40 Years of Failure in Mary Kay
Written by Parsons Green
Cleta Colson Eyre is celebrating a huge milestone in Mary Kay: 40 years with the company. FORTY.
That’s four decades of failure. You see, “Cleta’s Cheetahs” have been promising to become a national area for years and years. Here’s her proclamation in 2014 that she’d complete her national area by June 2015.
Here we are in 2025, and still no national area for poor Cleta.
But Cleta does not let this stop her!
She has declared that this will be her BYE BYE year! No no no! She’s not retiring, she will have her BEST YEAR EVER.
Let’s look at some of Cleta’s accomplishments.
- She has earned 10 Top Director Trips!
- She has qualified for 20 Career Cars!
- She has achieved Unit Circle Status 33 times! (but never as a million dollar unit)
But also…
- She hasn’t had any employer-sponsored benefits like health insurance or paid vacations.
- Her Social Security earnings have been low, ensuring lower benefits once she retires.
- She has not contributed into a company matched 401k program.
- She can lose her director title the second consecutive month that her team does not make minimum production.
Cleta has been trying to become a national sales director for years but has never come close. As she approaches age 63, time is ticking! She only has until age 65 to debut, and it does not appear that Cleta has the necessary downline to achieve this. From her Unit Recognition Page it seems that her highest team members are senior consultants, not even sales directors.
Mary Kay herself believed in Cleta. She sent her this letter the day after Christmas in 1990 admonishing her that her unit had less than thirty members. Even then Mary Kay said she was NOT recruiting enough.
Thirty five years later, what is any different for Cleta?
Cleta recently made an AI video of herself dancing to N’Sync’s Bye Bye Bye, which I think sums up her chances of having her Best Year Ever.
Visit the
That’s so sad. Almost four decades of ramming her head into a brick wall swearing that THIS TIME she’s gonna break through.
All she’s got to show for it is a drawer full of junk jewelry and a room full of inventory that’s slowly fossilizing in place. Nothing else is real. The cars aren’t hers. The trips weren’t earned; they were bought at stupid high prices. And if MK folds or ditches the MLM model, as it’s looking like it’s gonna, she won’t have a darn thing.
It’s also incredibly sad that that UR NOT GUD ENUFF letter is one of her prized belongings.
Cheaters may win, but Cleta’s Cheetahs never will
If MKC drops MLM and starts to retail directly or via established retailers, watch the wholesale and retail prices drop dramatically. Once they remove the outrageously high overhead cost of layers upon layers of MLM commissions, those products can be priced competitively while still allowing a strong retail margin.
But MKC profits will drop too, since without the captive audience of their sales force, they can’t command such high wholesale prices. They will no longer be able to count on people buying and discarding in such volume. In the real world, no one stocks up on beauty items the way MK consultants do.
In a real company, she’d be looking at a solid pension, a fat IRA or 401K account, and a high-level position (If she wanted it). But she’s got NOTHING because MLMs are like Groundhog Day … you start over every year and have to re-qualify and earn it all over again.
But I though you could promote yourself whenever you wanted to. At least, that’s the word on the street, you’re the She-E-O of your own company.
What a sad little lady, wasted her life on this. All this time she wont get back.
How much product has she thrown away or tried to move through sites like eBay? So much waste, credit card drama and nothing to show for 40 years of pretending to be a business owner.
It’s really a great “business model” – set people up to spend truckloads of money, line your pockets, and then get them to blame themselves when they inevitably fail. Because the only way you can “fail” is if you quit! As long as you keep “investing” money, you’ll keep “winning.” Someone IS winning – MK Corp down in Dallas, TX.
Shame on them.
So much in that letter. All about recruiting. Nothing about sales. And “your girls” – ugh! No wonder no one talks sales directors seriously.
And can you imagine being JCT who had to churn out these demoralizing letters every month? She’d probably have loved cut and paste.
I wouldn’t call her a complete failure. After all she “won” several free trips ( on the backs of consultants ordering gobs of product). She did what she was trained to do, recruit, recruit, get them to order inventory and be rewarded with a trip just for her. She can stay a Mary Kay Sales Director until she takes her final breath and will have nothing to show for it except a closet full of expired product and outdated director suits. How sad.