It’s Starting to Look Like the Family Business I always Dreamed of

I truly believe sometimes you need to travel to create the life you want. When I traveled to Bali with our daughter Gabriella, I knew that I wanted to work smarter in the ways that I am building an online business that allows our family to continue traveling the world, but more on our own terms. It was Gaby’s first trip to Asia, and just seeing her to experience so many things for the first time made me want to work harder to make change happen in our family’s life. It’s not easy… but we are building the life we want, and hopefully help as many friends to do so as well. My dream simply put:

Travel the world with my family, and have an online business that inspires people to live life to the fullest, and help as many people as I can.

Our trip to Bali made me really realize how I want our family to experience the world, even much much more than we already have. Our trip was over a year and half ago, but here is how it inspired me to take real action. After the trip to Bali we have moved from Sweden to New York to Canada… and traveled some too, but it still has been “slow travel” compared how much I used to travel. Simply put: I don’t want to travel as much alone anymore. I want to hang out with the people that matter the most to me. I have been building a solid plan how to make our dreams happen, and best part of it: I figured out how ANYONE can get on this lifestyle too.

Skimbaco becomes a true Family Business

When I started Skimbaco nine years ago, Skimbaco.com was an online store selling mainly children’s clothing and gift and home products with global flair. I knew that I didn’t want to focus on selling children’s products in the long run, but wanted to build a brand that could grow into a family business, whatever that would entail. I didn’t want to name the company with a self-explanatory name, because I knew my dreams were bigger than that, and well, I quite didn’t know what all I would like to grow Skimbaco to. My inspiration was our children, so the products I picked the first were the products I wanted to buy for them. As Skimbaco grew (and kids grew), the business direction changed to only a blog and a digital magazine, and I didn’t really want to have a business only catering to parents of certain aged children. Now we do very little content focusing only for parents/children, even though I tend to think we are very family focused site, and we do encourage raising global citizens. I think my reason for naming my company a very vague “skimbaco” was that it could become anything we wanted it to be. I wanted to wait and see how I can incorporate our family’s life into the business. I know an easy way could have been on focusing on parenting and child-focused content, but I am actually pretty private person, and I didn’t want to air out our personal life too much online. I wanted my family to have a saying, how much they wanted to be part of the online business, and our children truly to be able to say that, they had to grow older. I didn’t want to make internet famous kids only for kids to resent me for it later. Now we have a solid plan how kids can be part of our business as they grow older to suit their personal talents and preferences. We literally also changed our company name to The Presnal Family Company.

Gabypie shop opened and Gaby reaches almost half a million on Pinterest

One of the big news last year was also Gabypie.com opening. Gaby reaches over 400,000 followers on Pinterest, so I wanted to help her to create a shop with t-shirts and tote bags with her art in them. I hope we can expand her store soon.

A Vlogging Girl Video talent

One of the new things you see immediately on our site now is the video content to promote our new diffuser jewelry collection — this is all thanks to our daughter Isabella, and her video talent. While A Vlogging Girl is still just a fun project for Isabella, both her video editing skills and on-camera talent have already earned her a spot in her school’s news broadcast.

Photographer in Training

Our son Kristian has become quite a photographer. He has an Instagram account just dedicated to aviation photos, and I am currently trying to figure out a once in a lifetime trip for him — he’d be happy with a route with most flights… Kristian also volunteers on our fashion shoots, and he took this photo of Isabella when we were shooting pictures of our new diffuser jewelry collection.

Matt joined Young Living with me and will run our company with me

This marriage stuff isn’t easy always, and we have been working on it multiple ways. We sort of realized that kids are growing, and one day they will leave us! It’s not going to be all that soon, but yes, eventually. We have started thinking “what’s next” – what are we going to do, when all kids have moved out. We will work together towards mutual dream. Matt joined Young Living with me, and he will also run our new company with me. He has no plans on quitting his job anytime soon, so his career in aviation will still be his primary focus, but one, or in this case two steps at the time, he will continue raising this “company child” with me too, and perhaps he will be able to retire early one day, just to have more fun with me. And here that one way that pretty much anyone with grit and will power and interest in creating the dream life on their own: joining YOUNG LIVING. I know, it is a network marketing company. And yes, I admit, at one time I dreamed much much different dreams for Skimbaco too, but after traveling to 20+ countries just in the past couple of years I realized I do not want to be the entrepreneur who works 14-hour days 7 days a week – or travel alone. I want to be the entrepreneur who has much more security and freedom that just running your own online business. Frankly, starting Young Living business took a huge pressure off my shoulder with Skimbaco — it released me from pitching sponsorships to fully focus on what I have wanted to do for a long time: just help people to find their way to enjoy life, and to open our own little shop back up.

ENJOY LIFE product launch

Here is where it all sort of comes together. Our tiny product launch. Diffuser jewelry. Fashion with essential oils. Yes, I have been telling friends for YEARS I wanted my own product line, but just couldn’t really put my finger to it what it could be. Lots of great ideas, but none that was the perfect one. In all honesty, one of the ideas I had for a long time was our own natural product line, and I even scoped for some great manufactures in Sweden and Italy. I’ve always been interested in safe skin care and natural healing products, so joining Young Living was perfect for me. They offer products that everyone can use, and they are the everyday luxury and a way to save money for travels at the same time. They help us to live healthy and with full of energy. I started using the essential oils in my jewelry designed by Matt’s cousin, the jewelry designer DeAnna Cochran, and it was such a light bulb moment: this is what our product collection could be!! Our collection is gorgeous if I may say. I wear every single piece (except the earrings — my ears are not pierced!). The jewelry brings back feeling from my travels (this collection was inspired by Bali), and it’s easy to dress up or down. And the fashion piece turns into aromatherapy diffuser when I add the oils. It is gorgeous jewelry that makes you feel good inside and out. I named one of the signature pieces Wear Your Courage, because wearing my oils truly gives me the feeling of having more courage to go after my crazy dreams.

How did we do it?

I don’t know. Looking back I have no idea how we moved countries twice, bought & renovated a house, grew our business, added a puppy to our family… among lots of other stuff the past year and half. All I know that when there is a will, there is a way. And lots of oils. One of my favorites is called Abundace, and yes, I am a believer that it works.