E-Roll | Jess Elkins

Staying out of her comfort zone

Senior account manager Jess Elkins leads a life of adventure—simple, wonderful outdoor adventures with her family. Jess shares her love of nature, how she builds resilience in herself and her kids, and how important it is to push out of your comfort zone.

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Transcript

Getting outside of your comfort zone is scary. It’s supposed to be, though.

My name is Jess Elkins, I’m a senior account manager at EPIC, and I have been with EPIC for about two years now.

When I’m not at work, I like to spend most of my time outside. Being in nature and being very curious is just a part of my life and what I like to instill in my kids, too.

Waylon is 13 and Lucy is 9. We do also have a dog who goes on adventures with us as well. Her name is Georgia. We love to be outside year-round, and that can be anywhere from winter hiking to camping. We love kayaking and canoeing as well.

We are known as the family that brings rain everywhere we go! We had a week-long camping trip planned and found out that we were going to have rain pretty much the entire time that we were there. We ended up spending most of our time outside in the rain. We took a lot of walks and hikes in the rain and actually truly enjoyed ourselves. That’s one of the things that I love: that no experience is the same, and I find it to be magical every single time.

One of our big sayings is that this is “building resilience.” I build resilience while I’m outside in 10-degree weather. I’m also building resilience when we’re taking a look at a mountain that we might have to climb.

One of the clients that I really enjoy working with is John Deere. We did all of the booth creative for the golf industry show that they go to every year, and we saw the number of people that were in that space and engaging with the experiences—It was just phenomenal.

I like to look at things from a different angle and just look for that opportunity to maybe change things just enough so that we’re doing something even more exceptional for our clients than we already are.

If you’re not outside of your comfort zone, you will never do something extraordinary. And maybe people will disagree with that, but I think there’s a lot of truth to it.