Written by Raisinberry

You may have not realized how sorry your life was before you met your Mary Kay consultant. In fact, you stupidly may have thought things were just kind of alright. You may have even been happy and centered and forward focused. When she called you to be her model at the sales meeting, or meet her for lunch for a practice interview, you probably thought, what a nice treat. You could have never known you were about to be plunged into a carefully orchestrated paradigm shift that would soon have your self esteem flushed down a pink toilet.

Mary Kay sales directors are practiced and extremely efficient manipulators, passing down their skills to each generation of initiates who manage to get the Suit. All verbal transactions are scripted, and since they work, no one has any reason to evaluate whether they are moral. Part of the programming was to get consultants. to believe that they were enhancing another woman’s life– if they could only get her to take a chance on herself. The goal was to get her to do Mary Kay, for her own good. This justifies whatever scripting was employed to “enrich her life”. If she rebelled, we were taught these words, “I would never break your arm to join, but I would sure twist your arm to listen.” How noble.

We were taught to look for or create the “weakness” in a woman’s life, and use that to fill it with Mary Kay. We paid for seminars with David Cooper, or with NSDs, or top directors to find out exactly how to create the “hole” in the interview and then fill it with Mary Kay.

Did she have all the flexibility she needed? Did she have all the money? Does her current situation recognize and appreciate her? When was the last time she got prizes, awards and recognition for doing a good job? Did she feel like she would love personal growth? Does the idea of driving free appeal to her? Oh my, you still make payments? And pay insurance? Wouldn’t she like to learn more and grow? Could she get excited about all the trips we can win? Does the idea of making her husband proud of her accomplishments, excite her in any way? Of the ideas we have mentioned, which appeal most to her?

By the time we got done with you, you had a pretty dull, unimportant, going nowhere, limited and unfulfilling life. Wow. That’s exactly why you need Mary Kay!

If we were successful, we got you to feel dissatisfaction in your current situation. That was the fastest way to get you to try Mary Kay, at least try it, and “let me help you make $300 to $500 your first week and then decide if it’s for you.” What have you got to lose? You’d have to be an idiot to not let me help you make $500 your first week in business, now wouldn’t you?

Feel the setting of the hook?

This is not salesmanship. This is manipulation and exploitation. This is not service, because the thing we are going to “plug the hole” with in her life, is worse than our carefully crafted hole.

By subtle programming, the target rarely sees what is happening. Once on board, meetings and events are all orchestrated to fog the woman’s perceptions and NOTHING NEGATIVE IS ALLOWED! Ironically, we never see the effects that this strategy has on ourselves! We too, are being manipulated in the exact same way by our “uplines.”

Because Mary Kay knows you will sell a good deal of merchandise to friends and family, their interview promises will be reinforced and you will “bee-live”. You are really not thinking that friends and family are over buying to get you started…  because they love you. Those initial sales will be used to keep you in the game, thinking you can duplicate those numbers if you would just book, sell, book, recruit. Add a goal poster, meeting recognition, and special attention by the director and you will slip away into the pink bubble.

Once again, dissatisfaction has to be cultivated to keep you striving, so you will find yourself not sitting at the head table, and among the lackeys in the Unit because you are without your red jacket. Here is where the Mary Kay journey begins in earnest; when you are convinced you have to “fix you” to get the results others are getting. We were told to get you to “want the red jacket, the car, the suit.” We were trained to heighten covetousness for all these prizes. We had to “romance” every thing our nationals were giving away. We had to make you want it…the prizes, the new product, the event, the Seminar. We never really saw that it was the same formula that we used at the interview, working on the career path. Isn’t striving a good thing? Shouldn’t a person want to move up? Don’t you want to be her?

Mary Kay Inc. and NSDs created dissatisfaction in their directors as well. The use of blouse designations, special seating, car levels, ribbons, and constant prizes to be earned keep the average person frenzied and wanting. The prize overkill in Mary Kay will nurture whether you feel left out or among the achievers, and you will find that dissatisfaction is a distraction that keeps you unsettled, and never fully able to evaluate what is really going on. In essence, what you thought was building your self esteem, was in actuality, diminishing it. You were being made dependent on Mary Kay, growing more addicted to recognition and comaraderie and belonging, much like a junkie getting hooked on the very thing that is creating the dependence.

At the director level, you cannot afford to have your unit see you aren’t at the head table, or you don’t have a car, or didn’t do Courts. Now, you work to avoid humiliation, and attend every event to find the magic words that will get you “fixed.”

“You don’t want to be the only one who didn’t “fill-in-the-blank.” Not qualifying for whatever now becomes the chief fear of your life. How did you end up here when that initial interview was all about filling your life full with the benefits of Mary Kay? Mary Kay’s book was titled, “You can have it all”. And here it is again…that subtle message that unless you have all the time you need, all the money, all the recognition, all the friendships, the joyful marriage, the respect and challenges, that only Mary Kay can provide, you must be a lazy loser, lacking is self discipline and follow through.

“What does she have that you can’t have fixed?” Mary Kay shouts from the Seminar Queens Throne.

Yes, you still haven’t figured it out. You still have to get “fixed.” That “need” that they created has now grown larger. Only you are too fogged to see how they did it. How they continue to do it. You must “find a way or make a way”. You are, “standing in your own way”…”you have to raise your deserve level”….you have to “fake it till you make it”…you have to…” hitch your wagon to a star”.

Who created the need? Who exacerbated it? Who made you feel you didn’t measure up? Who romanced things you never wanted in the first place?

MARY KAY.

It is psychologically brilliant manipulation of the most evil kind. It is misdirection and sleight of hand. Because you occasionally hit it big by recruiting an emerald star, or selling a few roll-ups, you stay in the game, convinced that the jackpot is right around the corner. You’ll have to do to your new recruit, what was done to you, and soon she’ll be feeling pretty badly about her low sales and growing debt, wanting more and needing to get “fixed.” The higher you go, the more you find out that very few of the so called celebrated results are actually true. None of Seminar’s Unit Clubs are true. Most of the Queen’s Court of sales have only ordered $40,000 worth, not sold it!

You have been comparing yourself against I stories that leave out the details, the how–to’s, and the fraud. You don’t find out any of this until you reach the upper levels. Your unit “DIQ” will never tell how it all came together on that last day. Your director will never share how much she paid in co-pays this year. The newest red jacket who signed her brother so she could sit at the head table, will keep that to herself. But you will think they are all better than you. You will drift away, spent, feeling that hole in a big way now. You won’t even remember your former pretty okay life, because now you have 4 maxed out credit cards, and a failed attempt at significance. That’s what Mary Kay calls empowering.

By getting you to believe the life you had been living was nothing as grand as a Mary Kay life, your recruiter and director had to lie to you about their results and standing in order to make you think you needed to join. They intentionally and ironically sell a “dream” they know they themselves are not living, and attempt to make you jealous of a life they do not possess. They share their “once upon a time” success story as if it were a weekly occurrence, and cause you to fill in the blanks that their omissions leave. Your dissatisfaction is expanded and exploited and will be fed and stroked your whole career. And you will fail. Eventually you will fail. Because to be a success in Mary Kay means you don’t care one bit about the hole you’ve dug for someone else.