I became athletic director at Southern Illinois University. I was there for five years, ending in 1981. But after a while I was kind of spinning my wheels there. I wanted to go to a program where I could use my talents more.
I applied at a number of major universities. And it didn't happen. Even though my name was Gale Sayers and I had a good program. . . . I think the main reason it didn't happen is that Gale Sayers is black. The same is true of professional football -- there are no black general managers, no black coaches. Why? It's a very closed society.
So I decided this: I'm getting out. I'm going to do it on my own, do it by myself, do it with my wife. We'll make a go of it ourselves.
Hey, I had a great deal of skill in football, but I've seen a lot of skilled people that didn't do a damn thing in the game, because they didn't prepare; they didn't go out there and work hard. Football season ended for the Bears, every year when I played, in December; by February, I was working out again for next season. You had to work at it; every year they drafted a running back to come and take your job. If they're coming to take my job, I'd better be ready for it.
Hard work in business means preparing, then it means calling on more customers than you thought you could call on. In this business, you've probably got another 50 computer-supply companies starting up every year. If they get some business from the people that you are serving, that means they're stealing some of your business.
The hardest thing for me is getting through all the talk about football before I get to my product. With a lot of people, it's, "How are the Bears doing?" "What do you think about the Super Bowl?" Buy eventually, if I have to be there five hours, we're going to talk about computer supplies. Every time I'm talking to somebody, I'm thinking computers.
"Once you ride in a limousine, it's just a car." -- Xavier Roberts
I met with Xavier Roberts, 29, in his new Atlanta penthouse; although the decorators weren't finished, the Dali already hung by the chimney, and the Picasso was in the bedroom. Roberts was a 23-year-old art student when he made the first of the Little People -- the dolls that later became known as Cabbage Patch Kids.
I wanted to be rich. I grew up pretty poor, but even back then I didn't want a Chevrolet, I wanted a Maserati. Even when I was really young, I didn't want a brick home, I wanted a penthouse in the sky. Like the one I've got now. But I didn't really care about having my own business. I was looking to be more of a famous artist, and it all started out as something to do for art.
I'd put, like, old clothes on the babies, scuffed-up shoes, and burp stains, to make them look really real. Then I went to garage sales and bought bassinets and cribs so I could display them like real babies, kind of laying there. Then I made up a couple and started selling them. It really wasn't a genius thing.
I never expected riots in a department store. But before I signed with Coleco, I hd 2,000 people once waiting in line to pay $130. So I figured they would do millions of them at only $20. These past two years I think we sold 18 million Cabbage Patch Kids.
I miss a lot of the early times. I don't get the same satisfaction, going out and doing promotions and signing parties, as I did first making the dolls. Meeting 2,000 people -- you're just running through them like cattle. It's a job.
Even artists have to do some shit, though, and I enjoy it for the most part. While the business was growing, I got to travel all over the United States, which I'd never done. I'm probably happier than the average person could ever be. But it's really no different. Making a $75 car payment six years ago was a big deal. Today, I've got something nicer, but it's almost the same. You get used to this, too. Like my Rolls-Royce, or my limousine. Once you ride in a limousine, it's just a car.
"On the day of the funeral we sat in the living room, trying to decide what to do." -- Mary Kay Ash
The Mary Kay style, with its pink Cadillacs and pep rallies, has turned Mary Kay Ash into a mentor to the 150,000 women who, as heads of their own small companies, sell $277.5 million worth of her cosmetics. The headquarters of the business she started 22 years ago in her living room are now in a Dallas skyscraper of golden glass.
Twenty-two years ago, a woman walked two paces behind the boss. Anytime I made a suggestion, my boss would say, "Mary Kay, you think like a woman." I had this terrible burning inside that said, women deserve more than they're getting.
So I sat down at my dining room table to write a book on some of the problems that I had had.I wrote down all the good things the companies I had been with had done, and wrote down the problems. One day I thought, If you're so brilliant, what would you have done to solve those problems? Almost like a game, I began to work out some solutions. And when I got the whole thing on paper, I realized that I had written a marketing plan.
Then I thought, Wouldn't it be great if somebody did this instead of just talking about it?
So I took my life savings -- knowing full well that if it didn't work, I had sawed a limb off and I would have to go back to work for somebody else for the rest of my life. I took every cent I had in the world and went out and bought formulations for a cosmetic that I had been using for 10 years that I thought was phenomenal. Then I had to get bottles and jars and write literature and everything else that goes along with starting a company. The one thing was, I didn't know about administration. So my husband was going to handle all the administration.
One month to the day before we were to open the company, he died of a heart attack at the breakfast table. So then the question was, Do you go on with this, or do you stop right there? Because, literally, half my company was gone.
But I always say, when God closes a door, he opens a window. And it came in the form of my 20-year-old son, Richard. On the day of the funeral we sat in the living room trying to decide what we should do. And Richard became the administrator. We did everything. We swept up, we mimeographed the newsletters, we filled orders, working sometimes until two or three o'clock in the morning. That was our inauspicious beginning -- in 500 square feet of space.
