Consultant Confessions V.1
My LuLaRoe Story
I’m a curvy woman who had zero interest in clothes until I found LuLaRoe. I dressed in yoga pants and tank tops because they were easy, comfy and I could move around as much as I needed to. I have 4 little ones so anything stuffy or fancy was out.
A friend of mine hosted a LuLaRoe party online so I did my friendly duty and attended her party. I bought a pair of leggings and an Irma and I was hooked. I knew I wanted to sign up but didn’t have the cash. I looked into loans, we would have had to take a loan out against our car if we went that route. That didn’t sit well with me. I tried selling a different brand of leggings for a minute thinking I could make the start up costs that way. That didn’t work out as planned. I just wasn’t into the product. So finally my mom offered to pay for me to start LuLaRoe.
I interviewed 4 consultants and ended up with my sponsor because she was persistent. She checked in with me daily. She made me feel like she cared about me and the brand.
I killed it out of the gate! I was bringing in 6-12k retail monthly with barely any effort on my part. EVERYONE was buying and they were buying LOADS at a time. I was doing pop-ups every weekend. I was packing and shipping every chance I got during the day. I never went to sleep before midnight. My kids watched a SHIT TON of TV. But man I thought everything was amazing. I went to convention and then leadership. I earned the rank of trainer 9 months into the business. EVERYTHING was amazing or so I thought…
One night my husband looked at me and said “Do you want this business or do you want this family, I need you to decide.” I promised to chill the heck out and focus on our family and less on LuLaRoe.
Shortly after this an opportunity presented itself for me to host a multi consultant sale with a consultant friend of mine. We had free space we could use once a month. It belonged to our sponsor. She wanted us to run the multi while she vacationed various places.
It went well, we ran the multi for several months.
One month we had to move the date of the multi because of some weather issues. So neither myself or the other consultant that I worked with could attend. We passed it on to another consultant friend that offered to take over. She was excited to help out. I went to the event the day of to make sure they were ok and then went about my day. At some point our sponsor stopped to check in. The consultant in charge made various false claims about things that weren’t done to her standards, things that didn’t matter in the long run or have anything to do with the success of the multi. My sponsor sided with her and fired me and my consultant from running the multi.
This was a blessing is disguise but initially I was PISSED OFF. My sponsor, took the word of a new consultant over my word. I was busting my ASS to make trainer numbers to fill her pocket with her coaches bonus. I was getting my trainer bonus as well but that was the first time I started to feel like just a paycheck.
I started noticing a passive aggressive attitude from my sponsor. She would say things like “put your kids in daycare, you’ll have more time to sell. If you’re kids weren’t there you could do more pop-ups.” She also thought she was encourage me by outing my numbers in a chat with other leader friends of ours. She was shaming me because my numbers weren’t up to par. But she kept telling me it wasn’t about the money-she just really wanted me to succeed.
Things went downhill quickly. We spoke online. I refused to speak to her on the phone because I wanted everything detailed and in writing. Right around this time my sales took a major hit. It wasn’t fun or easy to sell clothes anymore. It was something I start to loathe. I couldn’t move my inventory and at this time I had 1000 pieces. I was burnt out from pop ups and God forbid I have a sale.
I removed myself from our team page and sulked for a few weeks. I could not bring myself to do anything LuLaRoe related. I had a panic attack one night in November while standing in my Lularoe. The clothes turned into dollar signs and I had a hard time catching my breath because my heart was beating too fast. I felt trapped and stuck and realized this wasn’t what I signed up for. I realized that I wasted over a year selling clothes instead of being with my family. I was a year being friendly with people that weren’t ever my friend. I missed my kids first days of school, I missed weekend after weekend of family activities. This was suppose to be a part time job where I could work and be a stay at home mom.
So I started discounting my inventory. I wasn’t speaking to my sponsor at this point. But I did let my sponsor know that I would be happy to sell my whole business to a worthy candidate if she could find someone. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sell anyone on this business. This was in my best interest because it was easy and it was in her best interest because she wouldn’t lose my trainer leg in her pyramid. I don’t know if she purposely sent me the most stupid people she could find or if she thought I was that stupid to jump at anything. The people she sent me to buy my business were laughable at most. I wouldn’t have left any of them in charge of my team or my business.
In my mentors team page someone posted a post about something that MommyGyver wrote. This was the first time I’d heard about the blog. I went to see what all the fuss was about. I was intrigued and felt energized because other people felt like I did. I read her blog religiously and waited for the next update and one evening I was reading her facebook page and liked a post on her page. Within 48 hours, I was removed from every team page I was a part of except one. Not a PEEP from my leadership and no one would speak to me. They completely cut me off, just like that. I was on the fence about leaving the business at that point and that cemented my plan. To this day, I still haven’t received any kind of communication from my leadership.
I joined this company for the promise of financial freedom and the sisterhood. What I realized was that it’s all lies and mean girls never grow out of it! These leaders are a bunch of mean girls that never grew up with their pretend power they think they have.
So here I am, 60 pieces left until I wash my hands of this crap. It was great until it wasn’t. Don’t piss off your leaders and don’t stop making them money. And for goodness sake, NEVER have a non-kool aid view of LLR because you’ll be on your way out so fast your head will spin.