Today is a packing day – washing clothes, buying last minute supplies and snacks, downloading games and movies on the various tablets to be distributed to our kids for the plane ride.  On Saturday, our entire family (all 5 of us), and Meghann’s dad, are heading on a “family adventure” to Australia that is the result of our “family business”.

Our Scentsy business truly is a “family business”, and it has been that way since we started it in 2009. There have been thousands of hours that have been “spent together” while we built this family business together, and everyone has played a role.  It hasn’t been just me and Meghann, our kids have been there every step of the way.  Whether it was helping to organize orders, or just being patient while Mom and Dad travelled to meetings around North America, or their understanding of our “work from home” requirements (as well as their embracing of our flexibility).

So because they have been such an integral part of this family business, we want to share the adventures that the business brings into our life with them.

The Australia component of our business is our latest adventure.  When Scentsy announced last summer that it was opening in Australia we got really excited.  My grandma is from Australia and my Dad was born shortly after they moved to Canada.  I also have relatives in Australia that I’ve never met before.  Australia was also a place that just “felt right” to Meg and I – who knows why?  We were just interested in the culture and the people.

So when the announcement happened we immediately became committed to the idea of building a business in Australia.

But how in the world were we going to do that from Canada?  

Well – we’ve learned in our life that if there is a will then there HAS to be a way.  So we got creative.  We used our social media networks to advertise that Scentsy was opening in Australia and we asked people that we knew if they had friends there who would be interested in the business.  We reached out to our “offline” networks as well and talked to as many people as we could about the Australia opportunity and continually asked people if they knew anyone in Australia who would be interested in building a business similar to the type of business that we had built in Canada.

We were relentless and it worked!  Pretty soon we had several people who were interested in joining Scentsy as Independent Consultants on our team.  We then spread the enthusiasm to our team and encouraged them to engage the same strategies that were working for us.  They started to recruit people in Australia as well.  We had a lot of momentum, and many people through our large Canadian network who had recruited other people in Australia.

So we decided to invest even further, and in the fall of 2013 Meghann went over to Australia and held opportunity meetings in many cities throughout the country.

This was an amazing success, and she met and connected with many genuine, wonderful and enthusiastic people who have since become Scentsy Independent Consultants and now have businesses that are ON FIRE with growth.  We were able to meet many of these new consultants when they came over to St. Louis for our recent Scentsy Family Reunion 2014.

Now the “Australian Component” of our business includes almost 500 Independent Consultants in our group who we have incredible empowering relationships with.  At this point we’ve probably had over 100 “late night or early morning” Skype or GoToMeeting visits with these team members (because of the time zone differences) but every minute has been worth it.  They are some of the most genuine, believing, enthusiastic entrepreneurs we’ve ever met.  It is a blessing to be associated with them.

So now we are going to see them on an Australian Family Business Adventure!  Let me tell you where we are going!

We fly on Saturday to Los Angeles where we will catch the red eye to Sydney.  From Sydney we will head north to Cairns.  This the “vacation” portion of the trip (mixed in with a little business).  We will see things like the Great Barrier Reef:

Green Island

Tablelands

We’re also going to have several team meetings and meet with our various team members and their families.

Then from Cairns we head to Brisbane where we will be staying at Bribie Island.

And we may check out the famous Steve Irwin Zoo as well!

From Brisbane we drive to the Gold Coast for Scentsy Family Reunion Australia 2014!  It is going to be amazing.  We can’t wait.

Stay tuned for more stories of our adventures from Australia, and if this perks your interest at all, you can also create these types of adventures for yourself.

Everything that we’ve done with our business, including the international expansion, can be duplicated if you are willing to work hard, be creative, and stick to a long term focus,  Click here to learn more