Hello, this is Leslie Kane. I am the host of the Why Not Today podcast. This is a podcast
to celebrate people who have been courageous and said, why not today? I started this podcast
to honor my father, Patrick Kane, who often said, why not today? I am based in Reston,
Virginia, a Planned community right outside of Washington, C.C., and thanks for joining
us today. And I'm super excited. I'm always excited about my guests, but I'm really excited
about my guests today and the day that we're doing it. And as many of you know that I am
a sales director at Mary Kay. This podcast is not about Mary Kay. And although I've had
a couple of Mary Kay people, we really haven't focused on Mary Kay. But today we are going
to focus on Mary Kay. And I'm super excited. My guest is Jennifer Cook, who was Mary Kay's
personal assistant secretary. I don't know your exact title. I don't even know for how
many years Jennifer will talk about that in a minute. And she is here to share about her
courage to write a book called Pass It On, but then also Mary Kay's courage. And I'm
excited about the date we're doing this. So we're recording this on Tuesday, September
13th, which happens to be Mary Kay Corporation's 59th anniversary. So how appropriate to have
Jennifer sharing her story today and some courage from Mary Kay. But before we hear
from Jennifer, I always like to say, you know, talk about connections and how you meet people
and how you get to know people. So I am part of a Mary Kay directors group. And a couple
weeks ago, we had a guest speaker come on who was Jennifer. And it actually was rescheduled
for another date. And so I was glad to be able to hear you and your stories. I thought
you would be a perfect person to talk to about Mary Kay's courage stories. And it was funny,
I friended you on Facebook and I sat there and like, okay, should I ask, should I not?
I went back and I'm like, my dad always said, what's the worst thing somebody could say
is no. And so I asked, and of course you were gracious and excited to share. So and then
of course it worked out for September 13th, which couldn't be a better date. So Jennifer,
thank you for being on and joining us today. So why don't you share a little about you
and fun fact about you. And then we'll go into the why not today and courageous stories.
Well, I was born in Dallas, Texas. I'm one of the very few people in the Dallas area
that was born in Dallas. And I have three sisters and one brother and my, we lived here
all my life and within this area. When, so it's kind of natural that I would find my
way at Mary Kay being a Dallas based company. I took secretarial school in high school,
but I was always intending to go to college and I worked my way through college at Mary
Kay and I was going to become a teacher, but I loved Mary Kay so much. I loved the company.
I loved the people. And when I got my degree, I thought, Oh, I hope I don't get a teaching
job, but I had actually got a scholarship from the Irving public school system. So I
thought, well, I need to apply to them at least because they gave me this scholarship
and I applied to them and there were no job openings. And I think I'm probably one of
the few people that was really excited that there was no job for me because I got to stay
with Mary Kay and I worked there for 45 years, 25 of those. I was with Mary Kay and I became
her assistant when I was just after I graduated, when I was just 23 years old. And I look back
right now and I think, you know, what was she thinking? I was so inexperienced and so
naive, but I have to look back and see that I learned so much from Mary Kay and she influenced
me so greatly. She was a fantastic mentor and just watching with her and being with
her was an inspiration. And the fact is that, like I said, I took secretarial courses, but
my parents always encouraged their kids to have two careers, you know, just a career
in something that, you know, anybody could do. But what we did was not what anybody could
do, but you know, and then a professional career. So mine was in the secretary world
and my fun fact is that I lettered in shorthand in high school. And, you know, everybody else
had their football letters, but I had actually have a letter from my high school that, you
know, to put on my jacket that says shorthand. That's funny. I did not know that was such
a thing. That was one of the things that really helped me. It helped me in college to take
down the notes in college. It helped me when I worked for Mary Kay because when she would
just start spouting things off, I could get it all down. And it is something that I never
regretted having done. And I still use it today when I interview people.
That's awesome. My mom actually took shorthand in high school and she knows it too. I'm like
totally don't understand it. So wow, you started working, you worked for Mary Kay or with Mary
Kay for 25 years. That's awesome. And so were you her only personal assistant from when
you were in high school? No, actually Mary Kay had a special assistant. And that was
the person who really worked with Mary Kay on more of her personal items. Like, you know,
she did a lot of the appointments, but she helped Mary Kay with her gowns and just a
lot of personal things. She worked with the nationals a lot. Whereas I worked more on
the administrative end, I was the administrative assistant. And so as we grew and Mary Kay
started hiring staff, I was the one who supervised the staff and just kept everything running
within the office. And at one time there was like 10 of us, you know, keeping up with Mary
Kay because she could really generate the work because she had a lot of ideas and a
lot of people. We have some great stories about her, which
I can't wait to hear. So before we start, what does courage mean to you? What would
be your definition of courage? Well, when most people think about courage, you think
about peril and, you know, coming to the rescue and showing great courage in the time of trauma.
But to me, courage is really stepping out of your comfort zone. There are so many people
with dreams and aspirations and they never make them come true because they don't have
the courage to take that first step to following their dream. It just seems too big for them
and they can't see that they really could make their dreams come true. And that's what
I loved about Mary Kay is that she showed women that they had unlimited potential and
that if they would just set a goal and put a plan of action together, that before they
knew it, you know, they could be climbing the ladder of success. They could be one step
closer to their dream if they would just set a small goal, make that happen, set another
goal, make that happen. And eventually the big goals would come true.
Right. And I'm sure working with Mary Kay, not only did you have Mary Kay courageous
stories, but so many people in the sales force and corporate. I mean, I admire Mary Kay,
the corporate side, so much that there's so much longevity that people have been there
for so many years. So I started my business, it'll be 28 years in November. So my very
first seminar, which was 1995, Mary Kay was there. And then I guess the next year is when
she had her stroke. And the only other year she came back to seminar was the only year
I messed up until the last couple of years because of COVID, unfortunately. But so I
never got to know Mary Kay. So I heard stories and my mentors knew Mary Kay, but I've never,
I've, you know, I've heard stories of Mary Kay, but never got to meet her personally,
experience it. So you worked with her every day for 25 years. And I know even after she
had her stroke, you were still very close to her. So I would love to hear, you know,
courageous stories of Mary Kay and maybe what you saw her, you know, starting the company,
first of all. So when did you start working for Mary Kay?
In 1971.
Okay.
When I first came to Mary Kay.
Company wasn't even 10 years old yet.
Right. It was, it was eight years old. And actually I started in what I think was the
year that the company was about to really take off because the company had just opened
its first distribution center out in California. And we also had just debuted the first two
national sales directors, Helen McVoy and Dailene White and opened the first international
subsidiary in Australia.
Oh, wow.
So there were all, all signs were there that this company was going somewhere and this
company was about to grow and take off, which it, which it truly did. It really was an exciting
time to join Mary Kay and be a part of something that went from 12,000 beauty consultants to,
you know, over 3 million beauty consultants. It was an exciting time to be a part of Mary
Kay.
And were they at that point public or private?
They were what was called the over the counter market. In 1968, they needed to raise capital.
For inventory and for the manufacturing. And so to raise that capital, they began to sell
the stock and it was on the over the counter market. It became so successful though that
in 1976 they went on the New York Stock Exchange.
Okay. And then they ended up buying the company back.
Right. And that was in 1984.
Okay. All right. So I know you wrote a book called Pass It On, sharing Mary Kay's stories
and lots of her stories, other people's stories. So share some of your favorite, maybe Mary
Kay courage stories or people, maybe start with Mary Kay. And then if you know of other
ones that inspired you, I mean, she's got so many Mary Kay stories, I'm sure.
Well, I think the first courage story that I want to share is about Mary Kay and having
brain surgery back in the 1950s. Mary Kay had a hemifacial spasm. Her right eye would
tick. Her right. And she was a motivational speaker. She would give a really great speech.
And instead of people come up and saying to her, oh, I loved your speech or I loved what
you said, they said, oh, your tick isn't as noticeable this time. And she realized that
people were watching her face and not really listening to what she had to say. So she went
to a neurologist here in the Dallas area who identified her problem as a hemifacial spasm
and told her that if something weren't done about it, after a while, this side of her
face would be paralyzed and she could lose the left side of her body. And so it was a
serious condition. And he referred her to the Cleveland Clinic, which was the only one,
I think, doing this type of surgery back in the 1950s. Now, this was very dangerous surgery
back then. And of course, I think that Mary Kay, you know, had to have had fears of what
was going to happen during this brain surgery. But she, you know, she took that step. She
had the courage to go ahead and have that brain surgery. And it truly was a serious
operation. You know, Mary Kay, ever the optimist felt that she'd have the surgery and be back
at work in two weeks. Well, it was four months later. Oh, wow. She was able to because she
of course, she almost died during that. And just the rehabilitation from this was a four
month procedure. But she always said that if she hadn't done that, she wouldn't have
been able to found the company. Because, you know, without the tick, then people started
listening to what she had to say again. And that made her the great motivational speaker
that she became.
I had never heard that story until you shared it the other day.
Yeah. And I think most people don't realize how serious that was. And yeah, was she a
single mom at that point? Or she married? I think she was a single mom. Yes. It's even
scarier. Yeah. Because it was back in the in the 50s. Yeah. The second courageous thing
that I think she did was when she quit her job. She had worked her way up to the director
of training for a direct sales company. And she she you know, she loves sales, she loved
motivating people. But they promoted a gentleman over her that you know, she kept hiring assistants,
she would train them and then they would promote these gentlemen over her. And she would always
say ask, you know, why didn't I get that promotion? And the answer was, well, they have a family
to support. And Mary Kay always thought that's not fair, because I'm a single mom, and I
have a family to support. And, you know, there came a time when she just had enough. And
so she quit her job. And you know, as she says later, when she went home, she got to
thinking about it. And she said, if they'd called me and asked me to come back, I probably
would have gone back. But that wasn't God's plan for her. God's plan for her was that
she start this company that would give women opportunity that she had been denied. You
know, she said it took her a long time to get into the boardroom of a company. And when
she got in the boardroom, her ideas were totally discounted. And they would just tell her,
Oh, Mary Kay, you're thinking like a woman. And of course, the sales force, they were
women. And so it was just kind of like that male mentality that it has to be the male
way and or no way. They wouldn't listen to her. So she wanted a company that valued women,
she knew women could do great things. And she wanted to show people what people could
do. But she wanted to show women themselves what they could do if they believed in themselves.
Her second motivation was to found a company based on the golden rule, which she did. And
just this combination of a company based on the golden rule, with an opportunity for women
to succeed financially and professionally was appealing to women back in the 1960s.
And the mission for Mary Kay, which what started with and is still today the Mary Kay mission
is to enrich women's lives. And that's not domestic. You know, I often say, you know,
we do so much more than the company itself than just products. And she came up with the
business plan before she came up the product line, which was great. And then the third
courageous thing that she did was, of course, founding the company. And, you know, she retired
from that other direct sales company in May. And in September, the doors of Mary Kay cosmetics
opened, which was called Beauty by Mary Kay. That was the first name of the company. Well,
if you think about it, that was four short months that she put this all together. And
I had no idea it was that and and launched her company. And she, she and her husband
were going to do this together. Well, he died of a heart attack at the kitchen table a couple
of months before they launched. And she and her children sat down and thought, you know,
well, should I go on? And her children were very supportive of her. They said, Mother,
we know that you can do anything that you set your mind to do. And Richard said, I'll
come and join you in the business. Her son, Ben, had saved $5,000 and he gave it to Mary
Kay to help finance the company. And then her daughter took a showcase down to Houston
and became the first sales director in Mary Kay. So they were very supportive of her.
Now, they were the only ones because her accountant told her that she could not have the commissions
that she had and stay in business. And her attorney sent away to Washington for a pamphlet
on how many cosmetic companies go broke every year. Wow. And then she met another gentleman
who was a businessman. And he told her that, you know, you might as well just tell me the
formulations right now, because you're not going to be a success. But she believed in
her dream. And she had was able to convince nine other people to believe in that dream
with her. And she always said they were just friends of mine who felt sorry for me, that
I had joined her when they had the grand opening, which was the beginning of Mary Kay. But,
you know, to go ahead and follow a dream when your husband's just died. And, you know, it
was with all of her life saving. That was a big step that I think took a lot of courage.
Absolutely. That took major courage. Yeah. And that one step of courage for that one
person, how many gazillion lives that has touched. Right. And it truly has. You don't
know how many lives and, you know, not only just the Salesforce, but then the family of
the Salesforce and community of the Salesforce and customers and so many ways we've touched
so many lives. I often wear and I do have it on net today, a starfish necklace. And
because of the story of the starfish. Do you know the story of the starfish? Yes, I do.
But why don't you tell it? Because I'm sure other people will want to hear. So the story
of the starfish is this man was walking down the beach and there were millions of starfish
on the beach. And this young kid was picking them up and throwing them in the water. And
the man's like, what are you doing? You can never make a difference. There's millions.
And he picked one up and threw it in the water. And he said, I made a difference in that one
person's life. And I think that's what Mary Kay really does. You just never know the lives
that it can touch and where it can go. And who would, I mean, my life is completely different
when I started really just to get my products at a discount. Who would have ever thought
the life I would be created. And then fast forward to I'm on a call with you who worked
for Mary Kay and was day to day with Mary Kay. I never got to meet her. So like how
many lives have been touched and yeah, just, you just never know. And just being courageous
to do those things and get out of your comfort zone because it's not just your life, but
so many lives you can change. And you know, it's not only the comfort zone with Mary Kay
that she inspired. I've met women who were beauty consultants who had dreams of something
that they wanted to do for a lifetime. And because of Mary Kay and the skills that they
got, you know, they were able to step into those dreams. I'll give you an example. There's
a chocolate here here in Dallas and she makes a chocolate high heels and chocolate Texas's
and she's, she's got the cutest line of stuff, chocolate lipsticks. It was a Mary Kay beauty
consultant and she had, she was a single mom. She had three, three daughters. She raised
her daughter doing, doing Mary Kay because you know, she needed the income. But then
after she got her daughters raised, she thought, you know, I've always wanted to do this and
I'm going to step out in faith and do it. But she said, because of her Mary Kay training,
because Mary Kay had taught her to believe in her dream, she was able to do this. And
now she's like around the world with her chocolate. She's in the Neiman Marcus catalog. Oh wow.
Mary Kay has influenced so many women. We always think about the women that are in Mary
Kay who were influenced by this company, but there are women who were part of Mary Kay
for just a short time who realized the power of vision and dreams and God had put a vision
in them about something else. And they, this is a great place to start, to get a foundation,
to build a business. Absolutely. I always tell people that, you know, you can learn
things. It's Mary Kay is an amazing personal growth program and things to do so many other
things. So there's a lot of other things I do in this world that aren't just Mary Kay
and most of them because of what I learned from Mary Kay and the skills and the talents
and the people and the tribe and the connections we've built because of Mary Kay. You just,
you can't even imagine how big it goes. So one of the things that I know Mary Kay was
courageous about, which coming from a corporate background is not prevalent in corporate America,
we talked about Mary Kay's philosophy of the golden rule, but also is faith first, family
second and career third is one of the principles of Mary Kay. And to have a company, a corporate
corporation that you can even talk about your faith, but live it out loud is, was very courageous.
So you don't talk about that, Jennifer and how she-
Well, yes. From the very beginning, you know, Mary Kay said God first, family second and
career third. And she really did live this. And I always say that Mary Kay was genuine
and she was humble. And there was one of the major reasons for this was that she realized
that God was using her, that it wasn't her that had started the company and made it successful,
but that it was because God wanted her to help women. She took that leap of faith. She
always acknowledged him. And because of that, he blessed what she was doing. And she was
also a great proponent of giving other people credit and recognizing people. And she would
say that one person, she herself could have not built this company to the great company
that it has become, but she always acknowledged that every staff member had an important role
and every beauty consultant had an important role and that together this company had been
built. And because she talked about our faith, that is one of the things that when you talk
to people about Mary Kay who knew her, they will always talk about the spiritual growth
that they experienced in Mary Kay because of her courage to talk about it. They never
felt that they had to be compromised about their faith. Mary Kay's faith was just a part
of her everyday life and they made it a part of their everyday lives. But Mary Kay never
preached. She never preached. What she did was she lived her faith. And she would talk
about her belief in God and how God had moved in this. She would give her testimony, but
she never preached or made people feel uncomfortable about what she believed. And that was just
a great gift to her. And because of that, she was able to influence a lot of people
to have that spiritual growth that many look back and just say what a blessing that was
to do that. And I can absolutely say one of the things we always say we got out of our
start a kid from starting this business is my spiritual growth. And right before we came
on this call, I was on a Mary Kay director Bible study and there's like 250 of us on
this Bible study that from all over the country don't even know each other. But one director
stepped on our faith and started this and it's touching so many lives and you just never
know. And I love that part about Mary Kay that the God first, family second went off.
Not just Mary Kay stories, but her faith part of it. You want to share that a little bit?
You went off for me for a minute. What was the last question, please?
Just that you had shared the other day when you were talking about writing your book that
you want to share Mary Kay's the faith side of Mary Kay.
Right. Right. And that is something that I think that most people don't realize was that
Mary Kay had a deep and abiding faith with her and herself. And I wanted to let other
people know that she was a great leader, but not only was she a great leader, but she was
a great Christian leader. And people kept asking me to write my book, write down my
stories and I really didn't feel like I was qualified to do that. What, you know, what
qualified me to write a book about Mary Kay? But one night I was woken, I was awakened
with this thought that I think came from God, that I was to write a book about Mary Kay
and that it was a book about what her faith was and that that was the most important thing
to her. That's what she would want to be remembered for. Of course, she wants to be remembered
that she was a great businesswoman, but I think more important, she wanted to be remembered
for the fact that she was a great Christian businesswoman. And before that, it was like,
I would always say, no, I'm not going to write a book. No, I'm not going to write a book.
But after that, it was like I would, I was being awakened every morning and just the
words would just come off of my pen onto the paper. It was like I was being inspired to
write this book. And I interviewed so many women who had fantastic stories about how,
you know, Mary Kay had given them success and given them self-confidence, but also about
the spiritual growth that they had experienced as a part of Mary Kay. And just listening
to these women and hearing their inspiration reinforced how special Mary Kay was and what
a great company this has been that has touched so many lives in so many ways and made dreams
come true.
Yeah, we could go on and on and on and on and on about stories and faith.
I wanted to say something about, you know, once you decide that you're going to do it,
why not do it? It's like, you know, God called me to do something that was totally out of
my comfort zones, totally something that I didn't know how to do. But I just didn't sit,
you know, I sit down and wrote what the Lord told me. But I realized that there's more
to making a dream come true. There is preparation and work. And so, you know, the first thing
I did is I took courses on writing proposals. I took courses on writing a book. I knew that
this was going to be a memoir for six months. I read other people's memoirs to see how they
had done it and just to get some ideas of how people had written memoirs themselves.
And I talked to other authors. I put a lot of foundation into this book. I just didn't
say, okay, I'm going to write a book and just flippantly do it. I mean, when God tells us
to do something, lots of times there has to be preparation. That there's a foundation.
The foundation has to be built for a big dream to happen.
Right. But, you know, and you write in the book, it was that prompting of God and saying
why not today? But yeah, and then you got to put the work behind it and be smart about
it. So yeah, with why not today, it's making that decision, but then being smart. This
Bible study I'm doing is called, the book is basically saying yes to God, which is,
you know, why not today and what you did. And then it said you have to have insane obedience
or something like that and then be obedient to the steps into getting it done. Yeah. And
it's not easy. And I'm sure you've had days that you're like, why that?
Yes.
People you've been around or why don't you tell us a fun Mary Kay story since you've
got, since we're with the Mary Kay storyteller.
Oh, okay. A fun Mary Kay story. Well, this is one that happened to me and it's one of
my funniest ones because Mary Kay was always on a diet like most women. And she was very
interested in nutrition because of her work in cancer awareness. And she would take these
cancer newsletters and of course they always had articles about nutrition and they had
these recipes, which I tried one one time and I thought, oh, this is the most horrible
recipe I've ever tried. But a group of us, there were four of us at lunch one day and
they, Mary Kay started the nutrition talk before we had our lunch. Well, the waitress
came up and she said, I'll take your order now. And Mary Kay said, well, you'll go first.
So we all ordered turkey sandwiches, diet cokes and salads, because after all we'd had
the lecture. Then Mary Kay turned to the waitress and she said, I'll have a cheeseburger, french
fries and a chocolate malt. And she had a twinkle in her eye and you know, just that
I gotcha look in her eye. And to make matters worse, she slurped her malt to prolong her,
you know, enjoyment of fooling us.
Yeah, she definitely had a sense of humor from one of her and lots of fun stories. We
could go on and on. So what would you say to somebody to empower somebody to be courageous,
to start that business, to write a book, to say why not today? What would be your encouragement
for somebody?
The promptings, you know, if you get a prompting and we argue with ourselves, we think, oh
no, I didn't really hear from God or oh no, that's not really what I was meant to do.
We're trying to talk ourselves out of it. Well, why not? I mean, why not try? What's
the worst thing that could happen to you? As Mary Kay, she had this little saying, she
would say, become a member of the Din Din Club. Well, Din Din stands for do it now,
do it now. So when you get those promptings, if you just take that first step, it would
be amazing the doors that will open for you. If it is meant to be, those doors are going
to open. Just take the first step.
Absolutely. Totally agree. So, oh my gosh, so many great stories and so much great information
about Mary Kay. So I always try to tie back my guests to a connection with my father because
this podcast was kind of started in his honor. Now, obviously, I've never met my father and
he did pass away. But I was trying to kind of think of different things. And with you
and with Mary Kay, one, his faith was very strong and he was definitely part of the Din
Din Club. And he often said, as we always talk about, why not today? But also, two,
what's the worst thing that can happen if you try and you say yes or ask that question
or just start? He did own his own business and worked for himself for years. So I kind
of saw that modeled in my life, which was then gave me the courage to do what I've done.
And I know for Mary Kay, family was very important. And same with my father. I mean, he worked
for himself so he could be there for us. There were six of us kids. And I remember like it
was yesterday when I started Mary Kay, my dad was a little leery because I'd just finished
my master's degree. What are you doing? But when I qualified for my first car, I'll never
forget, he talked to my senior director and said, complimented her and Mary Kay and how
it had changed me. And so it wasn't about the car, but the person I was becoming with
qualifying for the car and the personal growth in the business. And he was very leery. But
one of his one of my biggest cheerleaders and because of Mary Kay, when he was sick,
I was able to be there when he passed away and I was sad, I was able to be sad and, you
know, not take time off. For me to be where I am doing the things I am right now. Oh,
I think my internet's being a little unstable so we can hear us. So anything else you want
to add before we say goodbye, Jennifer?
Well, you know, it's so obvious that your dad was a great influence in your life. And
you know, his philosophy has been passed on through you. Mary Kay always told us, pass
it on. And so I commend you because you are passing on the philosophy that your dad taught
to you and the philosophy that Mary Kay taught to you. And it is a great thing when we have
positive mentors. And if you don't have a positive mentor in your life, I can recommend
one and that is Mary Kay Ash. And I did write the book to show what a great leader she was
and my book is on Amazon.
Where can we find your book and how can we connect with you?
And you can connect through Facebook. I have a Facebook page that's jennifercook-author.
And I had so much fun interviewing national sales directors that I'm continuing to do
that. And I post I continually post stories about Mary Kay that their experiences with
Mary Kay and it's just a lot of fun to talk to them. But it's a lot of fun, I think, to
read the articles to see how Mary Kay interacted with people and to know that she was just
a down to earth person who was truly an inspiration to everyone who met her.
Yep, absolutely. Well, I will share in the show notes or on Facebook and everything how
people can find you on Facebook and find your book and I have not I admit I have not got
the book yet. I'm going to order it today. But thank you again. Gosh, what a special
day. Spotify, iTunes, I think I added to Google pretty much anywhere you can find a podcast.
We do have some fun Why Not Today gear. We've got t shirts and cups and vinyl. So if you
want to start the movement with us and say why not today, let me know. We are working
on the website. We will have that ready hopefully soon. So again, Jennifer, thank you for joining
us and happy 59th anniversary to Mary Kay. That's right. So much luck with your book
and I can't wait to get my hands on it. So thank you. And don't forget everybody say
why not today. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.