01/08/2026
Inspiring!
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In 1963, a 45-year-old woman named Mary Kay Ash sat at her kitchen table in Dallas, Texas, writing a book.
She'd spent twenty-five years in direct sales—first at Stanley Home Products, then at World Gift Company. She had built territories spanning forty-three states. She had trained countless employees. She had earned a seat on her company's board of directors.
And none of it mattered.
Twice, she had watched men she trained get promoted above her. The second time, the man was given double her salary.
"Those men didn't believe a woman had brain matter at all," she later said. "I learned back then that as long as men didn't believe women could do anything, women were never going to have a chance."
So she quit. And she started writing.
The book was supposed to be about her experiences in sales—advice for women navigating a business world that didn't want them. But as Mary Kay made two columns on her notepad—one listing everything wrong with the companies she'd worked for, one listing what a dream company would look like—she realized something.
She wasn't writing a book.
She was writing a business plan.
All she needed was a product.
For years, Mary Kay had been using a skin cream made by a woman whose father had been a tanner. The formula had been developed while working with animal hides—an unlikely origin for something that made skin remarkably soft. Mary Kay bought the rights to the formula.
She had her product. She had her plan. And she had a partner—her second husband, George Hallenbeck, who had experience in direct sales and would handle the business side while she focused on products and people.
They invested their entire savings: $5,000.
They set an opening date: September 13, 1963.
One month before that date, George died of a heart attack at the breakfast table while reviewing the final balance sheet.
Mary Kay was devastated. Her lawyer told her to abandon the plan. Her accountant agreed—a 45-year-old widow had no business opening a cosmetics company.
Mary Kay opened it anyway.
On September 13, 1963, "Beauty by Mary Kay" opened in a small Dallas storefront. Her youngest son, twenty-year-old Richard Rogers, took over the role George was supposed to fill. Her oldest son, Ben Jr., had provided the $5,000 investment that made it possible.
The company started with one shelf of pink-packaged cosmetics and nine beauty consultants.
First-year sales: $198,154.
It was a start.
What made Mary Kay different wasn't the products—though they were good. It was the philosophy behind the company.
Mary Kay built her business on three principles: God first, family second, career third. She believed women shouldn't have to choose between their families and their ambitions. She created a business model where mothers could work from home, set their own schedules, and earn based on their effort rather than their gender.
And she believed fiercely in recognition.
Mary Kay had learned something during her years in corporate sales: people don't just work for money. They work for appreciation. She remembered winning a sales contest at Stanley Home Products and receiving an underwater flashlight as her prize. An underwater flashlight. For one of her best performances.
She vowed her company would be different.
Mary Kay created what she called "Cinderella Gifts"—rewards so luxurious that women would never buy them for themselves. Diamond jewelry. Fur coats. All-expense-paid trips to Paris. And, eventually, the most famous prize of all.
In 1967, Mary Kay walked into a Cadillac dealership in Fort Worth. She was tired of getting cut off in traffic while driving her black car. She wanted something different.
She pulled out her pale pink Mary Kay lip and eye palette and told the dealer: "I want a Cadillac this color."
The dealership thought she was crazy. They painted it anyway.
When Mary Kay drove that pink Cadillac around Dallas, something unexpected happened. People noticed. Other drivers didn't cut her off anymore. Her sales consultants asked how they could get one.
Mary Kay had an idea.
In 1969, she awarded the first five pink Cadillacs to her top-performing sales directors at the company's annual seminar. The crowd went wild. The pink Cadillac became the ultimate symbol of success—a "rolling trophy" that announced to the world what a woman had achieved.
General Motors eventually created an exclusive color called "Mary Kay Pink Pearl." Today, approximately 4,100 pink Cadillacs are on American roads, the largest commercial fleet of GM passenger cars in the world.
But the pink Cadillacs were just the most visible part of Mary Kay's philosophy. The deeper principle was what she called the Golden Rule: treat others as you would want to be treated.
She applied it everywhere. She referred to her consultants as her "daughters." She remembered their names, their families, their struggles. She believed that if you made people feel important, they would move mountains.
"Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around their neck that says 'Make Me Feel Important,'" she wrote. "Not only will you succeed in business, you will succeed in life."
The company grew. By 1968, it went public. By 1983, sales exceeded $300 million. By the early 1990s, Mary Kay Cosmetics was operating in nineteen countries and had been named one of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America—three times.
There were setbacks. The 1980s brought challenges as more women entered the traditional workforce and fewer were available to sell or buy cosmetics at home parties. Between 1983 and 1985, the consultant force was cut in half. Sales dropped.
In 1985, Mary Kay and her family took the company private again through a leveraged buyout. It was a controversial move, but it allowed them to focus on long-term growth rather than quarterly earnings.
The strategy worked. By the early 1990s, the company had surpassed $1 billion in retail sales.
The company's symbol became the bumblebee—an insect that, according to aerodynamic theory, shouldn't be able to fly. Its body is too heavy, its wings too small. But it flies anyway.
Mary Kay loved that image. It represented everything she believed: that women could achieve the impossible if they simply refused to accept their limitations.
In 1996, at age 77, Mary Kay founded the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation to combat domestic violence and cancers affecting women. That same year, she suffered a stroke that limited her public activities.
She died on November 22, 2001—Thanksgiving Day, her favorite holiday.
At the time of her death, Mary Kay Cosmetics had more than 800,000 beauty consultants in thirty-seven countries. The company had generated over $1.2 billion in sales. More than 150 women had earned over $1 million in commissions. Over 10,000 pink Cadillacs had been awarded.
Mary Kay Ash herself was worth an estimated $98 million.
But numbers don't capture what she built.
In 1999, Lifetime Television named her the "Most Outstanding Woman in Business in the 20th Century." Baylor University named her the "Greatest Female Entrepreneur in U.S. History."
And countless women—women who had been told they couldn't, women who had been passed over and underpaid and underestimated—had discovered that they could build businesses, earn fortunes, and drive pink Cadillacs.
All because a 45-year-old widow ignored her lawyer, ignored her accountant, and opened a small storefront in Dallas with $5,000 and a dream.
Mary Kay Ash proved something profound: that the best revenge for being underestimated is not anger, not bitterness, not proving people wrong.
It's building something that gives other people the opportunities you were denied.
"My goal in life," she once said, "is to help other women achieve success. Because when you're successful, everyone around you is successful."
She didn't just break through the glass ceiling.
She built an elevator.
