I Prayed a Very Specific Prayer. Two Days Later My Phone Rang.
How I found my way to a company, a team, and a group of women I did not know I was looking for.
I want to tell you how this happened, because I still get a little emotional about it, and because I think somebody reading this needs to hear it.
A while back I knelt down and said a very sincere prayer. Not a vague one. A specific one.
I asked God to help me with my health. I asked Him to help me with my network marketing business. And I asked Him to let me lift other women in the process.
That was it. That was the prayer.
Two days later
Two days later, Andi Thompson and Leah Smith called me.
Now, Leah had already been texting me here and there. She had sent me a webinar of a woman named Jordan Schrandt and asked if I would watch it. I did watch it. I am the kind of person who watches the thing.
But when the two of them got me on the phone together, something strange happened.
I started crying.
I need you to understand how bizarre that was. I was not pregnant, which is historically my only reliable explanation for unexplainable tears. Nothing sad was happening. Two perfectly nice women were talking to me about fish oil.
And I sat there with tears running down my face because my spirit understood something my mind had not caught up to yet.
I have learned to pay attention when that happens. It does not happen often. When it does, it is usually an answer, and I am usually the last one to figure that out.
What happened next
I started taking the products. And I want to say this carefully, because what follows is MY experience and I am not promising it to you.
My mind and my body responded really favorably. That is the honest way to say it. I felt clearer. I had more capacity. Things that had been sitting on my desk for a long time started getting done.
In one month I accomplished more in my businesses than I had in years. YEARS. I am not exaggerating and I am not being cute about it. I do not fully understand the mechanism, and I am not going to pretend I do. I just know what my calendar looked like before and what it looked like after.
And every part of it lined up with the prayer. Health. Business. Other women. All three.
Let me explain the BOX, because it confused me at first
Zinzino has a starter kit that everybody calls "the BOX," and the name is an acronym. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that.
B is for BalanceOil
This is the heart of it. It is a wild-caught fish oil blended with cold-pressed olive oil and vitamin D. The olive polyphenols are not decoration. Omega-3 is fragile and goes rancid easily, and the polyphenols help protect it.
Most of us eat far more omega-6 than omega-3, and this is meant to bring that ratio back toward balance. You take a test first, take the oil for 120 days, and then test again. That is the part that won me over. You get a number, you do the thing, and you get another number. I have spent a lot of my life in the wellness world, and I cannot tell you how rare that is.
O is for ZinoBiotic
Eight different dietary fibers, and there is a real reason for eight instead of one. Your colon is not one environment. Fast-fermenting fibers like inulin get used up early, and slower ones like resistant starch travel further down. So a blend feeds the whole length of it rather than just the beginning.
A word of warning from someone who learned this the hard way: START SLOW. Half a scoop. Build up over a few weeks. Drink your water. Do not be a hero on day one.
X is for Xtend
The micronutrient piece. Vitamins, minerals, and a set of plant compounds. This is the "fill in the gaps" part of the kit.
Test first. Do not guess. Then bring the oil in, then add the fiber slowly, then the rest. And if you are on any medication or managing an autoimmune condition, talk to your doctor before you start. I mean that sincerely and not as a legal footnote.
Then I started listening to Andi Duli
Andi Duli is four levels above me in this company, and I am genuinely grateful to be on his team.
He came to this country as an immigrant. When he started in network marketing he was broke, roughly forty thousand dollars in debt, and driving a car that honked by itself. That is how he tells it, and it makes me laugh every time.
He decided at the beginning that he would stay in until he learned what he needed to learn. He has said that failing was never an option because too many people were counting on him.
Here is the part I actually needed to hear.
In October of 2011, he lost most of his team.
Not a slow decline. Lost them. And he rebuilt. He has talked openly about the workshop that helped reset his thinking afterward. Today he has led an organization of well over fifteen thousand people, and he has been able to retire his parents and bring them here.
Everybody will tell you about the fifteen thousand. Nobody tells you about October 2011. But October 2011 is the part I want you to hold onto when your own month goes sideways.
What his calls are actually like
He opened one of them by telling us he had not felt great that morning and had gone and exercised anyway. And that the exercise is what turned it around.
That is the tone of the whole thing. He talks about the food we put in our bodies. He talks about the physical and the mental and the emotional as one piece rather than three, which of course is what they have always been.
He is not standing up there telling anyone to take a supplement and wait. He is telling us to go move our bodies and eat like we mean it and mind our heads and our hearts while we are at it.
When Andi teaches
He runs an intro call four nights a week. If you are anywhere near this business, it is worth moving your evening around.
| Class | When | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Men’s Intro to Zinzino | Monday through Thursday 6:00 pm | Men who are curious about the products or the business. This is the one to send your husband, your brother, or your grown son to. |
| Boss Andi Coaching Call | Saturday 9:00 am | Partners who want to build. This is the one I set my alarm for. |
It runs on Zoom. Message me and I will send you the link.
And then I listened to Jordan
Jordan Schrandt is three levels above me, and the first time I really sat and listened to her I had the oddest feeling.
It felt like listening to a more successful version of myself.
She had a coaching group called RISE UP. I have a group called RISE Wellness Collective. I did not know that when I named mine. She is a writer with her own publishing imprint. So am I. She homeschools. She is faith-forward and does not apologize for it. She built her whole first business in the essential oils world, exactly like I did.
And then, before one of her classes started, she mentioned her mornings. The first thing she does is get outside into natural sunlight. Then she drinks her water.
I laughed out loud.
I have been doing that for YEARS. My mom and my kids can quote me on it, because I say it constantly: get your eyeballs outside so the sun can stop the production of melatonin. I take my brother by the hand and we walk out together. When my mom cannot manage a walk, I tell her to go sit in the sun anyway.
Then the water. Mine gets a squeeze of lemon and a little stevia or monk fruit, and then I walk. Every single day. For years.
Nobody taught me that. I worked it out slowly, on my own, over a long time. And there she was, three levels above me, opening a class with it like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
She is a wife and the mother of eight children. She married a man who had lost his wife to cancer, and she became a mother to his five children the day she married him. She was twenty-three. Then she and her husband had three more of their own, including a set of twins.
I do not know how to write that sentence without stopping for a second. Eight children, five of them walking through the worst thing that can happen to a family, and she stepped straight into the middle of it.
The part I admire most
Jordan reached the top of her previous company. Royal Crown Diamond, which is about as high as that ladder goes. She had built it over years. She had every reason to sit in it.
And she walked away from it to start over here.
She did not do it because things were bad. She did it because she believed more people could actually succeed in this structure, that she could do more good, and that she could help more people.
Read that again and then read my prayer again. Health. Business. Lifting other women.
I did not go looking for a woman who had rebuilt her life around exactly that. She was just there, three levels up, already doing it.
When Jordan teaches
She is on Zoom nearly every weekday at 11:00, and the room never changes. I love that. It means there is only one thing to remember.
| Class | When | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Sales Call bring a guest | Tuesday through Friday 11:00 am | Anyone curious, and anyone you would like to bring. This is the call I send people to. |
| Team Call | Monday 11:00 am | Mindset and practical business principles. For partners. |
| Coaching | Tuesday 9:00 am Thursday 1:00 pm | Individual help with your business, once you have one. |
All on Zoom. Message me and I will get you in.
Come to Jordan’s 11:00 call on a Tuesday. Bring your coffee, or in my case your tea, and just listen. You do not have to say anything and nobody will put you on the spot. If it is not for you, no hard feelings and I will still love you.
One more thing about both of them
Andi and Jordan both talk about God. Often. Not tacked on at the end of a call as a nice thought, but woven right through the middle of it.
We do not all share the same religion, and I want to say that plainly rather than paper over it. It has never once been a problem. I love that they are centered on God. I love that they speak about Christ guiding all of us. I love that when they talk about where their strength and their direction and their purpose come from, they name it.
And they both love their families out loud. You can hear it. It comes up when they are not trying to make a point of it, which is the only way you can ever really tell.
That is the culture I had been hoping for without quite knowing how to ask for it.
Leah
I have saved Leah for last, because she is the reason any of this happened.
Leah and I knew each other from doTERRA, but we were never on the same team and we were honestly not close. She did not know me well.
Which is what makes the next part so strange.
When I went to Mexico looking for answers, Leah sent me money. Every month. For several months.
There was no reason for her to do that. No way for her to get anything out of it. She just did it. And later, when our family set up a GoFundMe, she gave to that too.
She is also the one who signed me up with Zinzino.
At one point I went over to her house so she could walk me through how the Fast Start bonus works. While I was sitting there, her husband handed me a pink heart-shaped stone necklace. He told me I was loved.
It hangs from my rearview mirror. I see it every single day when I get in the car.
Leah once told me she thinks her gift is looking for the best in people. Assuming the best intention. Forgiving easily. I have been on the receiving end of that gift and I can tell you it is not a personality trait. It is a discipline, and she practices it.
I could not ask for a better leader to work with.
Since I mentioned the Fast Start
Because somebody will ask. When you become a Zinzino partner, you get a 120-day launch window. There are bonuses in those first four months that you cannot get later, which I think is really just their way of nudging you to start while you still feel like starting.
Here is the part I did not understand at first, and it took the pressure right off.
You do not have to decide today. You can join as a customer, take the products, see what you actually think. If you later decide you want to build something, you switch over to partner — and your 120 days starts from then.
The clock does not run out on you while you are making up your mind. It starts when you are ready. I really appreciated that.
And Andi
Andi Thompson is Leah’s daughter. I knew her from doTERRA too.
She lives in Texas, near a good number of my family, my friends, and people I have worked with for years. She already knows most of the leaders on my team. And at some point she had taken a course from Jordan Schrandt, which is how those two came to know each other.
So follow the thread with me. Jordan taught Andi. Andi brought her own mother into the business. And her mother picked up the phone and called me.
A daughter enrolled her mom, and then her mom enrolled me. That detail makes me happy every time I think about it.
And I am grateful Andi took an hour out of her day to get on a conference call with her mother and me. She did not have to do that. Nobody made her.
The line
For anyone who likes to know how the threads connect:
- Andi Duli enrolled Jordan Schrandt
- Jordan Schrandt enrolled Andi Thompson — they knew each other because Andi had taken one of Jordan’s courses
- Andi Thompson enrolled Leah Smith, who is her mother
- Leah Smith enrolled me — someone I had known for years from doTERRA without ever being on her team
A man who lost everything in 2011 and built it again. A woman who left the top of one mountain to climb a different one. A daughter who brought her mother in. A mother who sent money to a woman she barely knew.
And a woman in Utah on her knees asking for help with her health, her business, and other women.
Not one of these people was a stranger to the next one. That is what I keep coming back to. I did not join a company. I got let into the middle of something that was already there.
A note to my doTERRA family
If you are reading this and you know me from doTERRA, I want to say something plainly, because I would hate for you to hear it from anyone else or to wonder.
I am absolutely in love with doTERRA products. I am not going anywhere.
I still use them. I still support my people. I still attend trainings. I still call, still text, still show up. Nothing about that has changed and nothing about it is going to.
And so nobody has to wonder: Leah was never on my doTERRA team and never in my line. We just knew each other. Nobody was taken from anybody.
Let me tell you how deep this goes. In my house there is a bag. It is literally labeled EMERGENCY. My husband knows exactly where it is and knows to grab it if I ever have a Lyme episode where I cannot speak for myself. That happens very rarely these days. The bag is still there.
You do not keep a bag like that for something you are lukewarm about.
Our doTERRA team is 61,000 members strong. I have taught classes across the United States and Canada, and in Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Mexico. Our family has since spread into Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, South Africa, Greece, Slovakia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Costa Rica.
Sixty-one thousand people. I did not build that by being a person who leaves.
Why I believe these two belong together
doTERRA does not offer blood testing. Zinzino does — that is the entire premise of the company. You find out your actual numbers, you do something about it, and then you find out your numbers again.
For those of us who cannot afford to guess about what is in a supplement, that testing and certification side matters enormously. It is not a replacement for anything. It answers a different question.
You can find me at mydoterra.com/celiacshack exactly where I have always been.
What else I am carrying
Since I am being open, here is the rest of the picture, because I think it matters to why the last few months have felt like such a gift.
I run Legacy Advocacy Group, where I work as a paralegal and a commissioned notary public. I am contracted with legal firms and Medicaid planning companies to support the most vulnerable people in the system — the ones who have no friends and no family to advocate for them. I support people the company holds legal guardianship over.
It is a sacred responsibility. I do not use that word loosely. I do it part-time now.
I have five children. Four are grown and working or in school. One has two years of high school left.
We live with and help care for my mother and my brother. Mom had back surgery she never fully recovered from. My brother is non-verbal and has Down syndrome.
I have books in the works. I have a blog I have been writing since 2008. I have websites and calendars and inboxes and clients.
So here is what I am actually grateful for
I am able to keep track of all of it.
That is my whole testimony. Nothing was cured. Nothing was fixed. I simply have the capacity to hold multiple businesses, multiple calendars, and a household with real caregiving in it, and still get up early, and still get things done.
I did step back from full-time paralegal work to make room for this. That was a decision about my hours, and I sat with it for a long while before I made it.
And I am not the only one in this house who has noticed something. My husband has more energy than he has had in a long time. He has cleaned and organized spaces I have been asking about for YEARS. He works late and we still get up early.
Just this morning my mom mentioned something she has been noticing too.
I am not going to make any of that into a promise for you. I am just telling you what our kitchen sounds like lately.
Why I am telling you this
Not to sell you anything. If you want to know about the products I will happily tell you, and I will tell you the honest version including what the research does not show.
I am telling you because I asked for something very specific and it arrived two days later through a phone call I almost did not take seriously.
I do not think that is a coincidence. I have stopped calling those things coincidences.
If you have been praying about something and it has gone quiet, would you keep an eye out? Sometimes the answer does not arrive as a feeling or a sign. Sometimes it arrives as two women on a conference call, talking about fish oil, while you sit there crying and cannot explain why.
Steffi
I am an independent Zinzino partner and I earn a commission if you purchase through me. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Everything I have described about my own health and my own business, and anything I have mentioned about my husband or my mother, is personal experience shared with permission. It is not typical, not a promise, and not a claim that any product treats, prevents or improves any medical condition. Most people in direct sales earn modest income or none at all. If you are taking medication or managing a health condition, please talk with your doctor before adding any supplement.
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