Mary Bacon

From an eight-year-old little girl who ripped up her school report card to a businesswoman who runs three businesses and keeps them all growing.

Imagine communist Yugoslavia, strict schooling and tough parents in the early 1980s. Hard work is required of all, including the children in every home.

School was something Mary attended but never became excited about. Culturally her parents did not place a high value on education, so as a result she was not nurtured or encouraged to do well in school.

Not surprisingly, Mary was scoring ‘C’s and ‘D’s in her second-grade report card. When Mary re-wrote her school report card so she could show an enhanced version to her parents, they didn’t even notice that the writing was from an eight-year-old.

Ashamed? Maybe! Guilty? Maybe!

That didn’t stop her from achieving the success she has achieved to date.

Mary, the eldest of three, and her parents emigrated to Australia in 1980. With no English language skills under her belt, she learnt the language at a migrant centre and completed two years of high school. Her parents’ vision was for her to be a mum and a homemaker.

Mary’s first job was a receptionist where she met her former husband working in the family business.
They were married at a very young age and had two children early on in their marriage.

Life was amazing, she had a beautiful family, successful business, hard-working husband and they were the envy of many of their peers who were in their early thirties. There were not many twenty-five-year-olds driving a Porsche 911 turbo, with their two kids sitting in the back seat.

Unfortunately, due to a relationship breakdown and subsequent divorce, life took a different turn, and it became a difficult journey.

Mary told us, “No matter how amicable a divorce can be, a broken family unit causes disillusionment in the parents and the children.”

Walking away from a marriage gave Mary a new meaning for life, and there were some serious responsibilities and challenges that came with that.

Mary’s then hobby of instructing aerobics had a natural progression to starting her personal training business. Mary prides herself in “self-belief”! She had and still has a passion for health and fitness.

She thrived in an industry that was new and progressive. Then, personal training was only for celebrities and well-to-do people, but today it’s an important part of many people’s lifestyle.

Stress is a major health concern. Work-life balance is a struggle for most people, so personal training has become more of a mentoring and life coaching business instead of just lifting some dumbbells in the gym.

Mary wanted to be exceptional in her field and committed herself to further study in rehabilitation, pregnancy and nutrition courses. Her passion for helping women in particular became evident when she spent several years researching the benefits of exercise in pregnant women. As a result, Mary became a published author in 2016, with her first book ‘Pregnant, Fit and Fabulous’.

“It hasn’t always been a pleasant ride. Being a single mum is tough, very tough,” she said.

Ten years ago, Mary started to develop digestive disorders and required hospitalisation for a major operation. Being bed-ridden for a month for someone who is “high-energy” was the most devastating and debilitating time of her life. Not having a partner around, and with her children then living interstate, Mary felt alone, useless and frustrated, and just wanted to check out. Financially, the pressures of not working accumulated, which added more stress to her life.

That’s when a lifeline came from a friend who told her about a network marketing company called Isagenix with products that could help her health.

Resistance and ignorance were an understatement on Mary’s part. The stigma around network marketing and selling products was giving Mary more digestive discomfort, but she knew she needed to get her stress and health in order, not to mention her finances, which were not in great health either.

Ten years later, when Mary compares all her businesses and investment of time and effort, she says that her network marketing business has had the highest return above anything that she has done in her life. It has allowed her to start her new online business ‘Pregnant Fit and Fabulous’ following the huge success of her book.