Star Consultants Not Making Any Money
Written by Parsons Green
Since Mary Kay no longer publishes director commissions in the monthly Applause, it’s hard to see how successful the consultants are. Enter the Star Consultant Program!
The program runs quarterly, and consultants are awarded points based on their wholesale orders. The company does include the disclaimer that the orders should be supported by sales of retail products to customers, but if retail sales aren’t tracked, who’s the wiser?
The points can be redeemed for prizes, or as Anastasia Syzmkowski explains it – CINDERELLA prizes.
Here’s a look at a sampling of the prizes for the quarter that just ended on December 15th.
The retail prices were found in a quick google search and definitely cost the company a lot less to purchase. Can you imagine spending $1800 to $9600 wholesale to get any of this junk?
Now let’s take a look at “future NSD” (LOL) Megan Coleman’s unit. These are her three directors.
Megan’s Top Four consultants were her and her three directors! The Star Prize does not get awarded based on Unit Volume.
For this quarter, Megan had
Pearls – 3
Emerald – 3 (and one of them was her mom)
Diamond – 2
Ruby – 3
Sapphire — 4
Based on the lowest level for each star, these 15 stars would have brought in at least $57,000 wholesale. Most of the consultant stars belonged to Megan’s downline. Anastasia had two stars, and Carly had one. Jamie didn’t have any.
Anastasia’s highest star outranked her, and is even credited for having the highest “sales” in her unit.
If a Sapphire star is $2400 quarterly, that means that everyone in Megan’s downline who did not star had less than $800 wholesale that month. Anastasia’s consultant is bringing in more than she is. Everyone is making well under $100 a week, even in the best case scenario.
How many of these orders were sold to customers – let alone for full price?
How much unpaid time did any of these consultants spend chasing down faces to sell the product to?
How does this seem like a lucrative job to anyone????
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Great article, PG.
Star Consultant status is another love bomb tactic to keep people trapped. You don’t want to miss a quarter! When you go to seminar, you could attend the all star luncheon, but ONLY if you were a four quarter star.
I think these “strategies” the company uses really prey on people who have some mental “differences.” I could use the word “neurodivergent,” but that’s broad.
I mean, you could be a perfectionist and not want to miss the all star luncheon. You could be ADHD and not want to miss the party! People whose brains work “differently” are more susceptible to the MK/MLM propaganda, I think. My brain is one of those brains, though I don’t have any official diagnosis yet. I do know that I am very intelligent – and that did NOT keep me out of MK, obviously. I am also resourceful and tenacious and know how to persevere. All good characteristics, but especially dangerous when used against myself in an organization like MK.
{{{Maybe I am just making excuses for myself.}}} I stayed in MK for over 20 years. I had many customers (I really did sell product to other humans!). I was a “free” car driver. A washed up sales director. I was a star consultant 49 quarters. On that note, we also would have local star events where you could go on a limo ride to look at Christmas lights but **only** if you were a star. Of course I was a star, I didn’t want to miss out.
49 quarters x 1800 (minimum) is around $88,000. It was an expensive way to learn. I know it is much higher than that because I was rarely the low-level star — I was up there at 3600 and beyond.
I truly hope other women come across this site and read this and process our lessons. Their unique brains will lead them here. If you are here and reading, keep asking the questions.
They use Fear of Missing Out to the worse degree
Big time using FOMO against the sales force! I was my biggest motivator … and my SD MIL used that tactic well.
Look at those “Cinderella” prizes: Corded vacuum, no-name slow-cooker, cooking utensils, cheap blender and other hausfrau items.
I get better GWPs from Tobin James Winery with my wine club shipments, and I’m not spending $1,800.
What the huns don’t realize about the big hot bright stars is that they’re doomed to go very much kaboom early and spectacularly. They run out of hydrogen quickly and have to scramble to fuse heavier and heavier elements in order to keep themselves alight. But eventually, the energy needed to sustain the reaction becomes more than what’s produced and it collapses in on itself before exploding as a supernova, throwing out blasts of radiation that can fry things parsecs away, and all that’s left is the hollow shell of a nebula with a black hole at its center sucking in anything that tries to get too close.
Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, small boring stars with JOBs like our sun will putz along peacefully for billions of years, have a midlife crisis at the red giant stage, and then retire as a white dwarf that will burn peacefully for possibly trillions of years.
“The founder of my company…” If that’s not Pink Fog, not sure what is.
Mary Kay does let you bank your points each quarter, and has some options for redeeming them for gift cards. Chelsea posted recently that she redeemed 30,000 points for $425. By my math, this is more than $10,000 wholesale
https://i.imgur.com/l1aMVie.jpg
The first 1800 star points each quarter are a 1-1 equivalent to wholesale dollars. $1,800 wholesale (consultant cost) order = 1800 star points = Sapphire Star.
After that, you get 600 points for each new qualified recruit (one who orders $600 wholesale in one order during their first two months of business) plus 1 point for every $1 wholesale ordered. My bet is Princess Chels spent closer to $20K for that $425 gift card, possibly more.
Was she on Court of Recruiting last year? If she recruited 24 qualified, that’s still only 14,400 star points, leaving her with over $15,000 to order. That does not include taxes, shipping, or giveaways.
And don’t forget, they tax these “prizes” on your 1099. They are reported as income after a certain level.
Decisions, decisions. Pay $2400 for some unsellable cosmetics, and get a $50 vacuum cleaner for free, or else use your $2400 to buy pretty much any vacuum cleaner your heart desires, and still have money left over. But, how to decide? It’s a tough call.