The Make-up of Sales Success

When Kathy Rasmussen quit teaching school and began selling Mary Kay cosmetics in 1970, she had one goal in mind, and a modest one at that.

“All I wanted was an extra $20 a week to pay someone to clean my house,” she said with a chuckle. “That’s the honest truth.”

Her actual rewards from nearly 13 years in the Mary Kay business granted that simple wish and others she’d never even voiced. Today she drives a pink Cadillac, wears Ultrasuede suits, sports gold and diamond jewelry, and keeps warm in luxurious fur coats. And because she’s made so much money, two years ago her husband, a Ph.D. economist, quit his job with the CIA to take over management of her business.

“You work an extra hour as a teacher and what do you get?” she asked, her brown eyes twinkling with enthusiasm. “Usually not even a thank you, much less extra pay. But with Mary Kay you actually get something – a lot, in fact – for your hard work.”

Directing 200 women

A resident of McLean, VA, Mrs. Rasmussen is currently one of the top Mary Kay sales directors in the country. She manages a unit consisting of more than 200 women in 25 states. Within nine months, she expects to be named one of only 41 national sales directors in the company.

She got her start in the company as everyone does, as a Mary Kay consultant, giving shows and demonstrations in private homes and teaching skin care. Within two years, she’d become a director, which means she had sold approximately $1,000 worth of cosmetics a month and recruited at least two other consultants a month. That’s when she received her first pink Cadillac, the well-known symbol of accomplishment in the Mary Kay company. She gets a new one every two years.

Attractive and meticulously groomed, Mrs. Rasmussen oozes with confidence and enthusiasm. There’s a sense of immense control about her, an innate ability to push herself just a little more than is necessary.

Keys to success

She modestly attributes her substantial success in the Mary Kay business to her husband’s support and the Mary Kay philosophy that provides women with job flexibility and generous financial compensation at the same time.

But, to her own credit, she’s a woman who understands herself, who knows where she wants to go and what it will take to get there. Over the years she’s learned to cope with the frustrations of being a working mother at the same time she’s met the job challenges that face those who must be self-motivators.

“Do you know what the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful one is?” she asked. “The successful person will do what the unsuccessful person won’t. If I had ever sat back and said, ‘Oh, I just can’t do that’, you can bet someone else would have come along and done it. Then they would have been where I am today.”

The positive philosophy by which she has found success may well derive from Mary Kay Ash, the company’s much-loved benevolent founder.

But the self-control and determination that have nurtured her through the years – they belong to Kathy Rasmussen. “In this kind of job, you have to be able to motivate yourself – the conventions and other company sessions are all very exciting and make everyone enthusiastic, but if you can’t sustain yourself in between them, you’re in for a disappointment.”

One of the keys to self-motivation, Mrs. Rasmussen believes, is to figure out what your own strengths and weaknesses are, then “make the most of the strengths and do something about the weaknesses.”

She is a “people person” by nature, she says, an excellent quality for sales work. But she can’t stand all the book work and behind-the-scenes organizing necessary for her operation.

“As soon as I could, I got a part-time person to come in and help me out,” she said. “But before I could afford that, I’d try to put the office work at the top of my list of things to do. I felt so good getting that behind me and it enabled me to put more of myself into what I like best – working with people. The setup now is terrific – my husband is a great organizer and he’s computerized much of what I used to do.”

“Have-to” motivation

The main way she motivates herself is to set up what she jokingly refers to as “have to” situations. “I back myself into a corner on purpose so I absolutely ‘have to’ do whatever it is I might otherwise avoid. For example, I’m not crazy about getting up and getting going in the morning, so I’ll make a 9 a.m. appointment. Then I have to get going. Sometimes I hate myself for it but it works!”

Neither does she care for traveling alone, so she sets up appointments that can’t be broken.

“Women especially find traveling alone difficult,” she said, “and I think it’s because we’ve been led to think we can’t do it. We hesitate to leave the comfort zone of home. I still have to push myself to do it, but at least now I know I won’t self-destruct on a trip and that my family can manage just fine without me. I miss them while I’m away, but I’ve learned I appreciate them so much more when I get back.”

The one time she’s had car trouble when driving alone, fate – and Mary Kay, it seems – were on her side.

“It was late at night and dark, and I’d kept an appointment because I didn’t want to disappoint the consultant who had asked me for help. Wouldn’t you know I’d have a flat tire. I got ready to flag someone down for help when a man and his wife stopped. The woman had been a Mary Kay consultant and when she saw the pink Cadillac on the roadside she insisted that her husband stop and help me. I just couldn’t believe my good luck.”

Career and family

Though Mrs. Rasmussen believes there’s greater compassion today for the dual roles working mothers must assume, she says, “nobody really understands what it’s like to juggle career and family unless they’ve been there. There’s an awful lot of frustration that’s inevitable and you just simply have to learn to cope.”

Her early years in the Mary Kay business were the most difficult, she said, because her children were young. “This is why I say it’s so important for women to have their husband’s support. Dale was great about taking care of the children when I was doing a show several nights a week. And he worked only five minutes from our home so he could help some with driving them for doctors’ appointments and music lessons and all the places children have to go.”

Being her own boss, though, made it easier for her than for other women who have strict work schedules and must be in an office all day, she feels.

When her daughter required emergency surgery, for example, Ms. Rasmussen took a month off from work without either loss of pay or jeopardizing her job. “I had other people under me, so my income was assured. That’s just not possible in very many jobs today.”

The basic Mary Kay demonstration is a low-key affair, designed to show women how to care for their own personal skin types. There are different products for dry, oily, and combination skins and each guest uses samples suited to her complexion. With assistance from a consultant, each woman cleans, moisturizes and applies makeup, leaving with “a Mary Kay face” and hopefully, a batch of supplies.

Mrs. Rasmussen first began using Mary Kay products herself in the late 1960s in Dallas, Texas, where she’d been introduced to them by the mother of one of her first-grade students. “I think what I liked best was that they emphasized skin care rather than just trying to get you to buy makeup. I got the distinct feeling they really cared about women.”

Two years later, after her husband finished his doctorate work at Southern Methodist University, they moved to McLean and he began working for the CIA. When she couldn’t locate a Mary Kay consultant in the area, she began thinking seriously about becoming one herself.

“Dale had looked in to the company and was quite impressed with all he’d read,” she said. “I wanted to work, but I wanted to do something that was flexible so I could spend as much time as I wanted with my children. And I figured if I was looking for someone to buy Mary Kay products from, other women probably were too.”

Diamond rings

The lavish expensive gifts Mary Kay awards for achievement are legendary now and illustrate the company’s upbeat philosophy that women deserve to be recognized, Mrs. Rasmussen said.

She herself has more diamond rings than she can wear at one time, the most recent acquisition being a 4.8 carat ring she chose over a full length mink coat. “I already have two fur coats,” she said, laughing. “What would I do with three?”

In 1981, she was ranked sixth among 3,000 unit directors and won a trip for two to Hawaii. “Of course I took my husband,” she quipped. “After all, he’s part of my business.”

Mrs. Rasmussen admits the financial security and rewards she’s obtained through Mary Kay are marvelous. “We have the financial freedom to do a lot of things we couldn’t do otherwise,” she said. “We love to travel, and we’re a skiing family and everyone knows that’s expensive.”

Success hasn’t changed Kathy Rasmussen’s down-to-earth approach to life, she insists. “I still have feelings of awe now and then that I have so much,” she said, “I wonder sometimes if it’s all right for everything to be so super – it’s got to be illegal or something!”