Before You Judge My LuLaRoe Gig – Please Read This

Has anyone else noticed the sudden flood of posts about LuLaRoe on Mommy Blogs?

According to these posts, LuLaRoe is a clothing line that can only be purchased through shady alley-way deals. It’s a time-suck worse than Facebook. It’s an expensive habit more dangerous and addicting than drugs and gambling combined.

Have you heard of it? Have you purchased it? Have you tried selling it? 

I’ve read several disgruntled posts from Ex-LuLaRoe consultants who also happen to be stay-at-home moms. And while I sympathize with their complaints, I also want to share a much sunnier perspective of my experience with LuLaRoe.

It’s amazing what having a passion and a purpose will do for your self-esteem and energy.

For some moms, your passion and purpose IS your kids. I thought I would be one of those moms. I also thought I’d have three kids before I was 30. But life has a way of running its own course and surprising you.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a billion times, I LOVE my Baby Smoosh so much it hurts. He’s my sun and moon and stars all rolled into one beautiful bundle and I’d do absolutely anything for him.

But I also need something besides Baby Smoosh. Yes, I ask a lot of the Universe. But why shouldn’t I?

I spent the first year of Smoosh’s life trying and failing to find that something that would make me feel excited about life again. I loved being a mom but I also missed my pre-mom life. I was caught in a position more awkward and frustrating than your mid-teenage years when you’re trying to find yourself. I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a full-fledged, cookie-baking, Stay-at-Home-Mom but also it was also painfully (and nauseatingly) obvious that I had long outgrown the ability to do Tequila shots and still be up at 6:00 a.m. for a busy day. I was exhausted but bored at the same time.

I tried Meetup groups. I took Smoosh to Mommy-and-Me classes. I started writing a novel. I jumped off a cliff (read about that here). These things all put a temporary band-aid on my identity crisis, but I still felt a void. I still wasn’t excited to get up and get going in the morning.

And then I discovered working for myself and working from home. I found LuLaRoe.

At first it was just a couple of pairs of leggings. Cute, colorful, and oh-so-soft leggings with cats and moons. But they made me feel cute and stylish again, and gave me incentive to change out of my pajama pants in the morning.

A week after buying my first pair of leggings, I was picking up my 8th pair at the house of a random, local mom who was also a LuLaRoe consultant. She had two adorable boys, ages 2 and 3. And she told me how she had just recently left her full-time job to stay at home with her boys and sell LuLaRoe. Whoa. 

Now, I’m not a sales person. I used to cry when my mom took my sister and me around the block to sell Girl Scout cookies. But oh my gosh, how I love leggings. In fact, leggings and over-sized t-shirts were my signature style all through elementary school. OK, and maybe a little into middle school too. I was a ’90s kid, what can I say? Apparently I never grew out of this style because from the moment I found it again in LuLaRoe, I haven’t stopped wearing it. And according to this fellow Mommy Consultant, that passion and excitement were all I needed to succeed. 

So I went for it. I’ve been selling for a couple of months now and life is only getting better. I’m not just talking about sales, I’m talking about quality of life and emotional well-being for myself, my husband, and my son.

Simply put, I’m happier. My shift from crabby mommy to excited entrepreneur made my husband happier. Smoosh is still unpredictably moody, but he’s a toddler. 

Some people claim that LuLaRoe preys on Stay-at-Home Moms, drawing them into their glittery web with promises of a full-time income while working from home. No need for daycare or babysitters, and you can have those homemade peanut butter cookies waiting when your little monsters get home at 3:00 p.m.

Now, here’s the truth. Smoosh does go to daycare once a week so I can catch up on work. I’m sometimes up until midnight processing invoices and Smoosh’s naptimes are no longer my chill time, they are work time. And sometimes I’ll have to respond to emails while I’m crashing cars around on the floor with him. 

But I love it. I have that same sense of purpose and ambition as when I worked in a full-time management job, but with much less anxiety. Of course, I still get stressed, but it’s a fleeting, healthy kind of stress. Like the time Smoosh knocked over a photography light, breaking a lightbulb. I freaked out for a second, but then smiled as he said “broke” clearly for the first time. Or the many times he so helpfully reorganizes my carefully folded and sorted legging bins. I momentarily get upset that a half hour of work just literally unraveled, but then he starts naming the animals and colors on the clothing and I realize – he’s loving this business, too. It occupies and entertains both of us, which is a tough thing to find in Toddler World. 

Smoosh has also learned that sometimes he needs to entertain himself while Mommy works. Before I started selling LuLaRoe, Smoosh was stuck to me like Velcro. He waited for me to initiate every activity, unable to entertain himself. Now, he’s fine with me leaving the room for a few minutes to go load some photos or package up some orders. Sometimes he’ll follow me into my office and, if he’s feeling mischievous, cause some kind of havoc. But more often, he’ll stay and play with his toys, understanding that I’m busy but will be back shortly. Maybe this is crazy, because he’s not even 2 years old yet, but I feel like he respects me more now that I have my own life and can’t – and don’t – give him my undivided attention 100% of the time.

And I respect myself more, too.

To be fair to the Ex-LuLaRoe bloggers, LuLaRoe is not ALL unicorns and rainbows. Yes, sometimes the merchandise arrives damaged and Home Office takes a week to respond to my emails. But I’ve also worked at jobs where merchandise just never arrived, and the boss was so MIA he was rumored to be fictional. And after years of working for cut-throat corporations, I want to give this start-up LuLa culture a big kiss on their Unicorn Rainbow lips. 

Do you work from home? What is your experience?

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Articles by Jessica Mautone

Jessica Mautone

Jessica is a first-time, Stay-At-Home mom who loves to write as an outlet for the stress that comes along with raising a strong-minded little boy and two yappy dogs. Credit for her creative inspiration goes to good wine and frequent travel. 

Facebook: Jessica Mautone