The finish line is off in the distance.
It’s not so far that you can’t see it, and for months, you’ve planned for the moment you’d get there. You’ve wanted it so much, you could feel it. And you’ll make it because, as in the new book, “Selling Opportunity” by Mary Lisa Gavenas, you’re willing to do whatever it takes.
Alexander and Lulu Wagner surely figured they were done raising babies.
There she was, though, an infant girl born more than a decade after her youngest-older sibling, a child they barely had time to name before they had to get back to work on the farm. They raised her in between long hours at a Houston-area hotel, a resort, a side-of-the-tracks restaurant, and several other endeavors just to put food on the table.
That little girl, Mary Kathlyn, grew up with very few possessions, therefore, but plenty of hustle. Though many Texas officials didn’t think secondary education was appropriate for girls then, she was a good student, won accolades, served on a militaristic drum-and-bugle corps, and she was set to graduate high school a year early, at age fifteen.
Instead, she left school and married a teenage-man who was largely absent from her life, leaving the family’s survival up to her. Before she divorced him age eighteen, she had three kids to feed and clothe, and she needed money.
Mary Kathlyn took a job selling psychology books.
She was good at that so, leaving her children with her mother, she started selling cleaning products door-to-door. She refined her patter, added her own spin to the company guidebook, and she attended a rally in Dallas that blew her mind. She bounced from job to job, honed her skills, and worked her way up with characteristic determination.
By 1963, Mary Kay, as she later called herself, had had jobs at several companies, and three divorces under her belt. She was widowed twice. And she started her own business, one that would change the lives of millions of women…
Throughout your career, you’ve undoubtedly heard several U-Rah-Rah versions of “You can do it.” You’ve taken some of them to heart. Others: in one ear, out the other. So now read “Selling Opportunity,” a book that shows it in action.
There are two things you’re going to like best here. First, author Mary Lisa Gavenas tells the story of skincare mogul Mary Kay Ash, her career, and a life that would have crushed anyone lesser. To say that it’s an inspirational story is an understatement, whether you’re familiar with her or not. Secondly, to put this biography into perspective, Gavenas offers readers a sense of the social times and the people that surrounded Ash, which makes her struggles and resolve even more impressive.
Taken as a whole, “Selling Opportunity” is the kind of book that snatches you back in time to hardscrabble Texas, puts you on a hard road out, and you’ll enjoy the journey home. It’s a pink Cadillac of business biographies, and you’ll love it to the finish.
