Caterina Harris: Another Mary Kay Failure
For years, Caterina Harris has been touted as Mary Kay royalty. The best of the best. At the very TOP of the company. Someone who is an example for all women who want to move up in Mary Kay. Part of an elite group of women…. “Mary Kay Millionaire” who is living the good life thanks to the wonderful opportunity that is Mary Kay.
Would you be sad (or surprised) to find out that Caterina Harris isn’t even making an executive income in the upper echelon of Mary Kay? Caterina became a Mary Kay sales director in 1992, and after twenty years as a “top” member of Mary Kay, she’s not even making a six figure income. Let me repeat… twenty years of her life devoted to this amazing opportunity, and she’s not even making $100,000 per year as one of the very top members of the company.
You wouldn’t know it from looking at Caterina’s promotional materials. In this tacky video, you can see all of her accomplishments. She is one of the top 200 women in Mary Kay.
She has gotten numerous Circle of Excellence and Circle of Achievement awards (based on how much was ordered from the company by her consultants):
She is a “Mary Kay Millionaire,” receiving more than $1 million in cumulative commissions from the company in her many years:
And her highest monthly commission check was $17,200:
(You know what to do with this. Mary Kay hopes you’ll do the math of $17,200 x 12 = $206,400 and wrongly assume that Caterina is making more than $200,000 per year with MK.)
All these wonderful “accomplishments,” and still Caterina Harris is not making an executive income in Mary Kay. How can this be?
It all boils down to the PINK TRUTH. Life at the top of Mary Kay isn’t all they pretend it is. Remember Amy Dunlap? She’s a former Mary Kay national sales director who spilled the beans on how low the income of the typical nsd is. She was bringing in just over $100,000 per year gross income (before business expenses) when she left Mary Kay. Former nsd Allison LaMarr was another one who was touted as a huge success, but saw her income plummet in the months before she quit MK.
And here’s the income of the superstar Caterina Harris:
The above figures include all of her commission income, per this explanation in Applause Magazine: “Listed are NSD commissions above $10,000 earning in _____ by National Sales directors as defined above plus the following which do not count toward NSD ranking: Sales Director commissions, Personal Team commissions and NSD contest bonuses.”
In recent years, Mary Kay stopped printing commission checks for the nsds with checks less than $10,000 per month. You can see that most months for Caterina are below the $10,000 mark, so I’ve used an estimate of $8,000 for her commissions those months (based on the history when MK was still printing the amounts of the lower checks).
How funny is it that her first month as a sales director in Mary Kay – – in 1992 – – Caterina says she made $5,000. And in 2009 and 2010, she had multiple months where she made less than that. So much for promoting yourself and giving yourself a raise in Mary Kay!
What does all of this mean? 2011 was the best of recent years, and in that year, Caterina Harris only received about $110,000 in gross commissions before business expenses. She receives other prizes from Mary Kay including the use of a car and a vacation. Those are valuable, but the “free car” is wiped out by the expenses related to operating it for business purposes. And a car, a trip, and jewelry cannot feed a family. When you deduct estimated business expenses from these commission checks, you can bet Caterina has about $80,000 (if she’s lucky) cash left to pay her taxes and feed herself. This is her wonderful career as a Mary Kay superstar.
And that “high check” of $17,200 that Caterina brags about? It happened prior to 2009. Her income hasn’t even come close to that in any month since.
What’s the moral of the story? Caterina Harris is sitting at the top of the Mary Kay pyramid after spending 20 years of her life devoted to this company. She is still not making an executive income. Her income is pathetic when you think of all the work she has done, and the length of time she has been with the company. And this is a woman others want to emulate?
Caterina said it best: She is in the top 200 out of 1.8 million consultants. And she’s not even making an executive income. That is the reality of multi-level marketing.
Visit the
So dear Ms. Harris is in the “Top 200 women out of 1.8 million worldwide”? She’s so high up in Mary Kay that my calculator comes up with an error message when I try to calculate the percentage. Yet she’s only receiving commissions around $100,000 per year (before business expenses). Funny, for a business with Unlimited Earning Potential, I expected a woman in the tippy-tippy-top to be receiving a whole lot more.
Do you remember when your Mary Kay recruiter showed you The Opportunity? When she pointed out how you had virtually no chance in your present J.O.B. of moving up to where the Real Money is found? That you could throw off your shackles and join an organization with Unlimited Earning Potential? That you had The Dream sitting right in front of you waiting for your “Yes” and your $100?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 19.9 percent of US households had incomes of $100,000 or more in 2010. But in Mary Kay the fraction of women at that level is almost too small to calculate.
If the tippy-tippy-top of 1.8 million Mary Kay women is ONLY able to pull in $100,000 a year, the Unlimited Earning Potential is NOT so unlimited after all. That also means that at the top 20% cutoff in Mary Kay, where typical American households reach the $100,000 mark, women in Mary Kay are pulling in a whole lot less than typical American households.
Out of sheer curiosity I googled the words “Mary Kay” with “Unlimited Earning Potential.” I found page after page after page of hits, with Pink Truth only turning up once. The real potential of making unlimited income with Mary Kay is nearly non-existent. The number of women who want to make you believe it anyway is the only real unlimited part.
-Do you have unlimited income potential? Before Mary Kay. I didn’t know there was such a thing.
-Earn great tax benefits and unlimited earning potential.
-Flexible hours, unlimited earning potential, and a support system of fabulous women.
-Mary Kay also offers a phenomenal marketing plan that has unlimited earning potential.
-The positive influence of the people I work with – coupled with the unlimited earning potential – makes this my favorite job to date
-Own a Mary Kay business and have unlimited earning potential and be in complete control
-I can help you create and develop your own flexible Mary Kay business with unlimited earning potential
-Mary Kay provides us UNLIMITED earning potential, and every tool we need/ want, to succeed.
-Mary Kay Cosmetics is a wonderful opportunity for everyone, with unlimited earning potential.
-Be your own boss— freedom from corporate America, no glass ceiling, unlimited earning potential.
-You have UNLIMITED earning potential! It all up to YOU!
-I love that my company has an “unlimited earning potential.” Thank you Mary Kay!!
-I teach skincare and color cosmetics and share the unlimited earning potential available with Mary Kay Cosmetics.
-I also enrich the lives of women by providing them with information on how Mary Kay impacts the community around us and allows them to have unlimited earning potential and self-development.
-Enterprising woman achieve unlimited earning potential while enriching the lives of others.
-Enriching the lives of women through offering the best-selling skincare and color cosmetics in the U.S. and offering a business opportunity with unlimited earning potential.
-Benefits of joining: 1. Unlimited earning potential
-With an unlimited income potential….there is no glass ceiling in Mary Kay
-Flexibility with unlimited earning potential, have the use of a company car and other gifts
Finally, here’s one that’s even grander than just “unlimited”:
-Boundless earning potential. … The choices are yours and the potential unlimited.
It’s enough to make me sick.
With that boundless earning potential, Catarina’s deserve level must not be high enough. The choice is hers, right?
Unlimited earning potential equals unlimited work hours. If you want to work 24/7…365 days a year, you are STILL limited…even in that.
The real deal is that pie in the sky scenario’s are the bait that MK uses to hook the target. If you don’t make enough, it will always fall back on you for not being willing to “work 24/7/365”. It will NEVER be, lack of sales support, lack of timely trend products, lack of audience, lack of good reputation, lack of customer appeal, over saturation of consultants, reduced price of product on EBAY, endless recruiting scams and bait and switch guest invitations.
As long as Sales Directors keep lying about their pay checks, and their results, the average hopeful “guest model” will fall prey to this scam.
The endless recruiting is BECAUSE the sales force has to be constantly replaced because they GIVE UP. And why would they GIVE UP…. IF they were making money?
This ain’t rocket science.
Who spawned Caterina?
Gloria Mayfield Banks spawned Caterina.
“Gloria Mayfield Banks spawned Caterina.”
Caterina is an adopted sd that gmb has mentored.
But she is not in gmb area nor is she gmb offspring.
Thanks Tracy for this wonderful article.
I love it.
Sincerely.
gotheart
Hmmmm…I was not aware, thanks Gotheart!
Mary Kay Cosmetics is a joke! The joke is on the fogged directors & NSD. Fogged directors are like I was, in so deep can’t see a way out until a teacher showed up & I the student was ready.
I suppose its like a gym membership. Put in the “work”and get the results. Oh and just wondering how does your income look now and what does retirement look like for you?
That’s exactly the point. It’s NOT like a regular job or owning a business. In those, you CAN put in the work and expect to get results. Over 99% of people in MLM lose money because the system is rigged against them. MK isn’t a business. It’s a scam.
@ 3:17 in the video – Does that look like a millionaire’s house to you?..Me neither.
The end of that video was beyond ridiculous.
wow. unbelievable (in a tacky sort of way!)
I am pleased to announce that this article shows up #5 and #6 on the Google search results for Caterina Harris and Mary Kay.
TIP: Using NSD in the title and first paragraph with the name might boost it a bit higher 🙂
Can you say “all about me and how much everyone wants to be like me” I bet she watches the video and think “I am so important and everyone would die to have what I have.”
Definitely not what God wants
OMG!!! Quit hatin’!!! How many of you make “good money” doing what you love?
Quite a few of us do. And specifically, the author of this article makes amazing money (much better than Caterina) doing what she loves. And, unlike Caterina, I don’t have to lie to anyone to make my living. Yes, I’m saying recruiters in MK must (and do) lie to get ahead.
Ok, so I totally dig PK for creating a space in which former MK Consultants can come and support one another. However, when it comes to Caterina Harris, I have to step in. Caterina may not be at the top in terms of being a high income earner, however, she is an incredible principled person. Therein lies the problem! Because she is not a frontloader like many of her “MK Sisters”, her checks are not as big as some of them. Even tough she is not hitting 6 figures, the high 5 figures that she is making, is being made honestly. With her solid work ethics and brains, she could easily hit a high 6 figure income, but just like the other NDS’s that are not hitting 6 figures, I believe she is attempting to build her business/ income by doing MK the “right way”. As we all know, doing MK the “right way” yields very low monetary returns. She as well as others but be enjoying some of the others MK “benefits”.
When I was in MK, she was one of my favorite NSDs and it was mostly b/c I saw her go from consultant, red jacket, director, so on and so forth, all the way to NSD. I’m not saying that she isn’t drinking the “pink lemonade”, I’m just saying that she really is a kind person.
There are lots of nice (and allegedly principled) people who are in Mary Kay. And let me tell you this… you do NOT get to NSD without frontloading inventory. Period.
This flawed thinking runs rampant in Mary Kay. That somehow there is a right or proper or not bad way to do it. But the bottom line is if you “do it right” you do not move up the director path and you do not make anything more than minimum wage.
And Caterina Harris proves herself a liar with this one quote from her unitnet site: “Caterina began Mary Kay in 1991 and has build a multi-million dollar business.” She does not have what anyone in their right mind would call a “multi-million dollar” business.
The part which troubles me the most is that she claims to be, in terms of income, “one of the top 200 out of 1.8 million worldwide MK women.” MK has significantly more than 200 NSDs in the US alone, and probably twice or 3x that number worldwide. So it’s not just being an NSD that makes her a “top 200.” Income counts too.
Now I don’t know if this means she is #199 or #2. But I do know this. If someone can qualify for the “top 200” year after year after year by pulling in ONLY $100k, that means a whole bunch of the other “top 200” are ALSO pulling in only $100k.
If the not-so-nice, not-so-principled others were really earning more, Caterina Harris would be kicked out of the “top 200” winner’s circle pretty fast.
Furthermore, if all it takes to be in the “top 200” of such a massive group is ONLY $100k, principled or not, what chance do the other 99.998% have of making even half that much money?
As I pointed out earlier, according to the US Census Bureau, in 2010 19.9% of all US households reported earnings of $100k or more. And that was during a recession. So why is it nearly impossible for the “top 200 executive pay” MK women to earn what mainstream America earns?
Faith –
Look at her actions, not her words. How many of the women she has recruited during the time you saw her go from IBC to NSD went into debt for her success?
Here’s a script Caterina Harris wrote.
http://www.pinktruth.com/2008/02/build-your-personal-30/ “Learn to respond in a script comes across as sincerely helpful, not pushy” … in other words, learn to manipulate and act sincere.
Here’s another bit from http://www.pinktruth.com/2011/05/thou-shalt-not-say-%E2%80%9Cjudge-not%E2%80%9D-until-thou-readest-this/ NSD Caterina Harris’s website features a document which states, “Invite guests to success meetings every week…tell them that on the way over that they will learn everything they need to know about the Mary Kay Career tonight in order for them to make an intelligent decision about coming into the Company.” Oh really? Do they ever disclose the number of IBCs in the potential recruit’s area? Do they fully explain the way the discount works? Of course not – it would scare away the prey.
Caterina is apparently OK with Dacia Wiegandt’s practice of deliberately leaving product out of an order, lying about not having it in stock, just for another whack at the possibility of recruiting: http://www.pinktruth.com/2011/09/8-out-of-10-mary-kay-nsds-are-okay-with-lying-to-customers/
I am so sad that this whole entire blog is hard to find! If I had seen this before, I wouldn’t be out $1800! Thank goodness I found this before I got in too deep. SHUTTING DOWN my ‘business’ today. I loved the Mary Kay products and used them since I was really young like 16 years old.. I think that is the only reason I was suckered into this. But the bubble of happiness just BURST recently because as a Feminist – I feel it’s sexist for Mary Kay Units to FORCE women to wear skirts and tight shirts with heels in order to attend meetings… That got me searching on the internet for other women who might feel this way and ended up upon this website.
IrishLass – welcome!
How long since you purchased that $1800 inventory? Chances are good you can get the bulk of it back – and there’s lots of good info on this site to tell you how.
I chafed at the dress code, too. In my unit, the requirement was skirts or dresses, hose, and closed toe shoes. The shoes got me the most, the hose next.
Had they also required “tight shirts” – that would have been the end for me.
I’ve been a professional woman ever since I got out of college. I know how to dress appropriately.
Anyway, welcome. Please read, read, read and ask questions. The amount of knowledge and information here is phenomenal.
I just signed up on the message boards under the name MetalFae!
I have only lasted 2 months. LOL I bought the inventory in July. the thing that I realized quickly though was that even though I made money on my parties – the recruiter and directors made sure I was ‘replenishing my inventory’ thereby leaving with no money myself at the end of it all. I was frustrated about that and THEN the dress code when I had explicity told my director before I joined that I work in Health care on my feet all day, I’m not going to dress in heels and a skirt… and I think it’s just plain sexist so… I’ve yet to pull the plug because I’m unsure how to address it.. I’ll be posting in the forum in a bit about it..
Faith, how come Caterina sells knock off purses at all her events?
How come she sells CDs DVDs of her events, at all of her events?
How come she sells the CDs and DVDs at 500% over cost?
Faith were you ever a sd?
Faith what is your definition of kind?
Hey Gotheart,
No, I can not answer to why anyone does what they do. I can only give an answer to my own actions. Although I earned the car and completed my 1st month of DIQ (for the 2nd time), I was never a SD. That I know of, at least 2 of my personal recruits are now a SDs.
My definition of kind is someone who prays w/ me when I lose a best friend due to domestic violence and donates $ to the surviving children’s trust fund on an annual basis. My definition of kind is when being diagnosed w/ a chronic illness, she sends cards, meals and even a housecleaning service to help me as I’m going through treatments. All of which CH has done for me.
Trust me when I say, I believe that MK is a shell of what it used to be and a sad excuse for “enriching the lives of women”. However, I do not believe that all the women in MK are all bad all the time. I believe that MK is a borderline cult and as with many cults, people do things that they may not otherwise do w/o being under the influence of the cult. I believe that just like many of us here on PT, who were once in MK hook, line and sinker, the current MK ladies need to have their own personal “light bulb” moment when they realize that MK will not be the vehicle to help them “have it all”.
Faith …
David Koresh bought me a muffin once.
Does that change what he did to others?
No.
Caterina was a second line to the famous Shirley Hutton. Caterina’s recruiter was Paula Gentry out of San Fran. I believe she in the Go-Give area now. She was just mentored by GMB.
Oh! I get it.
Kind to you is when it benefits YOU.
Ta hell with the rest.
*Although I earned the car and completed my 1st month of DIQ (for the 2nd time),
*That I was never a SD. That I know of, at least 2 of my personal recruits are now a SDs.
Well Dah! She is gonna pray for you! Ya keep providing her paycheck with production! Bring ya meals. Are ya kidding! If ya were to dump mk ya’d never hear from her again.
Desperate people do desperate thing. You and Caterina are both in that state of mind.
And about trusting YOU! Hell no!
*No, I can not answer to why anyone does what they do. I can only give an answer to my own actions.
Oh YES you can find out why people do what they do!
Woman what kind of answer is that! OMG
This type of thinking is not in your best interest.
It is called looking the other way!
You my dear are part of the problem and are perpetuating an evil process.
Not having good health is not taken lightly here.
However I can tell you for a fact that my health improved way beyond what we thought it could since dumping mk.
Whatever the hell my body was producing from the pressures of the evil empire has dried up, gone away.
Ya may consider that with your health.
I am so sorry about your friend. So sorry.
If you email me your address I will send you a wonderful meal. I promise.
Now ya don’t even know me. I am willing to do that for you.
I don’t make a cent off of you.
Your neediness has blinded you. You think it is kindness.
Oh! She sells the knock off purses and sell her DVD CDs cause she is not making enough money to pay her bills! The West Coast Summit?
Same. The profit goes three ways. I know for a fact the information I am saying. Caterina does nothing unless there is profit in it.
Sincerely.
gotheart.
P.S. I was serious about sending you a meal.
Obviously, we disagree…You are assuming a lot on my part (I am not now, nor have I ever been needy or desperate and I was not in CH’s unit or her down line). It appears to me that our experiences w/ her have been different. However, I don’t have to discount my experiences with CH in order to acknowledge yours with hers. Thank you for the meal offer. That is so kind of you, but I’m good.
Faith, I’d like to contribute only one thought to your quest for truth.. and that is simply that: some of the nicest, sharpest, most well-put-together men ever met are (behind closed doors) doing terrible things.. how can we be okay with that?
Even if Caterina’s a nice person, she’s part of an ugly pink cult mob that does ugly things to people who deserve better treatment.. she’s either a blinded victim or someone who will stop the madness and say “enough!” and get off the treadmill… and that’s it. Those are the two sides to play for.. she, in her position of power in the pink cult, does NOT have the option of “sitting on the fence”
Duly noted.
I don’t understand. This article is about a failure, yet those figures are substantial. Isn’t earning even $4-5k/mo a lot of money? It’s certainly more than someone like me earning less than $12k/year. Why are people calling her a failure for earning $80k in a year?
The point is that she is at the VERY TOP of the company, and has been part of this scam for more than 20 years. She is a failure because all of the lying for the last 20 years STILL hasn’t propelled her to an “executive” income.
She’s a Financial Failure because the 80k a year is BEFORE expenses. After expenses she’s lucky to clear as much as a Wal-Mart cashier, while working longer hours.
She’s a Moral Failure because she makes her 80k off the backs of women getting buried in credit card and thinking they’re running a business.
okay, I see what you mean now, since she’s been in the business so long.
Just out of curiosity, where are these income figures coming from? How do I know they are accurate? I’m surprised her income has somehow become public knowledge.
I’m still so confused about this website, though. I’ve been quietly perusing the articles here for a few months because I met someone three years ago who does mary kay and she’s wanted me to join. I finally decided to try it out last week, and I signed up. I think the only way I will understand the experiences found here is if I try it myself. I’m at least in a place where I have a steady job and I can support myself while taking on this endeavor. I just find it it hard to believe that every single person in MK is lying and cheating their way to the top. I just don’t understand.
The company publishes these numbers for everyone to see.
Yes, every sales director and above lies and cheats in Mary Kay. It is the Mary Kay way.
You have a 99% chance of losing money in MK. But try it if you think you can beat the odds. (Not really. Don’t try it. Just don’t waste your time and money.)
Her “income” is public knowledge because it’s a recruiting tool, and because it’s not really her true income.
Mary Kay publicly announces the commissions its top directors receive every month so that people like you will say, “WOW! I want some of that for me!”
What Mary Kay DOESN’T disclose is that those commission checks are gross commissions, before chargebacks, before car co-pays, before expenses (office rent, phone, prizes for downline, website, gasoline, office assistant salary), before buying “the suit” with all its mandatory accessories – a new one every year, before mandatory conference expenses (registration, travel expenses, food and hotel), before mandatory personal inventory purchases to stay “active”, before “topping off” monthly production quotas when your downline doesn’t order enough, before a lot of other expenses that reduce the $80k to poverty-level wages.
Mary Kay also doesn’t disclose that that $80k doesn’t come with a 401(k), doesn’t come with medical or any other insurance except low-value term life insurance, and doesn’t come with the company paying into Social Security and Medicare. You get to pay self-employment tax instead… assuming you have any income left after paying all your other expenses.
Soooo… Is that $80k still looking good to you? Do you still want some of that for yourself, knowing what else is glued to it?
Well, I’ve been self employed for about 10 years as a ballroom dance instructor, so I understand that there are a lot of upfront expenses in running your own business and finding your own clients. I also understand that anyone who is self employed does have to fund their own retirement accounts and insurance; all of those are quite normal for someone who’s self employed, which I’m sure everyone knows you are as a direct sales representative.
I do think the idea of office assistants is just ridiculous. Anyone who has a home based business is perfectly capable of doing office work on their own. I know I’ve read somewhere that MK really pushes the idea of you spending your time doing more important work than what an office assistant can do, and that’s just dumb and a waste of money.
So, I don’t know. I’m not really interested in recruiting people anyway. I really love their skin care and I feel like selling it shouldn’t be too difficult. Maybe if I just stick to the sales side instead of trying to move up the ladder, that’ll be less complicated.
Whichever side you intend to pursue you should know what to really expect.
If you decide to stick to sales, find out what you’re up against. You may think you set the prices, but you don’t. The customer sets the prices by refusing to buy from you if she can get it cheaper somewhere else.
And where do you find those prices? Check eBay, where you’ll find over 60,000 Mary Kay products at wholesale price with free shipping. Start following auctions and you’ll find that most of the stuff on eBay still goes unsold at 50% off. The check your local Craigslist where you’ll find one listing after another which basically say, “Name your own price, just take it off my hands PLEASE!” Let’s just say this: none of those ladies are making a profit. They’re all losing money.
Still think you can make enough money selling to make it worth the effort? Are you sure? Or are you ready to reconsider the recruiting path? Read on.
Directors comprise the “top” 2% of the Mary Kay sales force. According to Mary Kay’s own numbers published in Applause magazine, the typical director makes barely enough commission to cover her expenses. And that’s before handing her earnings right back to Mary Kay in the form of product orders to meet personal ordering quotas or “top off” her unit ordering quota when the “team” doesn’t come through.
This $80k income claim comes from someone in the top 200 out of 1.8 million Mary Kay consultants worldwide. She’s in the top 1/100th of 1% of all Mary Kay consultants, and the best she can do at that level is $80k. How does that compare to the rest of America? The US Census Bureau says that in 2013 the number of households with $80k or more in income was between 10% and 20% of the US population.
Those are real figures. You saw them on the picture above, and you can see them at the Census Bureau website. A typical American household is over 1,000 times more likely to earn $80k a year than a top Mary Kay director.
But if you insist on learning for yourself, go for it. We’ll be right here six months from now, ready to help you with your product return
Victoria – The market is overrun with MK ladies pushing their products and their opportunity. So it is VERY difficult to sell. There are just too many competitors within MK, and too many other MUCH BETTER products available at Target, department stores, Sephora, and Ulta. This is the problem with MK: It is almost impossible to sell the product consistently. That is why women have hundreds or thousands of dollars of products on hand that they are unable to sell.
Well, in the spirit of “it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” I still feel like trying it out for myself. I can’t let my kids go around saying they don’t like spinach even though they’ve never tasted it. Same kind of concept I think. And if, in the end, it turns out the same way as everyone else here, I know you won’t judge lol.
Spinach is authentic, based on facts.
MKC is fraud, based on facts.
Fraud: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities : mediums exposed as tricksters and frauds.
Your comparison is whacked.
Your children will learn to lie and deceive others. What they hear you say on the phone and the life they will be living will not measure up.
Mommy lies, so ya can feed them all the spinach ya want, “it’s good for you,” but they will know you lie.
Sincerely.
Victoria, I understand you wan to try and I get it. I have to ask that you come back to us after the director talk. When the recruiter and director tell you you have to come to meetings and bring people to recruit because you are being selfish if you don’t. When 3 months from now you are getting the push to order more inventory when you haven’t sold nearly enough yet. When you hear everything that we are tell you here, just come back and see us. We have welcomed people back with open arms, but please just do one thing.
Tell the director you are no ordering an inventory until after you 3rd party. So your first party all of your friends and family may be excited, the second one might be from that party, then 3rd one might be a bit tougher. See what your sales are BEFORE you lay down any money. I say this for 2 reasons. 1) see their reaction. Look in her eyes as you say with confidence that you are waiting to order inventory. 2) make sure you have even the interest or drive to do this. And if you don’t really like it then simply quit. It is really okay to quit.
exibc78, thank you for being kind. I know there’s a lot I don’t know yet about how things really work with MK since I’m new. So far my recruiter hasn’t said anything about meetings because her meetings are on a night that Im at school. So, so far she hasn’t mentioned anything about that. I am interested in purchasing a little bit of inventory, maybe a couple hundred dollars worth, but definitely not one of the packages. I’m going to ask her if I have to purchase a package or if I can pick and choose what I want for my first order. There’s just a lot of stuff in the packages that I really don’t want. I’m really not into the recruiting thing, so I’m just really hoping she doesn’t push the issue too much.
At the same time, I’m a different breed. I’ve done direct sales before. I’ve done Avon and Scentsy. As far as selling goes, I need very little training. But the only problem I see is that I want to do things my own way. It’s not easy for someone to push me around to do things I don’t want to do. So if she ends up excommunicating me because I don’t play along well then so be it. I’ll just be on my own doing things the way I want to do them. And maybe people here are right, and doing things ethically won’t get me to climb their ladder. But that’s fine too. I’d rather not resort to tricking people just so I can benefit.
Your Director is giving you the “empty wagon” speech and trying to get you to open your wallet. She wants that “star” order and the commission + bonus check that goes with it. RESIST! What’s in her best interest is not what’s in yours.
1. Never order anything until you’ve already reached out to potential customers, and already know what they’re likely to buy. In fact, the best way to get started is to just circulate some Look Books (like you did with Avon) and announce that you’re planning to take orders. If you don’t get enough interest to make that $450 retail minimum order to be considered “active” you’ll know pretty fast that maybe Mary Kay isn’t for you.
2. Never let anyone else place an order for you. You Director doesn’t know who your friends are. She has no idea whether they have dark or light complexions, are old or young, or have dry or oily skin. So how is she going to be able to make a smart decision about what YOU need?
Still, if you let your Director order for you, she’ll be happy to. And if she turns out to be one of the less ethical ones you may find yourself holding a lot of about-to-be-discontinued products like so many other women here have been. You can’t sell products that aren’t in the catalog, so don’t take the risk that you’ll get burned.
“At the same time, I’m a different breed. I’ve done direct sales before. I’ve done Avon and Scentsy.”
I couldn’t agree more.
“Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.” — John Wayne
Victoria;
And how will you attract customers at the studio? Will you wear your MK pin upsidedown and hope they point out to you that it is upsidedown? That’s what we were told to do – and it works until the same people see it a few times.
Will you put up a shelf of products behind the cash register where you work? Oops, you can’t do that. You would be selling from a retail establishment and that’s a MK no-no. Hmmm…………..this creates quite a dilemma, does it not?
And, remember, if you DO choose to display products at work with the inention of selling them from the trunk of your car, remember, your downline won’t have the same benefit. They will have to do it from their homes/basements/whatever. You would have an unfair retail advantage and MK is supposed to be fair for everyone.
How would you explain that during a recruiting interview?
It all looks so pretty and easy until you try to get women to open their wallets. That will sound like the opening of a crypt that’s been sealed for a thousand years or more. They are very reluctant to spend big bucks these days. Keep in mind, these days, thrift is the new chic.
The problem with most people on this website is that even if I did succeed ethically, most of you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway, so I’m not going to attempt to prove any of you wrong. Not on here at least. If I succeed, I’ll be happy on my own.
But honestly, I hope you guys realize that Mary Kay is no different than Avon, Scentsy, Party Lite, 31, Younique….or any of the other DS companies. Maybe I won’t make a six figure income and make it to NSD. But that also wouldn’t make me a failure.
Thank you, everyone, for your cautions and advise. I’ll be moving on now.
Victoria, I am glad you have read Pink Truth, even if just a little bit. Now I invite you to join the discussion forum and read further if you have not already done so. You will see pkain as day that members do not support ANY MLM. Look to the right on this page and you will see a category just for other MLMs. See the discussion board and you will see many threads dedicated to specific MLMs other than MK.
Good luck in your endeavors!
Well, good luck to you, Victoria, in Mary Kay.
You told us that you’ve done Avon and Scentsy. How did those work out for you? I’m going to guess your answer is “not that well.” If it did work out well you’d still be with them. Instead you’re moving on to another MLM – Mary Kay.
So I hope you ALSO realize that Mary Kay is no different than Avon, Scentsy, Party Lite, 31, Younique… MLM is MLM is MLM. They all use the same failed business model. They sell dreams while delivering debt. If Avon and Scentsy didn’t work out well for you, what makes you think Mary Kay will be any better?
LOL – It’s no different because they are all scam in which you have a 99% chance of losing money. You learned nothing from your failure with Avon and Scentsy. I wish you would be smart enough to walk away from MK, but you won’t because you think you’re so much smarter than us. Good luck with that.
The NSDs are so beautiful; that is what makes it so sad. The millionaire thing is a joke because any professional earning 70k a year is a “Mary Kay millionaire after 14 years.
Victoria, I’m sorry I just have to say, there are thousands of former MK consultants on this site. Do you think they are all the same “breed?” I’m sure many of them thought they were different, as well. I’m sure many of them tried and failed at other MLMs as well. I would ask you to listen to experience. How can you read all these experiences and STILL be so arrogant as to assume you know something they don’t? You really want to try it, just to see? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but your response just astounds me. These are women who thought they WERE actually making it, not just consultants who tried for a month or two and gave up. If you read through, you’ll find women who were in it for decades and realized it was a sham. More power to you, if you really want to try it out. I can’t imagine wasting money on something like that. Good luck.
Jenga, I was thinking the same thing. A person earning $40,000/yr. will earn $1,000,000 in 25 years. It alwalys disgusted me when MK would say so-and-so earned over 1,000,000 in MK bonuses over 20 years. Well, what the hell, we could ALL say we’ve earnined over $1,000,000 at that point. Big deal.
Someone earning just $60,000/yr. working 40 years earns an astounding $2.4 millin dollars. And yet, it’s all one can do to pay the bills with that money. You still have to save for retirement and possibly college for kid(s), etc. I am so not impressed when someone tells me how much a MK NSd makes. It’s a joke.
It is a joke. Most nurses, teachers, engineers, almost anyone with a decent paying job will earn at least a million $ in their career. And guess what? We don’t have to buy our way into it. And these are the professions that starry-eyed consultants are encouraged to quit to do MK full time when, in reality, they will have more difficulty earning that much $$ by doing MK! When they are presented with the MK flopportunity all they see is “a million dollars”, probably in their minds equating it with earning a million dollars a year, not over a lifetime. Nobody sits with a calculator and figures it out for them. Because that would be too forthcoming. Crazy full disclosure.
I caught the million dollar hype when I went to seminar and MK herself chastised a director on stage for having supposedly wasted that amount during her career. The fact that the pink cadillac director had earned cars and lost them. Put together a unit and lost a unit several times meant this entire company was based on always starting over. The NSD’s I knew might be making more than their former jobs as nannies (one had married a guy with money in between). However the NSD homes were not million dollar homes. Any NSD event cost money and included pizza as a meal. Any teacher, nurse or professional will definitely make a million during their career. They will not have to embarrass themselves in a make up mlm where misleading others is the norm. With a real career, we work 20 to 25 years and have real time for our families. Our credit card debt is manageable. In the end we have had real lives. MK and mlm’s rarely give anyone million dollar incomes annually. That may have happened decades ago but with a saturated market is an illusion today.