Excerpted from the Mon., Oct. 12, 2009, USA Today article

Trying something different

It was an unlikely job for a self-described extrovert: hour after hour, reading the fine print in contracts and reports in the fluorescent-lit cubicle she calls "the old fattin' pen."

That wasn't the worst thing about Jamie Titus' paralegal job at a mechanical engineering firm. As business declined, the 36-year-old Dallas resident's pay was cut and her workload increased. There were layoffs.

Her neighbor, who worked for Mary Kay cosmetics, suggested she try sales. Sales? She'd once failed when she tried to raise money — for leukemia research. "Sales?" asked her husband. "You've always hated sales."

But the frying pan was getting hotter. In June 2008 Titus quit to sell Mary Kay cosmetics out of her home. Even in a recession, she figured, women will buy makeup. Why not from her?

Since she must buy the cosmetics, she earns only if she sells. She focuses on friends, relatives, people in line at the store — anyone she meets. She claims even to have sold a product to a caller who'd dialed the wrong number.

She won't say how much she makes but predicts that within a year she'll be earning at least as much as she did as a paralegal.

When she left her paralegal job, "I was scared. I took a huge a huge leap of faith. But it was the right one."