Part two. See part one here.

Deborah’s sale had ended. The three bachelors living in this house weren’t concerned enough with ultra-clean things to invest $50/month for three years into a world-class cleaning apparatus.

However, I deeply enjoyed getting to know Deborah and learning about her story. You don’t find too many door-to-door salespeople anymore – especially women — ESPECIALLY especially 62-year-old women.

 Being in a sort of sales and having grown a lot in my sales experience, I was eager to learn what the life of someone doing door-to-door sales looked like. I’ve often thought if I were to do any cold selling I would be best at that kind of sales. Forming relationships is too important to me and it would slowly kill me to be in a job where I was only cold-calling all day. Door-to-door would still have the rejections, which is fine, but even the best cold call usually ends with you scheduling a meeting with someone else unless you’re doing full-cycle sales.

I had already heard Deborah mention that she had lived in England and Germany, but after talking more with her as she packed up her stuff, I found out she had also lived in Greece, Turkey, Japan, and many other places. Some of them she lived in while in the Airforce and some working for Kirby.

That’s right. She sold door-to-door all around the world. I of course asked her if she learned the language of the places she lived in, but she said absolutely not. She had no desire to. All three of us (my roommates and myself) were confused. How do you sell if you can’t speak the language?

She said simply, “everyone understands dirt.”

There were several circular pads that had dirt on them that I can only assume she used when doing the demo for my roommates. What a life. Being a salesperson in a culture where you don’t know the language. This older lady just walking down the street in the middle of Turkey going and knocking on people’s doors.

I asked where her favorite spot to live was and she said without hesitation “Turkey.” After digging in more, she said the community in Turkey was better than she’s had anywhere else.

It took Deborah probably a good 30-45 minutes to completely pack up all of her stuff, though it seemed that she purposely delayed on some of it. I could tell she enjoyed the conversation and the questions. After all, who doesn’t like talking about themselves?

Deborah seemed unsuspecting, but once again after digging in more, it turns out she actually owns a franchise Kirby yet still goes out and does the door-to-door sales because she enjoys it so much. Most of the other franchise owners don’t still do door-to-door.

She plans to retire in two years. She’s going to buy a Maserati, then who knows where she’ll go. She has a son, two granddaughters, and three great-granddaughters. She’s had more husbands and boyfriend than she can count and she plans to divorce her current in a couple years to remarry someone younger and new…

You heard that right.

She’s pre-planning her divorce.

While Deborah was cool to meet and lived an interesting life to say the least, I couldn’t help but feel sad for her. Living her life full of all of these things but not living for anything eternal. Living only for the things she can gain in this world and the pleasure from this world. These things are passing away, and one day, they’ll be gone and she’ll have nothing to show for all of her hard work in getting to where she is in life and business.

As Deborah left our house, I asked to pray for her and send her on her way. She was a bit weirded out…to be expected, but she appreciated it very much. She said no one had ever done it for her before.

As Deborah goes and lives her life, I can only pray that she seeks after what’s eternal and realizes the temporariness of this life.

That’s my prayer for her.