Happy Birthday, Mary Kay

I was always a little embarrassed about my name. I know being named Mary Kay isn't a hardship, but there are awkward moments. Gentlemen Of A Certain Age seem unable to resist a condescending chuckle and a “Do you sell cosmetics?” And when you’re 11, 12, 16, 25, and you don’t really wear makeup, the right response is baffling. I couldn’t even avoid it at home because my dad ran a Cadillac dealership. Every Christmas, the pink Cadillacs would be delivered to his store before going to the region’s super-sellers, and every Christmas, his staff would present me with a "surprise."

Smile good-naturedly. Escape quickly.

I was not named after Mary Kay Cosmetics. I was the first grandchild for my maternal grandmother (Mary) and my paternal grandmother (Kay), so my mother, in a master stroke of diplomacy, named me after both of them. I’m sure she knew about the company, but I doubt she knew it would be such a Thing.

I dreaded “Do you sell cosmetics?” until 1997, when another Mary Kay took the headlines.

School teacher Mary Kay Letourneau was arrested for rape of a child after repeatedly having sex with a13-year-old student. She got pregnant, went to jail, violated parole, got pregnant again, and went to jail for 7 years, leaving the boy and his mother to raise the children. It was national news.

“Do you sell cosmetics?” suddenly looked pretty good! I decided it was time to learn more about the original Mary Kay. Since she would have been 100 years old this weekend, and since “women and work” questions still seem to be a thing, it’s a good story to share.

Mary Kay was born May 12, 1918 in Texas. Texas in 1918 was hard and got harder. She had small three children when her husband returned from World War II. He announced that he wanted a divorce, and left. (“Greatest Generation” is a broad brush, I guess.) She was already good at direct sales and must have been a hell of a teacher, because when she trained men, they got promoted over her.

They all got promoted over her.

A lot of women were in this situation. Still are, of course, but it was so acute in those post-war years. Some women quit the work world entirely, but as a single mother, Mary Kay couldn’t do that. Some women planted their feet and fought for equal rights, but Mary Kay was too impatient for that. She took the third road: she struck out on her own.

I am a working woman and mother, and to do that, I stand on the shoulders of giants. Millions of women fought to be treated as equals in their jobs and their industries. They fought bad laws and worse bosses. It is so hard to hold your ground when the whole world is pushing against you, and those women did. I love those women for being stubborn and tough and holding their ground.

But revolutions have many faces, and one of those faces was Mary Kay’s. In the mid-1960s, at the age of 45, she found a good moisturizer and started her own direct-sales cosmetics company. In recognizing that the existing corporate system was rigged, her act of revolution was to work outside of it.

In recognizing that the existing corporate system was rigged, her act of revolution was to work outside of it.

Mary Kay started her own company, but it wasn't just a photocopy of other companies. From the beginning, her goal was to enrich women’s lives. Despite not having any management experience, she created a business based on simple, effective principles that most companies still have not mastered. In reading Jim Underwood’s More Than a Pink Cadillac, and Todd G. Buchholz's New Ideas from Dead CEOs: Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office, I was struck by how the Mary Kay’s work principles are the principles that research has shown to be essential to all business success, such as:

Focus on people. She didn’t just start her business, she made it possible for thousands of women to run their own businesses on their own terms. She also realized that people’s attitudes toward work were really just a reflection of how their bosses treated them. If you treat workers with love, they will love work.

She had a deep belief in people’s ability to achieve amazing things, and she goaded, pushed and celebrated the heck out of them. It wasn’t just big morale-building tent revivals, either. She personally interacted with people throughout the organization every day, and she expected her leadership team to do the same. This was not a business school theory she learned—it was something she believed was right, and when she did it, she showed it was also effective.

Be driven by your values. When Mary Kay said that she wanted to enrich women’s lives, she meant both customers and sales teams. Mary Kay understood that the women around her were impoverished in so many ways. They needed to support their families, take care of their skin, stay close to home, and feel and look good. She understood all those needs, and her values moved her to solve all those problems at once. It was her mission.

How do you know when something is really a company value, and when it’s just lip-service? Values always cost something. For example, the company went public at one point. Hooray, lots of fresh money for investments, right? But every quarter, Wall Street wanted results, and Mary Kay got sick of it. She thought Wall Street’s appetite for quarterly profit was incentivizing bad business and bad behavior. The family bought the company back.

She thought Wall Street’s appetite for quarterly profit was incentivizing bad business and bad behavior. The family bought the company back.

Maintain super-solid business practices around strategy, innovation, financial stability and bureaucracy. Her approach was people-focused and value-driven (and pink!) but don’t be fooled. Mary Kay still had to develop and move product, adapt to changing customer needs, live with the internet, diversify her sales force, grow in new countries, and compete with other cosmetic companies and changing retail trends. She built teams of creative, hardworking people who shared her values and were empowered to act.

Those things seem like common sense and traditional business stuff, right? But most companies in the 1960s and 1970s were far from people-focused. Heck, even now that those principles are commonly known to be effective, they still aren’t common practice.

When you look at Mary Kay’s life in the context of her time, the whole thing seems like such a glorious act of subterfuge. They ignored her talents so completely, but instead of telling them they were wrong, she cheerfully built a glorious pink temple of makeup and millionaire moms right under their noses. She gave women a place to work and succeed when no one else did, and it made them all rich for a long time.

I’m not saying the company and its founder were perfect. I am saying they did an awful lot of important things right, and we can learn from all of it. There is more controversy now about the Mary Kay Cosmetics model. I can’t argue that. Maybe direct sales lost its moment, maybe the company lost its way. I don't know.

What I do know is that when people scoffed at Mary Kay, I wish I realized what they were scoffing at—a woman full of heart and brains who won the business game by every metric available: Strategic intention. Rate of growth. Sales. Profit. Employee retention. Innovation. What's more, she did it by putting her values and her employees at the center. Her values statement wasn't an afterthought for the brochure, they were the reason she was there.

I wish I realized what they were scoffing at—a woman full of heart and brains who won the business game by every metric available: Strategic intention. Rate of growth. Sales. Profit. Employee retention. Innovation. What's more, she did it by putting her values and her employees at the center.

Now, when people ask, "Do you sell cosmetics?" I answer, "No, but you know what? She was amazing. Did you know she founded her company in her mid-40s, and created a work structure that allowed women to care for their children, while also raising themselves out of poverty? She recognized talent where no one else did, and beat corporate America at its own game. So no, I don't sell cosmetics, but I don't mess with the women who do."