Written by Rachel

I recently read a quote from a site promoting an MLM:

To recoup your initial $570 costs, focus on enrolling two distributors into your downline and then help them also enroll two people each.

This is the problem. Right here. It’s the exponential growth caused by unlimited recruiting (what MLMs like to bill as “unlimited earning potential.”) In the midst of a lot of talk about selling the product, the real focus for leadership in any MLM is recruitment. Some MLMs push recruiting harder than others, but they all have two things in common.

Written by PinkPeace

I’m a liar. Or more precisely, I was a liar — a big one. There are few things worse to be. You can’t trust a liar; everything she says and does is suspect. A liar ultimately only has her own interests at heart, and a liar is responsible for leading others into bad decisions.

I didn’t start out that way. Although I was prone to exaggeration sometimes, and could tell a little white lie, I know they were wrong and knew they were character faults that I should correct. I actually had contempt for liars and thought they deserved whatever bad consequences came their way.

Written by JTA

“The numbers don’t lie…” How many times have we heard that one? Well, the numbers are precisely what caused me to become disillusioned about this business and this company. A person in their right mind would not be able to look at the numbers I see and continue on.

Not so much my personal numbers, although I spent an extraordinary amount of time working, doing the “short term sacrifice for long term gain” thing. My schedule was 8am-10pm M-F, I worked on Saturday, too, and took off from 6pm Sat to 6pm Sunday and then got back on the phone. I was taught by other NSDs to only ‘relax’ those 24 hours so that I could become NSD more quickly.

Written by Fembot67

I have 3 kids, and I’m going through a divorce.  Last summer I was dragged to a Mary Kaay party.  I had been looking for a job at the time.  I fell in love with the products and was very interested in the opportunity.  The woman doing the party didn’t actively try to recruit me at all, but I went home thinking about it.  It looked so easy!  I called her a few days later and said “sign me up!”  She sent me the link and I got going.

I got the call the next day from my sales director and she instructed me to listen to Lisa Allison’s boot camp and her pod casts.  I ate the stuff up.  I was so excited!  Next came the inventory talk.  I was floored that I was being asked to buy so much product, but you can’t sell from an empty wagon, RIGHT??  I totally agreed.  Unfortunately, I had no savings, terrible credit and don’t use credit cards.  My sales director asked me to try to borrow the money, which I did, but no one would give it to me.  I ended up selling my third car to pay for it and came in at a Sapphire level.

Written by An Anonymous Reader

I’m generally a lurker, but I’ve posted to this board several times in the last year and a half since I joined. I’ve never been in Mary Kay or any MLM, but I found your site when looking up “MLM cult” after my husband and I were heavily encouraged to join the Tahitian Noni MLM. Since then I’ve gotten enough information from you ladies to know to NEVER join an MLM, and what to say to people who approach me about it! So thank you for your wisdom.

I’m writing because I’ve been reading the hate mail that people send to Tracy and it makes me so angry. People are holier than thou when they can be anonymous and don’t realize they’re speaking to real human beings. So I wanted to offer my “outsider’s perspective” on Mary Kay, and what normal people think of Mary Kay especially for the lurkers who think all of you are “losers.”

Written by The Scribbler

Note:  If you haven’t yet read the article, “8 Out of 10 Mary Kay NSDs Are Okay With Lying to Customers,” please do so now, as it will provide you with the necessary background information required to help you fully appreciate this piece.  Thank you!

After posting NSD Dacia Wiegandt’s “lie to customers” guidance on the Facebook walls of ten Mary Kay National Sales Directors, I received some interesting correspondence from an NSD whose personal testimony reads as such:  “Mary Kay has been the perfect career to allow me to expand the opportunity to minister. I know that as a National Sales Director, I will be anointed and appointed to win even more souls...”  I figured that someone claiming to be a soul-winner for Christ would have more than a few things to say against Dacia’s deception.  Boy, was I wrong.  This NSD wrote:

Written by A Former Consultant

You’ve heard them, you’ve been taught them, and you’ve even said them yourself. Now that you are out of the Pink Fog, here’s a translation of some of the favorite scripts in Mary Kay…  what you said then and what they sound like now that you realize the truth about Mary Kay Cosmetics!

THEN: Has anyone ever taken the time to pamper you with a Mary Kay facial?

NOW: Please please please tell me you haven’t tried Mary Kay so I can sucker you in to buying anything!

Written by The Scribbler

Back about 90 years ago, I worked in our church’s nursery.  On this particular day, my three-year old daughter and her playmates were playing the classic toddler game, You Scream and Run Like Hell and I’ll Try to Catch You While I’m Laughing My Can Off.  I was changing an infant’s diaper when my daughter raced past me, made the off-comment of, “It’s hot in here,” and continued onward.  I finished cleaning/dressing my young client, turned, and gasped as I witnessed my little girl running and laughing with her friends.  Stark naked.  Hey, Mom, I told you it was hot in here, remember? Find a way, make a way! 

Aside from the fact that I can now tease my daughter about having lived out the American Dream by running through a church au naturale, her situation made for one nifty object lesson:  the Mary Kay guidance of “Find a way, make a way” does not mean that the right thing will always be done.  I want to highlight one NSD who is teaching Mary Kay consultants how to lie; an act I would definitely file in the “Doing Whatever It Takes” drawer.

Yet another bunch of “false claims” coming from Mary Kay Inc. national sales director Tammy Crayk. She calls this a “tried and proven” plan, and I would love for someone to show me ONE person who did this. I bet she can’t.

And even if she could, you’d be talking about one out of millions. Oh, I know. That just shows it’s possible. It’s not Mary Kay’s fault if all of you are too lazy to do it. You could if you really wanted to.

Well, of course, I disagree with that premise. Even if a plan like this is theoretically possible, everyone needs to know that it’s not even remotely probable. The chances of a consultant being able to pull this off are so slim, yet no one in Mary Kay will tell them that.

Dr. Jon Taylor, the founder of the website Truth on MLM has spent years researching multi-level marketing companies like Mary Kay Cosmetics. He’s done a variety of research, but one of his really interesting projects was surveying hundreds of tax preparers about their MLM customers. He gathered data about sales to actual consumers, commission levels, and profits.

I’m also a fan of the 5 red flags of recruiting MLM’s that he came up with. Here are the red flags, with my comments about Mary Kay inserted:

1. Would you, as a new recruit, be permitted and even encouraged to recruit other participants, who would in turn be encouraged to recruit others, and they still more, etc… from whom you could collect commissions and/or bonuses on what they buy or sell?