Finishing DIQ With Your Own Money
No one finishes DIQ (director in qualification) to become a Mary Kay sales director without signing up friends and family who have no intention of doing the business, or without putting in their own money. No one.
Current MK DIQ Lauren Wagner is a shining example of this. And she has no idea how she is setting herself up for failure. To move herself to sales director, she has to have 23 recruits under her (so 24 total in the unit, including herself) and $13,500 of wholesale value of products ordered from Mary Kay by the group.
She did a Facebook Live last week about her status and a giveaway! Rather than making you sit through 10 minutes of her repetitive blathering, I’ve snipped out the relevant portions (with my summary and discussion below):
“We are done with production. Our sales have been met to finish our unit.”
“All we need is 10 girls to say yes to the opportunity for $30.”
This means Lauren currently has 13 recruits in her unit plus herself and is looking for 10 more to meet the minimum of 24 total. She brags about her “girls” taking “big promotions” of Red Jacket (3 recruits below you) or Senior Consultant (1 or 2 recruits below you) or Team Leader (5 recruits below you). But how many can really be doing that when she’s only got 13 people all together? (Hint: The answer is in the next paragraph.)
She’s now $6,000 away from earning her first MK car, rather than the $2,000 away that she mentioned in December. Oopsie. She also needs 2 recruits of her own to finish the car. Wait. What? She needs 16 total to qualify for the car, so that means the 13 recruits she currently has toward her unit are all her personal recruits. What she said about her “girls taking big promotions” was a complete lie. No one else in her group has recruited.
But production for our unit is done! Required production for the unit is $13,500 wholesale, with a maximum of $3,000 to be ordered by the DIQ. So this means her 13 recruits have ordered at least $10,500 wholesale. (Unless, of course, she paid for some of those orders. But never mind that.)
If you can make it far enough in the video, you will see that Lauren is going to pay the $30 sign-up fee for 10 women so she can finish DIQ. They justify spending this money because “you’ll make it up when you make the big girl money as a director!”
There’s another little catch, though. Even though the production is technically done, each of those 10 women has to become active in order to count toward the unit. They each have to place an order of at least $225 wholesale (plus shipping and tax on the suggested retail). So basically each of the 10 has to spend $250 for Lauren to become a director. More likely, Lauren will pay the $250 each (or $2500 total) because that’s how you “get it done” in Mary Kay.
Even if Lauren finishes her car and her unit, she’s set herself up for failure. She’s got a VERY weak unit. How many of those women are going to be selling and ordering again? She needs $4,500 of wholesale orders each month just to meet the minimum requirement to remain as a director. When you sign up a bunch of people who have no intention of being consultants, and they’re just signing up to help you finish your goal, you won’t get future orders out of them.
Shame on the upline who is guiding Lauren to do this.
Visit the
Ok. I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here and risk the downvotes. First, let me explain why I like to watch MLM videos like this. I am a grad student in psychology so mlm/cult/groupthink is very fascinating to me. I was also a Mary Kay victim and must say, I definitely checked all the boxes of new recruit:
1. Signed up during an emotional crisis
2. Spent all our savings so I could play business
3. Got pity purchases from all friends and family.
4. Sales came to a screeching halt when the warm market died.
5. Sent product back, tried to recover
6. Got shunned
Anyway, no possible way I have the personality type to recruit, even if I’d been okay with it morally. I’m not a persuasive sales type. But I saw this video and this woman claimed that she has been super successful (scamming) recruiting by asking women, “on a scale of 1-10, how interested are you in signing up? If they say anything less than 10, she moves on. Sounds plausible. Former directors can you chime in here?
Disclaimer: I am not promoting MLMs. “Successful” participants are scamming and lying.
I doubt she actually moves on. The concept in MK is called layering. If someone said 7, she’d know they’re pretty interested, and she’d keep approaching them with little things over and over. Basically layering is wearing them down over time. There is no way she is going to take a 7 or 8 or 9 interest level and just ignore it.
I wish Lauren would see this. It might actually make her wake up. Normally I have zero sympathy for MLMers. But I can see she is just parroting what she has been fed with very little insight into the disater that is coming. I feel sorry for her.
Lauren is in the Wilkes Unit. She is listed as a Pearl Star for Seminar Year 2021-2nd Quarter, along with Wilkes, Taylor, and Adkins.
In early January, she said she was having “the biggest sale.” So, you order a ton of products and sell them at a discount to move them? No wonder they end up in debt.
And how much will she have to pay MK for the director suit?
I am wondering if they’re even going to bother with director suits this year. What’s the point if there are no events? I suspect they’ll reuse the same blue suit from this year. So Lauren would be on the hook for about $300 if they do continue to require a suit.
NSD Brenda Summach revealed on a recorded video call that in Canada at least they are keeping the current suit for a second year.
So, 2 years of Holly Hobbie, home-Ec project suits. That’ll recruit massive numbers!
????
Another year of the suit embedded with the smell of BO. My director wasn’t big on dry cleaning hers often and it was pungent some days. Maybe it’ll just have disintegrated by this point haha.
This story reminds me of the “begin as you mean to go on” I read on an etiquette site about relationships.
If you’re starting your unit this way you can expect it to continue like this because it’s very hard to change later.
She needs to wear a less itchy sweater. Or were those nervous twitches?…very distracting. Definitely not the mannerisms of a “leader”.
It only costs $30 to sign up now?!
Yes for the option that gives you a website and the title of consultant. If you want the kit with the products in it, you have to pay the $100.
This was painful. She has no idea how quickly she is going to fall once her house of cards collapses. The worst part is there will be a so-called leader there who tells her to pick things up and start again with the insanity.
The new February Applause is a snoozer. Only 10 NSDs are on target for Inner Circle, and only 9 people finished Grand Achiever. The top 400 Directors for retail production (Read: Retail value of products her unit ordered from MK, not actual sales) includes a unit that did less than $20,000 wholesale ($40,298 wholesale).
The top 400 commissions in the whole company includes a check for $6510. That’s the equivalent of not even $60,000/year in taxed income before expenses are subtracted.
In the monthly Go Give Awards, the highest title represented is a Future Exec, and she’s been in since 2001. 20 years and less than 5 offspring. I’ve noticed they’re also no longer listing Cadillac drivers in their accolades there anymore.
And get this—Katie Toulon, Linda’s daughter that was bestowed her unit upon retirement, got a $10,635 commission check from Linda’s unit doing $90,659 retail ordering.
Missing Leadership much??
That was sooo cringe-inducing to watch! Usually when I watch MK videos like this, they are from one of the more “polished presenters” (a.k.a. LIARS!) like Jamie Taylor, Megan Wilkes, etc.
I don’t think Lauren’ll be in long at all. Even though I hadn’t heard of her before this post, I get the sense that she’s uncomfortable with the lies/manipulation.
This sounds awful but her voice drives me crazy. How she always sounds like everything is a question, the really high tone…
I know, right? It’s like? Are you telling me or asking?
I’d say it’s the new vocal fry, but they’re still into that, so…layering, I guess.
Annoyance layering.
It’s what we used to call Valley Girl talk. Makes them sound dumber than they really are. But, maybe it’s the truth in some cases.
This is totally off-topic, but I have to share:
I’m watching an episode of “Snapped” on Oxygen right now, the murderess is named Sylvia White (I’m watching it because it happened in a little Eastern NC town that I used to go to for work so I figured I’d watch). She had her husband killed. Anyhow, part of her alibi was that she was “at the Sheraton at a cosmetics seminar”. I think it was late 70s. Gee, wonder what cosmetics company?
There is also a big storyline on Coronation Street now with an MLM cosmetic company. It showing how some characters get sucked in and then it will lead to heartbreak (excited to see where it will go). The writers said they wanted to address this because so many women during COVID are getting involved in MLM. however they have been getting so much pushback from the MLM world saying it’s not realistic.
And here Lauren shows you how to “finish” a goal like the car. A 45% off sale means no profit.
Lauren’s friends are advocating for her. I just saw this post:
“Anybody that loves make up or skincare please help Lauren Wagner in Mary Kay she needs 4 people to sign on with her and buying any amount will help her out! She is so close getting her a free car.”