FEATURE
“But I had that accounts receivable list, and I didn’t want to walk away from that.” After packing up their apartment and sending Kristin and the kids to Washington, Kristian faced his troubles alone for the next six months. He spent a few miserable, sweaty nights sleeping in their white minivan in the Texas heat before a friend offered to let him sleep in his office outside of work hours. Kristian woke up early every morning to leave before employees arrived at work and spent his day visiting business after business on his list. Hit hard by their own financial instability, the businesses he approached regretfully couldn’t pay. Those who could spare something would give Kristian $50 here and $20 there to help him stay afloat. One night at Costco, Kristian sank to an all-time low. “I got in line to get my usual $1.50 hot dog and a drink at the end of my day,” he remembers. “When they asked for the money, I reached for the $1.50 assuming I certainly had at least that to my name. I came up with $1.43. That was a defining moment for me. I went to my van and couldn’t find the remaining money, so I walked around the parking lot looking for loose change until Costco closed. I couldn’t find enough. For the first time in my life, I tried to fall asleep while I felt like my stomach was eating itself.” Rising to the Surface Kristian started to rise from rock bottom when he upgraded from his friend’s office to a bedroom in that same friend’s home for a few months. He began working for the friend’s catering business and eventually was able to move into a tiny studio apartment on the wrong side of the tracks.
Finding a Glimpse of the Shore
world, Kristian started a small company publishing a quarterly advertising magazine that covered several zip codes in the Austin, Texas, area. But instead of success, Kristian found himself behind on everything, waiting on nearly $50,000 dollars owed to him by numerous small businesses. Kristin’s parents had just come to visit from Washington when Kristian got a call from their landlord threatening to send the sheriff to evict them if they couldn’t pay their rent. He didn’t tell Kristin or his in-laws about that call but instead went to work showing up at all the businesses who owed him money, hoping to collect enough to pay rent and smooth everything over. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t collect a dime. “Kristin’s parents had no idea we were so on the edge,” Kristian says. “I was just so used to living my whole life on the financial red line that this was normal to me. I finally told Kristin and her parents what was going on three days before the sheriff came.” “I was mortified,” Kristin remembers. “I was embarrassed that my parents had to see this and that they felt obligated to walk through this with us. We had finally hit rock bottom, and I knew our time had run out. I just trusted that God would take care of us. But it was a relief to relinquish control knowing it was the first time we didn’t have a way out. We were going to have to reap the consequences of our mistakes. I was looking forward to it, even though it was terrifying at the time, because I knew it could only go up from there.” Kristin took their two boys and went to live in her parent’s guest room in Washington while Kristian stayed behind to salvage what he could from the publishing business. “No one wanted me to be physically homeless,” Kristian says.
As fate would have it, around the same time Kristian found the MLM world, he also first spoke to Executive Director 4 Kent Wonnell about Melaleuca. It would take nine years of Kent following up before the Hoenickes decided to enroll as Melaleuca customers in 2008! “Laundry detergent and toothpaste just weren’t shiny enough or exciting enough for me,” Kristian remembers. “So I brushed Kent aside. We are so grateful to Kent for being persistent over many years and for also introducing us to Corporate Director 9 Ed Bestoso. I think Kent learned pretty quickly that we needed stability and peace of mind. What I was trying to build for my family was exactly what he was offering.” But Kristian and Kristin didn’t recognize the true value of being consistent in building their Melaleuca business when they enrolled. “I had it in my mind that advancing to Senior Director would fix all our financial problems,” Kristian says. “So when we achieved Director 9 after a couple of years, we waited and waited for the call that we had advanced to Senior Director, but it didn’t come. “We got right to the edge of Senior Director, and I had no gas left in the tank mentally and emotionally, so I gave up. I fell back into pursuing anything that looked shiny, anything that looked like I could make a big pile of money fast enough to not be homeless. And that all worked well enough until October of 2011.” Watching Everything Sink Finally convinced he could make a better life for his family outside of the MLM
18 JULY 2022 | MELALEUCA.COM
These results are not typical. Consult the Annual Income Statistics on page 58 for typical results.
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