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Transcription of interview with Gail Reynolds on December 31, 2012.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Gail Reynolds started as a single mom with two kids living on government handouts and
then eventually became one of the top earners with the Avon Company and is now literally
worth millions and millions of pounds.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Reynolds on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: Now that you’re more successful, how do you find the time to do
all the things that you’re doing?
Gail Reynolds: What I decided in my early years was I was never going to grow a business
but there is this one that became successful or anything else.
I was never going to keep it as a separate entity in my life.
I need to get it to be part of my lifestyle, children growing up around it and part with
my husband which luckily came onboard as well because I think if it’s so separated, it
really does become almost like chain around your neck, it’s like what I really must
do, almost like a 9 to 5 job and I never wanted that to happen.
Actually, my Avon business is part of my lifestyle and the children are part of the Avon business.
If I have to go away and I’m going to do a guest speak, they come with me.
I do my guest speak 7 to 11 or maybe in the evening 6 to 10 or something like that but
my children come with me.
We have passes and we go into all kinds of museums and we’ve got something called the
Sea Life Centre over here we’ve got a UK pass so we can go anywhere in the United Kingdom.
We go and watch shows and they come along knowing that mommy’s got to work, but we’re
going to have some fun along the way.
I always try to make sure that the business incorporates the children, my husband and
our lifestyle kind of revolves around both things.
Douglas Goldstein: At the end of the day, you’ve got to put in a certain number of
hours to be successful?
Gail Reynolds: Yes absolutely and I’ve had a baby in the middle of growing this business.
Rosie is only 7 and I’ve been doing this for 10 years.
I was very lucky that after about 3 or 4 years, I’ve built the business big enough that
I could sit back and relax for the last 3 months of my pregnancy and the first 6 months
of her birth.
I took 9 months out and my business still grew because it’s a multilevel marketing
business so the people and leaders that are trained, coached and developed over the first
3 years were still out there growing the business while I was being a mom.
It’s just an absolutely amazing industry to be in because you’re building a business
for your future and for your kids’ future.
Douglas Goldstein: A
lot of people looking to working at Avon or any sort of multilevel marketing program as
a side job, how do you turn it from being a side job to being your career?
Gail Reynolds: It was never an intentional step for me.
I just needed to meet new people.
I’d moved to an area and I was desperate just to make a few friends.
Actually, in my first campaign, I didn’t even earn much more than 5 pounds 10 years
ago.
It wasn’t the money for me.
It was more about meeting people and actually I was working for a great company but in my
second company, I doubled my earnings.
I earned 10 pounds and 500 pounds every 3 weeks which is from 10 years ago five but
because 95% of my business is based around people that just want to earn 50 pounds or
100 pounds every few weeks to take the children to the cinema, to pay a few bills, but what
I do find in this business, like I say 90-95% of my business is off the back of, these ladies
and a few gentlemen that just want to earn a few pounds, but one in every sort of 10
or 20 of those ladies will actually say, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this and I would really
like to know what you’re doing and how you’re doing it” and then I can then develop that
lady, which really comes just to earn 50 pounds, further to become a businesswoman and build
a team of her own and look after her family like I do.
Douglas Goldstein: You’re really helping people who for perhaps years thought that
it was not possible for them to become big earners and a few them realized, “Wait a
second there’s something really that I can do here.”
Gail Reynolds: Yes and what motivated me was back in 2007-2008, I won a really prestigious
award with Avon.
It was the Team of the Year Award and I was completely blown away when I won it because
I literally stood on the stage for the very first time in 6 years in the business and
got this amazing award.
All that keeps going through my head was, “I’m just a housewife.
I’m just an Avon lady.
This is ridiculous.
How is it that I get this award?” and that kind of inspired me to write my book.
The book Mum’s The Word is actually my life story from 2002 right to the day I wrote it
and it’s a journey of just being a mom wanting to provide for my kids and my husband to be
a good housewife and a good mom and that book alone since September last year has helped
me kind of open the minds of some women that really didn’t think they can do it.
They read the book and they go, “Oh my God!
I’m actually where you are there.”
In your year-three, I’m there already.”
They can identify themselves through the book because it’s not just about business, it’s
about being a mom-at-home and actually believing in myself.
Douglas Goldstein: Through your speaking and your writing, you’ve certainly helped many
women to learn about business but you’ve also in fact spoken the European Parliament
on this subject of business.
What did you tell them?
Gail Reynolds: European Parliament was incredible for me because I was incredibly on it because
they asked me to talk on behalf of European entrepreneurial women which you know again,
I’m just an Avon lady, but I spoke about overcoming obstacles that women face because
they’ve got the childcare primarily to take care of.
We did discuss at European Parliament the direct selling aspect, about going out speaking
to people face to face but I was there to talk about how I could advise women and inspire
women to actually see beyond just changing nappies and making tea.
The whole kind of invitation to Brussels was just incredible for me.
Douglas Goldstein: One of the biggest handicaps of mothers is they have to do something to
take care of their children and that’s usually a very expensive daycare proposition.
How do you balance that?
Gail Reynolds: Avon specifically is massively for women.
We are called the company for women.
When I assign a lady that wants to become a leader, 9 times out of 10, she can take
her child with her.
She could make an appointment with the lady that wants to join Avon and earn an extra
few pounds and she can say, “I’ve got a little baby.
Is it okay if I bring her along here?”
Nine times out of 10, they’ve got children too so it’s one of those businesses that
becomes part of your life rather than a separate entity and again it’s a business that you
run from home.
When I first started, I was doing 20 hours a week and I was working for somebody else
so I only had about 1 hour a day where I didn’t have the children because they were at school
at that point, so one hour a day to actually go out, speak to people face to face, ask
the people out to join Avon and then I would recruit them on an evening when my husband
was back from work or I would recruit them weekends.
You’ve got so many ways around actually working a business.
Douglas Goldstein: In general, do you have advice for women who think they want to start
a business?
Gail Reynolds: They need to find something that they’re genuinely interested in themselves.
The internet is just an amazing tool to find out what’s out there for everyone and there
are hundreds of multilevel marketing businesses, direct selling businesses, and network market
businesses.
They can just look it up online.
If you’re interested in health and nutrition or in cosmetics, whatever you have an interest
in, start doing some research and find out what’s out there because there’s just
so many things.
Another piece of advice to people out there who are interested in this kind of business
start up is find a mentor.
Once you’ve found the industry that you’re interested in, find a mentor or somebody that’s
already successful in your industry that you’re going to choose and ask loads of questions.
People can say no.
I mean I became a bit of a pain to some people but if they said no, move on to the next.
Definitely do something you’re passionate about.
It’s going to be something that comes from within.
Douglas Goldstein: Sometimes I think that the advertising that companies do to single
mothers, it doesn’t always just include how much money you can make.
If you buy this course and you buy this book and all of a sudden, this women who are already
behind the eight ball, find themselves spending more and more money just to try and get out
of something and it never works for them.
How can you identify the good opportunity from the not good opportunity?
Gail Reynolds: I’ve been a massive advocate for Avon, the company I work for because in
the UK, it’s absolutely free for you to try it.
You don’t have to buy anything.
In fact, the administration fee that you will get charged is only charged to you if you
place your first and second orders so I could go and recruit a lady today and actually give
out all the brochures and all the administration, I’ll give her an hour of my time, I teach
to her what I already know and do.
It’s up to her to go out and find those customers and get some orders.
Now, if she doesn’t then it hasn’t cost repining.
So actually trying Avon is absolutely free.
I don’t know how it stands across over 125 countries Avon serving, so it’s not just
UK I’m talking about.
As far as the leadership business that cost 25 pounds to start your business and again
that is not a cash outlay.
When you go to someone’s house and say, “Give me 25 pounds, thank you very much,”
they’ve already become a representative in their own right, that 25 pounds within
the Avon business gets take enough what they’ve earned that month.
If they’ve earned 50 pounds, it would just say on the invoice thank you very much and
mine is 25 pounds for your business kit so you’ve already earned 25.
So the beauty of a lot of the multilevel marketing companies out there actually recognized that
people haven’t got money, they’ve got no money and that is why they’re coming
to this industry because they don’t have the startup fees and the money and the thousands
of pounds or dollars actually put into the business because if they did in the first
place, they wouldn’t be coming to us.
So it’s kind of just a circle.
For me, I’ve never seen another company in this industry that offered free start up
kits and stuff like that.
There are some out there that ask hundreds of pounds and I would be very weary if anything
that ask you for lots of money upfront.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people learn more about what you’re doing?
Gail Reynolds: You could find me on any of the social networking platforms like Facebook,
Twitters, YouTube and you just got to type in Gail Avon.
I’ve got a couple of websites, www.gailsreps.co.uk and that is my business base so that’s about
the Avon.
You’ll find anything and everything to do with Avon through Gailsreps.co.uk.
I do have another personal website which is more about my books and becoming an author
but there’s also a working women’s form out there which anyone can join and that’s
www.gailreynolds.co.uk.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article.
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