Starting Your Own BeYOUtiful Business

Starting your own beyoutiful business is incredibly empowering. There are many reasons why you would want to start a direct sales business: flexible hours, working from home, supplementing your household income. And there are just as many reasons why you would want to grow a beauty business: beauty blogging, skin care specialist training, creating relationships. We all have a WHY.

1. Sign up

To start a direct sales business, like AVON, you will need to commit to becoming a representative. AVON has one of the lowest start up costs, only $15 for a starter kit. However, that $15 investment gives a huge return.

It's easy to sign up. Go to cheriefrid.avonrepresentative.com/opportunity/start and step through the easy sign up process. Your starter kit will be sent in the mail and contains 2 full size products, skin care and fragrance samples, Brochures, What's New, and a workbook to get you started.

I will be available to support you in any way. You also have a district and a regional division where you can always go with questions.

2. Login

After you sign up to be a representative, you will have immediate access to the Your Avon portal. You can login and get started right away!

Within your representative portal, you can plan your orders, view your account, access your web office to create your estore, manage customers, view order activity, market through the social media center & more.

The New Representative Center is the first place you will want to go for a step by step guide to setup your business. Once you start selling, place your orders through Your Avon, including products your customers have ordered, demos from the What's New, product samples, brochures and sales tools. To login, sign up!

3. Learn

There are three key areas of training that you should pursue: AVON products, AVON processes and business skills.

To learn about Avon processes, you have full access to AVON University as soon as you sign up as a representative. You will also have direct support from me, and there are many rep groups online that you are allowed to join as an AVON representative.

AVON University also offers product training, and learning about products is best done through reading about the products in the brochures and by trying products yourself.

I offer business skills training to supplement your learning and build marketable skills for yourself. These skills include communication, time management, problem solving, organization, technology and soft skills. To start learning, sign up!

4. Market

AVON has 26 campaigns a year, which is every two weeks. New and seasonal products are always coming out, and each brochure offers specials and sales. There are 13 mark. magalogs every year, offering current trend beauty products for a younger market. Outlet flyers provide last chance buys for clearance and previous season products. AVON has recently introduced the AVON Living magalogs, which provide a huge selection of home decor items.

Market Face To Face. Your local market is the first place to go as you begin to build sales. Tell everyone how much you love beauty and that you are now selling AVON products! Give brochures to people you know and meet, carry products and samples with you, and grow your business in person.

Market Online. Create and use social media accounts to share your love of beauty. By selling online, you are not limited to your local driving radius - you can grow your business by contacting customers all over the United States! Share from the social media center, send emails, and every order customers place on your estore gives you earnings, but payments are processed, and the products are packaged and shipped directly from AVON.

This marketing piece is where your business grows. Selling face to face and/or online is where representatives focus their efforts, and there are many opportunities and directions you can take. Finding your marketing groove is one of the most rewarding aspects to building your beYOUtiful business. There is excitement every time you gather orders from your customers, as you look through the exciting What's New demo books, each time you see an order come in "Direct Delivery", when you share content on social media and it gets a like. For every customer relationship you create, your business grows. To begin marketing your beYOUtiful business, sign up!

Marketing is part of my WHY. I love marketing, I have a Master's degree in marketing, and I want to share this marketing expertise with you, too. Another part of my WHY is empowerment. AVON has two strands of non profit causes: breast cancer and domestic violence. As a survivor of domestic violence, I want to empower women who need a boost, who need a helping hand, who need other women to say that life gets better. Through beautyforapurpose.com and avonfoundation.com, AVON is committed to empowering women beyond helping build financial independence.

what's YOUR WHY?

Sign up and tell me your why!

Drop Your Rocks: Daily Positive Thinking Leads to Success

There is a modern day parable that goes like this*:

As we travel through life, we collect experiences. Each experience has positives and negatives (whether we see those positives/negatives or not; nothing is absolute). For each experience, human nature is to pick up a piece of that experience and carry that piece with you as you progress through life. Imagine the negative aspects as rocks. Each negative aspect of an experience is like a rock that we pick up and put in our pocket. The more we see as negative, the heavier our burden. We could start by carrying pebbles, little things that annoy us. This can progress through stones and rocks. Traumatic events that might happen in our life might be boulders. These negative "rocks" begin to collect and weigh us down.

Drop Your Rocks.

In order to reach your goals, have the success you dream of, and fill your world with happiness and positive thinking, you need to suppress negative thoughts. You need to rid yourself of all the accumulated negativity that has built up in you over your life.

Negative thinking can include negative self-esteem - feeling like you will not be good enough, or maybe that people will judge you. It can include thinking that your past experiences have made you into a certain person, and trying to step out of that role will have negative consequences. Negative thinking can even be creating worst case scenarios in your head - what ifs that always result in a bad thing happening. It's thinking that you need people to accept what you do, or that you will always feel a certain "pain" and you have to accept that. Negative people hate, blame and complain.

Drop. Your. Rocks.

Positive thinking is ridiculously more powerful than you can even imagine. It really is magical. Like a unicorn that can make awesome things happen for you magical. You need to bring good things to you through after you have chosen to drop the negativity.

Positive thinking can truly make things happen, but it is a soft skill. It's not really "measurable". Sort of. Positive thinking can lead to greater productivity, better relationships, and personal joy.

When your brain is happy, it can actually be more creative, and create more ideas. When your brain is sad or afraid or angry, it produces fewer ideas. This brain science is something studied in education, in psychology, in business. The science behind the idea that neurons can be rerouted (in positive or negative directions) is called neuroplasticity. Brains like to be happy, and that happiness leads to more productivity.

Positive thinking attracts people who also want to feel happy or inspired. Human nature is to push away things that are negative (even though there are some people who are "negative Nancys", "energy vampires" or others who seek negative situations). You will find positive messages will bring more communication, more connections and stronger relationships.

Finally, when you begin to focus on thinking positive thoughts and dump the negative ones, you will find yourself experiencing more moments of personal joy. Don't get me wrong, life throws some nasties at us, and that won't quit. But when you develop a daily habit of seeking positive thinking, you will find yourself wanting to think, wanting to enjoy, wanting to play, wanting to create. Do it! Meditate, go for a run, play a game, start a journal or draw. Whatever you feel yourself compelled to do, just go ahead and do it. Your brain will begin to create those new neuron paths, and you will feel good as you do more of those things (whatever they may be - led by your personal interests).

So drop those rocks that you are hauling around with you. Letting go of those negative burdens actually helps you move toward success.

think positive thoughts . smile . choose happiness . healthy choices . positive words and actions . be productive . be creative . develop relationships

* (I've heard variations of this exist in spirituality and in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think it is a relevant enough metaphor that sermons and self help programs shouldn't be able to "own" it. I think the idea is transferable and can be applied to secular scenarios.)

Strategies for Direct Sales Facebook Parties

Let's have a party! Facebook virtual parties can be just as effective, if not better than home, in person parties. It's easy to get this party started. I'm giving you some great ideas on how to make Facebook parties work for your direct sales, especially if you have been trying Facebook to promote and it's just not working the way you want.

Facebook is fussy. Many representatives in direct sales are finding Facebook advertising challenging or not providing the return expected. Some of this has to do with Facebook's policies and algorithms. Some of this has to do with content that the direct seller chooses to push. Part of the problem is that Facebook's "Events" feature is meant to promote live events, not virtual events. I think that's a design failure on Facebook's part, but that's neither here nor there.

Considerations when creating a Facebook party: Event, Guests, Content, Engagement. EGCE doesn't spell anything cool, sorry. CEEG or GEEC either.

Event

To create a Facebook party, first make sure you have a Facebook business page for your direct sales business. (Creating business events from a personal page can cause problems with Facebook because it may violate their terms of service). From your Facebook business page, Create a new, PUBLIC event. I cannot stress this enough. So many people create social media content that is hidden behind their privacy filter. Make your Facebook Events PUBLIC. Make your Instagram PUBLIC. No one can see your content if it's not.

The Event Photo should be carefully crafted. You want something visually interesting, not busy, and low on text overlays. Guests will see this as a small thumbnail at first, so make sure it represents your event in a visually stimulating way. Also, adhere to the 1920 x 1080 image size in your design.

Make your Event Name powerful and relevant.

The Location should say Virtual, or Online.

Date/Time can be a single date or a time frame. On one hand, a single, short event will create a sense of urgency with guests. On the other hand, a time frame of several days expands guest participation because they can jump in at any time. A single, several hours long event or a 2 or 3 day stretch are the ideals;  anymore than 5 days can get annoying.

Co-hosts is useful if you are partnering up with another representative, or if you have a hostess. Another trick for Co-hosts? Add yourself, and as many friends as are willing to "co-host". What this will do is broaden your invite reach. Keep the invites low-ish though, or it will be id'd as spam.

Ticket URL is meant to purchase real live tickets to a real live event. I'd like to say use the link to your estore here, but I have to admit I have not tested this, and I'm not 100% sure what the policies are. If I discover this information somewhere, I will surely update you!

Description is very important. Copywrite this carefully. Your description should give specific information about what guests will experience, as well as the products or product lines you will be sharing.

I would choose Community > Shopping as the Category. Just making your event goals transparent may increase participation. Do not mislead your guests.

Leave Only hosts can post on the event wall unchecked. You want people to post; conversation is engagement and engagement leads to sales!

Guests

You want as many guests to join your event as possible. Invite all of your friends, ONCE! Don't be a spammer. Have your co-hosts invite their friends, once.

Promote your event outside of Facebook, with the linky back to the Event page.

Send out reminders leading up to the event to encourage more people to jump in.

Content

Have a purpose when you create a virtual Facebook party. Are you trying to:

• Introduce a new product or product line?
• Create a community?
• Answer questions about your opportunity?
• Promote a specific campaign?
• Acquire new leads and customers?

Make sure you focus your content on that purpose. Answer questions about other products and services, if they come up, but make sure you have a niche focus for your party. Focus on one product, or a newly released product, or successes customers have had. Even make it a problem solving event, if multiple customers have had questions about something.

Engagement

Your shares are critical. Share content that is related to the focus of your Facebook party, and work to create guest engagement. If people are posting on the wall, asking questions, making comments, participating or responding, those crickets mean no sales for you.

Hold Party Games to Make Guests Feel Like Individuals

OK, so there is this social media concept called "gamification". Essentially, humans want to enjoy their experience, so when interaction is turned into a game, they tend to engage more. I'm not going to go into this in too much detail (yet) because I haven't learned enough about it, but the same idea holds true in educational settings. (If you have kids, ask them if they have ever played Kahoot! in school and see their reaction.) Get kids involved by making learning fun. Get adults involved by making social media fun. Have party games about your products and about your customers. Make the games personal and relevant to individuals. Make guests feel special. Bring them in, and make it about them.

Take a look at my list of Facebook Games!

Offer Promotions Coupled with a Call To Action

When people shop, they want products that will work for them, but they also want to feel like they are getting something special. Offer as many promotions and discounts as you can. Give them exclusivity. Encourage action based on losing the opportunity to a discount. "20% discount on x product, available only from 6pm to 7pm today!" or "Free shipping coupon code expires Tuesday. Order now."

Provide Explicit Product Images, Information and Instructions on How To Order

Sounds crazy, right? Sell more product and get more customers by saying, explicitly, THIS is my product, THIS is what it does for you, and THIS is how you can get it. Don' make potential customers hunt for how to buy, or work to get the products you are promoting. Engagement that leads to sales will decline if it's too hard for them. Make it super simple to spend money on what you are selling.

Want to promote more and get more sales? Go create a Facebook event, and engage your guests with great content!

Market A Lifestyle Through Realistic Photography

Do you sell a product? Do you market the product? Content should not be focusing on product, it should be focusing on how customers USE the product. Content should solve problems. Customers should be able to see themselves in their life, using the product without thinking about it.

Lifestyle Marketing

In content marketing, visual images are crucial. In the crowded, noisy social media space, there is so much information and so many images that messages easily get lost. Highly engaging visuals can be the one tool to capture attention and increase engagement. Lifestyle marketing is about visualizing life being better through the use of a product. A long, relaxing drive through the mountains is a much better experience in a sporty convertible than in a clunky pickup truck, don’t you agree? The products we choose to purchase are often directly connected to how we see our lives improving as a direct result. Even things like toilet paper.

Visual Content: Keeping It Real

To better help customers visualize that improved lifestyle, engage them with visually stimulating content, showing the benefits of using a product, or the result of using a product. A few caveats, though: Caveat 1, This strategy doesn’t seem to work on Pinterest, as Pinterest users want to curate products and ideas and not photographs of people, and Caveat 2, Photographs need to be authentic, not staged. This authenticity holds especially true for millenials, who are not easily persuaded by flashy, glossy, “fake” photos. The rise in popularity of channels like Instagram and Snapchat are due to the authenticity of real people sharing real images of real experiences. Keeping it real is actually important!

Homes. Consider how realtors sell homes. The old school approach is to showcase the exterior and interior home in “staged” photographs. (They even call it staging.) Then the listing has a bunch of statistics, like facts about the neighborhood, schools, etc. There is a shift to real estate marketing that uses photographs of people within the home setting, enjoying their life. The listing now includes a narrative about what life is like in that area, and the focus is on storytelling, or trying to persuade the home buyer based on visualizing what their lifestyle will be once they move in.

Food. Food brands used to showcase their food product with highly stylized, close up photographs of the product or the food after it has been painstakingly styled (and no longer actually edible). Now, food brands are using photographs of people eating, enjoying their meals and their lives. Social media is awash with people taking photos of their food while out dining, or even (yuck!) the empty plate after they have finished. Note hashtag #foodporn.

Beauty. In the world of beauty, there has been a huge backlash against photoshopped models. Consumers want real. They want to see what that beautiful model really looks like. The idea of an ideal is fading, especially for the critical millenial market. Realistic body images are all the rage, and even traditional toys like Barbie are jumping on the bandwagon and recently launched their line of Fashionistas who resemble *gasp* REAL PEOPLE, with 4 body types, 7 skin tones, 22 eye colors, and 24 hairstyles! #TheDollEvolves I am excited that we are moving toward acceptance of diversity! That means WE are evolving. It is clear that the idea of unrealistic body images is no longer valued, and beauty magazines, models and beauty products are working to transition to more realistic marketing by cutting out the Photoshop, airbrush and retouch techniques they’ve used in the past.

A Photographic Paradigm Shift

Lifestyle content marketing is the idea of moving from product to people. It is about making human connections, and storytelling through visual and textual narratives. That shift requires a change in the visuals being used to tell product stories.

This shift takes moving from perfectly staged photography to a more photojournalistic style of photography. It’s the artistic perspective of capturing real life, photographing life as it happens, sharing moments. The millenials (again, with the millenials) have already keyed in to this. They organically, naturally want realistic photos of their life. This photojournalistic narrative makes connections with people culturally. I feel there is a revival in personal photojournalism, fueled by the rise in social media, where individuals narrate their own lifestyles and share that with the world online. Digital photography, smart phones and other technologies are impacting this as well. There is even a movement called “iphoneography”, though I personally still prefer my chunky digital SLR any day.

If you are a content marketer, selling a product and you have recognized that you need to develop your lifestyle content to engage more customers: get creative. Pull out your camera, or your smartphone and start creating content. Take photographs everywhere, of everything, of people, of communities, of lifestyles. (Make sure you ask people for permission to take their photo, and their contact information in case you want to use that photo for promotional purposes.) Take photographs of products, too. No worries if you don’t use them in your content marketing strategy. They are there for you to use, if needed. Be creative in your photography. Try to get the best lighting, but don’t worry about staging or perfection. Strive for realistic depictions of life. Try to use common photographic principles to go for the pretty factor: rule of thirds, composition, backgrounds, viewpoint, depth, framing, cropping, etc.  Be creative about your narrative. Use the visuals to tell a story, but be sure to back it up with a textual narrative.

I am starting to feel like a cheerleader. 

Be Creative, Be Be Creative! C-R-E-A-T-I-V-E

"Washington Redskins Cheerleader" by Keith Allison

People want to make human connections. That connection begins with visual imagery that engages, and that relationship continues through interaction. We adore cheerleaders because they have enthusiasm, positivity and giant smiles. They encourage us to participate and build our own enthusiasm. And, I cringe to say this, they are visually appealing. The truth is, though, human nature is to seek pretty, to seek interaction, and to seek good feelings. It is these driving motivators that encourages marketers and advertisers to leverage attractive, realistic, narrative based content.

Start to use realistic photography in content marketing. Consumers can better connect with engaging, visually appealing, realistic lifestyle photos.