Coffee & Oceans
To me, coffee represents home. Every morning my wife and I have a cup of coffee while playing with our three kiddos. There’s something so simple, yet so special about a hot mug of coffee that just makes me feel at home. It’s warm and welcoming. You can hold it in your bare hands.
Oceans are another thing I love. If coffee represents home, oceans represent the rest of the world. I love staring into the waves and horizon and feeling so small and out of control. Once I step out our front door, the world is like an ocean: beautiful, powerful, overwhelming, influential, and insanely unpredictable. It’s breathtaking and terrifying all at once.
Here’s a quick update on my recent coffee and oceans…
Lately, instead of pouring my morning cup of coffee and heading downstairs to my basement office where I used to work remote for a web design company in NYC, I now pour my coffee, walk my beautiful daughter to school at the end of our street, and then play on the ground with my two boys for a while. See, I was recently let go from that remote web design job. Things were going really well and I was working on some of my favorite work to date (and receiving great feedback), and then one day, completely out of nowhere, I was notified that the company wasn’t doing as well as it had hoped and had to make some changes. Nothing based on my work. Just something that often happens with small startups in this industry. And while I was completely shocked, frustrated, confused, and a bit angry for a moment, I wasn’t about to let this throw me off track.
I love God and I deeply believe that He has an amazingly beautiful plan for my life. So the last thing I was going to do (even though it was quite a challenge at times) was let this get me down. After processing and praying through this with my wife, Kelly, who I absolutely cherish, we decided that, while we are incredibly grateful for all my previous jobs, we’re done with letting another company decide and control our time and paychecks.
Kelly and I are independent distributors for Young Living Essential Oils. Kelly’s been working her tail off for close to five years now and I recently created my own account. Our vision for our family has always been for me to eventually quit my full-time 9–5 job and come home to work together as a team. I guess God just had another plan and threw us into this journey sooner than we had expected. And honestly, as hard as it was to be let go, I’m thankful that I don’t have to say I “quit” my job. I was invested and giving it my all. This was the company’s decision. And I can honestly now say that I’m thankful it went down this way.
Young Living has been an absolute monster of a blessing to our family. Not only has it provided a much healthier lifestyle for us and our kids and amazing financial freedom (check out the income disclosure linked at the bottom…and sit down, it’s pretty bonkers.), but also freedom with our time. Kelly and I can now work as a team with a vision for the future of our growing family (baby number 4 is due in December). We can work whenever and from wherever we want. We don’t have to ask for time off or leave the house every morning and miss out on our kids and each other for 8+ hours every day. We get to play with our kids and invest in their lives all throughout the day, all while still running a business from the comfort of our own home.
And it frees me up to really discover what I love and what God has created me for. Now I have the freedom to be more selective in choosing to do work for things I believe in and am passionate about. I have the opportunity to really figure out what I’ve always wanted to do and then pursue it.
I currently do contract design for Product Hunt and For King and Country and am incredibly grateful for these opportunities. I am thankful that my wife and I get to partner on this adventure with Young Living, experiencing freedom that we never expected years ago. I feel like I can breathe now. I don’t feel tied down any longer. I feel free to explore and chase after this adventure God has taken us on. And I am so grateful for the time I’ve earned back with my family.
If you are currently working a 9–5 job that takes you away from your family all day, trust me, I understand. That was me for my whole life up until just about a month ago. I respect anyone who works hard for their family. We all have to do what is best for our family and what we believe God has called us to. I am just simply saying that I believe there is a better way. The standard job that takes us away from our families for 8+ hours every day, working for someone else, on their schedule, can be a very crippling and exhausting experience.
At the end of the day, the most important part of my life, after my relationship with Jesus, is my wife and kids. And it’s silly that a 9–5 job takes away the majority of my time with them. I used to see my kids for a few hours every day. That’s not right. It should be the other way around. We should instead be able to spend every day investing those hours into our families, while still working hard, but on our own time and in a way that doesn’t remove us from them. Our kids now get those 8+ hours every day back with me, all the while getting to see me and Kelly working hard on our business. They even get to take part and get their hands dirty with us. Story recently told me she was going to be the “stamper” and put stamps on all our outgoing business mail. That’s good stuff!
Through this, I’ve also been challenged to realize that our identity is not in what we do, how much we make, or who we work for. My identity is found in God and God alone. This has been immensely freeing. Not always easy to remember, but so refreshing. My beautiful wife has been so great at reminding me of this.
I could go on for hours on this topic, so if you’d ever like to chat more about it, call, text, DM, or email me. I’d be honored to connect. We are living this story firsthand and I can’t speak highly enough about it. Young Living is an absolute blessing of a company, and when you experience something this amazing, you’d be crazy not to share it with others.
I am so happy I get to spend my days with Kelly and our kids now instead of leaving the house every morning. I don’t want to miss out on these precious days. They are already going too quickly. I’m thankful for this freedom and the journey God has us on. Come join us!
Young Living Income Disclosure
