Real Numbers on DIQ from a Former Mary Kay Director
Written by Pinkslipping
Why do I share this? Because I’m not an exception to DIQ – I was the standard!!
Not to make excuses, but I was being led by my senior and her senior by with sayings such as “you are a find a way, make a way gal“, “you’ll never work as hard as you do in DIQ” and “the only way to fail is to quit“. Oh and my favorite line of all while I was in DIQ: “Your debuting unit is never the unit you have a year later“.
So like a good DIQ I just kept telling myself “I’ll make up for it once I’m a director and out of DIQ”. I am a very accomplished professional (have 2 degrees and numerous certifications/awards from my past career) so I was gonna get this thing done. I was bound and determined to run the race to win, and I KNOW darn well that I was doing it the same way as so many other directors were doing it.
Now I do want to preface this by saying that I never did anything illegal, I didn’t make up people or sign up pets and dead relatives. Everyone in my unit knew they were in Mary Kay.
Debuted July 1st 2006, $19,000 production, 31 recruits. 29 were recruited by me and I was #30.
14 of the 29 were recruited 6/10-6/29.
13 of the 14 recruited in June were mercy recruits.
8 of the 13 mercy recruits I placed their order with my money to make them active(@ least $1600 wholesale).
I also contributed my $4000 max during the qualification period (I cashed out part of my 401K to do so).
I was a director 2 years and 10 months. I have never worked as hard as I did the last 2 and 1/2 years. I’ve moved 2 times (across country) oh and gave birth to my son. And I just got tired of running that friggin’ hamster wheel. I had to get off. I started out weak (from my unit perspective) and finished weak (personally). I just let it go. Out of my debuting unit, only two consultants remain – and one of them is my mom.
One day I will actually sit down and figure out how much money I actually “invested” into this so called business. And it will seriously make me want to puke because it wasn’t just my money, it was my husband’s money too. All with the notion of “Honey, I promise it will get better next month”. When I face that piece of reality I will be so flaming angry at myself – just not ready for it yet.
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Tags: diq, director debut, director in qualification
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Comments (23)
onelessSD
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Been there- done that! (still paying off the debt!) Pinkslipping- you’re not alone at all. I debuted with 32 – but I had 4 brand new red jackets. By all appearances, I looked strong and that I was headed for great things except, many of those who on the red jacket teams (and my team as well) were personal use consultants. I had 3 come in on the last day because I needed to finish and they agreed to help me. I bought 1 kit and made up the difference in their orders to reach $200 w/s. i actually debuted #4 at my career conference to my surprise, but things started to break apart rather quickly, and I was back to struggling and working my tail off for the next 7 yrs. (why did I hold on so long? It was pride. I worked hard to get there, and I wasn’t going to let it fall away). But then a friend of mine mentioned PT because her newest recruit found PT and changed her mind about Mk. That’s when I started to look at this site. It would be about 9 months later that I just let it all go – and embraced my new life out of directorship.
It takes a very brave woman to just walk away. She’s got to have a thick skin because of all the kaybots saying “she was lazy, she didn’t work hard enough, she didn’t have what it takes, etc.” The woman who leaves Mk is strong because she’s now ‘out of the bubble’ and all those friends she thought she had has abandoned her – she has to remember how to forge new relationships based on mutual trust and honesty again. She has to figure out once again that inner beauty is more beautiful than outer beauty. She has to also learn how to not look at other women as a way to get something, but to recognize them as individual human beings and find ways to give to the relationship instead of just take.
The woman who leaves the clutches of pink is a woman to be admired for her strength, inner beauty, fortitude, her uniqueness and integrity. This is the woman I strive to be – I’m not there yet, as the journey is long, but thank God I’m on my way.
Great article Pinkslipping- you’re transparency in your journey I hope and pray will help others along the way.
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onelessSD
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oops… that last line- I meant “your” not you’re! sorry!
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Deflated Pink Bubble
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Okay, this one line is very telling.. “Your debuting unit is never the unit you have a year later.” Doesn’t that say it all? That line alone should be a red flag.
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Hunney
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My thoughts EXACTLY, Deflated Pink! If the “opportunity” is so great, why does everyone leave??
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raisinberry
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The really crappy reality about all this, is the bread crumbs trail you follow into the nasty pink forest! NO ONE tells you what’s next! You get told these quips as you roll into the next level and the next, blindly being groomed to “listen to your Director”.Had anyone been told that a Unit you put together, is gone in 6 months…Hmmm…maybe we wouldn’t have just blindly plunged forward—and they know that! And silly me, I actually thought you WON the car! I had no idea we actually end up BUYING it.They know you wouldn’t do all this crap if you had any idea what the fall out was, what the real costs were, what the “real expectations” were, and the real OUTCOME was.
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Elaine
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My question is why? You didn’t have to go into DIQ. Sure, your SD and above may have been pushing you there, but ultimately the choice was yours.
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TRACY
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Ah, the “no one held a gun to your head” statement! She probably went into DIQ for the same reason everyone does… to become a director! Women want what they THINK is the “Career” of being a director. Of course, they don’t know even half of the truth about what is going to happen once they’re a director. If they did, no one would ever go into DIQ.
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Scrib
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Elaine, let’s say you want to learn how to play the piano. You know zilch about the music world, let alone pianos themselves. You come under the mentorship of an individual who claims to be a leader in the field and offers to guide you until you’re playing Carnegie Hall. Her fees are reasonable and she’s close to home, too. Bingo!
But here’s the thing. What if this piano instructor conveniently leaves critical details out of your training, such as how to work the pedals or incorporate the use of the black keys into your playing? What if she failed to teach you how how many beats a whole note was or what rests are?
Remember, you know NOTHING about piano playing or music and your instructor does. You WANT to learn about piano playing and music and so naturally, you trust your instructor’s knowledge and experience, right? Sadly enough, lacking critical knowledge that your mentor failed to disclose, your playing is found to be severely lacking and you are met with wrinkled noses and plenty of ear-covering the first time you play for an audience.
Elaine, your poor piano skills are to be blamed on noone but YOURSELF. You should have realized that your instructor wasn’t teaching you all the skills you needed to play. You should have KNOWN that she’d left out critical information. It doesn’t matter that you knew nothing about the field; you should have researched more. Furthermore, you shouldn’t have been so gullible to trust your instructor in the first place; for crying out loud, Elaine, WHY CAN’T YOU THINK FOR YOURSELF FOR ONCE? Nobody MADE you choose her, after all.
I trust that my point has been made abundantly clear.
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Kinzie
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Excellent analogy.
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Lazy Gardens
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It’s only a true choice if you are given all the information you need for an informed decision, including the odds of succeeding and the expenses you will incur.
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advertisingchick
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And that is exactly why this website exists…to provide the critical information that recruiters and directors conveniently leave out. The hope is that when the prospective consultant does some due diligence before signing on the dotted line, she will come across this website and stop the woman from making a huge mistake
Unfortunately, by the time she starts the research, she has already heard the marketing plan spiel and is half way into the pink fog. Therefore, she just assumes everyone on here was lazy, didn’t work hard enough or it wasn’t for them. This happened to me…I did some research before signing the agreement, came across this site and just thought “oh they were just lazy and didn’t it want it bad enough”. I signed and bought a star consultant inventory. It wasn’t until I start going up the ladder that I realized what a scam this company is. I wish I had taken this site more seriously back then. I’ll also note that every time someone askes me why I don’t sell it anymore, all I say is “when you have some time, read pinktruth.com” and that will tell you everything you need to know!!!
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AesSedai
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When I started over 10 years ago there were no “negative voices” out there to find. If this site existed, I sure couldn’t find it. When I got home from my “Lipstick Panel” curious about the opportunity, I hopped on the internet and searched for hours to find a downside. Guess what? I couldn’t. Information about the dangers of MK just wasn’t around. I am grateful that even if women come here and dismiss the information here that at least they had a chance to hear it. If I had found a site like this that night, I assure you I wouldn’t have joined – I was searching for a reason not to sign on the dotted line.
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exibc78
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In all honesty I saw how hard my friend who recruited me for DIQ was running. She sound successful, she said she had it all, but there was a look in her eyes that said a very different story. I was never comfortable with the idea of recruiting, and all of my friends didn’t really want to participate, so I luckily failed very early in MK and I, after reading my friends story that brought me here, am so glad I lost out on so little. My heart goes out every time I read this because I know that there are so many women still running the race. When I first came to this site I was still thinking that I was wrong, and felt like a lot of the kaybots that posted that this was not that many people, what are you talking about? But it is not one story from one bitter lazy looser, it is multiple stories from many women who are pouring their hearts out only to save one, or two or many families, marriages, and bank accounts.
So please, everyone, keep this up. I have been spending more time on here, preparing for seeing a newer friend who is a “star team builder” and future NSD who I have noticed after the holidays her MK postings are not as frequent. She hasn’t posted on her MK FB page since the beginning of the month. I am hoping that she is starting to see that this is not for her. I want to cover every angle so I can help get her here, to read the true stories.
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joybe
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I came across this web site totally by accident. Everything I have read is in my experience with MK is true. I became a MK director….it was 25 years ago ( I even have a picture of myself with Mary Kay at the national sales convention) ( was I in the Emerlad area? i can’t remember ). Anyway, I worked like a dog for 4 1/2 years . I hiring a live-in babysitter,,,,God first, Family second…yeah …right !!!,,,and worked 24/7. I believed I would make the big bucks. A true believer. What a fool ! I finally figured it out, The money was just not gonna happen, I quit. I got my life back and i regretted for years about how I stupid I was to be such a follower and angry at myself for being so gullible.
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Lazy Gardens
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joybe – You were not stupid, they hit you and figured out which buttons they could push and pushed them … and don’t be angry at yourself.
You were conned by experienced professional conwomen with decades of polish on their scripts.
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ttp
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You know what, joybe? You made a decision to climb the career path based on the information were given. How were you to know you weren’t getting the whole picture? The lies by omission and outright lies are their bad, not yours.
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Hunney
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TTP is right….don’t be so hard on yourself. My father says, “you did the best you could with the INFORMATION YOU HAD AT THE TIME”. And Lazy is also right–these women are MASTERS at lies and manipulation. Don’t fault yourself for being trusting. They are the ones who lied to you. Don’t blame yourself for their dishonesty. Live and learn–and you have learned. Glad you got out!
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mrpmama
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…………I am so incredibly discouraged now. I know you all are just sharing the truth, which is so great…..but now I’m stuck. I just started and it’s going sooooo slow and this is the only opening for me. Trust me, I’ve put my resume out to EVERY place I can think of, so far anyway, and this was a last resort. I’m a single mom and I was drawn in by being able to stay home with my daughter, but now I realize that the only way to really make money is to get to director.
So many mixed feelings!
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TRACY
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I’m sorry you’re discouraged, but hopefully you’re glad you found this out sooner rather than later. Please also understand that the only way to get to director is to put other women in debt with large inventory purchases. And while you can make money as a director, it’s not going to be much when compared to the time you will put in. You’d likely do better at a minimum wage job.
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GET OUT
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WOW i too bought an inventory. All the pros of having your own inventory seemed like such an advantage. Before finding this website I was already considering sending my inventory back or just selling it to friends at the wholesale price. I don’t think I will continue with this and involve other women. And my sales director is definitely pushy, always texting me about booking appointments with friends, practice interviews, coaching sessions, etc. I’m like hello lady, this is my part time job not my life! I have a job already and when I am off I want to spend time with my family. I need a normal life, not the life of seeing “everyone with skin” as a potential customer!
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Hunney
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mrpmama, I am also sorry that you feel discouraged. Believe me, I’ve been there. I was just devastated when I found this site and discovered that I’d been scammed. But looking back, I see it was a real blessing. I got out before any major damage could be done. I still lost about $700. I consider that my lesson.
Please know that you will not make any money at Mary Kay. You will be encouraged to put your daughter AFTER Mary Kay. Also, Mary Kay is not a REAL JOB. Maybe a hobby for people who don’t need money, but it’s not something that you could credibly put on a resume. And you will definitely lose money.
It is a fact that you would be better off and make more money working a minimum wage job. At least you will be earning, not losing, money.
Glad you found us. Good luck to you in your employment search. But run like hell away from Mary Kay.
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CHERYL
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WOW!!!! My friend and neighbor called me tonight to ask me to help her 10 year old daughter do a report on Mary Kay for her school project. What do you think about her exposing the truth in a classroom full of fourth graders??? Maybe we can teach them at a young age to not get sucked in to this kind of scam. She also asked me to help make her a costume for her to wear while giving her report and I am thinking of some nasty items to wear ie jail clothes or ragged handme downs. What do you think about taking a totally realistic view to school? I do not want to get her an F grade but I think it might be cool.
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Lazy Gardens
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If she does a compare and contrast … what they say versus what really happens.
Take, for example, the “free car” … point out the co-pays and the need to get other people to order.
Point out the problem of unrestrained recruiting … first in may have had it good, but the ecosystem gets overgrazed real fast and they all starve. Kids understand overgrazing and the problem of too many siblings.
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