No, You Can’t Be “At Home With Your Children” While Earning a Living in Mary Kay
If you’ve been around Pink Truth for a while, you know the chances of making a real living in Mary Kay are slim to begin with. Even the 2% of current consultants who have supposedly reached the upper levels of success as sales directors…. Most of them aren’t making a real income.
If they’re lucky, they’re like almost all of the directors, they’re making $10,000 to $20,000 per year . That’s not bad if you’re comparing it to a minimum wage job. But in the real world, we don’t exactly call that making a living or having career earnings.
But let’s suppose you believe $20,000 a year is a good living. Can you really earn that while being “at home with your children”? Because Mary Kay recruiters will lead you to believe that you can. Well, not really “lead you to believe”… They’ll falsely tell you that you can!
Here’s the truth: If you want to make that whopping $20,000 or more doing Mary Kay, be prepared to work a minimum of 40 to 50 hours a week. And when I say work, I don’t mean schlepping around in your jammies and making a few phone calls.
The kind of work you’ll be required to do in Mary Kay will have you out in the streets, looking for new blood constantly. You’ll be trolling for new victims and then working to convince them to “get together with a few of their friends.” There will be plenty of prep work for this gathering (the “skin care class”), including phone calls, coaching postcards, pre-profiling, and general administrative work.
If you can get the bookings, be prepared to be up and out of your house for about 3 hours for each appointment. (You didn’t really believe them when they told you it would only take an hour or so, did you?) After that appointment you’ll have follow-up contacts with people as you try to recruit them into Mary Kay.
Now don’t be too worried about the portion of the job that I just described. Not many women these days want to have home parties, so you won’t be burdened too often by having to partake in this. (Although, unfortunately, those parties are where you find new recruits, so if you’re not having parties you’re not recruiting either, which leads to the dismal earnings mentioned above.)
You will also be busy with weekly unit meetings, nsd guest events, and things like “Muffins & Makeovers” or “Pizza & Possibilities”. Don’t forget events sponsored by Mary Kay Cosmetics like seminar and career conference. And of course if you do find potential recruits, you’ll be trying to corner them into meeting with you and “taking care of the paperwork”.
If you or your unit members get one of those unsuspecting victims to sign up with Mary Kay, you have to start a whole round of meetings and/or phone calls designed to con her into ordering the biggest possible inventory package.
Don’t forget that you’ll also want to have meetings with your movers and shakers to try to entice them into “promoting themselves” up the Mary Kay ladder. Your meetings with them are focused on getting them to envy you, “the suit”, the material goods brought to you by Mary Kay, and your superior position as sales director. If you can get them to envy enough, you might just convince them that they want to be you and want to move up. You will need to have women who are trying to get the car and directorship in order to boost your own numbers.
There are many more parts to the Mary Kay “job,” but you get the idea here. There are a ton of things that you’ll be doing, none of which involve being at home with your children. Mary Kay is not flexible. You will be working it often during prime family time… nights and weekends, when your spouse and children are likely at home and wish you could be with them.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that having your child unpack boxes of inventory from Mary Kay is equal to spending quality time together. Don’t think that “shushing” your child because you’re on the phone means you’re developing a relationship with her or him. Hauling your child with you as you warm chatter women at the mall doesn’t count either.
Mary Kay is all about sacrifices, and your family will be the first to be sacrificed. Sure, you’ll be told that the sacrifice is only short-term, and that your family will appreciate it in the long run. You’ll be told to use your children “as your reason, not your excuse.”
Let’s just be truthful: You can’t really work Mary Kay as a career and be home with your children.
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Comments (7)
CK
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How True…
The short term sacrifices are the children’s school recitals (they are at night while you are “working” your business or attending that “must see” Mary Kay guest event), dentists appointments (you can’t afford them and Mary Kay doesn’t include group dental insurance for the rank and file consultant), bedtime stories (remember you are out “working” your Mary Kay business), Homework time (You are on the phone trying to convince a potential client she has a quick minute to talk to you), dinner time (unless you count slapping a frozen pizza in the oven) and a host of the most important moments of your children’s lives. Sure you are home during the day (if you are brave enough to quit a regular paying job) – but ask yourself this: How many years are your children home during the day?
So oops… there goes that excuse… your children really don’t need you home during the day. After all, if they get sick in school, chances are the school nurse will call you at work anyway and you will either go home early or ask your child care provider to pick your child up early so that you can work to afford the dental and medical insurance anyway.
I, myself don’t think it’s healthy for your child to see you crowding and stalking other people just to make a sale or get an appointment or a phone number. It’s creepy. And you really don’t want to teach your children how to be creepy do you?
Short term sacrifices. Losing your home is a huge sacrifice to stay at home, because let’s face it; You really can’t make enough money to pay the mortgage. . It’s better to go out to work to be able to afford your home.
Making phone calls and “shushing” your children does not a good relationship make. Me personally, I lost my Verizon phone account for no- payment because I was not making enough money to pay the house note, phone bill and electric bill. Did I nention that the water was cut off too?
No… I was not making money and the only thing I was teaching my children was that I could quickly get into debt, be considered a dead beat bill payer, and that Mary Kay just could not do the things (help me make money to Pay off my debt) that it was purported to do.
Now, my children won’t talk to me. So… I have lost almost everything. I have lost my credit, my good name, my husband, I am sitting in a cold house because I dare not turn on the heat because I can’t afford it, I have lost my pride because the only place I can afford groceries is from the local food pantry/bank. I have lost so much because I wanted to stay at home with my children. But the most precious thing that I have lost was the relationship with my children and I lost that because I got on the Mary Kay treadmill thinking that I could stay at home with them and that I could afford the things that they needed.
MORE FOOL ME…
So… don’t you do it. You will lose out as well. Heed this warning. It just may help you. I only wish that someone could have been honest with me enough to stop me from making such a huge mistake.
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FormerDirector
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I so could have written this article. I had to put my daughter in day care curing the day and then at night send her and her father out so I could work my Mary Kay business 60+ hours a week just to keep my unit and the car and I made barely any money at all. Not even minimum wage. It broke my heart. I did it “to stay home with my daughter.” I got out so I could “stay in my daughter’s life.” I have yet to meet a SD that is not neglecting their family for MK. I have also yet to meet a SD who really makes the money they say they do.
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brotherOfKaybot
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Tracy,
This is a very interesting, and timely, presentation about Herbalife (as you most likely know, another “pyramid scheme” type company not much different from Mary Kay). This should be a good read for any pinktruther-er (is that a correct name for us?) as MK and Herbalife are very similar. I only wish the evils of MK would get as much press as something like Herbalife (although Herbalife is publically traded so not surprisingly is in the media much more often). Anyways, whether its MK or Herbalife, down with MLM pyramid schemes! Keep up the great work and posts!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117631419/Bill-Ackman-s-Herbalife-PDF?secret_password=16pa8kf0q3qhtgm5u1se
http://kiddynamitesworld.com/why-bill-ackman-is-wrong-about-herbalife/
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brotherOfKaybot
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Tracy you will find this to be a great read
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117631419/Bill-Ackman-s-Herbalife-PDF?secret_password=16pa8kf0q3qhtgm5u1se
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brotherOfKaybot
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sorry for the abrupt previous post. The link is to a presentation claiming that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme. Although not directly related to MK I believe these MLMs are all the same so it is an interesting read for any
pinktruth-er (is that the correct name for us?). Its unfortunate that the evils of MK are not nearly as publicized as much as a company like Herbalife, since it is publically traded. Keep up the great work and posts!
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Lazy Gardens
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Any product-selling company that not only has direct salespersons BUT rewards them for recruiting by giving them a cut of the recruit’s sales, and that ties bonuses and rewards to recruiting, not selling is going to be abusive.
Basically, if they want to recruit you to do exactly what they do … it’s 99.999% guaranteed to be a scam. **
**NOTE: My SO gets a reward – and it can be a big one – if he refers someone to his company’s HR department for jobs with certain scarce skills … and if they get hired and if they stay for at least a year. He only gets rewarded for successful recruits, not anyone with skin.
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Flannel Girl
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And I’m pretty sure, Lazy Gardens, that your SO and the recruit don’t have to compete for the same customers to get any kind of paycheck or “reward”. They have their own jobs to do, and their own work to complete, and team projects are collaborations.
Recruiting for real jobs builds a better team. MLMs just want more people to spend money on products.
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