Mary Kay Doesn’t Pay the Bills
Written by PinkPeace
How do we get into so much debt in Mary Kay? Honestly, it’s not even so much the business expenses themselves, although they can be a bear. We have real-life bills to pay, but our Mary Kay income doesn’t begin to cover them. But if you’ve quit your real job (doh!) and have nothing else to fall back on, what do you do when Billy needs braces and the hot water heater sprung a leak?
Credit cards to the rescue!
I didn’t have a big enough bank account to pay my “real-life” bills, so . . . Kids’ doctor visits? VISA. Insurance premiums? American Express. Groceries? MasterCard. Gas? Discover. And don’t forget those awesome convenience checks that come every month. They really help out to pay for mortgage and utilities.
Every month I would stress through the bills, deciding which ones could wait until the next month to be paid and which ones couldn’t. Would the electric company cut off my service, like the notice said? Maybe I’d better figure out a way to pay that one. The dentist bill can wait, except I hate to do that, because she’s a good family friend. Department credit card bill? Well, they’ll just roll it over until next month. I know I’ll get a big fee charged, but maybe next month my check will be better.
This is how so many women fall into serious debt with Mary Kay. It’s not simply product orders or business expenses, although that can be part of it. It’s trying to make ends meet with a business that is not designed to make you money (no matter what your upline tells you). It’s believing that if you work harder and you get a couple of big months with Mary Kay, you’ll be able to pay off that debt and have it made for the rest of your life.
Pink Truth Lurkers, how many years have you been in this situation? Has your debt decreased or increased? Are you and your family going without, because you’ve had yet another “unbelievable” month? Are you pinning your hopes on your unit to order a lot next month or your recruiting prospect to sign?
Do you wake up in the middle of the night with heart palpitations wondering how you’re going to get out of this credit card mess? Are you hiding the credit card bills from your husband, because you’re scared to death he’ll find out how poorly your Mary Kay business is doing? Are you sick and tired of living this way?
PLEASE! Hear my heart, as they say. You will NOT get out of debt until you get out of Mary Kay. It’s no shame to step down from directorship or to send your product back. It will actually be the smartest thing you’ve ever done in your business and will be your first step in getting out of debt.
Here’s my definition of insanity, “Continuing to do Mary Kay year after year, and expecting different results.” Stop the madness, stop the debt, stop Mary Kay.
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This is EXACTLY how I racked up almost $25,000 in debt. It was part time pay for full time work, with a heaping side of “keeping up with the Joneses” image spend. My “business” simply wouldn’t pay for both itself and household bills. Mary Kay was a parasitic leech, and only when I finally removed it from the home did we begin to make progress, spiritually, emotionally and financially.
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
PinkPeace speaks the truth. You simply can’t make money from a system designed to take your money…a system who’s revenue source is the pockets of their own sales force. Mary Kay Corp does not see the sales force as business owners. Mary Kay Corp sees it’s sales force as customers.
It is designed to make losers of 99% of participants. You can fill the MK ranks with clones of the most successful NSDs, and the loss rates will not change. It’s in the nature of the system that so many must lose money.
Best to steer clear of MLMs like Mary Kay. The tiny fraction who do make money do so through the losses in their own downline. Those gains are nothing to be proud of.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I had a meeting with our financial planner, and my husband used the phrase “passive income” at one point (his shorthand way of referring to pensions and Social Security). I thought our planner’s hair had caught fire, the way he responded to those words! It makes me wonder how frequently he talks to clients who are ensnared in MLMs and what horror stories he could tell.
People have been trying to create a perpetual motion machine, which runs forever with no energy input, for centuries. They haven’t, and can’t because it lives in the land of the theoretical, and a real-world system will always have losses. A car engine will only run so long on one tank of gas, and some of the gas is converted to waste products and heat even in the most efficient engine. Even solar and wind energy aren’t forever; turbines and solar panels can’t catch all the energy and some is lost as heat or reflected… plus you get still days and clouds.
In order to keep the MLM machine running, it needs a steady input of money from its “sales” force. No one has an endless supply of money. No one can devote all their money to the MLM without suffering. To compensate, the company churns and burns through consultants the same way you pump gas into the car or put new batteries in the remote. The handful who do succeed aren’t creating electricity out of nowhere – they’re running extension cords to their downline’s outlets and nagging them to pay the $2400 electric bill.
The problem is, MK and its ilk pretend that they exist in that perfect world where the perpetual motion machine is possible, and if you can’t build one it’s ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!!!!!!
It’s not your fault. It’s reality’s, and there’s no escaping it.
“your business” I thought we had covered this, previously.
My director told us a little trick when paying your water and electric bill, you accidentally put the checks in the wrong envelope to give yourself more time to get the money to actually pay them. And then use the money for your order. By the time the utility companies figure it out you will have sold enough product to pay those bills. Are you kidding me? Of course I am dating myself because most bills are now paid online. But you get my point.
Right, or else “forget” to sign the check so that they will have to send it back to you for a signature and give you some extra time for the money to magically appear in your bank account. That was a favorite trick of my uncle’s when he was strapped for cash.
I actually did that for real once–legitimately forgot to sign the check. I got a call from the company, and it was pretty clear to me that they suspected I had done it on purpose to give myself extra time. I was mortified.