Good, Bad, and Ugly of Mary Kay
Written by Frosty Rose
Five years ago, I finally closed my Mary Kay “business.” After 14 years of struggle, striving, and failure, I finally admitted defeat. To close out everything, I sold my remaining inventory, my customer list, and all my gear to a newer consultant.
Not my finest hour, to be sure, and if I had known about Pink Truth then, I probably would have handled things differently. Nonetheless, the consultant came to my house after a long day at both of our J.O.B.s and carted off 14 years of work in two trips to her car.
It was a surreal experience to turn back to my living room, now devoid of pink boxes, fancy carrying cases, and motivational CDs. All that remained were bare shelves, dust, and the remnants of glitter that will probably never leave.
I felt empty.
The goal that I had spent 1/3 of my life working towards was gone. The door was shut. And I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. Did I feel relief? Or was it disappointment in my own failure? Worry about what people would think? Concern that I would lose all my Mary Kay friends?
It was all of that. And it’s taken years of hard work to undo the financial damage I did to my family in those years. And at least as much time, therapy, hard work, and engagement with the Pink Truth community to overcome the mental, emotional, and spiritual damage that I did to myself.
With the luxury of five years of reflection and space from my mistakes, I have come to a place where I can recognize the good, the bad, and the ugly of Mary Kay.
The Good
I know you’ll be surprised that I’m choosing to start here. But there are, in fact, some good things about Mary Kay. They do not outweigh the bad or the ugly, but they’re there.
Friends: I made some really good friends in Mary Kay. Yes, almost all of them have fallen by the wayside since I left the company. Not all, but most. But that’s okay with me. Friendships in my life have always been somewhat transitory and Mary Kay was no different. I had a core group of friends with whom I shared an activity, and we had a blast together. There are still some that I have lunch with occasionally. And if I were in trouble, several would show up if I called.
Sales training: I leaned into every opportunity I had to improve my sales skills. Yes, I paid for most of those opportunities. But I have leveraged all of that training and the skills I honed through countless hours of phone calls and skin care parties and turned it into a six-figure real sales job. With, like, base pay and benefits and stuff. That has allowed me to undo aforementioned financial damage to my family.
Self-image: Not to be confused with self-esteem or self-confidence. But I can now put together an outfit that compliments my body and wield an eyeshadow brush without poking my eye out. Baby steps here.
Resilience: I won’t break. If I learned anything through 14 years of failure, it’s that. I am stronger than I think and can get through just about anything thrown at me. Of that I am confident.
The Bad
Financial: Mary Kay is damned expensive. For something that’s supposed to help pay bills and make things easier, it costs a freaking fortune! I was good at sales and didn’t get too sucked into the prizes and the bling, so my inventory never got completely out of hand. But even still, at my lowest point, I had racked up over $24,000 in credit card debt. Seminar. Career Conference. Fall Retreat. Postage. Mileage. $0 parties in the middle of nowhere. Director qualifications. Car qualifications. Star consultant minimums. Director suits. The sheer expense of keeping up the image! You can easily get yourself into a world of trouble.
Fake people: I said I had good friends in Mary Kay. And I did. Because I specifically curated my group. And I left out anyone who was overly fake, overly greedy, narcissistic and manipulative. The percentage of those people in MLMs is astronomically higher than the percentage in the rest of the world. The system feeds those people, and their egos (at least on the surface) thrive there. “Fake it till you make it” becomes far more than feigning confidence as a newbie and turns into a way of life.
The Ugly
This one can’t be divided into neat categories, because it’s one big lump of mess. The spiritual/emotional/mental toll that operating an MLM business takes is beyond words. God and Mary Kay become synonymous, so when you leave Mary Kay, finding your way back to your true spiritual roots is hard. The scripture that used to be life-giving has become warped and perverted by prosperity doctrine.
The quippy sayings that Mary Kay uses to short-circuit your logic end up ingrained in your reactions. It becomes impossible to trust your own instincts or to come up with answers of your own. Everything is scripted, everything’s rehearsed. And when you step away from that world and have to start thinking again, it’s exceptionally painful.
Mary Kay is designed around the philosophy of personal responsibility. Which is great. And in short supply some days in our culture. However, it purposely does not acknowledge that forces outside of an individual (like a corrupt business model) influence success or failure. If you fail in Mary Kay, it’s all your fault. And disentangling your self-worth from your goals and production is a long road.
My life philosophy rejects regret of any kind. If I were to go back and change things, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and I’m not willing to give her up. But the ugly far outweighs the good in this case. I might not change a younger Frosty Rose’s decision to join Mary Kay. But I certainly wouldn’t advise my daughter, friend, neighbor, or worst enemy to start down this path.
What about you? What are your Good, Bad, and Ugly experiences with this company?
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The Good
I know you’ll be surprised that I’m choosing to start here. But there are, in fact, some good things about Mary Kay. They do not outweigh the bad or the ugly, but they’re there.
One of the things I admire about you ladies, is that you acknowledge all aspects of your experience. The PTCs that read here never appear to notice this fact. It’s almost like they focus on the negative aspects of being in Mary Kay for some reason.
THE GOOD: internet was in its infancy and so people didn’t understand mlms the way we do now. Because of this, I was able to land a job with Dior as a MUA with my makeup background in MK.
THE BAD: While I economized every aspect of my MK business , I still lost money. I mean I scrimped and traded so as not to order. I debased myself using my school district’s staff directory to make cold calls offering a discount of course. I HATED having to try to find any warm body willing to host a class. I experienced anxiety attacks having to call customers to see if they needed anything because I knew what the answer would be.
The Ugly: The spiritual manipulation is real, and it destroyed my faith. The prosperity gospel that runs rampant through MLMs is devastating to Christians, and don’t get me started if you are NOT a Christian. (I’m Jewish, and lordamercy, the crap I dealt with from my supposed friends because I *needed* Jeeeeeezus.)
I can only speak on behalf of my late father who, after retiring from great success in entrepreneurship, got entangled in MLM.
Good: It gave him something to do in retirement, and scratched his “salesman” itch. He absolutely loved selling!
Bad: He tarnished his reputation as a respected businessman. Over time, folks tired of “the pitch”. His MLM reputation started to proceed him. My sibs and I would coach our friends on how to respond if he jumped into his “pitch”. Bottom line: Don’t ask or answer any questions!
Ugly: He eventually admitted to me he knew that the folks at the bottom got screwed, and when confronted, said, “Who cares?”
My father was a very generous, loving and otherwise upstanding man, but his upline coached him into believing that the financial carnage in his downline was “just business”. That was so out of character for him, and this experience is what turned me anti-MLM.
All MLMs are the same. I’ve done a deep dive on so many over the years, and they share one important deception–the identity of the true target customer: The downline sales rep. I have yet to review an MLM that places more product in the hands of outside paying customers than is purchased (and never resold) by their own sales force.
This is the dirty, dirty, dirty aspect of MLM I wish everyone understood.
The Good – Friends: I wonder how that all is working out now that so much MK “business” is handled over social media. I joined in 2020 and never met my director, or anyone else on her team, in person. There was a fall retreat at her senior director’s house shortly after I joined, but I did not attend because…um…2020. As far as I know, my former director has not held any in-person events. Everything has been on Zoom.
Side note, I’m still in her Facebook group. She’s hasn’t posted monthly production for the past two months. On the last day of January, she went live to say that she needed 5 consultants to order $300. I don’t know how much longer she’s going to hang on to directorship or her MK car.