One of the universal truths we learn early is: you have to choose your future career well and when it is chosen -- follow the path consistently. Most of us do, even though it often causes the feelings of inner frustration and dissatisfaction. Changing the career path when you are over forty is often considered as "too late".

Mary Kay Ash, the star of the world's cosmetic industry, is an example of an extraordinary woman entrepreneur who started her own business when she was in her forties. Here is her story.

As a child, Mary Kay Ash lived in Houston. Her mother, Lila Wagner, worked fourteen hours a day in the restaurant she owned in order to support her family: her four children and an invalid husband. At the age of seven, Mary Kay was already responsible of taking care of her father, while her mother worked in a restaurant. Her contact with mother was mostly by phone.

"She always told me in great detail how to do things I needed to do and would end every conversation with the words ‘You can do it, honey.' That has become the guiding theme of my life," Mary Kay recalled.

After finishing high school, Mary Kay had a lot of dreams, but no means to make them come true. She wanted to be a doctor, but her family could not afford to send her to college.

Mary Kay was eighteen, when she married a local radio star -- Ben Rogers. Their marriage lasted eleven years, and the couple had three children. However, Ben asked for divorce after he had returned from military service in World War II.

By then, Mary Kay had given up her dream about career in medicine. "I couldn't stand cutting up those frogs, " she said after she had taken premed course at the University of Houston. Trying to find the right job was the next step.

From one of her friends, Mary Kay heard about Stanley Home Products, the company which conducted demonstrations in people's homes. In this job she made up her mind to achieve the annual award of Queen of Sales, and she achieved this goal.

After several years with Stanley Home Products, she started to work for World Gifts, a direct Sales company headquartered in Houston. She succeeded in making $1,000 a month in her first year. Mary Kay had a gift for selling, and she was soon promoted to area manager, then national training director. Later she wrote the following about this period of her life:

"At World Gifts, I found myself teaching men how to do what I did and then they put a man above me to tell me what to do, and paid me one-half as much as the male sales managers."

Mary Kay resigned from her job with a feeling of deep frustration. It took her time to re-gain her inner balance and start looking at things positively. In the end, she started to believe that her own mission on earth was to start a different business based on different principles. In 1963, she bought the skin cream formula she had been using for 10 years for herself. With a capital of $5,000, she started her "Beauty by Mary Kay" in Dallas. Her first staff was her second husband (who died of heart attack when this business was starting up), and nine beauty consultants, most of whom stayed with the company for long years. Later, her son Richard Rogers joined the company.

Mary Kay thought that the key to her success was understanding of people as the important asset of her company. Her talent was in recruiting people who recruited others. The recruiting bonus introduced by Mary Kay created the incentive of bringing in other beauty consultants. After six months of work, a new consultant could qualify for directorship and the famous pink Cadillac.

"God first, family second, job third." This was the wisdom Mary Kay had learned from her own life experience. Mary Kay was convinced that her company provided a great advantage of being Mary Kay consultant, because this work was compatible with motherhood.

"You can make $ 30,000 a year and still be home when the kids get off the school bus!" said Mary Kay.

Mary Kay remained active in the company until suffering a stroke in 1996. Her son Richard Rogers was named the CEO of Mary Kay in 2001. At the time of Ash's death in 2001, Mary Kay Cosmetics was represented in 37 countries, with the annual sales of over $2 billion.

Keywords: mary kay ash, mary kay ash biography

About the Author
Tatiana Sidorova, Brasschaat, Belgium
tatiana.fwb@gmail.com
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Tatiana Sidorova is the owner of the website http://www.famous-women-and-beauty.com. She writes articles about the famous women of our time, their biographies and style.

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