Y-Husband: the husband of a Younique business owner/presenter
I clearly remember the season of our lives when Mica started her Younique business. We were stationed at the “lovely” Fort Hood, TX. This was our fourth duty assignment and 5th address in 6 years. I was an active duty Army officer with a moderate work schedule that took me away from the family more often than I preferred. Mica was a full-time domestic operations executive (aka Super-Mom) gracefully managing seemingly never-ending demands. Naturally, the majority of Mica’s time was spent being super-mom at home with the kiddos. Considering the age of the kids, the challenges of the military vagabond lifestyle, and the 10-hour drive to our nearest family, Mica found a good amount of her daily adult interaction through social media. Needless to say, Mica’s days were without a doubt much more challenging than mine! And she was, and continues to thrive at managing all of it! Which is even more amazing now [but I’ll talk more on that later]. We were an intentional one-parent working family and though we were financially stable, our month-end margins were modest.
Now that I have painted a picture that displays a difficult life, allow me to clearly highlight that we were not struggling in any real sense. Yes, we faced some unique challenges associated with military life, but all the other difficulties were presumably not much different than the majority of Americans. All things considered, our lot in life was better than we deserved and our future was unambiguously positive.
In the summer of 2014, Mica asked me what I thought about her joining a Direct Sales company called Younique. The starter kit was $250 worth of makeup for the price of $100, and there were no other fees or obligations. Younique’s innovative business model encouraged the use of social media – and as I stated previously, Mica was already a regular social media user. More importantly, Mica had tried and really liked the makeup products and had expressed how much she enjoyed interacting with the Younique presenters online. Furthermore, the inspiring founder’s story, vision, and mission added an element of compelling authenticity that was admirable and distinctly positive. So, the decision for us was relatively easy. The risk was essentially null, and the barrier to entry was $100. The real question was, why not?
After some discussion, Mica started her business with a couple modest goals; make the $100 investment back and earn a few hundred dollars a month spending money (for Target and the kids of course!). Now, let me pause for a moment and be brutally honest. I didn’t actually believe this venture would achieve those goals. A few hundred dollars a month added meaningful margins to our monthly finances – this could be used to pay down debt, cover a monthly bill or two, increase investments, etc.; but I hadn’t really even considered all of that. I had recognized a change Mica’s ambition, daily mood, work ethic, and overall demeanor, but embarrassingly, it wasn’t until that first paycheck that I became acutely interested in the potential of this business.
Comments will be approved before showing up.