“World domination… comin’ in hot!”

That’s what the text message from my business coach said as I told him I got an email from a Walmart baby buyer.

It’s very similar to the one I got this morning from him as well, letting him know that I was hopping on a call with Amazon Europe.

But let me tell you, nothing about world domination is a piece of cake, and not one thing about it is hot. 

Unless by hot, you mean “get nowhere near this because it’s a propane tank on fire and it’s about to explode in your face and you’ll lose your precious eyebrows and forever fear the idea of rocks hitting rocks to create a spark.”

See, I’m obviously a little on edge over here.

Because that’s exactly what world domination feels like, apparently. A very precarious, inevitable explosion that may or may not end in disaster.

And by no means is the JoJo going to take over the world. I mean, let’s be realistic about this. I’m not in this for world domination. I would be happy if just a handful of babies got better sleep. Period. That’s a big win for me, and for lots of families.

But I was blessed with the fact that this product is actually awesome, and is actually catching the attention of some big players.

But catching attention, my friends, is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Similar to how I imagine influencers on Instagram, or celebrities, must feel, all of the sudden your life is under the microscope, and if you don’t show up and act a certain way, all the hard work begins to feel… pointless.

Here’s the story.

I got the email from Walmart on a random day, and it was magic. It came through from the contact form on my website. Who even does that? And it was a simple single sentence. 

From then, I got confirmation via a phone call that it was in fact, not a scam, and we started the process of onboarding with the biggest retailer in the world.

That was May 15th.

Shortly after that, Adam and I started to daydream, which we don’t often let ourselves do. Adam and I are pretty strict when it comes to dreams and ambitions and such, and do lots of calculations before risk. However, we are HUGE risk takers, so the two come to a head quite commonly. 

When we daydream, we dream big. And when we got word that the JoJo would, at some point, be in Walmart, for a little while we let our minds run wild. We road tripped to Lake Almanor and looked at homes to buy on the water. We talked about paying off debt, sending Joey to college, paying for our little girl’s hospital bill in cash instead of a payment plan. We talked about helping out friends, donating, taking trips, and having a gaggle of children because we could afford it.

Our dreams are so simple, we realized. And not that expensive in the scheme of things. But a payout from Walmart, just one, would be life changing.

After that weekend, we reined ourselves in and got back to work. Because work is what it took to get the Walmart email, and work is what it would take to pull it off.

Last week, we sent out our first order to Walmart, and it has been HELL to get this to work.

I’m here to tell you that great things don’t just fall into your lap.

As I sat on the patio the other day, watching Joey ride his bike and Adam burp Cece, I told Adam that this is the hardest money I’ve ever had to earn. 

I have sobbed, as in middle of the night sobbing so hard I wake the baby kind of crying, because I think this might not work. That I am not good enough for this. Because as I sat there, a few days earlier on the phone with a team of people at Walmart, trying to figure out why this was so hard, I was nursing my newborn baby. I was tired. My nails were broken from unpacking boxes and repacking them and then doing it again because I didn’t know that the UPC code had to be two inches from the bottom and not 5. I had a toddler watching a fairly inappropriate for a three year old TV show, praying he would stay quiet until the end of my call.

And I pretended, for a minute, that I was a corporate hound, sitting in business attire in my loft office, with a team of people in a warehouse. To impress them? No. To be on their level? No. Because I suddenly realized, as I heard myself echo in their tiny cubicle at Walmart headquarters, that I don’t have to be anybody except who I am. So as I dropped my shoulders and released my concerns verbally to them, I stopped caring what they thought. 

“This can’t be this hard,” I said. “Every vendor you work with can’t have to jump through these hoops, or there is no way you’d be this successful.”

“Something must have got missed,” they said. 

“Well un-miss it, please, because this is life changing for my family and not just another transaction.” 

It felt. So. Good. To say that out loud.

This, of course, didn’t change how they treated me. I realized that to them, I am just another vendor, and that’s ok. These people aren’t paid to care about me, they are paid to put my product in their warehouse so it can be distributed. And that’s ok, too. It’s their job, but this is my job. And it’s my responsibility to make this happen for my family. It’s up to me, and I can’t lay blame on the system I’m unfamiliar with.

But listen, this system I’m referring to is broken beyond belief. 

From each buyer message I get on Amazon to this Walmart onboarding process, and finally to the Amazon Europe girl, cancelling our meeting 6 minutes after it was supposed to start, there is a brokenness, where we have forgotten that behind every screen, every email, and every automated portal electronic distribution of information, is a human. 

And that human might be nursing her baby with a strawberry PopTart in hand, praying that this works. 

I could easily give you the details of how broken Walmart’s system is, and how I will never believe another thing I read about the quality of their “streamlined” fulfillment system. But it easily could have just been my experience, and not the company as a whole.

But that would also defeat the purpose of this world domination situation. World domination doesn’t come to those who blame others, or blame the system, or rant about how awful something has been. It comes to those who believe it’s meant for them, and even IF it is meant for them, it won’t come easy.

As a deep feeler (I have no idea what Enneagram number I am or personality type or whatever, more on that later), I know that some things are harder for me to handle than others. Like the fact that onboarding with Walmart was so hard – I took it personal, as if Walmart was somehow attacking me and had it in for me, to make it harder for me than others because I somehow needed to prove myself to them. I know that’s not true, you know that’s not true, but my sweet little heart that can’t sleep is wretched, and working hard to mend itself after a very tumultuous journey. 

And it’s not over. Since that email on May 15th, we still have not seen any benefit. No check, no sales, no nothing. The JoJos just got sent last week, and as I went to make the invoice for them, yet another hiccup arose. And even as I can see the light, it sinks, and the world must rotate around to see the sun yet another time for it to rise again.  

A piece of advice I see often, as other mothers talk to other mothers, is “lower your expectations, and then lower them again.” 

This advice never settles well with me. It’s as if we have to expect to be disappointed, and I hate that feeling. I don’t like being disappointed, especially in myself. And to expect to be disappointed by others feels somehow… disappointing. Like we can’t ever expect greatness, or believe in miracles. 

But I do believe in miracles, and I do expect greatness. Because that’s how He made me. And that’s how He made every single one of us. For greatness. Otherwise, He simply would not have wasted his time making all of this, all of us. 

So yes, my expectations of the ease of world domination are high. But my expectation of world domination in itself is high. In turn, the steps to get there are HARD. And contrary to what my coach said, are not “comin’ in hot.” No… they are coming in slow as freaking molasses and I am sinking in quicksand while they take their sweet time getting here. 

Rocks have to hit other rocks to make fire. Each and every moment is undecided by us, and we can either build fire for good, or build it for bad. World domination, in either form. But the spark always starts with friction. With hard places meeting other hard places, creating a miracle that is in fact, fire.