Shane Parrish

The principles she discovered about incentives, culture, and human psychology work in any business.

We cover all 23 of her timeless principles in this episode, and I guarantee you at least one of them will make a difference in your life today.

It's time to listen and learn.

To understand what Mary Kay Ash built, you need to understand what shaped her.

And that starts with a telephone in Houston, Texas around 1925.

Mary Kay was seven years old.

Her father had just contracted tuberculosis at the sanitarium where he worked.

The disease turned him from a capable man into an invalid confined to bed with his lungs slowly failing.

To keep the family from starving, her mother took a job managing a restaurant.

She worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week.

There were no weekends and no holidays, just an endless cycle of breakfast shifts and dinner service while her husband lay dying at home.

That left young Mary Kay very much on her own.

She was responsible for cooking, cleaning, laundry, and caring for her bedridden father.

Every afternoon around 3.30, she'd pick up the heavy telephone receiver and dial the restaurant.

And always, she'd end the same way.

You can do it, Mary Kay.

You can do it.

Talk about belief before ability.

Her mother had no choice but to believe in her.

There was no one else.