Sara Cavallaro /// Taking Control of Her Happiness

Imagine that your entire family is gathered around the dinner table, actually taking the time to enjoy a meal together. No one is absent due to a hectic work schedule. No one is asking to be excused early for a school project, and there is no pressure for each of you to quickly shovel food into your mouths before rushing off to another practice or to answer emails that weren’t addressed earlier in the day. Everyone is calm and able to relax without the stress of limited time looming overhead. Amidst the craziness of life, how often do these stress-free moments actually happen? For Sara Cavallaro, the answer was “not often enough,” and she wasn’t happy about it.

One morning in the spring of 2012, Sara was going through the regular motions of her monotonous morning routine—readying her three kids for school, feeding them breakfast, packing up their lunches, and dropping them all off at school. At this point, however, she had reached her breaking point. Feeling defeated, Sara retreated to her car, buried her head in her hands, and decided she could no longer endure this chaotic lifestyle.

After 14 exhausting years in the pharmaceutical industry, Sara found that she no longer had a passion for her career. Rather, it had simply become a means to earn a paycheck. “It didn’t matter how hard I worked or how great I was at my job; I was rarely recognized for it, and I didn’t have any control over that situation.” Ready to make a change, Sara realized that despite being a risk taker, she hadn’t been looking outside the box.

Throughout her career, Sara made use of her biology and MBA degrees to plug along down a predictable professional path. Yet, at the end of the day, she just wasn’t sure why. “Where I ended up was not, ultimately, what I wanted—it just felt like what I was supposed to do. And I was making good money, so I put up with being unhappy because I didn’t realize how drastically different my life could be if I had more control.”

A lack of control made it incredibly difficult for Sara to achieve a healthy work-life balance. “I couldn’t leave work at work; I was bringing that anxiety home with me, and it was affecting the way I interacted with others, especially my husband, Chris, and my kids.” Sara determined that a directional shift career-wise was the only way she could successfully make her family a priority.

Sara had often noticed a friend’s Facebook posts about the Rodan + Fields® business opportunity. “My friend was once in a similar situation to mine—she was a mom with three kids and a stressful job. However, I could see how genuinely happy she was working her R+F business. That was the missing piece for me—I just wasn’t happy with my situation.”

Sara reached out to her friend. She had a gut feeling that this had the potential to be the transformative opportunity she and her family needed. “It was an easy decision. I respected what the Doctors had already done and knew how this Company was growing. I saw it as an exit strategy out of my current situation.”

Sara enrolled as an Independent Consultant in July of 2012. She was driven to regain control and reestablish a happy, healthy balance in her life. Throughout the first 18 months of her business, Sara continued to work 40-hour weeks at her pharmaceutical job. She squeezed her R+F business around everything else—fitting it in during lunch breaks or at night while her kids were in bed. By working 10 to 15 hours a week, Sara ensured that her business was stable and consistently growing—she had already replaced nearly 80 percent of her monthly income. Two months later, Sara made the decision to leave her corporate job and focus exclusively on R+F.

With a renewed sense of balance, Sara has time to appreciate the little things, and that is what she values most. Now, her family has dinner together nearly every night. They are able to unplug and spend more quality time together. “When I look at my days now, it’s the simple changes that I cherish and try not to take for granted—the everyday things we get to do now that we didn’t before.”

For Sara, it’s more than just business—it’s a way to pay it forward. “I find it extremely rewarding to use this opportunity to empower others to take control of their lives, the way I have. It makes me feel like what I’m doing with my business is making a difference.” Sara has discovered that one of her favorite aspects of leading her team is the opportunity to work with others and to help them develop professional skills. “I love that everyone can determine for themselves how they want to apply that freedom and control to their own situations.”

Sara is now in a place she once thought was impossible. “Before I started my business, if anyone had asked me if it was possible to balance a career, a family, housework, hobbies … I would have said, ‘No—it’s impossible to give 100 percent to everything.’ But what I’m learning is that you really can have it all, on your terms.” She has learned that we are never too busy to make a change, as long as we truly want it. “When we take the time to really consider what is making us unhappy in our current situations and to commit to making the changes we want to see, we’re able to open our minds to thinking outside the box. The unknown doesn’t have to be scary—a risk can turn out to have amazing results, but we aren’t empowered until we take action. We are in control if we choose to be.”