Last night I was doing a little mindless TikTok scroll… well not completely mindless – let’s call it market research, you know, to see what’s trending, what’s funny, and to inspire creativity. Anyway I stumbled on this account and this guy had three videos, in these videos he walks up to strangers that are pulling up in really fancy cars and asks them what they do for a living.
These are Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Ferraris, the Mercedes trucks, that sort of thing.
So he walks up to the drivers and says, “excuse me what do you do for a living?” And the responses are kind of hilarious. Two guys say medical, one says lawyer, 3 say investments, and the rest all said something to the extent of, “umm I don’t know” or “nothing really”. So many were scrambling to put into words what it is exactly that they do.
So people driving the most expensive cars in the world can’t put into words what they do for a living?
It makes me wonder why we ask kids what they want to be when they grow up.
It seems some of the most successful people don’t even know the answer to that question. Maybe the better question would be HOW do you want to be?
Obviously this is a very small pool of people , maybe 15 or so were interviewed but I found it so funny because it resonated with me. When people ask me what we do for a living I struggle for words too… My husband doesn’t have a regular job and neither do I.
Neither of us have an office or a title.
I used to come up with these one liners like, “I help people discover wellness through homeopathic products”. Or, “I empower others to build a life of their dreams”. But none of those “titles” really resonated with me.
The truth is I can’t really sum up what I do in a word or two because its kind of a long story!
It’s not conventional but the truth is more and more people are living this way.
I can only assume that like us, those drivers that stumbled for words, live the entrepreneurs’ life. A life by design.
The entrepreneur decides how she wants to bring value to the world, does that thing, and the world pays her back in the form of compensation and much much more.
At the very basic side of things I help get essential oils and nutritional products into people’s hands. I show them how to use these products for beauty and longevity. I don’t hold stock of these products but I show people how to order from the farmer and producer.
But the story of how I got here is the more important part.
I was born in Poland. I was a nice little Polish girl that never took any risks and didn’t question the “norm”. There was a saying growing up that the adults would say; children should be seen and not heard. I knew my place.
At the age of six we left communist Poland and moved to the US. My mom had a little over $100, a couple of suitcases, and a dream. We lived in an “apartment” that was actually the top floor of a single family home. There was no heating in the bathroom and no air conditioning anywhere.
I remember wearing hand-me-down clothes and not understanding the language or traditions. I remember feeling like an outsider looking in. I remember feeling like I didn’t belong.
Of course these were just my own projections because the community in that small Iowa town where we lived for 3 years was so sweet to us. But my mom was working at a golf bag factory for $4 an hour. She was ambitious and this life wasn’t cutting it.
So we moved to the big city, Chicago.
It was there that I discovered something I never knew existed before, discrimination. The new school was run by cool girls and the Polish girls were at the bottom at the totem pole. I was picked on, and I shrunk down even more.
My mom went on to get her bachelors degree and then… the American dream… We moved to the suburbs! A home with a picket fence, we even got a golden retriever.
At the new suburban school I was no longer bullied but my self esteem was low and I never made an effort to make lots of friends.
I went on to do the proper thing and went to college and got a finance degree. In college I felt unjudged by my peers for the first time, but I still did not work on growing my confidence.
I didn’t know then that this was a skill I could learn. I thought outgoing-ness was a trait you were either born with or you weren’t, and I wasn’t.
While I was getting after my degree, my mom decided she was sick of corporate America, well actually corporate America decided she was too expensive. After serving her company as head accountant for many years they told her to go home. She found herself jobless.
And on to the next phase. We went into business together! I didn’t go into my field of finance, I instead became the manager for her salon. We offered tanning, facials and massages. My mom invested her entire life’s savings and 401k and we worked without getting paid to keep the business afloat.
In the meantime I met and married Michael. We bought an overpriced house at the height of the market and in the economic crash my mom had to shut down her business. Five years of working, investing, and pouring into a dream, gone.
Around this time I found out I was pregnant with our first baby… and then second. Because of my dream of being a stay-a-home mom, Mike agreed to work two jobs. That meant that he was never home, he was exhausted. I was exhausted. We couldn’t travel and there was no overflow. We weren’t living an abundant life. We were going through the motions and getting by the best we could.
And then a thing happened. My mom found healing with essentials oils when she was going through a hard time and then she started telling people about it. She told me her story. I starting using these oils too. I told a few friends and family about it. Some of them laughed at me and some of them bought some oils. My mom started teaching about a new way of living; how to live in a way that is more natural minded, by following the ques of your body, by eating better, getting the proper nutrients, and eliminating toxins from your lifestyle.
For the first time I began to see the possibility for something different. The possibility of living a life that I design with my own habits. That the average, go to school, work a job, take prescriptions, and extend dying as long as possible, was only one option but I could choose something different.
I attended some workshops, I read some great books, and I made the single most empowering decisions of my life. I decided to go for it. I decide not only that I would build a different kind of business (and life), but that I wouldn’t stop until I succeed.
I decided that I no longer identified as the shy little Polish girl that never questioned anything.
And I began to ask questions.
Why is our nation getting sicker, more overweight, and more depressed? Why do people stay in jobs they don’t love and not travel even though they’d like to?
Why don’t people allow themselves to desire anything larger than their bank accounts allow?
Because they have been lied to.
Because they aren’t taught how to ask the right questions. In fact they are taught not to question.
They assume (like I did) that if a box of cereal made it to a supermarket then the ingredients must be okay to give to our kids. And they believe that if they work really hard and get the title and the house that they will be happy in the burbs with the fence and the dog.
But we are not meant to be put in a box!
Our souls are ever expanding and ever desiring and we need to move and grow. We need to create and to discover.
We need adventure.
We need to express ourselves. Our bodies need nutrients and movement and times of stillnes and we can’t get any of those things in our modern fast-paced world. Most people are rushing constantly from work to soccer practice to every other obligation all in the name of keeping up.
So I made a decision to break out of this box. I decided to redefine myself.
I am not shy – I have a voice that deserves to be heard.
I am not an outsider – I am unique with a unique sense of humor and style.
I am not destined to live an average, okay, almost life – I choose to live an extraordinary, adventurous, spectacular one.
I decide that I’m free!
And so I did start to build a new business. A home based business. It didn’t require me to put in my life savings. It did require a whole lot of belief in myself and a new way of thinking. It requires me to keep pushing myself to grow in new ways.
A few years later Mike left job one and a couple years after that her left job two. Then we looked at each other and said, “now, where in the world do we wish to live?” And we choose a beautiful place on the east coast that is on the water. A place surrounded by beautiful nature views, and doesn’t make our faces hurt in the winter time.
Today I am living my dream life but I am in no way done. Not even close. I am just getting started. My business is really just my life now. There is no line. Life is business and business is life.
My job title is to better person today than I was yesterday. My role in my company is to learn and to teach.
Every single day when I wake up I ask the question, how can I be better today and how can I serve?
I wish to create desire and possibility for others. I wish for them to see that they can live a life beyond their wildest dreams. I believe everything flows in perfect devine timing and when the student is ready the teacher does always appear.
And so ya, if a stranger asks me, what you do for a living, I very likely might just answer:
Ummmmmmmm, well you know, a little of this a little of that… It’s a long story!
Do you have a success story? I’d love to hear how you broke out of the box. Find me on Instagram and shoot me a message.
To you joy and abundance,
Agnes
