Welcome to the inaugural post of “Reflections” -- I’m delighted that you’ve come to visit! Perhaps we’ve had a chance to meet already; if so, it’s good to connect with you again. If we don’t yet know each other, I’m looking forward to learning about you. (If you’re curious about me, you can click on the “About the authors” button at the top right.) It is so exciting for me to have this opportunity to share with you a bit about what’s going on at Mary Kay and my perspective on issues that interest us as women. I’d also like to hear from you about what’s on your mind. I wish Mary Kay Ash were still here, so she could see us utilizing these new avenues of communication. In my early days at the company, I remember Mary Kay referring to “the three forms of communication – telegraph, telephone and tell-a-woman”. She would be so surprised at how far we’ve come as a society and as a company...

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...

The response to our call for entries in the tagline contest was impressive indeed. More than 700 of you let the creative juices flow and shared your ideas, and a good many of you submitted several different suggestions. There were a lot of common themes, and some that were very close to being identical. When we narrowed it down, if there were duplicates (or near duplicates) submitted, we chose the one that was submitted first. It was really hard to narrow it down to a manageable number that you could vote on, and we decided to offer up 13 for your consideration. (You know the Mary Kay significance of that number.) My thanks to each of you who took the time to share your thoughts. With all the engagement and excitement we've seen in these early days, I'm really looking forward to seeing where this conversation takes us. Very soon we will know the winner of the Michael Kors designer handbag, and our lucky winner will see their tagline gracing the home page of the Mary Kay Reflections...

I always know when it's getting close to one of my favorite times of the year when the mercury tops 100 degrees in Dallas, Texas. No, it's not that I like the heat so much, but it means that it's time for the annual Mary Kay Seminar . It recharges my batteries like nothing else I've ever experienced. It always reminds me of why I love this company so much and gets me motivated for another year of challenging work. It's the time that I reconnect with women that I haven't seen for a year, get updates on their families, see the new hairdos, and find out who is breaking records and setting audacious goals for new ones. So what exactly IS this thing called Seminar? Well, what it IS NOT is another stuffy, boring workshop that someone sends you to where you're supposed to learn something, but you usually don't. What it IS can best be described as the Academy Awards, Broadway, and the Miss Universe pageant all rolled up into one, with a dose of business education...

The Mary Kay women are really a creative bunch! We've had well over 500 suggestions for the Reflections blog tagline. We'll close down the contest and gather all the entries tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM Dallas time. Then we'll narrow it down and put several of the best back out there for you to vote on. The tagline that receives the most votes will be declared our winner, and the author will be the owner of a fabulous new Michael Kors designer handbag. I've noticed that many of you have left duplicate comments because you didn't see it post immediately. Comments made to this site are moderated, which means that I review them before they are posted to the site. I review the comments several times each day, but there are times when I eat, sleep, do my other Mary Kay work, and spend some time with my family. Also, for you "night owls", I'm an "early to bed, early to rise" person, so I rarely review comments after 9 PM, and often review them prior...

Another year of Mary Kay Seminar has come and gone. And, as always, it was the best one ever. We are so blessed as a company to have such inspirational women in our sales force. I love hearing their stories and seeing how much they've grown over the years. Amazing stories of tragedy and triumph and of setbacks and successes. Women who brought talents and skills from other professions and turned them into abundant success for themselves, and women who, in some cases, were least likely to succeed, and they did it anyway. (That reminds me of the bumblebee, and why Mary Kay Ash chose it as the symbol of success for our company. You see, the bumblebee should not be able to fly, because of the large size of its body relative to the size of its wings. But that doesn't matter to the bumblebee, who goes right along flying anyway. Mary Kay always loved this story of the bumblee. Her late husband, Mel Ash, who always gifted Mary Kay on Thursdays because that was the day they were married,...

I often wonder how different my life would have been, and even how different I would have been, had I not "grown up" in Mary Kay. I was in my very early 20's when I came to work here, and had so much to learn about business, people, life and myself. Almost daily, I am reminded of the tremendous impact that Mary Kay Ash, our sales force and my colleagues have had on my life and my journey of becoming the leader, wife, mother and friend that I am today. I know without a doubt that I am a better person, and that my life is richer because of the values that are entrenched in our company culture, and the warm and caring people that I am surrounded by. Mary Kay Ash encouraged all of us to pass on what we had learned, believing that "all you send into the lives of others comes back into your own." One way that I have chosen to "pass it on" is in mentoring young women in business, both inside and outside our company. I am amazed at what I have learned myself over...

Well, we've finally arrived at the piece of this on-going discussion that I've been looking forward to, and at the same time dreading. Not because it's bad in any way, in fact I think it's really good that women are comfortable talking about this subject. For our male readers, let me just say, don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger. When Mary Kay asked women around the world what they wanted in their lives today, they told us. In fact, there were ten consistencies that surfaced, regardless of what culture or region of the world the women were from. One of those ten things was MEN. . . sometimes ! The "sometimes" here is the critical factor. It seems that women today have a yin/yang relationship with the men in their lives. For single women, they definitely still have romantic notions, but many feel that husbands can become obstacles to some of the other desires they have in their lives, like their career. In Europe, women cited that being loved by a man...