Reason to build. “I believe that we can only give our children two things in life: roots and wings. Mary Kay allows the opportunity for both,” Independent Senior National Sales Director Emeritus Pat Danforth says. In fact, Pat’s children became a main incentive for her success. “I feel that our children should be part of our reason to build our businesses, not our excuse to stop working.”  

Pat and her husband, Tim, wanted to give their daughters everything they needed in life, financially and emotionally, in spite of the fact that their military family moved 12 times in the first 15 years of her Mary Kay business. “Our many moves and our children were the keys to my consistency,” Pat says. I focused on sales and team building no matter where I lived. Each time we moved, I began my business again because, to me, moving wasn’t a reason to quit, it was a reason to keep going.”

That helped Pat build a strong business. “My philosophy is that if you will do the things you ought to do when you ought to do them, you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them,” she says.

Pat praises the accomplishments of the women in her National area and those of her grown daughters. Jessica is a medical doctor and an attorney. Regan is currently an Independent Senior Sales Director who has earned the use of a Mary Kay pink Cadillac. “We have traveled the world, earned fabulous prizes, and live in a beautiful timber and stone home on the lake as a result of the Mary Kay opportunity,” she says. “Yet, if you took it all away, you could never erase what this Company has done for my family.”