lisa's love: What I Learned from Paula and Other Fun Things

I know not everyone understands the world of Mary Kay. As with many other things in life, we are one of those worlds where:
"From the outside looking in you can't understand it. From the inside looking out you can't explain it."

I wish we could explain it to everyone. We try. Oh how we try ... but it's one of those things not everyone grasps. Not everyone feels. But for those of us who do, oh how blessed we are.

I put this on Facebook last night...

Ask a hundred Mary Kay consultants why they joined Mary Kay, and you will get many, many different and varying answers.
Ask those same hundred women what they love most about their business, and almost every single one of them will give the same answer: the women.
The women we meet, the women we learn from, the women we mentor, the women we help, the women we serve.
Yeah, almost every single woman will say it's the women God has put into our lives through this amazing opportunity.

...and it is true. In Mary Kay we share. A lot. Many times the question arises, "What do you love most about your Mary Kay business?" I have heard woman after woman after woman say, "Well, while I love the money, and the prizes, and the recognition, and the cars(!), and the jewelry what I love most about my Mary Kay business is the women I get to spend my time with. The women God has put into my life. Take everything else away, and I would still do this for the women and the relationships I have formed."

Whoa.

In Mary Kay, we begin as Independent Beauty Consultants. This means we are our own little business. We can do as little or as MUCH as we want. Mary Kay Ash knew each woman is in a different place in her life, and she wanted this opportunity for ALL women no matter where she is in the moment.
We can continue on our merry way simply building a customer base and selling the product which we so love, or ...
we can continue on our merry way selling the product which we so love while advancing our career. We can move up in our business. And it's entirely UP TO US!! We can decide to 'build a team' by sharing this opportunity with others and inviting them to begin their own Mary Kay business.

We have different titles for different levels on the career path, and we have different wardrobes for the different levels. When you see a group of Mary Kay women, we may look a bit odd to you, because some are dressed one way and some another, and yet, we're all kind of, sort of all dressed alike, and you just don't 'get it'. We understand. It all makes perfect sense to us, but we absolutely understand how it looks to you. We used to think it odd too, but that was before we began our own business.

So ... we begin as our own little personal business.
Then, if we so desire, we build a team.
Then, if we wish to move into leadership, we build our team into a unit.
And if God puts it onto our hearts, we can build our unit into a National Area.

What I LOVE about this company, and I have said it over and over and over, is the symbiotic relationship each woman has with one another. The ONLY way to make money, the ONLY way to earn a car, the ONLY way to advance your career, the ONLY way to win free trips is by helping other women, by raising others up with you. Period. It's that simple.

Paula Kirkpatrick is building her National Area. And she's going to ROCK it!
She came to Corpus this week to encourage, to mentor, to share, to laugh and to cry with all of us, and we are so thankful, because she did all of this and more. She lifted us; she inspired us.

I took notes, because what I have learned is when a woman shares her story, you listen, and you take notes and you reflect and you learn.

And here is what I learned from Paula....

It took Paula 15 years, let me say that again, 15 years, to say "yes" to Mary Kay. So, if you are out there layering and loving on a woman, because you just know she would rock this business, even when she doesn't know it herself, do not give up!
Paula thought the world of Mary Kay was just a little too 'happy clappy', and she knew makeup cannot make anyone that happy.
However, God had put it into Paula's heart to help girls. She wanted to reach out and help girls with low self esteem, girls who didn't respect themselves. As she looked around and dug deeper, she realized the reason so many teen girls felt this way, is because they had mothers who had low self esteem and who didn't respect themselves. How could they teach their daughters any differently, when they didn't have it in them? She knew if you wanted to help the daughters, you had to help the mommas.
Paula went to a woman's shelter and asked how she could help these women. It just so happened that the women in that shelter got one evening where they got to be "Queen for a Day". They had an elegant dinner where they got to dress up in gowns and have a special night. Paula, still not in the Mary Kay world herself, but knowing others who were, reached out to those Mary Kay women and asked for help. Paula needed ball gowns and makeovers for the women in the shelter, and what she got surpassed anything she could hope for. Women who now sold Mary Kay but used to be cosmetologists did the women's hair; some did nails. Gowns came in from all over the United States. Paula realized there might actually be something more to all this 'happy clappy Mary Kay world' she had been observing but not understanding.

She finally said "yes" to Mary Kay when her mother-in-law told Paula that she saw Paula leading women. You see ... most women in Mary Kay do not care about lipstick. It's about helping women.

Paula went and asked her husband, "Did you know you can make a lot of money doing this?" And, because he grew up in the pink bubble, he did indeed already know this, but what Paula meant was, "Did you know I can make a lot of money doing this?", because (and read this part very carefully) we can all make the same money in this company. All of us.

Paula did not come into this business for the money. She came into this business to impact women. And it is why she gets up each and every morning. She gets up every morning wondering, "Who can I bless today?"

So when you think Mary Kay is about selling a lipstick, it is so so so much more than that.
As I wrote when I began this post .... it's about the women. Mary Kay Ash never set out to sell a lipstick. She set out to change women's lives. That is what this company is about.

A few photos from our evening: