Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Texas: The Original Goal-Getter with Ashley Rose Reeves

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

In this episode, Ashley Rose Reeves joins Sharon to hear the story of one of Texas’s most iconic business owners: Mary Kay Ash. Tired of being passed up for raises and promotions to her male colleagues in the 1960s, Mary Kay drew up her own business plan, armed with enthusiasm, charm, hard work, and five thousand dollars. By the early 90s, Mary Kay Cosmetics made over a billion dollars annually and became the largest direct seller of skin-care products in the United States. Learn about the savvy, smart, pink Cadillac-driving woman who started it all. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my friends. Always happy to have you along. And today I'm chatting with my friend Ashley Reeves about a story that I think you're going to love and that she really loved about one of the greatest business stories of all time, according to Forbes magazine, from the great state of Texas. Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Oh, yay. This is going to be so much fun to chat today. Thank you so much for coming, Ashley. Yes. Well, tell everybody, if you guys are not following my friend, Ashley Reeves, tell everybody a little bit more about you. Like where do you live? What do you do? All of that good stuff. I live in Utah and I have four kids and I work online doing social media content. I do content creation and social media marketing. I do a lot of brand work with companies. I help share products.

And this year I also started my own clothing company called Body Love Basics, which is a size inclusive clothing line. And kind of the concept is that the clothing pieces will kind of ebb and flow with your body. I got really sick last year and had some body changes. And I just really found myself going back to the pieces of clothing that like felt comfortable and supportive. So I've been working on designing my own pieces there. And it's, we launched this year with some robes and it's been really fun.

I love sharing content online. I've done it for nine years and I love, you know, the relationships I've built through it. And I just kind of hang out every day there. I'm a body mother, raising a bunch of kids, trying to help them have confidence and feel comfortable in their bodies as well. And that's kind of what I talk about online. I love it.

First of all, I love size inclusive clothing lines. There are not nearly enough of them. Oh, and they're not very cute. The ones that they're not cute. It's like, Oh, a t-shirt. Wow. You know, like a size three X men's t-shirt. So innovative. I've spent many years shopping in the men's department because it was the only option I could find. I'm like, no, no, no, none of this. We need to fix this. So you're still like me too, right? Yes.

Yes. We've talked about this so many times too, where it's like extra challenging as a tall woman to find clothes that you feel like look good on you. And that feel good that you're not like constantly pulling down, like, let me pull down the shirt. pulling down, like, let me pull down the shirt. Well, I'm going to tell you today about another female business owner from the great state of Texas. This has been a long running joke in my community that people perceive that I have beef with the state of Texas, because I have said one million times that Texas cannot succeed. In fact, I did a whole podcast episode on it. And so people are like, why are you trying to mess with Texas?

And I'm not. I don't, I have no issue with you. I just, like the facts don't require our approval. The facts are what they are. Texas has a lot to offer. It really does. I think you're going to love this story about somebody you probably have heard of before named Mary Kay Ash. Do you know who she is? Mary Kay makeup? Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. So this, you know, this is a surprise to me. I didn't know we were talking

about her. I wasn't married to consulted at 18 years old. You were straight out of high school. I like went to parties and I was like, this is my life path. I cannot wait to hear the story. Oh my goodness. So I bet you know a little bit about her because they definitely like infuse some of Mary Kay's values into the company. So Mary Kay is having its 60th birthday this year. First of all, it's an iconic direct sales company, right?

It's truly iconic. It's not an episode about direct sales or multi-level marketing. This is really more about Mary Kay herself because I find her very charming and endearing. And she kind of has a little bit of that, like Dolly Parton quality to me where you're like, that is an adorable woman. I love the Dolly Parton quality. So, you know, all about Mary Kay's like pink labels and their pink Cadillacs. And I thought it would be really interesting to dive into like, how did the pink Cadillac

actually become a thing? So Mary Kay, her original name, her maiden name was Mary Kathleen Wagner. She was born in Hotwells, Texas in 1918. Mary Kay was the youngest of four children and her father contracted tuberculosis and never recovered from it. He didn't die, but he never recovered. So he was unable to provide for their family. And that left her mother in this very unique position at the time of being the sole breadwinner for the family. Her mother worked at a restaurant and she would be gone for most of the day, sometimes 12, 14 hours a day, her mother would be gone. By the time Mary Kay was seven, all of her older siblings were out of the house.

Kay was seven, all of her older siblings were out of the house. And so that left Mary Kay alone at home, caring for her ill father and doing most of the household chores and tasks while her mother worked. And, you know, she's written a number of books and was a public speaker for many, many years before she died. And one of the things that she talked about was how, when she didn't know how to do something, she would call her mother on the phone at the restaurant because it wasn't like her dad who was now disabled. It wasn't like he was raised knowing how to cook a certain kind of food. You know what I mean? Like he was not going to be able to help her with what it was that she needed. So she would call her mother at the restaurant and her mother's refrain that Mary Kay always remembered that she felt like just kind of reverberated throughout the

rest of her life was you can do it, Mary Kay. You can do it. That was always what her mother told her. You can do it. And so she, she said, she took her mother's words of, you can do it, Mary Kay, you can do it basically with her through the rest of her life. And I, I loved that idea that the words that we speak to other people, people internalize them. And so it's important to be mindful of that. You don't know what a little throwaway, like, oh, you can do it. You can do it, Mary Kay. You don't know what those words are going to mean to somebody someday. And obviously Mary Kay really took them to heart. You can do it. That's beautiful. I love that. That's sweet. Yes. So Mary Kay was very smart. She was one of the top students in her school,

but she was not able to afford college obviously for a variety of reasons. And so she got married when she was 17. This was in 1935. Okay. And she had three children with her husband. Her husband was named J Ben Rogers. As I said, they had three children, but the marriage was not a particularly happy one. He was irresponsible with money. He played in a local band and would be gone a lot for gigs. So there was not a lot of stability with their finances when they were a married couple. And so consequently, she felt like she had to sort of make up for the difference for her husband's inability or lack of desire to provide a stable income for her and their three children. And so her first sort of foray into the world of working outside the home, of selling things to people, was when a traveling salesperson

stopped by their house and they were selling encyclopedias. And Mary Kay really wanted a set of encyclopedias for her children. The encyclopedia salesperson told her, you can earn a free set of encyclopedias if you sell 10 sets of encyclopedias. What Mary Kay didn't know is that selling 10 sets of encyclopedias was the quota for a salesperson for a three month time period. She just thought like, well, I'll just sell them real quick. And so she went out and sold 10 sets of encyclopedias in a day and a half. When all of the, the regular salespeople, like you were meeting your quota, if you sold 10 cents in three months. That's amazing. She got the encyclopedias for her children. And then that idea of like, I am good at selling things like that, that I,

that little seed got planted in her heart of like, huh, maybe, maybe I would be good at this. And so in 1939, she began working for a company that is the originator of the home sales party called Stanley home products. Okay. And I was like, Stanley home products. Why does this sound familiar? First of all, they still exist today. Okay. Secondly, they started at, you know, way, way, way back, particularly of cleaning products. That's what Stanley home products sold was cleaning products. And you can literally go on the website and order them now. And so they originated the idea of women should get together and like have a party and eat some snacks and look at the products and buy them. Stanley Home Products originated the idea of a home sales party. And of course these things were really aimed at like the housewife crowd where

women, you know, are perceived as needing something to do. And the Stanley Home Products Company actually has a whole collection at the Smithsonian Museum because they are the pioneers of this model, which has greatly impacted American society. The model of the home party, obviously Mary Kay used it. And so did another consultant for Stanley home products who started Tupperware. I was just going to say like the Tupperware people. Yes. Yes. So she was very successful at Stanley home products. She sold tons and tons of products. Her husband then during World War II was sent overseas and she then had to begin making a full-time income with her Stanley Home Products sales business. So she began working that business like really diligently

in the 1940s when her husband was away. And she found that she was so good at it. She was asked to train other people. She eventually throughout the years worked up into the corporate level. And then one year she found that a man that she had just finished training, got a promotion and double her salary. And she was like, excuse me, I literally just showed him how to do that job. Yeah. And why would he get a promotion and double the salary that I am making? Like that is absolutely not fair. This is now the 1950s. She'd done all this work and was just being passed over for absolutely no reason other than she was a woman. And you promoted men into higher tiers of management.

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every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Eventually, her husband asked for a divorce. And she, you know, even though the marriage was not a happy marriage, there was still that element of like, I am a single mom with three kids. And that's really like, that's not something that is socially really acceptable or prominent

during that time. She continued working for Stanley home products and she kept encountering situation after situation where she felt like her opinions, her ideas, her talents were being disregarded by all of the male management. They would discount her ideas, be like, that will never work. And then a couple weeks later, come up with the same idea for themselves and try to pretend like they came up with it. And she would be like, I suggested that two weeks ago. And, and they were like, oh, well, I don't, you know, I don't remember that. This just, she was just never getting the credit that she deserved despite all of her hard work. And despite all of the evidence of like, I am doing a great job for you. Yeah. Nevertheless, she was still a very successful executive at this company by early 1960s standards, right? Successful for a woman.

Yeah. And so she began to, she started thinking I could write a book to help other women succeed in business. I have been successful, obviously, to a different extent than we would deem success today. But at the time, she felt she'd been successful and maybe she could help other women be successful in business. So as she's writing this book, she realized, why am I just theorizing about this dream company where women's roles are valued and women's contributions are valued? Why am I theorizing about this? Why don't I start my own dream company? Yeah. And at the time she did not know what that, what kind of product she was going to sell, but she had a certain set of criteria that she wanted to have met. This was her criteria. It had to be something women could believe in because she really wanted to focus on

women. It had to be something women could recommend to their friends and family, that sort of word of mouth element that she had become accustomed to with her position at Stanley Home Products. become accustomed to with her position at Stanley home products and number three, and perhaps most importantly, it had to be a product that could be used up and re ordered over and over, not a set of encyclopedias where you're like one and done. I'm all good. Like you needed to be able to like, well, that hand cream is out. I need another. So this, she really is a super cool woman. So she's now in her forties. Okay. So I also love that this speaks to the idea of you don't have to be a hot 25 year old to find success, to find something that you feel passionate about, that you can be a divorced mother of three in your forties and going for it. So she realized she's now in her

forties for 10 years, she had been very faithful to a certain skin product and it was called a skin softener. This skin softener that she had been using came from a formulation from a family friend who owned a tanning business and not sun tanning, hide tanning, like tanning animal skins to be used for things like purses and wallets and belts. You can't just like take a skin and be like, well, it's ready to use. You know what I mean? Like it has to be softened and yeah, it has to be processed. And so he had developed this product, this skin softener, which actually was an animal skin softener. softener, which actually was an animal skin softener, but that Mary Kay had been buying and using on her own skin and she loved it. She was very loyal to it. Yeah. She got this idea.

What if I approach this tanner and ask to buy the skin softening recipe from him. And then I use that as my product. I have been loyal to it. I have recommended it to many people. This is something that women can enjoy and it's something that people will use up and use again. Checks all the boxes. Checks all the boxes. So she took $5,000 and she purchased this skin tanning recipe from the tanner and she recruits her now second husband. She's been remarried to help her start this business, which she was going to call beauty by Mary Kay. Yeah. And one month into her sort of a ramp up into beginning beauty by Mary Kay, her husband died and they had only been married for like four weeks and he died. So they never got to enjoy any kind of long married life because he died very quickly. And so then she turned to her oldest son and was like, will you help me? And he said, yes, mom, I will help you. We'll get this, we'll get this up and

going. Her son's name was Richard. And so Richard and Mary Kay decided that they would open a small storefront in Texas. And it opened in 1963. They were going to be selling beauty by Mary Kay's five main products and they were cleansing cream, which in 1963 cost $2. A night cream, which costs $4 and 95 cents. A skin freshener. I don't know what that is. Maybe like a toner. Yeah. That costs $3 and 50 cents day radiance, which I assume is a lightweight moisturizer. Yeah. Which costs one 50 and magic mask, which was $4. And I presume that some kind of a skin mask they opened on September 13th, 1963. And one of the things that Mary Kay told her son that she wanted to do was that she wanted to run the company, not on the competitive rule of like,

always be competing, et cetera, but on the golden rule of treating other people, how you would want to be treated. And because she had not been treated the way she wanted to be treated in the workplace. So she was going to run her company differently. So she very quickly seized on this idea of home parties that she had found success in at her previous company, but she made an important tweak. And this is one of the things that ultimately led to her success is in other home party businesses, the consultant demonstrates the product. Mary Kay decided that at her parties, all of the attendees would use the products. It would not. And I'm sure you remember this from when you were a consultant, little

trays and the little dots and oh yes, I do. You would show people how to use the products. Yeah. Right. You didn't just say, this is a great blush. No, show people how to put it on like the hands-on experience. Yes. Yes. And so Mary Kay invented that. She invented this idea that people should be able to use the products, look in the little mirror from the little tray and be like, I really like this. I'm going to buy it. I love this shade of lipstick on me. You know what I mean? Like being able to try it on was a new and noteworthy idea. So one of the things that she did was she decided that instead of calling the people who were going to sell Mary Kay at these home parties, they decided she would call them consultants because she wanted them to feel like they were an important and valued member of the

company. And they were not just sales people. Yeah. And she developed this policy of equal pay for equal work. Like whatever you put into the business, you're going to get out of the business. And she helped develop what we now know as sort of this multi-level marketing idea of you recruit people to be consultants, and then you make a small commission on what they sell as well. That idea was really rooted in that early 1960s era of Mary Kay. She's one of the originators of that idea. So Mary Kay referred to her consultants. She referred to them as daughters. And today we might be like, well, that's a little weird, but at the time her idea was that I want to mentor my consultants the way my mother mentored

me. And I want to show them, you know, I want to show them how to do it and not just exploit them. Was the idea that she wanted them to feel valued. And I love this quote from her. She said, people are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps. And that is still, I think, 100% true. Yeah, that is.

The very first year that she was in business, they turned a profit, also very unusual for a business, right? To be successful straight out of the gate. They sold $198,000 worth of cosmetics, which in today's money is over a million and a half dollars in sales for this very small startup cost her $5,000 to start, you know, from this small town girl in Texas, like she's in her forties and she's been divorced. Another husband died. Like she has not had, uh, she did not get handed this. Yeah. She did not get handed this business on a silver platter. You know, she really invented it. So one of the other reasons that historians who have studied Mary Kay, because she really was a pioneer in this industry point to why she was successful is of course, people liked the products. They liked the selling method of the products, but they also just really liked her. Yeah. Really liked Mary Kay. She was

this genteel feminine sort of God fearing Texas woman who had pulled herself up by her bootstraps and people could connect with that story and connect with her. And so she was not just selling beauty products. She was selling herself in that sense, you know, like selling. Yes. She was also very noted for just being continuously positive. She was very warm. She was very complimentary to people. And so she had that way about her that made people want to be around her, that made people want to be her friend, that made people want to be like her. I love this quote too. And I was like, that is real good. Mary Kay. She said, pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around their neck that says,

make me feel important. And I was like, that is the truth though. That is, that is everybody who everyone wants to be noticed. Everyone wants to feel that people care about them. Everyone wants to feel, you know, important to somebody that is, that was the truth then. And it's still the truth now. And you're like, if we all operated like that, like that would be beautiful. Oh my gosh. It would be a very different world. If that was the lens that we viewed others through. Absolutely. So the year after she opened, she was like, well, okay okay I guess this is going to run to something yes so she had her first sales convention that she called a seminar and they still

they still have these every year it's almost like now when you look at pictures of them did you ever go to one of the year no okay no you know. No. I didn't have like the business drive that I do now, but yes, yes, totally. I told that's very understandable. Um, but if you look at, I'm sure you've seen pictures. It looks like some kind of like Oscars production. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, at her very first convention, she decorated the hall where she held it with balloons and streamers, and she served a chicken salad and jello salad that she had prepared herself. Oh my gosh. Because she wanted her consultants to feel like she cared about them. So she made the food and it was, she made three days worth of food for all of her consultants. Incredible. I thought that was really cute. Like find me a CEO today. Who's like, I made the jello

salad. No, I'm the caterer and the CEO. Like that does not happen. So she really, really wanted to reward people who worked hard at their business. So she developed this big system of incentives and you still see this incentive program idea, very prevalent in direct sales communities, right? Like I earned a trip to Mexico. I earned a cruise to the Bahamas. I earned a car. And that was Mary Kay that came up with that idea of incentives for consultants. She gave away, you could earn vacations, you could earn jewelry. And of course, still to this day, like one of the highest honors you can earn in Mary Kay is a pink Cadillac, the pink Cadillac. And it's good. Like those pink Cadillacs,

they're not like the Pepto-Bismol pink. They're like pearl, like pearlescent. Yeah. I've seen them. They look good. She loved the color pink. And one of the reasons she chose pink, of course, is because she felt like that pink label first of all, it was very feminine. It would make you feel like a lady, but it would stand out against people's white bathroom counters. That was the psychological reason behind it. Like at the time she's into aesthetics. That's right. At the time sinks were porcelain. Yeah. Right. And you did not, you weren't like, what color sink should I get? No, you're going to get white. Yep. You know, that was the option. And so the pink would stand out against the white and it would make a woman feel a certain way when she went to go use her products. And, and also it

would look nice in the bathroom. Yeah. You know, like the packaging, the color was important to her. So she said, if you honor and serve the people who work for you, they will honor and serve you. And that was part of her rationale behind, you know, the pink Cadillacs. Of course, they were a mobile advertisement for the business. They stand out on the road to this day. Like you just said, Ashley, you notice the pink Cadillac, don't you? You totally do.

You know what I also remember too, when I was doing Mary Kay, I remember, I mean, this is, I'm like 36. This is like a long time ago, but, or 38. Whoa. Anyways, I remember they said there was more pink Cadillacs like out in the world and there were police cars. Like that's how many people had earned them and we're driving them. I remember this and like, I don't know if that fact is still true today, but like, that's kind of incredible. Like there's four feet in Cadillacs cruising down in police cars. That's pretty cool. I did find a statistic that said that GM, which of course owns Cadillac has painted 100,000 Cadillacs pink for Mary Kay. That's so cool. She orders them directly from GM. Yeah. She's not getting, they're not third party pink paints. She orders it directly from the car manufacturer,

which also speaks to her business acumen, like that she would even be able to get a meeting at GM. Yeah. I want, I would like to order some pink, please. I need a fleet of pink. Let's do it. That's right. Again, woman from small town, Texas is able to work with General Motors. Oh my gosh. No, I love that. She, by the way, the original pink color was, she asked GM to match it to a shade of blush that she sold called mountain Laurel. Ooh. Okay. And she was like, I would like it to match this color mountain Laurel blush. And that was what it originally was based on. The color pink has shifted slowly over the years. And right now this, it is a pearlescent pink. Yes, you're exactly right. It's very soft pearlescent. That wasn't the style like in the eighties, but that's the current. So by 1968, so five years after starting

her business, she is wildly successful. She's a millionaire. She meets another man named Melville Ash and they get married. And she decided to take Mary Kay public, offer it for sale, sell stocks in Mary Kay on the stock exchange. That is a very noteworthy accomplishment to have your company be so successful that other people on the New York Stock Exchange would want to purchase shares of it. That's amazing. But by the mid eighties, like 20, 20 years in, she was kind of tired of catering to shareholders because who are the shareholders? They're mostly women are mostly men who don't really get it. And they were harassing her about the pink Cadillacs. Like this is frivolous. We don't this, you got to drop this. And she was like, I will never drop it. So what my solution is, is to take the company back private. I'm not going to sell any more shares to shareholders

because I want to run this the way I want to run it. I do not want to be beholden to your opinions. The cars are not frivolous. They're important was her perspective. Yes. Yeah. They're essential. They are. Yeah. Do you want to join Mary Kay? If you don't have the option of earning that pink Cadillac, I feel like that is one of the reasons people still join it. Like that is held up as like, Ooh, yeah. Status symbol. Yes. By 1993. So 30 years after starting her business, she had sold over $1 billion worth of cosmetic products, which was incredible. She wrote a number of other books called Mary Kay, the success story of America's most dynamic business woman. That book, by the way, sold over a million copies.

To sell a million copies of a book is still to this day, a very big deal that hardly any authors do. In 1996, she had a stroke and ended up, you know, the Mary Kay cosmetics story as one of the greatest business stories of all time. This is Forbes. And there have been many great business stories, especially if you think about like the Gilded Age in New York, where people are, you know, the Rockefellers, et cetera, like those are some great stories, but Mary Kay's story stands out. It's not a tycoon kind of story where like, and then I bought the whole forest. You know what I mean? It was such a unique business story that it's still considered one of the greatest business stories of all time. She died in 2001. And when she died, she had a personal fortune of close to a hundred million dollars, which is still, and that's in 2001 money. And the idea that she literally started that company with nothing and then died with a fortune of a hundred million dollars. That's incredible. That's something few people will ever achieve. She started this Mary Kay

charitable foundation. And they, the idea behind it was it would help victims of domestic violence and also cancer treatment, et cetera. I also love this quote. She said, we must have a theme, a goal, a purpose in our lives. If you don't know where you're aiming, you don't have a goal. My goal is to live my life in such a way that when I die, someone can say she cared. can say she cared. Oh my gosh. It's really sweet. It's really sweet. People who knew her felt that way about her. Yeah. You know, like that kind of a Dolly Parton effect of like, she's just a national treasure. She must be protected at all costs. Well, I also like, I know there's a lot of feelings about multi-level marketing, but I, I used to do business consulting and I helped a company who was a multi-level company. I did really appreciate, I would see like the camaraderie between women who

really didn't have a connection outside just in their normal lives. And so it sounds to me like what she did is she kind of was the best case scenario for that. And she wasn't just like talking the talk. She really was referring to them as her daughters and she was serving them food and providing for them and helping them feel that. So I think it's really beautiful. Like, cause some women really don't have that connection in their personal relationships. And I think that's what pulls a lot of people to these times.

Yes. Sounds like she really did it the right way. So I think that's so cool. Yeah. She did not have a predatory method. She really viewed it as I am giving women an opportunity to earn a great income. That's truly how she viewed it. And I also think it's really funny. Like she was obsessed with the color pink clearly. And when she built the Mary Kay headquarters in Addison, Texas, first of all, it is a 34-acre campus, and it has 13 floors worth of pink granite.

Oh, my God. Her own personal home that she built with the fortune that she amassed by the way it was pink inside and pink outside i also love this idea and i'll leave leave it here i love this because i do think this is for sure true she said a mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one i love that that. It is very true. That enthusiasm will carry you far. It really will. I love that. Yes. Isn't that a fun story? Isn't she a fun lady? I love that so much. I really, really do. It's so fun. Like I love, I don't know if you knew this, but I specifically love hearing about women in business. It's something that's always been

near and dear to me. Like, I think it's really cool. So that's so, it was so fun to learn more about her. Yes, absolutely. And I think there's a few little nuggets in there that you, you can take as a female business founder and take those and do with them what you will. I think that's really fun. Thank you so much for doing this. Tell everybody where they can find you because I just love following you. So where can people find you on Instagram? I am on Instagram mostly. I'm just Ashley Rose Reeves. I hang out there. I share, you know, just a lot of different stuff, lifestyle content, but mostly like I'm really working to raise a body positive family, try to fix some of the things that I maybe didn't get right in my childhood with my kids. So working a little bit every day. Yes. Thank you, Ashley. This is

fantastic. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon says so podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor, would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.