Our Team Won a Cadillac!
Written by SuzyQ
Your director is the one who drives the Cadillac, you are not on the insurance. (You’re not even ALLOWED to drive it, since only people listed as “authorized drivers” on the MK paperwork are allowed to.) Your director gets additional recognition at events, you don’t. What you get from being a Cadillac unit is an additional name badge ribbon, 2 minutes going across the Career Conference “stage” and the ability to eat in a separate dining room at Seminar.
Doing it for the team/unit means doing it for the sales director. Period. The production must be there for the sales director to earn the Cadillac and to maintain it without a copay. She cannot do this without a big unit which means there will be a huge push on recruiting and ordering. Stars will be given extra recognition as will recruiters.
Even before the Cadillac is earned, she will introduce herself as a Future Cadillac Director (in the name of abundance, name it and claim it, and manifesting from the universe) and you will be introduced as members of a future Cadillac unit. It will be so special and may even be accompanied by tears. You may even receive postcards with a picture of the sacred car and a plea to do your part to make this dream come true. Order and recruit. Recruit and order.
And then there are the Unit Clubs and the Top Director Trip, and the honor of representing you on the Seminar Stage! Once again, this team effort nets you little, but your director will have a good time with the bling, the jealousy of the non-trip directors, and the sending of emails and postcards from the trip. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the pictures of food as these appear to be the epitome of the experience to most of the directors.
Next time you see a pink Cadillac, ask yourself a couple of questions: First, why would any adult female in her right mind be caught dead in a pink car, and second, what is the typical amount of her copay and her charge backs? Last, but not least, why doesn’t everyone realize that the pink Cadillac is a brilliant advertising ploy for MK and is used as the epitome of materialism in the MK world that values appearance over substance. The ultimate reward of selling your soul– the trophy on wheels.
Watch for consistency clubs and a huge push after Career Conference for orders and recruits. June is always deadly with new products to be introduced and “goals” to be achieved. The NSDs will hit the road for events and you will be pressured to attend with recruitable guests. You will be reminded frequently that those who show up go up, and if you are not sharing this opportunity with everyone, you are being selfish. You just may be the answer to some woman’s prayers. After all, you are doing this for the Team, and you ARE a Team player aren’t you?
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And don’t forget: even with zero copay (ha!), she’s still paying for that car, because the lease payments come out of her commission. Yet they call it a “free car.”
The bass-ackwards logic of MLM.
AND she pays taxes on the lease payments as “income.” Such a scam.
If I leased a vehicle strictly for business (as real estate agents and many professionals do), the lease payments would REDUCE my taxable income as a valid business expense. How does it work in Mary Kay?
It gets added to your 1099 at the end of the year as taxable income, just like all the prizes they give away. So, for example, if your lease payment was calculated as $500/month, it shows that you “earned” an additional $6000 in income that year, none of which showed up in your commission check.
SD 1099’s will have categories for commissions (which you receive in an actual direct deposit), prizes (star consultant prizes, all those “real diamond” rings, “free” trips, etc.), and car lease value. So, say an SD earns $36,000 in real commissions, she may have to pay taxes as though she received $45,000+ after considering all the prizes and car payments. AND, she’ll have to pay both sides of FICA because she’s self-employed.
Long story short, as always, Mary Kay consultants and directors get the short end of the stick.
It would be interesting to see an article about how much the hypothetical average Cadillac director winds up paying in income taxes, since the chance of a real SD releasing her tax returns is pretty much zilch.
Wait, the lease payments come out of her commission?! If that’s accurate, that’s Horrible. I’ve been on Pink Truth for a few years now & never heard that. I knew about co-pays though.
The car thing has done more than anything else to distract IBCs and SDs from discovering the underlying pyramid scam in Mary Kay.
A clever bit of marketing there. Sick and wrong, but clever.
The consultant drives a giant MK advertisement. Does MK pay her to do it? No, she pays MK.
The lease thing always killed me. You’ve got a copay, and you pay taxes on the copay AND the lease cost! It’s beyond double dipping. (This is why I took the cash compensation.) Plus getting your spouse added as an authorized driver increases the crappy insurance rates. Don’t get me started on the insurance company being an MK subsidiary. Their rates were insanely high for the coverage you had.
The car program is a complete scam, no matter the level.
Scams all the way down.
Scamception.
At the same Seminar that I quit Mary Kay (yes AT Seminar)- I was in a Cadillac Unit. Only 6 consultants from that unit attended Seminar and you can bet we were the top 6 that put our director in that car. What completely appalled my husband was that fact that when our director “took” us out for dinner , we were all expected to pay for our own. It was an appreciation dinner where we received our “gifts” for being part of the Cadillac team. When everyone started digging into their wallets for their share of the bill, my husband grabbed it and took care of the whole thing. Much to the embarrassment of the Cadillac Director. We were not rich of course, but he felt that those 6 consultants (myself included) at least deserved a free dinner out.
I quit right after seminar this past year. And I was in a Cadillac unit too. Funny enough, only 2 of us out of the whole unit were at seminar. When the other girl asked why we were the only 2 there, we were told that the “the ones who needed to be there were there.”