Reading

I’ve been reading more than I’ve been writing lately.  Sometimes thoughts and writing flow easily, and other times they don’t.  Right now, my greatest pleasure is continuing with a book I’m enjoying, fiction or not.  When I’m somewhere, at work, out supermarketing or whatever, I think to myself how excited I will be to climb into bed later on that night with my book!  It’s the simple pleasures don't you think?

The title I ordered from Abe Books after my no-spend February was 1985 published Estee:  A Success Story by Estee Lauder.  I’ve borrowed it a number of times from various libraries over the years, and the most recent time I borrowed it realised I would love it for my home library.

I could read about cosmetics, fragrance and living beautifully all day, and this book has all of that, but it also has a business angle showing Mrs Lauder’s tenacious ways to get ahead socially and financially.

I might not be as hungry as her but I find her relentless self-propulsion very motivating to be organised at work and shape my lifestyle to be the best and loveliest it can be.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from her book.

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Rose Kennedy once told me that good luck is something you make and bad luck is something you endure, a very wise observation indeed.

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There wasn’t a minute of any day when I didn’t look as pretty as I knew how to make myself.  It was a matter of pride to me; it was a matter of self-respect.  There is no reason every to look sloppy because it takes so little time to look wonderful.

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I dressed as the wealthy women did, as elegantly as I knew how.  In my day there were no courses on dressing for success, but I knew I had to look my best to sell my best.

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Packaging requires special thought.  You can make a thing wonderful by its outward appearance.

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Being a perfectionist and providing quality is the only way to do business.

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I needed a special kind of salesperson.  She had to look wonderful herself.  She had to use my products and sell their effectiveness by example.  I was not out to fool the customer.  No-one could tell her, and make her believe, that a certain cream could make her sexy, brilliant or rich.  What a cream could do was to make her clean, pretty and confident.  That was the truth.  Confidence breeds beauty.

The spokespeople for my products would always have to be smiling, pretty and confident; very elegant, very soft and very fine.  I needed my counter attended by alert, interested, eager young women.  She has to be a walking advertisement.  She can’t oversell – no women ever appreciates being sold more than she needs.

Actually, the saleswoman’s job was not to sell, but to let women buy.  She had to respect the customer.  She had to know the product and believe in it.  She had to know how to use it and what one could realistically expect from it.  Most of all, she had to convince the customer to try it on, as she would a dress or hat.  Then, and only then, would she make her sale.

( I adore this description of her ideal saleswoman.  I want to be 'very elegant, very soft and very fine'.  That sounds like a wonderful way to be to me!)

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I always spent my money on one or two elegant outfits, which I wore everywhere, rather than on a whole wardrobe of mediocre clothes.  One had to look finished to sell a fine product.

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When speaking with customers, use your imagination, use your nicest manner.  Tell the truth always.  Never sell what a customer doesn’t want or need.

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It wasn’t youth that make me so energetic, it was enthusiasm.  That’s why I know a woman of any age has it within her to begin a business or a life’s worth of any sort.  It’s a fresh outlook that makes youth so attractive anyway, that quality of ‘anything’s possible’.  That spirit is not only owned by those under thirty.  Selling, especially, is an art form that depends on spirit – and honesty.  The customer can always tell when you’re being less than candid.

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If you don’t do important things when you think of them, you probably never will and may lose out.

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If Elizabeth Arden’s claim to fame was pink and Revlon’s was sexiness, mine was, I hoped, elegance.

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