Why I became a Body Shop at Home Consultant

I am an Independent Consultant for The Body Shop at Home. I embarked on this venture in November 2018. There were a number of reasons why I wanted to be a Body Shop at Home consultant and this was not instead of blogging, but in addition to it. Blogging and writing is still my career. The Body Shop at Home is my second business but it’s one which has absolutely changed my life, in so many ways.

If you’re looking to join the Body Shop at Home and don’t want to read the whole post, click here to jump to my section on joining!

Why I became a Body Shop at Home Consultant

I became a Body Shop at Home Consultant for a number of reasons. I’m going to go through them in order of importance to me.

1. Self-esteem and confidence

Due to things that have happened in my life, past relationships, emotional well-being and all kinds of things, my confidence has crumbled over the last few years. My self-esteem was at rock bottom.

I avoided mirrors. I avoided cameras. I hid my body under hoodies and jeans. I didn’t wear makeup. I didn’t look after my skin or hair. I didn’t follow fashion. I didn’t look after ME. I did in the sense of eating well and getting fresh air, I don’t drink, smoke, do drugs or consume caffeine. But that’s about it. I LOVE looking after my family and I always put myself last. I didn’t love myself. I didn’t feel worthy enough to treat myself or take pride in my appearance. I felt ugly and unattractive. Both on the outside and on the inside. And most of the time I busied myself in other things, because when I stopped and thought about it, it got my down. I was not comfortable in my own skin.

And it wasn’t just skin deep. My confidence waned when I had to speak to someone new or talk on the phone. These are things I had never had a problem with before. I also had it in my head that nobody GENUINELY likes me and that people just humour me (and then slag me off behind my back).

But I didn’t want to feel that forever. I wanted my confidence and self-esteem back. I wanted to be able to walk up to anyone and spark up a conversation. I thought about how nice it would be, to be able to look in the mirror and not get this sinking feeling in my stomach every time I see my reflection. To have the confidence to be in photos and maybe even make vlogs or do live videos. To feel like I’m not worthless.

So. I thought that becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant might help me with that. On two different levels.

On the communication side of things, becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant would mean I have to get out there and talk to people. I’d go out to parties and chat to hosts and their guests. You need confidence to be able to sell things. To be able to recruit new members. To lead parties and close sales.

And on a more personal level, being a Body Shop at Home Consultant would give me more opportunity to try new products. Inspire me to start taking care of my skin and hair. Allow me to try all these things without spending a fortune on them. And makeup too.

And I was right. It did improve my confidence, in even more ways than I expected. It did push me out of my comfort zone and it has turned around my entire way of thinking about my myself. 

 

2. Social Life

I love my family to pieces. I wouldn’t change them for the world. My four incredible children and my husband are my WHOLE WORLD. And because of that, I didn’t really have a social life outside of my family, beyond coffee with a friend once every few months. I try to see my mum once a month but the rest of my wider family, I don’t see very often as they live far away. A few times a year perhaps. And I had never really seen my lack of social life as a problem. I’m not into going out drinking anymore. I don’t dance or run anymore. And somehow my social life became non existent. My friends were still there, but they were distant.

But then I started to wonder if perhaps getting a social life would be good for me. Good for my confidence. And good in the sense that I won’t feel desperately lonely when my littlest is old enough to go to school! He’s my little sidekick and we go everywhere together.

Becoming a Body Shop At Home Consultant gave me a brand new social life. It’s a talking point for anywhere, anytime, with anyone. Chatting through the sales offers, the products in the catalogue and giving advice on which are the best products to buy, got me engaging in conversation with lots of different people. Posting on social media, doing live videos, running raffles, giveaways and playing games increased my online social life too. And going out to run stalls and host parties made me step well and truly outside of my comfort zone. In the ten months I’ve been doing this, I’ve made so many new friends from it and built on existing friendships too. Acquaintances have become friends, friends of friends have become friends. People I never had an excuse to meet up with before, I do now. 

3. Wanting to succeed

I think that in order to feel fulfilled, we need to have goals and ambitions to work towards. We need to be good at something, succeed at something, as a way of appreciating our own worth as individuals. An individual as opposed to a mum or a wife or a writer. I thrive on goals and pressure and deadlines. I love shopping and I love the feeling of doing well at something. In my first month, I met three out of my four personal targets (which I set for myself) as a Body Shop Consultant. I then went from a consultant with no team members in January, to a Manager with a full team in just three months. I also won a place on the first ever consultant retreat, meaning that I got to stay in a lovely four star hotel for two nights, with all meals paid for and meet lots of other Body Shop at Home Consultants. I’ve also won vouchers and been sent flower bouquets and chocolate bouquets and all kinds of other lovely prizes for doing well. And I’m not the anomaly either. Lots of the girls on my team, do equally as well as me for sales and some of them even earn MORE than me. It’s a business where anyone can do well.

Even now, ten months in, I feel genuinely excited when I click through the brochure, when I chat to others about the products and when I type orders into the system. These are products I have bought, used and loved myself since I was a kid. We are talking 20+ years. So selling a product I know and love makes it fun and exciting, rather than a chore or “work”.

 

4. To earn some extra money

I make my full time income from freelance writing, blogging and sometimes travelling. But who doesn’t want to earn a bit of extra money? I have four children who each had very big Christmas lists (and a husband with an even bigger one) so being with The Body Shop at Home before Christmas really helped me to get them a few really lovely things for Christmas.

Becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant means that a week after I put through everyone’s orders, I get paid a percentage as commission. Every penny adds up right? This is a side venture. My Body Shop Business will hopefully run alongside my blogging business for a long time. It won’t replace it. Being self employed means swings and roundabouts with income. You have good weeks and bad weeks. Sometimes you have to wait months for clients to pay their invoices. So my Body Shop commission will really help on the weeks where I’m waiting for payments from my other business. And this one is a lot easier for accounting!

I’ve had a mixed reception to becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant. Some of the friends who I hoped would be hugely supportive, weren’t. Other friends who I didn’t expect to support me in this venture, have been amazing. I’ve grown my customer group from friends, family, friends of friends, party hosts, party guests, stalls, fundraisers and social media.

Why would you buy from a Body Shop Consultant?

I’ve had the odd one or two people say something like, “well if I want something, I’ll go to the shop and get it”. So let me explain the benefits of buying from a Body Shop Consultant as opposed to buying from a shop.

Firstly, Body Shop at Home Consultants have different prices to the tangible stores. We do sales when the stores don’t and offer all kinds of crazy deals and discounts. We did a HUGE Black Friday sale with discounts way bigger than the stores. I also do raffles and giveaways for people to win products. Sometimes we are able to offer freebies. And best of all… We are like personal shoppers. We can give advice and tips and help you decide which products are right for you. And sometimes a store might be out of stock of a particular item, but we have it or can get it. We can often tell you when a sale is coming too, so you don’t buy something at full price and regret it the next day. Body Shop Consultants give you that personal touch that you don’t get from shopping online and we can dedicate more time to helping you test and explore products than they could in store.

Body Shop at Home Parties and Pamper Evenings

And the parties… or pamper evenings… whatever name you prefer… If you host a party, you get our undivided time and attention. You get free reign to test out any product in our kit. We play games, your guests can win prizes and above all, it’s a really good giggle and an excuse to get all your friends together. And dependant on how much your guests spend on placing orders, the host gets free products and heavily discounted products.

I hosted my first party in January and all the guests had a really good giggle. They loved the games and the prizes, but I think most of all, they loved being able to test all the products and ask questions about them, with no time limits. It can be awkward testing products in a shop, but sat on a chair in a friends house, with a glass of wine, taking your time, is quite a relaxing experience. The host bagged herself lots of free products and had the option to buy more at 70% off! People were able to do skin tests, colour matching and smell everything. I hadn’t even realised quite how extensive my kit had grown, until I laid it all out at the party, but it was so much fun. I’ve since done lots more parties and am always looking to book more. 

My Body Shop at Home Group

If you couldn’t tell from the passion in this post, I’m really enjoying being a Body Shop at Home Consultant and I’m really hoping that it’s something I can continue to do well with long term. I have a closed Facebook group for all my customers, where I do games, videos, product tutorials, exclusive offers, polls and all kinds of other things to keep my customers updated on the latest products and discounts. I try to get a variation of posts, from personal posts, to photos with the products and also of course some product knowledge, as well as lots of fun stuff too. 

If any of my readers fancy joining my Body Shop Facebook group, to see what sales, discounts and games I do, you can request to join. It’s called Look Good and Feel Good with Emma.

My Body Shop at Home Team

I joined the business in November 2018 and in February 2019, I decided I wanted to build myself a team and progress up the career plan. So I introduced my first team member in February and by April, I had a full team and promoted to an Area Manager. At the start of September 2019, that first teamie of mine, got her own promotion to Area Manager! In May 2020 another two of my team members promoted to Area Manager and I got promoted to Senior Area Manager. I am now looking to build my team bigger and stronger and hopefully soon progress to being a Regional Manager, with my own region. I offer manager training sessions to those on my team who also wish to work up the career plan, but I do not pressure people to recruit others unless they want to. So whether you are just looking to earn a bit of extra cash or you want to progress up the career plan and become a manager yourself, I’d be thrilled to be your manager and your mentor. I will help you achieve whatever business goals you have.

Reasons for Becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant

People join this business for all kinds of reasons. You’ve seen my reasons for becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant earlier in this post.  You might be wanting to join, for any of the following reasons:

• To earn some extra money and top up your income
• To work around family life and looking after children
• For a social life
• For a confidence boost
• To build yourself a career
• To ease some boredom
• To be self employed around a health condition, which limits how much you can work.
• Because you just bloomin’ LOVE The Body Shops products
• Because you are passionate about cruelty free cosmetics
• To get cheaper products for your own use

How To Join the Body Shop at Home 

Whatever your reason for wanting to join, fill in this little form and I will give you a call/message/email and answer any questions you may have. There will be no pressure to join, just honest answers to your questions, from someone who is already a Body Shop at Home Manager (me!). Should you decide to join my team, I will guide you through that quick and easy process and I will give you full ongoing support and training. If you would prefer to join a different team (not mine), you will find details on how to do that, at the bottom of this post.

By filling in the form, you consent to me storing your details securely and contacting you via your preferred method. These details will be 100% confidential and not shared with anyone else. They will be deleted once I’ve made contact with you.

 

More about being a Body Shop at Home Consultant

Consultants get 25-30% commission on orders.
There’s no minimum order amount.
You do NOT have to buy kit top ups or anything other than your kit.
You are not pressured with targets (well not on my team anyway!)
You get many opportunities to earn free shopping 
You get opportunities to earn free products and cash bonuses

MYTHS about becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant

You have to do X amount of sales to get commission… No… No you do not! You get commission on ALL your sales.

You HAVE to do parties… Nope. Wrong again. You can do parties if you want to – theyre a brilliant way of getting sales. But you don’t have to. Likewise, you can sell via a closed Facebook group… but you don’t have to. You choose your own method of sales (as long as it doesn’t violate the consultant agreement!). 

You have to buy things yourself to top up your kit. No, you do not. The kit is designed to include everything you need to be able to do a party or a borrow basket, or a stall. There’s no requirement for you to buy anything else yourself. The idea is to sell to customers, make money and earn the products you want with your free shopping. There is NO NEED to use your commission to buy stuff.

 

What my team think

I LOVE my team. There are now 15 of us (one of whom, is now also a manager). They are such a supportive bunch of ladies, who constantly help each other, even though many of them have never even met! I love that we have such an easy going team too. Nobody puts pressure on anyone and we all celebrate each others different reasons for being in this business.

I can only talk about MY TEAM as I can’t speak for all teams. I can’t guarantee that all teams will be equally as friendly and welcoming as my team. The same as I can’t vouch for the level of support, you’ll receive from other teams. But here’s a few testimonials from people on my Body Shop Team:

Here are three testimonials from ladies on my team, about what our team is like!

“My first body shop at home team lead by my friend Emma. Despite me starting saying I’d never recruit other people or make my own team, Emma lead me to believe I was capable of doing so and here I am 7 months down the line about to be a manager myself. Emma gives fab incentives to better yourself in the business, without the pressure that other teams seem to have. It’s the most supportive team full of women with their own goals and aspirations and where everyone is appreciated!”

“I was very wary about joining the body shop at home. I didn’t want to put money into something I couldn’t make successful and didn’t believe I could do it. Its been 3 months down the line and I am loving it. Team MacSonic has to be one of the most supportive bunch of ladies I’ve ever met! I bombarded them with questions at the start but nobody ever complained – just helped. There’s no pressure that you have to sell so much, that I see on a lot of other teams. We are individuals doing our own thing but support one another in our own goals. I am so pleased I started out with Emma and her team… should have joined so much sooner!”

“Team MacSonic is extremely supportive! Not just with body shop but with everything life throws at us.”

 

If you want to have a peek at my customer group, to see how I run things, it’s called Look Good and Feel Good with Emma. Please do not join if you are already a registered consultant.

And if any of my blog readers fancy joining up as one of my recruits and becoming a Body Shop at Home Consultant yourself… Just drop me a message or an email or fill in the form above. I’d love to have you on my team and will offer you full training and ongoing support. If you’re not sure, but it’s something you’d like to maybe chat about and consider… again drop me a message and I’ll be happy to chat through all your questions.

 

If you’d like to join, but would prefer to join a different team, head over to The Body Shop At Home Website or call 08000 929090.

 

10 Months in…

So ten months in… I’ve ran numerous stalls, where I certainly had to leap out of my comfort zone, and I feel I learnt more from each one. I’ve done numerous parties, fundraisers, borrow baskets and catalogue drops. I’ve been on the consultant retreat, recruited a whole team and promoted a manager. I’ve experimented with new makeup techniques and found a skincare regime that I’m happy with (for someone with ultra sensitive skin and eyes – that’s quite something!). I’ve done LIVE videos on my Facebook page, both with and without makeup. I even posted a 9 minute video, chatting about the products, to Facebook and YouTube, with NO EDITING! I’ve talked to strangers about The Body Shop at Home and The Body Shop products. I feel like my confidence has improved immensely already and I hope that by continuing to grow this second business, my confidence will continue to bloom too.

The statements, views and opinions made or expressed on this website are solely those of Emma MacDonald, an independent The Body Shop at Home Consultant.

It is illegal for a promoter or participant in a trading scheme to persuade anyone to make a payment, by promising benefits,from getting others to join a scheme. Do not be misled by claims that high earnings are easily achieved. Actual earnings and sales vary from person to person depending on factors including the seller’s personal skills and the time and effort put in.