What does it actually take to lead a team, run an international guiding business, and still choose the hard line when it would be easier to stay comfortable?

Juliet Jacobsen Kastorff is co-founder of Endless River Adventures, owner of Rio Quijos Ecolodge in Ecuador, and founder of the nonprofit Need More Outdoors. She's been teaching and guiding whitewater kayaking in Western North Carolina and internationally since 1991. On this episode of The Discomfort Zone Podcast, Anna Levesque talks with Juliet about leadership, building a guiding business that outlasts you, and staying uncomfortable on purpose after three decades in the outdoor industry.

This conversation is really about what it means to lead well: building a team you can eventually hand things off to, taking responsibility instead of making excuses, and noticing when your own expertise has quietly turned into a comfort zone.

If you lead a team, run a business, or coach others and want to hear how a 30-year industry veteran keeps growing instead of coasting, this one is for you.

In this episode, you'll explore:

• Why staying in your comfort zone as an expert, running the same line or the same rapid, can quietly stall your growth

• How Juliet builds leaders who could replace her, and why that's the goal, not the threat

• The hotel industry lesson that changed how she handles mistakes and hard conversations

• Why "a bad moment, not a bad day" changes how you show up after things go wrong

• What three decades of guiding in Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Chile taught her about community over ego.

Whether you're leading a business, coaching a team, or just trying to get comfortable being uncomfortable again, this conversation will meet you there.

Listen now, and start noticing where your own comfort zone might be holding you back.

What do you do when fear shows up and your instinct is to either force your way through or quit altogether?

In this episode of The Discomfort Zone Podcast, Anna talks with Sara Hunter, a licensed clinical mental health counselor, certified emotionally focused couples therapist, and PMBIA Level 1 mountain bike instructor based in Asheville, NC. Sara takes clients out of the office and onto the trail, using mountain biking to help them notice what's happening in their bodies, name what they're feeling, and practice new ways of responding to fear.

This conversation is really about the skill of slowing down, and why the smallest step toward what scares you is often the most courageous one.

If you tend to white-knuckle your way through hard things, or freeze when the pressure is on, this one is for you.

In this episode, you'll explore:

• Why slowing down and naming what's happening in your body changes how you respond to fear

• What titration means, and how to break an intimidating goal into steps your nervous system can actually handle

• Why beginners often grow more on the trail than seasoned athletes, and why sitting still is the real discomfort zone for adventurers

• How the rhythm of pedaling and scanning the trail calms the body's threat response

• The surprising link between perfectionism and the courage to ask a clarifying question

Whether you're eyeing a rapid you've been walking around, a trail feature that gets in your head, or a hard conversation you keep putting off, this episode offers a kinder and more effective way through.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts!

What does it mean to paddle a river your family fought six generations to free?

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the historic first descent of the undammed Klamath River by Indigenous youth in the Paddle Tribal Waters program. To honor it, Anna is replaying her conversation on The Discomfort Zone Podcast with Keeya Wiki, a Yurok kayaker who completed that first descent at 17. Keeya also belongs to the Te Aupouri and Ngati Porou tribes of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and her family has fought for generations for the health of the salmon, the river, and their right to fish.

This conversation is about joy as resilience, and what happens when the healing of a river becomes the healing of the generations connected to it.

If you love rivers and want to understand what dam removal and Indigenous-led restoration mean for the people who fought for it, this one is for you.

In this episode, Keeya and Anna explore:

• What it felt like to paddle the Klamath after generations of advocacy for dam removal

• How Keeya listens to her body and grounds herself when fear and self-doubt show up

• The intense underwater moment on the river that tested her self-trust

• The power of community, mentorship, and representation in outdoor spaces

• Why the joy Keeya experienced on the river has the power to heal generations

Since this conversation, Anna has read The Water Remembers by Amy Bowers Cordalis, Keeya's aunt and the lawyer who played a key role in getting the Klamath dams removed. Amy joins The Discomfort Zone Podcast later this summer, and you may have seen Amy and Keeya together on the Kelly Clarkson Show sharing their family's legacy. Consider this replay the first chapter of that story.

Whether you paddle whitewater, care about river restoration, or simply want to hear what courage and joy sound like, listen now and let the Klamath's story move you.

What does it actually take to train your brain for courage, and can you do it while running a 13-mile hike-in class V expedition and going back to school full-time?

In this replay episode of The Discomfort Zone Podcast, Anna Levesque revisits her conversation with Anna Wagner: whitewater paddler, explorer, and Dr of Occupational Therapy, whose approach to courage is equal parts science and grit. Anna Wagner has run the Middle Kings, the Stikine, and the Rio Baker, and has a knack for finding her "mean girl" voice exactly when she needs it most.

This is a conversation about what courage actually looks like when it's built deliberately, not borrowed from someone else's highlight reel.

If you've ever wondered why hard things feel so hard, and how to keep showing up for them anyway, this one is for you.

• How neuroplasticity works — and why positive self-talk feels fake before it feels true
• Anna's "mean girl" strategy for cutting through fear and self-doubt mid-rapid
• Why chunking big adventures into small steps is the same skill as running a rapid
• How one piece of advice from a professor changed Anna's lifestyle and her performance

Whether you're preparing for a big river objective, navigating a major life transition, or just trying to quiet the voice that says you don't belong here, this conversation will give you something real to work with.

🎧 Listen now and start building the neural pathways that bring you back to your best.

Sage Donnelly just became the Queen of the North Fork, and it's the perfect time to revisit our 2024 conversation on The Discomfort Zone Podcast, recorded when she was the reigning Women's Freestyle World Champion.

Sage is a multi-discipline competitor across slalom, freestyle, and extreme racing. In this conversation, she breaks down how she trained her mind to find calm and flow at the start line and in the biggest rapids she runs.

If you've ever choked under pressure on something that mattered, or wondered how the best in the world stay loose when everything's on the line, this one's for you.

How Sage went from competing out of fear and expectation to competing with the kind of relaxed confidence that brought her back to the World Championship podium

Why feeling a rapid in your boat matters more than overanalyzing it from the eddy

The expedition that taught her she could push further than she thought possible

How she manages type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, and hypothyroidism without letting any of it define her

Whether you're chasing a competitive goal, learning to trust your gut, or navigating a diagnosis that feels bigger than you, Sage's story has something for you.

🎧 Listen to the replay now.

Ever feel like you need the perfect plan before you can start anything? This conversation might change that.

In this episode of The Discomfort Zone Podcast, Anna sits down with Chris Baer, a raft guide and whitewater kayaker who lives half the year out of a converted school bus and spends his winters chasing first descents in remote corners of the world, often with little more than two weeks' notice.

This conversation is for anyone who's ever held back because they didn't have it all figured out yet.

Anna and Chris dig into:

🌫️ Why whitewater is "all gray," and how letting go of rigid rules opens up better decisions

🧩 How problem-solving on the fly becomes a way of life, on the river and off

✈️ What happens when you trade a five-year plan for two weeks' notice and a plane ticket

👣 Why getting feet on the ground beats overanalyzing every detail in advance

If you're craving more confidence in navigating the unknown, this one's worth a listen.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts!

What if the language you've been using to help people is actually underselling them?

In this solo episode of The Discomfort Zone Podcast, Anna Levesque shares a perspective shift that stopped her in her tracks: after 25 years of building a brand around "empowering women," she's retiring the phrase. Sparked by Emma Grede's book Start With Yourself, Anna explores why the word "empowerment" may inadvertently suggest women need someone else to give them what they already have.

This episode isn't about tearing down a movement. It's about getting more honest and more precise about what great coaching, instruction, and community actually do: create the container, hold the space, and trust that the person in front of you already has what it takes.

If you've ever questioned the language you use, wrestled with a belief that served you well and then stopped, or wondered what it really means to support someone's growth, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• Why Anna is dropping "women's empowerment" from her brand vocabulary after 25 years

• The real role of a coach, instructor, or mentor, and why it matters how we frame it

• What her year-long recovery from a herniated disc taught her about inner strength and being supported

• How to hold an idea you've outgrown with both honesty and self-compassion

• Why changing your language is an act of courage, not correction

Whether you're a coach, a paddler, or someone mid-shift in how you see your own work, this episode will give you something worth sitting with.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

What does it take to help someone do something they're afraid to do?

In this episode of The Discomfort Zone Podcast, Anna sits down with Casey Bryant Jones, Director of the Ottawa Kayak School, for a conversation that gets into the real inner game of learning whitewater kayaking. Casey has spent years teaching paddlers of all levels on one of the world's premier big-water rivers, and he gets specific about fear, confidence, and what it actually means to succeed on the water.

This is a conversation about what happens in the space between what you think you can do and what you're actually capable of doing.

If you paddle whitewater at any level and want to build more confidence on the water, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• Why flipping and rolling is a superpower, not a failure (and why the students who flip most often are the ones who progress fastest)

• The "ramp up, ramp back down" approach that Casey uses to find the right level of challenge without breaking a student's confidence

• The breathing technique a mentor taught him in Chile that he still uses today

• Why he and his wife have introduced their young daughters to whitewater kayaking even though it can be uncomfortable and scary

🌊 Whether you're working on your roll, developing your skills on the water, or building confidence, this one is worth your full attention.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you ever had a "stupid, hare-brained idea" that worked so well it took over your life for a decade?

That's exactly what happened to James Byrd when he looked at the North Fork of the Payette River in Idaho, thought about his college football stadium experience, and decided the best kayakers in the world should be racing it in front of a crowd. What started as a passion project became one of the premier whitewater extreme races on the planet, the North Fork Championship, and now, after a few years away, James and his wife Regan are bringing it back.

James is also a registered nurse, a lifelong paddler, and one of the most genuinely stoked people I know. This conversation went a lot of places I didn't expect, and I think you'll appreciate it.

In this episode:

• The visualization practice James uses before stepping up to something big and scary on the water, and why he won't send it until he genuinely feels ready

• What it was like to get pushback when he first launched the event, and the one moment that changed everything

• Why he thinks kayaking athletes deserve to be known, not just watched, and what he's doing about it

• The real talk on money, sustainability, and what he and Regan discovered when they did the math on their nursing wages versus the hours they put into North Fork

• How going nonprofit is changing what's possible for the event's future

If you've ever poured everything into something you believed in, hit friction, and wondered whether it was worth it, this one's for you.

🎧 Listen now and walk away thinking differently about what it actually costs to build something worth having, in paddling and in life.