Author:
Laurie Bennett
Last Updated:
UPDATE: Why I stopped selling LuLaRoe and what happened when I left the cult
I’m sharing 7 ways to fund your LuLaRoe investment. Each way comes down to one thing: hustle. You’ve gotta be a hustler, a hard worker, if you’re going to be successful with LuLaRoe! It’s also important to realize that your funds don’t have to all come from one source! If you can sell some stuff you don’t use (clothes, furniture, whatever) and make $500, add that to the pile and keep going. Don’t think “oh it’s just $500”. You have 6-8 weeks to come up with $7,000(ish). Just to keep it simple, let’s say that’s $1,000 a week. So that $500 would help quite a bit for one week!
Trust me when I say I know that $7,000 is a LOT of money. I’m not sharing these ways to make you think it’s easy because even if you were to make $1,000 from each of these 7 ideas, it’s still going to be a lot of work. But if you aren’t ready to put in the work, you aren’t going to survive selling LuLaRoe, so think of it as a boot camp. ;)
7 Ways to Fund Your LuLaRoe Investment
REMEMBER! You don’t have to have the money when you sign up and get in the queue. The money just has to be there when you get the call to get onboarded. That means the 6-8 weeks I was talking about earlier is after you “join”. Some are in the queue for upwards of 10-12 weeks, but just to be safe I used the average calculation of 6-8 so you can make sure you have the money ready when you get the call.
While you’re here, check these posts out:
— 7 Ways to Grow Your LuLaRoe Business
— How to Have a Successful LuLaRoe Launch
— LuLaRoom Ideas and Inspiration
— Resources for Your LuLaRoe Business
— How to Make Your Designs Home Office Compliant
— LuLaRoe Style Hacks and Ideas
— Creative Ways to Photograph LuLaRoe Inventory
1. Work for another LuLaRoe rep. I personally know several LuLaRoe consultants who could use an extra hand. Whether you work for one in person or online, there are so many tasks to complete, I am confident you can be useful! Offer to help with pop-ups, shows, and even shipping for local reps. If you’re super organized, you could be “for hire” to locals for setting up storage and organizing systems in their LuLaRooms.
You can work as a Virtual Assistant for LuLaRoe consultants online. Offer to help with their inventory tracking system (like setting one up for them in a spreadsheet), help host live sales (keeping track of who comments first, who gets what, etc), you could even help organize orders, giveaways, and loops. There are endless possibilities with this type of thing. Even if you’re only getting paid $10 or $15 an hour, that can add up fast – especially if you’re working for more than one consultant. Bonus: you get hands-on training before your own business launches!
2. Do other online work. I am a virtual assistant and that is where some of my LLR start-up money is from. If you have experience with social media, you can offer to help some consultants out with their groups or fan pages. If you’re like me and you have experience with blogging, even better! I work for dozens of other bloggers, writing articles or recipes, and can make several thousand dollars a month doing so. That will easily fund a LLR start up, especially if you aren’t having to use it to pay bills like I do.
3. Sell your stuff. Think about this like a minimalist would: stuff is just stuff. I remember way back when I was first starting my business online, I was broke – really broke. I had to sell my TV to be able to afford a printer so I could work my business. But guess what? That TV was worth maybe $100 and my next TV was worth 3 times that much! It definitely paid off and I didn’t miss the TV at all because I was busy working my business. Figure out what you’re actually willing to sacrifice to make your LuLaDreams come true. Are you committed? If so, selling some clothes, shoes, electronics, and old stuff in the garage that hasn’t been touched for years, shouldn’t be difficult.
4. Go in halfsies. Signing up for LLR with a partner is an option, but you need to have a joint LLC to make it happen the right way. You don’t want to end up with a ruined friendship and completely screwed on your business, but it happens. If you’re going to partner with someone, make sure you not only trust them but you both have realistic expectations going into this.
5. Get a credit card. Generally speaking I think everyone should steer clear of credit cards. They have saved my life at times, so I don’t hate them (and they did help me raise my credit score by over 200 points), but it’s easy to let them get out of control. Signing up for a credit card with 0% interest (or at the very least, low interest) is key so you don’t have a huge snowball effect of interest working against you.
6. Ask for a loan. Got a family member that has some extra cash? If you do, sit down and discuss numbers with them and make sure they realize this is a loan, not a gift. Also reassure them that you have a plan to pay them back even if this LuLaRoe business doesn’t work out for you. LuLaRoe buys back your inventory at 85% if you decide to jump ship, but you could also do a huge flash sale in your group to move your inventory and pay your loan back. If they don’t have $7,000 to loan you, consider asking 2-3 family members for a loan of $2,000 each. Smaller loans like that are much less stressful.
7. Get a line of credit. I recommend Kabbage because they make it simple to pay back. Kabbage’s terms are 100% transparent and there are no hidden fees. I looked into several other options and this was the most straight forward. Kabbage is a business line of credit so this is something you’ll use only if you already have a decent stream of income coming in from your business. Even if you aren’t sure, try it and see what they say. If you get $4,000 from Kabbage, you can come up with the rest using one of the ways above or you can apply for a line of credit with Paypal. Paypal can be pretty reserved when it comes to amounts, so don’t be disappointed if they only want to give you $2,000. The idea is to pull from different sources and put them together.
Things to remember
Your investment isn’t just the initial order investment. You’ll need some other supplies (check out the other posts I mentioned for a detailed list), and you’ll want a cushion to order more inventory or supplies. If you order the smallest package and keep everything else on the frugal end, you can start for about $6,000. If you go more high end, and order extras, you could end up spending $10,000 or more.
The initial order doesn’t come with leggings, and leggings are the #1 item requested! You’ll need a little extra to place a leggings order right away.
Even if your business isn’t successful, you have to pay back loans, lines of credit, etc. Keep that in mind when deciding how much to borrow. Always have a Plan B.
I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments! How did you fund your LLR investment?
Leave a Reply
Kaycee
How would I apply for a loan from kabbage? it wants the companies info. address, phone, structure (LLC, Single LLC, General partnership). Month and date of when it was established and a tax ID number.
Reply
SlapDashMom
Kaycee, I wouldn’t recommend signing up with LuLaRoe at this point. This is an old post. Read the update. Thank you!
Reply
Heidi
I understand that you are no longer selling LLR or condoning anyone too because of your beliefs but is there anyway you could help filling out Kabbage?
Just the basics of what Kaycee asked. Like, would we fill it out as if LLR is our own business or?Reply
SlapDashMom
Heidi, I think Kabbage changed after we did our loan because I’ve seen a lot of people having issues and mine was very simple. I filled out the form, they called me, and that was that. If you have other income you’ll put that as your business, since LLR isn’t making money yet they wouldn’t fund you if you put LLR. I hope that makes sense.
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