Hello, Divas!
It is my pleasure to welcome you to my brand-new beauty and lifestyle blog! This has been a dream for some time and I'm thrilled that it is finally a reality right along with The Diva Bar - my full makeup bar in this beautiful dual master suite of our home that regularly hosts fabulous women, parties and client consultations! Here we'll chat about products I love, tips and tricks I've discovered along the way, life as a growing team leader in SeneGence, and other fun and funny stories from my crazy life. And I want to hear yours, too! So in addition to commenting, let me know what you want to know more about - we can talk about it all!
Most of all, today as we start this new chapter together, I want to say thank you - to my amazing customers who have been with me in this journey for nearly five years, to my growing team that has been with me for about two years, and to our company - that has restored my faith in products that not only do what they say they're going to do, but continue to deliver with every new product release (and that's on top of training, recognition and compensation that is the best in the industry). It is because of all of you that I am here today. Thank you for continuing to learn and grow with me on this journey of making long-lasting beauty possible.
Next month I will be attending my fourth Seminar - our biggest training event of the year. I'm excited to see my many SeneSisters that I share this journey with, as well as my team leader, Lisa Tippen Morris (my team, The Kiss This Girls, are part of the Bayou Beauty Queens - one of the most successful dominions in all of SeneGence) and all the other incredible leaders in our company whose energy and enthusiam for these amazing products has exponentially multiplied the growth momentum of SeneGence International over the last couple of years! When I look back not only how far I have come, I can't help but think of how far the company has come, too. Like last year at Seminar, where we were buying shirts saying we had survived 'Outtastockalips' - which was the time when the company exploded so rapidly and unexpected we had a LipSense apocalypse where we literally sold out of every single shade of LipSense.
Literally. Every. Single. One.
It was a crazy time during that year and a half or so, but that was when the true light of what we refer to as the SeneSisterhood really shined. Women across the country helped each other get colors to their customers so we wouldn't let anyone down. Never have I been more grateful for my extensive inventory - which also allowed me to help my exploding team help their customers, too. We joked it was like the Hunger Games - as a company we regularly broke the internet as we scrambled to order products as soon as they were made. One of the limited edition colors that came out at the time sold out in about two minutes. Two minutes. (Yes, it's that amazing. 🙂 )
I have seen companies fail and fold in times like these, but Joni, our founder and CEO, doubled-down. She spent millions buying land and hiring industry leaders to manage our exponential growth, ultimately creating a brand new headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma to serve Midwest and East Coast distributors whose teams had multiplied seemingly overnight. At last count, I think we were producing something like a million tubes of LipSense a week in order to keep up with the demand. It took several months, and not everyone was willing to ride it out, but I never for a moment doubted that we would come through. And here we are, bigger and better than ever, and yet still at the ground floor of incredible opportunity. I love that I have been here long enough to see how it was 'before' and how it is now. I remember when we used to crown one new Crown Princess at Seminar a year - it was a huge ceremony with speeches and recognition - when a woman achieved a million-dollar-milestone with her team. I remember the last year we had only one, it was a dear friend of mine who had been with SeneGence from the beginning. The following year, when this growth began to explode, there were 32 Crown Princesses. The following year, there were more Crown Princesses than there had been attendees of Seminar the year before.
Unreal.
My story isn't quite that dramatic - but I like to call myself a slow burn. And yet, this company has done so much for me that I can't imagine my life before it. Because of SeneGence, I was able to supplement my part-time college instructor income during summers when I wasn't teaching in order to pay my bills. Because of SeneGence, after I was hired full-time and had to take emergency leave when my sister's baby was born one pound, nine ounces and three months early, I was able to help support and take care of us both during the scariest time of our lives. Because of SeneGence, I have met amazing women who are like sisters to me - both on my team and in this company - that I simply cannot imagine my life without.
If I didn't love teaching (I'm a professor teaching public speaking at one of the nation's largest and most amazing community colleges), I could do this full-time and never look back. If I did, I'd probably already be driving my SeneBlue car or have been with my SeneSisters in Costa Rica a few months agp! But that's okay - there's still time...and frankly, though the money is awesome, my customers are the heart of my business - and no trip or car could give me the same joy that I feel when I'm able to make someone happy with just a little bit of the world's most phenomenal makeup and skincare that's waterproof, budge-proof, smudge-proof and kiss-proof. I mean, really - what not to love about being able to look beautiful all day, right?
As I put the finishing touches on my website and get ready to go live, I'm excited about looking forward. It's appropriate that this should be happening now since tomorrow is the start of a new Seminar year. My goal this year is to achieve the rank of Crown Princess before the end of 2018. I had really hoped to do it before today, the last day of our 2017-2018 Seminar year. But life happens, and you manage, and you keep moving forward. As a Countess currently, I'm halfway there. I'm excited for what this next year will bring.
I hope you'll join me for the journey - and I promise we'll have a lot of fun along the way!
Thanks for visiting, and I look forward to seeing you here again soon.
Love & LipSense,
Charlene
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