Alumna Jill Davis—a past advertising and promotion major and a current national sales director for Mary Kay—has a favorite saying: “Oftentimes, the riskiest thing you do is play it safe.”
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It’s certainly a sentiment that has played out in her career. Although she received her degree in marketing in 1999, she had trouble finding an advertising job that suited her in Kansas City, where her husband needed to move for his work. She got a job as a bank manager, but knew that it wasn’t what she wanted to be doing for the rest of her life. When she met a national sales director for Mary Kay at a local Chamber of Commerce meeting, she thought, “Why not give it a whirl?” Her gamble on a whirl paid off: By the time Jill turned 25, she had replaced her income enough to retire from the banking industry and made her Mary Kay business full time.
Mary Kay had all the values Jill wanted in an ideal company: women, America, faith, family and work, all together in one organization. The flexibility and freedom of the business allowed her to “sprinkle” her work around her husband Corey’s work schedule and her children Kobe and Coen’s activities. As a national sales director, Jill’s job still involves selling product and working with customers, but is more heavily focused on building leaders out of the consultants that work under her, and helping them build their own businesses. “I love working with women and encouraging women and inspiring people to be the best versions of themselves,” Jill says. “It’s such a win to see someone else winning.”
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Jill’s marketing degree played an unexpected role in her Mary Kay business. In the beginning, she used concepts from her degree to help build her clientele. “Different points of contact are necessary to keep and retain a customer,” she says. Her advertising and networking skills definitely came in handy when she began creating a customer base for her business. Now, the rest of her business degree comes into play. “As an entrepreneur, the more you understand how business works, the better, especially from a top-down view rather than employee.” Jill believes the accounting classes she had to take for her marketing degree were some of the most useful later on for Mary Kay. Between getting to use her business acumen and doing work that she’s passionate about, Mary Kay has ended up being a good fit for Jill.
Another reason to love working for Mary Kay? You might end up on an advertisement in Times Square! “Mary Kay treats us like gold.…They like to reward the sales force and think outside the box,” Jill says about a surprise photoshoot held at a training session for the national sales directors. The photoshoot was optional, but the photographers didn’t tell the directors what it was for. “I thought it was for social media and before I knew it, friends were calling me saying they had seen me on a billboard in Times Square!” Jill says she didn’t go see it herself while it was up for the whole month of December, but received lots of pictures from friends who did.
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Jill sees sticking with Mary Kay for the long term. There are still positions she can promote herself to if she wants to work towards them, but she loves her current job of working with other Mary Kay consultants on their businesses. Although this wasn’t the job she thought she’d have when she graduated with her marketing degree, she has found that her time at Missouri State and in the College of Business has created a strong foundation on which to build her dream career.