I Didn’t Earn the MLM Trip (and My Life Didn’t End)
I found this last week on Facebook, written by a woman who was “successful” in Xyngular (a nutritional supplement MLM). She’s been in their “presidents club” for years. Think of this like Mary Kay’s $650,000 unit club, and the sales director gets to go on the top director trip. This writing demonstrates how all MLMs are virtually the same. They may have different products, call the ranks different names, provide slightly different prizes…. but they’re all the same at the core.
Her comments are so on point:
- You are constantly hustling for a goal in MLM. Once you qualify for something, you have to start all over again from zero and hustle for that thing again. You’re constantly trying to maintain your rank.
- You sacrifice your family, your friends and any outside life for your MLM.
- When you don’t meet that goal (i.e. recruit the person who buys an inventory package), it is because YOU failed. Any failure in MLM is always your fault. (Of course, they can’t tell you that the pyramid schemes guarantee the failure of 99%, they have to make you believe it was a personal failing.)
The most interesting comment from Kaylin is the cover-up. If she was successful in MLM, then that covered up other shortfalls in her life. I look at these women like Chelsea Adkins, Jamie Taylor, Kelly Brock, etc. and I see it through and through. They are looking for outside validation that they are good and successful people, and you can see how heavily they crave this. I think it’s very common in MLM.
Signs point to Kaylin officially quitting Xyngular, but I can’t be certain. No more mention of it on her Facebook bio.
The Xyngular piece about her no longer exists.
It’s great when people finally start telling the truth about their scammy MLM. I can’t help but still be a little bitter that they didn’t start telling the truth sooner. Remember how fantastic it was for years while you were swindling unsuspecting recruits out of their money?
Change just a few words in each comment, and you’ve got Mary Kay. Swap out “diet” for talk of “skin care.” Tell them it’s not expensive, it’s department store quality at a lower price. There’s a money back guarantee. I don’t sell, I share. I don’t recruit, I just offer the opportunity. You only need a few hours a week….
Visit the
I think her upline lives relatively close to her. The upline’s daughter has won several national champion cutting horse titles which of course is bought by having very expensive horses which the downline paid for. I had a local lady who sold X. and I friended her. She would show these amazing before and afters but would never offer what they had to do to lose so much weight. Their results were in a couple months which was unhealthy.
The way they lose the weight is through a starvation client which includes the silly shakes full of all sorts of additives.
She said something that caught my attention: her addiction to MLM was to cover up decades of trauma. I don’t know how to word this, but the psychological manipulation of MLMs is extra-damaging to those with histories of trauma, and I think they are more susceptible to falling for the con. It makes me sad. I think people with trauma histories are less likely to see the red flags in MLMs & draw boundaries and say “this is bananas!” & this stay in longer.
(And, I don’t mean that as a put- down to people with trauma histories at all, but just as a way to show how awful & manipulative MLMs are.)
I think it was Raisinberry who did an excellent piece on this years ago, about adult children of alcoholics.
Her mention of trauma reminded me that I saw some really vulnerable people in my limited time in MK, and it made me think “This person does not have the skills/personality to be running their own business or being in sales.” I was genuinely worried about them. They had obvious mental health concerns & in one case slight cognitive deficits from a brain tumor. Now, I shudder to think how they were manipulated into ordering more than they could ever sell. They were really preyed upon. It’s despicable to prey upon anyone for profit, but when you add in the extra vulnerability, it’s even worse. I’m Sure they weren’t seen as people, but as numbers, a way to make production.
YES! They prey on the vulnerable – those who have deep financial issues, those who have relationship trauma, those who have heart-wrenching trauma, those who are emotionally lost.
For all of the God talk, their tactics to lure in the vulnerable is so anti-Christian. MKer’s are masterful users and abusers wearing bright pink lipstick.
This point is very important:
“This person does not have the skills/personality to be running their own business or being in sales.”
And yet, MK Corp (plus the recruiting director) are more than happy to take that person’s money…not just for the starter kit, but also for as much inventory as the person is able to buy. This is such a HUGE difference between MLM and legit J.O.B.s…a LEGIT company or hiring manager will not take “anyone with a face” (or pulse, or credit card, or…you get the idea). That’s because a LEGIT company spends a lot of money on hiring, onboarding, and training new hires, and thus won’t hire just anybody. But MLM will take EVERYONE who can pay the starter kit fee! And frankly, a pulse isn’t even mandatory, as we’ve seen from MK directors signing up dogs, dead grandmas, and pet rocks…as long as the starter fee is paid, the new “consultant” is good to go.
Kaybots (and lurkers): If the MLM company is quick to take your money without ANY questions about your experience, skills, personality, etc…then they are also as quick to take your money for inventory without ANY proof that you have the skills to actually SELL what you’re ordering from them…
…But why would they be willing to take your money if they aren’t bothered to see if you potentially have the skills to sell the product?!? Hint: it’s not because the product “flies off shelves” and thus you’ll have no issues selling it; it’s because THEY DON’T CARE if you sell it. They make their money when you ORDER it. Heck, they even take the (estimated, based on that double-profit fallacy) sales tax UP FRONT from you when you order it. They have NOTHING to lose by accepting your starter kit fee and your initial inventory order.
How is this? Well, the price you pay for the starter kit is designed to cover every penny of cost that MK incurs when they create your IBC number and send you the kit. They have NOTHING invested in you. THEN, they also make profit on whatever wholesale order you place.
(Tangent alert: I’m always amazed at the Kaybots who actually believe that the wholesale price they pay for their inventory is also what it costs MK to make the product…ie, MK, out of the goodness of their little pink hearts, make NO profit on the wholesale orders that their IBCs place…such as, if for example an MK item costs $20 at wholesale, that MK makes no profit on selling that item at $20. There are a surprising number of Kaybots who believe this. They actually believe this!! They believe that MK Corp (perhaps as part of this whole Golden Rule/Sharing the Opportunity rubbish) doesn’t see ANY profit from the wholesale orders of their sales force. (Kind of like how a ridiculous number of them believe that their uplines don’t make commission on their sales because the upline commission checks come from corporate and not the downline directly…it hurts my head to think about.)
I think a big problem with these IBCs who come here and think that they are special little unicorns (who are NOT like the other 99% of IBCs who fail every year) are their assumptions that they know better; their belief that they’re too smart to be ‘taken’; their false confidence that makes them think they are too savvy to be victimized by MLM; and their (woefully inadequate) “extensive” experience that makes them believe they are experts.
It’s always the lowest-rung IBCs who come here and challenge anything we say. Always. Where are the directors? Heck, even a legit Red Jacket critic would be a welcome change. Perhaps the directors know that arguing with our truthiness is futile. Except for the Cynthia Ruccia types, perhaps…but we’ve all seen how well her lies go over with Pink Truthers.
Eek, this tangent has gone off the rails (I guess when we’re talking about MK train wrecks, that’s bound to happen lol). Thank you for taking time to read my rant!
-Mountaineer95
ETA for those unfamiliar with the name “Cynthia Ruccia”, or the national story that even let us know she existed, here’s more. *Be warned, you might just fall down the rabbit hole filled with Candid Exposes, Clueless Kaybots (on national TV even!), Sharp Pink Truthers, Pesky Facts, and Tracy’s Fabulous Hair…but I bet you’ll be glad you did! ;)*
https://www.pinktruth.com/2012/08/03/mary-kay-lies-cynthia-ruccia-senior-sales-director/
https://www.pinktruth.com/2012/07/24/harpers-magazine-mary-kays-pink-pyramid-scheme/
Ooooh! I don’t mean to brag, but…okay, I do (forgive me). When I worked in my legit sales job (I was a territory sales rep with a PROTECTED territory), I made the “President’s Club” in my fifth year there. It was a sorrowful J.O.B., with full benefits, profit matching, a salary of $70k, mileage covered, and 401k.
That lousy company sent me on a horrible all-expenses-paid trip to Quebec City as part of the President’s Club (top ten percent of reps went) and they even had the nerve to leave a welcome gift in my room of Dom Perignon and a Mont Blanc pen. If that’s not bad enough, I was able to take a plus-one (as a single girl back then, I took my ride-or-die bestie) at no extra cost. The nerve! Everything was paid for. What a rip off working a J.O.B. when I could have been a Mary Kay #BossBabe!
Whoops, I forgot to include the horrible trip to Marco Island where our guest speaker was Don Shula. That trip was lousy too. At least I have a photo with Coach Shula as a parting gift.
Those J.O.B.s really suck, don’t they, Kaybots?