Shane Parrish

When she'd moved cities, she'd lost her customer base and had to start over from scratch.

Military wives face this constantly.

So her solution to this was no sales territories.

Consultants could sell anywhere, recruit anyone, keep their teams no matter where they moved, relocate from Dallas to Denver, and your commissions continued.

This created collaboration instead of territorial competition.

In most direct sales companies, consultants viewed each other as threats.

At Mary Kay, they were potential teammates.

A brief word on competition here for a second.

Mary Kay was intensely competitive, but only with herself.

She built that into her business model.

The company held competitions constantly, but never where there could only be one winner, at least not at the start.

They'd set high sales targets, and if everyone hit the target, everyone won the prize.

So if 50 consultants all sold $5,000, then all 50 were celebrated.

And this inverted the traditional competitive model.

Instead of trying to beat each other, consultants helped each other succeed because someone else's success didn't diminish your own.

And I think that's a key point.

That's amazing.

So another problem was she'd struggled to balance work with raising children, missing school plays for meetings and taking sick children to babysitters because missing work could cost you your job.

The constant guilt she felt of failing at both work and motherhood.

So her solution was you can set your own hours entirely.