Chapter 6 〇5. Mary Kay: Be a bumblebee with faith

It is recorded in the official introduction of Mary Kay: "The tide of history has bred many successful business leaders, but no business leader has such a unique personality like Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Inc. Charisma. Her success has left a memorable mark on the history of American business, while setting a fine example for women around the world to continue to create success.” This echoes the tone of William Manchester’s description of the President of the United States How similar, but here is the praise of Mary Kay. The business empire built by this retired female worker with 5,000 US dollars is in a sense a symbol of the American spirit of the times. People read the teachings of success from it.

Mary Kay was born in Houston, Texas, USA on May 12, 1918. On September 13, 1963, Mary Kay just lost her first husband, but she still started her dream journey in a small shop in Dallas.She named the new company after herself, and the initial staff consisted of only her and her son Richard and 9 beauty consultants. But in the first year alone, Mary Kay's sales revenue reached 200,000 US dollars, and in the second year it jumped to 800,000 US dollars. After 13 years, in 1976, Mary Kay was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the first American company owned by A public company with stock owned by women.

After that, Mary Kay was out of control. Like an elf who inadvertently opened a magic box, they continued to discover their superpowers: employees and income increased year by year. By 2008, Mary Kay had as many as 850,000 employees. A well-known beauty consultant, it has branches in 37 countries on five continents, with annual retail sales of more than 2.4 billion US dollars. "Fortune" magazine listed Mary Kay as the 100 best companies in the United States three times. "Forbes" magazine compared Mary Kay with oil tycoon Rockefeller, financial tycoon Morgan, car tycoon Ford, the world's richest man Bill Gates and others, and called them "the 20 most legendary and hugely successful global businessmen in the past 200 years." character", it should be added: Mary Kay is the only woman.

In 1999, Mary Kay was named the most influential woman in the 20th century by Life Time TV on Line together with the scientist Marie Curie in the image of a businessman. On November 22, 2001, Mary Kay died in Dallas at the age of 83.Sri Lanka has passed away, but the three books she left to the world, "Mary Kay Talks about People's Management", "Deep in My Heart" and "You Can Have Everything", present the ups and downs of her life to the world. Opinion: Aerodynamic engineers have studied the Hornet and decided it shouldn't be able to fly at all.Its wings were too thin to allow its overweight body to fly.But perhaps the divine Creator whispered to him: You can do it, and so it flew.Today, the bumblebee has become an essential symbol of Mary Kay Inc.'s achievements.

Sometimes, starting a business may be an accident. It is not because of seeing an extraordinary opportunity, nor having a strong capital, or finding an unparalleled tool to make money, but just a puff or a whimsy And began the Long March.But one thing is for sure, those entrepreneurs who are ultimately successful are always confident in themselves, and what is hidden in their hearts is a volcanic confidence. background of the crisis In 1963, Mary Kay was 45 years old. In this year, she broke up with her old employer of 25 years because of unfair treatment. Mary Kay became a laid-off female worker.Resignation in middle age is a heartbreaking thing for anyone. It means that your career accumulation in the first half of your life has been burned, and if you choose a new career, the end of your career seems to be close at hand.

Worse than the personal situation was the professional environment in the United States at the time.Until the establishment of the American Women's Organization in 1966, the history of the United States is also the history of women's continuous pursuit of liberation. In 1872, a woman named Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in the presidential election, because it was illegal for women to vote at the time. It was not until 1920 that American women won the right to vote.Even so, inequalities between men and women in social life still abound: different job opportunities, disparities in treatment, and discrimination against women.At the height of the struggle between the sexes, even the editor of Time magazine, which has always been rigorous, suggested that in order to end the war of the sexes, two independent republics should be established in the United States—a male republic and a female republic, with a free zone in the middle... Mary Kay lost her job At the moment, it is at the final climax of the feminist struggle.

Mary Kay later said: At that time, if women wanted to go out to work and have a family at the same time, they had to make sacrifices or compromises.A man can kiss his wife and children goodbye early in the morning, leave home for work, and give his full attention to his work.But if we women want to gain a firm foothold in the sea-like business world, we must first make the bed and iron the clothes.The burden of family life rests entirely on the shoulders of women.If you want to work, it seems the only excuse is that you are a widow, divorced or bachelorette.Even so, people's attitude towards you is still: you work only to wait to find something better (a new husband).

It is precisely because of this background that it is an insurmountable low ebb for a woman, so Mary Kay has been looking for a breakthrough after losing her job.She plans to write a book to teach women how to survive in the male-dominated business world.She was thinking about the outlines at her dinner table: one was the good things she saw in the companies she worked for; the other was the things she thought should be improved.But then it occurred to Mary Kay: Why not start her own dream new company?Fascinated by her own ideas, she decided to climb up again from the bottom of her life. However, such a downturn is obviously not enough to highlight Mary Kay's personality.In fact, at the moment when Mary Kay's inspiration flashed, she also encountered a major misfortune-her second husband died suddenly.Mary Kay later wrote in her autobiography: "We finally decided to start the company, but the day before the company opened, I was having breakfast with my husband, and he had a fatal heart attack when he read the company's final percentage figures... ..." There is a saying in China to describe the extreme misery of ordinary people: losing a wife in middle age and losing a child in old age, because that means losing children and grandchildren.Although Mary Kay’s experience is not the most tragic, middle-aged bereavement does not only mean the loss of a relative, it may be the loss of spiritual support, and her company is waiting for a month to open.

However, these unhappiness eventually became the accompaniment of Mary Kay's rise. The main theme of her life has always been a word of encouragement from her mother in Mary Kay's childhood. When she walked into the unknown countless times, her mother would always tell her softly: " You can do it." This simple belief became the core philosophy of Mary Kay Inc., affecting millions of people.Mary Kay's explanation for this is: "Aerodynamic engineers have studied the bumblebee and thought it should not be able to fly at all. Its wings are too thin to allow its overweight body to fly. But perhaps the divine creator Gently said to him: You can do it, so it flew up." The bumblebee in Mary Kay is the symbol of the successful people in Mary Kay today-in today's Mary Kay, the most successful women will Reward a pink Cadillac, and a diamond-encrusted bumblebee brooch, because that represents the power of faith.

In the later journey, Mary Kay also experienced a tragic journey—it was still about death—her third husband died of illness at the height of her career—at that moment, all the drama of history To the strong Mary Kay, it seems that to test a person always needs to gather all the accidents and inevitability. Thus, an image of a brave and strong heroine appeared on the historical stage of the United States: on the second day after the death of Mary Kay's third husband, Mary Kay arranged a show with 7,500 people in St. Louis, Las Vegas. Mary Kay still attends meetings of business supervisors and beauty consultants. She later recalled: "I know many women who pay a lot of money to attend this conference and feel a responsibility not to let them regret. These meetings should be happy and happy. Inspirational. Even when I am grieving, I am determined to approach everyone in attendance with optimism...the fact that I can still smile in my worst moments will inspire them to face tragedy as well Show the same courage."

It is precisely because of this undaunted belief that Mary Kay has grown from a small business with $5,000 to one of the greatest cosmetics companies in the United States.And the crux of it all is an old-fashioned truth: when life is calm, it's easy to smile and be enthusiastic, because ideally anyone can be happy; but the real test is always It's the ability to keep a smile on your face when you're having major personal problems. Opinion: When God closes a door, he always opens another window. Do not pin your hope on God, but you must always be in awe in your heart, because all entrepreneurship needs the favor of fate.Mary Kay's growth is a combination of miracles, as she said, "Any decision is made up of hundreds of small decisions", and her success also includes hundreds of God's nostalgia. background of the crisis In today's China, melamine is already a well-known term. This crisis of food additives has driven the milk industry into a bottomless abyss. The unsalable fresh milk is poured into the river, which not only makes the cows busy, Also let the fish and shrimp die unexpectedly.But in fact, such a crisis is not unique to China, it also appeared in the United States during the Mary Kay era. During a period of time in the last century, a chemical called hexachlorophene was widely respected and widely used in the formulation of skin care products. Mary Kay's cosmetics were also one of the users.But then, the US Food and Drug Administration found that hexachlorophene was harmful to the human body, so within a short period of time, it banned the use of this formula and asked manufacturers to destroy all their products containing hexachlorophene.For many cosmetics companies, this is a sudden disaster. After paying direct economic losses, their brands have also suffered greatly. For this crisis, Mary Kay was not among the victims, and the reason for surviving was that "they believed in God"! ——Because before the hexachlorophene incident broke out, Mary Kay found that hexachlorophene had some disadvantages, so it decided not to use it on the production line, and destroyed about 19,000 bottles of skin care products.This inadvertent decision allowed Mary Kay to avoid huge economic losses, and the greater benefit was a substantial increase in popularity. From such a passing crisis, Mary Kay saw the power of faith. She said: "You never need to worry about sacrificing for the Lord, because he always guarantees you a hundredfold return. When God closes a door There will always be another window opened.” In fact, business operation is always a long process, and all deceptions and lies can’t deceive time, and the supervision of God’s eyes in the belief may not be a good thing for operators. bad thing. No one can predict the future, but when some people in the enterprise know that some mistakes are happening, it is the only way to make up and solve them in the fastest time.Mary Kay later made a deeper interpretation of this. She pointed out: "The operation of an enterprise is not composed of a few major decisions but millions of small decisions. It is often those small decisions that are made every day. — the decisions you make moment-by-moment — that really make the difference.” The decision that prompted Mary Kay to drop the wrong recipe was a small event before it happened, but afterward, it could be a business-destroying frenzy . Viewpoint: When you encounter a traffic jam, take a detour and change direction.Don't let one obstacle stop you.Divert, fail, detour, or patiently consider another path.Difficulties can make us shine or bring us down.A diamond was once nothing more than a lump of coal that has been pressured and polished to perfection. The success of a career depends on finding the unknown blue ocean, but why do so many people fail to make it to the end?The answer given by Mary Kay is: to take every step of the moment well.Therefore, the image of an entrepreneur should be like this: with a halo of confidence on his head, deep eyes looking into the distance, but every step under his feet is firm and powerful. background of the crisis Mary Kay's career has achieved great success, but she is optimistic by nature, but she has always maintained awareness and vigilance against failure.When talking about Mary Kay's achievements, she always likes to put them at the starting point of starting a business. She believes that there are many reasons for the failure of a new business, but success is usually related to a certain key element—satisfaction Capabilities for unknown needs.So she always blames Mary Kay's success on finding a market opportunity to teach women how to take care of their skin during a low point when all the other cosmetic companies were just selling blush or lipstick or new eyeshadow, But Mary Kay's entry into the market can actually meet the real needs of the market. This is a logic that is easy to understand, but it is very difficult to actually discover and implement it, and once you discover it, it means that you can find the "blue ocean" of your dreams at any time.In business history, a typist named Betty Graham knew there must be a good way to correct typos.So she experimented and tested in the kitchen, and finally came up with the formula for the correction fluid.An inspiring example is the fact that her company was sold for a whopping $40 million before her death. Also because of this motivation, many people will wake up excitedly one morning, and then start to weave big dreams, so that the energy of a lifetime may be consumed in it.For this, Mary Kay has a deep understanding, because when she preaches everywhere, people often ask her how to realize a huge plan. At this time, Mary Kay must gently tell her: just look at your feet and walk towards your dream step by step.She said: There are many people in the world who dream quickly but act slowly.Many of them do so because they don’t divide big goals into small, achievable goals. Some people are afraid of failure because they are so afraid of failure that they simply don’t try anything. This fear can only be overcome if they are willing to start from scratch. As for how to ensure the long-term strength of a company, even in the face of great changes and recession, Mary Kay also has its own answer.She believes that a company will remain strong because of its own purpose, and a company with a basic and strong purpose can face everything-even if it changes its products on a large scale.Because people change, products change too.But in the process of change, the purpose of the company determines the survival and demise of the company. Mary Kay's purpose is: you can do it.