How to take your love for adventure and make it your livelihood…by accident!
Kate Capelli is now a bona fide digital nomad and is helping other nomads and entrepreneurs find and succeed in their adventure. Before this, she went from London Met police officer to running a fast-growing adventure company – all because she wanted someone to go hiking with!
At NOMADS.insure, we’re not just brokers – we’re adventurers and digital nomads ourselves, traveling the world and living this lifestyle alongside the people we serve. As we explore new places and dive into global communities, we keep meeting incredible individuals with stories that deserve to be shared.
That’s why we’re launching this interview series: to spotlight the remote workers, founders, creatives, and explorers we meet on our own journey – people who’ve turned their love for freedom and adventure into a way of life. We’re kicking things off with Kate’s story that perfectly captures this spirit.
So, Kate, you wanted to start an adventure company. How did it start?
It was never, ever intended to be a business. I never wanted to be a business owner – very much happy being an employee – tell me what to do, I’ll just get on with it. Before I started Adventuress In The Wild, I traveled and worked around the world for 6 years, from 2014 until 2020, which was when I headed back home to the UK – through need rather than desire.
Before that, I was a Met police officer patrolling the streets of London.
And that’s when you decided running a business was for you?
No, not yet! I moved to a new town when I headed back and jumped on a few Facebook groups – which is what I did when travelling around the world – asking if any other women wanted to go hiking or climbing.
A million women responded, so I decided it’s easier just to start a new group and put up a post if I was doing anything at the weekend. The first time one person turned up, the second 3, and before long I had a really solid group of mates. We’d hang out or hike and climb all the time. It grew to a few hundred members quite quickly.
So, this is starting to sound like the embers of a business…
I had to leave and move back to London for family reasons, so thought I’d give it a go there too. I named the group something tacky like Adventuress Tribe and loads of women joined – all just waiting for me to post.
So I started posting hiking and some climbs around London. One of them was called Bouldering and Beer, so we’d go and climb and then drink! At the time, the MeetUp platform was a really good way of organically growing in London, so it did.
I met my now partner then, in 2021, and she said to me “why on earth are you doing this for free, you should be monetising it!” I’d genuinely never considered it, but after we realised how much others were making doing similar things, I thought, “why not…I’ve nothing to lose”. So I posted a hike and it sold out within 10 minutes.
So this all happened quite quickly, it seems. Did you expand out of hiking and climbing?
Women were happy to pay for the hikes and climbs. They just wanted a way to get out and about and meet other women. Fairly soon it started to get some interest from big adventure suppliers who saw the opportunity from my big following and engaged audience. I’d help promote some of their events – and host some of them – but decided that if they can hold weekend and overseas events, then so could I.
That’s quite a jump from a weekend hike to overseas trips!
Yes, that is when I had to get into the qualifications and certificates required to operate as a tour operator. The weekend adventures away would sell out in less than an hour, and the same happened with overseas trips. They’d sell out really quickly.
That’s how it grew into a women’s adventure company, at a time when no one else was really doing it. It was really niche for the time.
There’s obviously some risk attached to taking people overseas. Any close calls?
This was one of the things that was the biggest mind-bender for me. There’s a lot of anxiety attached with the level of activity involved in these trips – you’re taking people out into the mountains, taking people climbing, there’s so many things that can go wrong. There are so many moving parts involved with the adventure business, but luckily nothing serious really went wrong on any of my trips.
We’ve got so many funny stories that helped to bond the groups – in fact, the most connected groups were the ones where we did go through something adverse. People seemed to like the trip more when something did happen!
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So, at some point, your adventurous spirit drew you to nomadism?
I took a values test and adventurous came out on top, as did community – which I guess made sense given how Adventuress started. The amount of dedication to the business I gave wasn’t sustainable, especially to maintain personal relationships, and the growth of the business meant I lost a lot of the connection to the business.
I was offered a position as a Business Support Manager on a government-funded initiative, so handed a lot of the operation to others to run, and took the role. I ended up absolutely loving talking to the 300 or so entrepreneurs and business owners I helped about their businesses. The feedback from people telling me how much I’d changed their business, or just things they’d never thought of doing, was really gratifying.
I got asked to mentor some of them outside of the program and the little voice in the back of my mind grew and grew, and eventually it took over from Adventuress In The Wild. The agency model it had moved to also meant it was less high-touch with the members, so I moved on from it.
Now you’re setting up another community, but for a different type of adventure?
Adventure is what you think it is, it’s different for everyone. Given the success of running groups before, I’m channelling that love of – and success – helping solopreneurs and entrepreneurs with their adventure.
WHY Founders goes back to the values I talked about before – adventure, community and making a difference. It is helping me fulfil my “why”, as well as the business owners we get to help on their adventure – whatever that why might be for them.
Side Note: Community is key to any digital nomads lifestyle. You find us and hundreds of other adventurers with a location independent mindset at the best events for digital nomads world wide here in our always up to date calendar.
Do you think people who seek adventure are more likely to end up a digital nomad?
I think moving to another country is an adventure in itself. Moving from the west to KL or Bangkok is ballsy and requires some adventure. Adventure in its typical sense, perhaps not necessarily.
I think I expected every digital nomad to be a travel blogger, to be honest, but now I’m here, they’re really not. They could be corporate or consultants with no interest in going hiking with me whatsoever! But then there are a huge community of them doing it to be adventurous and have travel experiences like surfing or skydiving while out here. My why for being a digital nomad is adventure-driven.
So what’s adventure for you now?
Now I’m in Phuket, and Thailand is ripe for getting outdoors. London life was a struggle in the end as we wanted to get out every day and do something, which we really can do here. At the weekend we headed up to Khao Lak on a motorbike – an adventure all by itself – and did bamboo rafting, hiking up waterfalls, etc.
I’ve already set up a community here over the last few weeks to find people to get out and adventure, hike and climb with. I’m super into business, but the first thing that pops into my head is “right, where’s the next hike!”
Kate started up WHY Founders to help passionate solopreneurs and entrepreneurs – or those aspiring to be – get support in their adventure. It’s her second time successfully following what she loves to do to build community, and just talking with her is infectious.
Find the WHY Founders community here, or check it out on Instagram.
Wherever your path leads – whether it’s island-hopping in Greece, building your startup from a mountaintop café, or simply embracing the freedom to roam – peace of mind makes the ride smoother. As fellow nomads, we know the risks and rewards of this lifestyle firsthand.
That’s why, at NOMADS.insure, we’ve built a brokerage that specializes in long-term travel insurancee (3 months+) and international health insurance tailored for digital nomads. We’re here to make sure unexpected medical issues don’t derail your journey – or your finances.
Take risks. Confidently. We’ve got you covered.
