VOICE ONE:
I’m Mary Tillotson.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA. This week, we tell about one of the most successful American businesswomen. Mary Kay started a company in nineteen sixty-three with a five thousand dollar investment. Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics is an international company worth thousands of millions of dollars.
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VOICE ONE:
Mary Kathlyn Wagner was born in the state of Texas in nineteen eighteen. For much of her childhood, she cared for her sick father while her mother worked long hours at a public eating place. Mary Kay married Ben Rogers when she was seventeen years old. They had three children before he left home to serve in World War Two. When he returned, their marriage ended. Mary Kay looked for a job so she could support her children.
Mary Kay began selling different kinds of products. At first, she sold books. Later, she visited peoples’ homes to show how home care products such as cleaning fluids and equipment helped ease housework.
One night, Mary Kay was showing these products at the home of Ova Heath Spoonemore. Later in the evening, Missus Spoonemore began giving her guests some home made skin care products. The products were developed by her father, J.W. Heath, in Arkansas. Mary Kay tried the skin care products and found they made her skin smooth.
VOICE TWO:
Mary Kay was successful selling home care products. Her supervisors praised her work. But they never increased her earnings. She left the company after a man she trained was given a more important job than she had.
Mary Kay said later that she learned from this experience. It taught her that men did not believe that a woman could succeed in business. She decided to prove them wrong. So she bought the rights to Mister Heath’s skin care products and started her own company. She paid five hundred dollars for the legal rights to the products.
VOICE ONE:
The Mary Kay Cosmetics company began operating in Dallas, Texas, in nineteen sixty-three. Mary Kay’s twenty-year-old son Richard was the company’s financial official. The idea was to sell skin care products through demonstrations in homes and offices. Nine sales representatives were chosen to sell the products.
The sales representatives were independent workers. They bought products like soaps and skin softening liquids from the company and sold them at higher prices to friends, family members and other individuals. Mary Kay decided that each representative who brought other sales women into the company would receive part of the new person’s earnings. That way, experienced sales representatives would be willing to help train new ones.
Mary Kay told the women who worked for her that to be successful in life a person should put God first, family second and work third. She said women must discover how to be good wives and mothers while at the same time learning how to succeed in work.
