“I wasn’t just growing my business… I was growing myself, first.”
-Rachel Thompson
Working moms know how tough it can be to balance work life and home life. Many consultants are attracted to the WineShop at Home business structure simply because they see it as a way to earn significant income while staying closely connected to their young children.
When Rachel Thompson, a formerly full-time dental hygienist, found out about WineShop at Home, she recognized the potential it had for her.
“It wasn’t a ‘fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants’ situation,” she says. “I know that if I put my mind to something, I’m going to do it successfully even if I fail one hundred times in between. I’m going to figure it out, how to make it successful.”
Although Rachel didn’t give up her work in dental hygiene completely (she explained that her dental career is very important to her and she still temps when she chooses to do so), she runs a thriving WineShop business from home. But as it is for many consultants, growing her business was a process that didn’t happen overnight.
The First 6 Months as a Wine Consultant
Originally from a small town in Montana, Rachel and her husband, Johnny, had an opportunity to move to Georgia not long after they had their two children. During a visit back to Montana, Rachel and Johnny happened to run into WineShop consultant Tara Hofeldt [LINK: Tara’s Interview] at the grocery store on their date night (Tara and Rachel grew up together and remain close friends).
“[Tara] asked me what we were doing that night. Johnny and I hadn’t decided what to do with our date night yet, so when Tara explained she had just started a WineShop at Home business and invited us to her wine tasting, we said yes. ‘At least it will be all adults and no kids!’ Tara told us.”
At the tasting, Rachel recognized pretty quickly that being a WineShop consultant was something she could do. After some discussion with her husband, she took the plunge and got to work on her own back in Georgia.
“It was a very frustrating first six months,” Rachel said candidly. “I learned how important it is to keep meeting new people and appreciating even the tastings when you don’t have the highest sales. Obviously not every tasting is going to be $1200. I sold 1-2 bottles for six months; the first time I sold 6 bottles I was on top of the world!”
But although her sales numbers were relatively low for the first six months, there were still big shifts happening within Rachel. “I grew a ton personally figuring out how to better talk to people, how to step outside my comfort zone. When I went to convention, I realized that I wasn’t growing my business… I was growing myself first. I was finding comfort in my own skin before I was able to put that back into my business.”
And with that realization, everything changed.
The Big Shift
Armed with a new understanding of who she was as a businesswoman and clarity on how she had grown over the past six months, Rachel found herself thinking things like, “Look at where you’ve come from. Now where can you go?”
With a new boost of confidence, Rachel started seeing her sales numbers improve rapidly.
“You come out of that with more confidence, and that turns into, ‘I can talk to this person.’ I think people felt it in my presentation because I finally made it my own. I made it personal to me.”
Rachel has successfully created a lifestyle for herself and her family that she loves.
She concluded the interview by saying, “You have to forge your own path. Yeah, we have people guiding us, but at the end of the day, I know my business will pass or fail depending on what I choose to do. You have to be willing to work to make your business work.”
Thanks, Rachel!