Mary Kay Thrives on Secrets and Lies
It’s been well over 20 years since I was in Mary Kay. The company has been around for more than 60 years. And in all that time, one of the core principles was secrecy. I didn’t know it at first, but lies were rampant as well.
You see, Mary Kay is not a business for the consultants. It’s an elaborate scam that takes money from those at the bottom of the pyramid and transfers it to those at the top. The ultimate top of the pyramid is corporate. They make the big money while the people in the scheme (yes, even the national sales directors) make a relatively paltry living.
How do they get consultants and directors to continue to sell this non-business to new recruits? Through secrecy and lies. You see… if anyone heard the FULL TRUTH about Mary Kay Cosmetics from the beginning, no one would ever sign up to be a consultant.
The unofficial rule in Mary Kay is that you can never be negative. You can’t say out loud that your sales stink, that your recruiting efforts are failing, that it’s difficult to make minimum production each month as a director, that this business just plain sucks. By maintaining secrecy about the many negative aspects of MK, consultants and directors are essentially isolated. They are left to feel like THEY are the only one who is having a problem making the business work. If everyone shared openly about the struggles, everyone would see it is SYSTEMIC. That the pyramid scheme itself is to blame for the widespread failures.
Sales director Tonya Gary is all in favor of keeping the secrecy and isolation. In the Director Tips Group on Facebook, Tonya complained that people were not following what she was taught by her scammy nsd Rena Tarbet: only share negativity with your upline, and only do it in private.
The group was split on whether negativity should be shared or not.
I love that our old friend Gail Scott mentions “cultish”… what a perfect way to describe Mary Kay!
It is a little funny that Tonya started all of this off by saying negativity should be kept to yourself… but on June 3 she found herself being negative on Facebook to the public at large when she said she was BEHIND ON GOALS in MK.
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I’m sorry, Ms. Gary, but if I were to “shop local” for my skincare or make-up needs, I would be supporting one of three Quebec based pharmacy chains.
I also know people who work in these stores, so they can do “the happy dance” or send their children to ballet or soccer, fill their gas tanks or buy groceries with their pay if they so wish.
Buying from an MKBot wouldn’t do any of those things, except in your imagination.
Seriously, buying MK is about as “buying local” as ordering from Pizza Hut or shopping at CVS just because they’re in your city. Nothing against Pizza Hut or AutoZone; just that each location is connected to a giant corporation thousands of miles away the same way every MK consultomer is.
If I shop local, I can support Sally Beauty Supply, Walmart, or any of several supermarkets and drug stores. Their employees are ALSO paying for college, dance lessons and rent from their salaries.
That stupid C&P trying to guilt random strangers into buying MLM products circulates round every major holiday. I know at least forty people who work in local stores, from people my age down to my children’s friends or their often, these days, younger siblings or cousins.
I don’t know any of the twelve “local to me” MKBots or any other MLM Hun.
The only Huns I know are friends or friends of friends of my sister in law, who make pity purchases from them.
The thing is, you can ignore the bad stuff all you want, but that doesn’t make it go away. That unpaid bill shoved into a drawer is just going to keep adding up interest and service charges and then bill collectors will be hounding you day and night, that little twinge you keep telling yourself is nothing will land you in the ER someday (lookin’ at you, *MOM*!!!!!!), and that damp patch on the ceiling from the leaky roof is going to come down on your head if you don’t get it patched even if you never look up at it.
Similarly, for MK, clinging to the good old days isn’t going to bring them back, ignoring the numbers isn’t going to make you rich, and pretending that the entire shopping culture in the developed world hasn’t completely changed in the past 60 years isn’t going to pull people away from Sephora and Amazon.
“sisters in pink” THAT says everything. They’re not your sisters, they’re random suckers, er IBCs, that are hawking makeup, for a CORPORATION. I don’t think of my co-workers as my brothers or sisters.
NO negativity is a MANUFACTURED reality. “Cultish…” we have a winner!
Can Ms. Gary explain how buying her overpriced MLM product is “better, safer and cheaper” than shopping at a local store?
At least the salesclerk won’t be pestering me afterwards via text and Facebook to help her meet some stupid foundation match goal or join her cultish Boss Babe group.
Here’s a secret they lie about: The loss rates in MLMs like Mary Kay are built into the model, and cannot be changed. If you were to clone the most successful Mary Kay consultant/xSD, and fill the sales ranks with those clones, the loss rates would not change from today.
The losses are not the result of poor performance on the part of the consultants. Rather, they are the result of the poor performance of the underlying MLM model. The model is designed to create these losses, as downline losses are the primary revenue source in MLMs like Mary Kay.
No amount of positive attitude can change the poor performance of the MLM business model used in Mary Kay. But a positive-only dialog can certainly hide this truth from much needed recruits!
Denying the truth doesn’t change the truth, that’s for sure. Negativity as a daily perspective is absolutely poisonous, that’s for sure, as well. But to be so JUVENILE, and it IS juvenile, to refuse to see the wrongs in a situation, that is not a perspective to foster amongst your minions. That is not reality, kbot babies.
Isolationism – the tactic of true tyrants. Keep up the good work, kbot kult rekruiters lololol. Sickening beyond belief. And they are raising CHILDREN. God, watch over the children.
Would you like to explain to me the phrase “maybe we just need to find a level of frustration that is positive”?