I spent 18 years in high-pressure corporate IT — global banking, deal making, relationship management, negotiating major contracts while building coalitions across a hundred-thousand-person organization spanning dozens of countries. I have a master’s degree in information systems and a career’s worth of understanding what pressure looks like when the stakes are real.
Then I walked away from all of it to coach.
Not because corporate broke me. Because I’d been coaching on the side for years and realized that was the work that mattered. The endurance athletes I trained on weekends. The people stuck in patterns they couldn’t name. The quiet conversations that changed more than any deal I ever closed.
That transition — from boardroom to trailhead — is the foundation of everything I do now. I don’t coach endurance from the outside. I’ve lived in pressure environments for over two decades, first in corporate, then in the field.
The field part is where it gets specific. I’ve finished more than a dozen ultramarathons over 50 kilometers — Marathon des Sables, UTMB, Ironman, open water, multi-day stage races, expeditions. I’ve coached in more than 25 countries — from the Swiss Alps to the Sahara, from Kyrgyzstan to Tokyo. For five years I coached at military-inspired mental toughness camps, working with soldiers and athletes who came to get broken down and rebuilt. Those programs shaped how I think about what people are actually capable of when the easy options are gone
But the endurance resume is the part people expect. What they don’t expect is the rest.
I’ve practiced yoga for over 30 years and have taught for 15 years. I’ve led yoga teacher trainings, burnout prevention workshops, and yin yoga programs designed specifically for athletes. The breath work, body awareness, and ability to quiet the noise when everything is loud — that came from the mat, not from a coaching manual. It shows up in everything I coach.
I spent years working with high-performers in private, high-stakes settings — people navigating pressure at a level most coaches never encounter. That experience shaped how I think about mental performance. It’s why I coach differently than someone who learned this from a textbook.
I went to the University of Georgia on a trombone scholarship. Music taught me rhythm, timing, and how to perform under pressure in front of people — skills that transfer directly into how I coach cadence, pacing, and the auditory side of mental performance.
I’m a private pilot, trained in the complex topography and wind currents of the Alps. That’s not a coaching credential. It’s a window into who I am — someone drawn to calculated risk, precision under pressure, and the kind of clarity you only find at altitude.
All of this converges. Yoga, corporate pressure, clinical-level mental performance work, extreme endurance, music, aviation. No single piece is the differentiator. The intersection is. I coach from a place that no label captures — and that’s exactly why it works.
I coach from a place that no label captures — and that’s exactly why it works.
Hillseeker is a Swiss company and I work with clients worldwide. I have two rescue dogs and a schedule built around meaningful work, training, and writing. I’ve written six books: five on running, training and mindset, and a conspiracy thriller, Black Circuit: Thread 72, which I write as J.S. Grant and am releasing a chapter at a time. Black Circuit: Thread 72. https://jsgrantauthor.com
If you’re here, you’re probably not looking for motivation posters. You’re looking for someone who’s been in the rooms you’ve been in, run the distances you want to run, and built something real from the intersection of all of it.
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