Making memories

For The Transcript

Mary Lacher believes in setting goals and then making things happen, and that is apparent when she tells of how she has built a successful home-based business.

Lacher has been so successful with the Creative Memories company, a direct-selling provider of photo-safe scrapbooking products, that she is the featured "Star Performer" in the monthly publication that goes to more than 80,000 Creative Memories consultants.

Lacher was a stay-at-home mom living in Colorado when she signed on as a Creative Memories consultant. In less than eight years, which included a move back to her hometown Norman, her business network has grown to serve hundreds of people in several states.

She makes no secret of her key to success, summing it up as "giving you my best to help you reach yours." Her "best" thus far has helped her build an organization of 108 consultants, with a third of those being her direct recruits into the business end of the world of album making through the Creative Memories line.

Lacher ardently believes in helping others to preserve family photos, letters and other memorabilia, and she calls an album of her parents' wedding photos as her favorite. After her mother passed away, she pulled out the photos of their wedding and put them in an album. She asked her father to identify the people and events shown in each photo. When he returned the album to her, what he had written about each photo made it an even more special memento for her and her family.

"The journaling is so important. I tell people that it is just as important that they journal for each photo or page as it is to put the pictures in place", she said. It is through the words that the pictures become meaningful to the generations to come.

"Some think album making it is about stickers and decorating the pages into works of art. I encourage people to just get the photos on a page and write about them. Preserve the history. If you want to decorate the pages, fine. But that's not what is most important."

Lacher devotes 20 to 30 hours a week operating her business resulting in earnings of more than $3,000 each month. Regular phone calls, emails and teleconferences keep her in touch with her 'downline" consultants providing coaching and motivation that they need to build their own successful business.

"Most of all, I want them to have fun with it," she said, and hope that they reach the levels to earn all expense paid trips to exotic places that she and her husband, Leo, have enjoyed.

An in-home business does make its demands on the family. One room in the Lacher home is filled with scrapbooking equipment and supplies. She opens the home one morning and one evening each week to her customers "who become my friends. We are sharing our lives through albums," she says. She also hosts occasional "crops" (the scrapbookers' equivalent of a quilting bee), including those designed for teen-agers. These events include boys as well as girls.

"Teens enjoy getting together to work on scrapbooks," she said. While album making is predominantly an interest of women, Lacher has many male customers, because the interest in preserving family memories has no gender.

The photo shoot for the "Star Performer" magazine was a fun adventure for her family, including daughters Allison and Mary Ellen, and son Adam. The company sent a photographer "and even someone to do my makeup and hair," she said. Lacher invited members of her team to be with her that day, too. "They said that no other consultant designated a Star Performer had invited their "downline" team to be there. They are my team. I wanted them to share the honor with me."

The result was seven pages of story and photos in the company's April issue. In the magazine, Lacher shares her strategies for recruiting consultants, and a typical week in her business life.

She offers her tips for success, some simple rules which can be applied to any business: 1) have a passion for the product, 2) inspire people, 3) have a vision for the future -- know where you are going and invite others to come along with you, 4) be competent, and 5) be honest and have integrity.

Lacher, who founded the Norman chapter of Birthright (now called Birth Choice) and served as its director for 10 years, has set a goal of reaching the next level in the Creative Memories sales, that of Senior Director. She has goals defined on a chart taped to her refrigerator where she regularly records data and checks her progress toward the goal. She is confident of reaching the next level in the company, and knows that to reach it will take more phone calls, more coaching, more helping others to reach their own goals.

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