Author: Joe Saunderson
Read Time: 3 - 5
September 5, 2025
How Hiking Built A Tribe
This week, I sat down with Adrian Kee, who has had a tough few years in the working world and has come out of the other side a much stronger person. I was eager to learn about the factors that motivated him to push forward and how he dealt with being retrenched twice. I also wanted to know how he began building his personal brand and connected with hundreds of people through his passion for hiking to create a support network, which he refers to as his tribe.
Adrian is a self diagnosed introvert, but sitting down with him I felt as though he was an extrovert. Years of stepping outside his comfort zone and embracing new experiences have enabled him to hold comfortable conversations with almost anyone.
After being let go in a redundancy, Adrian accepted a position he admits was waving red flags at him right from the start. A boss who manipulated, bullied, and operated outside legal employer/employee boundaries led him and another colleague to leave the business, after being asked to work without pay.
I had seen a few of Adrian’s posts on Linkedin and was very keen to chat to him, as some of the topics had hit me personally, as well as connected with the stories I hear when meeting others through my role at Health for Work. One of the standout posts was how he had grown a friendship group of 3 people who loved hiking, to a network of over 140 people, who meet up to hike and provide support to each other on various issues.
“Our tribe welcomes people facing all sorts of challenges. Retrenchment, divorce, health issues, you name it. Take one retrenched guy, for example: he needed job search help, so I shared my experience with interviews and resumes, while others in the tribe, recruiters and headhunters, offered free job search support. Life and health coaches also stepped in to provide guidance, showing how we can rally together to support anyone in need”
During our chat, Adrian shared the 5 actions he believes to be the turning point for his outlook and job search at the time. We discussed how people go through a step by step process when they are leaving a career behind and how best to move through the journey. Adrian openly admitted he needed a couple of weeks to grieve his previous role and give himself space before actioning his 5 points:
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Create a routine and stick to it
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Take care of yourself and your family
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Fitness and health, keeping a healthy body and a healthy mind
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Push yourself out of your comfort zone
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Network with strangers
Taking these steps allowed Adrian to progress towards building his network, as once he had challenged himself to fitness, pushed himself out of his comfort zone and then onto networking with strangers, he found he had built something without realising it and people were starting to come to him to join his movement.
“So, for me, why I started this community is because I enjoyed hiking but I was afraid of networking and I asked myself, why? What element of networking am I afraid of? My answer was the formal setting, exchanging of name cards, talking to a CEO, a junior talking to a senior, that was really uncomfortable so I thought why not remove the uncomfortable part right? No formal setting, no conferences, no Armani suits, no big titles - take that away.”
I was keen to find out if Adrian believed his networking tribe could be introduced to a setting where people don’t share such unique common interests, and whether it could be replicated so that individuals can enjoy a shared activity while finding common ground. For example, workplaces often have diverse groups with different interests, but they could benefit from a way to connect through a mutual activity.
Adrian felt that if someone is willing to put themselves out there, into a situation that meant they would be open to networking with others and having a chat with someone new, anything could turn into a group that forges connection.
“Let's say someone organises a gathering at a cafe. Have coffee for two hours, get to know each other. Or even get ice cream, right? Everybody sit down, enjoy the ice cream and have a chat. There's lots of ways for humans to connect together”
Our chat left me with a lot to think about around people’s connections and how, in the modern age of technology and social media, we are becoming more disconnected from others.
Years back, people would connect at the pub after work or in the cafeteria on lunch breaks and perhaps have those conversations that provide support to each other. Modern workplaces are different landscapes. Lunchtime is spent scrolling on phones, the pub (rightly or wrongly) doesn’t feature as much as a knockoff activity and a large percentage of people are working from home, only meeting each other when required to do so.
Perhaps we should all be looking to create a tribe with our colleagues and find our own support group, in an environment where the breakroom chats and watercooler catch ups are happening less frequently, as the years go on.
