Once upon a time I could speak my goals into existence…
Or at least that’s what it felt like.
I’d lock onto a target, take decisive action, and everything would fall into place.
Then things changed.
The past 12 months have been some of the most unexpected of my life. I’ve hit targets, but not the ones I expected.
My shaky aim this year has caused me to reevaluate the delicate balance of flexibility and ambition…
I often use this space to (selfishly) organize my own thoughts, but sometimes my ruminations are helpful to you, too. So today I’m pulling my ramblings out of my journal and sharing, in hopes a handful of you might see a bit of your journey in mine.
Here we go…
The Best Laid Plans…
I recently went back and listened to a podcast episode I recorded at the beginning of 2024 and I laughed. And laughed.
At the time, I had just finished reading 10X Is Easier Than 2X by Benjamin Hardy and I was fired up with the PERFECT plan for 2024.
(By the way—it’s an excellent book and I highly recommend it. It’s about quality over quantity and how ultra-focusing on a handful of goals trumps the shotgun approach to life or business.)
Anyway.
The book lit a fire under me. I turned the last page with grand plans to streamline our life and businesses.
As entrepreneurs, there’s a temptation to grow endlessly. It’s our nature to build, create, and expand. Those are good things, but they can go too far. In nature, nothing grows constantly. And we’ve had years of business constant growth with very little pruning. It was time to do some trimming.
The first to go? We decided to close Genuine Beef. It was a good business, but it wasn’t aligned with our ultimate goals and was pulling focus from other places.
And the other biggie? We decided to sell the Soda Fountain. (I recorded this podcast episode explaining why.)
Bam. Easy. We were mere inches away from a streamlined, simplified life, right?
Wrong. So, so wrong.
Lesson One: Big Changes Take More Time Than You Think
Turns out, untangling yourself from something you’ve built isn’t as simple as snipping a few branches.
As the months ticked by, my frustration grew.
The thousands of pounds of beef in the freezer were selling, but not as fast as I wanted them to.
We had lots of people wanting to buy the soda fountain, but no one brave enough to pull the trigger.
February passed, then March, then April… I had planned to be fully streamlined before summer hit, and we weren’t even close. My panic level rose to an all-time high in May. Not only would our life NOT be streamlined by summer, it was shaping up to be far more complex than I had ever planned.
And that’s when I rolled into my second big lesson of the year:
Lesson Two: Surrender isn’t Passive
I’ve always hated the word surrender. I equated it to giving up and not trying. That’s not how I roll.
I can outwork, out focus, and out-hustle almost anyone. Forward motion (and lots of it) is how I achieve my goals and my ability to move quickly and decisively has provided me everything I’ve ever wanted.
But not this year…
This year I ran headfirst into a wall where “working harder” was no longer working…
And I did NOT like it.
Winter and early spring were rough. I was stressed, not sleeping, and, honestly, not in a great place. Christian kept reminding me to trust the process, but I fought it. Hard. Surrender felt like giving up, and I wasn’t interested. I would MAKE this happen.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but after many months I realized surrender doesn’t have to be passive. In fact, it can be very active as you stay curious, move forward, and are open to where the process takes you—even if it’s not where you thought you’d end up.
And in that moment, things began to shift in the most interesting ways…
Lesson Three: The Reward is in the Risk
This isn’t a new lesson for me. But 2024 was the year we began to reap the harvest of some of the risks we’ve taken the past few years.
And that’s the thing about risk—you won’t see the pay-off right away. Sometimes not for years. That’s what makes it feel, well, risky.
It’s easy to underestimate the importance of this.
People tell me they want to live in a small town like I do, but can’t bring themselves to risk losing conveniences.
People tell me they want to be an entrepreneur, but won’t take those first uncertain steps to buy or start the business of their dreams.
People tell me they wish they could start a school in their community, but shy away after eyeballing the first mountain of paperwork.
Make no mistake my friend– whatever you want will require you to risk something. The risk may come in different forms but it’s the price you pay to get what you want.
There are no exceptions.
Lesson Four: Life Has Seasons
We’re all complex. We all have layers.
In 2024, I found peace in letting different layers of myself come to the forefront in ways they hadn’t before. But not without a struggle, of course (because that’s how I roll).
For over a decade, I’ve been the quintessential stay-at-home mom with little kids underfoot as I canned, gardened, baked, and ran businesses from home. It was a magical life and it shaped who I am today.
As our life shifted this year to being more community-focused than homestead-focused, I found myself mourning the loss of our old life.
We’re still homesteaders, but it doesn’t look like it did. My kids are still farm kids, but now they’re taking the lessons they’ve learned on the homestead and applying it to new areas of life—like the basketball team or FFA or in the community.
And I’ve learned to accept that it’s okay for something that once defined you to take a back seat so something new can emerge. It doesn’t mean you’re losing yourself because the old pieces can exist alongside the new.
I am proud of my abilities to both bake bread and build complicated landing pages.
I love running both a homestead and a digital empire.
I crave both the peace of my garden and the chaos of the soda fountain kitchen.
I enjoy the dance between home-cooking and the restaurant-style of cooking I’m currently learning.
And I’m finally understanding Walt Whitman when he said,
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
In 2024 I found peace in the multitudes.
Lesson Five: It’s Ok to Like Pressure
Perhaps an obvious revelation, but an important one, none the less. In the past, I’ve felt like I had to justify why I take on big, hard projects. I’d say things like, “I’m doing this for the community,” or “I’m creating financial freedom for my family…”
And yes, those things are true. But at the end of the day, I simply love the thrill of a challenge.
Period.
As I began to once again be more present in the day-to-day operations at the Soda Fountain, I realized how much I love a good rush. In fact, I crave it. When it’s standing room only, all the tables are packed, and we’re trying to figure out how to make it all work—that’s when my brain hums.
Some people achieve a mindful state from yoga or meditation, but I get mine from a standing-room only lunch rush or sorting cattle horseback in the middle of 100 mama cows.
And perhaps that’s not as crazy as it sounds… These moments of forced concentration bring us fully into our bodies—something that’s increasingly harder in a world where distractions seduce us 24/7.
Perhaps we’re all craving just a little bit of that.
Lesson Six: Be Open to Who Shows Up
My most revelatory lesson of 2024: The people you need will show up at the right time, but they might not be who you expect.
I was vague about our reasons for selling the soda fountain at the beginning of last year, but it came down to one thing:
I couldn’t find the right partners. And after 3 years of owning the place, I was utterly convinced the partner I needed did not exist.
And then in the 11th hour, someone showed up.
It wasn’t who I expected.
Not in a million years.
In fact, he was so unexpected, I wasn’t super friendly to him at first.
But he waited. And he proved himself. And he stayed when no one else did.
Fast forward to today, George is now managing the Soda Fountain. If you stopped by this summer, you probably met him. He’s not only improved the menu, processes, and culture, but his steady presence has allowed me to dream once again.
In the past 6 months, I went from wanting to sell the business, to being wild-eyed excited for its future. We’re holding sold-out supper nights, catering events, and bringing the community together in incredible ways. The Soda Fountain is thriving, and I’m genuinely excited to go there every day—something I never thought I’d feel again. Thank you, George.
Be open to the people who show up in your life. They might not be who you expected, but they may be exactly who you need.
As we close this year, I’ll leave you with a quote from Brianna Wiest that I clung to this year. Perhaps it will inspire you as it has me:
“Almost when you least expect it, things fall into place. You realize that what left was making space for what was about to arrive. The quiet let you hear the guidance, the unhappiness forced you to make a move. The unsettledness made you keep seeking […]. The doors that closed turned you toward the ones that were opening. The lessons were always leading you.”
Happy New Year, my friends.
May 2025 be full of meaningful risk, gritty challenges, and fresh curiosity for us all.
-Jill
More Personal Updates and Deep Thoughts:
- My Different Sort of Goals for 2025 (podcast episode)
- To Everything There is a Season: A Personal Update (podcast episode)
- What I’ve Learned About Doing Hard Things
- Confessions of a Fun Hater
Leave a Comment