The Myth of a Benefits Package
Mary Kay recruiters and sales directors rave about the “benefits” of being a part of Mary Kay Cosmetics. How the items on this list can possibly be compared to paid sick leave, a 401(k) or tuition assistance is beyond me. I was also not aware that the ladder of success pin is “THE most coveted piece of jewelry in ALL of Mary Kay.” Anyone can get one, all you need is a $1,800 or available credit. What is so special about that?
Let’s take a look at one sales director’s take on the benefits…
STAR CONSULTANT’S BENEFITS PACKAGE
Every corporation has a “benefits” package. That’s why most people work in corporate America – for the “Bennies”! So why not take advantage of the BENEFITS PACKAGE that your Mary Kay Company offers Star Consultants as well?
| Benefit #1 | Your Star Prize | Have you picked your prize? Star Consultant Prizes are hand-picked by Mary Kay to reward YOU. Many of the Star Consultant Prizes are created EXCLUSIVELY for Mary Kay and are ONLY available to Star Consultants |
| Benefit #2 | Your Star Treatment | Star Consultants are awarded each quarter with MUCH appreciation and showered with gifts. For example, one of last year’s Star Consultant Night Quarterly Celebrations included a limousine ride (complete with long-stemmed rose) and dinner in a private dining room of an exclusive restaurant. There’s also the Star Consultant Sash you get to wear designating YOU as an ACHIEVER, Special Unit-Only Star Consultant events and recognition on the Wall of Stars at our area Training Center! |
| Benefit #3 | Preferred Listing in the Mary Kay Consultant Directory | As a Star Consultant, YOUR NAME and contact information will be displayed first on the consultant locator system on marykay.com. Plus…when potential clients call the 1-800-MARYKAY phone number ONLY Star Consultant names given to callers! That’s PREMIUM advertising placement! |
| Benefit #4 | Free Products From Mary Kay! |
Whether it’s a New Consultant Bonus or the current Biz Builders Bonus, Mary Kay gives you Free Product when you place your qualified order. You can use it as a gift, promotion, personal use or sell it for 100% PURE PROFIT in your pocket!!! |
| Benefit #5 | Your Star Jewelry | Your Star Consultant Ladder of Success Pin is truly THE most coveted piece of jewelry in ALL of Mary Kay. It’s your consultant “report card” that displays your success – quarter after quarter. It is a visible representation of your efforts, your customers, your sales ability and your customer services. You should wear it proudly everywhere you go. |
Are these really perks of being a Mary Kay consultant, or just more smoke and mirrors to create a false perception of the value of the Mary Kay opportunity?
Visit the
“Whether it’s a New Consultant Bonus or the current Biz Builders Bonus, Mary Kay gives you Free Product when you place your qualified order. You can use it as a gift, promotion, personal use or sell it for 100% PURE PROFIT in your pocket!!!”
Umm…it’s not free when you have to pay to get it. And it’s only a “profit” if you sell all of it, and at a price high enough to cover all of your costs and then some, which 99.6% of consultants are unable to do.
You can’t turn a profit in Mary Kay through “ordering” alone. You must sell at a margin (nearly impossible) and/or recruit a downline willing and able to place orders too large to use or sell personally (exploitation).
So get busy selling that overpriced product to your family and friends and exploiting your own downline so you can get into the top 0.4%! Who cares if your downline is losing money every month…your are worth it!
Yeah, no, I’ll be sticking with my 4 weeks vacation, 12 sick days, fantastic medical insurance, life insurance, and pension plan. If I want long-stemmed red roses, a limo ride, or jewelry, I can buy all those things for heckuva lot cheaper than the cost of a star order. The benefit is people not running away screaming when I walk into a room or text them.
It sounds like a joke! Like something that would be on SNL!
According to the last published figures, I make more than about 80+% of the NSDs, at my Journey of the Broke (JOB). And that’s not “up-counting” (a la MK) matching pension contributions, SS, full med insurance, and as mentioned days off and sick leave… So, um, yeah, Star Consultant def what is needed. But, I’m a guy, so the sash thing I don’t find so appealing.
Aw, come on, you know it will bring out the color in your eyes 😉
So hubby and I each owned our own businesses. Very small no health insurance benefits. So we paid the full premium for health insurance. But now I work for a communities foundation (non profit). We have amazing benefits. We’re saving $14K a year. And that doesn’t include the 401K match, or the money they give us to donate to non profits of our choice.
Oh fun. Story time! Picture it, it was July of 2017. I was struggling through directorship, hanging on by the skin of my teeth. I hit a month/missed a month of production almost every month consistently since my debut in November, and the growth they promised would come when I was a director wasn’t coming. I need hardly add that the money wasn’t coming, either. And the excess product from “topping up” production every other month to cling to my faux title was piling up in my office.
We were trying to grow our family, and that month I had a miscarriage. It was early, so not as traumatic as it could have been, but it was a lot. Emotionally. Physically. It was heavy. My O.B. put me on bed rest while we tried to figure out if the pregnancy was viable. But I had work to do! I had a unit to serve and a title to protect. I couldn’t rest, couldn’t stop. Especially not in July, which is always the hardest month of the MK year anyway! And I couldn’t miss production again or they would kick me out!
So I worked. Instead of staying at home on the couch or in the bed, taking care of myself and my family, I held several parties. I begged a consultant in my unit to come with me to carry my bags so I at least wasn’t schlepping 50 pounds of crap around. But I wasn’t on bed rest. I couldn’t afford it.
What I needed in that season was a humane employer. I needed PTO and reasonable people around me encouraging me to protect myself and my baby. To sit down, process, and feel my feelings. To not make myself sicker.
What I did NOT need was incessant calls from my senior director and HER senior director (both of whom knew what was happening) telling me to “find a way make a way!” To just push through. To do whatever it took. I did NOT need the financial strain I was under that made it fiscally impossible to take a week off and cover bills. I did NOT need the faux sympathy of Corporate when I called because I missed production (they sent a damn peace lily, which I had to give away because my cat had a death wish and wouldn’t stop trying to eat it.)
Time off, financial stability, rest. These were the things I needed in that season. These are the very “bennies” that Mary Kay does not, can not, and will not offer. Ever.
I remember hearing about DISC personalities and how ‘High I’s’ looooved the MK recognition etc….being the absolute opposite of that, I couldn’t relate. I’m not flashy. I like thrifting and staying home. I don’t care about ANY of that (yet, I bought into ‘the dream).
I’m a teacher and I have so much more stability. Regular paychecks. Breaks. Pension. Insurance. Retirement.
My job doesn’t make me cry, a la Rachel Ryan. I don’t have to beg people.
So, so, so much better.
Frosty Rose, I am so sorry for this horrific experience. I haven’t had kids but I can very easily imagine myself being in your position and the impotent fury and rage I would have been suppressing from these harridans terrorizing me into further endangering myself and literally another human being. I missed funerals FOR WORK. And while I intellectually know I committed no unforgiveable offense in doing so, once it happened a few times over a few years, NEVER AGAIN. No job that I would be capable of doing was/will be more important than cleaving to the loved ones of a person gone forever. So that little facet of my life and my anger over it, transferred to your position and how I suppressed my anger to dangerous degrees, I AM SO ANGRY FOR YOU!!!! And my heart goes out to you, I pray spiritual peace fills your soul because you earned it, the hardest way, with these women terrorizing you. I am not overdramatizing at all. I have been in these emotional positions and IT’S TERRORISM. I wish you so much peace and joy, Frosty!!!!! xoxoxoxoxoxoxooo
Is anyone else seeing Rachel Ryan desperately beg for people to join an “opportunity of a lifetime” so she can save her pink cadillac? Looking like a deranged telethon. By now everyone in her downline has bought whatever available credit they were conned into using. A gofundme would be easier.
To anyone debating how easy a car is to earn or how the product just sells itself!!!! Rachel is showing you the exact opposite as she lives a delusional fairy tale with a fake Chanel. The intended audience of an authentic Chanel would not be groveling on Instagram to hauck some bottom tier products.
The life a Marykay bot shows on instagram is simply an illusion. And Jamie showed up to help her put a second mortgage on the house to stockpile.
Yes! Sign me up for this “opportunity of a lifetime.”
I, too, want to HUMILIATE myself and my family by begging and sobbing on social media so I can drive a pink, leased car.
Then, the driving period expires and I have to requalify and start begging all over again.
“Mary Kay: Enriching women’s lives.”
Her Facebook page is really sad. Apparently her very young daughter has some kind of special “pink Cadillac” skirt to wear “in honor” of her finishing her goal, where she was given a “grace period” to achieve by sometime today I guess. Lady, you want to make a fool of yourself, that’s fine, but don’t do that to your defenseless little kids. It ain’t so cute.
And the worst part of it is, if she somehow maxes out all her credit cards and fills up the house with crap she’ll never sell… ahem… sorry… PULLS OFF A MIRACLE AND EARNS THAT CADDY WITH THE SPIRIT OF MARY KAY oh yeah god too ON HER SIDE she’s going to have to do it all over again next time she has to requalify. Nothing lasts and nothing is guaranteed.
“Are these really perks of being a Mary Kay consultant, or just more smoke and mirrors to create a false perception of the value of the Mary Kay opportunity?”
I say BOTH! Yes, these ARE the perks. And yes, they are just smoke and mirrors to gaslight consulvictims into believing these have any value whatsoever.
I would love to know how many times she will be making a payment on this pink billboard nightmare. Being 60k behind the goal and squeaking by the finish line at literally the last second is not some devine act, just a woman that was able to sob her way into a fake success. How disgusting.