Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mary Kay dedicated the original version of this book to all those who still believe that people and pride are the two foremost assets in building a successful business.
This new book is dedicated to all those people at the Company and in the independent sales force who have helpedwith great prideto forge a successful corporation and millions of small businesses around the world according to The Mary Kay Way.
YVONNE PENDLETON Executive Editor
THE MARY KAY WAY
This book is the lifes work of an extraordinary woman I had the great fortune to call Grandmother Mary Kay. She lived her life by these principles and philosophies, and raised her family by them. Now that Im older I can clearly see how she was teaching them to me throughout my childhood. She knew they would make a difference in my life.
In 1963, when she began her dream company, she adopted the values that shaped her business. Over the course of the past 45 years, theyve changed millions of lives for the better within our independent sales force. And theyre still the guiding beacons we use to manage the business today. They always will be. My grandmother started it, my father nourished it, and I will perpetuate it; its The Mary Kay Way.
Grandmother Mary Kay had already received the Hall of Fame Award in the Direct Selling Industry by the time I was born. And at the age of one, I was too young to understand what it meant for her to be selected a Horatio Alger Distinguished American Citizen. At age two, I was still too young to remember when she was profiled on 60 Minutesthe interview where Morley Safer asked,... dont you think in a sense youre using God? To which Mary Kay replied, I hope not. I sincerely hope not. I hope Hes using me instead. But I do recall how important she always made me feel. As the years passed, I began to understand how much importance Mary Kay placed on the art of listening, on treating people like she would want to be treated, on doing well by doing good. She practiced all these things on her family as well as everyone she did business with.
I was seven years old when this book was first published in 1984 and she autographed a copy for me. I still have it and treasure it because the words in the book ring so true with what I saw in her life. She said, Learn all of this to use when you are President of Mary Kay.
Twenty-four years later, Im still heeding her advice. This book is something all of us in leadership at Mary Kay Inc. refer to constantlynot only for how to do things The Mary Kay Way, but also, as she shares in the introduction, so that we continue to exercise a sensitivity for the needs of others. I always knew who my grandmother was, and what she did, but it wasnt until after I joined Mary Kay Inc. in 2000 that I began to fully appreciate how much she had meant to so many others. At our headquarters, I would see candid photos of my grandmotherlike precious familyframed prominently on peoples desks in their offices and cubicles. As I attended Company events with our independent sales force, they would relate their most treasured stories and memories about Mary Kay. At the time of her death, I witnessed firsthand the great outpouring of love for my grandmother. The heartfelt thoughts, the letters, and interviews deepened my sense of how much she had contributed.
Several years ago we hosted, for the first time, a global business conference in Dallas for all the leaders of our Mary Kay subsidiaries around the world. Ill never forget one of our executives holding up a copy of this book and asking the group if everyone had read it.
To those who raised their hands indicating yes, he said, Great. Read it again.
To the ones who hadnt yet read it, he said, Get a copy before you leave. Read it. Then he went on to say, If you find you cant or dont agree with the principles in this book, just go ahead and find the door.
As I began traveling to our world markets, to places like China, Mexico, and Russia, I was surprised to find how well people understood the Mary Kay principles. It didnt matter where I was, there were people practicing The Mary Kay Way, making others feel important, and treating others the way they would want to be treated. I would come home and marvel to my dad, Richard Rogers, who helped Grandmother start the company, that the Mary Kay culture is an amazing international language. It works everywhere.
Today women who live in countries where my grandmother never traveled are building Mary Kay businesses based on her beliefs. The anecdotal evidence of the difference Mary Kay made in so many lives can at times be downright humbling. Whether its a woman in Russia who told me she thought her life was over when she was widowed at a young age, an Asian scientist who grappled with giving up a promising career to sell cosmetics, an American woman who grew up in foster care thinking no one cared about her, or a woman in Mexico who sold chickens in the marketplace until finding a better way to feed her familythe life-changing experiences of these women confirm to me that my grandmother had it right.
In 2003, two years after my grandmothers death, I was honored to accept an award accorded her as a result of an academic study by Baylor University to determine the Greatest Entrepreneurs in American History. Henry Fords great-grandson accepted his award; the late John H. Johnson was there to accept his as Greatest Minority Entrepreneur; and Mary Kay Ash was named Greatest Female Entrepreneur in American History. I said then that the greatest thing my grandmother did for the world was to tap into the minds and hearts of its women.
In 2004 my dad was interviewed by the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania after Mary Kay had been named one of the 25 greatest business leaders of our time in a Wharton/PBS study. This book, Lasting Leadership, was notable as one of the few times since her death that my father has spoken publicly about my grandmother, whom he had worked with from the age of 20 to build her Company. In a book filled with 23 stories of male leaders like Grove, Gates, Buffett, Walton, Green-span, and Welch, my Dad talked about one of only two women in the book. He explained how at Mary Kay relationship building is ingrained as a business model. Nothing illustrates the power of her legacy to build relationships better than our sales force of 1.8 million.
We decided, as this new edition was being planned to celebrate our 45th anniversary, that it would be interesting to add new material showing how the principles in the book have affected the 500 women leaders around the world who used them to build the most successful of Mary Kay businessesthe Independent National Sales Directors. This group cuts across every generation, as well as background, language, and culture. Some have advanced degrees, and some had never worked outside the home prior to Mary Kay.
If there is one thing they agree upon wholeheartedly, it is that these words of Mary Kay Ash are timeless. They say Grandmothers principles resonate magnificently in building a business, in building a life. As they responded to our questions about the significance of this book for them, they urged us to teach these principles to future generations of Mary Kay leaders in the independent sales force and at the Company.
As much as any time in our history, The Mary Kay Way governs and fuels our global enterprise as it works to better the lives of untold millions of families around the world. And, it will continue.
