Real DIQ Numbers
A former Mary Kay director shares her experience in DIQ and after.
Here is news to some: No one successfully completes DIQ without recruiting a friend or a family member who is simply a number. It just doesn’t happen that the full unit is completed with people who really WANT to be in Mary Kay. There’s always a friend who signs up (knowingly or sometimes without their knowledge) in order to round out the numbers.
Why am I sharing this with Pink Truth? Because I’m not an exception to DIQ – I was the standard!! This is embarrassing, but it’s true.
Not to make excuses, but I was being led by my senior and her senior with sayings such as “you are a find a way, make a way gal”, “you’ll never work as hard as you do in DIQ” and “the only way to fail is to quit.” Oh and my favorite line of all while I was in DIQ: “Your debuting unit is never the unit you have a year later”.
So like a good DIQ I just kept telling myself “I’ll make up for it once I’m a director and out of DIQ.” I am a very accomplished professional (have 2 degrees and numerous certifications/awards from my past career) so I was gonna get this thing done. I was bound and determined to run the race to win, and I KNOW darn well that I was doing it the same way as so many other directors were doing it.
Now I do want to preface this by saying that I didn’t explicitly break the rules. I didn’t make up people or sign up pets and dead relatives. I didn’t sign up anyone without their knowledge or consent. (That happens often!)
I went through DIQ when we were required to have a unit of 30 people. My debut was July 1st. I had 31 women in the unit. 29 of them were recruited by me, I was number 30, and one was recruited by one of our unit members.
14 of the 29 were recruited between June 10 and June 29.
13 of the 14 recruited in June were mercy recruits. (In other words, they signed up because I begged them to.)
For 8 of the 13 mercy recruits, I paid for their first order to make them active. This cost me about $2,000 when you add in sales tax and shipping.
I also contributed $4,000 of production myself during the qualification period. I cashed out part of my 401k to do so.
I was a director for almost 3 years. I never in my life worked as hard as I did over that period. Even giving birth and moving across the country twice weren’t as hard as the Mary Kay hamster wheel. I got tired of it. I had to stop running. I started out weak (from my unit perspective) and finished weak (personally). I just let it go. At the end, only 2 consultants from my original unit remained, and one of those was my mom.
One day I will actually sit down and figure out how much money I actually “invested” into this so called business. And it will seriously make me want to puke because it wasn’t just my money, it was my husband’s money too. All with the notion of “Honey, I promise it will get better next month”. I have avoided looking at the actual numbers, because I know how angry it will make me.
Did I mention that I’m not the exception? This is how it works for almost all of the Mary Kay directors, they just won’t admit it to you.
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Dear lurkers: if what she has to say is hitting a little too close to home, making you cringe, and feel guilty about those unopened credit card bills, and a little betrayed because all the post DIQ promises never came to be… you’re feeling those feelings for a reason. Don’t take them to a MK-sanctioned place because they’ll just try to suck you back into the bubble. Bring them here, or to a trusted family member, or a therapist, or your dog. Take a nice long look at those feelings and what’s causing them.
Today’s poster did and she got out of the madhouse, and you can too.
Coming up tomorrow: some starry-eyed n00b flaunting her one month’s worth of experience to tell today’s former director everything she did wrong!!!!!!!!!!!! (that’s dripping with sarcasm, of course)
Serious question: Does MKorp keep the DIQ program because it’s profitable? Or is it really about making sure they’re ready to be a director?
Sure seems like there’s a lot of production (read: spending) in DIQ.
MK Corp keeps the DIQ program as it is because the hamster wheel is insanely profitable. I don’t know the exact number of failed DIQs, yet I can guess it’s high. Those DIQs pump up production for the parent unit, and those recruits also go back into the parent unit. Wannabe senior directors miraculously make Cadillac production when their DIQs fail.
Every incentive in MK is to promote ordering and recruiting. There is no corporate incentive to sell the product. DIQ is just one of the many “carrots” they dangle just out of reach to get the sales force to spend more, and sooner, than they would if their orders were based on actual product demand/sales.
None of the silly MK terms, titles, awards or events have any business value/meaning. It’s all a charade to fool the sales force into thinking they are running a business, to get them to order way more overpriced product than they can ever hope to sell or use, and to recruit others to do the same.
When I successfully completed DIQ, I also cheated. My director had held that position for 10-11 years at that point, and had never earned her car. She finally earned her first car because I was in DIQ. I had to produce $4500/month to maintain my status, which pushed her over the $7,000/month minimum for her car at that time. It was still a stretch, and on the last day of the month, she had ME calling MY team members to beg for orders “to help the team finish.”
After I debuted, my team/unit split from hers, and neither of our units were strong enough to survive alone. Both directors (her and me) were pumping personal money into the units to maintain minimum production for 2 units instead of just 1. The quarter I debuted was the only quarter she actually hit qualifications for car, which meant she was also paying a copay for the privilege of advertising for MK everywhere she drove.
As previously commented, DIQ is hugely profitable for corporate and the upline. When a DIQ inevitably fails several times, she has recruited dozens of women into the unit, most with frontloaded inventories that then help the senior director. Not to mention what it does for nsds.
In short, yes, Corporate knows DIQ is a losing game. They know people almost always cheat to finish. And they don’t care. In fact, I would argue that it’s completely necessary to create the level of churn that makes MK function.
I can totally validate the claims mentioned above. I too recruited and paid for starter kits in order to “promote” to director. Of course this starts you out as a weak unit. My director “earned” her pink Cadillac due to mine and her other offspring. When you power recruited, you have to get everyone great start qualified. This puts a lot of money into uplines pockets and magically increases their car production AND their star status. It’s such a scam. I am so thankful that due to shutdowns, I never had to go to Dallas for DIQ training. I did it online. What a total waste of time.
And that’s just DIQ. What about NIQ?
On April 6, 2024, Lindsay Creamer signed her NSD Commitment Form. She posted a video of the signing on FB and referred to it as “a sacred moment.”
She’s still not NSD. At least one of her SDs (a first-line who debuted in April) is already back to IBC.
Think of the money, time and energy being spent by so many consultants to help push someone else up the ladder.
“ No one successfully completes DIQ without recruiting a friend or a family member who is simply a number.”
Many spouses are knowingly — or unknowingly— MK consultants.