You Can Quit Your Job and Do Mary Kay Full-Time (Not)
This is one of those sad, sad dreams that Mary Kay directors and recruiters like to build up for you. They tell you how easy it is to “replace your income” with Mary Kay. And it’s bull. Because we’ve seen over and over on Pink Truth how almost everyone in MK would be better off working a minimum wage job… they’d make more per hour at minimum wage than they make at MK.
It is next to impossible to build a client base large enough to generate a steady income in Mary Kay. Even women who’ve been in for years and have 100 or 200 customers (impressive sounding, yes?) aren’t doing consistent, significant sales.
The reality is that “good” Mary Kay customers probably buy $50 to $100 of products a year, on average. Sure, you’ll hear a Kaybot talk about the two customers she has that each spend $500 a year. The fact is that they’re an aberration. Many customers spend only $25 a year, but we keep them on the PCP mailer because we think someday they’ll be won over and buy more.
Add to that the fact that once you start building that client base, you’re immediately encouraged to start poaching it for recruits, so you can “move up” and make the “big girl pay.” So even if you can start building a real customer base, before you know it, you’re recruiting some of them.
So how on earth can anyone think this Mary Kay propaganda is possible to achieve for more than about 5 out of 1,000 women? Well, the sad fact is that the recruiters make you believe that women all over the place are doing it. When they know good and well that they’re not aware of anyone who actually did it.
Here’s how they say to do it (my comments in italics):
HOW TO QUIT YOUR JOB and/or REPLACE YOUR INCOME
Write down your yearly salary $_______
Okay, fair enough starting point.
Subtract out daycare expenses for the year $_____
Stop right there. You mean you won’t even have to pay for babysitters? If you’re trying to replace a full-time income, of course you will have to pay for child care!
Subtract out other expenses that you would not need to pay if you were able to stay at home (dry cleaning, gas driving to and from work, eating out for lunch, etc.) $______Stop again. You probably will spend more on gas racing around to classes, delivering products, warm stalking women, going to unit meetings and guest events.
This new total is what you would need to make in order to replace your income from your job.
Kaybot Example:
$22,000 salary
-$10,000 daycare
-$520 gas, drycleaning
= $11,480 net salary you need to replacePink Truth Reality:
$22,000 salary
-$ 0 daycare (If you’re working Mary Kay full-time, you need childcare. If you’re caring for your kids, you’re not working.)
-$0 gas, drycleaning (In fact, you probably need to add money here to cover all the extra gas you’ll use up.)
= $22,000 net salary you need to replace (And this includes no paid days off and no paid benefits. All those are buh-bye once you quit your job.)Figure out what your average per face is. Take all your sales from facials and skin care classes and add them up. Then add up how many total faces those sales came from. That will be your average per face. Using a company average of $200 per class divided by 3 women is $66 per face.
I think $200 per clas is inflated. I think you’re lucky if each woman spends $50.
Divide your Net Total Salary by your average per face. This will equal the number faces you would need to see in order to replace your income. $11,480 divided by $66 = 174And this is where the big difference comes up. Because she started with a low and false salary to replace of $11,480, the numbers are skewed. they should be: $22,000 divided by $50 = 440
Keep in mind that we need to double the amount we just calculated, because you need to reinvest ½ of what you sell to keep your inventory at full inventory. 174 x 2 = 348 faces
440 x 2 = 880 faces
Take your number of faces and divide by 52 weeks. This is how many faces you would need to see per week to replace your income!!! 348 divided by 52 weeks = 6.69 faces per week880 faces divided by 52 weeks = 16.9 faces per week
In this example you would need to see 7 faces per week in order to replace your take home salary of $11,480. Do you think you could do 7 faces per week and work a total of about 6-8 hours doing so? It really makes you think about how easy it can be to replace your income in a fraction of the hours that you give to your job.
Keep in mind that this formula ONLY takes into consideration new faces. You will also be receiving reorders and recruiting commissions that are not factored in!
If you are worried about your health insurance, I want you to start calling Health Insurance companies and getting quotes for your family. On average it is about $400 per month for health insurance. To pay $400 a month you would need to do an extra 6 faces per month to pay for your insurance! Or better yet, your recruiting commissions would pay for your insurance each month.
I hope this helps you see how easy it can be to replace your income and become a full-time Mary Kay consultant and then Sales Director.
Talk about false earnings claims! This is total fiction. If you use the realistic numbers I calculated above, you’d have to see 17 faces at $50 a face to replace your income. That’s 6 skin care classes a week.
To do 6 skin care classes a week, you’ll have to book about 12 to 18 full classes for each week. To do that, you’ll need to get referrals to about 48- 72 women… women you can talk to and ask to have a class. You hope that about 1 in 4 will actually book a class.
Now to hold 6 classes a week, you’ll have to figure about 3 hours class time for each. That’s 18 hours. Plus you’ll probably spend about 1 to 1.5 hours each for coaching the hostess, packing up stuff, filling orders, and doing all sorts of little administrative stuff… follow-up phone calls etc. You’re now up to about 26 hours per week.
Then on top of that, you’ve got the unit meeting and probably another recruiting event (Muffins and Makeovers, etc). You will also want to factor in time spent warm stalking to get those 60-ish names per week that you need to get. And don’t forget general office work and such. I’m thinking you’re now way beyond a 40 hour week.
So we’ve now gone from the recruiting lie of replacing your full-time income with 6 to 8 hours of work per week. And you’ll be home with your child!!!
…. to the reality of… This is a time commitment of more than 40 hours a week to replace your income. And that’s only if you’re able to find those 60 or more names per week to harrass into having classes. I’d challenge anyone to do that for a full year…. 60 names a week every week for a year. (Yeah, right.)
Are you as infuriated as I am at these types of completely false examples that set women up to expect something they cannot achieve???
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Comments (18)
Linus
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Way to expose it Tracy!
If we could get every potential IBC to read this counter argument with the real data, there would be very few recruits left for MK.
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xpinkstalker
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All I can say is, the words “don’t quit your day job” have never been more appropriate advice. Seriously, DON’T!
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pinkbabs
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Forget the “company average”
Ask to see hers….how well/close did you come to the 3 women buying $200. per class.
How many classes per month/year.
Wait what….you cant tell me how many classes/$ per class for every week/month/year you have been doing this? and you are selling me this pig in a poke?
Either you know and you are using this “company average” because you didn’t do as well, or you don’t know….how do you not know?
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ASX
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$400 a month for health insurance? For an entire family? Seriously? I think that is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. I’ve had jobs with excellent benefits where my portion of my health insurance was almost $400 per month. If I were paying the entire thing, it would have been well over $1000.
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LIGHTRED
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The gross underestimate for health insurance in this example struck me funny as well.. One would be lucky to find a minimal plan (which would only cover catastrophic issues after a huge deductible) for $400 a month.
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TRACY
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$400 for an individual, though is quite possible, depending on the coverage you elect. I have a very good insurance plan, and I pay less than $400 per month for myself.
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havurah
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In 1994-95 when the scheme and levels were simpler getting to the faces was a trial. Before Caller ID victims would just not answer the phone and I would leave a message. Phone calls never returned. Committed party hostesses would call when they knew I would not be home and leave cancel messages. I went to booked parties where no one was home when I arrived and no one came home.
Parties that held had no significant amount of sales. All of that effort and a guest might buy one eye shadow refill…not even the case. One lipstick, one mascara per person. IO did have some good sales but I remember them because they were so rare.
In those days MKC defended its best selling cosmetic claim by telling us to explain that more women claimed to have one MK product in their collection than to have any other brand. That is believable because the parties would sell one lipstick or mascara or eyeshadow…and that is what was in everyone’s collection.
If this is such an income earning profession then everyone would be doing MLM and not looking for real work. Employers would be begging for applicants who are eschewing employment for the MK opportunity. Is that what the world looks like today? I don’t think so. If everyone is making so much money in MK why is no one shopping and buying things? Why is the tax collection stalling? There are no taxes to collect on income that hasn’t been earned because the earners cannot find work. Who is the MK customer if everyone is getting rich in MK? They are all selling it …to whom?
What about Sephora and Ulta and the drug stores and the prestige lines in the department stores? Who is buying that stuff if everyone is selling Mary Kay? If one is lucky enough to have a day job, one should be thankful for that and JUST SAY NO.
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NeverWasPink
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Wow, this is hands-down the best article I’ve read on here!! They are all amazing, but this one makes it impossible to comment against! Well done
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Cindy Le Clair
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I remember listening to a training tape in Mary Kay. The director said if you aren’t making that kind of money, tell the potential recruit
about what she can possibly be making in MK. Don’t use your own numbers. That felt very wrong to me. Now I realize that is because no one was making that kind of money or she would not have had to say that. Very sad!!
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advertisingchick
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I remember when my director was down playing my job search to get back into in my field. I was laid off and looking when I stumbled into MK. So I was pretty vulnerable and took everything they said hook, liner and sinker. I continued to look for a job but my director was constantly giving me the song & dance about how evil corporate america is. She was in my same industry before she took her MK business full time so she was able to “sympathize” with me. I finally got a real job at an ad agency and told both my recruiter and director that I was done. Now when I travel for work, I use the corporate card my company gave me and they pay for EVERYTHING. Imagine that!!!
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pinkymcstinky
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When my exSD wouldn’t stop harrassing me about taking some time for myself, and I finally told her I needed to take a break and figure out what I wanted to do because I didn’t know if MK was right for me anymore… she mailed out an old weekly accomplishment sheet (that she claims to have “just found sitting on her desk”) from four months prior in which I had the best class of my MK tenure.
The sales were close to $1200. Sounds great, right? She added a note to it (complete with random caps and excessive punctuation) explaining that I was a natural and all I needed was more training to really make it. But, the accomplishment sheet doesn’t give an accurate picture of that day.
First of all, it was from four months prior… and I had nothing like a class like that before or since (and I actually did pretty good in actual sales while I was in.) Secondly, for the near $1200 I sold, I gave away close to $300 in discounts, hostess gifts and in-class raffle prizes. It also doesn’t account for the unreal hours I put into that one stupid class.
I spent a total of almost two hours on the phone, getting addresses to send invitations, pre-profiling (including making repeat calls when nobody answered or didn’t return messages). I then spent an hour getting trays and whatnot ready… only to find out the night before that 11 people would be there instead of the 5 I was expecting. Add in another hour to get everything else ready. (Not to mention that 3 of the extra people ended up being teenagers, and 2 of the guests admitted to already having an IBC… neither of which were facts I knew before getting to the hostesses house.)
It was my first big class, so I got there an hour early… and the first guest didn’t arrive until 45 minutes AFTER class started. By the time everyone trickled in, stopped by the kitchen for wine and snacks and chit-chat, I was 2 hours behind before I even started. Closing out all 9 people (only 1 of the teenagers had her own money to purchase) took almost 2 hours.
By the time I packed up my gear and reloaded my car, I had spent 11 hours on this one party… not including driving time (35 minutes each way) and loading gear into and out of my car at home (because, of course, I packed my products so I could have ‘anything they purchased on-hand’.) Eleven freaking hours… no joke.
Now, not every class went this far over… but they all went significantly over the time commitment suggested by the MK literature and my exSD. And, of course, when I broached the subject of this massive disparity to the old SD, she played it off as a fluke, trotted me out in front of GNO for awesome sales, and never missed a chance to bring up my sales from that class whenever she thought I was inching my way out of the fog.
And how exactly does that allow me to stay home with my young family while working part-time hours? It just plain doesn’t. Such a massive lie.
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Dazzling Diva Dana
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This is the REAL truth! It takes HOURS to have the PERFECT class…
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raisinberry
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Slam dunk, Tracy.
This stuff, these “scenarios” just frost my cake. (being polite)
And do you know, that as a Director if you mention to your upline that you rarely see this kind of action yourself, they go into “doe in headlights” mode and say, “Well silly…you may not be doing it but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible!”
The great conscience wipe. If it is remotely possible, well then dag gum it, you can sell it to the troops.
* Note to lurking Directors…try this tactic out on your NSD. The next time she crabs about not being “Inner Circle”…just give her a neat-o false earnings scenario that she can accomplish if she just FOCUSES!
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RegretfulEll
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I just signed on as an IBC a few weeks ago. I’ve done no sales, despite numerous calls. I actually had one friend laugh at me and say ”What a scam.” I wish I had seen this website before I invested my money. Eff my life! I don’t think I’m going to stay in this for more than my first 3 ”active” months.
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Lazy Gardens
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Why stay? Pack it up and ship it back, get almost all of your money back and stop wasting your time.
Yes, you will lose a bit of money, but it’s cheap tuition in the school of life: Avoiding MLMs 101
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Katewoman
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I too believed my Director and the tapes and CDs I listened to that I could one day quit my high stress job. I prayed for that day to happen and worked my business after coming home from a full-time job. What a waste of my precious, precious time! All the unreturned phone calls, cancellations, facials with no sales, and classes with little sales. Everyone’s comments here are right on. Believe them lurkers. I was just kidding myself that things would get better if I had more experience. I was in for 6 yrs. longer than I should have. Don’t waste your time, energy, or money on this MLM.
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Jess
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Ugh – geez just got hit up while leaving Wal-Mart tonight by some gal who gushed about how fab my make-up was. I wanted to give the poor dear a magnifying glass and a light – clearly she doesn't know what she's talking about but was trying to hook me with the whole MK networking pitch. She asked me if I had any time and I just said no I really don't and walked away. I heard about this trolling line on this site. But really, I just couldn't be all harsh and crush her little dreams. Not to be snotty but really – I make over 250K a year, own my own home, drive a Lexus and was wearing a rock on my finger that between the car and my bag screamed hey a make a freakin lot of money. The sad thing is these brainwashed idiots will actually try to convince me that if I want to make extra money I can do MK. Honey, first I don't have any extra time and if I do the last thing I want to do is pressure someone else into buying product – I'd rather sit by the pool and sip a cosmo. Second, if I want to make more money the easiest way to do it is work harder at my current job (which BTW is in sales). You know the job with the actual salary, health benefits, paid vacation, 401K plan, and paid expenses. The one where I know EXACTLY what my net take home pay is. Seriously I doubt this little gal's director makes even half of what I do. And these people think they know how to sell. Take it from me – I've been selling very expensive high end technology for over 15 years – MK doesn't have a clue.
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Fembot67
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Rock on Jess!!
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