What It Is Like Being a LuLaRoe Consultant

I have now been a LuLaRoe Consultant for several months and I love it but it is hard work.  I was a LuLaRoe addict long before I was a consultant.  The consultants I shopped from appeared to be selling alot. I watched the Buy Sell Trade groups and eBay and saw leggings selling for over $50. I paid over $50 for several pair myself.  I guess I thought I would be selling those unicorns and making a lot of money on them. But in reality we don't get many unicorns in our shipments and we can't sell on eBay and we can't sell anything at different prices than what LuLaRoe tells us.  So I quickly realized that I wasn't going to super busy selling unicorns all the time. That I was going to have to go find the customers if I wanted to sell.  So that's what we do as LuLaRoe Consultants we go find customers, they don't come and find us.   I have a Facebook page, a store in my home and I use every social media platform there is. I post at least weekly if not daily sometimes.  The clothes do not sell themselves we have to work at it.  We are up with the sun and work all day and sometimes all night.  Many consultants have real jobs and have to work twice as hard.  I feel sorry for them because I can barely keep up and I don't have a real job.  I am not busy selling I am busy trying to sell.  I have a Facebook Boutique with 4000 members in it, but they don't shop.  They never shop in my group. Some of them respond when I do giveaways maybe 400 will want to win so they comment but otherwise they are not there in my group.  They don't shop my albums even when I post a New Inventory graphic and tell them I have brand new leggings.  LuLaRoe customers shop only in Multi Consultant events or somewhere else, but not in most of our groups. All of the consultants I know say the same thing, our groups are nothing buy silence, like we are talking to ourselves when we post something.
When I received my first order I hurried and took pictures and posted them and waited and waited for my first sold comment.  I realized after about a week that they didn't seem to know I was there. So I posted a giveaway.  Then some of them responded.  Then I did some loops and started my Facebook ad campaign.  I did a giveaway of leggings for a year for having people add their friends and family. OH my, don't do what your sponsors do all the time.  It's not always a good idea.  I had people mad about being added and it will cost me a lot to send 3 people leggings for a year. My sponsor and our Team Trainer did the same giveaway so I did it too. But I quickly regretted it and so did my sponsor.  After a long time of silence in my group and no sales just giveaways, I found the sign up on our Team's main FB group for Multi Consultant events. I signed up for one multi consultant event each night.  That was ok but I was still only selling 3-4 items an night or sometimes nothing at all. So I started signing up for 3-4 multi's a night  I have been doing 3-4 multi's a night for several months now.  I sell maybe 6-7 items on a good night now.  It is a lot of work to do multi consultant events. It takes a lot of time to load pictures in to the group and then we have to watch our notifications hoping we don't miss them.  Just signing up for events takes me about 2 hours a week to search for them and go through the rules and then sign up. We try to keep our calendars full all the time but of course we always hope for a Pop Up or something else to come along too.  We had some awful months during the summer and non of us sold a ton of stuff.  I did some sales on my Facebook Group just to see if anyone was actually ever going to buy. Well of course they buy when it is on sale.  I have had a few people come and shop in my home Boutique and that is awesome.  I can sell the clothes cheaper in my home.  We are not allowed to advertise or even post once our sale prices so people have to pm us.  I love helping people save money so I get excited when they shop in my home.  I am not trying to discourage people from signing up to be a consultant but if you are signing up because someone told you that the clothes sell themselves they are not telling you the truth.  The clothes cannot sell themselves.  You have to find someone to see the clothes and hope they want to buy them.

LuLaRoe Queue Preparing to Onboard

Once you onboard you will be so busy taking pictures, hanging up items, taking inventory etc. You need to be ready before you onboard. Have you thought about how you are going to keep track of everything for tax purposes? I'm not a tax expert but my tax guy told me a few things I will share with you. I knew about most of what my tax guy told me but a few things I didn't know about so I thought I would share some of the important things he said here.
1. Have a LuLaRoe Consultant Bank Account, separate from your other accounts. It looks really bad if you transfer money a lot between accounts. You can even go to jail for money laundering. Look it up, he told me a story of an elderly couple who were just transferring money between their regular accounts and got arrested and sent to jail for money laundering. Crazy huh? ☺ I haven't had time to look it up since he told me this but he scared me enough to make me realize I need a separate account from my regular bill paying and my regular personal account.
2. Keep track of your vehicle receipts for everything like gas, oil changes etc and track your mileage.  Google maps is helpful for mileage tracking. Your tax person will help you decide at the end of the year which is a better deduction, mileage or the vehicle expenses.
3.Keep track of your receipts for refreshments (for your open house launch and your in home Boutique pop ups). But it's easier for your tax person if you don't buy the refreshments when you buy your regular groceries. Maybe do two transactions at the store? Just keep track of anything for your business even things like serving food and drinks to guests.
4. Keep track of what you buy for inventory and what you still have at the end of the year. If you bought 58 Julia's with your initial order and you still have 15 of them at the end of the year, you cannot put down the amount of purchasing and selling all 58 on your tax form. You will have to figure out how to keep track. If you sold all those Julia's and have more in stock then make sure you have those accounted for and discuss them with your tax person. Some people use a numbering or bar code scanning system, others use Audrey to track inventory sales or another way of keeping track.
5. You can deduct the space in your home that you use for your LuLaRoe Room or Boutique. It's the percentage of the space in your home. If you use 15% of your 1500sq ft home for LuLaRoe then you can take a deduction of 15% of your  utilities on your tax return.  Redecorating that LuLaRoe space is also deductible if it was done for your business.
6 If you need internet to run your business then that is deductible too. Your phone bill and any office expenses you need.
7 All supplies like your racks, and shelving are deductible if they are only used for your LuLaRoe. Your office supplies, shipping, picture taking etc supplies are also deductible.

I think this is enough info to get you thinking about tracking your expenses and how you are going to do it. You can use apps that scan receipts, scanning the receipts with a scanner, a spreadsheet, etc. You just need to keep everything and then discuss it with your tax professional at the end of the year or each quarter if you choose to file quarterly.

I was told to hold back 35% for our tax bracket but you will need to ask about your tax bracket and how much you should hold back. You might not need to hold back 35% but it's better to have too much saved for taxes than not enough.

Please consult your tax professional for information regarding your taxes.

It's soo exciting knowing you are joining the world of LuLaRoe and it's hard to wait for your name to come up in the queue. But having soo much to do to prepare makes the time go by soo much faster.

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What To Do While Waiting in the Lularoe Queue

The first thing I did after I filled or out my paperwork and sent it in, was discuss with my husband which part of the house I will use for my Lularoe business. I knew I wanted to do home parties and shopping UV my home and I want to do online like Facebook too. So I knew I needed an office area, a picture taking area and an area for an in home boutique. I am lucky we have no kids at home and my hubby has only one kid who still stays on the weekends with us. She's 19 so she doesn't come often. I plan to recruit her as my assistant. We have an extra master bedroom and an extra bedroom. So I decided to use the extra upstairs bedroom as my office and photo room and the downstairs master as my boutique. But my son does come to stay a couple of times a year so I refuse to take over that whole master. I'm leaving him a need in there. My hubby isn't happy about the bed being in there, he says it will look silly. But I told him I'll put extra pillows on it and it can be a seating area. I also talked him into letting me use a leather sofa from our bedroom sitting area as more seating on my boutique. It's a big bedroom so I should have room for several racks for clothing, the bed and the sofa. I hope. I also have a good size walk in closet that can be used as a dressing/changing room. The bathroom is huge on this master suite but it doesn't have a door going from the bedroom. There is a door for the toilet closet but that area is soo small I don't think anyone wants to try clothes on in there. So that's what I did first. Figure out where and how I am going to do this business. Some people only want to sell Lularoe online. But I feel like online is really limited. There are soo many people who will not hear of Lularoe unless they get invited to a party. Speaking of parties. I have to figure out how I am going to run my parties. Oh my there is soo much to do and soo many things to buy.

How My Lularoe Obsession Started

My obsession with Lularoe started several months ago when my friend who I had I known since I was a teenager, started selling Lularoe. She had a drawing a few weeks after signing up. I had never heard of Lularoe before but wanted to help her out. So I added every one of my Facebook friends to her group. I was so excited when she said I won the drawing. She told me to pick out some leggings from her album. But I didn't know what I wanted so I told her I wanted to buy a top and she could pick out the outfit for me. She sent me the must amazing black and gray butterfly leggings. Well, I was hooked after that. I started buying leggings and Irma tops. I started stalking eBay and then finally some Facebook groups. I was totally addicted. I even ended up with soo many leggings I had to sell some on eBay. I made money on my leggings that I sold on eBay. This was a few months ago when eBay was not soo oversaturated with Lularoe. Now I hate going on eBay. Everything is over priced and consultants are listing their entire inventory on there . Now it seems tacky to me to buy my clothing off of eBay. But when I first started this addiction eBay was the only place I knew of. Anyway, so that's how my addiction started. One free pair of leggings won in a drawing and an Irma top to match. Now just a few months later I am in the Queue patiently waiting to onboard. There are soo many things to do while waiting for the Onboarding process. Soo many things to buy, a room for my in home boutique to get ready, a room for my office and picture taking to get ready and a business to start.