Interview

“I teach ordinary people how to create extraordinary lives!” – Dr. Gloria Mayfield Banks 

Have you ever found yourself in the “ordinary” category during this journey they call life?

If so, that’s actually good news because Dr. Gloria Mayfield Banks has mastered the art of helping people transform their lives from “ordinary to extraordinary,” and she started with herself.

Today, Gloria is an internationally renowned motivational success strategist and sales trainer with a Bachelor’s degree from Howard University, an MBA from Harvard University and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

She has built a multimillion-dollar enterprise as an author, a founding partner of Charisma Factor, and as an Elite Executive National Sales Director with Mary Kay where she holds the No. 1 ranking in the nation out of 3.6 million women around the world.

Gloria recently published a book, Quantum Leaps, which highlights 10 specific steps to help you soar and take your life to extraordinary heights.

Those who know Gloria’s full story would likely tell you that her life is nothing short of a testimony, given the odds that fell into her lap early in life.

Banks was diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age and still faces challenges because of it today. That’s not all though. Earlier in her Mary Kay career, Banks became a victim of domestic violence abuse in a relationship that she was in, at the time.

To some, these are obstacles that usually have a bad ending.

That wasn’t the case for Gloria though.

She didn’t allow her dyslexia or experience with domestic violence be the ending to her story. For her, those challenges were just the beginning of an amazing transformation.

Curious as to what that transformation looks like?

Here you go:

• Gloria has been best described as “Energy in Motion!” as a prolific businesswoman with high energy and an inspirational teaching style.

• Gloria has trained professionals in six continents, helping them achieve new levels of success.

• She has sat down with Oprah Winfrey to talk about women empowerment and girls in leadership.

• She’s shared her secrets of success with national media audiences, appearing on CNN with Soledad O’Brien, ABC-TV, and CNBC with Donny Deutsch on “The Big Idea.”

• Banks has been featured in “Fortune,” “Black Enterprise,” “Glamour,” and “Ebony” magazines.

• Harvard Business School documented Gloria’s success in a case study titled, “Gloria Hilliard Mayfield at Mary Kay Cosmetics.”

Banks is now happily married to Ken Banks and they share four adult children. During our interview, Banks described her relationship with her family as pure “joy.”

My talk with Gloria was more than just an interview, it was an experience, and I now encourage you to enter into this life-changing experience yourself and get ready to take your career and your life to a level where it’s never been before!

Q: What were three key things that you had to make a priority in your life in order to get to where you are today?

A:

1. Emotional management.

2. I had to work the numbers. I had to get a lot of yes’ and a lot of no’s. When I say work the numbers, I mean work strategically. I strategically put things in place. That became a habit for me, and when I looked back, I knew what I needed to do to get to where I wanted to go.

3. Team leadership. I had to understand the value of team leadership. I understood that what I chose as the team goal was critical to people’s individual goals.

Q: What do you mean when you say “emotional management?”

A: I think everybody deals with a lot of emotional pieces, but it’s how you deal with it. I learned how to deal with discouragement and disappointment in my business and in my life. I had to deal with feelings of being overwhelmed because when I started my entrepreneurship, I had a full-time career, a very demanding and highly responsible full-time career.

I had to deal with other people’s opinions because people didn’t understand why I was going after entrepreneurship. People didn’t understand why I was choosing to work so hard. They didn’t understand why I had the vision that I had or why I wanted to work in the cosmetic industry. People didn’t understand why I wanted to do direct selling.

I had divorce. I had small children then. So, I dealt with a lot of unconventional things. I had to learn how to compartmentalize.

Q: Having received a Bachelor’s degree at Howard University and then a Master’s at Harvard Business School, how has that educational balance shaped you?

A: I’m glad you asked that question because it’s something a lot of people are intrigued by. We all have choices. If you chose to go to an Ivy League graduate school, you could have also went to an Ivy League undergraduate school. Both of those educational journey’s are very different and extremely powerful for different reasons.

For me, going the HBCU route at Howard University was very much about the informative part of the education. It was also about confidence. As a kid out of Detroit, I was raised in a very strong middle class city. I didn’t need to go to an HBCU to know the strength of that environment and the success that you could achieve by going. I didn’t have to go there for that, but I went and I had a sister that went to Howard as well. I honestly believe that my confidence was enhanced because of that experience, and I think those teachers breathed such a great belief in us. They just believe in you so much. You’re not competing against them. I say that today. I don’t think I would have described it like that 10 years ago, but given what we’re up against today, I do believe it. I’m not competing against race.

I turn around and I go to Harvard Business School and I get a whole different degree of confidence. That degree of confidence comes from when you walk in the door and you wonder if you’re supposed to be there. Now, when I was at Howard, I didn’t wonder if I was supposed to be there. You walked in there knowing you were supposed to be there. You go to Harvard and wonder if you were the only one who slipped through the cracks because they strip your confidence and then build it back up. So, going there and listening to other people rave about it today gives you confidence.

Q: I view you as a triple threat. You’re an author, you’re a founding partner of Charisma Factor and then you’re also an Executive National Sales Director with Mary Kay. That’s the triple threat I’m referring to. Can you briefly touch on each of these aspects of your career and what they require of you?

A: Someone saw me speak in a room full of speakers and he said I was the best there. He chased me down for about four years, wanting me to write a book. Originally, I said “no no no.” I told him I wasn’t a writer, I was dyslexic. He then told me that he owned a publishing company — a successful publishing company — and he too was dyslexic.

So, I wrote a book and it was straight from my heart. It wasn’t ghost written. It is a book about how to have a ‘quantum leap.’ That’s one book. Then, I wrote another book about the forge of friendship and what I love about that book is that it enhances my role model mentorship on the power of relationship and how a relationship can either lift you up or take you down. People struggle with these things all the time and it’s not something we talk about a lot.

The Charisma Factor company is a company that requires partnership. Angie Onianwa and I, we started over 20 years ago and that came out of a situation like most situations. She saw me as a speaker and she said she could help me and the next thing you know we had a company. She and I have ran it for over 20 years. It’s an event speaking kind of company and we have employees and we’re headquartered in Florida. Running the company requires hard work, vision and flexibility.

Twenty-eight years of Mary Kay. I’m currently No. 1 out of 3.6 million women in Mary Kay. I tell everyone I’m No. 1 in the world except for China, haha. I found Mary Kay only because my girlfriend invited me to a skin care class. I wasn’t even trying to be an entrepreneur. I’m the third of four girls and all four of us are entrepreneurs. And so, the Mary Kay piece didn’t start out with the desire to be this, but once I got into it, I was definitely thriving as a top performer.

Q: Let’s transition to your book Quantum Leaps. What was the vision behind it and where can people purchase the book?

A: Quantum Leaps came about because I broke a lot of company records and I like to break company records. In fact, I strategically know how to break company records. So, I wrote the book for anybody who wants to have fast growth. It’s not something that’s necessarily sustainable. I don’t operate at that high level consistently, but I know how to take myself there and complete it because people stay in the “want to” lane for a long time. They don’t necessarily get to the “got to” lane. So, I talk about that in the book. They certainly can go to https://gloriamayfieldbanks.com to get the book. I would love to connect with them. I would love to stay connected to them.

The 10 phases you go through with your quantum leap:

These are the 10 things that I think are most critical when you want to have a quantum leap.

1. The power of making a decision. If it’s one thing I learned at Harvard Business School, it was the power of making a decision.

2. Confidence.

3. Vision, imagination and belief. You can’t take yourself to where you can’t see yourself.

4. Time management, emotional management, money management and skill management.

5. You have to have strong goal-setting skills. I could teach for half a day or a whole day about how to be a strong goal-setter. Not a good dreamer, but a strong goal-setter.

6. Image is a big piece of it and image is not just the way that you look, but the way people perceive you.

7. Passion is very powerful because passion is the one thing that can guarantee you to push past your fears. Everybody has fears, but when you’re really passionate about something, you could care less about your fears.

8. Discipline and hustle is important. You have to be educated enough in the skill, but not so educated that you don’t hustle to increase your discipline. Discipline is not nearly as important as your desire. If the desire is strong, the discipline will show up.

9. People skills and leadership skills are critical because you’re going to be dealing with people. It’s like cooking. It’s one thing to cook well, and it’s another thing to be a magnificent cook. If you don’t practice, you can’t be magnificent. Some people say “I’m not like that when it comes to people skills,” which could be true. You might not be like that, but you can learn skills that can make you better.

10. Short term sacrifice. Like you said at the beginning of the interview, “success is not convenient.”

Q: I want to talk about your sit down with Oprah. When you sat down with her, what was that experience like for you?

A: Oprah’s bigger than life. I mean, I don’t know what it’s like to be her, but she’s bigger than life. This is what I loved about being with Oprah. I was talking about empowering women and girls when we sat down to talk, and the young woman who we were celebrating was one of her daughters from South Africa. When she finished talking Karl, I told my friends, “She’s going to be president of the world.” Not the United States. I said this girl was going to be president of the world. I was so impressed with her.

And what I loved about Oprah was she wasn’t trying to hold her daughter back. She wasn’t trying to hold her down. She didn’t tell her she couldn’t handle it. It was awesome.

Q: Something we touched on earlier was the state of the Black community today. While I have been able to experience people from all walks of life and I’m able to be transparent with everybody, it is still important for me to see other people that look like me who are doing well and who are very strong and positive figures in our community.

How important do you feel it is for people in the Black community, especially young people, to see strong, educated, professional and successful Black men and women living a life of success?

A: When you were talking, I was thinking about what word would be more powerful than “critical.” I think it’s critical and it goes back to what I said about not being able to become what you can’t visualize for yourself. When people walk up to me and say they want to be just like me, I say, “No, I need you to be better than me.”

My job is to encourage you to be better than me. It’s just something in your soul when you see one of you do the same thing.

I remember being with a really great friend of mine and she’s a very powerful and successful white woman. She has some of the most amazing African-American women on her team. She told me that she doesn’t see black and white. She sees everyone together. But, what I had to tell her is that we’re not just alike. That doesn’t mean we want to be seen as less than though. It’s not about being seen as less than or more than. I told her that I just wanted her to embrace our differences. We don’t listen to the same music. We don’t eat the same food. We don’t like the same jokes. We have different cultures and that’s okay. She has a different culture and it’s okay. That’s beautiful. But, for you to see me as you, that’s not being realistic because it’s not the truth.

Q: I know your perspective has had to change having traveled to so many countries. This list I’m looking at, it includes places like China, South Africa, Spain, Australia. Do any of the countries you’ve traveled to standout to you and why?

A: Well, Kazakhstan stands out because it’s very unique and many people haven’t gone there. Paris, people have gone there. They’ve seen it on TV. People are familiar with Paris. People are familiar with Rome, but Kazakhstan, they’re not familiar with. And also, people in Kazakhstan are not familiar with African Americans. When I got off the plane, people were asking for photos because they couldn’t believe I was Black. When my husband and I went to China, they were asking for photos like crazy. I told my husband that they thought he was Michael Jordan and I was Beyoncé.

South Africa was amazing because of the history. I went to South Africa both before and after apartheid. During my visit before apartheid, I met a woman there who just wanted to speak. She told me she had sent her daughter to another country because she wanted her to come home and speak like me. That was a “wow” moment for me. This is before apartheid and I was there with Harvard Business School. We were interested in interviewing students to do an exchange program with Harvard Business School. So, I’m in a big conference room and the people that work there thought I was actually there working, not like I traveled there to do work with the school. The second time I went back, I was training there, and to hear the stories from people who lived there was mind blowing.

Q: In your bio, one of the things you mentioned were the odds you had to beat to get to where you are today and I know that dyslexia is one of them. Now, for those who aren’t familiar with dyslexia, can you explain what it is and then talk about the challenges it’s created for you and how you were able to overcome those challenges?

A: Dyslexia can mean many things, but for the most part, it’s a reading disorder. It can affect the way you read. It can affect the way you do math. The way you see numbers. The way you see words. The way you hear annunciation. It’s hereditary. I found out that I was dyslexic in the seventh grade. The challenge with it is in order for you to really learn how to read, you have to have a teacher who understands how to teach dyslexic students and who doesn’t view it the same way that they view other learning disabilities.

When you’re dyslexic, you learn differently. I don’t hear words the way others might. The only thing I can spell is what I have memorized.

When I was in Harvard Business School, someone read to me. I think my strength has been transparency. I never hid it. I talked about it and trained about it in humor.

Q: Something that some might not know about you is that you were once a domestic violence victim, but you’re also a domestic violence survivor. There’s women out there today who are in those same situations and some of them feel that they can’t overcome that obstacle. What’s your advice for those women?

A: First, I want them to know that they’re not always going to be stuck in that same spot. They just have to make a decision. Sometimes those decisions are big. Sometimes they’re small. Sometimes they’re scary, but the victim doesn’t have to be stuck.

The second thing I want them to know is that as smart and as capable as I am, I was not able to leave that situation for myself. I was able to walk away because of my children, who were one and two years old, at the time. It was a journey. It was a big journey, but eventually I was able to say ‘No.’

Three, I was around the right kind of people. I was in Mary Kay, so I was in a very encouraging environment. I was in a position where I could increase my income, and that’s the problem for a lot of women. A lot of women are stuck because they don’t have any income or because they don’t have enough income and they need him.

Q: Speaking of overcoming a major obstacle in your life, you’re now out of that situation and have now been happily married for 20 years and have four adult children. How important is family to you?

A: Family is really important to us. For us, it’s not about the amount of time as much as it’s about the joy because we still have very full individual lives. We’ve gone through the blended family, the house full of teenagers, them going to college one at a time, and they’re now grown and on their own and now we have grandchildren. But, the time we spend together is so much fun. So much laughter. So much support. It’s very powerful.

So, family is really big because it’s the core of our lives really.