Chef Mama is Cookin' Again!

Have you heard the news? Okay, so it isn't BIG news, like the kind that makes the TV station or newspaper (remember those? LOL!). It's the kind of news that you see on Facebook or e-mails. Chef Mama is back. Back to being a CHEF again.

After a nearly 2 year hiatus, I have rejoined The Pampered Chef as a consultant. We need to earn more money. I will be posting about some of those reasons soon. I am a homeschooling mom. I tend to have health issues pop up now & then. I am on a restricted diet which makes being gone to an 8-5 job more challenging (though thousands deal with that daily). And I really want to keep my craft business going. My husband asked me about working retail at a store I would enjoy, like Hobby Lobby. While an employee discount there would be wonderful, my guess is you start at minimum wage. I just looked it up. That's $7.25 an hour. Now, for my teenage daughters, that may seem like a lot since we pay one of them $5 to mow the front yard. For an adult who has to buy gas to drive to said workplace and home again, as well as for work worthy clothes and shoes, it doesn't add up to enough to pay medical bills. Plus, the hours would be set by the employer, not me.

I thought of other direct sales companies, but none of them seemed the right "fit." With some I'd have to make deliveries. With others, I'd still have the party plan and have to go out. My tax deductions would be for business supplies alone. With Pampered Chef I am doing the party plan, but no deliveries (unless I have a show shipped to me). I can deduct some food costs if I am trying new recipes. And dish detergent for washing PC dishes. Besides, I already know the basics of PC. I really don't want to have to learn too much new right now!

The products are the main thing I KNOW about Pampered Chef. I'm not just flippantly saying, "It slices! It dices! It will AMAZE you!" then going home to my own kitchen tools. These ARE my kitchen tools. My utensils, my pans, my baking stones, my Simple Additions pieces are what I use in my kitchen. I use them every day. Even if all we do is make eggs, we use a mini-whipper. More often, though, I end up with a pile of baking stones or pots and pans to be hand washed. That restricted diet for both my daughter and me means I cook a lot from scratch. I LOVE my Kitchen Aid (which we bought years ago with money I earned from the Pampered Chef) and use it weekly, but I use my PC items daily. People love these products, not because they are the latest, greatest fad, but because they work, are quality products, and really do help you spend less time cooking and more time at the table.

The other selling point (no pun intended, but it's a good one---ha, ha!), and probably the biggest, was the amount of money I could earn. I knew that the LEAST I could make for a show was $30. The LEAST. I knew that on average a consultant makes about $100 per show. I knew that in my head, but was thinking, "Well, even if I make $75 per show, it's better than Hobby Lobby." For that matter, $30 is better than Hobby Lobby, especially considering I get paid the same for a catalog show where I sit at home in my pj's and enter orders.

As I started packing for my first live show, I found an old binder that had flyers in it with old specials listed. I pulled those out but my eye caught a page before I threw it out. It was an old commission statement from September of 2007. First, the grand total popped out at me: $693.  I looked to see how many shows I had done: Four. I was a director at the time, so some of that was director "overrides" from my sales and my team. When I looked at the actual commission I just smiled. $405. For 4 shows. Now I'm thinking, "I can make AT LEAST $100 per show." I did not get back into PC to go "gung ho." I got back in to do one show a week and maybe some catalog shows alongside that. But seeing those numbers, I realized I need to tell people that they CAN make money doing this. You won't get rich quick and, unless you do a show a day, you probably don't want to quit your day job. But if you want to earn AT LEAST $100 for 3 hours total of work, then it is a great job.

Hopefully I can share more tips & tricks with you. I'll be setting up a facebook page and a website as soon as I am able.