Getting Your Wife to Leave Mary Kay
Written by Emanuel
Mary Kay may not technically be a cult, but it has many characteristics of cults. My brother’s wife has been involved with Mary Kay, moving up into the ranks of a car driving sales director. They have four small children, and it is sad how little she sees of them, even as Mary Kay promotes itself as a way to be at home with the children. I provided the following advice to him.
If my wife was involved with Mary Kay, this is the strategy I would use:
PLAN A:
I would tell her “Honey, your involvement with MK is putting financial stress on our family (see note at the end/bottom about MK ‘success’) and I would like you to stop using the family credit card for MK functions. May I suggest that you find a part-time job (as a pharmacy assistant, coach, department store clerk, etc.) in order to pay for the expenses you incur as a result of MK ?”
[This is because there are so many different expenses that erode/eat-into the 50% mark-down/discount they get on the their product purchases; the high price of the products one one would have sell them for; and not to mention the ever increasing product inventory.]
If this plan does not help her to re-prioritize her life (how she allocates time and money), then follow…
PLAN B:
I would tell her “Dear, I am very concerned about your finances around the MK consulting business. I would like to ask you to hire a bookkeeper/accountant to help you keep track of your positive cash-flow and expenses for the following 3/6/9/12 months. And then, at the end of the 3/6/9/12 I would like us two to sit down and look at the financial picture of your MK consulting business.”
[Here you decide on a definitive time span for this professional accounting/accountability, so you have a goal of when the reviewing of the books will happen. You should also have her track ALL of her time spent on MK so that you will be able to figure how much she is making per hour. You may also want to agree that if she is not turning a profit at that time (or isn’t making at least $x per hour), she agrees in advance to leave Mary Kay. ]
If this hard facts analysis does not help her realize that she is working as a slave for MK (earning less then minimum hourly wages and netting annually less then the poverty line), then go for…
PLAN C:
I would sit down with her and say “[Wife], I have been doing some reading about MK business practices and made a list here of some very dubious practices. I would like to ask you up-front if you OR your upline have ever used these tactics/techniques ?”
THIS plan requires some research and time reading online on your part, about all the complaints from current and former MK consultants about how impossible it is to continue in this business (climbing the ladder) without taking shortcuts and compromising oneself morally/ethically.
If the answer is YES, then I would say “This is highly unethical if not immoral, and it is very unbecoming of a Christian. I would like you to repent of this, and stop your involvement in MK now!”
If the answer is NO, then proceed to….
PLAN D (last resort):
I would find a quiet place for the two of us to sit and tell her “Honey, I love you very much and want the best for our kids and family. I have something very important and serious to tell you: Your involvement in MK is causing our kids, myself and our family great emotional/financial/time-management distress. I would like you to make a decision today between your family (4 kids and I) and your MK family (business plans and associates).”
If her answer to this plan (Plan D) is “I choose MK family,” I would recommend that you take the kids and leave the house ASAP and give her space and time to think things through. You can easily afford a short-term rental (motel, hotel, apartments for commuters, etc.). As a Christian, I also recommend that you NEVER consider divorce (or use that word), no matter how painful the emotional or financial loss of her involvement in MK business is to the family.
And in all things Pray for Wisdom from above, to know how to talk to her and approach her.
NOTE:
Financial success in MK IS possible (not probably, but still possible)… but the question is “At what price?”
How many hours dedicated away from family, and how many hours even when one is physically present at home is one’s mind on the MK business or MK affairs (emotionally absent from family)? About the ‘success’ of the MK business here are some numbers found on Pink Truth which seem to be well documented in other places/sources also:
As for the “many many” women who are “incredibly successful” in Mary Kay…. In the United States there are about 300 to 500 women making “executive” income in Mary Kay. There are a couple thousand making middle management income. There are another 5,000 to 8,000 making minimum wage. Almost everyone else is losing money. This is out of 600,000 to 700,000 consultants in the United States. So the “many many” women being “incredibly successful” are about 400 out of 600,000 are 0.06% (that’s six one-hundredths of one percent).
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Hi Emanuel. Thank you for sharing your perspective. Your brother must have shared a lot of his grief over Mary Kay with you.
I agree with all of this except for the “no divorce” part. The marriage vows were undermined when she started putting MK above the family and then there’s the “unawareness plan.”
Sorry I didn’t mean to reply directly to you.
“This is highly unethical if not immoral, and it is very unbecoming of a Christian. I would like you to repent of this, and stop your involvement in MK now!” BEFORE you pull out the God Card, make sure you understand how deeply embedded on prosperity gospel and decorated with Christian trimmings most MLMs are … Rather than have these “come to Jesus” meetings as a one-shot, which is likely to backfire and make her more committed than ever, keep bringing up the ways Mary Kay is unethical as you see them, and how it’s eroding the sense of right and wrong. ERODE her connections, don’t try to blast them off in one shot.
(remember the fable about the sun, the wind and the traveller’s coat? Be the sun)
Thank you!
These look like good suggestions from outside the pink bubble. They’re logical, reasonable, and sound. Unfortunately, MK has a decades-long track record of answering logic with manipulation. “Women make business decisions with emotion. If it feels right, do it!” They will warn a new recruit about the “negative nellies” in their lives. “I know your husband and mom love you. They’re trying to protect you, and that’s why they’re warning you. They just don’t know what I know about this business. Trust me! We’ll show them together!” They will encourage women to keep their loved ones on an information diet, the “husband unawareness plan.” Top directors speak from the stage about getting to the mail before their husbands so he doesn’t see that credit card bill. “After all, I can pay it off with just XXX number of skin care classes!”
The scripts and manipulation run deep in Mary Kay, and any overt questioning of the company line will be seen as spewing negativity. At a certain point (reached long before a car is earned), the consultant/director has her self-worth so completely tied up with Mary Kay that any statement that she’s not making the money her recruiter promised her will be seen as a direct attack on her as a person.
Your brother needs to talk to someone who has escaped the pink cult. Reading the articles here from former consultants and directors is a good start.
As Lazy Gardens suggests, getting someone out of MK is a long process. It’s aided by subtly pointing out where things don’t match up. If she slips and mentions something negative (she didn’t sell anything at her most recent party), ask a follow up question in a non-threatening tone (wow, you usually sell so much. What’s your party average? How much profit is that? So that’s ____ per week/month? Wow, you should be able to take over the mortgage (or whatever) with that!) Get her back on his team, not her recruiters team (see how the recruiter did that really quickly when painting everyone else in her life as a negative nelly? It’s now wife and recruiter vs. husband and mom. Not husband and wife vs. the world.) When she inevitably CAN’T pay whatever agreed-upon bill with her sales, help her dig into her books. Not in an accusatory way. “Wow, that must be disappointing. I know you thought you were going to make XXX from your sales this month. Can we look at your business ledger and see what happened? I think it will help you course-correct for next month.” She’ll start to see how little she’s making. At first, she’ll likely blame herself because that’s what she’s been trained to do. “If it’s to be, it’s up to me!” Keep digging into the hard numbers with her, not against her. She’ll start to see that no matter how much she works, she’s not making any money, certainly not enough to justify the time away from her family.
Perhaps take the kids someplace fun every time Mom goes to work. Make FOMO your friend. There’s only so many childhood moments she can miss out on before it wears on her.
I can’t stress this enough. The MOST important thing about this process is being on her team, and her believing that he’s on her team. MK WILL train her that anyone outside the pink bubble is not on her team. If he can pull her back to her original commitment to her husband–2 people becoming 1–it will be easier to pull her away.
Mary Kay does not have 600,000 to 700,000 consultants in the U.S. At most it may be around 400,000 but I suspect it’s much less. I heard the company is at
1.5 billion dollars in “sales” worldwide. It was around 3 billion five years ago. So it is shrinking considerably at a fast rate. The lies and manipulation aren’t working as well as they used to!
People are waking up – hooray! On a related note, do you listen to the podcast, Life After MLM by Roberta Blevins? A recent episode talked about these FB groups where a bunch of MLM people are in one group to “support” each other – but it sounds like a big gambling spree! It’s wild. At least more information is getting out into the world so people can hear BOTH sides of the MLM story.
Please don’t assume that this is just about making versus losing money.
As a former member of a cultish church, I can assure you that people often stay in a cult even when they know it’s costing them money. They stay for some benefit that’s so valuable (in their eyes) that it outweighs any possible financial loss.
With that in mind, ask yourself about the intangible benefits your sister-in-law is getting from Mary Kay: recognition, attention, praise, relief from the never-ending demands of mothering four small children (which is really hard work, no matter how much you love them), camaraderie with other adult women. The money may well just be icing on the cake.
If she’s using MK to fill those needs, what can her husband and extended family do to her help her meet them in a less destructive way? Does she need someone to babysit the kids regularly so she can take some time off to reconnect with friends or work on a hobby? Does she need to hear words of praise and appreciation more often than she’s been hearing them? The (false) promise of money may be just the tip of the iceberg. If she’s in Mary Kay for reasons that are more personal than financial, then spreadsheets won’t be enough to win her over. (Although the spreadsheets may become a valuable tool after she begins questioning Mary Kay.)
The late Walter Martin, author of Kingdom of the Cults, taught that asking questions could be a useful technique, especially questions that make her aware of the cognitive dissonance between what the cult says versus what she’s actually observing. Asking good questions takes a light hand, as well as patience, so it may not feel as satisfying as laying out your whole argument all at once like a prosecutor in a courtroom. But it may work better in the long run than a direct attack, because if it’s done right, it’s less likely to put the cultist on the defensive.
The people I know who’ve left cultish situations haven’t done so because someone sat them down and laid out everything wrong with the cult. They’ve mostly left because they started to see cracks in the cults’ facades for themselves. Then they had someone who would listen to their concerns respectfully and compassionately, who would validate them in a way that didn’t come across as, “See? See? I told you so!”
This is just my experience, and it may not apply to everyone. But I hope it will be of some use to someone.
Not many independent women who think they are running a business are going to respond positively to “I’D like you too…” While these are great suggestions, a better approach might be “LET’S sit down together and look at your Mary Kay business and finances and figure out a way to reduce credit card cost and get your business on a cash basis and also make better use of your time so that you aren’t away from our family as much” It might be a better way to get the conversation started.
Starting out with “I” or giving her an ultimatum right at the get go is only going to make her feel the husband is in charge of the household and she doesn’t matter. It may take several conversations for her to break away from MK. JMO
“is only going to make her feel the husband is in charge of the household and she doesn’t matter” And this feeling is why the love-bombing in MLMs is so effective.
Yes, which is why approaching the subject as a team rather than the I want you to do it approach is better. He has to realize there is a very strong pink barrier that has to be broken and his wife or sister-in-law truly believes she is running her own business.
For me the approach would be to offer strong and consistent support in the form of a comprehensive and accurate business ledger. Help her track everything accurately including her time, expenses and bonuses and sales. Start to create graphs on the cumulative losses, and once she is is able to see the losses month after month, gently discuss putting limits on the losses, either time-based or dollar based. Be sure to track hourly wage equivalent.
This can look like:
“Hi honey. I am noticing a trend here. How high should we allow this loss curve to get? How much loss do you think is acceptable?
Or:
“What hourly wage should you be shooting for achieving with this? How long should we give you to achieve that?”
Or:
“Hi honey…it looks like we are still losing money every month. How many months should we give the business to turn this around to profitability? We can’t just keep losing money. How long do you think is an appropriate amount of time?”
If you support her enthusiastically around keeping that ledger and creating the trend graphs, she will see it for herself, without having to be told, the bleeding that is going on. And she will never be able to say you didn’t support her.
And remember, you can support her without supporting Mary Kay. This is key. By being along side her, she will know you are supporting her and wanting her to succeed as much as she does. But those graphs will be an eye opener to her every month, and those won’t need any judgement or explanation.
Her business performance will speak for itself.
I made a spreadsheet that has formulas to keep a running tally of MK related expenses versus income from MK that entered on the other sheets.
It adds up all the expenses and subtracts them from the total income.
Hourly Gross Income is the number of hours you have worked on Mary Kay activities divided into your Net Income. It will become positive when your Net Income turns positive.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12sNNkIfxvOR_ikDS_Bt6EREtysXMTFWFBton8uRGSPM/edit?usp=sharing
Hi,
many thanks for this site.
So I’m not “just paranoid” as my wife says and the symptoms of the pink plague are always the same again?
Well, I already tried Plan A-D in the last five years. My wife’s conclusion: I am the only Problem(negative, unsupportive) and the cause of her lack of success. So I should better leave home and keep being the father of our three Kids from outside.
Regards from Germany
Donnie