It occurred to me recently that I’ve never shared why I joined Beautycounter. It almost feels like I joined, added a page to my blog and wham(!) started sharing about it, but only in incremental steps. So far, I mostly stick to conducting Beautycounter business on my IG stories. But there are people who follow this blog that don’t even follow me on Instagram. There are also people who follow me on Instagram that don’t watch my stories. There are so many ways to follow bloggers and it varies in degrees of distance. Some loosely follow maybe one platform and check in every once in a while. Some follow on multiple platforms and interact daily. And everything in between. It’s really a mixed bag in terms of audience and engagement. And so, for that reason, I thought I’d write a blog post on my “Why” when it comes to Beautycounter, and I’m really dishing it all. From my experience as a buyer, my personal desire for cleaner products, my reason for taking it a step further and becoming a consultant and all of my thoughts on direct sales and why Beautycounter doesn’t fall into the category of MLM (multi-level marketing) although it does closely resemble it.

Reading this post will, no doubt, reveal more of who I am as a person and why someone who is extremely picky about what I choose to personally consume and publicly elevate has gotten so 100% on board with Beautycounter in a more meaningful way.

The Beginning

About four years ago – three years after Beautycounter was established – I began to see someone I knew posting about cleaner and safer beauty products from a company I had never heard of, called (you guessed it) Beautycounter. This person was my former high school cheer coach and sister of my high school best friend. We had kept up with each other on social media over the years and she had actually reached out on several occasions to cheer me on in my professional endeavors. I had always admired and respected her – she is an accomplished attorney, Army wife and mother of two. This last part is important to mention, in my opinion. I think so often we see women joining direct sales companies to make a buck. And while I won’t disparage anyone from trying to earn more money, get at that hustle and better their lives, there *is* a stark difference in just wanting to make extra money and truly identifying with a much more important feature – mission. I knew that my friend wasn’t trying to milk people for money. I knew that she wanted to create a cleaner and healthier world for women and for her precious daughter, who she wanted to see grow up without risk of health complications from harmful ingredients that we have just accepted for so long in our beauty, skincare and shower products. I would read her posts and watch her videos and was honestly floored at how LITTLE I knew about what I had been lathering on my body for years. I didn’t know the ingredients and what they were linked to. I didn’t know how much my skin absorbed and how easily these ingredients found their way into my blood stream, nervous system, endocrine system, etc. I didn’t know that there were people that actually cared about eliminating these products, that were testing and testing and tirelessly testing to bring safe products that perform just as well to the market AND that cared enough to take it even further and lobby on the Hill in DC to create real change. A company that worked that hard and didn’t just talk the talk, but also walked the walk? Hell yes.

I started talking to my friend about it and placed my first order. I bought the charcoal face mask and charcoal balancing mist. And I loved it. I slowly started using up what I had and replacing things when they ran out and as my budget would allow. Slowly but surely I added more and more Beautycounter products to my makeup bag, my skincare regimen and my shower shelves. And at that point, I was happy to continue buying as a customer and support a business I loved.

And then…

Fast forward to a few years later. I had been striking up a new friendship with someone who I now consider to be one of my best friends – and if you follow me on Instagram, you probably know who I’m talking about because she has made multiple appearances, one being an extremely talented rendition of Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield LOL – Pooja! I knew that she sold Beautycounter as well, but honestly didn’t even ever really talk to her about that since I was content to keep buying through my original consultant. Our friendship began through other mutual friends, but we had started bonding over the fact that we both blogged. Me, with my fashion blog, and her with a food blog specializing in nutritious and auto-immune disease friendly recipes. And as this friendship grew, I began to wonder why I wasn’t buying Beautycounter through her. It’s a difficult thing to navigate. I’d been buying my products with someone else for a few years, but I wasn’t as close to that person as I was now with my friend who I really wanted to support and who played a more active role in my life. With absolutely nothing against my (now former) consultant, I decided to start giving my business to my friend instead. And naturally, conversations about Beautycounter just naturally evolved. As my blog grew, she began mentioning that I should join Beautycounter as a consultant since I had a platform where people could reliably trust me to give them my honest, straight-talk opinions on things that I loved and that includes Beautycounter. I have to pause here for a moment of appreciation that Pooja never EVER pressured me, pushed too hard, came across as “JOIN MY TEAM” salesy, or pushed any boundaries uncomfortably. She simply brought up the idea and said, “Think about it.”

And I began thinking about it. And talking to my husband about it.

The Decision

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of becoming someone who works in direct sales? I’ll read your mind with three words: “fear of judgment.” Yep. Me too. But, in my 29 short years of life I have done plenty of things that thousands of people have been able to judge me for and although that fear of being judged is always somewhere in me, it is a much more remote voice than it used to be. Ex-politician turned full-time academic who also blogs and “sells makeup” – that’s pretty much how you’d describe me. Is it wild? Yes. But is it authentically who I am? Also yes. I travel through life with a few aims: live passionately, achieve higher and higher goals, allow myself to do the things that make me happy no matter what other people think. Fear has never stopped me before. I don’t know why it would allow me to now.

So I decided to join Beautycounter. At first I thought, “Okay, I’ll just build another page into my blog that will lead people right to the Beautycounter website and it’ll just kinda hang out there if anyone ever wants to use it.” Basically, the bare minimum. But the more I got involved with Beautycounter, the more I wanted to keep talking about it and sharing it with others. I now share about this company almost daily on my Instagram stories and occasionally on my feed. I had planned on just adding it as another element of my blog and leaving it pretty much alone, but I didn’t realize how much interest there would be. I didn’t know that there were SO many girls that would start to see and hear about Beautycounter through my blog and have the same thoughts that I did when I first started watching my high school cheer coach talk about it. Of course I should have assumed that EVERYONE would be interested – I mean, everyone has a stake in their health…why wouldn’t they care? People have pretty much been reacting to it the exact way I did. And this has spurred me on to become a lot more active with it. I thought this little venture would pretty much be ignored by friends and family, but even some of them have started to ask questions and place orders.

In short, and perhaps this is the most important part, I have been able to continue on with my academic pursuits and I have also incorporated set aside time each day to devote to Beautycounter and it has garnered returns.

Yes, some people make Beautycounter their full time gig (and I hear tell that a gal at the top of my “team” is pulling in $60,000 a month which is certainly nothing to scoff at). But also, full-time attorneys, doctors, teachers, speech pathologists, therapists, entrepreneurs, you name it….those people have added Beautycounter into their lives and their schedules as well. I knew that if women from all over the country with all kinds of careers and goals and aims were joining Beautycounter, then I could too. And I didn’t have to be fearful or embarrassed that I loved something enough to share it with others.

My Why

Ok, so…let’s review so far… “I love the products” and “I have a growing blog that could incorporate a direct sales component”

That describes my decision for the most part, but it does not necessarily describe my Why. Over the past recent years I have had some health issues pop up. I’ve gone back and forth on whether I’d like to share about that. I don’t think it’s necessarily the time to do so, but I do think it’s fundamentally worth mentioning that my health realizations directly correlate to diving deeper into Beautycounter personally and wanting to share that with others. The ingredients that are in what we’ve been using on our bodies since we were little girls have turned out to be extremely toxic and linked to all sorts of things including, but not limited to, endocrine disruption (infertility), cancer, respiratory illnesses including asthma, severe allergic reactions, organ toxicity, nervous system toxicity, neurological problems, rashes, etc. It can even negatively impact babies in the womb. “Normal” ingredients found in thousands of every day products can harm fetal brain development and other developmental delays. Guys. None of this is made up. Women also used to casually use radon because it glowed in the dark…until their jaws started falling off and they started dying. Chemicals and beauty product ingredients over the years have been found to be extremely dangerous.

Why on Earth would we ignore this and continue to slather them all over our skin, which absorbs them right up and seeps them into our systems? It’s time to own up to the facts and be way more proactive with our health and the health of those that we love. We work out regularly, we drink as much water as we can, we eat healthy and many of us have eliminated a lot of harmful food practices…yet we go to Ulta and Sephora and buy products packed with things that are slowly (or fastly) killing us. No more.

Why Beautycounter?

I’m going to be honest. I have always secretly disliked direct sales. I still not-so-secretly dislike a good amount of direct sales companies because I think they advocate for shmoozy, “buy my snake oil” scammy, disingenuous and dishonest practices. And I don’t like that. I’ve seen so many consultants for other direct sales companies behave so abhorrently and I know a lot of people are turned off by direct sales. Beautycounter has never come off that way to me and none of the people who represent it have either.

This, of course, does not paint the entire field with a broad brush. My sister works for a direct sales company and not only does it with tact and class, but is super passionate about their products and mission – the way I am with Beautycounter. In my opinion…different strokes for different folks, ya know?

Beautycounter appealed to me because I had already been using and loving the products – and by that I mean not only did I love that I felt healthy and protected using safe ingredients, but they did not lack in performance which was amazing! And, like I said previously, I loved that they were willing to get down in the muck to really fight for what they believed in. Congress has not passed any regulations on the beauty industry since 1938 and Beautycounter is the *ONLY* cleaner beauty brand that is fighting to change that. Putting their money where their mouth is, employeeing a full time lobbying staff on the Hill, testifying before Congress, getting legislation passed through the process (currently happening!!), etc. They’re out there doing the dang thing and I respect that!

Clean beauty + products that perform + a company that backs up their mission and gets in the fight = I am now a direct sales girl and I’m loving every minute of it.

Is this my job?

The short answer is no. I’m not treating this as a “Be Your Own Boss Babe and Work From Your Phone” situation (and I swear if I hear those phrases separately or strung together again I’m going to vomit LOL).

But the answer is no, just like I don’t blog full time for a living. Both are just things that I do because I like to, because I’m passionate about it, because it allows for a creative outlet and community connection (so super possible on Instagram, I’ve met so many new friends I can’t wait to meet in person), and so on.

However – that being said, I will also say that both my blog and my Beautycounter “biz” do turn a profit. And I don’t hate that, obviously. It allows me to be able to work on my academic pursuits guilt free which right now are my biggest goals. And every single person that supports my blog and Beautycounter has no idea how much that support means to me!

P.s. If you want to shop Beautycounter with me, I have built a page into this blog that you can easily access! On my blog’s homepage, look at top navigational bar and you will see a Beautycounter tab! Just click that and away you go!

Well, friends, I think that pretty much covers my Why in a more comprehensive way and I hope something I’ve said here resonates with you and maybe even has planted a seed that will grow roots of your own passion for cleaner, safer, healthier and better beauty products. When you’re ready to ditch the toxic crap and have a conversation with me about how to get started with Beautycounter…I’ll be here.

XOXO, Thessali

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