Compulsive Consultancy in Mary Kay Cosmetics
Written by Lazy Gardens
Compulsive consultancy brings despair and humiliation into the lives of countless thousands of men, women and children. The compulsive consultant is a person who is dominated by an irresistible urge to participate in Mary Kay. Coupled with this is the obsessive idea that a way will be found to “make it pay” and enjoy it besides. This causes deterioration in almost all areas of the person’s life.
The compulsive consultant attempts to create an image as a philanthropist and an all around “good person”. Much of the time the compulsive consultant lives in a dream world which satisfies her emotional needs. The compulsive consultant dreams of a life filled with friends, new cars, furs, penthouses, yachts, etc. Pathetically there seems never to be enough income to make even the smallest dream come true; probably because whatever income results from the Mary Kay activity is, to the compulsive consultant, sacred. It has to be plowed back into Mary Kay. More…
During the winning phase, consultants experience a big sale – or a series of sales – that leaves them with unreasonable optimism that their success will continue. This leads them to feel great excitement, and they begin increasing their Mary Kay activity and ordering.
During the losing phase, the consultants often begin thinking about big sales they have had in the past and borrow money – legally or illegally. They start lying to family and friends and become more irritable, restless and withdrawn. Their home life becomes more unhappy, and they are unable to pay off debts. The consultants begin to “chase” their losses, believing they must work harder and order bigger to cover their losses.
During the desperation phase, there is a marked increase in the time spent on Mary Kay. This is accompanied by remorse, blaming others and alienating family and friends. Eventually, the may engage in illegal acts to finance their Mary Kay activity. They may experience hopelessness, suicidal thoughts and attempts, arrests, divorce, alcohol and/or other drug abuse, or an emotional breakdown.
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Comments (11)
MLM Radar Detector
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I know one of these compulsives, and you’ve hit the bulls-eye. It’s a guy, so Mary Kay hasn’t been involved, but a string of other MLMs have been.
I see two personality types getting sucked in by MLMs. One type is guilt-driven by “I didn’t work my business hard enough.” The other type is the compulsive ego-driven dreamer you describe here.
The ego-driven dreamer is convinced that failure could never be because of him/her or the MLM business model. The same gullible faith in get-rich-quick schemes causes such folks to enroll in one MLM after another.
The ego-driven dreamer embraces the “lessons” in fatally flawed motivational material like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” convinced that the business model works if they can only find the right company. Having run Mary Kay through its paces and gotten nowhere, the dreamer will find a reason to condemn Mary Kay (the market is oversaturated, the directors are corrupt, the product is low quality, the compensation plan is poor). The reason is always the company, and never the MLM business model or his/her lack of ability in marketing.
The ego-driven dreamer will immediately sign up for the next MLM that doesn’t appear to have the same flaws. Such dreamers are so confident in the MLM system that they will even “research” MLM companies looking for the best compensation plan, product appeal, and apparent lack of local market saturation.
The ego-driven dreamer understands that he/she needs to keep building a customer base beyond immediate friends and family. However, the dreamer is sucked in by the idea that if he/she can only find the “right” company with the “right” product, his/her personal flair will make strangers suddenly flock to the door. People are hungering for _____, I will bring it to them, and we’ll all be rich.
Ironically, the dreamer who does so much research looking for the “perfect” company stops researching as soon as his/her emotional triggers are satisfied. The ego-driven dreamer never reads the fine print in the agreement or thinks through its ramifications. He/she never quite grasps that MLM success is only reached by meeting outrageous purchasing and recruiting quotas, that his/her potential customer list was exhausted a long time ago, and that failure to meet quotas means the company will destroy his “business” by reassigning his downline to someone else.
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multimom
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Hello MLM Radar Detector, I pretty much just lurk here, but you really piqued my interest. My BIL just gave me a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad to read, saying it was the best financial advice he’s ever read. From what I can tell so far, it’s some lucky gambling.
Could you elaborate on your objections to the book. It doesn’t sit with me right, but I don’t know how to verbalize my objections.
Thanks
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MLM Radar Detector
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Hi, multimom! Is your BIL perchance in an MLM? If he is, would you mind telling us which one? Whatever you do, I strongly recommend you DON’T buy a starter kit.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad is good for starting a fire in the charcoal grill. That’s about it. After sucking you in with some basic financial advice which any prudent person would follow, he devolves into twisting reality, bragging about how he “beat the system,” and insulting prudent investors (like you’ve always tried to be). In truth, the book is really a guide to total financial ruin.
Rich Dad Poor Dad was originally written as a hook to get people into the author’s real estate investment seminar series, where he would stair-step them into spending tens of thousands of dollars for bogus, sometimes fraudulent, advice which ultimately profited no one but the seminar leaders.
This book was a sleeper until he connected with Amway/Quixtar. It hit the big time in MLM circles, because it claims you can start with very little and “leverage” your way to wealth by heavily investing in a multi-level marketing company. Direct Marketing/MLM upline directors have been using this book ever since as “financial education” for new consultants/distributors. Among other bits of disastrous advice, the author claims that investing your money in your 401(k) is “too risky,” but dumping the same money into an MLM is your ticket to financial freedom.
You can google the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad and find websites that dissect it, revealing it for the untruths it promotes. Here’s one that goes into considerable detail:
http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html John T. Reed’s analysis of Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Here are a few more:
http://www.enemyofdebt.com/2010/04/my-beef-with-rich-dad-poor-dad-author-robert-kiyosaki/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/04/07/review-rich-dad-poor-dad/
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/01/26/deconstructing-robert-kiyosaki/
When confronted by someone who promoted the book to me, and who mocked both his and my “wage-slave” fathers for being fools, I replied thusly:
“My so-called wage-slave “poor dad” father prudently saved and invested. He retired with enough money to travel whenever and wherever he desired for a long time to come, and had enough in reserve to ensure my mother would live comfortably for as long as she might outlive him. Your “poor dad” father did the same. YOU, on the other hand, mister “rich dad,” are only a few years away from retirement, you have scarcely a penny to your name, and you spend whatever you get on whatever “promising” opportunity comes your way. But you, “mister rich dad,” will happily regale us with stories about how you made a fortune several times and lost it (but losing was never your fault), and are sure you can make another fortune if someone will only give you the seed money. Take your book and GET OUT.”
I hope this helps. If your BIL is in an MLM, we can point you towards the real facts which show how MLM is a losing proposition every time.
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multimom
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Thanks for the info. My BIL isn’t in a MLM, that I know of anyway, but he does do real estate. Some house flipping, mostly trying accumulate rentals.
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multimom
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Thanks. I don’t think he’s in a MLM, at least that I know of. He does house fiipping and buys houses for rentals.
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MLM Radar Detector
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The days of making a quick buck on real estate appreciation are over. There is some money to be made in buying and flipping foreclosures, but the market for selling them is still very soft. Rentals can be somewhat profitable. But when I was a landlord I found out the hard way how much damage a bad tenant can do, and how it’s nearly impossible to recover the costs of that damage.
RDPD makes outrageous, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable claims about getting rich with real estate. He couples that with advice to commit tax fraud. There are much better resources available.
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MLM Radar Detector
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BTW, Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, has written about 16 books, has his own website, gives investment seminars, sells financial education CDs and DVDs, and even created games and financial training materials for children.
I strongly recommend avoiding all of them. He’s only popular because the MLM crowd promotes his material as endorsement for MLMs.
If your BIL offers you any other books or materials with financial advice, look for the author’s name. If it’s got Kiyosaki’s name on it, the advice inside won’t be any better than his first book.
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enorth
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“Rich Dad Poor Dad was originally written as a hook to get people into the author’s real estate investment seminar series…advice which ultimately profited no one but the seminar leaders.”
Thank you, MLM Radar Detector, for this info. When I was still in the corporate world, a guy in my office became obsessed with the RDPD book and advised me to read it. He said he’d get rich from real estate; he began traveling out-of-state to attend seminars. He said, “You’ll never get rich working for other people.” I really got suspicious when he invited me and DH to his home to participate in a “real estate club” where we – with other couples – would “play a game” that mimicked real estate investing or something to that effect. He also offered to loan me CDs and books to read if I wanted to “learn more.” All red flags to me, and I did not bite.
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MLM Radar Detector
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The purpose of the “Real Estate Club” was to raise money which he didn’t qualify for through conventional financing. He was attempting to “leverage” other people’s money – YOURS – because the banks (with good reason) considered his real estate investments too risky.
You were wise to stay away. Getting a bunch of people into a “club” doesn’t reduce the risk of losing money you can’t afford to lose. It merely increases the number of people who get hurt.
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Skeptigal
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Another great post! I am so glad to have found this site. There are so many facets to the MK Scam and this is an important one. I believe that several people I know have been caught up in the MK business in a similar manner to a gambling addict who keeps trying ‘just one more time’ to beat the odds. Just a little bit of success, the right amount of love bombing, the new fake friends and the lure of a big payoff in the future. They too, have blamed everyone else when things didn’t go their way and alienated friends, families and spouses in the process. Evil, on so many levels.
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Realist
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This article was frustratingly spot on. Over the past 4 years, my relationship with my SIL has deteriorated from an incredibly close friendship to a convenient aquaintance. She used to be a real person, one you could talk to and be your true self with and i would say after 6 months of MK she really started to change. After being pressured by her MK leader to spend several thousand dollars(her and her husband were already $1200 short a month on bills and were borrowing from every corner possible) on inventory, the reality of not being able to sell her product really sank in. Her and her husband began fighting almost daily because of the stress. Her life was a mess and i think it truly changed her. She had decided she was going to quit MK and went to talk to her director one night and it was almost instantly that she changed again…sort of. From that point on she became obsessed with everything MK…atleast on the outside. She tried to get me involved in her business several times and i finally told her after nicely telling her no that i will never be interested, and that i am not interested in selling anything (Me and my husband have goals and are working hard the honest way to achieve them…i didnt say that part though). She immediately wanted nothing to do with me, it was as if she realized if i couldnt help her then i was no need to her. She did this with most women in our family and friends circle. Fast forward to right now which is pretty much the same except she uses me when she needs to vent everything negative in her life…and then almost immediately goes onto facebook to make it look as though her life is perfect! Why do people do that! The only things she will talk about are MK related and when i mentioned to her how i miss having our chats and hanging out and having fun, she took that as me being negative and then went on about making it a priority to avoid negative people…I feel as though she is brainwashed. In her eyes anything that isnt promoting her business is not positive for her happiness and needs to be ignored…every time she posts on Facebook how sucessful she is and how perfect her life is i just want to correct her. Im sorry about the rant, i could actually go on for days about all of my issues with MK but i am not the best at organizing my thoughts on paper…so sorry for the mess!
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