Meet Holly Ross | Pediatric Occupational Therapist & Water Safety Instructor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Holly Ross and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Holly, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
Work-Life Balance! It is always the topic of the day. The topic of many audiobooks, that tell you how to split it up, where to use it, and how much is too much. Rewind to before I became a business owner and I thought about balance like these books. Clocking in and clocking out, making sure not to go over my hours so that I could have the appropriate time alloted off for the weekend. At that time, this worked for me. Work and life were separate and therefore balanced in my mind. This allowed me to unwind on my nights off and the treasured weekends that everyone has. I was not ready for how this mentality would need to change once I started my business. Speaking of audiobooks, I listened to this one shortly after becoming a business owner called, Off Balance by Matthew Kelly, and since then, my views on balance have changed.

In Matthew Kelly’s book, he explains a concept that what the typical version of work life balance that people think of can make it seem like work and life are versing each other in battle. Who will win more time? Once I started my business I found that I was working long hours, weekends, and holidays. The theory I had in my mind was that my balance was off, leading me to stress and attempt to force my work schedule into something that would be considered “balanced”. Was I spending enough time with my husband? Did I have enough time off? Was I working out enough? Let me tell you, those anxiety driven questions keep coming with that old mindset. I decided to take Kelly’s advice and I began to measure work life satisfaction instead of balance. I almost never use the word balance any longer when speaking about my life as a whole. To be honest, as a business owner, life is NEVER balanced. And putting work and life against each other leads to strain and anxiety. So work life satisfaction, what is it, and how do I measure it? Well work is a part of life not versing each other, so within my life I have personal time and professional time. However, with the old mindset, one counts the time spent with work vs. life. With my new mindset, I look to see if I am satisfied with my personal relationships. I ask myself, is everything in your personal life going good and are you satisfied? If I am able to say yes, then I move to asking the same question about my professional life. If I am able to say yes, then everything in my life is all good. There’s no need to quantify how I use my time to make sure it’s balanced between tasks. If everyone and everything is satisfactory, then I am good to go. While myself and others close to me understand that I have changed my mindset here, I still baffle the regular 9-5 worker. People ask, Holly , is your husband mad that you are working these long hours? Holly, but why don’t you take the holidays off like everyone else? Holly don’t work too hard, one of the statements I loathe. However, despite all these pestering questions and comments I am so happy to answer that my life is going great and that the people around me are satisfied with our relationships. Just because my hours don’t look “balanced” doesn’t mean that I am unhappy. So I challenge you to throw out the old concept of “balance” and replace it with measuring how satisfactory your life is to you. I think you’ll find that some of that anxiety you held vanishes and is replaced with joy.

What should our readers know about your business?
Community Aquatics n’ Occupational Engagement otherwise abbreviated to CANOE is the name of my business. While it is a mouthful, my name embodies what I hope to give to the community as a service. I got where I am today with some necessity, creativity, and innovation. When did I start my business? Well, I filed my LLC February 20, 2020. Did anybody else read that date and just say oh crap! Yes, you read that date right. I started my business about 1 month before the shutdown in Colorado and the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, I didn’t obviously know what was coming. In fact, I filled my LLC out of necessity, parting from my last W2 employed company. Surprisingly enough, when I left, all my clients followed. Afterwards as I previously mentioned, COVID hit, and I was forced to move ALL my clients to a Telehealth platform. Had I ever treated someone over a virtual platform…no, but I learned. I adapted my practice to make it good for my clients and I innovated the simple logging in and winging it to pre-planned sessions with treatment and parent coaching that empowers families to meet their goals. I made some innovations to the Telehealth practice that I noticed other clinicians were not doing, which I am proud to continue to offer.

At this point you’re probably wondering what exactly it is that I do. Well, I am an Occupational Therapist, but I am also a Water Safety Instructor. What I specialize in is working with children and families with extraordinary needs and medical complexities to achieve their goals. While I do provide traditional Occupational Therapy services, my bread and butter is combining both of my licenses together to make custom aquatic therapy programs for children and their families. These are not just swim lessons. I really focus on engagement, happiness, and what the child/family goals are. This could look like learning to hold one’s breath for drowning prevention or this could look like walking a blind person around the pool on their back for desensitization. This could also look like stretching, pain relief, learning to swim, building coordination skills, and much more. The ages of my clients can range from 2 months of age and up through 26 years of age. I offer 1:1 sessions, home programs, Telehealth services, and many others. It’s sometimes hard to explicate what I do simply because I take all my specialities and mash them together to create custom programs for each client. I really try to understand the client’s and each family’s perspectives, needs, and wants. Instead of pushing my clinical advice, I look to answer questions and provide information to the areas that the families want to know about. Along with direct care, I also work with local non-profits to get equipment and services for my families. I hope to continue to help create and develop events with non-profits and the community I serve to bring further engagement and happiness to the community. I guess if I wanted someone to know about CANOE, I would want them to know that this is a business that strives for innovation and creation of new interventions/programs to serve the individual clients and the community as a whole.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I think when people come to visit Colorado they always go for the big spots like Red Rocks, but there are many other gems that I find are so worth visiting. Some of my favorite places to go are the Jeffco Open Spaces. They are free parks in the area and they are all so beautiful! My top favorites to take family on a weekend trip are South Valley Park and Clear Creek Canyon park. They are beautiful and not crowded, giving anyone visiting the opportunity to take a breath and take in nature. Almost all places in Colorado make awesome drinks, seems to be a thing Rocky Mountain peeps are good at. However, one of my husband and I’s favorite places for breakfast and some awesome morning mimosas is Mainstreet in Idaho Springs. They make awesome food and some stiff drinks! Also, if you’re a nature pal like myself, heading to Dillon and going around the reservoir up there is amazing. You would think that after living in Colorado for some time that one would get used to the beauty, NO WAY! It’s a breath of fresh air and beautiful scenery each time. If anyone visiting is a snowboarder like me, Keystone is one of my favorite places to ride. Mid season and heading through some black diamond runs called the windows under the outpost gondola, that’s one of my favorite places ever.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Obviously, I would love to shout out to all my family who have supported me through my youth and allowed me to blossom in my own way. There are multiple family members that have supported me but I would love to Shout out my Mother, Amy Weiss. I would give love and a huge shoutout to my Husband, JR Calderon. He is my biggest support at this present time. He and I work as a team 100% of the time and it is because of this that I am able to take more time and put it towards my business. He supports and loves me. Also, he has great business ideas and helps guide me to make good decisions for my company through discussion. A reason as to why I hired him to be my Business Operations Manager. In my professional life, I would love to Shoutout my first mentor Katie B. She also started her own practice here in the state of Colorado. I saw that another professional in the same field could do it, which inspired me to try as well.

Website: www.canoecommunity.org

Instagram: @canoe.community

Facebook: Community Aquatics n’ Occupational Engagement

Other: hross@buildingblocksot.org is my professional email 720-610-9928 is my business phone line

Image Credits
JR Calderon & Holly Ross