Friendly Advice

This is week four of the Circle of Friends Challenge hosted by Raili.  I encourage you to visit soulgifts to learn more about this amazing phenomena.

This week’s theme invites you to share your most unique experience of friendship. What moment, memory, experience, person comes to mind?

I met Jerusher while out shopping.  I quickly discovered that she was a regional sales director for a cosmetics company, and she was recruiting new sales representatives for her team.  Jerusher was poised and polished.  Her hair was perfectly coiffed, her makeup, flawless.  Her outfit was chic and stylish, expertly complimented by high-end accessories.  Everything about her screamed “success.”  Disenchanted with my current position (low pay and long hours), I accepted her a lunch invitation to learn more about this opportunity.

Jerusher’s sales pitch was persuasive, and I am ready to sign on the dotted line before the waiter brought the check!  After a couple of days and a long talk with my husband, we decided this was not the right opportunity for me.  A salesman at heart, Jerusher was not easily deterred.  She called me a couple of days each week for about a month, trying to convince me to join her team.

Over the course of our telephone conversations, we struck up a friendship of sorts.  We connected over our roles as working wives and mothers and the struggles therein.  Jerusher explained that she was once like me, frustrated with a job that drained her physically and emotionally.  Selling cosmetics was her way out and could afford me the same opportunity.

I gave her every excuse I could think of, even sharing words of advice offered by well-meaning family and friends who cautioned against leaving a secure position for a job in sales.  I will never forget her response:

“Who are these people and what are they doing with their lives?  Whether you join my team or not, do not take advice from people you don’t want to be like.”  This was a game changer for me.

In the end, I did not join her team, and after many attempts, she did eventually stop calling and emailing.  I haven’t talked to her or seen her since then, but her words stayed with me, constantly in the back of my mind when others offer advice whether solicited or unsolicited.  I always ask myself: is this someone I want to emulate?

I realize this is why I met this lady, to gain this invaluable piece of information.  I honor her and our brief association by paying it forward.