Not Making a Living After 35 Years in Mary Kay
This story was submitted to us by “Suzanne” more than 10 years ago. I have no idea who she really was, and I wonder if she’s still in Mary Kay. I’m running the story again because I think it’s so powerful.
I read everything that is written on your site and I know how true it all is. So here I am still a Sr. Director in MK after over 35 years and today I just wanted to scream. Recently I sent a note to my Sr. Dir. to thank her for an anniversary gift and explain why I could no longer attend any area events. I just can’t ever tell my “I story” again since I would have to be truthful and tell everyone that my pink bubble burst. After I went bankrupt a while ago, I find myself old with no health insurance, a bad heart that needs surgery and barely keeping a roof over my head.
Her response to me was no real surprise. She told me that she believed in me and recommended a web site about believing in yourself. Wow, isn’t that what I spent the last 30 years trying to do.
I believed in myself when I was being told by my former husband that I wasn’t really making money. I believed in myself when I was running all over doing classes, trainings and meetings and missing some of my children’s events. I believed in myself when I ran all those sales contests that ended up costing me more in prizes than what I made, because we were taught to keep offering things to keep consultants believing kept believing in myself when my accountant told me that I really wasn’t making any money.
I kept believing in myself and got divorced from that “negative” husband that was holding me back. I kept believing as I continued to spend the money to travel to all the areas where my unit was located even though they often had personal things to do and didn’t show up for the meetings. I continued to believe when I kept going to Dallas to receive the awards and get my head pumped bigger and bigger. Yes, I kept believing while my life fell apart around me…..and then one day I didn’t believe any more, but I was too far in debt and spent too many years to know what do next.
Today I believe that I did a lot of good things over the years by putting some real happiness in some women’s lives. I never asked them to place orders to help me but was more concerned about them selling product. Selling product in MK is a nice hobby or part time income.
The only real money in this business is if you can, without any conscience, recruit, recruit, & recruit with constant pushing for orders. It doesn’t matter if you ever teach them to sell. The company will keep changing products so they can keep ordering and you can keep collecting the checks. I actually don’t know how some directors sleep at night. That’s where the real believing comes in. They have to keep believing that they are really giving their recruits a good opportunity to earn money, when actually they only care that they order and don’t ship back product.
I will probably be taking care of my customers until I die, but I no longer “believe” that success will come just through “believing in yourself”. It’s just the hype that keeps people going so that others can benefit. I believed myself into a life of poverty.
I am still not a negative person, but I am cautious about what I just “believe in” without real proof. My riches in life today are the joy of a sunny day, the laughter of grandchildren and the love of family and friends. I gave up so much over the years while I lived in the pink fog. I hope more women can break out of that type of hold before they lose as much as I did.
Thanks for listening and keep up the good work with Pink Truth. If anyone ever wants my figures I can tell you that in my best year in the company I had 90+ consultants, was in premier club, queens court of sales, three offspring directors and my bottom line taxable income was less than $20,000. How’s that for a harsh reality?
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That. Is. Tragic.
But for the grace of God, there I’d be.
I am grateful for an understanding husband who was patient with my “business” but under no illusion about it creating a dream life for us.
I am grateful for a revealing DIT week when a national, in a rare moment of honesty, revealed that she (and likely most) was in $75,000 in credit card debt driving a Cadillac. When the woman celebrated as queen of everything let her mask slip and shared that 10% of her consultants returned product because she started everyone with $4,800. And she didn’t care about the chargebacks.
I am grateful for sales skills and sheer luck that landed me a good sales job that lead to a great career once the pink bubble burst.
I am grateful that I am not dependent on Mary Kay to pay my bills.
I am grateful for Pink Truth and the understanding that I am not the problem—Mary Kay and the MLM model are.
You could remove any reference to MK in today’s article and it would apply to any MLM. Rip the mask off this scam and expose it for what it is.
The goal in MLMs like Mary Kay:
Recruit customers who will order way more product than they can ever hope to sell or use*, and convince them to then recruit others to do the same…ad infinitum, without returning any product. All at the expense of the recruits.
No outside sales necessary.
*In Mary Kay this is the initial inventory purchase (front-load) and qualifying minimums (recurring). In other MLMs it is often the starter kit (front-load) coupled with auto-ship (recurring). Most have qualifying minimums (recurring) to receive commissions and bonuses. Auto-ship is the upline’s dream…funding the gravy train…for a time. I am surprised Mary Kay has not tried this.
I just hope she got out of MK and got the healthcare she needed… if she didn’t, that’s 45 years giving her all to one company with nothing to show for it. I mean, I turn 49 next week so that’s a whole lifetime spent spinning your wheels. Very sad.
By now she likely qualifies for Medicare. But that doesn’t cover all the medical expenses, so retirees with the means to do so pay for Medigap insurance or the luckier ones have a generous pension plan that takes care of nearly everything, but that’s pretty rare so one really needs to have the retirement income to pay the Medigap premiums. Regardless, don’t look to Mary Kay to be taking care of you in the retirement years.