Fortune Small Business Magazine:
Here is how Marla Cilley, better known as FlyLady, runs her business. Every morning she rolls out of bed and starts nagging. She sends a first e-mail to her 400,000 subscribers at about 7 A.M., reminding them to get up and get dressed.
Throughout the day she’ll send about ten more e-mails from her Brevard, N.C., home, nagging them to polish their sinks or plan a healthy dinner.
She’ll also pen an essay or two on topics ranging from the evils of perfectionism to the importance of self-love. Her office administrator will send a few more e-mails, giving subscribers tidying tips. By the time Cilley’s last e-mail - “Please go to bed!” - goes out at 10 P.M., her flock has received about 15 messages. Last year sales hit $4 million.
It may seem odd that Cilley, 51, should spin such gold from nagging, something most of us do our best to avoid.
Yet her customers - almost exclusively female middle-aged homemakers, who call themselves FlyBabies - cannot get enough. They log on to flylady.net and purchase thousands of dollars’ worth of FlyLady-branded products - kitchen timers, license plate holders, ostrich-feather dusters, books, calendars, mouse pads, T-shirts, tote bags, sink stoppers, water bottles, and lapel pins.
They convene at occasional Flyfests around the country, where Cilley gives personal encouragement. And every day they send her about 5,000 grateful messages - so many that Cilley has had to hire a team of six offsite readers to help respond to the deluge. “You are the mother I never had,” one recent e-mail read, “loving, caring, understanding, available with a big hug and a kick in the butt when needed.”
Cilley says she didn’t set out to become a guru. The FlyLady juggernaut began innocently enough, after Cilley married her third husband in 1996 and found that neither of them knew how to keep a tidy home. When the mess became unmanageable, Cilley turned to the Internet, finding clutter-busting pointers on a website.
Before long Cilley started posting her own tips on the site’s message board, eventually building a grassroots following with her no-nonsense, country-girl wisdom, along with her unbridled joy over her newly uncluttered life.
“We never set out to have a business,” Cilley says. “We set out to help people. And the business grew because of their needs.”
Photo by FlyLady.
Fiona on October 22nd, 2007 at 8:24 am
I think this is madness. I am a flylady subscriber and I love getting the emails. I am not in the middle aged house wife bracket, I’m a pre 30s full time office worker and I’d go mad if I didn’t have her emails to follow.
Good for her if she can make a comfortable living from giving great down to earth advice, and useful products.
Flybaby in the UK
Nikki on December 21st, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I hardly think 30 is middle-aged. I agree with Fiona’s comment, “Good for her if she can make a comfortable living from giving great down to earth advice, and useful products.” My home is tidier, my kids and hubby and myself happier, and we have healthy meals in the fridge and freezer.
danakeith on June 13th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
ohh she really helps people through that, haven’t heard having like one here, hope to have soon.