Congratulations on Reaching Presidential Diamond

Gary: I was working as a full-time attorney for an insurance company when Kari started doing doTERRA. I was very supportive of what she was doing and I helped her on the side while working. I helped take care of the kids and pitched in around the house. I also helped with the business by talking to other husbands and sharing. Two years ago, I left that job to work with Kari and it’s been awesome. I love the work. It’s completely outside of my comfort zone, but it’s been great to learn from my spouse and from other leaders in doTERRA.

Kari: I’m first and foremost a full-time mom and doing doTERRA on the side. As our team grew, things started falling through the cracks. I realized I would either have to hire someone to help with doTERRA or hire someone to help with the kids. I didn’t like either one of those options. So, Gary andI prayed and he threw me this awesome curve ball and said, “What if it was me?” We spent nine months planning out what that would look like for us to job share and switch off who was with the kids and who was working doTERRA. We really navigated and prepared what that would look like for our jobs, roles, and responsibilities. Now, our kids have been able to have both mom and dad with them regularly and it’s just been special for us that we could make it work.

Gary: There are days when we butt heads, but in a good way. If we didn’t butt heads, then one of us wouldn’t be needed. We have to keep mutual respect for one another. When you make that a priority, it helps overcome the obstacles you might face.

Kari: We’re sharpening each other. He and I are opposite in a lot of ways personality-wise, but we have aligned goals and interests. We’ve both learned so much through the process of navigating our strengths, weaknesses, different skillsets and interests, and how to help each other shine.

Kari: We’ve learned to keep really specific business hours. It’s like clockwork. Gary is out of the house by 9:00am because he still liked the idea of getting up, getting ready for work, and leaving so that he doesn’t feel like he’s going stir crazy in the house all day long. He takes his laptop with him and he works remotely from one of the local coffee shops or libraries. He comes home at 1:30pm every day and I work out of our home office after that. I like still being close to the kids so they have access to me, but I’m behind closed doors. I think this system has helped us respect each other’s space and the way that we each like to work. It’s also helped us to have those set business hours. We know when we can schedule our appointments and it’s helped us keep all our priorities protected. We get to the end of the month and we don’t feel stressed and like we haven’t seen each other. We don’t feel in over our heads—we feel the opposite, like we have a really good work-life balance.

Gary: I thought the same thing at one point, that this rank was intimidating and seemed to be so much work. It’s actually the opposite. I feel like our lives were crazier and more hectic when we were Diamond. Life is actually getting much more manageable. When you’re Presidential Diamond, you have solid Platinums and above that are under you—in our case we have Diamonds and Blue Diamonds on our top line who are completely self-sufficient. Most of the time they don’t need us. It creates true time freedom so that we get to focus on our own personal missions and purposes in life. Because of the financial rewards of Presidential Diamond, we get to take the blessings we have received and pass those on to whatever charitable causes or people we want to help. We’re also a part of the doTERRA mission even more than ever because of the opportunity we have to interact with the top leaders and owners. We actually get to have an impact on what that mission is, and that’s been a tremendous blessing to be a part of.

Kari: We want so badly to see all of our leaders shine, succeed, and have the freedom that we have. We don’t want to sit back and rest on our laurels. We want to see our core leaders hit Presidential Diamond. We always want to keep helping people because it’s addictive. We can’t help it. We can’t stop sharing the oils and we can’t help our desire to develop leaders. We just feel called to it.