Getting Lippy gives back!

Getting VIP Lippy with Jen was donating three cans of food for every $20 spent in November, so that equated to 111 cans of food.

I was just going to turn that into a cash donation to make life easier, but the kids’ schools are having a Holiday Food Drive (to include books, cleaning supplies, personal care items, and winter accessories) so I’ve decided this is where my donations are going. And on top of that, I donated $50 to the Northern Illinois Food Bank, which is currently being doubled by sponsors and will provide $800 worth of food! Thank you to all who made purchases this month!!

  

My first vendor event was a smashing success!

Thank you to my friend Heidi for all her table design guidance last week (and coming down to check on me and talk up LipSense to passersby), my amazing upline (and the rest of the team across the country!) for dealing with my total crazy as I prepped for this, and my awesome hubby for his unending support in every possible sense. I couldn’t have done this without all of you! 💕 It was tiring but fun… I won’t be doing these every weekend but I’ll definitely do more!

After being up at 5:30 and setting up from 7:30-9…Let’s do this! (Oh and did I mention that Tom had to work at his office today so he couldn’t help at all plus had to take the kids with him?!)

 

Some info and takeaways from my day:

💋I am a bit anal plus I’m a perfectionist so I spent probably 50-60 hours prepping the table (design elements, printing stuff myself, REprinting stuff 😂, shopping for inexpensive stuff that can do double duty in my home)… But I think it turned out pretty well! I was definitely the most professional-looking booth in my immediate area!

💋Everyone loved my lips (Blu Red and Blackberry). I think I went through more gloss than I normally do in a week—every demo I did I literally dragged my fingers across my lips and face. 😂

💋The Dum Dums with my business info stuck on them were a fail. The stickers didn’t stick to the waxy sticks and were all falling off and not one person took one. I couldn’t even give them away to kids!

💋The very first customer wanted to see a lipliner. It was my fault for handing it to her… So let’s just say I now have a tester. 😂 But she did end up buying two colors and gloss–and might have a party. (She also came back later in the day with a cracked gold glitter gloss so now I have my very first RMA!) 

💋 I didn’t realize until about halfway through that I didn’t have a Honey Rose or Hazelnut tester out! [Two recent new colors.]

💋 I had ShadowSense stripes on my arm from my own personal stock which I didn’t bring. A handful of people wanted to see them but I only had one color out so people could see the cream to powder action. 

💋I really could have used a LipSense Buddy. I know I lost a lot of people because it took so long to explain and demo with people that I couldn’t snag people as they walked by. A friend (Heidi) who was at a different booth would stop by when she could and whenever she was there taking up LipSense it went better (she’s a big fan). I was also bummed I didn’t get to check out the other vendors. They did have volunteers who would sit at your booth while you took a break but I didn’t feel like just anyone could handle my booth—if I wasn’t there to reel them in, they’d likely pass right by. 

💋 I took my laptop thinking I’d have time to enter each sale. Ha. Haha. Hahaha. 

💋I could have left the beauty stuff off the table entirely. Not one person asked about it. I definitely didn’t need my own out for testers. (But if I didn’t have them, someone would surely have wanted to test something, right?)

💋The QR code was a fail. I thought it would be easy to snap for business info but only one person all day did it. People still wanted business cards. (I had seen it recommended to use because people were more likely to “see” it again on their phone vs. a business card which would likely get tossed.) Next time I will just have a big contact info sheet that they can take action picture of.

💋I didn’t give away too many glossy samples because pretty much everyone who tried it on their lips bought their own color and gloss. 

💋 The raffle for a free gloss went pretty well. I got 19 entries. Two wanted to host a party and four marked that they wanted to learn about/buy other products. Now we wait and see if they return my emails. 

💋 My biggest sellers were Napa and Sheer Berry. I managed to sell more Ooops! today then I did since I starting selling. 😂 I think it’s a much easier sell when they demo it and see how easy it is to make a mistake. 

💋 I was prepared with $150 in cash but only one person paid with cash!

💋 Being on my feet the whole day was rough on my back. I was busy most of the six hours so never really had time to sit down—and even when it was calm I wanted to be ready to easily interact with people and I couldn’t do that from a chair. If I did have a chair I’d want a director’s chair. 

💋The collapsible wagon from Sam’s Club was amazing. It fit my big heavy duty totes perfectly. (If I begin to do more shows, I would like to organize my totes better so everything fits.)

💋I will eventually get a real banner but I was going inexpensive for my first show.) And I will have some small tweaks to do before my next event (like bigger lip pics with more true colors—everyone looked at those).

All in all it was a great day. I didn’t make a ton of money but I went into it expecting to sell nothing and just being there for the experience so anything above that was a bonus! 😂 After both raffle items (the one on my table and the one I donated to the fundraiser), I think I made $200 (better then nothing and my upline was proud!)!

My first birthday fish sage!

I was originally planning on meeting a girlfriend halfway for a girls night out and we would do a joint live Facebook LipSense sale while having a few adult beverages in the hotel. She had to bow out due to work commitments, but I still wanted to try the sale myself so that’s just what I did! Of course, I kept with the adult beverages because, hey, that’s who I am and it was my birthday after all. :p

So why did I call it a fish sage? Well, in the initial planning stages with my friend over text, my phone autocorrected bad typing of live sale to fish sage and the rest is history. We both thought it was hilarious and I thought it might draw in more people’s attention if I was advertising a FISH SAGE. The result was…meh. A few people were intrigued, but it didn’t have the rousing success I had envisioned. (The fish sage joke only lasted for the first two days of the advertising. I quickly let people in on the joke.) The advertising was also proof you can pretty much google any two words and find appropriate pictures!

I was a bit nervous but once I got started it went well enough. I had about 4-7 people watching for the hour and a half I was on (I didn’t plan for it to go that long but oh well!) and although I didn’t sell anything during the sale as I had imagined, I sold quite a bit afterwards! So it was a success!

Here are some screenshots of the live video just because. There were some hilarious parts where I really didn’t know what I was doing with some of the makeup but I rolled with it and it was all good. (Keep in mind before this gig, I really didn’t wear lipstick or makeup more than a few times a year. I mean, ever since I stopped working nine years ago—and even back then I had no idea how to apply makeup—I just winged it. So I’ve worn makeup and eye shadow more in the past month than I have the past five years. And I’m still learning.)

And this was the full end result of the makeup demo. It was only a semi hot mess. And yes, the two different color lips were on purpose. 💕

It was definitely an interesting way to spend my birthday!!

Apparently too many margaritas make for interesting dreams. 

  
Last night the Obamas were at our house, just chillin’. I was FREAKING OUT because, duh, it was THE OBAMAS, but I was trying to be cool and clean up the house and be a consummate hostess and they were totally chill, telling me to just sit down and relax. 

The guys were watching a biography on Obama (I was pulling toys out of the couch from under Barack’s butt) and I was showing Michelle LipSense–I left her alone for a few minutes and she had stripes all up and down her arms!! I woke up before I was able to take any pictures or find out what color she bought.

Fall into LipSense!

🙌🏻 IT’S A NEW MONTH! And also a new city! New house! New friends! New challenges! New season! New goals! And new (temporary) banners!

I’m sure most of you know I don’t really like change so the past three months have been challenging to say the least. But this month I’m ramping it up and jumping in feet first so I can ROCK this business. But I can’t do it alone…

🚌 Can you help me be successful and grow my business so I can continue to be supportive of my children in their new schools (okay, and also to keep Tom off my back and not to have to get a real job)?? 😂

👍🏻 Getting Lippy with Jen now has a public Page! I’d really appreciate if you could throw a Like or Share my way to help promote my business and keep me working from home. Pretty pretty please with sugar on it (as Katie would say)?

https://m.facebook.com/gettinglippywithjen

Getting Lippy with Jen is getting more official!

So I’m not sure why I didn’t do this sooner, but…if I am going to really try and make a go of this business, I need a real domain. So, I grabbed www.gettinglippywithjen.com which for now just redirects to my Facebook group. New business cards will come after we move and get settled and I have time to devote to them.

Business in my first two months has been amazing—if I hadn’t reinvested all my profits into more stock, I would definitely have passed my first goal of making back what I’d spent on product before becoming a distributor (I actually would have done that the first month). If I decided to quit right now and sell everything I have in stock, I’d come out way ahead for sure. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can keep this going and make some nice side money with it (though July will be tough with the move—and summer is apparently always bad for sales)!!

The kids went to a new pool!

Heather and Eric invited us over to their pool today, but I had a LipSense party scheduled and Tom really needed to work in the garage…so they offered to take the kids for us!! And they had A BLAST! The pool is much bigger than our AND has a real deep end with a diving board so Owen was THRILLED—he’d never been on a diving board before! Heather said he was so cute—he must have gone on it 30 times!

These are some of the friends we are REALLY going to miss…

My launch party was a success!

So, I just had my first in-home party (my business launch!)…and while I thought it was a total hot mess, they told me everything was fine and they had fun. (There were only six ladies and they are all good friends so I could be honest with them and ask for their honest opinions.) I dislike selling and feel like I stink at it so really just felt like I was pretty much out of control the whole time and consequently I felt totally off my game and I felt like I looked like an idiot (I know we are always hardest on ourselves). But they all seemed happy and bought stuff so it’s all good. And I know it will get easier with practice…

We didn’t take any official selfies but I did snap a few quick shots so I could remember who bought what (I was still figuring out how to use my credit card system!)

 

When FedEx screws up…

When FedEx screws up and DOESN’T deliver Package A because they claim you WEREN’T home but says Package B WAS delivered but isn’t anywhere. I am having a mini panic attack because these were my first two business orders.

FedEx has been contacted and they have a trace on the package… and the one requiring a signature will be delivered tomorrow. 

* Note: Both packages were delivered together on Friday. Phew!

But still. Panic. 

Selling? Me? What? Huh? What’s happening?

So I have BIG news!!! I am doing something I’ve never even remotely considered before in my entire life…

It turns out I loved the LipSense lipstick SOOO much (and have, um, *cough cough* ordered so much) that I figured I might as well just become a distributor!! I know a few of my friends are saying IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME!!

So, some quick background on how I got to this point… 

Back in February I was cleaning out my bathroom drawers and decided that all my lipsticks were too old (like, seriously, most were at least five years old and some were 10+ years old!) and it was time for something new. I also figured the science/technology had likely changed and there was surely something better these days. Enter my online friend Sara (well, we’ve met in person, but she started as an online friend). She was selling this cool lipstick called LipSense and I decided to try one color. That was February 23. I wasn’t in love with the color but I loved the product and immediately scheduled a party with her, which meant I’d invite my friends so they could order and then I’d get a big discount on my own order. That was March 19. During the party and right after, Sara strongly suggested I become a distributor—saying just from my party orders alone I’d have made money plus it was likely there would be repeat customers. Nope, not happening. Then as a friend placed a second order, Sara said “Are you sure?! Look at it like a Costco membership—you pay $55 to get an automatic 20% discount on anything. And if you happen to sell more to friends, that’s cool.” But I didn’t think I’d need that much more and besides, I don’t sell things. So nope, not happening.

But this was happening:

Then I bought something on eBay that I couldn’t get from her and on April 10 I was ordering some more from her and once again, Sara suggested joining. Nope, thanks but no thanks, still not happening.

But by April 22 I had changed my tune. Why? Well, when I realized that Tom was really quite serious about me going back to work when Katie starts Kindergarten this fall…I knew I had to do something. Something serious. 😆 And since I had fallen in love with this stuff over the past few months—I mean, I’ve worn lipstick more in the past two months than in the past five years—I figured why not be brave and try something new? I’m always telling my kids to be brave…so now it’s my turn! But it just took me awhile to make the leap because A) I am scared of change, B) I am inherently lazy, C) I hate selling, and D) I am scared of failure.

But as I’ve discussed with Sara, worst case scenario, I hate it and want to stop everything after X months—and in that case, I simply sell off my stock to other distributors (technically you can sell back to the company but the distributors would rather have it). Mid-level case? I sell to my friends and make some extra money every month. Best case? I am a freaking whiz at this and end up signing up a bunch of people to sell under me and I earn commissions on their sales as well. Honestly, I’m setting the bar low: I’m looking to make back what I’ve spent on my own stash thus far. After that, I’d be happy with even $100 a month. Anything more than that is gravy. And what’s best? Tom is behind me 100%. 

So here we are, almost two months to the day from when I ordered my first color.

  • I have paid my membership fee.
  • I have the financials in order (separate checking account and credit card).
  • I am getting the invoicing, payment, and backend ready (you should see the spreadsheet—holy wah!).
  • I am ordering packaging and shipping supplies.
  • I am prepping to make fun treats (mini lipstick remover and lip scrub jars) to include with orders.
  • I am getting ready to place my first order May 1 (and hoping lots of stuff comes back in stock).
  • I got my new Facebook Group page Getting Lippy with Jen up and running tonight! (I bounced a few name ideas off my mentor and this was the one she liked the most! It’s different than most other group names AND it fits my personality!)

So, it shall be interesting! If you’d like to join me on this crazy journey or just come and see what it’s all about (or maybe even just watch while I crash and burn!), come join! And if you just want to see how cool LipSense is, check out this video (also posted on my Facebook group).

A great day and night with great friends!

Nancy was helping me with a Jamberry manicure and Ken decided he wanted a few nails done as well.

Nancy and I tried to recruit two friends to the wonderful LipSense world today…and I introduced them to my infamous (?!) stairwell shooting location. 😊

Tammy and Amy helping me roll bread balls for garlic bread bites.

The whole group!

Uncle Eddy!

We need a bigger table!

The dessert table! Eddy helped me make a cheese flan (with a caramelized top) in the instant pot (far right) and it turned out great! And Amy brought three cakes from Juniors Cheesecakes!

This is why we need better outdoor space! This is where everyone always wants to congregate and we only have eight chairs with barely enough space to hold them!

The party mostly died out by about 11 and just a handful of us stayed talking to about midnight. It was a great night with great friends…