Success Story (Australia) (Australia)
source: Amway Australia, Because October 2007\sDiamond IBO Ingrid Peskops illustrates that you can achieve anything - no matter what your circumstances – with belief and a lot of heart.
“It’s been a while,” Ingrid Peskops says as she squeezes her foot into a hard riding boot that has stiffened with time. She struggles, but she finally puts her foot in.
“Ever since I started this business I haven’t had much time on the farm,” she explains.
Ingrid grabs the other boot and goes through the same steps. After some yanking, the boot is on and she is ready to ride her first cutting horse in years.
She goes boldly across the Cooranbong farm she shares with her husband – not blinking twice at the scattered heaps of cow poo – and enters an arena where a herd lazily roams.
She mounts her horse and leads it towards the incognizant cows, then separates one from the rest.
As the lone cow tries to rejoin the herd, Ingrid loosens her hold on the reins and the horse automatically quashes the cow’s attempts to run by.
The horse’s movements are fast; Ingrid is assertively tugged in several directions.
The action goes on for a few minutes, until ultimately, Ingrid takes control of the reigns again and the cow is left to join the herd.
This is called cutting - an equine riding activity that has its roots in the cattle ranches of the American west.
Although Ingrid hasn’t done it in years, she rides like she never stopped.
It is only when she gets off the horse and gasps, “that was scary”, that you grasp what she was truly feeling. But Ingrid isn’t one to let potentially scary things stop her.
It didn’t stop her on her road to the Diamond pin, when, as she admits, there were plenty of factors that could have held her back.
First and foremost, she built the Amway company entirely on her own, as her husband, Irwin Kent, was already running his own engineering business at the time.
That was only five years ago, to be exact. Then there was the issue of her age.
She may have justified her decision by claiming that she was too old to start a new company.
Then there was the fact that she was a professional life coach at a time when there weren't many of them who were successful in their field.
Instead of allowing all of these obstacles to stand in her way, she realised that this business opportunity would allow her to achieve a new level of fulfilment in her life.
Ingrid has faced and conquered adversities throughout her life, which have helped to shape her into the strong, confident, and fearless woman that she is today.
Her family fled their home nation of Latvia during World War II when she was only a small child, and she has never returned.
In her description of how they were forced to leave, she jokes that it was "like something out of The Sound of Music."
They relocated to Bavaria for five years, but the Cold War frightened her parents, who decided to try to start a new life somewhere else in the world.
As a result, they embarked on a voyage across the world on a yacht with their 10-year-old daughter, Ingrid, and eventually arrived in Perth.
Ingrid did not know a single word of English when she first arrived in Australia, but that did not deter her from pursuing a career in education, eventually becoming an English teacher.
In a similar vein, when she first joined up to start the firm and was instructed to bring 20 prospects to a national conference, she just followed through.
It wasn't until later that she realised she had done something that not many other people had.
She was rewarded for her efforts with priority seating and the opportunity to meet her US based upline Crown Ambassadors, Jim and Nancy Dornan.
Nancy took one look at Ingrid and said to her, “You are my kind of woman.”
Ingrid became a Platinum member only 11 months after signing up. As she accelerated through the pins, the momentum carried her forward.
The previous year, she was the only IBO in Australia to qualify for the Emerald stretch, which resulted in a One-Time Cash Award of $75,000 dollars.
Following that success, it only seemed logical to continue her efforts toward Diamond, which she achieved in just five years after deciding to start her company from scratch.
The help and encouragement she has received from her upline Double Diamonds Norman and Glenda Leonard, as well as Jim and Nancy Dornan, has been priceless.
"I have the best mentors in the world, and I have the best business in the world," she says.
The life of a Sydney mother of three and proud grandmother of a very bright two-year-old kid just keeps getting better and better for her.
Both she and Irwin live on the northern beaches of Sydney, where they own two farms and are currently in the midst of building a third house on one of those sites.
She is grateful that she was able to assist her parents in relocating from Perth, Australia, to Sydney, Australia.
Moreover, she attributes Nutriway supplements to enabling her father to survive his sickness for a longer period of time than projected by physicians, and she boasts that her mother is the healthiest person in the retirement community.
When it comes to Ingrid, all of the Artistry goods and Nutriway supplements have assisted her in appearing and feeling years younger than she did when she first started the firm.
She has a totally different life now than when she first came to the United States from Australia all those years ago.
“We all have circumstances, but as (inspirational author) James Allen once remarked, 'Circumstances don't make the man; they show the man.'" Ingrid agrees.
You will learn from this business that circumstances are made and that they happen to you, but that these circumstances have nothing to do with your destiny.
You have the option to do so if you so desire.” “Your own personality is absolutely flawless. Regardless of who you are or where you come from, it makes no difference.
What matters is what is on the inside of you.
It is what is in your heart that matters.”
