turn things around?

A total stranger and a bag of beef jerky.

This conversation is ultimately about much more than hiking or business. It’s about service, wisdom, community, and getting busy living while you still have the opportunity.

In This Episode

We talk about:

  • From Silicon Valley to financial industry leadership — Alex’s upbringing in Sunnyvale, the influence of his parents, and his three-decade journey helping build Loring Ward.
  • Building a life around service — Why Alex believes great businesses, advisors, and leaders put helping people ahead of products, assets, or “wallet share.”
  • Running away vs. running toward — How running initially became an escape from the pressures of work and family before adventure evolved into something Alex intentionally pursued.
  • Adventure, friendship, and community — From the John Muir Trail and Mount Whitney to the Excellent Adventure group, Alex explains why difficult experiences shared with others create unusually strong friendships.
  • Knowing your limits—and having each other’s backs — What a dangerous Grand Canyon rim-to-rim hike taught Alex about preparation, humility, listening to his body, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.

Episode Timestamps

Episode Timestamps

00:00 – From Silicon Valley Roots to Loring Ward
Alex’s childhood in Sunnyvale, being raised by a single mom, and the unlikely path that led him into financial services and eventually to building Loring Ward.

08:00 – Building a Business Around Service, Not Sales
Why Alex rejected the traditional asset-gathering mentality and built a culture centered on genuinely helping advisors and their clients solve meaningful problems.

18:00 – Where the Drive to Help Others Comes From
Alex reflects on his mother, his father’s recovery from addiction, and how both shaped his belief in service, compassion, and taking care of people.

21:00 – The Day Running Changed His Life
Overwhelmed by a demanding career, young children, and little sleep, Alex started running—and discovered the value of exercise, solitude, and uninterrupted thinking.

24:00 – The John Muir Trail and Finding Sanctuary Outdoors
Backpacking through Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, encountering ancient forests, and discovering the peace and perspective that come from extended time in wild places.

31:00 – Running Away vs. Running Toward Adventure
How Alex’s relationship with the outdoors evolved from a coping mechanism and escape into an intentional pursuit of adventure, challenge, and joy.

33:00 – Why the Best Adventures Are Shared
From Mount Whitney to the Excellent Adventure group, Alex and Josh explore friendship, companionship, and why doing hard things together creates such powerful bonds.

41:00 – Knowing When to Push—and When to Stop
Why fitness isn’t enough in the backcountry, how experience builds wisdom, and the importance of checking your ego when conditions or your body tell you something isn’t right.

43:00 – Grand Canyon Survival, Beef Jerky & Trail Magic
A rim-to-rim Grand Canyon hike in 110-degree heat goes sideways, a stranger’s bag of beef jerky helps Alex recover, and the experience becomes a powerful lesson in humility and having each other’s backs.

A Few Takeaways

Adventure can change from escape to pursuit.
At one point, running and the outdoors gave Alex a way to cope with stress. Eventually, something shifted. Instead of running away from something, he began running toward experiences he genuinely wanted.

Fitness and wisdom aren’t the same thing.
Being capable of pushing harder doesn’t always mean you should. Experience teaches us to recognize the signals our bodies—and sometimes our lives—are sending.

The best adventures are often about the people beside you.
The summit matters. The trail matters. But years later, it’s often the people who struggled, laughed, helped, and celebrated alongside us that we remember most.

Service is a way of being.
Whether you’re helping a client navigate a family crisis, staying at the back of a hiking group to make sure everyone gets home, or opening a door for someone at the grocery store, the principle is the same: I’ve got your back.

Resources & References Mentioned

  • John Muir Trail — The roughly 200+ mile Sierra Nevada trail Alex has backpacked in sections

  • Yosemite National Park — One of Alex’s favorite places on the planet

  • Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) — Alex discusses encountering thru-hikers while on the JMT

  • Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park — Near Alex’s home in the Santa Cruz Mountains and home to magnificent old-growth redwoods

  • Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose — Alex’s recommended account of the Lewis and Clark expedition

  • Arthur Brooks — Referenced during the discussion of “deal friends” versus “real friends”

  • Dimensional Fund Advisors — An important part of Alex’s professional story and later his son’s career

Final Thought

One of the most memorable ideas in this conversation is also one of the simplest.

When you’re on a trail and someone is struggling, you help.

You don’t ask whether they’re part of your group. You don’t calculate what’s in it for you. You recognize that today it’s them—and tomorrow it could be you.

Alex has carried that philosophy from his childhood into business, from business onto the trail, and from the trail back into everyday life.

Maybe that’s part of what adventure is here to teach us.

Take care of the people around you. Know when to push and when to turn around. Find places where the voices go quiet. And don’t spend your whole life running away from something.

Find something worth running toward.

Keep the Adventure Going

If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone you’d want beside you on the trail.

Subscribe to On Adventure wherever you listen to podcasts, and check out The Money Trail Guide for practical ideas to help you plan for adventure, minimize “trail waste” along the way, and use your resources to move toward the life that matters most to you.

Because someday isn’t the goal.

The adventure is happening now.

Check out this episode!

On Adventure: Lessons from the Edge

Two recent conversations from the On Adventure Podcast – and what they have to say about the lives the rest of us are building.

Every so often we like to step back from the individual episodes and notice the thread running between them. The two most recent conversations on the On Adventure Podcast came from very different places – a bike-shop classroom on the California coast and a rotating string of mountain towns out West – and yet they landed in almost exactly the same spot. Both are about choosing the harder, fuller life on purpose, rather than drifting toward comfort or putting it off for some vague day down the road.

That turns out to be a financial question as much as an adventuring one. So here are the two, and a bit of what stayed with us.

Episode 75: Hard Things Are Worth Doing with Justin Smith

Justin Smith teaches high school in Santa Cruz, where his classroom is a working bike shop – teenagers learning to fix bikes, build résumés, and solve real problems with their own hands. On his own time, he’s an ultra-endurance athlete who has ridden the 2,700-mile Tour Divide from Banff to the Mexican border in sixteen straight days, raced the Fiji Eco-Challenge, and lined up at the Ironman World Championships in Kona.

What we appreciated most was how ordinary he made all of it sound. Justin talks about the “pain cave” – the dark hours before sunrise on day two of a race, when the body starts asking what exactly you’re doing out here – not as something to conquer but as a room you learn to redecorate and settle into. Comfort, he says, is what gets sold to us. Hard things are what actually move the needle. The line he repeats to his students and his daughter has stuck with us: a ship is safe in its harbor, but that is not what ships were built for.

Listen to Episode 75 →

Episode 76: Do It While You Can with Stefan Gruber

Stefan Gruber grew up in Raleigh, studied engineering at Western Carolina, and today works a remote job for a technology company he’s been with for about six years. But the more interesting thing about Stefan is what the remote job makes possible. Where a lot of us build our lives around our work, Stefan has quietly done the reverse – he’s built his work around the life he actually wants to live.

For the last couple of years, that life has been a moving target, in the best sense. When his wife Sarah began travel nursing, the two of them packed a car and a trailer and started following her contracts – Bozeman, where they later got married in Glacier; Idaho; and now Colorado Springs, in the shadow of the Garden of the Gods. Almost everywhere they land, there’s climbing within twenty minutes of the front door. Stefan describes climbing the way Josh describes the trail: one of the rare activities where you’re so locked into the next move that everything else – work, stress, the noise – simply melts away. He’s an unusually good photographer, too, a habit that started when he found an old camera lens in his parents’ attic and went looking for the camera to match it.

He was refreshingly honest about the cost. Living on the move means no steady circle of friends – the hardest part, he admitted, of the whole adventure. But when Josh asked him to boil it all down to one lesson, Stefan didn’t hesitate: get out and do these things while you can. We only live once, we’re a little older every day, and the experiences, he said, end up meaning more than any car or house ever could.

That’s a sentence we think about a lot on the financial side of the desk. The only real value of money is in its use – spending it on what’s genuinely of value to you, whatever your version of that is. It’s easy to spend a whole career building bigger buckets for a someday that keeps receding, only to arrive less healthy, less able, or not at all. Stefan’s life is a working argument for the alternative: decide what matters, and go live some of it now.

Listen to Episode 76 →

What We Took From Both

Put the two side by side and the lesson from the edge is really one lesson. The worthwhile life rarely happens by default. It gets chosen – on purpose, against the pull of comfort, and without waiting for permission or for the perfect moment that never quite arrives.

That’s the heart of how we think about planning, too. A good plan isn’t about the number for its own sake. It’s about being able to do the hard, meaningful things on purpose, to stay present through the long stretches, and to spend a life – not just save for one. We’re grateful to guides like Justin and Stefan for the reminder.

If either of these resonate, they’re worth a full listen. And if you’d like to talk through what you want your own version of “do it while you can” to look like, we’re here and happy to help.

Ridgeline Wealth Advisors

Episode 76: Summit Fever and Close Calls – Knowing When to Turn Back in the Mountains with Stefan Gruber


 

What happens when you build your work around the life you want to live?

In this episode of On Adventure, Josh talks with Stefan Gruber, a climber, photographer, traveler, and customer success professional at Levitate. Stefan shares how remote work and his wife Sarah’s career as a travel nurse have helped them create a life centered on movement, creativity, and outdoor adventure.

They discuss climbing, film photography, international travel, dangerous moments in the mountains, and the judgment required to turn around when conditions are not right. At the heart of the conversation is a simple message: meaningful experiences should not always be postponed.

In This Episode

  • Building a mobile life around remote work and travel nursing

  • Why climbing creates focus, presence, and flow

  • Traveling through the American West, Poland, and Nepal

  • The appeal of film photography and printed images

  • Balancing documentation with being present

  • Avalanche terrain, exposed climbing, and failed summit attempts

  • Summit fever, risk assessment, and the limits of luck

  • Future goals, including the Grand Teton and Colorado fourteeners

  • Why Stefan believes in doing things while you still can

Episode Chapters

00:00 – Colorado Springs and life on the move
Josh and Stefan discuss Colorado Springs, choosing temporary homes, and the possibility of eventually buying land in Colorado or Montana.

11:00 – Stefan’s career and lifestyle
Stefan explains how he moved from a long corporate commute into remote work and began traveling with Sarah during her nursing assignments.

17:30 – Climbing, travel, and flow
Stefan reflects on his Polish heritage, his early interest in travel, and the sense of complete focus he finds while climbing.

20:00 – Designing work around life
The conversation explores the freedom and tradeoffs of building a career that supports travel, adventure, and flexibility.

24:00 – Poland and international travel
Stefan describes Poland’s cities, mountains, coastline, affordability, and cultural growth, along with other memorable travel experiences.

36:30 – Photography and creative ambitions
Stefan explains how photography connects his travels and outdoor life. He also shares ideas for creating a travel channel with Sarah.

41:00 – Film, digital photography, and presence
They discuss the visual character of film, the value of printed photographs, and the tension between capturing an experience and fully living it.

51:00 – Risk, fear, and turning around
Stefan recounts dangerous moments involving avalanche terrain, exposed climbing, wildfire smoke, and two unsuccessful attempts on the Grand Teton.

57:00 – Summit fever and the limits of luck
The conversation turns to humility, decision-making, and why surviving a poor choice does not make it a good one.

1:04:00 – Survival psychology and photography advice
Stefan recommends Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales and encourages new photographers to begin with whatever camera they can access.

1:11:00 – Favorite mountains and future goals
Stefan talks about the Tetons, Annapurna Base Camp, Denali, Everest, and his goals for the rest of 2026.

1:18:00 – Do it while you can
Stefan closes with his belief that health, time, and opportunity are uncertain, so meaningful goals should not always be saved for later.

Memorable Quotes

“Sometimes those limits find you.”

“There’s a certain store of luck, and it will run out eventually.”

“If it doesn’t happen today, it can happen another day.”

“Do it while you can.”

Key Takeaways

Build work around what matters.
Flexible work can create more room for travel, relationships, creativity, and meaningful experiences.

Turning around is not failure.
Good judgment sometimes means abandoning a climb or summit and returning under better conditions.

Luck is not a strategy.
A successful outcome does not automatically mean the decision behind it was wise.

Give photographs a life beyond the screen.
Printing images or shooting film can make photography feel more intentional and lasting.

Do not save everything for someday.
Adventure can be a major expedition or a small personal goal. The important step is beginning while the opportunity still exists.

Resources Mentioned

  • Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

  • Stefan’s Instagram page

About Stefan Gruber

Stefan Gruber is a climber, traveler, and photographer who works remotely for Levitate. He and his wife Sarah travel throughout the United States for her nursing assignments while pursuing hiking, climbing, skiing, photography, and international travel.

Keep Exploring

Subscribe to On Adventure in your podcast app and on YouTube for more conversations with people building meaningful lives through exploration, challenge, and curiosity.

Share this episode with someone who has been saving an important goal for “someday.”

Check out this episode!

Episode 75: Hard Things Are Worth Doing with Justin Smith


Episode Description
What happens in the dark hours before sunrise on day two, when your body starts asking
what exactly you are doing out here?
 
Justin Smith teaches high school in Santa Cruz, California, where his classroom is a working 
bike shop. By day he runs a Career Tech Ed program through Project Bike Tech, teaching
teenagers to fix bikes, build resumes, and solve real problems with their own hands. On his own
time, he is an ultra-endurance athlete who has finished the 2,700-mile Tour Divide from Banff,
Canada to the Mexico border in 16 days straight, raced the Fiji Eco-Challenge with Team Curl,
competed at the Ironman World Championships in Kona, and returned three times to a 60-hour
swimrun across the Swedish archipelago.
 
In this conversation, Justin takes Josh inside the pain cave and the mental game of multi-day 
racing: the dark hours before sunrise on day two, the difference between the front country and
the back country, and why the body only truly comes alive on the second night. He explains how
a psychology degree and Outward Bound canoe trips led to a life built around adventure, why he
and his wife once lived in a tiny house they built on television, and how putting himself in hard
situations makes him a better dad, husband, and teacher.
 
They also talk about the people. From trail angels on the Pacific Crest Trail to a septic-truck 
driver in Southern California, Justin keeps returning to the connections that outlast the miles.
Most of all, this is a story about a simple idea he repeats to his students and his daughter: a ship
is safe in its harbor, but that is not what ships were built for, and the more you do hard things,
the more you realize hard things are worth doing.
 
Episode Highlights
• 00:00 Meet Justin Smith: high school teacher by day, ultra-endurance adventurer on
his own time
• 02:00 The bike shop classroom and the Project Bike Tech program in Santa Cruz
• 08:00 Building a tiny house on the TV show Tiny House Nation
• 14:00 The permission slip to not conform, and choosing the hard path on purpose
• 16:00 Comfort is what gets sold to us, but hard things are what move the needle
• 19:00 Meeting Roy Malone at the 2019 Fiji Eco-Challenge with Team Curl
• 20:00 The One Water swimrun across the Swedish archipelago, attempted three times
• 26:00 The Stagecoach 400 and sleeping on McDonald’s cardboard with no sleeping bag
• 31:00 Courtney Dauwalter’s pain cave, and learning to redecorate it instead of fighting it
• 38:00 Finishing the 2,700-mile Tour Divide in 16 days, from Banff to the Mexico border
• 43:00 The Pacific Crest Trail, meeting his wife, and hiking through grief in 2009
• 55:00 Orienteering, gut instinct, and trusting intuition when the map runs out
• 01:04:00 A ship is safe in its harbor, but that is not what ships are built for
• 01:12:00 The mantra: if you can’t get out of it, get into it, and find a way

About Justin Smith

Justin Smith is a high school Career Tech Ed teacher in Santa Cruz, California, where he leads a
bike shop program through Project Bike Tech, and a lifelong endurance athlete and adventurer.
A former NCAA swimmer, he has finished the Tour Divide, raced the Fiji Eco-Challenge and
multiple expedition-style adventure races, competed at the Ironman World Championships in
Kona, and thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. He lives in Santa Cruz with his wife and daughter,
with whom he shares most of his adventures.

Connect with Justin Smith
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/smilingjustin
• Inspire Out: www.instagram.com/inspireout/

Connect with the On Adventure Podcast
Hosted by Josh Self, financial advisor and everyday explorer.
• Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major streaming platforms
• Follow on Instagram for short-form clips and behind-the-scenes content
• Connect on Facebook: On Adventure Podcast with Josh Self
• Connect on LinkedIn: Josh Self
• If this episode resonated with you, leave a review and share it with someone who needs
to hear it.

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On Adventure: What We Carry

Lessons from Gil Jackson and Aaron Saft

Every long walk is an exercise in deciding what matters enough to carry. Ounces add up over thousands of miles, and eventually you strip down to what is essential. In our two most recent On Adventure episodes, I sat down with a Cherokee language educator and an ultrarunning coach whose lives revolve around a version of that same question: out of everything you could hold onto, what is worth the weight?

Gil: Walking Home

Gil Jackson grew up in the Snowbird community of western North Carolina in the 1950s – no television, no car, one light bulb per room, and a tight-knit Cherokee community where everyone showed up when a neighbor needed help. When he left for college in Georgia, his mother laughed and said, “You’ll be back.” He was gone almost 40 years, then built a house 200 yards upstream from where he was born and poured himself into the work that now defines his days: keeping the Cherokee language alive.

Only about 130 fluent speakers remain, and they are losing roughly two and a half a month. Gil calls it the eleventh hour. He thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2014 to experience some portion of what his ancestors endured on the Trail of Tears, and conceded the biggest difference: he got to come home. But what moved me most is what Gil does off the trail. He spends his days locating sacred Cherokee sites in the mountains and taking younger people to them, so the stories and routes are not lost. The elders who know where these places are can no longer reach them. The young people who can make the climb do not know they exist. Gil is the bridge.

Aaron: What Do You Need?

Aaron Saft has finished Hardrock, UTMB, Leadville, Western States, and the Bigfoot 200. But the moment from our conversation that will stay with me had nothing to do with a finish line. It was his description of what happens when you come across another runner sitting on a rock in the middle of a 100-miler. You do not ask, “How are you?” You can see how they are. You ask, “What do you need?” And then you give whatever you have. Aaron said it is not a decision people make in the moment. It is who the sport turns you into.

He pins an upside-down photo of his family to his quad so that when he looks down at mile 80, he sees his wife and kids looking back at him. His son now runs for the University of Portland. His daughter, a high school freshman, just competed at the state championships. When other parents ask how he got his kids into running, his answer is simple: he did not. He just showed them what was possible. He even rebranded his coaching business – from “MR Running Pains” to “Running is Life” – because the words we wrap around our work shape the experience. Training is 99 percent process and 1 percent celebration. If you cannot find joy in the process, you are missing the whole thing.

The Same Trail

Gil is preserving a language and the sacred geography of his people. Aaron is building runners who understand not just what to do but why. Both told me the point was never the miles. The miles were just the means of discovering what mattered enough to hold onto. Not every adventure happens on a trail. Some happen when you ask someone what they need and mean it, or when you pass along something that would disappear if you kept it to yourself.

Stay safe and stay on adventure.

— Josh

You can listen to the full conversations with Gil Jackson and Aaron Saft on the On Adventure podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 74: Carrying a Language Home with Gil Jackson


Episode 74: Carrying a Language Home with Gil Jackson

Episode Description

What does it mean to be so connected to a place that even your name carries it?
Gil Jackson, known by the Cherokee name Dohi, meaning outside or outdoors, was born in
Robbinsville, North Carolina in 1951 and today lives on 30 acres just 200 yards from the spot
where he came into the world. He is a fluent Cherokee speaker, one of roughly 130 left, an elder
of the Snowbird community, and an educator who has taught at Stanford, UNC Asheville, and
Duke. In 2014, he thru-hiked all 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail, walking in part to honor
his ancestors on the Trail of Tears.

In this conversation, Gil takes Josh inside a tight-knit upbringing built on Gadugi, the Cherokee
construct of community, where neighbors came together to cut wood, harvest crops, and care for
anyone in need. He explains why family kept him rooted in Western North Carolina even when
opportunity called him elsewhere, how a community school preserved the language while the
wider world pushed assimilation, and why Cherokee is considered one of the ten hardest
languages in the world.

They also talk about why Gil keeps walking. From a 48-mile day in the Great Smoky Mountains
to the ladder-strewn West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, his adventures are less about
conquering anything and more about seeing the creator’s creation. Most of all, this is a story
about a race against time: preserving a language, the knowledge of medicinal plants, and the
sacred sites that risk being lost before the next generation can carry them forward.

Episode Highlights
• 00:00 A name that means outdoors, and a home built 200 yards from where he was
born

• 02:00 The Cherokee tradition of burying the umbilical cord to connect a child to the
land
• 05:00 Why family kept him rooted in Western North Carolina despite chances to leave
• 06:00 Growing up in 1950s Snowbird: one gravel road, one light bulb per room, no TV
• 08:00 Gadugi explained: the community coming together to help in times of need
• 13:00 An aunt’s middle-class home, new clothes, and the family that raised him
• 21:00 Selling moss for 25 cents a pound to buy a guitar he still owns
• 22:00 A community school that taught English while protecting the Cherokee language
• 24:00 Only about 130 fluent speakers left, and losing two and a half each month
• 27:00 What makes Cherokee one of the ten hardest languages in the world
• 29:00 Degrees in education, administration, and planning, and leading a language
immersion school
• 33:00 How Cherokee end-of-life traditions have changed over a lifetime
• 35:00 Finding the therapeutic in streams, trees, and birdsong
• 39:00 Why he thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2014 to honor the Trail of Tears
• 43:00 The brutal West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, with 100 ladders and 10 hours
for six miles
• 45:00 A tense night cooking near foraging bears in Virginia
• 46:00 A trail family of five speaking four languages, all wanting to learn Cherokee
• 53:00 Losing the knowledge of edible and medicinal plants, and the sacred sites that
hold the stories
• 57:00 Rapid-fire: Gvgeyu (I love you), favorite sunrises, beloved teachers, and the White
Mountains

About Gil Jackson
Gil Jackson (Dohi) is a fluent Cherokee speaker, elder of the Snowbird community in
Robbinsville, North Carolina, and a lifelong educator who has taught at Stanford, UNC
Asheville, and Duke and served as principal of a Cherokee language immersion school. He
remains committed to preserving the Cherokee language, traditional plant knowledge, and the
region’s sacred sites, and is an avid long-distance hiker who thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in
2014.

Connect with the On Adventure Podcast
Hosted by Josh Self, financial advisor and everyday explorer.
• Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major streaming platforms
• Follow on Instagram for short-form clips and behind-the-scenes content

• Connect on Facebook: On Adventure Podcast with Josh Self
• Connect on LinkedIn: Josh Self
• If this episode resonated with you, leave a review and share it with someone who needs
to hear it

Check out this episode!

Episode 73: Running is Life with Aaron Saft


ON ADVENTURE PODCAST |  EPISODE 73

Episode 73: Running is Life with Aaron Saft

As a species, we only do things if there is truly a reward on the other side. So when the reward is pain, struggle, suffering, and danger, what exactly keeps driving us back out the door?

Aaron Saft has spent his life chasing that answer. A five-time ACC champion at NC State whose teams finished third at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, he traded the track for the trail, ran his first 100-miler in 2016, and has since become one of the most experienced ultrarunners in the Southeast. Today he coaches roughly 75 athletes full-time through his Running Is Life platform and podcast, a business he deliberately renamed from “MR Running Pains” because he believes running, done right, should bring as much joy as it does suffering.

His résumé reads like a bucket list for the sport: the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning, the Bigfoot 200, Hardrock, Leadville, UTMB, and the Tor des Géants in the Italian Alps, where a fall, a head injury, and a watchful medic ended his race. He has finished a 100-miler while spiking a 100-degree fever, outrun a mother grizzly and her cubs in Canada, and learned the hard way when to push and when to stop. But ask Aaron why he does it and he won’t point to a trophy. He’ll point to the upside-down photo of his family pinned to his quad, the one he looks down at in the darkest miles to remember who he is suffering for.

In this conversation, Josh and Aaron trace the many forms the “why” can take. They dig into presence, learning to run a hundred miles one mile at a time, and the moment an empty drop bag at Leadville taught Aaron everything he needed to know about the generosity of the trail community. They talk about the one question you never ask an ultrarunner, the evolution from chasing a place to simply chasing the finish line, why legacy is something children catch rather than something we teach, and how an abundance mindset shaped the coaching practice he built from the ground up. It is a conversation for every everyday explorer about doing the hard things that make life fuller, right now, not someday.

Episode Highlights

•     06:00  The Terry Foxworth connection and the heart of On Adventure: the reward beneath the suffering

•     15:00  Running Is Life: why words matter and reframing the sport away from pain

•     19:00  From reluctant soccer goalie to cross country, and the high school coach who changed his life

•     24:00  The NC State years: five ACC titles, redshirting, and racing the steeplechase

•     28:00  Virginia, mentor Ben Thomas, the run shop, and the move into trail running

•     33:00  First 50K to first 100: the long adventure runs that planted the seed

•     37:00  What 100 and 200 miles teach you that a marathon never will: presence, mile by mile

•     38:00  Finishing the Grand Slam and the Wasatch 100 with a 100-degree fever

•     44:00  When to keep going and when to stop: the Tor des Géants head injury and a fevered DNF on Mount Mitchell

•     52:00  Intrinsic motivation, the family photo on the quad, and the “debt” a race director taught him about

•     55:00  The empty drop bag at Leadville and the generosity of the trail community

•     59:00  “What do you need?” The only question you ask an ultrarunner

•     01:01:00  Adventure versus performance, “level 49,” and racing for the finish line instead of the place

•     01:08:00  Legacy as something caught, not taught, and raising two runners of his own

•     01:13:00  From brick-and-mortar to online coaching: 75 athletes, an abundance mindset, and a teaching heart

•     01:25:00  Rapid fire: the grizzly bear, the Altra Lone Peak 9+, best and worst races, and five 100-milers in one summer

Resources and Mentions from This Episode

Here are the people, places, and resources Aaron mentioned in this episode:

•     Running Is Life, Aaron’s coaching practice and podcast

•     Training for the Uphill Athlete, the team’s recent book study and a foundational training manual

•     Races referenced: Grindstone 100, Mountain Masochist 50, Hellgate 100K, Western States, Leadville 100, Wasatch 100, Hardrock 100, UTMB, the Bigfoot 200, the Tor des Géants, the Cocodona 250, and the Ouray 100

•     Gear note: the Altra Lone Peak 9+ with the Vibram outsole

Free for Listeners: The Money Trail Guide

Josh’s free resource for everyday explorers is packed with practical insights on planning for any adventure, big or small, minimizing trail waste along the way (yes, that means taxes), and living with confidence toward whatever is most meaningful to you. It also includes key takeaways from recent On Adventure guests to help inspire your next steps.

Grab your copy at ridgelinewealthadvisors.com.

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Hosted by Josh Self, financial advisor and everyday explorer.

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Base Camp Thinking: What Mountaineers Know About Volatile Conditions

There’s a sentence Ed Viesturs likes to repeat, and we’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”

Viesturs is one of the most accomplished high-altitude mountaineers in history – one of a handful of climbers to summit all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen. He’s said he didn’t make it home that many times by being brave at the wrong moments. He made it home by being disciplined at the right ones.

Markets aren’t mountains. But the principles people use to come home alive from volatile conditions translate surprisingly well to financial life planning. And in a stretch like this one – energy shocks, persistent inflation, consumer confidence at all-time lows – we keep returning to a few of those principles.

Base camp

No one summits straight from the road. The first thing you do is build a base camp – a stable, well-supplied position you can return to when conditions deteriorate. You sleep there. You eat there. You wait out storms there.

In a financial life, base camp is the cash reserve. It isn’t where you live – it’s what you fall back on when the weather turns. And the function it serves isn’t really about the dollar amount. It’s about giving you the freedom not to make decisions out of panic.

Households with an honest base camp don’t necessarily make different long-term decisions than households without one. But the experience of difficult conditions is fundamentally different. One is decision-making from a position of strength. The other is decision-making from a position of fear.

Acclimatize before you climb

Altitude doesn’t care how strong you are at sea level. The body has to be allowed to adapt to thinner air, in stages.

Building a financial life has a similar rhythm. Big decisions – a new house, a business move, an early retirement, a significant inheritance – work best when there’s time to acclimatize. To live with the implications. To stress-test how they feel. To see what assumptions hold and which don’t.

Most of the financial regrets we hear about aren’t bad ideas. They’re good ideas executed too quickly.

Pre-set turnaround thresholds

Climbers set turnaround times before they start the summit push. If you haven’t reached the summit by, say, 2 p.m., you turn around. Period. The decision is made in advance – in calm conditions, with clear thinking – precisely because at altitude, in bad weather, under pressure, the mind isn’t reliable.

A financial plan with pre-set thresholds works the same way. Rebalancing triggers. Cash buffer minimums. Withdrawal rate guardrails. Spending floors during retirement transitions. These aren’t constraints – they’re decisions made when your head was clear, so you don’t have to make them when your head isn’t.

The team you bring

No one solos K2 by accident. Every expedition has a team – sherpas, climbers with complementary skills, an extended network at lower altitudes. The team is part of the equipment.

In a financial life, the team is the people you’ve intentionally chosen to walk alongside you – the spouse you talk through decisions with, the CPA, the estate attorney, the advisor, the family members you trust. The point isn’t to outsource judgment. It’s to have other clear minds in the room when yours is tired.

One more thing

The mountains have a way of revealing what was already true. Volatile financial conditions do the same.

If your plan is built well, hard stretches are uncomfortable but not catastrophic. If it isn’t, hard stretches reveal what was missing – and they tend to do it at the worst possible moment.

We’d rather have those conversations now, in calm air, than at the top of the ridge.

Episode 72: Risk in Every Form with Greg Winchester


ON ADVENTURE PODCAST |  EPISODE 72

Episode 72: Risk in Every Form with Greg Winchester

  

Episode Description

What does it take to keep saying yes to risk, in the boardroom, on the trail, and across all seven continents, for forty years and counting?

Greg Winchester calls himself an armchair explorer, but the title sells him short. Over a 40-plus-year career in commercial real estate, he has worked through the savings and loan crisis, the 2008 financial crisis, and COVID, first as a banker, then as a co-owner, and today as an investor through his family office, Summit Investors. In 2003, he and two partners bought their company from its founders in a management buyout, personally guaranteeing the entire debt with 300 employees and no safety net. As Greg puts it, it was like walking to the end of the diving board and jumping, hoping there was water below.

A lifelong Boy Scout who fell in love with the outdoors in the Roan Highlands of North Carolina, Greg went on to serve on the board of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and to build a life of generosity that reaches all seven continents, inspired by the book Seven Summits. From an orphanage in Bolivia to a pastors’ training center in Uganda, a nearly thousand-year-old cathedral in Winchester, England, and Sir Ernest Shackleton’s grave on South Georgia Island near Antarctica, he and his wife set out to support smaller, lesser-known nonprofits and build real relationships, not just write checks.

In this conversation, Josh and Greg trace the many forms risk can take. They dig into why leverage is a two-edged sword, how diversification and dry powder let you run into the fire when others are running out, why your gut becomes a kind of superpower after twenty years in any arena, and how setting goals every year since his twenties shaped a life of purpose. Greg also shares the two questions a pair of mentors asked him in his mid-fifties, what is a noble cause you can get involved with, and what do you actually want to do, and why finishing well may be the greatest adventure of all.

Episode Highlights

         00:00  An armchair explorer who spent forty years navigating real estate’s biggest crises

         03:00  Stumbling into commercial real estate from a bank management trainee program

         06:00  The 2003 management buyout: 300 employees and everything personally guaranteed

         12:00  Jumping off the high dive and hoping there is water below

         14:00  A lucky break, a termination fee, and the real mix of hard work and luck

         17:00  Three things that get people in trouble: cycles, capital structure, and diversification

         20:00  Running into the fire in 2008 and why leverage is a two-edged sword

         23:00  The gut instinct you earn after twenty years in any arena

         25:00  Seven Summits and a vision to serve nonprofits on all seven continents

         29:00  Winchester Cathedral, a 950-year-old Bible, and Shackleton’s grave near Antarctica

         38:00  What rises to the top: relationships, faith, family, and friends

         40:00  A Boy Scout in the Roan Highlands and a lifelong love of the trail

         46:00  Moving toward something, not away, and setting goals every year since his twenties

         50:00  Finishing well and the two questions that reshaped Greg’s second act

Causes and Organizations Greg Supports

Here are the people and organizations Greg mentioned in this episode:

•    Summit Investors, his family office investing in real estate across the Sun Belt

•    Auburn University Master of Real Estate Development program, where he serves as an adjunct and industry connector

•    The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, where he served on the board

•    The South Georgia Heritage Trust, stewards of the historic church and museum on South Georgia Island

•    The National Christian Foundation, which helped guide his international giving

Free for Listeners: The Money Trail Guide

Josh’s free resource for everyday explorers is packed with practical insights on planning for any adventure, big or small, minimizing trail waste along the way (yes, that means taxes), and living with confidence toward whatever is most meaningful to you. It also includes key takeaways from recent On Adventure guests to help inspire your next steps.

Grab your copy at ridgelinewealthadvisors.com.

Connect with the On Adventure Podcast

Hosted by Josh Self, financial advisor and everyday explorer.

•    Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major streaming platforms

•    Follow on Instagram for short-form clips and behind-the-scenes content

•    Connect on Facebook: On Adventure Podcast with Josh Self

•    Connect on LinkedIn: Josh Self

•    If this episode resonated with you, leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it

Check out this episode!

Episode 71: Solo Female Travel, Real Risk, and the Belonging We All Crave with Amanda Black


ON ADVENTURE PODCAST | EPISODE 71

Episode 71: Solo Female Travel, Real Risk, and the Belonging We All Crave with Amanda Black

          

Episode Description

What does it actually take to step on a plane alone, head somewhere most people would call risky, and come home a different woman?

Amanda Black is the founder of the Solo Female Traveler Network, a community of more than half a million women that started as a small Facebook group during her expat years in Australia. Ten years and roughly thirty tours a year later, she leads women into places the average traveler tends to avoid: Egypt, Morocco, India, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and beyond. Bali was the first trip. Seventeen women signed up. Nine of them ended up with the company logo tattooed by the end of it.

We talk about why she leans into destinations perceived as less safe, what real risk actually looks like versus the version we imagine, and why she pushes back on the idea that travel is simply safe or unsafe. Risk, she argues, is a spectrum and a muscle, and most women have a lot more capacity to build it than they have been told.

We also get into the quieter side of all this. The cobblestone cafe in Sighișoara, Romania, where women who had known each other only a few days started telling the truth about how lonely life back home really feels. The Golden Eagle Festival in Mongolia, where she felt like she had walked into a movie set with no electricity. The unexpected pattern she keeps noticing across every trip, every country, every group: people are not really upset about the hotel room. They want to belong.

Amanda also shares why she launched Kindred Community, a smaller, slower offering built around connection retreats in Southern California, and what almost a decade of leading women into the wild has taught her about courage, capability, and the kind of friendships that get a logo tattooed on someone’s wrist.

Episode Highlights

00:00  Welcoming Amanda Black, founder of the Solo Female Traveler Network

01:00  Building a community of 500,000+ women and running tours in 25 countries

03:00  Why she leans into destinations perceived as less safe: Egypt, Morocco, India, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan

05:00  How strangers become a travel family inside the first 48 hours of a trip

08:00  From a Facebook group in Australia to a first Bali trip where 9 of 17 women got the company logo tattooed

12:00  Talking honestly with women about safety, fear, and the gray areas of real risk

15:00  Risk on a spectrum: why “safe or unsafe” is the wrong question, and how to build the muscle over time

17:00  Mongolia and the Golden Eagle Festival: stepping into a place that felt like going back in time

20:00  What solo travel reveals about how strong and capable women really are

22:00  The hidden business lesson behind a decade of tours: everybody just wants to belong

24:00  A cobblestone cafe in Sighișoara, Romania, and the loneliness that surfaces when women finally feel safe to share

27:00  Kindred Community and the next chapter: building belonging closer to home

Connect with Amanda Black

Bonus for Listeners (Free Travel Quiz):

https://thesolofemaletravelernetwork.com/where-should-i-travel-next-quiz/

The Solo Female Traveler Network

Website: thesolofemaletravelernetwork.com

Instagram: @solofemaletravel

TikTok: @sofetravel

YouTube: @sofetravel

Amanda’s TEDx Talk

Shared Firsts: Redesigning how we find belonging

youtube.com/watch?v=xSaVJH2b5H0

Amanda’s Website

meetamandablack.com

Kindred Community

Website: kindredcommunity.co

Instagram: @kindred.sd

Connect with the On Adventure Podcast

Hosted by Josh Self, financial advisor and everyday explorer.

Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major streaming platforms

Follow on Instagram for short-form clips and behind-the-scenes content

Connect on Facebook: On Adventure Podcast with Josh Self

Connect on LinkedIn: Josh Self

If this episode resonated with you, leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Check out this episode!