Some Truth
A few years ago, I wrote an entry for LJ Idol writing about giving up my Mary Kay directorship. I really did feel like a failure, and my friends were all so wonderfully supportive that it really made me feel better. I had not yet announced my intention to go into real estate training. It's hard to believe it's been three years since then.
At the time, I believed that I would take a break and then aim for directorship again when I had more time and both kids were in school.
Three years later, I have finally made the decision to quit Mary Kay entirely. As of the end of this month, I will begin "T" status with the company, which stands for "terminating." I'm going to give up what remained of my personal team (all 5 of them), and in another 6 months I will be completely terminated. I might actually decide to just call the company and have them terminate my consultant number completely before that time; for now I need to be able to log into the system to do my taxes.
I am going to write some things about Mary Kay. Some of them are unsavory. If you've ever seen my old LJ page, it said, "Living in the Pink Bubble," but in reality it was more of a Pink Haze or a Pink Fog. I know that there will be MK people on here who will defriend me, perhaps over on Facebook, too, for being negative. I assure you that this is not being negative; it is being truthful. That is something that most people deep in the Pink Haze cannot do.
Here is my truth: I came out of my Mary Kay directorship with more than $15,000 in debt. I never made money. I will repeat, I never made money. I had cash flow, but that is not the same thing. Let's talk about this.
When you start in MK, you are told that there are no quotas. This is not, strictly speaking, true. In order to be a consultant, you must place a $200 order once per year. If you have a team, you must maintain Active or Inactive status to keep your team, and that means placing an order approximately every 6 months. If you want to be able to order any amount of products, you must order approximately once every three months (You are active the month you place an order and the 2 months following, so depending on the time of month you order, it could be only every 2 months.)
When you become a director, you and your unit must maintain a $4000 per month minimum wholesale production. If you miss this quota one month, you have the following month to reach it, otherwise you are terminated as a director.
The first time you are about to miss for the 2nd month in a row, I nearly guarantee you that someone above you in the hierarchy is going to say to you "don't worry about it; just buy it and you'll be able to sell it. Have a great month next month and you'll make it all back in commissions anyway." And thus, you get on the hamster wheel.
As a director, there are two ways that you can get up to your $4000 per month unit wholesale quota. The first is to have a huge team of people who sell like crazy and order like crazy. Only, most people don't do that. The company will tell you that it's all a numbers game. One third of your unit is coming in, one third is working, and one third is on its way out. So the other way to meet your wholesale quota is to recruit a ton of people and have them place very large initial orders of $1800 or higher. When as a director you go to your training sessions held by the company, a huge amount of time is spent teaching you to "pull inventory." $1800 is chicken feed. They're teaching you to get people to place $3600 or higher initial orders. I could not do this. Even three years ago, we were living in a recession. The one time I convinced someone to place an $1800 order, she pretty much disappeared nearly immediately, and I personally felt like I had done her a huge disservice. The one time someone placed a $3600 (I was still a consultant at the time and my director had done the inventory talk), that person returned the product a few months later, and I experienced my first charge-back. Oh yes, if you get a commission check and the person returns product, you have to pay the commission back. Big surprise that was.
So, because I could not bring myself to ask anyone to place these huge orders, I was left with what people would order based on their sales. And I taught selling. I was a great seller. But I was an unusual person. When you listen to your recruiting interview, they will tell you that they don't want people who are good at sales (because most people will say they are not good at sales) but in the end, it takes a good sales person to sell the stuff. Most of my team and unit had other jobs, and were selling a lipstick here or there to make some extra cash. There was only one in my unit, not a personal recruit, who consistently sold products and placed orders to support them. One. And not a personal recruit, which meant that if I lost my directorship I would lose her.
In all, you are made to believe that if you just stick it out and work harder, your biggest month is just around the corner. Just work harder. Sell more product, recruit more people, frontload inventory. Get lots of other women into big debt so that you don't have to. And once you are sitting on all of that inventory of your own, you feel that you can't quit, because your next big month is just around the corner, and you'll get a huge commission check and be out of debt. You're in a pink haze, and you can't see that you're just digging a giant hole. Every other month you are supplementing your own production in order to keep that directorship, to have the next big month.
In addition to the inventory insanity, there's more debt to be incurred when you are a director. For instance, you are highly discouraged from holding your unit meetings in your own home, so you need to rent a space. There goes $50 per week. You are encouraged to have a huge debut to announce your directorship, so there goes about $300. There are prizes to be bought for consultants. As a director, you must buy the Director Suit, which, depending on your options, is approximately $300. Because of the timing of when I became a director, I bought three of them over 2 years. Seminar officially costs $175 but you have to get there ($250+), get a hotel room ($300), eat ($200+) and pay for transportation ($50) so in the end it's $1000 to go. Rinse and repeat for Leadership conference. Rinse and repeat for your Fall Retreat and Career Conference. And when you first become a director, you get to go to "free" training in Dallas, where you still have to pay for airfare, hotel, and some of your food. You BLEED money as a director.
And by the way, if you happen to be very successful at recruiting and front-loading inventory, and you happen to earn a car, your monthly quota goes up. For Cadillac drivers, the monthly quota goes up to $16,000. If you miss it, you have to make a payment on the car. Up to $900 per month. Ever wonder why I never even tried for a car? If I couldn't meet $4000, I sure as hell wasn't reaching $16,000.
As I said three years ago, when you start MK they tell you that it's part time work at full time pay. It's not true. If you become a director, which is really the only way to make full-time pay, you absolutely have to work full-time to make it work. Oh and I don't mean 40 hours per week. The women who actually make the money will tell you that they eat, sleep, and breathe Mary Kay. They will tell you that you absolutely must have child care to be a top director. They will tell you that there is no such thing as taking a break. And there is not. There are no breaks. Because if you have a $16,000 month one month, you still have a $4000 quota the next.
They will tell you that one in four people whom you share the business plan with will recruit, and that you need to recruit five per month to maintain a unit, and ten per month to grow. They also tell you that only one in three selling appointments will hold. Assuming that everyone you meet books an appointment (which does not happen, because by now everyone can see the Crazy Mary Kay Lady coming), and you share the business with everyone you make an appointment with, you have to MEET 60 people per month just to maintain a unit (Meet 60, 1/3 will hold, which is 20, and 1/4 will recruit, which is 5).
Are there successful directors? Sure! They march across the Seminar stage every year in their unit clubs. They become National Sales Directors. Many of them, in my opinion, lose their sense of right and wrong in the process. When I started in Mary Kay, we used to show the Applause magazine to get people to see how much money you could make if you made it to the top in Mary Kay. It was a great recruiting tool, back when those Nationals who were in from the very beginning of the company, were still on the books. Nancy Tietjen making $75,000 per month was a big thing to sell. Only now, those checks are not quite so big, and MK does not publish the commission checks of those Nationals making less than $10,000 per month anymore. Prior to that change, some of the Nationals were shown as making less than $5000 per month. Not such a great recruiting tool anymore if the top of the top are not clearing $60,000 per year.
Perhaps the most telling is this. I did a quick search to see where many of the local Directors were who were Directors when I became one. I looked up around 10 of them. Of the 10 I looked up, two are completely missing from the roster, so we know they quit completely. Two lost their directorships and then did DIQ again. One, who was an Executive Senior Sales Director (which meant she had 5 offspring directors) is now a Senior sales director, which means she has 2 or 3 offspring. We were sure she'd make National in just a few years. The rest are Consultants.
And then there is me. I take full responsibility for what I did to myself and my own finances, and we have, for the last three years, been climbing out of the hole I dug. But what I have come to find is that the system was broken. I have met a lot of other women now, some in person and some online, who had the exact same thing happen to them. When the system is broken, and when you are told to keep your blinders on, just look toward the goal, just do what you have to do, short-term pain for long-term gain, it is hard to see what everyone around you sees. It really is. That is why I am hoping that someone else will relate to this, and I might save someone else from the mess that I got myself into.
In another article, I will write all about how Mary Kay is really a Multi-Level or Pyramid, even if they will swear up, down, and sideways that they are not. If anyone wants you to join a Multi-level, I highly suggest you use this phrase: "Show me your Schedule C." The tax man knows the truth. This past year, I did my taxes late for various reasons, and it is no coincidence that it was October when I figured out that I was going to quit for good. I did my taxes, lost money yet again, and looked at the $10k+ of wholesale inventory on my shelves that I would never sell. Even if the company does not require inventory or even suggest it, ask to see the tax forms. Because someone who is truly making money will show it to you, and someone who is not will continue to brag about her biggest check, her National's salary, or the fabulous Girlfriend TIme you'll get.
Thanks for reading.
At the time, I believed that I would take a break and then aim for directorship again when I had more time and both kids were in school.
Three years later, I have finally made the decision to quit Mary Kay entirely. As of the end of this month, I will begin "T" status with the company, which stands for "terminating." I'm going to give up what remained of my personal team (all 5 of them), and in another 6 months I will be completely terminated. I might actually decide to just call the company and have them terminate my consultant number completely before that time; for now I need to be able to log into the system to do my taxes.
I am going to write some things about Mary Kay. Some of them are unsavory. If you've ever seen my old LJ page, it said, "Living in the Pink Bubble," but in reality it was more of a Pink Haze or a Pink Fog. I know that there will be MK people on here who will defriend me, perhaps over on Facebook, too, for being negative. I assure you that this is not being negative; it is being truthful. That is something that most people deep in the Pink Haze cannot do.
Here is my truth: I came out of my Mary Kay directorship with more than $15,000 in debt. I never made money. I will repeat, I never made money. I had cash flow, but that is not the same thing. Let's talk about this.
When you start in MK, you are told that there are no quotas. This is not, strictly speaking, true. In order to be a consultant, you must place a $200 order once per year. If you have a team, you must maintain Active or Inactive status to keep your team, and that means placing an order approximately every 6 months. If you want to be able to order any amount of products, you must order approximately once every three months (You are active the month you place an order and the 2 months following, so depending on the time of month you order, it could be only every 2 months.)
When you become a director, you and your unit must maintain a $4000 per month minimum wholesale production. If you miss this quota one month, you have the following month to reach it, otherwise you are terminated as a director.
The first time you are about to miss for the 2nd month in a row, I nearly guarantee you that someone above you in the hierarchy is going to say to you "don't worry about it; just buy it and you'll be able to sell it. Have a great month next month and you'll make it all back in commissions anyway." And thus, you get on the hamster wheel.
As a director, there are two ways that you can get up to your $4000 per month unit wholesale quota. The first is to have a huge team of people who sell like crazy and order like crazy. Only, most people don't do that. The company will tell you that it's all a numbers game. One third of your unit is coming in, one third is working, and one third is on its way out. So the other way to meet your wholesale quota is to recruit a ton of people and have them place very large initial orders of $1800 or higher. When as a director you go to your training sessions held by the company, a huge amount of time is spent teaching you to "pull inventory." $1800 is chicken feed. They're teaching you to get people to place $3600 or higher initial orders. I could not do this. Even three years ago, we were living in a recession. The one time I convinced someone to place an $1800 order, she pretty much disappeared nearly immediately, and I personally felt like I had done her a huge disservice. The one time someone placed a $3600 (I was still a consultant at the time and my director had done the inventory talk), that person returned the product a few months later, and I experienced my first charge-back. Oh yes, if you get a commission check and the person returns product, you have to pay the commission back. Big surprise that was.
So, because I could not bring myself to ask anyone to place these huge orders, I was left with what people would order based on their sales. And I taught selling. I was a great seller. But I was an unusual person. When you listen to your recruiting interview, they will tell you that they don't want people who are good at sales (because most people will say they are not good at sales) but in the end, it takes a good sales person to sell the stuff. Most of my team and unit had other jobs, and were selling a lipstick here or there to make some extra cash. There was only one in my unit, not a personal recruit, who consistently sold products and placed orders to support them. One. And not a personal recruit, which meant that if I lost my directorship I would lose her.
In all, you are made to believe that if you just stick it out and work harder, your biggest month is just around the corner. Just work harder. Sell more product, recruit more people, frontload inventory. Get lots of other women into big debt so that you don't have to. And once you are sitting on all of that inventory of your own, you feel that you can't quit, because your next big month is just around the corner, and you'll get a huge commission check and be out of debt. You're in a pink haze, and you can't see that you're just digging a giant hole. Every other month you are supplementing your own production in order to keep that directorship, to have the next big month.
In addition to the inventory insanity, there's more debt to be incurred when you are a director. For instance, you are highly discouraged from holding your unit meetings in your own home, so you need to rent a space. There goes $50 per week. You are encouraged to have a huge debut to announce your directorship, so there goes about $300. There are prizes to be bought for consultants. As a director, you must buy the Director Suit, which, depending on your options, is approximately $300. Because of the timing of when I became a director, I bought three of them over 2 years. Seminar officially costs $175 but you have to get there ($250+), get a hotel room ($300), eat ($200+) and pay for transportation ($50) so in the end it's $1000 to go. Rinse and repeat for Leadership conference. Rinse and repeat for your Fall Retreat and Career Conference. And when you first become a director, you get to go to "free" training in Dallas, where you still have to pay for airfare, hotel, and some of your food. You BLEED money as a director.
And by the way, if you happen to be very successful at recruiting and front-loading inventory, and you happen to earn a car, your monthly quota goes up. For Cadillac drivers, the monthly quota goes up to $16,000. If you miss it, you have to make a payment on the car. Up to $900 per month. Ever wonder why I never even tried for a car? If I couldn't meet $4000, I sure as hell wasn't reaching $16,000.
As I said three years ago, when you start MK they tell you that it's part time work at full time pay. It's not true. If you become a director, which is really the only way to make full-time pay, you absolutely have to work full-time to make it work. Oh and I don't mean 40 hours per week. The women who actually make the money will tell you that they eat, sleep, and breathe Mary Kay. They will tell you that you absolutely must have child care to be a top director. They will tell you that there is no such thing as taking a break. And there is not. There are no breaks. Because if you have a $16,000 month one month, you still have a $4000 quota the next.
They will tell you that one in four people whom you share the business plan with will recruit, and that you need to recruit five per month to maintain a unit, and ten per month to grow. They also tell you that only one in three selling appointments will hold. Assuming that everyone you meet books an appointment (which does not happen, because by now everyone can see the Crazy Mary Kay Lady coming), and you share the business with everyone you make an appointment with, you have to MEET 60 people per month just to maintain a unit (Meet 60, 1/3 will hold, which is 20, and 1/4 will recruit, which is 5).
Are there successful directors? Sure! They march across the Seminar stage every year in their unit clubs. They become National Sales Directors. Many of them, in my opinion, lose their sense of right and wrong in the process. When I started in Mary Kay, we used to show the Applause magazine to get people to see how much money you could make if you made it to the top in Mary Kay. It was a great recruiting tool, back when those Nationals who were in from the very beginning of the company, were still on the books. Nancy Tietjen making $75,000 per month was a big thing to sell. Only now, those checks are not quite so big, and MK does not publish the commission checks of those Nationals making less than $10,000 per month anymore. Prior to that change, some of the Nationals were shown as making less than $5000 per month. Not such a great recruiting tool anymore if the top of the top are not clearing $60,000 per year.
Perhaps the most telling is this. I did a quick search to see where many of the local Directors were who were Directors when I became one. I looked up around 10 of them. Of the 10 I looked up, two are completely missing from the roster, so we know they quit completely. Two lost their directorships and then did DIQ again. One, who was an Executive Senior Sales Director (which meant she had 5 offspring directors) is now a Senior sales director, which means she has 2 or 3 offspring. We were sure she'd make National in just a few years. The rest are Consultants.
And then there is me. I take full responsibility for what I did to myself and my own finances, and we have, for the last three years, been climbing out of the hole I dug. But what I have come to find is that the system was broken. I have met a lot of other women now, some in person and some online, who had the exact same thing happen to them. When the system is broken, and when you are told to keep your blinders on, just look toward the goal, just do what you have to do, short-term pain for long-term gain, it is hard to see what everyone around you sees. It really is. That is why I am hoping that someone else will relate to this, and I might save someone else from the mess that I got myself into.
In another article, I will write all about how Mary Kay is really a Multi-Level or Pyramid, even if they will swear up, down, and sideways that they are not. If anyone wants you to join a Multi-level, I highly suggest you use this phrase: "Show me your Schedule C." The tax man knows the truth. This past year, I did my taxes late for various reasons, and it is no coincidence that it was October when I figured out that I was going to quit for good. I did my taxes, lost money yet again, and looked at the $10k+ of wholesale inventory on my shelves that I would never sell. Even if the company does not require inventory or even suggest it, ask to see the tax forms. Because someone who is truly making money will show it to you, and someone who is not will continue to brag about her biggest check, her National's salary, or the fabulous Girlfriend TIme you'll get.
Thanks for reading.