Redefining Success: When the Seeds Became a Garden

Twenty years ago, when I was only eighteen years old, I joined my first network marketing company.

It was Avon.

Which is actually a little funny when I think about it now, because I didn't even really wear makeup. But they had other products I liked, and I thought maybe I could help people find some things they would enjoy using.

There wasn't some grand vision behind it.

I wasn't dreaming of becoming wealthy.

I wasn't trying to climb ranks or build an empire.

I wasn't even really thinking about "success."

I was eighteen years old and had stumbled across something that seemed interesting, so I decided to give it a try.

It wasn't until after Aubrey, my first daughter, was born that I started to see entrepreneurship differently.

I realized that if I could find ways to make money from home, I could contribute financially to our family while still being home with my children.

That became the dream.

Not millions of dollars.

Not fancy cars.

Not recognition.

I wanted to be home with my babies, and I wanted to help carry some of the financial weight so that all of it didn't have to fall on Mike.

That was enough for me.

I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Network marketing became a large part of that story, but throughout the years I also created businesses of my own.

Still, somewhere inside of me lived this belief that if I were ever going to become really successful, it would probably happen through something someone else had already created.

A company.

A product.

A business model.

An opportunity.

There was always a piece of me that knew I was destined to do something meaningful with my life.

But there was another piece that wasn't entirely convinced I could build it myself.

So I kept searching.

Over the last twenty years, I joined somewhere around thirteen or fourteen different companies.

For a long time, I was embarrassed by that number.

It felt like evidence that I couldn't stick with anything.

Like I kept trying and failing.

Like I was constantly searching for "the thing" and never quite finding it.

But today, I see those twenty years very differently.

About ten years ago, I joined a company called It Works, and for the first time, I went ALL IN!

And I became successful by almost every traditional measurement of the word.

I climbed the ranks.

I made around $10,000 a month.

I made enough money that Mike was able to stop working for a period of time.

We relocated our family from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and lived in a big fancy house.

I went out and bought a brand new car with only 30 miles on it.

I accomplished things that the younger version of me probably wouldn't have believed were possible.

And somewhere in the middle of achieving all of those things, I started losing myself.

Because there was always another rank.

Another promotion.

Another bonus.

Another goal.

You would accomplish something you had worked incredibly hard for, everyone would celebrate, and almost immediately the conversation became:

Okay. What's next?

What rank are you going for now?

What is your next income goal?

What promotion are you charting for?

There was always another finish line.

And eventually, without realizing it, I started absorbing the message that where I was wasn't enough.

What I had accomplished wasn't enough.

And maybe, on some level, I wasn't enough.

Because how could you ever feel like you'd arrived when the destination moved every time you reached it?

It took me years to understand that I didn't actually like living that way.

And it took stepping away from the network marketing world this year to realize that the things I had been taught to view as success weren't the things that had ever fulfilled me in the first place.

It wasn't the ranks I missed.

It wasn't charting.

It wasn't selling.

It wasn't the bonuses.

It wasn't even the money.

It was the people.

That realization came with some heartbreak of its own.

One of the harder lessons I learned throughout my years in the industry was that sometimes relationships you believe are deeply personal are also tied to business.

Not all of them.

There are people I met through network marketing who became genuine friends and remained in my life long after the company connecting us was gone.

Those relationships were real.

But there were others that changed when I was no longer part of the business.

When I was no longer contributing to someone's team or benefiting someone financially, the phone calls became less frequent. The conversations stopped. People I thought I had meaningful relationships with simply weren't there anymore.

And that hurt.

Because for me, it had always been about people.

No matter what company I was with or what product or service I was selling, I don't think the product was ever the thing people connected with most.

They connected with me.

And looking back, I can finally see that.

Different company.

Different product.

Different compensation plan.

Different logo.

Same me.

I was always writing.

Always telling stories.

Always creating content.

Always connecting with people.

Always mentoring.

Always encouraging.

Always trying to make someone feel seen.

I've always believed that people don't simply buy what you sell. They buy who you are. They respond to authenticity. They know when someone genuinely cares about them.

And I genuinely cared.

That's why people followed me through different companies over the years.

The company kept changing.

The parts of me that people connected with never did.

Eventually, I grew tired of hustling.

I stopped caring about the next rank.

I didn't want to spend my life constantly messaging people, recruiting people, selling something, charting for promotions and trying to convince myself that if I could just accomplish the next thing, then I would feel successful.

I wanted something different.

Or maybe I finally wanted what I had wanted all along.

To create.

To connect.

To help people.

To be present with my family.

To live a life that actually felt good while I was living it.

Stepping away from my last company wasn't simply leaving another company.

I think I was stepping away from an entire lifestyle that no longer fit the woman I had become.

And for the first time in twenty years, I don't feel the need to find another one.

There is no next company.

No next opportunity I'm waiting to discover.

No product I need to attach myself to.

No brand or logo I need behind me.

I don't have to keep searching anymore.

I just get to create.

And I cannot explain how freeing that feels.

Because writing feels different from anything I've ever done.

The constant pressure to show up, sell, message and recruit eventually drained me.

Writing does the opposite.

Writing gives me energy.

It makes me feel alive.

When I'm away from my desk, I find myself wanting to get back to it.

Ideas come to me while I'm living my ordinary life because my life is what I want to write about.

My experiences.

My stories.

My perspective.

My lessons.

My mistakes.

My healing.

For years, I thought I needed a company, a brand or a product in order to build the life I wanted.

Now I'm realizing that the things I actually have to offer were never owned by any company.

They were always mine.

No compensation plan can change them.

No company can restructure them.

No business can suddenly close its doors and take them away.

My words belong to me.

My story belongs to me.

My experiences belong to me.

My perspective belongs to me.

And maybe that's why I can finally look back at those thirteen or fourteen companies without embarrassment.

Because I don't see thirteen or fourteen failures anymore.

I see seeds.

For twenty years, every experience was planting something.

One season taught me how to sell.

Another taught me how to market.

I learned how to lead.

How to mentor.

How to speak in front of people.

How to hear "no" and keep going.

How to handle rejection.

How to start again.

How to trust myself.

Some experiences taught me what kind of leader I wanted to be.

Others taught me what kind of leader I never wanted to become.

Some gave me friendships.

Some gave me heartbreak.

Some built my confidence.

Others broke pieces of it and gave me the opportunity to rebuild it differently.

Some taught me about money.

And some taught me that money would never be enough.

Even the things that fell apart planted something.

For years, I looked backward and saw a trail of things I had started and eventually left behind.

Today, I look at that same trail and see a garden.

Maybe I needed every one of those seasons.

Maybe those companies were classrooms I needed to walk through.

Maybe I wasn't supposed to stay forever.

Maybe I was supposed to learn what I needed to learn, carry those lessons with me and continue becoming the person I was always meant to be.

The seeds were never wasted simply because I didn't stay where I planted them.

Some of them were growing me.

And perhaps the most important thing those twenty years taught me was how I define success.

Because for a long time, success was always somewhere ahead of me.

The next rank.

The next promotion.

The next bonus.

The next income goal.

The next opportunity.

There was always another place I needed to get to before I could finally look around and say:

I made it.

But recently I asked myself a question that brought me to tears:

If no one ever told me what I needed to achieve next, how would I know that my life was successful?

And the answer came almost immediately.

My life already is.

I have an incredible husband who loves me deeply and whom I love just as much.

We have three beautiful, healthy children.

We have created a strong family that continues to grow and strengthen.

We have built a home and a life together.

I have peace that I spent years searching for.

And perhaps most importantly, I can finally say something today that I couldn't truthfully say for most of my life:

I love myself.

If I never made another dollar but got to keep all of that, it would be enough.

Of course I still have dreams.

I want to write more books.

I want to build my blog.

I want my words to reach people.

I would love for my writing to financially support my family someday.

I have ideas I haven't even begun creating yet.

But there is a profound difference between pursuing those things because I believe I need them in order to finally be enough and pursuing them from a place of already knowing that I am.

I don't need another accomplishment to prove that my life matters.

I don't need another zero in my bank account to prove that I'm successful.

I don't need another person to hand me an opportunity and tell me what I could become.

I still want things.

I still dream.

I still believe there is so much ahead of me.

But I no longer need those dreams to come true to prove that the life I have right now is already beautiful.

Maybe that's what I've been searching for all these years.

Not the right company.

Not the right product.

Not the right opportunity.

Not the right definition of success.

Myself.

And somewhere along the way, the seeds became a garden.

Twenty years later, I can finally stop searching.

I can simply sit down...

and create.