Episode 34 Tanscript

Hey everyone, it is me, Lisa, and welcome back to another episode of the other 99%. I’m so excited to have a fellow ambassador here with me. Could you just jump in and tell the listeners who you are and what you do? My name is Sally Hasem. I’m from Missouri, BC. We moved here, I don’t know, about 30 odd years ago from Saskatchewan. I’m a mom of five, grandmother to 18, and great-grandmother to nine. I have been with Epicure for about 13 years, give or take. And I also am the director for the CIBC Run for the Cure for breast cancer for the, my geographical area, which is Surrey, Langley and other cities around us. So I’ve been doing that for about 11 or 12 years. So I do that as well. So I just came back from two weeks of camping with some grandkids and great grandkids and now I’m ready to walk it. I’m not ready for fall yet, but I’m going to be on the summer for a few months-days.

Not ready for the pumpkin spice just yet? Well, I mean, I don’t love the winter, but fall is one of my favourite seasons. So I am ready to bring on the fall because I’d rather the cooler days and the cooler nights. So when you went camping, was it like close by or did you have to travel a bit?

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We go camping in Fort Laine Lane. We started going there years and years ago and because it was a way for us to go camping with our children and then their children when they start again, Mary, that was close enough that those that were working could still zip into the city, but those that weren’t, we were close enough that they could go back and forth. And you know, you’re not traveling for six hours to get to where you’re going. It’s a beautiful campsite. It’s just they have lots of kids activities there. So the kids are busy, you know, from Wednesday to Sunday. And that part is always free. And these are camp counsellors that are there. So, and I love Fort Langley. That’s such a beautiful village that I know it’s just, yeah, we just don’t, we’re home bodies.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m definitely more of a glamping type person, not necessarily camping because I am. Bugs and I don’t get along too well. So you’d probably hear me from BC, from Ontario, if something crawled on me. So, all right.

So tell me a little bit about direct sales. Like how did you come across direct sales and is Epicure your only direct sales company that you ever been in? Just share a little. No, I was introduced to Mary Kay probably, oh my gosh. almost 45 years ago when I was a very young mom and I was invited to, they were coming into Canada at that point and I was invited to a big guest event they were having at one of the hotels downtown. And I’m a big journal writer. And I remember, and I still have that journal, coming home that night and saying, this was so me that I wish I had the money to buy the kit to do this because it was a way for me to pad our income. but still stay home. But I didn’t follow up with that until we had actually moved to BC and the kids were all in high school. Some of them were finishing and I wanted something to do. So I went back to that or went to it. And I was with Mary Kay for a long time. And then I left when I was diagnosed with cancer. And so I just decided to just focus on me and focus on my health. And so that when I just wanted to do something afterwards, I was introduced to Epicure and people kept saying, why would you not go back to Mary Kay? Because I was so successful. And I said, I just, to me, because of the cancer, I had to focus on what I was putting in my mouth. And to me that was, it’s a consumable product. I know people’s, you know, money’s really tight, the economy was going, you know, out the window. And I thought people will buy groceries. They won’t always buy a new lipstick. And I just felt teaching people how to eat better and teaching them to cook was up my alley because I love to cook. I love to have big family dinners and stuff. So, but there was a gap probably of about 10 years in between one and the other, but it’s the only one that I’m doing now. I can’t imagine doing any other direct sale because this is like me talking, cooking. That’s it. Everything that you love all in one, right? Everything’s rolled up into one.

I don’t know if you know it, but I started off in Mary Kay too. So I totally get that. Yeah. I remember being introduced to Mary Kay when I had my second son. So that’s how I jumped in. And for the exact same reasons was to stay home and not have to go find that part-time job that took me away from them all weekend. Right. And I never looked back like it’s been 18 years in direct sales and I love every minute of it.

So I’m still considered an Mary Kay consultant, I never let go of my title. And I’ve never to this day of 40 years later, I’ve never had anything but Mary Kay on my face. I know people always say, man, I can’t believe you’re in my late 60s now. And I always say, it’s my Mary Kay face, you know, wash your face, put your moisturizer on, you’re good to go.

So true. If you went into my bathroom right now, it’s like all Mary Kay, even my kids use Mary Kay. It’s like, yeah, I love it. And it’s exactly right. I mean, I always say that, you know, once you’re in direct sales, and you know, like even people who come into the business for, you know, what I call as, you know, like a customer, like they come in just to be a consumer of the product, and they share maybe with one or two people, they are doing it the right way because they’re taking advantage of the discount. Plus they’re making a few bucks when they share it with their families. So, I mean, I totally get what you’re saying by staying in the business just to get your products because the discount, you just can’t walk away from that. Right. And I did that for my two years with Epicure because I, you know, when I was introduced to it and I said, no, no, no, no, you know, I don’t want to go into direct sales. I don’t want to do that anymore. I was focusing on my health and they said, no, no, you don’t need to sell anything you can just do it to save money. And of course that rang a bell. And so I did, and my sponsor said, our leader is really good. She’ll ask you, what do you want from it? You tell her and that’s what she’ll do. And so I told her, I says, I don’t wanna go anywhere with this. I just want my discount so I can get my products at cost. And I did that for two years. And it was great. And she just, every now and then she’d send me an email or a text and just, you still breathing over there? Is everything okay? And we had, we formed a great relationship because she listened to me and she did push me into doing more than I wanted to, because that would have put my heckles up and I would have left at that point. But she just was really good. And so I try and do that with my team. Now I ask them the same thing right off the bat. What do you want from this? And then I, you know, I stay at that point and every few months I just, you know, touch base with them and just checking and see how you’re doing. And you know, let them know if you change your mind, I’m here. If you’re okay where you are, I’m here, you know, and if you do that. And I think that’s what’s missing in, because I would, you know, in between, I worked jobs and I was a nurse and I was, you know, left that and I was working in hotels as a manager. But there wasn’t a whole lot out there to give me a different choice. And so now it’s perfect because I get rewarded for my works not because of somebody else’s work and nobody’s going past me unless I’m letting them go past me. You know, that’s I’m choosing to do that. And so, you know, I say this a lot. I wish I had known that Epicure, well Epicure wasn’t there when my children were little. It wasn’t invented yet, but when they first started, I wish I had been on board. It answered a lot of questions for me.

So just want to back up a minute if we can. So you said you came in as basically a customer consultant. So you came in for the discount. What was that point that changed that? Like when you wanted to move from that to like, because now you’re in leadership. So what changed? I actually, we were, as you know, we got our monthly magazine or our quarterly magazine. In those days, we would get them in the mail. It wasn’t a digital one and I was just flipping through it and I always would look for names for my sponsor or my leader You know, I’m just you know, but then I saw The dollar signs about by their names and I’m going oh my gosh Like that’s a lot of money and I really you know We were getting into the age where you know My husband was hitting close to 60 retirement was going to be coming around the corner and then COVID hit and he got laid off from his company. They just really downsized and all the middle managers were let go off. And I realized, okay, I need to take my, you know, small business doing it very part-time. I need to move it up. And that having, I remembered looking at that podium magazine that month thinking that’s serious money for talking about food. You know, like I don’t even have to go and do it. It’s just talking about food and then with COVID and we had to pivot and we had to do it all online. Well, that’s even better because I didn’t even have to go out and go to people’s houses because I have arthritis really bad in my spine and my hips. So a lot of times going out was a painful event. But this I could do. And my husband is the best and I could set up during the day and then after I was done the class, he would clean up and everything. Although he would say, Can you not get your customers to pick something other than Mexican meals in a row? Because people love Mexican dishes, right? Yeah. Um, but it was just knowing that I could still do what I love, but teach more people in that because of what I was putting into it, I was going to get greater pay. I wasn’t getting greater paid. on my team, I was getting greater proof because I was working for it. And that was really, really important to me. I didn’t want to move up because of my team of what they were doing. I was moving up because I was doing, I was putting the hours and I was doing the work. So I hope that answered your question. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So now with COVID, you were doing everything online. So how are you currently running your business? Are you back in person or are you just continuing? No, I am, I, I probably 90% online and 10% in person. I do vendor events that I did not, I did a few before COVID, like maybe one or two at Christmas time. But after COVID, I would do more just to meet more people. But I still, my cooking classes and that are still all online. I still do them online and I found that people love that more because you took away that people have to clean their house, people have to find somebody to watch the kids. You know, you’ve been at work all day and now you got to go home, you got to hurry up and feed your kids, then you got to clean up from supper because then all these people are coming in, you’re tired and then you have to sit there while everybody’s doing that and then everybody leaves and you got to clean up your house again and then when we got to do it online I found that my customers loved the online part because, you know, and not only that, but they could invite people from all over North America. It wasn’t just people that lived locally that came. And so their class sales were way more than if I had gone and just did it in their home because they were limited at who could be there. And, you know, so you know, it’s, yeah, I know I do almost over 90% is just still online. And what platform are you finding the most success now? Still Facebook, Facebook parties or Facebook and Facebook parties? Yeah, yeah. Actually, that’s like 99.99% of my stuff. My customers love my page, our private group page, because they get to know when something’s coming up before the rest of the country. I always have contests going on on there. I always have freebies going on over there. I’ve got my big open house coming up for the new season next weekend. And so I’ve been teasing them with different dishes that I’ve made, but they can’t see what the item is. And so everybody’s trying to guess. And it just brings a lot of interaction between one another. And a lot of times customers says, I can’t figure out what to make for supper today. And they’re posting that question. All of a sudden they’ll get, you know, 20 answers from different people that don’t even know them. But it’s just, it’s very much like a little village, a community where everybody, we’re all working together. And that has gotten much, much better since COVID because they realized that I don’t have to go in their living room. I can just be at my desk and they can access me on their phone, on their coffee break at work, or they’re stuck in traffic and, you know, they’re hands free. But they get to, do that part of it. And so for my customers and for me, it works still way better doing it online.

Yeah, awesome. So I just curious, do you have something in your business that you’re super proud of, like an accomplishment or something like that you’d like to share? Oh, for sure. When I had my first teammate, self promote to leader. I was probably more excited for her for that than I was originally when I became a leader. And so when we were in Dallas for our conference in March, I wasn’t going to be going because the exchange rate was so high, but she was going and I thought there’s no way she’s worked so hard to get there. I was not going to let her cross the stage by herself. And so I went down there and told her whole team and everybody else, you listen. Because when, because you can, you know, you hear me screaming, you’ll know she’s crossing the stage. So that hands down was probably my proudest moment out of all my promotions and everything else is that to see her cross the stage because of what she’s done and, and watching her work with her team now using the same things that I’ve done that I taught her and other people have taught her, you know, he’s just. let them work at their speed. And if they decide to back away, it’s okay, still love them. You know, they’ll still be a really good customer for you. For sure, that was one of my very proudest accomplishments and not even accomplishments, but I got to be a part of my first teammate becoming a leader. So that was really exciting.

That’s awesome. All right, so I always say that everybody has like a superpower in their business. There’s one thing that they’re just really, really good at. What would you say your superpower is? Um, possibly I don’t have a fear of talking or being in public, you know. I do, I know when COVID hit and everybody had to do, you know, live or video cooking classes, a lot of people struggled with that because they just they couldn’t even though it was their kitchen and you know, their stuff, they’ve done it 100 times, they’ve been in people’s homes and done it 100 times, just the fact that they have to go on camera was very scary for them. And that was something that I never had a problem with. So if I had to be a superpower, I would have to be and I’ve talked to different ambassadors, I’m really close with and other leaders and you know, help them get past that. point to be able to do one live is once you do that first one, it’s going to be a piece of cake after that. And does it mean that you have to do one? And I see other ambassadors taking my videos and sharing it on their group and they say, you know, here’s somebody that works with me. This is somebody I know. This is a really good dish that she made. And so I’m happy that something that’s easy for me helps others that have that problem because there are things that I’m not, I don’t get very well. And so I like learning from other people that do that, you know, that they’re able to do that. So yeah, probably just talking on having an issue with being. And going live was definitely a big thing, a big hurdle to overcome during the last few years. A lot of people. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

All right. So I always ask my, my guests for a quote or words of advice that they’ve heard over their years in the direct sales. And you have many years of experience to reflect back on, um, that you think that every direct seller needs to hear. Can you share something? It is not about the sales. It’s about building relationships. If you focus on the sales, you’re going to get simple, or you’re going to get very minute amounts. But if you focus on building relationships with people, find what they’re dilemma is what is their problem and then help them solve that give them suggestions give them ideas to help them the sales will happen but you if you have that I go through this with my team frequently and they say you know I need to make this amount of money to pay hydro this month I’m going to say if you’re going to go to your customers with that mentality you’re not going to get anything because as soon as we have that inborn That sales resistance that just goes up. Yeah. If somebody’s pitching you a sales thing, you’re just going to back up. You just shut down, you know? And so it’s just forget about the sales numbers, focus on learning how to build relationships with your team and with your customers. The sales will follow. So that was a hard lesson for me to learn because I, you know, like when Like I said, this now was our income. And so I was just panicking a little bit and realizing, okay, just breathe. You know how to do this, you know, stop with the sales and it did it, but it took me a while to straighten it out. So now I just helping other people so that they don’t have to go what I went through. Yeah. That’s great words of advice for sure.

All right, Sally. Well, I’m going to ask you. If people are listening and then they want to come and find you online, where can they find you? I am my private group is Sally’s Epic VIP group. So we can do that, or they can just find me by my name on Facebook and then just say, Hey, I heard you on podcast. And then I can direct them in there. Um, and then my website is sall So they can find me there as well. Not hard to miss. I will make sure I get those links from you so I can link them in the show notes. All right.

Well, Sally, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it chatting with you. And I’m sure the listeners are going to grab a couple takeaways from our chat. And I hope to see everyone on next week’s episode of The Other 99%. Take care, everyone.