Ingredients For Success
How Melanie Hayden-Sparks went from humble roots in Forest Lawn to millionaire
Mario Toneguzzi, Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, March 02, 2008
Outside the office of her new business in southeast Calgary sits a brand-new Infiniti M45 luxury sedan.
Although Melanie Hayden-Sparks' new office is in an industrial part of the city, the office itself is elegantly if simply decorated. And when Hayden-Sparks leaves the office at the end of the day, she enjoys the comforts of a sprawling 5,000-square-foot home in Springbank.
The 47-year-old grandmother has been on a long and winding journey over the past three decades in the business world of North America. And along the way she has authored a remarkable financial success story.
Would you describe yourself as a self-made millionaire? she was asked recently.
"Yeah, I've done very well," she says in a humble manner at her office at H-TRIO, a home-based business facilitating life balance development and a product line for the "heart, health and home."
That's not something she would have envisioned 30 years ago. She grew up in the Forest Lawn area of Calgary, graduated from high school and worked in jobs just to pay the bills. She was a mother at 20.
"I had no big career aspirations whatsoever," says Hayden-Sparks, who has three grown children and three grandchildren.
"My family is really just a good hard-working blue-collar family. To be in business, I didn't have that around me growing up to even know what that looked like."
She moved to Medicine Hat after school when her parents bought a convenience store there. That was her introduction to the world of business. And it was there that circumstances came together, eventually putting her on the path to corporate and financial success -- and executive positions with a number of companies in Canada and the United States.
"While I was (in Medicine Hat) I got pregnant with my second child and became very, very sick. I actually lost that baby and had a very serious health risk that was associated with that. Almost lost my life. I was that sick.
"That changed everything. I just lay there thinking,'Oh, my God, there's so much I want to do yet,' but I didn't really know what it was," she says.
Friends booked her for a Mary Kay Cosmetics skin-care class but she couldn't go because she was in the hospital. When she left the hospital, someone from Mary Kay called her and asked if they could connect.
Hayden-Sparks got a bank loan to start a little business in direct sales, "and did not much with it for about the first year." But then at a Mary Kay conference in Toronto, she met a successful businesswoman who offered her some advice and mentoring.
"She really helped me get connected with my purpose and that's something that's been a huge driver with me ever since," says Hayden-Sparks. "I was full of fear and doubt. All I ever thought about was my deficits in life. I didn't have a university degree. I didn't have any credibility. Who was going to want to listen to me? It was all just this deficit mentality constantly. She said, 'I don't want to hear about it anymore. I want to hear what you've got to give. I want to hear what you've got to offer. What are you good at?'
"That was the end of July. By the time September came, I was in Dallas, Texas, as one of the youngest Mary Kay sales directors in Canadian history. I had set some company records by that time, literally just did what I was told and that's how I got going in the business."
That experience catapulted her onto an interesting and successful career path over the years. She left Mary Kay to join Watkins in the United States and started as western Canadian division manager, then national sales director of Canada, vice-president of Canadian sales and international sales training, and vice-president of international sales and marketing.
From Watkins, she took a position as director of sales for the House of Lloyd in the United States. Then she moved on to vice-president of sales and marketing for Colour Me Beautiful. She became vice-president of sales and marketing and then president of Canadian company PartyLite Gifts. Her last corporate position was as Canadian vice-president and general manager of Herbalife Canada. In 2003, she was the recipient of the Ivan P. Phelan Lifetime Achievement Award from the direct selling industry in Canada.
Now she is founder and president of H-TRIO which opened for business last October in Calgary. The company brings people together in a workshop environment, teaching them how to be emotionally and physically healthy and how to find balance between them as well as in their homes. There are 200 facilitators, to date, who are independent contractors delivering these seminars in homes, corporations, clubs and organizations, and schools throughout country.
The Positive Attitude Zone, based on Melanie's longtime personal mantra, is one of the company's most successful workshop events, inspiring people to develop a positive and balanced stance in their lives and in those of their families. It's been introduced to several schools and kids' sporting venues, encouraging children to champion anti-bullying practices and respect for one another.
Hayden-Sparks's remarkable journey offers an example of what it takes to become successful as an entrepreneur, says Victoria Calvert, an instructor in entrepreneurship and management at the Bissett School of Business at Mount Royal College.
"One of the first characteristics or traits is: Are you energetic? This woman sounds as though she has energy to fall over. The second major trait is: Do you believe in yourself and your abilities? She's in sales and dealing with people, and she obviously believes that what she has is of value for whatever product she's picked," says Calvert.
"Are you passionate about your goals and visions? Obviously, Melanie is passionate about what she's doing. She's passionate about accomplishing sales.
"Is she good with other people? Yes. She gets along with other people. She handles conflict and she can probably build trust.
"Could she handle uncertainty? She appears to have gone from opportunity to opportunity and seized on the windows as they emerged. She appears to be able to handle uncertainty. And adaptability and willingness to take risks. She obviously is the type of person who will seize an opportunity and then put herself out there to try and accomplish."
From a trait and character perspective, Calvert says Hayden-Sparks is a reflection of many people who succeed, no matter what industry they choose, because of their character, their values and their energies.
"It's a personality and goal and value system moreso than what lifestyle you've had," says Calvert. "Because it's not based on education; it's based on yourself."
Taunya Woods Richardson, president and CEO of Powerhouse International -- a Calgary company that builds peer advisory boards for small businesses -- has met Hayden-Sparks and describes her as a "very dynamic leader who has a lot of confidence."
"That is the first thing that everybody really taps into when they meet her," says Woods Richardson. "It exudes from her -- the confidence in herself and her product and her business."
Woods Richardson says there are a number of key qualities that shine through for successful businesspeople, including planning -- having a sense of where they're taking the business and how they are going to get there.
"Perseverance is key No. 1," she says. "You've got to keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. There's going to be a lot of rejection. There's going to be a lot of noes, but you've got to keep going. So really, ultimately, that's one of the kind of intangible things that I definitely think you need to have in your back pocket. And tapping into Melanie's success as well is that confidence that keeps you going -- confidence in your product, confidence in your company, confidence in yourself that allows you to keep that persistence rolling. Those two go hand in hand."
When Hayden-Sparks is asked how someone from her background can become a self-made millionaire, she pauses and reflects on a period when she was also a single mother for about 11 years as she persevered along the journey to business success.
"First of all, I have no problem with being vulnerable. For me to look at you and say I have no clue how to do that is not a problem. There have been a whole lot of people in my life that I've met in business, but even when I was in school, who took an interest in me and said you're better than that?" she says.
"They saw more in me than I saw in myself. . . . They pushed me and made it very clear that they saw I was capable of more and a lot of it is about being blessed to have people who believed in me more than I believed in myself and me not pushing them away.
"When I got into business, it was always a matter of asking a lot of questions. Not pretending I knew things when I didn't . . . I'm not a big risk-taker, which surprises a whole lot of people. I want to know exactly what I'm walking into. I want to understand exactly how we're going to get there and once I can get a clear vision of what we're doing then, fine, I can go."
She says another key to her success is being able to search out and find people who are able to teach her what she needs to know.
"Another key point is that I very early on got over needing people to like me," she says. "I was really able to do what was right, not what was popular and was more concerned with being respected than I was having people like my decisions. And I clearly understood the short-term and long-term effects of that. If you want to be popular, well, then you're going to do things short term. If you're going to do the right things, then it's going to mean you might have to be unpopular for the short term, but you're going to be respected in the long term. I think that's taken me a long way."