Dawn's Story

Avon has changed my life .  I started Avon 16 years ago.  I went into the apartment building where I was working and a lady was picking up her Avon box and I said "Oh! You sell Avon!"  She goes "Nope! No, here's my manager's number, call her."  So I called the manager, she came over, and that manager changed my life forever.

I graduated from  high school with my diploma, 100% illiterate.  So my manager, I just wanted to buy for myself and a couple of my friends.  I made President's Club in 4 months, and I made Honor Society by the end of the cycle, and my manager kept saying you're doing so good, we need to start getting you in Leadership, and I said I can't.  So I would do recruiting events every weekend at Fashion Bug painting fingernails, and I would get 2 or 3 recruits and I'd call her and I'd say I've got some recruits for you to sign up and she goes you have to do this and I said I can't!  She said you have to tell me why.  I said cause I don't know how to read or write.  So, she taught me.

Avon is impacting lives and changing lives.  Then I had to move from Minnisota to Washington 8 years ago,  and I met my new manager and I was so scared because my manager in Minnisota really bonded with me very well, and Gloria Spitler's here today.  We sat down, we talked a lot.  I still don't know how to do the computer or emails, my husband when we started going online he was doing my invoicing.  But when I first joined Avon he said you can do that as long as I don't know you're doing it, he said he was raised with Avon, he was with his mother all day long doing Avon, and he didn't like it.  

So after I was on the panel and made Executive,  with Vondell, she impacted my husband so much.  Then my husband started having an interest in it, and my manager was doing emails for me to my team and showing me how, and I don't learn very easy cause I have a learning disability but she was with me all the time.  When a new incentive came out, I never understood how to do that, she'd come over, we'd map it out, write it out.  Your managers are incredible.  They want to help.

 Gloria spend countless hours teaching me downline manager, teaching me how to do invoicing and emails.  

Then I started coming to events like this.  And it was so amazing because I used to look at Seniors and say Wow that is amazing!  I could never do that because of my disability.  I grew up in a family that says you can't do that.  You're not smart enough.  And then I went to school and I was the one least likely to succeed in anything.  Well, my manager gave me so much confidence,  and everyone here gave me so much confidence.  Then I realized wait a minute.  A Senior Executive is just like me.  We're all just the same kind of people.  We all want the same thing.  We want to help change lives.  So now that I am a Senior Executive, I am very thankful.  I am the only one out of 9 children that made something of myself.  I'm able to travel, my kids have had a wonderful life, they've never even been on a school bus before!  I drop the kids off at school, and then I work and then I pick them up at school.  So I've been able to raise both my boys 100%  Now I have a 18 year old who's in business college in Tennessee, and he wants exactly what I gave him while he was growing up.  He wants an Avon career for him and his family"

-Dawn