"For every failure, there's an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour"
About this Quote
Mary Kay Ash packages grit as logistics: failure isn’t a verdict, it’s a routing problem. The language is deliberately unromantic - “course of action,” “roadblock,” “detour” - the vocabulary of sales territories, calendars, and quotas. That’s the point. By turning emotional turbulence into navigation, she offers a mindset that feels actionable, especially to people whose livelihoods depend on rejection not becoming personal.
The intent is motivational, but also managerial. Ash isn’t just consoling the discouraged; she’s training behavior. “You just have to find it” places agency squarely on the individual, a subtle nudge toward persistence that conveniently aligns with entrepreneurship’s demands: keep moving, keep selling, keep recruiting, keep iterating. The metaphor makes quitting sound less like self-preservation and more like a failure of imagination.
The subtext carries the sunny logic of postwar American self-help and the corporate feminism Ash helped popularize: women can win in business if they adopt the right habits, the right optimism, the right discipline. It’s empowering, and it’s also a form of pressure. Structural barriers - sexism, capital, childcare, networks - vanish behind the neat image of a detour. If the road is blocked, it implies the driver didn’t look hard enough for an exit.
Context matters: Ash built Mary Kay in a world that routinely underestimated women in the workplace. Framing obstacles as solvable routes is a survival tactic as much as a slogan. The quote works because it converts anxiety into motion, selling a story where momentum itself is proof you’re still in the game.
The intent is motivational, but also managerial. Ash isn’t just consoling the discouraged; she’s training behavior. “You just have to find it” places agency squarely on the individual, a subtle nudge toward persistence that conveniently aligns with entrepreneurship’s demands: keep moving, keep selling, keep recruiting, keep iterating. The metaphor makes quitting sound less like self-preservation and more like a failure of imagination.
The subtext carries the sunny logic of postwar American self-help and the corporate feminism Ash helped popularize: women can win in business if they adopt the right habits, the right optimism, the right discipline. It’s empowering, and it’s also a form of pressure. Structural barriers - sexism, capital, childcare, networks - vanish behind the neat image of a detour. If the road is blocked, it implies the driver didn’t look hard enough for an exit.
Context matters: Ash built Mary Kay in a world that routinely underestimated women in the workplace. Framing obstacles as solvable routes is a survival tactic as much as a slogan. The quote works because it converts anxiety into motion, selling a story where momentum itself is proof you’re still in the game.
Quote Details
| Topic | Overcoming Obstacles |
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