Did You Think Mary Kay Was a Money Tree?
In 2008, I posted an article about Mary Kay on my business blog. And 14 years later, a Mary Kay loser thinks it’s important to tell me how we didn’t run our “business” as a business. She starts off with the misinformation that MK is a franchise. Wouldn’t legal love to hear her promote MK as a franchise!
In 20 years as a consultant, she’s never become a director. She tells me that I shouldn’t “diss” something unless I hvae personal experience. (I do have personal experience.) And that if I did do Mary Kay, then maybe I just didn’t really work it. I was a “success” by Mary Kay standards, so that argument doesn’t work either.
It’s telling that she doesn’t know how banking works, because banks do in fact lend to businesses that have been in business for less than three years.
LOL Years after the original comment I am adding my own comment… However, I feel the need to point out that the women in Mary Kay are or SHOULD be RUNNING a business. And if they have lost money, it is because they did not run their business as a business.
Mary Kay is NOT a sham or a pyramid scheme, it is a FRANCHISE opportunity – and like any FRANCHISE BUSINESS the person RUNNING the business needs to WORK it. There is NO money tree. Hate to break this news to you, but any business is work.
Take McDonalds for example, it is a Franchise business, about $30 K to buy into the franchise, then the new owner needs to build the building according to McDonald’s standard, buy the menu according to McDonald’s Franchise STANDARD, hire employee’s and train them ACCORDING to MCDONALD’s FRANCHISE STANDARD… see a pattern here? However, IF the new owner who bought into this franchise, sits at home after investing the $30 K or maybe buy’s say the menu items to be delivered but HAS NOT yet hired the employees or got the building and then goes home and SITS ON HIS or HER BUTT welllll that BUSINESS will FAIL and that Franchise owner will LOOSE money…
Same goes for Mary Kay consultants – they have bought into being a part Franchise owner- with a ton of support, training, classes, and mentoring if they want in skin care and Make up AND how to run a business as well as social media. But THEY themselves HAVE TO MAKE THE EFFORT – it is NOT going to just fall off the tree’s. IT is a BUSINESS. Go Figure.
AND way to many new consultants think they can BUY more and more products just to LOOK as if they are doing well – NOT.
I know, I’ve been a consultant for over 20 years, sometimes active, sometimes not. Right now, I have a different business and I only do MK for myself and my family and friends. However, that does not mean that I am not totally grateful for the foundation on HOW to run a business that I learned FIRST from being a MK consultant.
So think what you will – but if you want a business, here you go, if you want it just to have a discount- there you go. But don’t diss something unless YOU have personal experience. And if it didn’t work for you, well then did you actually work it, or did you think it was going to grow on a money tree? As NO Business in the HISTORY of mankind has EVER done? Hmmm…….
I ALSO worked for the SBA…. Stats show most businesses fail within the first 3 years – THAT is WHY a bank WILL NOT loan to a business unless they HAVE BEEN in BUSINESS for at LEAST 3 years, and THEN they consider them a NEW start up. Before then, to get money to start- we would tell people to go to the three F’s Friends, Families and Fools……..
Visit the
Hooeyyy! What a mess of Friday fluff! Who knew MK was a franchise. Oops! I mean a FRANCHISE!!!
The things you learn from a 20 year consultant.
Wonder what income producing activity she was up to when she stumbled across that old post?
“it is a FRANCHISE opportunity:
Please pull up the Mary Kay Corporate website and show us where the opportunity is identified as a franchise.
Good grief. Do these people have a “Nasty Letter to Pink Truth” Generator or something? Random CAPSLOCK and punctuation!!!!!!! available to paid license holders?
Must be Chelsea’s new BOGO offer.
Ha! Buy one exclamation point, get one free! I made thousands playing punctuation at my kitchen table!!!
And is LOOSE money spare change under the couch cushions?
By the way, here’s what happens when an actual franchise business (Starbucks) allows too many locations to open up too close together. The phenomenon is called “cannibalization,” and while a new location might do well in the beginning, other franchises in the same area LOSE MONEY. Since MLM requires you to recruit every creature with a pulse (or without. It’s Halloween and zombies and vampires have skin too) that means too many people selling the same stuff in the same area which means you’re going to LOSE MONEY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/joke-starbucks-every-corner-actually-113027036.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGbRYNPM4yfzevsQ0qDJtkJ072uMnc7N61QTyRpAegOPVaetpLNFDB13Jl69IYOtgrPPEXudN3SrMeJzZDY_4m1q6v70tAKb4XRwpg-2lp7OsTJSAstiW3hPhIbQ5KkeeMfuKnRVh4gb5Eyq_qxRVPzwlH0M4WH22lGcXde6nEjk
And I saw documentary about LuLaRoe where two women, who lived right next door to each other in the same NYC apartment building, were both selling LuLaRoe. They both had plenty of inventory on hand and sold and advertised in company approved ways, and yet they were both… wait for it… LOSING MONEY.
Silly them for not running their “franchises” and businesses.
And recently, Starbucks closed a lot of their corporate-owned stores that were hurting the franchise stores.
You could have a field day or night with vampires as they can’t see themselves in mirrors. Just think of all of the outdated colours you could sell to them.
LOL Years after the original comment I am adding my own comment… However, I feel the need to point out that the women in Mary Kay are or SHOULD be RUNNING a business. And if they have lost money, it is because they did not run their business as a business.
From the get-go out theme is victim blaming.
Mary Kay is NOT a sham or a pyramid scheme, it is a FRANCHISE opportunity – and like any FRANCHISE BUSINESS the person RUNNING the business needs to WORK it. There is NO money tree. Hate to break this news to you, but any business is work.
I don’t think any-one here is frightened of hard work. It’s just the system is rigged in such a way, that it’s not hard work but money that counts here.
Take McDonalds for example, it is a Franchise business, about $30 K to buy into the franchise, then the new owner needs to build the building according to McDonald’s standard, buy the menu according to McDonald’s Franchise STANDARD, hire employee’s and train them ACCORDING to MCDONALD’s FRANCHISE STANDARD… see a pattern here? However, IF the new owner who bought into this franchise, sits at home after investing the $30 K or maybe buy’ssic say the menu items to be delivered but HAS NOT yet hired the employees or got the building and then goes home and SITS ON HIS or HER BUTT welllll that BUSINESS will FAIL and that Franchise owner will LOOSE (sic) money…
I don’t know where this lady got her figures from but as of 2021 you need a buy in of 2021 $45k with a minimum of $500k of liquid assets (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/072516/cost-buying-mcdonalds-franchise-mcd.asp). Further if I buy a franchise, I will have a territory, something MK doesn’t guarantee.
Same goes for Mary Kay consultants – they have bought into being a part Franchise , owner- with a ton of support, training, classes, and mentoring if they want in skin care and Make up AND how to run a business as well as social media. But THEY themselves HAVE TO MAKE THE EFFORT – it is NOT going to just fall off the tree’ssic . IT is a BUSINESS. Go Figure.
If there was plenty of support we wouldn’t be seeing recycled and outdated lists of how to get an extra 3 customers(https://www.pinktruth.com/2022/10/25/how-new-directors-got-their-last-3-customers/).
AND way to many new consultants think they can BUY more and more products just to LOOK as if they are doing well – NOT.
Why are they buying too many? Got to get a Star, got to get a Car, got to do this for the team, got to do that for the team. Find a way, make a way. It’s pressure from the top down.
I know, I’ve been a consultant for over 20 years, sometimes active, sometimes not. Right now, I have a different business and I only do MK for myself and my family and friends. However, that does not mean that I am not totally grateful for the foundation on HOW to run a business that I learned FIRST from being a MK consultant.
So my real job subsidizes my MK facade, got it. I just hope you keep your ledgers better than MK taught you to.
So think what you will – but if you want a business, here you go, if you want it just to have a discount- there you go. But don’t diss something unless YOU have personal experience.
There are plenty of women here who did the right thing to grow their MK business. And failed because the system is set up that way. And there are plenty who can read the income disclosure to see that MK isn’t worth the time and effort needed to earn a pittance.
And if it didn’t work for you, well then did you actually work it, or did you think it was going to grow on a money tree? As NO Business in the HISTORY of mankind has EVER done? Hmmm…….
I don’t think any-one here is going to argue differently. Unless, you inherit your family’s business, then you need to put in the hard work to get started. It’s a different type pf hard work, keeping up with modern business methods.
I ALSO worked for the SBA…. Stats show most businesses fail within the first 3 years – THAT is WHY a bank WILL NOT loan to a business unless they HAVE BEEN in BUSINESS for at LEAST 3 years, and THEN they consider them a NEW start up. Before then, to get money to start- we would tell people to go to the three F’s Friends, Families and Fools……..
Failure rates in businesses are high, no-one will dispute it and most of it is due to lack of research. Some-one building a 5-star restaurant in my small town would be throwing their money away. There isn’t enough people in the hinterland to support one.
Watching shows like Kitchen Nightmares shows that even once successful ventures can fail. The owners are out of touch with current dining trends, they lack the passion they once had, the landlord upped the rent and they can no longer afford to pay.
As for start-up loans, I can see several banks offering low rates to new businesses in order to stimulate the economy. Of course, you need a good business plan first. They are not in the business of throwing money away. MLMs are never good enough plans for a loan.
“Failure rates in businesses are high, no-one will dispute it and most of it is due to lack of research.” You can’t research Mary Kay! They won’t tell you how much competition is in your area.
I actually do own a franchise business. A successful one.
Nowhere has it been suggested, told, discussed, encouraged, that I buy a franchise and then recruit someone else to buy a franchise so that I will get commission from their sales. Oh wait, not sales, inventory orders. But I don’t buy my supplies from the company, I buy them from vendors. The company doesn’t care what I buy as long as they get their royalty % from MY sales.
“Before then, to get money to start- we would tell people to go to the three F’s Friends, Families and Fools……..”
What is this? I’ve never heard them say “fools” before. It sounds very much like they are suggesting you dupe somebody into giving you money to support the MK scam. Kind of unethical from the start, no?
Because its a statement made by one of the guys on the t show Shark Tank. Not by the actual banking industry.
Fridays never disappoint! The posts are so full of delusions the OP might fall off of his/her unicorn.
Mary Kay is a franchise my ass. Where do I start with this one? Having worked at the corporate offices of a franchisor, Mary Kay and other MLMs are not franchises by any stretch of the imagination. For starters, no legitimate franchise in the world would encourage you to recruit and train your own competition. Furthermore, some franchises (not all) offer territorial protection where you have the exclusive rights to a particular geographic area where there can be no other franchises but your own in that area. Can you imagine McDonald’s opening up locations across the street from each other? That would never happen. Yet, it can happen anytime with Mary Kay representatives. I know there are plenty in the town I live and given how many there are and how big the town is, they can’t be that far from each other.
But forget about all these points I just made because anybody could have posted that information and may even find ways to dispute them. There is one non-negotiable document that has to exist for any franchise to be legal. It is the Uniform Franchise Offering Circular (UFOC), similar to a stock offering prospectus. If Mary Kay was truly and legally offering franchises, I would be able to call their headquarters or a regional representative and request a UFOC for the state where I wanted to open my Mary Kay “franchise”. There is no getting around the UFOC publication requirement in any state if a company wants to sell franchises in a particular state. As far as I can see, you join Mary Kay by contacting an existing Mary Kay distributor. They would not have a UFOC to give me or have headquarters send to me because no such thing exists.
Mary Kay is a franchise my ass.
“if they have lost money, it is because they did not run their business as a business” This is true – and none of the training or advice they get from their upline will be anything business-like. Mary Kay Corp makes it IMPOSSIBLE for them to run it like a business. Can I find out how many IBCs there are competing with me in my area before opening my “Mary Kay business”? Nope. Mary Kay will not tell me.
The MLM model is a successful business model – an exploitative one designed to move money from the recently recruited to those doing the recruiting and the manufacturer of the product (or provider of the services). For it to work, the recruits have to be convinced they are in a business but to not do regular business things like track inventory, cash flow and expenses. Because as soon as you do that you realize you are losing money.
BTW, when I enter my zip code into the consultant finder, one suggested is an hours drive west through a tricky canyon, one is over an hour’s drive to the east through desolate ranch country, and one is over FIVE HOURS south of me in another state.
I know, I’ve been a consultant for over 20 years, sometimes active, sometimes not.
So, you dabbled off and on for 20 years, as a bottom-level consultant, and you think you know all there is to know? Pshh.
But don’t diss something unless YOU have personal experience.
Oh, they do. Much more than you do. We have former Directors — even Cadillac drivers — who contribute regularly. Maybe you should sit and listen before you stand and talk.
I ALSO worked for the SBA…. Stats show most businesses fail within the first 3 years.
Wrong again. Statistics show the majority of new businesses — about 60% — are still around after five years. Not that that has anything to do with your next statement about banks. Honestly, where do you get this nonsense?
IfI become a consultant and become inactive, how many months can I wait to reorder until I am terminated? Thank you.
Please don’t become a consultant, Linda. Seriously, just don’t do it. If you need convincing, take a random sampling of any three articles on this site to inform you.
You’re a grown person though and can make your own decisions. The MK rule book says you must place a minimum $225 wholesale order at least once every 12 months to remain on the books as a consultant.
From Tracy’s blog, this comment is a real gem. Say it with me, “Consultomers.”
Nikki 10 months ago
“There’s a bit of a flaw in your logic. Many women might decide to buy the $600 package to sell, and never have any intention of selling at all. They just got a full stock of makeup at wholesale price. Enough to last a long time. Even drugstore makeup is expensive. If makeup is your thing, seems like a pretty good deal to me.”
Yes Nikki, everyone should and could do that….if they want MKrap. Most do do that. How do you think the Mary Kay Rogers’ family grew and grow their fortune?
Actually, you only need to purchase $225 a quarter, or just one and done, so not even $600. People who pay double to a consultomerurer can’t be the brightest bulbs. *Dim bulb exception made for Grandma Ruth, Mother Ester, and Aunt Lydia for making family retail pity purchases. Makes you wonder though, what kind of person profits off their family?
#Retail sales to non-affiliates are not required for Mary Kay Consultants #FTC
We all know that the first thing you do if you buy a McDonalds franchise is to pressure and guilt your friends into buying their own McDonalds franchises, because your restaurant won’t be successful unless everyone you know has their own, right? /s
And if this person really did work fir the SBA, she would know that the SBA doesn’t loan money to people who want to buy into an MLM scheme. It’s policy, and she may want to ask herself why that is.