JR Manning

The featured event of the year for anyone in a home-based business is the national conference held by the business owner’s partner. For Mary Kay Consultants, it’s the gathering in Dallas that everyone looks forward to. For those of us who are Independent Consultants with the Pampered Chef, it’s the national conference in Chicago every year.

This year, we attended the conference in the second wave of consultants. Second wave? There are so many consultants who attend conference that there are actually three conferences, all identical, and we’re all divided into three groups. We were in the second group this year.

There is so much that goes on at conference, from seminars to the introduction of top performers to the announcement of new products. It’s an intense three days!

For us this year, the highlight of the conference was visiting the stunning facility that we refer to as the Home Office, in Addison, Illinois. The facility is right off Army Trail Road (for those of you who are familiar with the greater Chicago area) and it is actually visible from I-355. It was fun to meet some of the home office staff, especially as The Kitchen Guy. There aren’t that many men who are “Cheffers,” so we were kind of a novelty in our tour.

But something in our tour was missing.

The Pampered Chef has been in business for 26 years now. It was the brainchild of Doris Christopher, who started this multi-million dollar operation, with her husband Jay, in the basement of their suburban Chicago home all those years ago. It has grown into one of the most successful direct marketing companies in the world and is certainly one of the most respected.

Doris built the business around the concept that family dynamics are much improved if the family dines together around the family table and discusses life. She remains committed to that concept, no matter how large the business grows. (All us consultants are a little too familiar with “The Boss.” We all refer to her as “Doris,” like she’s our best friend. In a way, she is our best friend, because she gave us all the same opportunity. Forgive us for addressing her in the familiar form, as if she’d know us if we met on the street.)

Along the lines of the family dynamic concept, Doris and Jay Christopher, along with the Pampered Chef, began a family resiliency program at the University of Illinois in February of 2000 through a gift of $500,000.00. (Doris is a grad of the U of I.) The program funds graduate student fellowships in Human and Community Development, funds research grants, and hosts a lecture series on family resiliency that is open to the public. (You can read more about it at http:// www.familyresiliency.uiuc.edu/news/news.html )

More recently, through a most generous gift of over $11 million, a special facility was built on the campus to house the Family Resiliency Program as well as to provide a laboratory to study family dynamics. It is a stunning facility, as you can see in the photos.

The missing item in my home office tour was a visit to the facility in Champaign. Luckily, my “other job” took me to Champaign last week. I took advantage of that stop to make my pilgrimage to the site, just two weeks after the National Conference in Chicago.

Did I go in? Of course not. The folks there are working. It would be like you walking into a busy facility somewhere and demanding a tour because your uncle’s brother in law hung the wallpaper in the rest rooms. No, I only convinced a passing student to take a photo of me next to the sign, to prove that I’m one of (probably only a few) consultants who have actually seen the facility first hand.

It is a beautiful facility, isn’t it? Of course, it’s still in Illinois. It’s an unwritten law in Illinois that once a facility is completed and landscaped, someone has to tear up the street and wreck the new sidewalks.

Just the same, this is a stunning facility and a most interesting program that has been started at the U of I. Best of all, it all started, 26 years ago, in the form of a dream that took shape in a basement. Every family should do as well.

Thanks, Doris.