I posted this one a few years ago, but I’m bringing it back because it’s important and amusing. The big selling point in Mary Kay (or any MLM, for that matter) is “part time hours with full-time pay.” You have to get to sales director level to (hopefully) get that full-time pay. (Sadly, the vast majority of sales directors only make minimum wage.)

We’re told over and over that you can be successful with just a few hours a week. Recruiters promote the idea that you can make it to sales director if you work 10 to 20 hours per week for one month. Or you may be told that working 9.5 hours per week for six months or less will get you to sales director.

Truthful sales directors will tell you that they easily work 50 hours a week or more, just to maintain a small unit. They’re struggling to make minimum production each month, and it takes a lot of time to stay afloat. Those with larger units and bigger production are spending just as much time, because they have to do a lot of recruiting and inventory frontloading to get their production. That takes lots of time too.

Here’s NSD Dacia Wiegandt answering a question on Instagram:

I love how she puts the hours in quotes. Quotes are used to either quote someone or to express sarcasm or irony. Do you think this former school teacher meant to be sarcastic or ironic in giving the number of hours?

I suspect Dacia worked more than 40 to 50 hours a week as a director. And she works more than 20 hours as an NSD… although if you are lucky enough to get a large pyramid underneath you and you can use your “celebrity status” (see what I did there?) to help sell the dream, you can get a lot of mileage out of the people underneath you and work less than you otherwise would have to at that level.