Can 26,000 Mary Kay Consultants All Be Lazy?
Written by Lazy Gardens
Admin Note: This article was first published in 2007. But the results are still valid, so I’m running it again.
Just for fun, I analyzed a bunch of Court of Sales data that I collected. My collected data contained the estimated retail sales for 26,279 consultants in 519 units, mostly for July, August, September, October of 2006, with some data from the full 2005-2006 Seminar year.
What did I find? First, there is no evidence that anyone is regularly having $300 parties, $1,000 days, or any of the types of results shown in Mary Kay propaganda.
Sales are estimated from wholesale orders, which means I can’t tell who is selling product and who has a closet-full of inventory gathering dust. However, even if we pretend it all sells, nobody is getting rich except the upline. The total wholesale orders by these 26,000+ consultants was over $4,000,000.
I wondered what the love checks would be on $4 million in wholesale orders???
Here’s how the numbers worked out for those ordering Mary Kay consultants, assuming that they take home 1/3 of the retail value of the products:
- 23,101 consultants (87.91%) took home less than $200 per month, which is less than working 10 hours a week at a minimum wage job
- 3,178 consultants (12.09%) took home more than $200 per month, which is greater than or equal to working 10 hours a week at a minimum wage job
- 430 consultants (1.6%) took home more than $600 per month, which is greater than or equal to working 32 hours a week at a minimum wage job
- 120 consultants (0.46%) took home more than $825 per month, which is greater than or equal to working full time at a minimum wage job
Did you read that right? Yes you did! Only 120 Mary Kay consultants out of over 26,000 made more than $825 a month selling products. And that’s assuming they’re actually selling what they order. (I know, it’s a long shot.)
In order to complete my analysis, I considered the following:
- I excluded units that only gave data on the top 10 consultants.
- I included a few units with suspicious data – all the unit’s values were over $1,000, which was unlikely, but the director did not specify top 10. It biases the results in Mary Kay’s favor.
- The highest average estimated retail sales volume was $5,464.
- Remember that I assumed all of the ordered product was sold, which isn’t even close to the reality for the vast majority of Mary Kay consultants.
- Only 10 consultants had estimated retail sales of over $4,000 per month, putting them on track for Cheryl Warfield’s $100,000 income plan.
- I realize the data includes personal use consultants, but I doubt that 86% of the consultants signed up with Mary Kay planning to make less than a burger-flipping teenager, and that 98% of them are happy making less than a WAL-MART greeter.
- Oh, yes, it adds up to a bit more than 100%, because of rounding errors and because the IBCs in the last two categories are also counted in the second category.
So what are we to conclude from all of this?
Are twenty-six thousand Mary Kay consultants, in the unforgettable words of national sales director Mattie Dozier, “TO LAZY OR TOO EVIL OR TOO SLICK TO WORK THIS BUSINESS”? Should we think, as Ms. Dozier does, that “SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG WITH THEM OR THEIR ATTITUDE AND WORK HABITS OR THEY WOULD BE MAKING GOOD MONEY TOO”?
Is Pat Fortenberry going to give them a talking to, and tell them “I believe it is because you are not working with discipline and determination.”
Is Allison LaMarr going to tell them “Choose today to BE GRATEFUL!”
Is some anonymous suit at MK Corporate going to tell them “You never know… a $1,000 week or your next team member could be right around the corner!”
Well, I’m going to tell them what Benjamin Franklin (or perhaps Albert Einstein) said a couple hundred years ago, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.“
If you are working your business as hard as you can, month after month, and it’s not working for you the way your upline claims it works, maybe it’s time to stop the insanity. Add up your expenses and your debts, and compare them with your income. Are you sliding slowly down the debt-drain, one order at a time? No true businesswoman would prop up a failing business by sliding into debt … they might borrow to get a business started, but real businesswomen know when to pack it up, ship it out, and get over it.
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Tags: allison lamarr, mattie dozier
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Comments (10)
Blast From the Past: 26,000 Lazy Mary Kay Consultants | Pink Truth
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[...] or don’t want to make money. Five years ago, Lazy Gardens took on this idea in her article Can 26,000 Mary Kay Consultants All Be Lazy? The data and the results are still relevant today. Check it [...]
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Lazy Gardens
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Minimum wage has gone up since then, so IBCs are worse off than they were in 2006.
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gotheart
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Boom!
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kaykay
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*drops mic*
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JOB4me2
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“in the unforgettable words of national sales director Mattie Dozier, “TO LAZY OR TOO EVIL OR TOO SLICK TO WORK THIS BUSINESS”?”
Is she kidding?! The only “evil” and “slick” people are the fake liars that continue to perpetuate this scam. Project much?
I don’t believe that most women that join Mary Kay are lazy at all. They are duped in the recruting process to think that most women actually want the crappy products, and that there is actually money to be made selling. They are not initially told that the money and “promotions” are only for recuiting. Plus, it’s quite a shock to learn the distasteful things that are expected of you to try to make this joke of a “business” work. (Does Warm Stalking at 1:00am at Walmart sound palatable?) It doesn’t take long to figure out that we were sold a bill of goods, and we don’t really want to do the vile things necessary in this ridiculous “business”!
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Lazy Gardens
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“in the unforgettable words of national sales director Mattie Dozier, “TO LAZY OR TOO EVIL OR TOO SLICK TO WORK THIS BUSINESS”?”
Is she kidding?
No … Mattie Dozier ranted in ALL CAPS with MANY exclamation!!! points!!!! about the evil that is Pink truth, and called us all a bunch of lazy loosers and evil promopters of pink porn.
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JOB4me2
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Oh, I believe you! It’s just amazing how much these women project their
evilness onto others!
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JOB4me2
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Forgot to add that this “opportunity” sucks, and those at Mary Kay know it; otherwise they wouldn’t be lying and omitting facts to recruits. There is no other explanation for the smoke and mirrors.
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Deflated Pink Bubble
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Exactly. If this business was everything it is claimed to be by those in Mary Kay there would be no lies, no omissions and no crazy antics. There would also not be a need for Pink Truth! If they were the up and up company that they would like you to believe they are, our services would not be needed.
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Business 101
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The Mary Kay people that object to what Pink Truth is talking about do so because they are ultimately very afraid of “the truth”! They are busy pushing it out of their minds- because they know deep down this is not the opportunity all the hype projects….it’s alot of hype but no money!! It’s a psych game – but not really the money they pretend is being made – you are more likely spending money but not making it – thank you Pink Truth for a place to come and scratch the old noggin and ask questions freely without being “hissed at”.
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