Mary Kay Hides Real Results
One of our readers provided this insight on Mary Kay Cosmetics.
MARY KAY IS A SCAM which drives women into debt with their trinkets and labels them “failures” when the real issues are an unworkable, unprofitable business model and manipulative corporate culture set up for failure with unethical behavior, and no conscience.
MARY KAY is a faulty business design with lies, conning, and manipulation. Do you have any idea of the abuse at the hand of Mary Kay upon women?
MARY KAY has hidden real results, real outcomes, real expectations of earnings.
MARY KAY is a pipe dream for you which only drives THEIR profitability.
Within the world of Mary Kay, the dynamic is control. We think alike, we talk alike, we script alike, we program in the positive and regurgitate only what our upline and top directors have told us. If you suddenly awake from that indoctrination and discover you have been a willing dupe, you may be guilty of a lack of analysis, but who told you it was paralysis? We did what we were told and conditioned to do, and since the programming remains intact by the never-ending events a director must attend, they rarely get an independent viewpoint to fully assess the damage.
The “control” continues, throughout every incident of director duties. You must attend or you let the area down. (Cha ching) You must have the new line or your unit won’t order it. (Cha Ching) You must re-qualify for your car or your unit will feel like losers. (Cha ching) You must “stretch” so you can attend the luncheon…the speed of the leader is the speed of the gang. (Cha Ching) “What if I haven’t sold it?” “You’ll sell it.” Another dose of soft pressure, combined with a willingness to please, and another director bites the production bullet. (Cha ching)
All any ethical director needs to do to find out where the truth lies is to look honestly at her financials, her people, their results, and her past. Look at every team leader and up, at all the product they bought and never profited from. Look at every DIQ who was taught to order to “make production”…and upon doing that, fell deeper into debt. Look at every consultant who joined to make money and lost it instead. Look at every director placing orders to hit the minimum $4,500 wholesale production per month, over and over again. Imagine how in the world could they be selling all that product? Face that you know, they aren’t. You don’t sell what you have on your shelves. You lie to yourself to quiet your own conscience, and you condemn as unethical the directors on Pink Truth who are done with the charade.
“Listen to your NSD / director” was taught at every retreat, meeting, event, luncheon, career conference and seminar. Don’t think: Do! Keep it simple sweetie. You get 13% commission on your unit …are you really going to lose your meaningless “no value” Director title for lack of production? Come on! Put it in. You’ll sell it. This sage advice begins the “stretching” that is required for the remainder of the career path.
Wouldn’t an ethical company actually track real retail sales? All contests, unit clubs, trips, cars, quarterly stars, queens and courts are all based on wholesale ordering. Not ONE piece of seminar retail glory is actually TRUE! Ponder that a minute.
All directors go along with the premise of seminar because that is what is done. The company tracks wholesale…its easier we’re told, and every director plays the game without question. That means that it is space on credit cards that is being acquired, not sales excellence. Period. Each NSD attempts to get her downline crew to work to the last possible second, borrowing credit space, recruiting and frontloading newbies, and maximizing product purchases in a heated frenzy, having NOT ONE THING TO DO WITH ACTUAL SALES. Portions of these orders will be sold or get sold, but that’s not what seminar honors. In a word, seminar is a FRAUD!.
We chased the “dream” long past any chance of fruition. Most of us were good at it. We were encouraged to never quit. We were told the only women who fail in Mary Kay are those who quit, and since we believed, we kept going, trying every new idea to make it work. In reality, the only ones who fail are those who continue, blindly repeating the lies they were fed without ever evaluating the facts. They fail as human beings.
They do not care how many of their members are drowning in debt, on their good advice. It’s just an opportunity, they tell themselves, and they move on. No? Next. The only women making money in Mary Kay are the ones who are making it off the backs of their offspring and downline unit members. They do it the Mary Kay way…which surprisingly is the most unethical way of all. We who are the “weeded out” are happy to finally be among the clear headed women of the world who know the real definition of integrity, and have paid the price of fighting for it.
Run far away from any organization that doesn’t permit critical thought or thinking.
Visit the
Excellent post!
In Summary: All the incentives in mlms like Mary Kay are tied to orders. Nothing in the Mary Kay Corporate business plan depends on retail sales.
Mary Kay Corporate could not care less if anything is ever retailed. In their view, the IBC is the customer!
This first-person account is well-written and concise. It makes for a good “first article”: a fine starting place for anyone coming to Pink Truth to research Mary Kay.
That having been said, it makes no points that haven’t been stated here before, many times. Those of us who have been here a few years likely were nodding to themselves, “Yep. Uh-huh. Heard it, heard it, said it. Uh-huh…”
By no means am I minimizing the importance of this contribution. It shows how anyone whose eyes are not dazzled by the pink fog will reach the same conclusions:
1. Mary Kay is a scam.
2. There’s little chance you’ll break even in sales, much less profit. (50% margin isn’t nearly enough, even if you could get it.)
3. There’s little chance you’ll make minimum wage as a Director, much less “executive income.”
4. The only way to profit is off the backs of others who are losing money chasing the dream.
The above four points apply to ALL MLMs. They are all scams, making the same false claims of opportunity and egalitarianism. MLMs rely on the fact that most people are fairly trusting of others, and few understand the nuts and bolts of retail sales.
Mary Kay teaches how to gain the trust of others and recruit them into the scheme. (Sit on the floor so you’re lower, touch their arm so you look sincere and caring, ask leading questions and wait for them to respond, exploit their personality type, etc.) It’s enough to fool almost anyone who doesn’t know about the methods and scripts.
Few realize that retail stores like Sephora and Ulta have margins of 75-90%+, not because they’re greedy, but to survive. And they have customers coming to them in droves; no warm chattering necessary. 50% margin is break-even at best, once you pay expenses and overhead.
Just say no to MLM scammers.
So certain is failure in MLM, that if you took the most successful Mary Kay director, and cloned her endless times to fill the ranks of Mary Kay, the loss rates would not change.
The failures rates in MLM have nothing to do with “competence” or “level of effort” or “quitting too soon”. The system is literally designed to create this very outcome. The up-line makes its money almost entirely from the losses below. There is no other appreciable money source in these mostly closed systems.
In a typical real business with 1000 employees, everyone makes positive income. In MLMs like Mary Kay, only 4 of those 1000 have a chance to make money, because the losses of the 996 are needed to provide the profits for the 4.
“Run far away from any organization that doesn’t permit critical thought or thinking.”
Fantastic article and great advice. “Any organization” is perfectly logical. It would be hypocritical to only apply that advice to some and not others.