All I can say is WOW! I wish you could all see how things are "buzzing" around here since yesterday morning. So many of our employees and executives are sharing their excitement about the new blog, and just take a look at the response we've received so far. Clearly, the time was right for us to make this connection. As far as the tagline contest, we've already received more than 150 fabulous entries. The plan is to keep it open through the weekend, and then we'll close the contest early next week. My team will take all the entries, narrow them down to a handful, and post them for you to vote on. In the meantime, keep those great ideas coming. In case you're curious about the PRIZE, how does a Michael Kors designer handbag sound? Is there such a thing as too many purses?

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from Mary Kay Ash was the importance of maintaining a positive attitude. She often said "What you think about, you bring about!" In the more than 10 years that I worked closely with her, I never once heard her mutter a negative thought. She was always about the possibilities, about seeing the glass half full, and about making lemonade when life gives you lemons. I remember in the mid-1980s, when interest rates were sky high, inflation was running rampant, savings and loans went under and our country's economy was creating challenges for us all. Mary Kay's response was "Recession? What recession? I refuse to participate in a recession!" Her laser-sharp focus on continuing to help women and their families through those trying times kept us all positive and focused, too. We made it through those times, stronger than ever. Once again, our economy presents us with challenges. And the news tells us that women are impacted...

I was asked to give the closing keynote speech at a Global Business Summit yesterday, conducted by the Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter of the American Marketing Assocation. On Tuesday evening, there was a reception at a local university for the speakers, several marketing industry professionals and faculty from the university. One of my staff members from Mary Kay's market research team is the President-Elect of the local AMA chapter, so she also attended the reception. I don't get many opportunities to socialize with my team, and I was glad to have the chance to visit with her outside the normal work day environment. As we were talking, she shared with me her dream of continuing her education and pursuing a PhD, and then the conversation somehow turned to getting out of school and trying to figure out where you fit in the business world, and all the things that they don't teach you in college that you wish they would. She said they didn't teach her in college how to find the...

I saw a great quote on Twitter yesterday. Unfortunately, an author wasn't cited, so I don't know who to attribute it to, but it really got me to thinking about what happens to us when things don't go our way. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted" If that is true, which I believe it is, then I know without a doubt that Mary Kay Ash would have said that she had lots of "experience "! For example, when she was a salesperson herself (before founding our company), she had set her sights on winning a beautiful handbag that she had seen a previous sales leader earn. She set that as her goal, and worked hard all year long to earn one for herself. She achieved the level of sales required, but she didn't get what she wanted. Instead, she was rewarded with a flounder light (evidently it's something you use to attract fish when you're trying to catch them). From that experience , she decided that if she ever got the chance to...

As I've continued on my life's journey, one of the many things that I have learned about myself is that I am a creator/producer. I like to "make things". In my early years, it was crafts and sewing. I'd often just get a piece of fabric and sit down with the scissors and begin cutting and sewing, without a pattern, because I saw in my head what I wanted to create. (Perhaps I was really meant to be a fashion designer.) My next phase of production was children and the things that I could create through my work at Mary Kay, like products and marketing tools. As I continued to move up in the organization and focus more on strategy and leading others, I became less involved in the actual day-to-day creation of things. It took me a few years to figure out that I was actually missing the creating/producing process and the sense of accomplishment that comes at the end when you actually have the "thing" that you envisioned in the beginning. Since that was no longer...

The votes are in and we have a winning tagline for the Mary Kay blog. Congratulations and thanks to each of you who contributed a tagline suggestion, and also to those who took the time to vote. The winning tagline is Reflections: The purpose and passion behind Mary Kay products and people This tagline was originally submitted by Kim Howe Beams as Reflections: Look in, reach out! Discover the purpose and passion behind Mary Kay products & people . When we went through the process of narrowing down all the submissions into the 13 finalists, we did some editing in order to make some of them shorter, but still maintain the essence of the thought. I'm extremely happy with where we ended up on the tagline, and I think it does a wonderful job of explaining to our blog readers what sort of content they will find here when they visit. I hope you like it. The tagline will actually begin appearing on the blog site sometime next week. Kudos to Kim for the winning slogan, and you're going...

Yesterday, as we were gathering to begin a regularly-scheduled staff meeting, four of us were just catching up with each other on what was going on in our personal lives. One woman shared that she had just been to the doctor for her annual physical, and not only was she excited about the significant weight she had already lost, but had set a new goal to lose 17 additional pounds. Another talked about completing her first workout with a personal trainer, and how she was looking forward to the next one. And the third woman, well, talk about being on a mission. She shared that she has set a goal to compete in a triathlon, and had begun daily training for the fall event. As each of them was sharing their personal vision, I could sense the excitement in their voices, I could see by their body language that they had a sense of pride about what they were doing, and I began to feel those same things somehow magically being transferred to me. My adrenaline began to rise (or at least it felt like...