"Do the work YOU want to do"

Part 2 of Esther's Foster's adventure business journey: be ruthless about what you do (and don't!) want to do, and be true to your values.

Victoria Ash

and

Adventure Collective

Mar 24, 2023

Name: Esther Foster

Business: Esther Foster Climbing : climbing and mountain coaching, with a focus on skills progression, small ratios and bespoke days

Location: Keswick, Lake District

Key takeaways

Focus on the type of work you do (and don’t) want to do
Don’t let other people put you off
Build a support group
Be clear on your values
Get business advice

Introducing Esther

In part 1 of this story, we met Esther Foster, a coach, guide and instructor based in Keswick in the Lake District, whose passion has led her to pursuing a career in the adventure business, initially as a freelancer and then via her own company, Esther Foster Climbing.

“My business is means to an end”

When Esther set up her business ten years ago, she saw it as means to several ends: a way to get the kind of work she wanted to do, to work with the people she liked, freedom to work when she wanted and on projects that were important to her.

“When I left uni, I knew what I wanted to do: work in the outdoors and follow my passion for climbing. I knew that I didn’t want to work in an office, and I was also clear about the type of coaching and training I wanted to do, and that I didn’t want to do. For example, I didn’t want to be working on taster sessions in an outdoor centre in 20 years time!”

Starting out freelancing allowed Esther to really focus on identifying the kind of work that she found rewarding, and that she was best at. In essence, this meant mainly working with adults and specialising in climbing, plus being focussed on helping clients develop their skills and achieve progression, often through long-term coaching relationships.

“I had to make it happen”

While this focus has ultimately been key to helping Esther build a profitable business, at first it posed some challenges including the need to set up on her own.

“There aren’t many employers who are offering that kind of specialist work, and there aren’t that many places in the UK where you can be that focused either so that meant that I had to make it happen for myself.”

In the short term, her challenge was also self-confidence. “I was living in North Yorkshire with my husband, who was in the military, and that wasn’t the most obvious base for the kind of work I wanted to do. People could be quite negative about my location, which really put me off trying to find the work I wanted as I didn’t believe it could happen. I realise now that I could have made it happen faster if I’d been more confident but I just didn’t have much support around me, and didn’t realise what the potential was or how to go about things.”

When Esther and her husband moved to the Lakes, her business began to build thanks to a more ‘ready-made’ market and a supportive peer group. However, she’s keen to point out that “being in a honeypot area like the Lakes is obviously easier than other places for building an outdoor business, but it’s not essential to live somewhere like here: I don’t want to put other people in less mountainous areas off!”

Follow your values

As her business has developed, it’s allowed Esther to focus on some of the core values that matter to her – and this has brought new sources of business. In particular, supporting women’s development and, more recently, working with groups who haven’t traditionally been involved in the outdoors in the UK, such as Muslim women.

She says, “I have seen the value of climbing and mountaineering as therapy, as skill mastery, as simultaneously an empowering and humbling experience.”

Historically, women have been in a minority in the climbing world, both as climbers and coaches and, beyond gender, other factors have led to exclusion such as body shape. While attitudes are changing, Esther has been able to build a significant client base focused on coaching women: “women often like having a woman instructor – I think it puts many of us at ease”. In addition to the bespoke one-to-one coaching, she’s developed a range of regular and one-off courses specifically for women, and she’s also recently become a director of the Women’s Climbing Symposium.

As her business has grown, so has Esther’s awareness of the importance of relationships:

“Take away the people and the connections, and I’m pretty sure most of us wouldn’t feel quite as passionate about the sport. Without the people we climb with, the stories we share, the encouragement we get from others, the laughter, the shared experiences, the friendships, the mentors, the external validation, group psyche and appreciation when we succeed or get to the top, the learning from others, and the welcoming communities…. climbing wouldn’t be nearly so fulfilling and rewarding.”

Diversity matters

More recently, the Black Lives Matter movement caused Esther to think more about what she was doing to help diversity in her sport. Research and connections on social media led her to new groups that were springing up in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, such as The Wanderlust Women, a hiking and adventure group for Muslim women, and she’s worked with them to develop courses specifically designed to build confidence and skills in a supportive environment.

And, surprisingly perhaps, the Covid pandemic has also helped Esther build her business. “Time out really gave me time to focus on my positioning and what made me different, and to communicate this better on my website and by building up my social media profiles.” As a result she found her business came back much faster than she expected when restrictions were lifted, particularly for 1 to 1 sessions for adults or couples, meaning that she could largely give up the remaining freelance work that she had still been doing and focus on her own client base.

Advice to your younger self?

As someone who’s only in her early thirties, it’s not long to look back in this regard but if she had to give advice to someone starting out on their own business adventure, Esther points to a number of things:

1.       Get business advice early on to help fill your own skills gaps, whether that’s business planning, social media or setting up a newsletter. It’s also worth investing in streamlining your admin, whether that’s finances, online booking systems or banking.
2.       Realise your worth: pricing is, she says, very hard to do and it’s difficult to avoid the pressures of price competition. However, if you have faith in your skills and differentiation then value your time realistically.
3.       Build a support network. Esther points to how isolating working for yourself can be and says how valuable she finds it to share experience, learn from and mentor others. She’s very involved in women’s groups for her industry, such as Women’s Trad Fest and the Women’s Climbing Symposium, and says that’s given her a lot more confidence over the years.

Waving a magic wand

Looking to the future, Esther has to think long and hard about where she wants to be. In part this is obviously because she loves her work and has found her niche but also, she says, because she’s open to change and opportunities and you don’t always know where those are coming from.

In the mid-term, she’s pretty clear that while she wants to grow her revenues and create more stable income, particularly during the winter season, she isn’t planning to do this by building headcount. While she does employ freelancers, employing people full time doesn’t appeal to her at present. Instead she’s very focused on building her skills and her focused client base, which includes a lot of repeat customers, which she believes will allow her to increase rates where appropriate. She’s also looking at how she might change her ‘product mix’ to include more small group courses, and further streamline her admin to give her more time with clients.

Key business tips:

Build a mailing list: Esther has found that keeping in touch with previous clients by sending out a regular newsletter has made a big difference to repeat and new business
Get expert advice if you need it: for example Esther has had help with moving her bookings system online, and with developing her social media feeds and content
Price your time accurately: take into consideration not just the time spent with the clients, but also the time required for preparation
Use your social media connections to reach out to new groups and networks, keep your feeds up to date and post regularly
Get a mentor: someone more experienced in your industry who can help you challenge yourself and give you guidance

Coming soon: “Faith and savings”

How work comes in and advice for people starting out (Flying Gecko's Jenna Sanders part II)

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