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Coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. When you think of a pink Cadillac or hear the phrase independent beauty consultant, Chances are one name immediately comes to mind. For generations, Mary Kay became more than a company. It became a symbol of opportunity. Here to tell the story of perseverance, faith, and the woman who built a beauty empire from scratch.
is Mary Lisa Gouvainis, author of Selling Opportunity The Story of Mary Kaye. Take it away, Mary. She was married Kathleen Wagner. And her childhood Even by standards of her time, her childhood was tough. She was on her own.
Her siblings were all over a decade older. They were working and soon got married and moved out of the house, leaving her on her own because her mother was working 16-hour days, seven days a week for year after year.
So she grew up in a family, which was highly unusual for the time, where the mother was the breadwinner of the household. The mother was the responsible one, the mother was the take-charge one, the mother was the disciplinarian. Her father was not around.
Some people say that he had an alcohol problem. She says that he was tubercular. But in any case, Her parents got divorced when she was seven years old, and they didn't remarry until she was 10. And when he did come back and she was 10, she had to take care of him. She was the caretaker.
So basically at the age of seven, She was getting herself to school, getting her own meals, managing the house, cooking, taking care of everything. It created a culture of self-reliance. Even for that time, it was extreme self-reliance. People in her neighborhood sort of thought of her as the little Wagner girl who was kind of neglected and, you know, brave, but really on her own. Mary Kay's family had worked in farming and they'd worked as casual laborers.
But her life would be totally different from her parents and her siblings because In 1920, her family moved to Houston. And that happened to be the exact year that the population of the United States shifted from rural to urban.
So Mary Kay was part of that huge shift in American culture. and Houston at that time was the world capital of reinvention. The city was flush with oil money and it poured a lot of that money into funding education. Almost overnight, it went from having one of the worst school systems in the United States. to having one of the best.
What the kids were learning in those schools, aside from the academics, was This extreme philosophy of anybody can make it if they work hard enough, over and over and over again. But by the time she got to high school, the depression was on and things were tougher than ever. But the schools, the newspapers, the radio programs, the civic organizations were countering that with this relentless optimism. It's the kind of rhetoric that now we associate with motivational speakers or religious revivals. You just didn't admit defeat no matter what.
Confidence was the big buzzword. Everything about it was a can-do culture. Uh And Mary Kay was very smart and she was very capable. She didn't think of herself as neglected. She didn't necessarily feel sorry for herself because she didn't have a mother and a father.
And her mother was constantly telling her, you can do it, you can do it, Mary Kay, because really what other choice did they have? Her education gave her this incredible ambition and this, oh, you can do anything attitude. But then here's a young girl who's very smart. very hardworking, has all this ambition, and she has no place to put it. She was married at 16, had two babies by the time she was 18.
The government estimate said that women like Mary Kay averaged 60 to 70 hours a week just on household chores. And they didn't have much control over the rest of their lives. In Texas, a woman was not allowed to make financial decisions for herself or her family. At all, basically. She couldn't accept a job.
She couldn't open a bank account. She couldn't write a check without her husband's permission. In the early 1940s, she started working for a company called Stanley Home Products as a side hustle because she was a young mother who needed money. She started direct selling, which means the kind of selling that's done door to door and not through stores or catalogs. Their pitch was, oh, you can do this on the side while your children are at school and you'll still be home at night to cook dinner for your husband and take care of them and get your household chores done.
Her first husband, she thought he would be a musician and be super successful. She called him the Elvis Presley of his day in Houston, but he wasn't all that successful. Only somebody as optimistic and as in love as Mary Kay would have thought of it that way. He wasn't around much. He soon started skipping out soon after the marriage.
He ended up going off with another woman. They got a divorce. And as time went on, what other women considered a side hustle became her career. Uh Now, the lucrative parts of direct selling that really somebody could make money and even maybe make a living at were not open to women. Avon and other companies let women sell things, but They were only minor things where there was no possibility that you could actually make a career out of it.
Stanley was different and they opened their company to selling by women in 1939. Basically, because they were desperate. Their supply of salesmen had dried up. And they needed to do something to keep going.
So. Out of desperation, they turned to women. And what happened was they started this sales model where instead of going door to door, because that was considered dangerous for women and really not that appropriate, they would have parties.
So, a hostess would have coffee and cake or something like that, tea and cookies. Invite her friends over, and Mary Kay would come in and do the demonstration and try and sell them these cleaning products. Mostly Stanleys sold things like easy cleaner, cleaning liquids. things to scrub pots and pans, things that were very involved in homekeeping. She just worked constantly as much as she could.
She would try and do two or three parties a day. She was super successful at that. When we come back, more of the story of Mary K. Ash. Here.
On Our American Stories. Lee Habib here again. Our American Stories tries to tell the stories of America's past and present to Americans. And we want to hear your stories too. There's some of our favorites.
Send them to us. Go to OwlAmericanStories.com and click the Your Stories tab. Again, please go to OwlAmericanStories.com. and click. the Your Stories tab.
Isaac. Cubes, big three. Season is heating up. The most competitive basketball league on earth is on CBS this Sunday. Coach Steven Jackson and the DMV Trilogy face off against two-time MVP Michael Beasley and the defending champion Miami 305 in a must-win game for both teams.
Then the battle for Texas as Greg Monroe, Coach Nancy Lieberman, and the Dallas Power take on Jonathan Simmons and the Houston Righands. The game played the way you love. Watch live Sunday on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET.
Presented by iHeart. Hi, I'm Steph and I work at United Healthcare. When I think about United Healthcare's members, I think of my own family. My niece was diagnosed with an ultra-rare genetic disorder. I know how hard it is for our families at United Healthcare.
We can make it easier. I'm Brian. I care because I know what it's like to not speak the language. It's not easy. Health insurance is complicated.
I would say our job is to make everything easy for our UXC members. I work for United Healthcare. I'm committed to CAPE. Aging is real. And so are the benefits of adding vital proteins, collagen, peptides to your daily routine.
Because around the age of 30, your body needs backup to keep your collagen up to help support healthy hair, skin, nails, bones, and joints. Available in the classic collagen peptides, collagen and protein shakes, and new vital proteins, collagen, sparkling waters.
So you can stay vital, stay you. Visit vitalproteins.com to learn more and where to buy. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You never know what the week's going to throw at you.
That's why you need to keep your engine ready with Penn's Oil Platinum. The full synthetic motor oil that maximizes engine protection. And you can maximize your time too by scheduling a quick oil change at your local Walmart Auto Care Center. They'll get it done while you shop. Ask for Penzoil Platinum and you can receive a $25 virtual prepaid card.
Penzoy, long may we drive. Ends August 31st, 2026. At participating locations only. Terms and restrictions apply. See details at penzoil.com slash claim.
And we continue with our American stories and return to Mary Lisa Gavanas. Author of Selling Opportunity, The Story of Mary Kay. Let's pick up where we last left off. She was the secretary to someone at Stanley Home Products when she started selling for them because she was an ace typist, among many other things that she was good at. And she was the secretary who married her boss.
He was much older, literally old enough to be her father. He had grown sons her age. But he had also. like so many people in direct selling, come from a very impoverished background. But part of the success of moving up in direct sales is modeling success.
So he was a snappy dresser. He always had a really nice car. He loved Cadillacs. Would make his family dress formally for dinner every night. You know, he would show up to sales rallies and parties and tuxedos.
He was very... conscious of observing the proprieties and telling Mary Kay that Really, if you want to recruit people to direct selling, you have to model success and you have to look prosperous. to really show people who in many cases were desperate for a job that, oh, they can make a lot of money doing this if they just work hard enough or they're just successful enough.
So very early on, Mary Kay, who loved beautiful clothes. anyway and loved the nicer things. She always really tried to have a great house. She'd always tried to be as well-dressed and well-groomed as possible. Her manners were impeccable.
Even during her early selling days, people would say, oh, she always wrote thank you notes. She always sent Christmas cards. She could not have been nicer or more ladylike.
So she had learned from her second husband. He taught her all about. How to do direct selling, how to manage people, all the things that she might not have learned other places. He was really like a one-man history of the industry. But then he died ten months into the marriage.
Uh So she got married again. She got married to another salesman and she was the breadwinner in that relationship. She paid his debts. And he skipped out. You have to remember that this is the day where a woman is not considered successful.
unless she's married. Her friend Mary Crowley convinced her to marry her brother. She moved to St. Louis, and when she moved, Stanley had this policy that was horrible for women whose husbands got transferred. She couldn't keep any of her old customers.
She couldn't keep any of her sales territory. She had to start all over again.
So she went from being this star seller to having to start over. In the meantime, one of her recruits convinced her: oh, I'm working with a new company. They're great. They also use the hostess model.
So she started with a company called World Gift. And At World Gift, it was a very small company. She just charged around the United States recruiting people. She was very good at making contact with people, making friends, getting them to trust her, convincing them that this was a great opportunity. People adored her.
And so she really made a huge success of that company. And She was naive enough to think that She could prove herself, and she was doing such a great job that she would be rewarded. And she was not aggressive about asking for promotions. She was not the type to threaten to quit. She was not the type to act out.
And her boss's attitude was basically, she's a woman, we're giving her an opportunity to sell, she's making money, what is she complaining about? Most women don't even have that opportunity. She should be happy with what she's got. She was 45, it's 1963. And she'd been selling for most of her life, and she'd been frustrated with a lot of the policies for years.
But in 1963, she got remarried. She had a new husband, George Hallenbeck, who was a direct sales executive who was out of work. And his idea was, oh, let's start a new company. Using her money, of course. He was going to be in charge and he would let her recruit and train the salespeople.
And Mary Kay was in love and basically he egged her into quitting. Mary Kay later said that she came home that night and just cried all night.
So in 1963, I resigned what was literally a dream position of traveling all the United States and training people and I really loved it. But the company that I was with made some decisions that I couldn't live with, and so I decided to resign. And that night I went home and I did what you would have done. I cried all night. And the next morning I got up and sat down at the dining room table.
because suddenly from not having enough hours in the day I didn't have any reason to get up in the morning. and I decided I would write a book on sales for women. And one day, in preparation for starting the book, I read the entire script and I thought. Wouldn't this be marvelous if somebody would really do this? What happened was her new husband dropped dead one month into the marriage.
one month to the day before the new company was set to open. She was brokenhearted. Her money was gone. It was spent in labels and leases and the kind of expenditures that she couldn't claw back. She was widowed for the second time.
She was jobless. She was out of cash. Her two sons arrive for the funeral and They talk her into going ahead with the business. She said that she had been ready to quit. But they say, no, mom, you can do it.
Her younger son says, Hey, you know, I'll come work for you. I'll fill in for him. And she says, She admitted thinking that He's 20 years old. What does he know? I thought maybe he'd just, you know, be able to carry boxes and take stuff back and forth to a warehouse.
And he turned out to be a financial wizard, but she didn't know that at the time. The older son. handed her his Passbook savings account and said, Mom, I believe in you. You can borrow anything in here. You can take anything that you want.
I'll come work for you too. She wasn't so eager to have him come work for her, but he was a good saver, and she had that money now as a cushion, which she did end up using.
So this was the first time in her life. Where Mary Kay did not have to answer to somebody else. She was going to be the boss. And What happened was they changed the way the company had been set up by her deceased husband. He had set it up so that It was going to be a franchise business and People could buy into it and a lot of ideas that Mary Kay really hated because they weren't really set up for women.
With her in charge, She got to execute the ideas that she'd had for decades about how to improve this. This is the way this should be done. Women would sell harder if they only had this kind of support. She made those decisions. This was the first time in her life she didn't have to answer to somebody else.
If she'd had investors or a husband, they would have had the final say. That didn't happen to Mary Kay. And you've been listening to Mary Lisa Gavanis, author of Selling Opportunity, The Story of Mary Kay. And she's telling one heck of a story, and not just a business story, and not just a personal story. It acts as sort of a social history in the same way our story of Duke Ellington wasn't just a music story, but a story about race in America in the 20th century.
And my goodness, what she went through as a woman, tough enough, but how people thought about women, how the state treated women, on something as simple as a bank account. That's just, we've come a long way, baby. And my goodness, she'd been selling most of her life by 1963, about to form a business. But her husband's way, he dies, and finally for the first time, with the faith of her boys behind her. and her own faith, she launched a company that was going to be run Her way by a woman, for women, with all of the hidden understandings and deep understandings of what she was about to do and launch.
When we come back, more of the story of Mary Kay. Here. on our American stories. Ice Cube's big three season is heating up. The most competitive basketball.
League on Earth is on CBS this Sunday. Coach Steven Jackson and the DMV Trilogy face off against two-time MVP Michael Beasley and the defending champion Miami305 in a must-win game for both teams. Then the battle for Texas as Greg Monroe, Coach Nancy Lieberman, and the Dallas Power take on Jonathan Simmons and the Houston Ringhands. The game played the way you love. Watch live Sunday on CBS at 1 p.m.
Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart. My name is Jessa. One of the things I love the most about working for United Healthcare is that everybody matters.
Every moment matters. There's a person behind every problem. I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do. I'm Ben and I work at United Healthcare. I am just one piece of a larger puzzle, but every piece matters.
It's more than just work. We want to make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I want to make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me. Aging is real, and so are the benefits of adding vital proteins, collagen, peptides to your daily routine.
Because around the age of 30, your body needs backup to keep your collagen up to help support healthy hair, skin, nails, bones, and joints. Available in the classic collagen peptides, collagen and protein shakes, and new vital proteins, collagen, sparkling waters.
So you can stay vital, stay you. Visit vitalproteins.com to learn more and where to buy. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You never know what the week's going to throw at you.
That's why you need to keep your engine ready with Penz Oil Platinum. The full synthetic motor oil that maximizes engine protection. And you can maximize your time too by scheduling a quick oil change at your local Walmart Auto Care Center. They'll get it done while you shop. Ask for Penzoy Platinum and you can receive a $25 virtual prepaid card.
Penzoil, long may we drive. Ends August 31st, 2026, at participating locations only. Terms and restrictions apply. See details at penzoil.com slash claim. And we return to Our American Stories and with Mary Lisa Gavanes, author of Selling Opportunity.
The story of Mary Kay Let's pick up where we last left off. Launching the company was like reliving her childhood and adolescence. It was a case of extreme self-reliance. took insane amounts of work. a show of confidence that she probably didn't feel.
and the determination to keep going because Really, she didn't have any other choice. The early days of the company were pretty grim. It was not an instant success. She was scrambling around trying to find more assets to sell. She still owned a house back in Houston.
She put that up for sale. She was constantly advertising for new salespeople. She and her son got into the wig business because. They thought that, okay, if we have these parties. And we have wig sales.
We'll have something to sell. We'll be selling wigs for another company. and women will want to stay to the end of the parties because they'll get to try on a wig. Everybody will want to see themselves with their makeup done and what they look like with a wig. And the wigs were also very high ticket items.
So it was possible for people to make money doing that.
So basically she was just trying absolutely everything she could to get people going and you also have to remember that in Dallas in 1963. Right after she started her company that September, Not long after, that's when Kennedy was assassinated and Dallas was just. Scorned throughout the whole rest of the nation. The economy was depressed. Nobody was in the mood for going to hostess parties or trying on wigs.
Or so she was really, really scrambling. She also found out that She thought, oh, I have this ideal location. basing our office out of a storefront in this Dallas shopping center where hundreds of women work every day.
Well, what she didn't realize was that all the secretaries and all the women that worked there only got a half an hour for lunch.
So, and they all got it at the same time.
So that they had no time to come into her little storefront and look at her skincare or try on wigs. They just rushed right home to their families and taking care of their house and cooking dinner for their husbands and children as soon as they got off work.
So she thought she would have this great high traffic location. And it turned out to be the total opposite. She was really panicked for the first. Five or six months. Um What finally happened was She had been running these ads in the Dallas paper.
And the ads, if you read them, she really is starting to sound desperate the longer they run. She attracted this one legal secretary. who was looking to make more money. named Jackie Brown, and Jackie Brown couldn't even drive a car at the time. She got somebody to drive her over to Mary Kay's office because she was interested in maybe winning a wig.
And she came in and she was so impressed with Mary Kay, she wanted to be like her. She started wearing. Blonde wigs, just like Mary Kay, even though she had dark hair and olive skin, she started putting on the same makeup as Mary Kay. She was just totally under the spell because. Again, Jackie was somebody who had a really hard luck story.
She'd grown up in Arkansas as the youngest in a family of, I think, 10. Her father had died a couple days after she was born. She had always wanted to go to college, so she got married. young and had a child and Her husband died, leaving her dreams of college crushed. She got remarried.
Her second husband really didn't want to. Support her child from the first marriage. She's working as a legal secretary, and she's another. Really young, smart woman with a lot of ambition and no place to put it. She sees Mary Kay, and Mary Kay knows exactly what Jackie Brown wants to hear.
She creates a sort of rivalry. between Jackie Brown and another one of her recruits. And she says, oh, okay. If you recruit these people, you'll get a share of what they sell. And you'll win this prize.
And she kept putting more and more prizes in front of them. And both women, who were competitive and smart, the other one was Daylene White. Started recruiting like crazy and in this sort of rivalry with each other. And Mary Kay encouraged that because it wasn't. a really nasty rivalry.
It was I want to make more money than she does. If she can do it, I can do it. And so what happened is they... really started to go through the roof with the recruits. and after a while they didn't even need the wigs any more.
As the company grew, it grew so fast and so suddenly. that it almost became a victim of its own success.
So by the late 1960s, The recruits were coming faster than she could supply them with product. And Richard solved that problem by strategizing a way to take the company public. and secure the supply chain.
So what he ended up doing, and again, he was a financial whiz. Is Mary Kay's company became one of the few in that industry to own its own factories?
So that not only gave them a secure supply chain, but it provided an additional source of revenue because they then began manufacturing for non-competitive vendors like Neiman Marcus.
So they had a really healthy income coming in. And secondly, the challenge was that direct selling Is a cyclical business.
So it was very impressive when the economy would go down and Mary Case's company would be booming. But it's a countercyclical business, which means when The rest of the country is doing good. Direct sales is not. When direct sales is doing good, that usually means that the rest of the economy is down because people are looking for. an extra way to make money or they've lost their regular job.
So that was a challenge, and especially during the rake and boom years. when the overall economy was so good. Her stock really dropped off the charts. It was down, I think, at 1.46%. And they were afraid that the company was just going to go out of business or be acquired in a hostile takeover.
So Mary Kay and Richard, namely Richard, Decided to take the company private again. And they had this very long, convoluted process where they financed buying back all their stock.
so that they could be private and run it the way they wanted to. And you've been listening to Mary Lisa Gavanis, author of Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kaye. And we learn that, well, when Mary Kay launches this business in 1963, basically with her own money and in the end having to sell her own house, well, she's up against it. The JFK assassination, the economy's in good shape, and we learn that this is a counter-cyclical business when times are tough. This kind of work works because people are looking for extra income during really good times, not so much.
She's hustling, she's trying everything, including selling wigs at her home parties. And then she attracts some talent, one named Jackie Brown, and then of course her son Richard, who's a financial wizard, ultimately able to take the company public. But because of the cyclical nature of the business, the stock collapsing in price and in the end, taking the company private. When we come back, more of the story of Mary Kay. here on Our American Stories.
Ice Cube's big three season is heating up. The most competitive basketball. League on Earth is on CBS this Sunday. Coach Steven Jackson and the DMV Trilogy face off against two-time MVP Michael Beasley and the defending champion Miami 305 in a must-win game for both teams. Then the battle for Texas as Greg Monroe, Coach Nancy Lieberman, and the Dallas Power take on Jonathan Simmons and the Houston Righands.
The game played the way you love. Watch live Sunday on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart.
Hi, I'm Steph and I work at United Healthcare. When I think about United Healthcare's members, I think of my own family. My niece was diagnosed with an ultra-rare genetic disorder. I know how hard it is for our families at United Healthcare. We can make it easier.
I'm Brian. I care because I know what it's like to not speak the language. It's not easy. Health insurance is complicated. I would say our job is to make everything easy for our UXC members.
I work for United Healthcare. I'm committed to CAP. Aging is real, and so are the benefits of new vital proteins, collagen, sparkling water. Because around the age of 30, your body needs backup to keep your collagen up.
So get your daily glow up now in three fresh flavors: strawberry blossom, lemon lime, and blood orange. Improved skin health in as little as 30 days thanks to collagen peptides? Cheers to that.
So you can stay vital, stay you. Visit vitalproteins.com to learn more and where to buy. These statements have not been available by the food drug administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat you, or prevent any disease. You never know what the week's going to throw at you.
That's why you need to keep your engine ready with Penz Oil Platinum, the full synthetic motor oil that maximizes engine protection. And you can maximize your time too by scheduling a quick oil change at your local Walmart Auto Care Center. They'll get it done while you shop. Ask for Penzoil Platinum and you can receive a $25 virtual prepaid card. Penzo.
Long may we drive. Ends August 31st, 2026. At participating locations only. Terms and restrictions apply. See details at penzoil.com slash claim.
And we continue with Our American Stories and with Mary Lisa Gavanis, author of Selling Opportunity, The Story of Mary Kay. Let's pick up where we last left off. With Mary Kay's company. being taken private. Mm-hmm.
We were talking about Mary Kay modeling success as one way to recruit people, and she always had nice cars. She'd had Cadillacs before, as soon as she became successful. And she was a very frugal person, but her idea was that.
Something like a Cadillac or a nice house. paid for itself. because other people would notice and think, haha, she's really successful. I want to go to her company.
So as her company was doing well in the 60s, She went into a dealer at Fort Worth to get herself a new Cadillac to celebrate. And she said, oh, why don't you paint it This color, and she pulled out the compact that she was selling, which was a pale pink, her brand color. And he said, Oh, lady, come on, you do not want that color. And she said, Yes, yes, I do.
So she prevails upon him to get the Cadillac custom painted pink. And he does, and he kind of rolls his eyes and... As she's driving at home, this is a car that's almost 20 feet long. Everybody's cheering her and giving her the thumbs up and waving her through stop signs in front of them and Just, you know, really giving her a lot of attention and big smiles and. She gets so much notice, so she's very happy with this purchase.
She pulls into her parking lot at work. And her sales directors take one look at this car, and they go, I want one of those. and they all start selling like crazy in order to be able to afford one. In short order, the parking lot at company headquarters is filled with pink Cadillacs because all the women that work there have gotten a pink Cadillac. There are so many pink Adelaqs that the women have to go along and check their license plate numbers when they get in the car at night because there are so many of these cars.
And Mary Kay, in one of her moments of marketing genius, puts a little sign on the edge of the parking lot that says reserved for pink Cadillacs. And that gets her a lot of attention because her company headquarters at the time are on one of the major access roads in Dallas. Everybody's driving by there.
So it was tremendous free advertising. She turns to her son Richard after a few months of this and says, you know, we should give away Pink Cadillacs as a sales incentive. And he kind of rolls his eyes and she kind of goes, make it happen.
So he comes up with an algorithm. That If you sell a certain amount, you can get a lease on a pink Cadillac.
Now with Mary Kay, you don't get the car because if you get the car, it might get repossessed, it might get dirty, you might paint it, something could happen. The idea is that if you're selling at a certain level, you get the privilege of driving that pink Cadillac and the company's paying for the lease.
So it's always going to be shiny and new and be a big pink advertisement for success at her company.
So the first year she gives away five pink Cadillacs. And then she gets Richard to expand the algorithm a little bit. And women are just going crazy. Sales goals that she thought she had set as impossibly high. Are being met all the time.
And suddenly she's giving away so many pink Cadillacs that when she does one presentation ceremony with the keys in a basket, the bottom of the basket goes out because there are so many keys in there.
So that becomes an identity for her company, and she becomes known the world over for those Pink Cadillacs. In Mary Kay's company, everyone got personal attention. In many ways, I look at her career as... She based her company on what she wishes she had gotten. She had not had a lot of attention as a child.
She had not had a lot of attention as a struggling young mother.
So she made sure that she sent up birthday cards and presents and notes and telegrams and Christmas cards and everybody got a prize for everything that she could possibly give them. And nobody got to be a sales director without visiting Mary Kay's home and petting her poodle and being served to tea and cookies by Mary Kay herself. She was invariably polite. No matter what somebody said to her, no matter how nasty or snarky or critical they were, she smiled, she thanked them for the suggestion, she wrote them a thank you note. When a stockholder wrote to tell her that the pink Cadillacs were tacky and she should swap them for a more tasteful color, like maybe gray.
She wrote a thank you note. She was always polite about it and always smiled. There was always this real push to keep a personal relationship with everyone that worked for her. She understood again from her own experience that positive motivation can go further and last longer. Insults and challenges might have a short-term effect, but they're really not sustainable in the long run.
With Mary Kay, she had this power. this gift of convincing people that she really believed in them. And that was an amazing impetus to a lot of her salespeople because many of them had not had anybody else who believed in them. One of her directors told me, I worked like crazy because I did not want to disappoint Mary Kay and what she thought of me. She wanted to live up to Mary Kay's expectations.
Mary Kay was a very religious woman, and she believed very much in what she called the God of abundance and the prosperity gospel. A lot of people think, oh, that's very transactional, but she was a strong believer.
So when she said, God first, family second, career third. That was meant to be a way of telling her sellers how to order their priorities. Mel Ashe was the last husband. Everyone describes him as very sweet, very supportive. She was the big breadwinner, but she gave him a lot of deference.
She treated it like a traditional marriage. And he always flattered her. He went to sales events with her. He would help her entertain her sales directors. He would take them on tours of the house.
He would always boast about how proud he was of her. She didn't marry Mel Ash until a few years into her business. Mary Kay was a terrific planner. Such a planner that she would do her Christmas shopping ahead of time and finish it by late January so that she was all set for the coming year.
So because she had started her company so late in life, almost from the minute it started to become successful, she kept talking about my legacy and what will continue after I'm gone because she really wanted it to be that way. Most founders have ecos that don't want to see the company be a bigger success after they leave. She set it up so that her sales directors, the people that she called her daughters, Would be carrying on, and they would be the Mary Kays of the future, as she put it. And she also did such strong branding. That The pink Cadillacs and the seminars and the everything, the diamond bumblebee pins that she gave away.
Her company became so known for those things that. It had this strong identity that existed independently of her, even though her name was on it. She'd had really horrible health for a long time, many operations. and in the late 90s. She had a stroke that left her unable to speak.
So for the next five years, she was basically housebound uh She died in 2001. She had planned everything for her company so well that it actually nearly doubled in size after she stepped aside. She became this Figure that was used for almost mandatory inclusion in any story of. Perseverance against impossible odds. She started to be written into management manuals and marketing manuals and just praise to the skies.
Here is a girl with no aptitude for numbers who becomes the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange. Here is a girl who is the first in her family to graduate from high school, doesn't come from money, doesn't marry money, who goes on to become an incredible success. Here's a woman who didn't even start her business until she was 45. who've been through innumerable failures and setbacks and Nobody had really been that nice to her or given her that many breaks, and he still just kept going. Her life is an illustration of a distinctly American industry, direct selling.
She's the only woman included in Ford's greatest business stories of all time, alongside the likes of Henry Ford and Walt Disney and Bill Gates and JPMorgan. She ended up as one of the most famous saleswomen of all time, arguably the most famous saleswoman ever. She's part of American history. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Madison Derricott. And a special thanks to Mary Lisa Gavanis, author of Selling Opportunity, The Story of Mary Kay.
Go to Amazon, your local bookstore, wherever you get your books. I promise you, you won't. Put it down. And my goodness, I think the most salient feature of Mary Kay's life isn't just that she empowered women, but that her company doubled in size when she stepped aside. A classic American Dreamer story.
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from work to driving our kids around. But when you're behind the wheel, please. Do not speed. A few minutes saved by going faster. is never worth a risk.
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