The Night Paul Had to Rescue the Resuscitation Poster

A few weeks ago, I somehow found myself nominated as Chairperson of our body corporate. I haven't been in the role for very long, but I'm already discovering that it comes with a rather random assortment of things that need sorting out around the complex.

One of those things is the resuscitation poster by our swimming pool.

At some point the poster had come free from the ties holding it to the wall. I'm not entirely sure who thought ties were a good idea in a coastal area where it gets VERY windy, but there we are. The pool technician had found it the last time he was here and tucked it underneath the hedge so that it wouldn't blow away completely.

That probably would have been the end of the story if the poster hadn't somehow found its way from underneath the hedge into the swimming pool.

This is where Paul comes in

We could see the poster lying on the bottom of the pool, so Paul decided he'd go out and retrieve it. It was already dark by this point, but he wandered outside with his towel under his arm because he was only going to dive down, grab it and get out again.

Paul isn't the strongest swimmer, but he wasn't planning to swim a mile in the ocean. It's our swimming pool. He was retrieving a poster. What could possibly go wrong?

He'd been gone for a few minutes when my brain started doing what brains are very good at doing when somebody takes slightly longer than expected. I started wondering why he wasn't back yet and then thought, what if he's at the bottom of the pool? What if he's been diving down trying to get the poster, he's got tired and now he can't get himself out?

By this point I'd managed to properly panic myself, so I went to go outside and check on him.

There he was, sneaking back inside with his towel wrapped around his waist.

Apparently retrieving the poster hadn't been quite as easy as we'd expected. Because it's so thin, it had stuck itself flat to the bottom of the pool and he'd had to dive down and work at getting it free. Once he finally got it out, he was so winded from the unexpected exertion that he'd had to sit on the side of the pool for a few minutes before coming back inside.

So while I was indoors imagining him lying at the bottom of the pool, he was actually sitting beside it trying to get his breath back.

There is something slightly ridiculous about the possibility of needing the resuscitation poster because you've exhausted yourself trying to rescue the resuscitation poster.

Thankfully Paul was absolutely fine. The poster survived its adventure too and spent the night drying in our kitchen before Paul could take it back outside and silicone it properly to the wall.

Chairperson duties are going splendidly so far.

Sometimes the thing isn't missing

Apart from giving us something to laugh about afterwards, the whole thing made me think about how often we do something similar in our businesses.

The resuscitation poster hadn't disappeared. We already had the thing we needed. The problem was that it wasn't where it needed to be to actually do its job.

I think we do that with our offers and products more often than we realise. We spend hours creating something, put it on our website or in our shop and then move our attention onto the next thing. A few months later we're wondering what else we could create because we need more sales, more enquiries or something new to talk about.

Meanwhile, something we've already created is metaphorically lying at the bottom of the swimming pool.

I've been doing quite a lot of tidying in my own business recently, and part of that has been looking at what I already have rather than constantly thinking about what I could make next. There are services I still offer that I haven't talked about enough. There are pieces of art that can become something else. There are things I've created that need a clearer doorway so the right people can actually find them.

That doesn't mean we should never create anything new. I'm currently creating plenty of new things myself. It means that before we decide the answer is another new offer, another freebie or another product, it's worth looking at what we already have.

Is it visible? Do people know it exists? Is there an obvious way to get to it? Is it still useful but sitting somewhere nobody is going to find it?

You might discover that you don't need to create the next thing at all. You need to rescue something you've already made and put it back where it can do its job.

Hopefully yours doesn't require your husband, a swimming pool and a towel.