Work from Home, Part 3: Using Existing Talent

Welcome to my office

So Mary Kay was a flop, pottery was out of my league, and I had a little baby boy to take care of.  I needed to find a way to make extra cash from home, pronto.  So I took inventory of my possible talents.

1. Direct salesperson.

2. Potter.

3. Seamstress/crafter.

4. Virtual librarian.

5. Musician.

6. Writer.

I gave making leather baby shoes a shot.  It about killed my non-industrial Singer sewing machine. I looked at Virtual librarian jobs, and they were all full-time. I was a bass player without a band (well, I did have a band but they were all six hours away HOLLA MUSICSMYTHE!) so it all came down to writer.

This is how it happened.

During graduate school I had to do a tedious exercise in volunteerism working for Internet Public Library 2. I answered questions submitted by users with the thoroughness of a researcher, even though they were things like “How do you change a diaper?”  My editor had buns of steel, apparently, and sent back my submissions multiple times.

What I didn’t know was that this was valuable, resume enhancing experience.

Two months after I graduated, I applied as a content writer for a popular question database website.  I sent in writing samples, including a question I answered from the Internet Public Library 2, and immediately received an invitation to test with them–an invitation 60% of their applicants did not receive. I passed the testing phase and was hired as a writer.

For a year, I worked as a content writer and made several hundred dollars a month.  No, it did not replace the income of a full-time job BUT….

1. I didn’t have to spend money on gas.

2. I didn’t have to buy a “professional” wardrobe.

3. I didn’t have to pay for childcare.

And I got the job using my existing talents–not talents that I wished I had (le sigh. pottery.) It also didn’t hurt that I pursued something related to my graduate field of library science–research.

Next up, Work from Home, Part 4: Being Let Go

How to Work from Home, Part 1: Don’t Sell Mary Kay

I get so excited about invitations. Hand delivered, e-vite, Facebook invite–I love them all! So when a friend from chorus handed me an invitation, I was pretty psyched.  Until I saw the words “Scentsy Party.”

Le Sigh.

If you don’t know what Scentsy is, let me rephrase: Amway, Tupperware, Mary Kay, Avon, Pre-Paid Legal, Thirty One, Lia Sophia, Pampered Chef…but with candles and lotion.

These companies are called “multi-level marketing” programs.  Someone recruits someone else to sell a product, making that person a “consultant”. The recruiter gets a cut of the consultant’s profits (or some type of kickback), and the consultant sells the product and recruits other people. Sales are made by convincing friends to host “parties” made up of friends. Typically, consultants offer the hostess free stuff, bring brownies and Sun Drop, and everybody pretends the event isn’t just a sales pitch to a captive audience.

Stay at home mommies looking for extra cash are the bread and butter of these companies.  Why? They make two claims about being a consultant:

1. You can work “your own hours.”

2. It’s fun!

Lies and more lies.

Truly successful multi-level marketers work their buns off.  Ever seen a pink Mary Kay Cadilac? The woman at the wheel works 50-60 hours a week, supervises dozens, if not hundreds of junior consultants, conducts training sessions and workshops, and still runs a few “parties” for her clients.  She may find her work fulfilling, but not “fun,” and she’s not working her own hours.  She’s working ALL hours.

Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay, was smart as a whip. She knew what would get women to buy stuff: guilt. She also knew how to get women to sell stuff: prizes.  So she created a company where women guilt their friends into buying something in order to get a prize, culminating with the mighty Pink Caddie. It’s not about selling a great product, it’s about selling an ideal.  Check out the Mary Kay slogan:

“Mary Kay–Enriching Women’s Lives.”

If it was about selling great make-up, it might say something like “Mary Kay–everything a makeup addict can’t live without.” (That’s actually MAC’s slogan.)

In 2007, a Mary Kay consultant approached me and my sister about selling. We were psyched up, sold by the enthusiasm and glamour she conveyed. She brought us to her “boss” (If you read vampire novels, you can think of her as our friend’s “maker”) to get our training.

The first thing the woman did was convince both of us to buy $2000 dollars of Mary Kay products with our credit cards to build inventory.  “If you want business results,” she said, “you have to treat this like a business. If you want hobby results, treat it like a hobby.” Right. So only dumb people forgo inventory–and credit card debt–right?

I bombed at selling Mary Kay for the simple reason that I realized that I was cheating folks.  Oops. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. What I meant to say was that I was selling a low or average quality product for twice or three times its true value. I knew I wasn’t actually providing anybody with something that they needed. Shoot, I wasn’t even that good at putting the make-up on myself, much less being someone else’s “beauty consultant.”

The question was: what did I have to offer? Was there a service I could provide, or a product I could create that would make me deserve the hard earned cash of my friends? I was sure there was. I just had to find it.

Coming Up, How to Work from Home, Part 2: Niche-Finding Fail.