Portrait of Mary Kay Ash and Mary Kay corporate headquarters in Addison, Texas. Credits – Wikipedia
Because she was risking every dollar she had saved, the advice seemed reasonable on paper. Even through these obstacles, Ash didn’t give up, and her son Richard Rogers took over the administrative work his father had been due to handle.
Mary Kay, her accountant and her lawyer both advised her to cancel everything she was working on, according to her autobiography. The Horatio Alger Association , which also praised Ash with their award, noted that he was meant to run the administration. Ash was quite affected by the death of her husband and later labelled that day as the darkest day of her life. That’s how he also played a big role in growing the business. How the business grew
Her husband died even before the launch of the business they were both working on.
On 13 September 1963, she opened Beauty by Mary Kay with $5,000 of her life savings, her 20-year-old son, Richard Rogers, and nine independent beauty consultants, according to the company’s press kit . Her business began in a 500-square-foot storefront in Dallas and is now sold in more than 35 markets around the world. By early 1963, she had retired with the idea of writing a book to help women build careers in business. She put her $5,000 into the project and used it to buy formulas for skin care products and pay to have them bottled and packaged for shipping.
She spent most of her career in direct sales, starting as a dealer for Stanley Home Products, a firm built on home parties, according to the Horatio Alger Association . In business, founders can often lose partners, suppliers, and financing, but very few dare to rebuild everything, especially after losing the person who stood with them through every moment. Something similar happened with Mary Kay Ash. After her husband died of a heart attack, Ash went ahead with her plan anyway. How the business worked Ash did not step into the system without having any knowledge. At that firm, she was named ‘Queen of Sales’ after her first year. In the 1950s, she became national training director at another direct sales company, World Gift. The sticking point was that she kept training young men who were then promoted over her. Ash made two lists, one covering what her former employers had done well and the other covering what they could have done better While planning the book. After making the list and analysing it, she realised that she had accidentally created a marketing plan for a company of her own, where one woman could earn as far as their efforts would carry them. And that’s how the book turned into a business plan. Then came the launch part, which was quite hard to implement.