A Little Formula to Figure Out if Your Mary Kay Director is Making “Executive Income”
Written by Raisinberry
July is one of the few times during the year that you might actually find out how well your Unit is doing. Mary Kay publishes commissions in Applause Magazine, the top pyramid dwellers, but the vast sea of some 13,000 North American Directors will never grace the pages.
In July, however, many Units announce where they finished at year end. If you can find out what your “Seminar Year End Goal” was to hit “whatever” Unit club, or how far away you were, you can easily estimate your Director’s paycheck. When your Director keeps this quiet,…well you know.
Remembering that she is paid on wholesale, not retail, any retail figure has to be reduced by half. So if your unit is in the $250,000 Unit Club, figure the amount at $125,000 wholesale. Now divide that $125,000 by 12 months and get $10,400 wholesale production per month. Your Director gets about 23% of that (if she’s over $5k per month, which means bonus money). She’s makes $2,392. per month excluding her personal recruiting commission. You can find her recruiting commission, commonly called a love check in your newsletter (unless she’s hiding from that).
If she is a strong recruiter, and gets star orders this will be a significant additional commission. Usually a Director posts her “love check” in the newsletter and you can see it will range from 100 to 1500 per month. If she only has 4 or 5 recruits for the year, or has relied on her on-targets and DIQ’s to bring ’em in, this number will be low. Very low. The listing of Seminar Sales Leaders gives you a picture because you can look at the names, divide the retail in half and total the possible commission guestimate at 10% because not all her months will be at 13%. It’s nine percent (even if she does her own 600), if less that 5 order during the same month.
In our example, we’ll say the newsletter shows an average of $250 additional per month. She’s up to 2642.00. She also may have picked up some bonuses for recruiting over the year (She gets up to 500 for 5 qualified in a month…haven’t seen this happen much at all). Divide up another 1000. (generous). Add $90…we’re now up to $2,732 per month prior to business expenses.
So your Unit Club Director, at 250,000 retail production for the year is making roughly $2700 gross commission per month. On the generous side. Before expenses. And we know how considerable these are. Easily (twelve months) averaged at 800.00 to 1,000 a month, and we all have to pay taxes. (Unless you lose money-and most “premier club” directors ultimately do.) In this example, a woman clearing $1,700 a month after expenses is making $20K a year.
Now, how many units are at 250,000 “retail” in all of Mary Kay? As you go to Seminar or your awards night this month, observe how many Units even made it to any type of Unit Club. Twenty thousand per year is okay helpful money for any home. But it isn’t “executive” by any stretch so if you left your job to pursue it, you’re screwed. Of all the Units in MK, how many shine on that Seminar stage in Unit clubs? 500 per Seminar? 600?
Now why would we report on this? Aren’t paychecks kinda personal? In this case, absolutely not. Mary Kay’s marketing plan and “opportunity talk” elaborates on the high potential income of its consultants and Directors. They routinely share their “highest check” at Guest Events as the main bait to join.
Any consultant can see if she is being lied to. She can do the math on her own Unit, and even being generous with bonuses, can get very near a clearer picture as to whether her Director has, “paid for college with her MK check…purchased her home with her MK check, is making Executive Income part time from home with her MK check.”
Any guest can check what she has been told by simply asking the Director what is the average wholesale production per month of the Unit. She will never expect that question. She will stammer. You should press. She will give you a June Number (typically the highest month for most sales directors) because she has to spin it (following the tenets of positive affirmation). Then ask her what March was and January. With those numbers you can figure an average and you will have her.
Pink Truth Exists because Directors lie and are lied to. Directors “suggest”. Director’s “allude to” and we assume. Our first line of clarity involves getting Directors to admit and face what they work so hard to deny. They teach consultants to deny as well, by simply not allowing anything “negative” to be spoken. The end product is an entire group of sales people pretending they sell more than they do, and absolutely clinging to that “highest check” as their reality instead of the exception.
It was our assumptions and Mary Kay’s inability to be forthright with information and documentation of financial facts that we relied on, that caused some of us, to make horrible decisions. It’s called detrimental reliance, and it is cause for legal action…class action, if David can still slay Goliath. But Mary Kay doesn’t promote (wink wink) what it makes it’s Directors say. We promote “top” check, not “average” check. We leave out expenses and the fact that the top check was 15 years ago. That’s negative. See why Mary Kay is fighting the “full disclosure” requirement that the FTC is promoting for Direct sellers? The truth will kill recruiting.
Do the math and find out exactly what kind of earnings YOUR director is bringing home, so you aren’t duped into “chasing the dream” that even your own Director can not catch.
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Comments (16)
Lazy Gardens
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Remembering that she is paid on wholesale, not retail, any retail figure has to be reduced by half.
That’s assuming that Mary Kay hasn’t decided to double-credit the amount ordered in any given month as a “bonus”.
When they do that, the bonus only increases the paper amount for awards, not the actual commissions or car production, so the unit’s goal may have been met on paper while the actual commissions were way lower that month.
Although that artificially inflates the SD’s income on paper … she’ll still come out looking pathetic with this calculation.
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Keyta
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Using this formula my ex-director made $57,500 last year prior to expenses. Approx. $4,791 a month. However, she purchased anywhere from 1,800 to 2,800 wholesale each month. So her orders cut the earnings in half before you add any of the other expenses. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
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gotheart
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Raisin, this information is great to put in the hands of Kaybots.
The numbers and how to go figure them.
I was in such, OMG,in Ahhhhh, of the women that were sd that I just figured “well if Pam,(not Shaw) my adopted sd, Donna college professor, and the rest of the incredible women in the Sacramento area were sd then I want that too.”
I had no clue how to figure my commission as a sd.
In fact I called Pam my adopted sd my first month as a sd and asked her to help me figure my commission. It was 1300., I thought, naw this can’t be correct!
Keyta, then your exsd, was in the Director’s Queens court of Personal Sales. That is some serious smoke and mirrors. Looks like success, NOT.
She made a lot of wholesale purchases.
When she sent out/downloaded her Unit newsletter did she include her personal retail sales?
Or did her, your exnsd show her, your exsd’s personal sales in her monthly sd newsletter?
if not than ya can bet your exsd has a lot of product sittin in her basement, storage.
I am thinking you exsd came up with half her Units production, of the $4K needed to stay a Unit.
What is realllllly sad is I bet she was unable to put a lick of money aside for her Social Security Earning. Of course she is missing the percentage that an employer would have to contribute too.
Now I am telling ya this is not good. I never even thought of that.
The most “Taxed Social Security Earnings” I had was in 1994, $18,390. I was in the 250,000. Club.STRUGGLE! I was not any any court. worked my ass off to become a sd. Had a personal, qualify for sd that same year.
Boom! when to serious struggle when my DIQ, sprung off. Boing, boing, boing. LOL! That next year my TSSE was 16K, went down hill from there till I got the hell out in 2006.
mk says they never test on animals. When i think of all the gerbils there at scaminar and how all of them are running in there cages. It is quite a sight in my mind. I think they are right they don’t test on animals. They test on rodents. That is how they treat the women in mk like rodents.
Since the Harper’s/Forbes/Recovering/Virginia’s articles have come out I have gotten crazy. Happy crazy. Thus my going on and on.
With some serious love to all of ya. XXXXXOOOOO
gotheart
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Keyta
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I based that on the unit total for this Seminar year. $500,000 retail. She is a caddy driver so the monthly production required is higher (I think). She has a large unit (probably 50 or more). I am not even sure how many consultants are in it. Most just order to stay active and never went to meeting. She has been in applause this year several times.
They pulled down 57,000 retail in February. I think that might have been the biggest month. June was only in the 16K’s. Our sd lists all wholesale orders for the month including her own in the newsletter. This is how I know how much she ordered. Most of the time her order is the highest order. The majority of the orders fall in the $200 range, except for new recruits that they have talked into the 1,800 package and those who are in DIQ or buying their Stars
This year she had 3 DIQ’s. Two made it through. One did not. The goal by February of 2013 is 30 directors total in the unit. This is her 30th anniversary in Mary Kay. 30 for 30! She has 4 right now. I think this is an insane goal. Assuming that the DIQ’s come from the existing unit. They would have to recruit 624 people. 24 for each of the 26 DIQ’s. That’s a whole lot of people and inventory. Ebay here it comes!
Her husband has a very high paying job. 6 figures She doesn’t have to depend on the Mary Kay. Which is good because it would seem that she makes next to nothing on Mary Kay.
Her expenses: She has the personal assistant. Her Monday meetings are in her house. Pot Luck. No charge to consultants. So money is saved there. She goes to all events (lots of expense).
When you consider the expenses I’ll bet she is close to being in the hole.
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Lazy Gardens
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The most “Taxed Social Security Earnings” I had was in 1994, $18,390. I was in the 250,000. Club.
So you built a unit with an average production of $10,000 a month … worked 50-60 hours a week at it, 52 weeks a year, and for your efforts you managed to net $18,400?
That means you were making $6-7 an hour with zero benefits! That’s mind-boggling.
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gotheart
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I said struggle. I am being truthful.
I didn’t figure all this out till just this year, 2012.
“Mind-boggling”, embarrassing.
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TheRose
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When they say “executive” income, I think they’re basing the claim on 1960s numbers, when MK started. Back then, $20,000/yr was a lot of money.
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raisinberry
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Gotheart, I hear you. I really do.
If any one of us took the time to really evaluate our situation, our debt, our earnings, what it was costing us…we may had pulled up sooner. But the “speak it into existence” mindset of positive affirmation, and the shunning for negativity, left us little options other than to just keep plugging along…our NSD’s wouldn’t LIE to us?! It HAD to be true. And that big check was just one recruit away! You can’t quit now! What did they always say? Attributed to Mar, herself, something like too many women quit just before success.
Wow. Talk about trapped in a holding pattern! But the very worse part is exactly what you mentioned. All this time spinning on the hamster wheel left no cash for investing, no retirement, taking the best years of our lives, chasing a pipedream. When you quit-you get to pay down DEBT before you can even BEGIN to invest or do retirement planning.
And I know many women still on the wheel, waiting for that next magical recruit…the one who is gonna change everything. If you are far enough up the food chain, it is very hard to stop, since “any minute now” the payoff is coming. It’s pink bondage, and the sick thing is, Mary Kay said it herself! Building a Mary Kay business is like trying to fill the bathtub with the drain open.
wow. what can possibly explain that except pink fog?
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gotheart
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Keyta, 50 Unit members is very a very small Unit.
Based on mk training only 10% of your Unit members are working ibc.
They, coach to have a Unit inside of a Unit. Meaning to have at least 30 working consultant inside of whatever you Unit members are.
Raisin, you have written on going about what type of woman is drawn to mk.
“wow. what can possibly explain that except pink fog?”
My up bringing was what could explain it.
You’ve cover it in articles that have been on the front page of PT.
I registered for my first college course for the Fall of 2012.
I am gonna regain those 27 years of bein a hostage to my upbringing and mk. So I’ll be 88, got a lot of living to do!
Thanks for your help.
Sincerely,
gotheart
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Keyta
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50 is a small unit. Wow! I thought it was large. I guess there are armies of women in the pink fog.
Congratulations on your college enrollment! I wish you “real” sucess in your endeavors
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Embracethis
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Congrats on going to college!! ♥
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raisinberry
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GOD LOVE YA GOTHEART! You’re my HERO!
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Bittersweet Bronze
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Holy shit! My director made less than I did last year. Even after I added in her “sales.” And she’s been a Cadillac director for years and she really works and has a large customer base.
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Veronica
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Does anybody know what a MK sales director typically pays her personal assistant?
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TRACY
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Usually minimum wage or less. They often like to “pay in product”…. which means you’ll get some old products from her warehouse of old stuff she bought to “meet goals” which she can’t sell.
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ttp
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I was paid less than minimum wage by a fledgling director (as a favor to my friend
) and minimum wage by a Senior director.
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