Stage to Screen

Age 7 as a Street Urchin in Oliver! at the Battle Creek Civic Theatre (MI). Photo by Valerie Philipp.

Video from a show in May, 2015.

"How did you get started doing that?"

That’s a common question when people find out about my work as a live on-air guest on QVC. It’s not like anybody ever says, “I want to sell beds on television when I grow up.” The answer is that I started on this path many years ago with a role as a Street Urchin in the play Oliver! (The best part of the role was the assignment to go play in the mud to get my costume dirty.)

I continued doing plays through high school, along with Speech competitions, and then led Singing activities at the Concordia Language Villages. I spent several years getting to know the Sleep Number bed and answering customer questions, first in the Customer Service department and then while developing in-person and video training for our Retail teams. Turns out all those experiences were excellent preparation when the company needed an on-air guest in the Spring of 2001.

In the next 19 years, I sold more than $450 million and been live on-air for more than 175 hours. Now I try hard not to get my costume dirty when prepping for a show, although spilling tea on myself is a greater risk than mud splatters. 

With Agra the white tiger. Photo by Tom Duffey.

Highlights from 19 years of selling the Sleep Number bed on QVC:

  • Met Agra the white tiger, who was appearing with Jack Hanna. The picture here is from the green room after my show and before hers. She’s chewing on the neck of a big water bottle. I always wondered what the next people thought when they needed to change the container and found tiger tooth-shaped puncture holes all around it.

  • Achieved the highest one-hour sales in Sleep Number history.

  • Spent a New Year’s Eve with Richard Simmons, of the crazy hair and exercise shorts fame. He even held my hand!

  • Fell out of the bed during a show. If nothing else, that proved there’s no tape delay and it’s truly live. I’m grateful it was before the days of YouTube, so I didn’t become a meme.

  • Lost sales to myself. Customers I had been working with in a Sleep Number store bought a bed from the QVC show that I had presented. Hard to argue about that lost commission.

  • Taken my skills on the road to Canada and the United Kingdom with shows on their versions of QVC.

  • Auditioned and was approved to do shows on QVC Germany (in German) in 2008, before the global economy changed and the business I was working with decided not to develop the market.

Moving from stage to screen is another way I live my mission to facilitate insight, learning, and growth in innovative ways. In this context, it’s helping viewers learn about sleep and how a specific product can improve it. I continue to develop my skills to do this, whether it’s immediate comment through an earpiece while on-air, debriefing after the show while taking off all the makeup, or reviewing video with the whole team months later.

My attitude of continuous improvement combines with a willingness to ask, “What if?” and answer with, “Let’s try it!” to improve people’s lives. I’m lucky to be able to have them call in to a live, national television broadcast to tell me that I’m accomplishing that goal.