Katie Yeutter had been swimming for 10 and a half hours.
On a brisk July morning, she’d left the shores of Dover, England, with the goal of crossing the English Channel to France. At the 6-hour mark, she got sick from ingesting too much saltwater. But she kept swimming. At 7.5 hours, she was stung by a jellyfish, causing her entire body to experience temporary paralysis. But she kept going. She was just 4 miles from the shoreline when her boat captain made the call: The tides had changed, she couldn’t overcome the current, and reaching France that day was impossible.
“I’m sitting there going, ‘How can this possibly be?’ I did everything right. I’m physically fit, I worked so hard, and it was just over,” remembers Yeutter. “But all you can do is control what you can control. Then you have to persevere through the failure of what you can’t. In my heart, I didn’t feel like that was how this was supposed to end.”
That mindset has served Yeutter well beyond the water.
As COO/CFO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce and President of the Florida Chamber Leadership Cabinet in Tallahassee, Florida, USA, she has built her career leading member education, driving enterprise results and championing safety programs. All the while, the resilience she honed through endurance challenges like the channel swim has guided her approach to leadership.
Just two and half weeks after that first attempt, she was on a plane back to England to try again. Thirteen hours and 44 minutes after she dove into the channel for the second time, she walked onto the shores of France.
Living a life of purpose and performance
Hard work was instilled in Yeutter from a young age. When her father, an orthopedic surgeon, set up his practice in rural Wisconsin, he and her mom, a teacher, decided to purchase a farm. Yeutter and her seven siblings were then tasked with chores such as mowing hay and milking cows.
— Katie Yeutter share
“My dad had this fundamental belief; he always said, ‘I don’t care what degrees you can hang on the wall; I will teach you how to work. Because a solid work ethic will carry you through life.’”
Her attraction to challenging endeavors was formed early on as well. Family vacations were adventures, like the time they went llama packing across the Continental Divide or when they hiked the Grand Canyon.
“Growing up, I always wanted to just go to the beach,” she laughs. “But we were always skiing, hiking, climbing, seeking out these activities that had a little bit of a struggle. I learned a lot about perseverance, how I react to stress and how fulfilling working hard could be.”
She channeled her work ethic into her schoolwork and career — earning her MBA and MS in accountancy — as well as into her extracurricular activities. A childhood of competitive swimming gave way to adult ironman competitions and later climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Yeutter quickly realized that endurance challenges were not only a great way to personally push herself, but the benefits spilled over into her professional career.
“You put yourself in situations that you can control, where you’re under stress in a good way, and it gives you the space to learn and overcome,” she says. “Then you have those talking points to say, ‘I’ve done hard things, and it was hard, but I came out of it.’ You step it up a little bit at a time, and you build those resiliency blocks within yourself.”
When the idea of swimming the English Channel came up, Yeutter says it felt like a great alignment of her passions and strengths.
“When you want to live a full life of purpose and performance, you have to take on these big challenges with a solid ‘why’, because otherwise you don’t have anything to fall back on when it gets hard,” she says. “I thought I could learn a lot about myself and find real growth in the discomfort of it all.”
Get comfortable with your discomfort
Preparing for the challenge meant 3 a.m. wake-up calls to train in the Florida ocean. To toughen herself for the cold Channel waters — official record rules require swimming like the original crossers, without a cap or insulated suit — she began flying back to Wisconsin to swim in the frigid Midwestern lakes.
The cold water is what worried her the most.
“The first time I got into an ice bath, I was shivering two minutes in, thinking HOW can I possibly do this for 10-12 hours?” she recalls. “That’s what I really love about taking on these pursuits, though. It’s not really about reaching the coast of France; it’s how the journey that leads up to that creates focus for my behaviors and forces me to move through the struggle.”
Resilience is never a solo sport
Yeutter credits her family and her day-of crew’s support for her ability to bounce back after her first attempt.
“Whether it’s professional or personal pursuits, if you don’t have the right people around you during times of struggle — you can go to a place that’s not good,” she says.
She also credits YPO, specifically her forum, for being a safe space to share struggles and hear what she needs to hear, even when it’s, perhaps, not what she wants to hear.
— Katie Yeutter share
“YPO provides those trusted relationships, sharing and support that can remove a lot of the uncertainty,” she says. “Often, we can let challenges get bigger and bigger in our own minds. It can be overwhelming. But the minute you verbalize it, suddenly it’s manageable, and it gives you this calm confidence. Then you can show up for your people authentically and without ego.”
Protect your energy, fuel your strength
For Yeutter, resilience isn’t just about grit in the moment — it’s also about the discipline of recovery. Lessons from a YPO Mayo Clinic event drove home the science of sleep, and she’s since built a toolkit to keep herself steady under stress. With the help of her Whoop watch, meditation, reading, mindful nutrition and daily gratitude, she makes recovery a priority.
“When I get good sleep, eat well and stick to my routines, I’m definitely more resilient,” she says. “It gives me the clarity to show up for my team, my family and myself in the best way possible.”
Step back to build others up; Step forward when it counts
Yeutter says that tackling endurance challenges like swimming the channel has given her the confidence to push herself professionally into new areas and opportunities — and that causes a ripple effect for the rest of her team.
“When you have the confidence to let things go, then you can create space behind you for others to develop and take on more responsibilities and their own challenges,” she says. “And as a leader, that’s when things get very exciting.”
Yeutter says in this sense, she tends to ‘lead from the back’ – especially during times when things are working. If her teams fail then, they can build their own resiliency. Then, during challenging times or times of organizational transformation, while she is leading from the front, she knows that the rest of the team is more resilient because of those past moments of failure.
“Collectively,” she explains. “We’re pulling stronger and harder.”
