It's Hard Until It's Easy- What I learned from Multi-Level Marketing

Many of you don't know that my first business venture after college was a Mary Kay Business. This horrified my mother, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a private university education, I decided to sell makeup. (In her words)

I learned a lot in my Mary Kay business about what to do and what not to do in business in general.

Lesson #1: They spent a lot of time teaching you about "warm chatter" which is essentially talking to random people about anything, and stalking them until they come to a Mary Kay meeting. They specialize in networking and persistent follow up skills.   I would go up to women in the bookstore, and see if they wanted to start a Mary Kay business. I was determined for 2 whole weeks to make this happen. I warm chattered old, young, beautiful, and busy women all over Chicago. In the COLD. I met prostitutes (I didn't understand how anyone could walk around in a short skirt in 17 degree weather). I tried to get them to get on the Mary Kay train. I wanted to make money, get a pink caddy, and build a business where I could live in the lap of luxury while my consultants plugged away at hawking eye shadow and skin care products.

This is the MOST valuable thing you can learn. It's not always the moment that you meet someone that something happens. It can be months. Years. But staying in touch and in front of people long enough, eventually they will help you. There is a lot of slogging before you make it happen. It's not effortless, but what's hard eventually becomes easy.

Lesson #2: The problem was that fundamentally, I was embarrassed that I was selling Mary Kay. You have to like what you are selling. If you don't like what you are selling, you better like the company you are selling for.  The only time I have been successful selling is if one of those two principals, and it's better if both are the case.

Lesson #3: Practice makes perfect. I started by unabashedly sucking at warm chatter. Eventually I got some people to join my team. Learn from your mistakes. Also, don't try to recruit prostitutes. Trust me. It's a time saving tip here. 

Lesson #4: Make sure the carrot is big enough for you.  This is the part I think is the most crucial. Make sure the goals of the organization align with your goals and that you will make enough money to make the business make sense for you.  Mary Kay says that God, Family, and then business are the priorities in that order. My priorities were money to buy shoes/cocktails, boys, and then maybe a pedicure or yoga to get the God time in. I wasn't on board with the mission, it didn't fit what my goals were at that time. I thought the pink caddy was silly. I didn't own a Chanel suit like the sales directors, and I didn't want to. The carrot was too small for me. I realized it was more important for me to find something that I was actually passionate about (in this case business development and creative marketing for job creation).

There was a lot of hard before it got easy in my later business life. There was a lot of networking and marketing fails. There will be more. How I approach the problems has changed. I still stay away from prostitutes, pink caddys, but I have my local Mary Kay lady on call in case I run out of eye shadow. You never know when you need a touch up.