[00:00]

Tricia: And here I was at this crossroads of I had just built this entire business. I had literally from the ground up. Like I had watched it be built with plywood and insulation and I had set at the store. I had hired all the employees. I created the processes and procedures. Everything that that store did, it felt like mine because I did it. And you know what I did? You know what they did after my last day? They changed the locks.

Intro: Hello, and welcome The Career Shakeup Podcast. I’m your host, Kristin Szalajko. I’m a certified professional career coach who specializes in career exploration. I believe everyone deserves a meaningful career they love. I know it can be hard to find that career, and that’s why I’m here. I’ve developed an easy formula to help you identify the right career path for you. Let’s Shake up the way you view your career. I’m going to challenge you to look at careers in a brand-new way. Whether you’re stuck in a job you don’t like or just starting out on your path, my goal is to empower you to take control of your career.

[01:11]

Kristin: Okay. We’re here with Trisha Weiss. And welcome, Trisha.

Tricia: Thank you.

Kristin: Okay. Tell us your job title. Tell us what you do.

Tricia: I am a network marketer with doTERRA, but I have my own brand called Essential Thrive Tribe where I help working women get out of the stress cycle and reduce inflammation in their bodies.

Kristin: Awesome. I think that’s a great description. We will jump into, like, all of that and all that what entails. But I like to start off with just a funny story. So, do you have any, like, crazy career stories from doTERRA or anytime in your career?

Tricia: I have so many crazy stories. I worked for Disney at Walt Disney World in Orlando for years.  One of the craziest things about that was that on average we would see 20,000 people per day. That’s a lot of people.

Kristin: Oh, My Gosh.

Tricia: And they’re coming from all these different backgrounds and different places and different personality types. And the guests said the dumbest things. And so, I think most of my stories come from this, like, guess what somebody said today? And the worst part was when I was pregnant and working and really pregnant. You know a lot of them. You just don’t see a woman who is nine months pregnant all the time, every day. Right? And so, we look kind of huge and sort of whale-like.

And that was the worst month ever in my career because people just said every day, are you having twins? Or should you even be here? Or your feet are really swollen, I think you need one of those motorized scooters. I mean, this thing is what I heard. So that’s kind of crazy.

But then I worked for Pandora Jewelry, which is the charm bracelet brand, after working for Disney. And we opened, assuming that we would make X amount of income that day. And we did this big sale. We ran out of sale product within the first hour and had a line wrapped around our building and promised that the sale – it wasn’t really while supplies lasted – it was like, this is the sale that’s going on all day. I was literally out of product and started giving away the store. And that was one of the just kind of an oh, my gosh, I’m going to get fired for this. I told all my employees, I said, I don’t care what it is. Anything under 50, just give it away. Like that’s our promotion for today.

Kristin: Oh, Jeez. I would have panicked too. What Do You Do? That’s a lot of angry customers.

Tricia: Oh, My Goodness. Yeah, so lots and lots of stories.

[04:11]

Kristin: Okay, so tell us, let’s just jump in to like, what you do. So, you do direct sales for doTERRA, but you also do health coaching on the side.  So tell us kind of like what your day to day looks like. What is all of this look like?

Tricia: Yeah, so there’s really six different buckets that I am managing on a daily or weekly basis. And so, of course, one of those is clients. I have a lot of clients at this point, and so it’s helping them. I get lots of questions around, this is what we have, what do I do with this? I’ll get lots of pictures of this is a rash and what would you suggest that I do with it? I’m having a headache, my stomach hurts. All those types of questions. Right?

And so, you have your clients that you’re supporting and then you have your leaders that you’re supporting too, which we’ll talk a little bit about this later, but that is the bread and butter of network marketing for me and loving that aspect of building up other women into leadership roles. And so, I have them and I’m doing a lot of mentoring with them.

And then you have your marketing bucket, which takes a ton of time and actually made me very grateful for not having to do marketing in previous careers, although it’s become something that I’ve enjoyed. It’s been a steep learning curve. So you have that marketing bucket. And then you have just your administrative stuff. There’s surprisingly more than you would think that there is.

Kristin: What do you mean by that?

Tricia: So, anything from writing, messaging, and emailing to figuring out the structure of your pay and how to maximize the compliance and so structuring for different types of bonuses. There’s a lot of emailing that goes back and forth between me and corporate, especially now that I’m a leader in the company. And so, there’s a surprising amount of things to do there. There are things like creating like a Canva graphic and popping that up.

Kristin: Okay, so those are definitely things you don’t enjoy as much is all the administrative things. So, is there anything else in your day that you do on a pretty regular basis?

Tricia: Yeah so then you have like your prospective clients. So, you have when you’re reaching out to people, you’re teaching classes, educating, inviting them in, helping them with a regimen, trying to kind of paint this picture of what it would be like to work with you. So, prospects is a big part of what we do.

[07:02]

Kristin: I’m just going to ask you about the different parts of your job and if you feel like you get enough from that or if maybe you’re lacking in that area. This is mostly because other people may also be interested in this, and they want to know what it’s really like. So, do you feel like there’s enough variety in what you do on a day to day basis?

Tricia: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, another thing that I do on a day-to-day basis is like business collaborations as well. And so, when somebody contacts me and says, how do I do what you did? How do I make this into a business? I say there are three ways to do it. You can do a little bit of all three or you can really lean into one at a time. One is sort of the standard what we think of when we think of network marketing, which is like a party. So something where you’re hosting inside your home, people are inviting, people are coming in, you give a presentation, they try the products, they buy the product, right? So that model works really well. It always has. I think it probably always will. At the end of the day, people want connection, but there’s a lot of people that don’t want to do that for a variety of reasons. So sometimes they don’t want to open their home, the stress of cleaning, the stress of hosting, sometimes it’s the invite where they’re like, I don’t know who I would ask to come, that kind of thing.

So number two is online marketing. And I have succeeded well in that arena. And so the difference – I love the online marketing space – so whether you’re going to do that on Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik, Tok Facebook, wherever you’re going to do it, it can be this beautiful tool for education and conversion. And what’s really great is that so many people think that when you start in a social media platform, that you need to be an influencer, but you actually don’t want to be an influencer. That takes away the bread and butter of what you’re doing. You instead want to convert at a high rate. And so, if you have 200 customers and you convert five that month, that’s all you need to do, or 200 followers, right?

And so that’s where I’m really good at training people, is establishing an online presence and authority and niche, a content strategy, and speaking to the people that they want to help, because we all want to help someone. That it’s human nature. And that’s the beautiful thing about the social marketing. So, number one is the party, number two, social marketing, and then number three…

Kristin: I’m curious as to why you say you don’t want to be an influencer. That’s not as helpful?

Tricia: Yeah. So, if you’re an influencer, you are getting… The term influencer is that you’re getting paid sponsorship. So, the expectation of an influencer is that they have an Amazon store, for example. This is my link to Amazon. All the Amazon things that I love. Amazon gives them a kickback when somebody uses their link. And so, any influencer that you know, you’re going to see like a bubble on their Instagram page where you can click on their Amazon links and their favorite things. But they’re partnering with all sorts of brands, right? Like you think of there’s a famous dancer on Instagram, Kelly Dactyl, and so she part has a huge partnership with Crocs, the company. And so she dances in her crocs.

If you’re an influencer, your main source of income is coming through these business sponsorships and that’s going to take a ton of time away from what you’re really trying to sell, which is your network marketing. Because at the end of the day, you’re going to get paid way more for selling whatever product you’re affiliated with from a network marketing perspective than from an influencer perspective.

Kristin: Okay, that makes sense. Okay, sorry I cut you off before. Do you remember what you were trying to say?

Tricia: Oh, just the number three that has also been really successful in this space is partnering with local businesses. And the culture of business right now is partnerships, collaborations as much as possible. And so, walking into an acupuncturist or a Chiropractor or massage therapist and saying, this is what I do and this is how I can help your business and how we can combine our networks. And so, I partner locally with the Chiropractic office, and I have a huge network here in my area, and so I host classes, seminars at the Chiropractic office and that’s giving them leads too and so I do that with multiple different businesses and that’s a wonderful way to build the business as well.

Kristin: So between the three different ways, how much percentage of time would you say you’re spending in each bucket?

Tricia: The most right now is online because I love it the most, and we’ll talk about this a little bit later, but creating a job that you love is really important. And so, of those three things, the thing that brings me the most joy is the online space. But I have leaders who literally hate it. They’re in this boat of like they’re ready to delete their social platforms, right? And so, for them, they want to walk into a business and shake hands with somebody and say, how can we partner together to create this holistic experience for the people in our community?

So that’s why I spend, I would say 50% is there and then it’s 25% with business collaborations and 25% with hosting, like in-person events.

Kristin: Okay. And so it kind of comes down to personal preference, what you prefer to do, where you prefer to work. But there are some options there about how you control that part of the business, right?

[12:56]

Tricia: Yup. And there definitely are not options with all network marketing companies. So that’s something that you have to take into consideration when you’re wanting to join one. Just like any career. Right? Like you could say Target and Walmart are the same and most people would say, no they’re not! But you could have the exact same job at Target or Walmart. So, it feels like. But how much you make and the culture of the company and just the overall standing of the company with the rest of the world, it’s going to matter to you.

Kristin: Yeah. So, what is it about doTERRA in particular that you are fond of?

Tricia: Well, number one is that there has to be a product. If you’re going to sell something, it needs to be consumable so that you are having those repeat customers. And so, I looked at 19 different brands prior to choosing doTERRA, and some of my favorite brands were things that was going to be a one-time purchase or two-time purchase. You can only have so many earrings, for example. And so that was one that it was consumable.

Number two is it was really important to me that the company was debt free and that their growth trajectory was a very positive swing. And so doTERRA has grown as fast as Apple and that was a really good sign. Over the next eight years, we’re projected to triple in size and in income. And so that was really a big, big deal as well. They are proving that they’re on the right space. Aligning with a company that doesn’t have any debt is important because if they are maintaining a ton of debt, they might go under and then you’re building a business with a company that you might lose your income altogether. And we’ve seen that for the past 30 years, different companies losing income and restructuring pay and things like that. So very stable.

But the third is that the health and wellness is something that was important to me because of my health issues that I had had. And so, I had this really personal, compelling story of, hey, this really did change my life. And of course, I’m going to tell you about that and it’s going to change yours too, if you give it the right chance to work.

Kristin: Yeah. So, I like how much thought and effort you put into picking a company and joining. I feel like there is this…Maybe a stigma or just a preconceived notion that that’s not how it works. I want to talk to you about, like, there’s this stigma that all stay-at-home moms should do network marketing because it’s a good fit for them just because of their life situation. But I get this sense from all these things that you’re doing and all this effort you’re putting into it, there’s more skill to that and there’s more to it than just being able to stay home that makes you successful. So, talk to me about what you need to be successful in this space. What kind of skills do you need?

Tricia: Yeah, I have a lot of problems with the way network marketing markets itself as a whole. If you were going to stereotype how they market, there is a lot of times this lead, “It’s really easy to do. You can do it in the cracks of your day. You can make really good money in the cracks of your day.” And ultimately that’s just a fallacy. And so, we need to start calling that out now.

There’s a huge difference, and I think where the stigma comes from is that we just see numbers. And while statistics don’t lie, statisticians do. So, you see this huge bucket of people that say, okay, they’ve all upgraded their account to distributor status, but some people who have upgraded their account to distributor status literally just want a discount on their products. DoTERRA doesn’t do that, which is one of the reasons I aligned with them. Again, there’s not like this extra discount. I pay the same thing for my oils that you pay for your oils. And so that was important to me. I get paid for a job that I do. I don’t get a discount on my products. But some people, right, like, they’re going to have an upgraded account with maybe four different brands just because they want an extra 25% off when they order.

There’s a huge difference between them and between somebody who’s making this a career. And so that’s where the stigma needs to break down is that you can’t just take this pool of people who have upgraded accounts and spread out income among these pool of people. Rather, you need to take the pool of people who have upgraded accounts. You need to separate them by people who are actively working ten or more hours a week versus people who are not. And that’s going to give you a way clearer idea of the income that people are making. So that’s kind of the stigma that needs to be debunked there. Does that feel clear? That’s kind of point number one.

Kristin: Yeah. So it’s like you get this unclear idea of what you could make based on what you put in right? There’s maybe some misconceptions about what it takes to actually make a real living doing this. Is that right?

Tricia: Yeah, because of the way that the data is presented. And so, you hear all the time that somebody is in the top 2% of their company. Okay, well, what percent of the company are you at of people who are actually working the business? Right. It would really be different. So, anybody who is at a leadership rank or above, if you took anybody in those buckets, they’re probably working somewhere between ten and 30 hours a week and they’re making really good income. And that would be probably be true among most of network marketing. But the trick is you got to look at that leadership rank.

And so what happens is that you’re putting in a lot of time at the beginning for not very much income because the whole point is that you’re building out this business. And so, the way that I looked at it when I started was I was at this crossroads. And you know this because I worked with you as a career coach and I had just quit my corporate job where I was making really good money, really good bonus structures, had a horrible work-life balance, but I had a lot of passion and purpose around my career and around being an upper leadership in the corporate world was awesome. I loved that. And so, I quit my job, right? And I was really thinking, do I go back to school and either get a master’s degree or some sort of certification toward being a project manager or being a life coach? Right? There’s all these certifications that you can get, they usually take about two years to complete. Or do I put my time and effort toward building a business for two years and not expect anything out of it?

Because either way I was going to go to grad school, and I was going to spend 50 grand and at the end of that two years. I was going to be 50 grand in the hole but have some pretty good job opportunities or spend two years making just a couple hundred dollars a month and working 10 hours a week and it’s feeling like I’m working for very much. Right? But then after two years, you kind of know, have I made it or have I not? And after two years, my income is pretty dang good.

And so instead of being $50,000 in the whole and $50,000 positive Right?

[20:14]

Kristin: Right. So you’re treating this more like this is not a quick fix. It’s not a quick money. It’s really, you’re treating it more like a business, more like an entrepreneurship. So, I thought of this analogy, and correct me if you think this is off, but it seems like direct sales is kind of like a franchise. If you have a franchise, let’s say Chick-fil-A. They do really well. But Chick-fil-A has a structure. You buy into their structure. You pay this fee, but then they give you all the tools that you need to succeed. But then you obviously have to run your own building, and you have to get it up and running. And it’s going to take time to have income come in and build the business and get customers. And that’s sort of how it seems for direct sales also. Like they have the structure for you that you’re inheriting. But you have to, as an entrepreneur, come out and actually build your business and build the structure. And it’s going to take time to get customers. Do you think that’s an accurate analogy?

Tricia: 100%. And I even struggle with people saying that you’ll hear network marketers say, support my small business. I don’t even consider myself a small business. I am aligned with a multi-billion dollar global company. To me, that doesn’t feel super small business.

Small business to me would be somebody that opens up like a local private practice of some sort or somebody who has a lawn care business that’s thriving, something like that. To me. There might be others who disagree with that. But 100%. I feel as a franchiser, what’s different is that if you’re running a Chick-fil-A, there’s still hours of operation. So, you have to be there at a certain time. It’s a way bigger buy-in. And so, if it doesn’t do well, you really have the opportunity to lose quite a bit of money versus in network marketing. If it doesn’t do well, you’ve lost time. Now. For some people, time is more important than money. For me, in the season of life, I had more time than I had money. And I think that’s why so often stay-at-home moms are the ones that are recruited because they do have to, generally speaking, more time than they do money.

But the other thing is that this has exposed me to this whole other world of coaching and caring for clients on a one-on-one basis and allowing me to expand my business into other streams of revenue that Chick-fil-A wouldn’t have done for me. Because your heart and your soul is going to be poured into Chick-fil-A. And once I realized that I needed to take my network marketing and establish my own brand, that is when my business took off and flourished. Right? So now, you can buy products from me. I’m going to help you with them. And you can also pay me for a coaching, a 45 day coaching program that’s going to overhaul your inflammatory load and I 100% promise that my clients feel better after 45 days by leaps and bounds. In fact, usually, it’s day eight that my clients say, I have never felt this good in my whole entire life.

But I wouldn’t have stepped into that space had I not had all this. Think about all the free training that I’ve gotten from doTERRA. Think about all the access to doctors and scientists and researchers that I’ve had just by aligning with that brand that I would have had to go out and find on my own had I just tried to go to health coaching route. And so now when I train my leaders, that’s how I train them. Here is the product that we sell. How does that align with the brand that you want to be? For example, right now I have a leader who is opening up her own Apothecary and she’s making all of these in-house blends for beauty using doTERRA essential oils because they’re the best essential oils out there. But she’s saying, here’s a facial serum, here’s something for your eyelash growth. It’s all non toxic. Here’s how to grow your hair, here’s how to grow you know what I’m saying?

[24:19]

Kristin: Yeah. So, the trick is really finding something that you can grow and that can scale. You’re not stuck in this small bucket, but you can actually grow beyond that. Like, you found a way to take doTERRA as a part of your income, but you’re enhancing those skills and enhancing your job – your product offerings – so you can make more money.

Tricia: Totally. Yes, I can make $5,000 a month from doTERRA and $5,000 a month in coaching. And they go together because my coaching clients were using my doTERRA products.

Kristin: Absolutely. That makes sense. Is there any other myths or stigmas about direct selling that you would love to kill today?

Tricia: There’s this fear of rejection that comes with it and that I wish would go away because there’s a huge fear of being misunderstood when you step into the space of why you’re doing it and where you’re going. And so, as someone that’s thinking about stepping into this space or even watching other people step into this space, the biggest question that needs to be asked is tell me your five-year plan. Right? Where are we going? Where do you hope to take this career? And how is it a launching pad for you? And if it’s for the stay-at-home mom who just needs an extra $400 a month, that’s great. She wants to provide groceries for her family, and that needs to be admirable.

And so what happened at the beginning is that there was this rejection or they say when you start a business that your friends and family are the least supportive. And that’s true, unfortunately, in a lot of regard. And then once you make it, they’re so supportive. And so, when I switched from kind of just getting started to like, oh, she’s actually a leader in this company and she’s doing really well, the floodgates of family and friends began to open, and that was really frustrating. And so, if the misconception could leave in the first place and not be there, it would be helpful for the people who have really contemplated this and said, this is something that is going to be right for me and my family.

But then the other thing is just that it’s a career for so many. And there’s this misconception that you’re either making a couple hundred dollars. This is where the idea of the pyramid comes from, is that people are either making only a couple hundred dollars a month or they’re making a million dollars a year. And that’s so inaccurate. And again, the data lies. It doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what’s going on. And so, it’s a career for a ton of people. There are so many of us that are making $60,000 to $200,000 a year, and we don’t need to be millionaires necessarily. We just needed a career that we loved. And so, it’s a career for a lot of people, not just the top 7 people in the company.

Kristin: Yeah. That’s I’m in Utah, and there’s definitely, like we seem to be, like, the direct sale headquarters of the world. But you do hear and see that a lot. So, it’s helpful to know that you can really make real career out of this, but you also have to put into it what you would any other career to make it successful. How did you find support at the beginning? So, you just talked about how, like, at the beginning, you don’t have a lot of support, and friends and family because they think you’re crazy or whatever it is. They just don’t support your dream. So where did you go to find support? Where did you go to feel like somebody believes in me?

[27:59]

Tricia: I really drew support from my mentor, who in network marketing, is often called your upline. And so, I had aligned with someone…I mentioned earlier that I had worked with or interviewed 19 different companies prior to choosing one. And one of the reasons that I chose her is because she had made this a career. And it’s really important that you align with someone – if that’s what your goal is – you need to align with someone who has already achieved what you want. Right? And when it got really hard, and sometimes it does, I drew on her belief in me, in the product, in the business model. And really, that was kind of it. And that was kind of all I needed too.

Kristin: You just need someone that’s been there, that’s doing it, that’s rooting you on in the inside, right?

Tricia: Yes.

[28:56]

Kristin: Okay. So what kind of person does it take to find success in this space?

Tricia: You need to know yourself really well. There are all sorts of people that if you go to any distributor conference, you’re going to find an array of people. But there are a couple of things that they have in common. This doesn’t mean that their skill set is in common, but they always have… they’re a self moted, driven individual. They rely on a lot from within. Just a strong person. They have quite a bit of support from their spouse, if they’re married. That is pretty key and then they have some sort of attachment or connection to the product that they are selling.

And so, for me, it took away my chronic migraines and helped me undeniably with anxiety and so I’ve struggled with anxiety. My first anxiety attack I remember very clearly was when I was 21 and I haven’t had an anxiety attack since I started taking Doterra’s adaptive capsules in June of 2020. That’s a really big deal.

Kristin: Yeah, for sure.

Tricia: And then chronic migraines I lived with for seven years and I took an oil called Copaiba and I took that internally and the migraines went away. And so, I’ve got this deep connection to this product as well as drive and a lot of support. Now that’s kind of what makes us similar now as far as skill set, what type of person you need to be well, that can be super varied. It just depends on what type of business you want to build. And so, we talked about earlier that there’s multiple channels to build this business. And for me, what I succeeded most in the corporate world was taking a person and figuring out what her skill sets were, what made her tick, and creating that into a job for her.

And so that’s what I do really well in this space, too. So instead of focusing on your weaknesses and trying to improve those, let’s figure out what you love to do and do more of that, because that’s what you love to do. And so here the reason that I’ve succeeded in this space, is because I’m a really good leader. And I had already proved that to myself and my audience in a corporate space, because I promoted more people than anyone else that was in my boat, at least at the time, right? So, my organization promoted out more managers than any other organization did, and that and my retention rate was really, really high. So, I took those skill sets and that passion, and I said, I’m going to transition this into the network marketing space.

And again, I had really high retention, because when somebody comes to me and they say, I want to build this business, I say, Great. So, tell me all about you. Tell me what you do well, tell me what you hate, tell me how you envision this going, and then we figure out how to do it from there. Because that’s the beauty of this industry, is that there are so many ways to do it. Right?

Kristin: So, I really love that. I love that you’re not focusing on, okay, let’s say sales. I’m not very good at selling to strangers. So instead of forcing yourself to do the skill set you’re not good at and to try to force yourself to grow, you figure out what you are good at and how you can do this in a different way. Because there’s multiple ways to grow these businesses without doing the one that we feel like our next-door neighbor did. And so, we have to do it exactly the way she’s doing it. But we can make this individualized to ourselves. Is that right?

[32:45]

Tricia: Yeah, and you’re in control of that versus when you have a boss at a career, you get shut down all the time. “Hey, I have this great idea.” Or “ I’d really like to focus on this”, and they say “no!”

Kristin: Yeah, that’s true. So, you have a lot more control over what you’re doing and how you do it and how you make it work for you.

Tricia: Yeah.

Kristin: Okay, so walk us through your career journey. How did you start? Where did you start out of school and how did you end up where you are?

Tricia: So I graduated in the middle of a recession, and I actually graduated with a vocal performance degree. So, what the heck was I…

Kristin: Very different.

Tricia: What’s that going to do with that?  I stand by that degree. I do enjoy having it. It has served me in many ways. But there were no jobs. And so, my husband and I decided to take minimum wage internships for Disney. We moved to Orlando, and I wore a costume – khakis that came up to my nipples and stood at the cash register and was paid $7.25 to do that. But I worked really hard, and I was really positive, and I fit the brand really well. I have a very outgoing personality, and if somebody said, go out and tell a little girl she’s a princess, by golly, I did that.

And so, we moved up pretty quickly within Disney into management. So we were in frontline management, and I happened to be in retail operations management, and so did that. And then in about 2012, the company got really serious about trying to figure out how our Disney lovers could decorate their homes without it being red and yellow and black. And so, I had the privilege of being on this team of creating new concept design. So how do we …how do we have kitchen décor that’s Disney; but it’s like subtle Disney. And how do we have Disney that’s incorporated into fashion? And so it was just this it was this amazing opportunity and task force sort of just fell into my lap along my career journey. And I got to open and help design this concept, this boutique concept for Disney that took off and did amazing.

And so then from there, I went into corporate alliance with Disney. So anywhere that you see Disney products, they have a corporate alliance partnership with Disney. And so I was one of the main people that held the Pandora jewelry account. So that is the charm bracelet. And let me tell you, if you are coming to Disney and you love Pandora, which is essentially the entire East Coast, you want a Disney charm on that bracelet. And so that marriage was literally perfect and I think blew Disney and Pandora’s expectations out of the water. It was an amazing thing to have a front row seat in. And just some of my absolute favorite career memories come from the birth of that partnership.

And so, about a year into that, Pandora recruited me and said, hey, would you come manage the Disney side from Pandora instead of managing the Pandora side from working for Disney, and made me offer I couldn’t refuse. And so, I jumped ship, but I stayed feet on the ground, representing Pandora for Disney, and so it just was wonderful. And so, I built this store from the ground up. It was the highest revenue store in the entire world for Pandora. I hired my staff, and I quickly got promoted within Pandora as well. And so, by the end, I was one of the people most responsible for the south region, so Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida, and spent my time traveling between those places, mentoring the other leaders in that store, which is amazing. It’s one thing to mentor your part time employees, but it’s a whole other thing to mentor somebody who wants to do this as a career and promote them into these new roles. And so I mentioned that I promoted more leaders than any other store nationwide.

Well, what happened is that I had my third baby, and it was really hard to manage being a mom of three, one of which was an infant. In fact, my boss from Pandora called me when I was four weeks postpartum, and she said, when are you able to start traveling again? And I remember actually sitting in my closet, because I was trying to not hear my baby cry so that I could have this conversation with my boss. And I wanted so badly to say, “I’m still bleeding”, right? And that’s vulnerable, and that’s personal. I realize we’re talking to an audience here, but that’s real, and that’s what women sometimes are facing in the working world. And my boss was a woman! She’d had kids. But there’s this kind of expectation that if they had to grind it out and put their family on the line to do it, to succeed in their career, people coming for them should too.

And I refused.

And so instead, we decided to go back from maternity leave for a few months just to get things worked out. And I took a year worth gap. And here I was at this crossroads of I had just built this entire business. I had literally from the ground up. Like, I had watched it be built with plywood and insulation. And I had set up the store. I had hired all the employees. I created the processes and procedures. Everything that store did, it felt like mine because I did it. And you know what they did  after my last day? They changed the locks.

Kristin: That stinks.

Tricia: It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t mine. So, I had built this fantastic business. It was the highest revenue building in the world, and none of it belonged to me. And so, in that year of what do I want to do? And you know, because I worked with you from a career perspective of like, what am I going to do? Because I knew that I had to work, that I wanted to work. 1s

 And so I said, you know what? In these years where a couple of my children are so really little, I’m going to step in and try to create something on my own. And at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work, that’s okay. I’m okay with failing. I will be glad that I tried. And so I said, I’m going to do this. And the goal at the time, is I gave myself five years, which now I know it’s way too long to give yourself in one area, but I said, by the time my littlest goes to kindergarten I want this to have replaced what my corporate income was so that I don’t have to go back and build something for somebody else.

Well, turns out two years into that, you know, I just about achieved that goal, but I gave myself a lot of grace and patience, and it wasn’t the end all, be all because I had time, right?

This is what I was going to do. I could either go to school and go to grad school and be $50,000 in whole, or I could get some sort of certification that you pay $12,000 to $20,000 for, like a health coach or project management certification or do coding. There are so many options, right? Which is why you do what you do, because all of us are like, what are we supposed to do? Kristin help us!

Kristin: Yeah. It’s confusing.

Tricia: Or I could work for a couple of years trying to build my own brand, and at least I wasn’t going to come out in the hole, right. I wasn’t going to lose any money doing this.

Kristin: Just time. Not money.

Tricia: Just time. But I felt like I had time.

Kristin: Yeah. Most of us feel like we’re in a hurry, but the truth is we do have time. Right? We put these arbitrary deadlines on ourselves sometimes. And you’re like, well, who really said it has to be done by then? And who really says everything has to be achieved by this certain date? And obviously, we need to be driven and have goals, but sometimes these timelines we create are just kind of silly.

Tricia: Yeah. So as long as it was something that was fulfilling, that is really what I needed. When you talk about, do you need time freedom, do you need financial freedom or do you need purpose freedom? When I stepped into this space I needed purpose freedom.

[41:00]

Kristin: Okay, so how does this work with your family? So, you still obviously have kids, you’re still working and trying to juggle this with them. Is it hard? Is it working well? What are the pros and cons there?

Tricia: You know, most of them are pros. Things that I’ll do… I hire childcare out just once a week for 6 hours so that I have at the beginning of the week, a big chunk of time to get done. This is the stuff I need to get done that I can’t get done when I’m with my kids.  These are calls that I need to take that I can’t have, distraction – that sort of thing. And that big chunk has been really key. I used to try to just take an hour or two at a time. I really couldn’t get into a rhythm. And then otherwise I take throughout the week three other chunks of 3 hours. And sometimes like one night a week. That’s at nighttime when my husband takes the kids that night. And that’s been really sweet. One of them is typically one of the weekend days that he’s off in the morning for a few hours. And then I’ve ended up taking my kids over to my parent’s house and we do dinner there. And then I’ll kind of sneak away for a couple of hours and get some things done. So that has worked really well for our family.

My kids literally don’t feel like I’m gone and I’ll ask them sometimes if they do complain. There are times where I need to stick in front of the TV and I need to take a call or we’re at the park and I’m the mom sitting over on the bench that everybody’s judging of, like, why is she on her phone not playing with her kids? Well, because actually she runs like a really huge business and she’s killing it right now by taking this hour to let her children run off some steam and her answer some messages. Right? Have grace people. Sometimes they’ll complain about that, like, Mom, why are you on your phone instead of chasing us? And I’ll say, well, kids, Mommy needs to work. So, we have a couple of options. I can either work a little bit while you guys are out having fun and playing or like, Mommy can be gone every day, all day. And when I put it into perspective for them, they’re like, oh yeah, no, it’s fine, mom, it’s fine.

Kristin: Sometimes it’s helpful to just put it in perspective for yourself too, so you don’t feel so guilty.

Tricia: I only schedule about 12 hours a week of concrete time.

Kristin: That’s pretty awesome. So do you have any final career advice for people listening? Anything that you think would be helpful for them or anything somebody’s ever told you that you feel like it’s worth repeating?

Tricia: I do. Figure out which of these words rings most to you. Are you self-preserving? Are you intimate, or are you social? And I think identifying that can give you a lot of insight into what kind of career you might want. And so self-preserving may be somebody that needs to be in an office, sit in a chair, do something administrative.

Somebody intimate… I identify as somebody who is an intimate person from a social perspective, and I want to sit one on one. I’m like, I have loved this because it’s me and you talking. And if I could sit at a coffee shop Monday through Friday and just have a new person to talk to every 90 minutes, I would rather do that than, like, go out to dinner with a group of seven girlfriends. So that’s something that you can figure out. And then figure out what your need is.

Do you need time, freedom? Do you need financial freedom or do you need purpose freedom and go from there. Who are you and what do you want? And then have the confidence to know that it’s out there for you. We live in a place where there are so many different types of jobs and I’ve worked a lot of them and had fulfillment in all of them.

Know your worth and have confidence that there is something out there for you. It’s kind of like choosing a spouse, right? There’s somebody for you.

Kristin: Absolutely. I compare finding a career to dating all the time. So, I’m right there with you.

Tricia:  You do?…

Kristin: I think that’s excellent advice. So where can people find you? Someone wants to find more about you. Where are you?

Tricia: My brand is Essential Thrive Tribe. And based on this interview, you can tell I picked the Thrive Tribe aspect because I knew that I was going to have a group of women who were going to really succeed and go, well, go forth in life. And so that’s kind of where that was born, but also thriving from a physical perspective and an emotional perspective.

And so, my 45 days is called the Temple Reset. And our bodies are a temple. And what we want for our bodies is for them to interact with the world around us the best that we possibly can. And so, there aren’t very many programs out there like that that address spiritual, emotional and physical needs all at the same time in the same 45 days. And so, you can connect best with me on Instagram. I’m on a few different social platforms, but that’s the one that I prefer. So Essential Thrive Tribe, you can also go to www.essentialthrivetribe.com and you can book a discovery call with me. You can download…

I specialize in helping working moms because as you’ve seen through this conversation, that was really, really hard to be a working mom. And we didn’t even get into how that ended up impacting my health in that gap year, which is in part how I found essential oils to pull me out of that hole. But I had so much inflammation in my body that I didn’t even know about as a working mom. And I promise any working mom that they have it too. There is no way to avoid it. If you’re a working mom, you need to go download my guide to Career Wellness and see what the stress of trying to balance home and succeed in your career does to your body. And that there is hope and a way to support ourselves in an elevated way that you probably wouldn’t have to do if you weren’t trying to do both of those things.

Kristin: That’s awesome. Okay, so Instagram and her website are the best way to find her and to learn more about her and her course. And of course, I’ll link to those in the show notes so that you guys can easily find them. Trisha, thank you so much for your time. This has been such an excellent conversation and as always, is a joy to talk to you.

Tricia: You too, Kristin.

[47:36]

Kristin: It was such a great conversation with Trisha. I’m so glad that she could join us. I think she did a great job of teaching you what to look for in a network marketing company. If this is something you’re considering, clearly there are some criteria that you need to have in mind and you need to vet these companies before you choose to align yourself with someone. And also, there’s other ways that you can grow and develop and obviously learn…gain an income outside of just selling whatever products you have aligned yourself with. And I love the tips that she shared about how to succeed in this space. So, thank you for joining us today. I will have all of these notes in the show notes. It will be at www.kristinszalajko.com/episode7. And I’ll link to all of Trisha’s – her website, her Instagram, her social media pages so that you can find her there. Thank you for joining us and we’ll see you next time.

[Outro]

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you found value as you listen. If there’s anyone you feel could use this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. Also, you’re likely listening to this on the go. When you find a quiet moment, could you be so kind to leave me a review that will help others find me as well? Be sure to come back for our next episode, the same time, same place. Have a great week!