Making It
Financial Dreams Come True
A Loudoun mom discovers she has a knack for selling knickknacks
In the past two years, Margaret Zagrodniczek has gone to Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Mexico and a spa resort in Arizona. For Free.
  Composite image of Margaret Zagrodniczek for the Washington Post Magazine (Copyright Keith Barraclough) |
Margaret travels with her husband but gathers with other women like herself: top sellers for Southern Living at Home, the direct-selling home-decor business started five years ago by Southern Living magazine. The company gives luxury trips to its top performers.
Margaret is in the top 10 nationwide for sales. Last year, the 36-year-old mother of two from South Riding in Loudoun County sold $106,000 worth of knick-knacks, dishware and linens to friends, acquaintances and friends of friends.
Here's how it works: Margaret finds women to host parties in their homes (they get free gifts and discounted merchandise as incentives), where she goes to give her Southern Living presentation and take orders. Typically, a party is 10 to 12 women, gathered over wine and food, eager to fill up their big suburban homes with tasteful pieces. Margaret can't remember the last time a guest didn't buy something.
"People can always get a candle or something little," she says.
Margaret gets a 24 percent commission on everything she sells, plus royalties on sales by the 37 other women (she calls them "girls") she has signed up to regularly organize parties themselves. Margaret made $50,000 last year, working 20 hours a week, mostly when her 9- and 12-year-old daughters were at school or in bed.
"Not only the financial freedom, the traveling, but just being a parent and being able to have those flexible hours and working from home -- I would never trade it for a million dollars," she says.
Three years ago Margaret was teaching gymnastics to kids 10 hours a week and working another 10 in the children's ministry at New Life Christian Church in Centerville. Every penny of her $1,200 monthly income went to paying bills.
A parent at the gym asked Margaret to host a Southern Living party, and she was hooked. At the first party Margaret supervised herself, she sold nearly $1,000 worth of stuff. Selling, she's discovered, "is definitely more forte."
Margaret adores Southern Living's decor, which is found all over her own house, and sets goals for how much she's going to sell. That discipline has put $1,200 into the bank every month as savings -- and a new PT Cruiser convertible in the driveway.
Margaret's husband is a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. "He wants me to go all the way to the top so he can retire early," she says, laughing.
Will there come a day when the cul-de-sacs of suburban Virginia have enough Southern Living candles and casseroles? Won't happen, Margaret says.
"When you think about the millions of people who live in this country, I don't worry about it," she says.
Margaret Webb Pressler wants to hear how you're forging a new financial path. her e-mail address is presslerm@washpost.com.
