Here is the final part of the interview I did with Birdie of Beauty Dish. Read part 1 and 2...Enjoy!
What do you see as the advantages of blogging about your business?
Sometimes I wonder if Avon HQ knows how much this blog has contributed to its own culture, how many Avon Reps have told me that Beauty Dish helped them decide to walk that door-to-door path. If I count my saved email, just the ones from bona fide new Avon Ladies who plunked down hard cash to get their kit after reading my adventures, it numbers over 200. And many of them sold like crazy,
stamped brochure after brochure, left them here and there, enough places to raise their sample coffers to the level of President's Club, those who drop a cool ten
grand and more in Avon's lap. And those are the women who took the time to email, to offer thanks. Customers number over 8000. Just the ones that took the time to email and tell me what they thought after they bought a product due to one of my reviews. It all adds up to incredible revenue for Avon.
Two things keep me blogging. Those gentle emails from Avon Ladies, those emails from customers, the ones that tell me I changed their life, gave them some kind of beauty when they most needed it. And the fact that I can't stop writing, can't stop sharing my life, my deepest dark blue current with you. I can't stop.
I love the story about Melva and her monkey! Have you ever thought of writing a book based on your blog?
I started writing stories the week I started selling Avon. I don't know why. When people ask, I tell them I wanted to remember my strange customers, the women who hid Latin lovers in their closet, the ones who paid me in pennies and pumpkin bread. But the truth was something different, something I still can't articulate. My heart pumped heavy blood, swollen red cells that carried the weight of
forty years of memory. I had to unload it.
Somehow, in the telling, in the seven hundred days of pen against paper, feet against pavement, I uncovered something I never knew was hidden. I discovered my fingers were meant to type, my mind was meant to race, this body held snapshot bits of pet and lover and brochure for a reason. I'm meant to tell these stories, to let my eyes fall on the person in front of me, to draw their life force, their candid breath. I'm meant to write. Nothing else makes sense. Now I think of
myself as a Mom first, a writer second, and an Avon Lady dead last, after friend, confidant, lover, knitter, troublemaker. I don't know where it's going, just know I'm following a trail of crumbs some invisible force left for me to find.
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