At this point in the year, you’ve probably decided that a particular New Year’s resolution or goal is a good fit…or it isn’t. I know that entrepreneurs are feeling overwhelmed and burned out trying to reach those grand plans.

If you try to go all-in on everything all at once, your big and lofty goals might just feel too big and too lofty. But what if you tried just one thing at a time? What if you peeled back all the noise and chaos and tried something new that feels a little out of the norm for you?

This week on the podcast, I’m sharing a story of one boy I knew back in my post-high school lifeguarding days who did just that. I’m certain that he was able to carry over that courage and success to other parts of his life.

And you can bring that mindset to your own business too! Listen in to hear this heartwarming story and how you can try something new in your business.

Links and Resources:

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Transcript

Tracy Jepson 0:10
Whether you’re looking to grow or ready to scale and so navigating the challenges you face as a business owner are hard, and knowing which steps to take next can be overwhelming. Each week on Beyond the bank account, I will walk you through overcoming the overwhelm and confusion around your business. From the bottom line and beyond. I’ve worked behind the scenes and in the weeds of small businesses, including several my own for over 20 years, and I have a personal mission of guiding owners to have profitable sellable businesses while living the life that you’ve always dreamed.

Tracy Jepson 0:42
Hey, welcome back to beyond the bank account. On this show, I spent a lot of time talking about running your business, making sure that you’re paying yourself budgeting, raising prices. And coming up, we’re actually going to have a few episodes talking about questions that people have sent in to the website. So if you have a question specifically for me that I can answer on this show, please drop that into the question box on Tracyjepsen.com/podcast. And I will be able to answer it for you personally, I may even reach out to get a little bit of clarification. But I’m super excited about those episodes coming up here in the near future. But today, I just want to give you a little bit of encouragement, I have been seeing a lot of things on social media, people are starting to already feel burnout in the beginning of the year, everyone has set all of these grand resolutions that they wanted to get done, which we know that if you try to put some sort of major change into your life all at once, and you try to do six new things like getting out of bed without your snooze button, making sure that you’re working out every day eating right, making sure that you’re reading whatever it is that you set goals for yourself.

Tracy Jepson 1:49
If you try to go all in on all of those at the same time, you are never going to be successful. And so I just want to give a little bit of a word of encouragement to you. The summer before my freshman year of college, I worked as a lifeguard at a day camp. Now the staff lived on site all summer long. And we would see these groups of campers come in from different churches or families, all kinds of different people would come in and use our facilities. There was horseback riding, there was pools, there was arts and crafts, hiking, biking, all kinds of different things. It was an absolutely beautiful resort environment that was right outside of my hometown and outside of my college town as well. During this summer, I got to spend a lot of time again as a lifeguard and my job was to clean the pool every morning. And it was the most peaceful part of my day, I enjoyed it, everyone was still asleep, I was up at five o’clock in the morning and making sure that I had the most pristine, gorgeous waters that all of these kids were going to get to swimmin all day long. There was one week towards the end of the summer, that a really special group of kids got to come and visit the camp. It was a group of kids that belonged to a local Al Anon group. And if you’re not familiar with that is it is for family members and kids, of people who have substance abuse issues, that kind of thing.

Tracy Jepson 3:09
So you get a lot of traumatic, or kids with a lot of traumatic experiences in their life, that are coming to this camp that have a lot of anxiety, nerves, that kind of thing. And that you are really there to help them have the best week as they get a little glimpse of getting outside of their normal day to day, and hopefully a little peace and quiet for themselves. And a whole lot of fun. As I got to know these kids and would see them every afternoon in the pool, splashing around having such a great time, I recognize this little boy was sitting on the side, just kind of looking, not swimming, he wasn’t really sure about getting in the water, or I’m not really sure if he just didn’t like all the noise of the other kids or what was really going on. He was actually nonverbal. And so we wanted to make sure that his experience was just as exciting as everyone else’s. So I took his hand and we walked into the shallow end because I was unsure at that point if he even knew how to swim. And just so that way, he could walk around and start enjoying the water just as much as his friends were. When we did that, all of a sudden his face just lit up. He was so excited to be a part of the group with everyone else. And it was apparent to me that he actually didn’t know how to swim. So that was super exciting. He took to water like a fish and he was splashing around. Again, he wasn’t saying anything. And he wasn’t necessarily playing with the other kids. But he stuck right by my side. And anything that I did he wanted to do as well. And so we spent most of that week together playing in the pool, making sure that he was having a great time and he just really grew on me. I thought it was so wonderful that he would go from sitting to the edge of the pool to them walking around in it. He began to swim, he began to jump off the side of the pool into the water. He just had all of these sorts of transformational things that were happening during that week. together. And at one point, he looked at me, and he pointed to a diving board.

Tracy Jepson 5:04
Now, I was a little nervous about getting him up on the diving board because I didn’t know how he would react if he would be able to swim in the deep end, that kind of thing. So when all of the other kids were taking a break, we wanted to make sure that he was in a really safe environment. And I put on my lifeguard floaty had him walk up onto the diving board, and I was able to sort of be in the water to catch him. When he came off the board. He got up there, he stood there for a minute, and he jumped off with the biggest smile on his face. And he was so excited. And he was able to jump into my catch and swim to the side by himself. So again, he became a really good swimmer that summer or that week that he was there, because I guess we just spent a lot of time together. And again, he just kept watching and anything that he was watching, he was able to learn. He picked up things very quickly. He was a super smart little boy. Well, it got to be the second to last day of their camp. And when I was able to lifeguard at my pool, I was the only one that was there. And so I would spend a lot of time swimming myself, I would also just come off of my very first dive season in high school. And yes, I was the only Springboard diver ever at my high school. And I jumped into it literally my senior year of high school because I thought it looked fun. And I knew nothing about Springboard diving, I didn’t know I you know, I had never been on a swim team I like to swim is fun, and just kind of was able to learn how to dive and was apparently really good at it. So that was kind of exciting. But I would spend my time in the mornings, or in the afternoons before the kids came and got in the pool. And I would work on my diving and I would stand on the diving board. And I would do backflips and front flips and inwards and all of these different things. And I loved it, it was so much fun to be able to continue all of my Springboard diving without the pressure of practice or meats or anything else.

Tracy Jepson 6:56
What I came to find out is that the group of kids were coming up to swim that afternoon and I was on the springboard diving. And when my new little friend came up to me when they got to enter in the pool area, he pointed to the diving board. And he pointed at me and he said in his best nonverbal way to me that he wanted to do a backflip off the diving board. Now you guys this was a little boy who at the beginning of the week was sitting on the side of a pool, not wanting to even get in the water, or not feeling comfortable enough to get in the water on his own. We had gotten to hang out for the whole week together. And I really trusted his ability to learn new things. So we got him up on the diving board, we brought in an extra lifeguard so that way we could just see what happens. And you guys, this little boy did a backflip off of the diving board, in front of his parents in front of his family in front of all of his friends, he was ecstatic. What I have learned since is that he went on to grow up and was able to actually do diving in his high school. I don’t know much more about him. But I was able to get a little bit of information from the organization of how he kind of grew up, I wanted to make sure that I stayed in touch he really, he really impacted me that summer and showed me that you can really do anything as long as you put your mind to it. You don’t have to be perfect at something, you don’t even have to be in a position where you know that you’re going to do the thing that you end up doing. I mean, two years ago, you could have never told me that I was going to open a scuba diving shop, or even learn to scuba dive.

Tracy Jepson 8:32
So I think there are things in our life that we can just spontaneously learn or jump into full of fear and excitement. At the same time. I want you to have the type of confidence in your life that you are willing to go after anything that you want. And to be able to go after something that doesn’t make sense. That might be scary, that maybe somebody else told you that you can’t do or maybe that you saw somebody else doing what you’ve always kind of wanted to do, but you weren’t really sure how to get started. I would just encourage you that when it comes to starting a new revenue source in your business, bringing on that team member, paying yourself more, raising your prices, any of the things that scare you, I want you to try, I want you to realize that those failures are only going to make you better if you don’t succeed. And what if you only do something halfway, you still did more than nothing. And I think it’s really important to remember that not everything has to be perfect. Sometimes Done is better than perfect. And I just encourage everyone this week to think about something that they’ve been scared to do.

Tracy Jepson 9:42
Again, whether it’s in your business or in your personal life, something that you’ve been nervous about something that you thought, Oh, I could never be the one that does that. And I want you to go try it. I want you to create a plan. And step one is something that you start today. Go out find the thing that you want to do and the thing that you’re going to enjoy, or mark it off your list. If you try something and you don’t like it, and you always thought you’re going to, you don’t ever have to do it again. That’s actually the best part about trying things is if you don’t like it, you don’t want to continue it. If you don’t like a program that you’ve got in your business right now, or you don’t like a course that you’re teaching, or you don’t like a group that you’re, you know, a part of, you can stop it to, you don’t have to continue something just because somebody else wants you to, you get to create the life that you want. And you are the one that is in control of what you try what is new, what you take risks on, and what you don’t. And I just encourage you this week to try something new.

Tracy Jepson 10:47
Thanks for listening to beyond the bank account, you can check out the notes of today’s shows. For links and resources we discussed. Just check your app or visit Tracyjepsen.com/podcast and you can catch all the past episodes. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Just search for beyond the bank account on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. And if you can take the time to drop us a like or a thumbs up even a five star review. It really helps us to know what you’re enjoying about the show and it’ll help newless listeners find this more easily. And lastly, do you have a question or a challenge that you need help with? Send me your questions through my website Tracyjepsen.com/podcast and I’ll be answering all of your questions via email and on the show.

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