This story offers the point of view of a Mary Kay husband. While some may say that this schedule is temporary and will end once the wife is done with her Director In Qualification period, that is false. Sales directors are constantly “in DIQ,” always looking for new recruits while barely making minimum wage.

Let me first begin by saying I’m not the average guy. I do laundry, change diapers, clean, cook, do yard work, and I carry my own weight around the house. I am not one who expects my wife to do it all while I sit on my rear with the remote in hand.

With that said, MK is slowly driving a wedge.

Written by NoEscape

In Mary Kay we are told to take short term sacrifices for long term gains. But at whose expense? We are told to be women who find a way and make a way. But at whose expense? We are told to share this “opportunity” with everyone, never prejudge. But at whose expense?

We are crafted into believing that we really do want to be directors, that we LOVE that pink caddy, and our lifetime goal and dream is to become that all-glorified NSD. But at whose expense? We are told we are in business for ourselves but not by ourselves. Someone will be there for us every step of the way. But at whose expense? That we can’t sell from an empty wagon. That the product sells itself. We need to stock up on certain products. But at whose expense?

If your husband dares to question the Mary Kay opportunity, your recruiter wants you to be ready with these answers. Mary Kay doesn’t want something as silly as your husband’s logic to stand in the way of you purchasing inventory!

I feel sorry for the husbands of Mary Kay consultants. Seriously. Very sorry.

Why? Because the minute they figure out what a scam Mary Kay is (which is usually much sooner than the wife figures it out), they are called negative and unsupportive. Uh, no. They are rational, reasonable, and realists. The Mary Kay opportunity is bad, and I don’t think that the husbands should be punished for recognizing that and pointing it out to their wives.

Written by SuzyQ

One of Mary Kay’s selling points to starry-eyed new recruits is the gift of time they can devote to their families and those they hold dear. After all, the priorities are said to be Faith First, Family Second and Career Third, right? Not exactly.

But, let’s focus on family and those other relationships that make us who are are. When you start a Mary Kay business, you are told that you will be able to devote more time to your family and they will become your REASON as opposed to your excuse. This means mandatory attendance at the weekly success meeting and any and all opportunities to “move up.” These opportunities include Career Conference, Seminar, retreats, Power Up Days, Muffins and Makeovers, Pizza and Possibilities, Career Breakfasts, Guest Events, Diva Days, banquets and other quarterly, daily, or weekly events.

Written by The Scribbler

What is a husband’s place in the Mary Kay venture? Should he stand quietly by, allowing his wife to do whatever he wants with his family’s finances? Should he be actively involved in running the Mary Kay “business”? Or should he just be a cheerleader?

I pondered whether or not this article would offend our readers; after all, it liberally uses the “S” word (submission), questions Mary Kay teachings, and looks to the Bible for clarification on such.  I decided to press onward; after all, if you’re an active MKer out there reading this, you’ve probably heard very offensive insinuations that you’re not a proper adult (i.e. a “Big Girl”) because you haven’t (insert task here).  If you can tolerate that kind of abuse, then you’re a strong individual and will come away even stronger after having read this piece.

Written by BlessedOne

This piece was written by the husband of a former Mary Kay consultant who was involved with MK for many years. He offers his advice for other husbands, boyfriends, and family members.

1. LOVE YOUR WIFE. This is the most important thing you can do. This is where you must invest the majority of your effort and resources. Take every opportunity to let her know she is as vital and needed by you (and your family) today as she was the day you married her. Be ready to court her all over again. She’s worth it. You be the source of her recognition. Be the loudest source of her applause. Be her number one fan club. Shower her with your affection and attention. Perhaps this MK crisis is a God sent reminder that we’ve not done this enough.

Written by FortunateSon

As a family member of a disillusioned former director, who has spent ten years in the presence of all that nauseating pink optimism (“It’s only a flesh wound!”), I learned of this blog and relished the opportunity to repudiate some of the perfunctory platitudes that are given as explanations for why you’re a worthless, miserable failure. Let’s begin.

Written by Lazy Gardens

Mary Kay Ash said, “A woman who will tell her age will tell anything.” She never told her age. She also never mentioned other details that might have interfered with her carefully crafted public image as the plucky divorced single mother of three from the wrong side of the tracks who founded a cosmetics company to give women like her a chance. Somewhere, somehow, she managed to lose track of two of her five (or seven) husbands.

That’s right… Mary Kay “Ash” had seven husbands, but she (and her beloved Mary Kay Cosmetics) conveniently forgets to mention them. Mary Kay’s autobiography talks of “my husband,” but it’s not clear to the reader that she is referring to five different men. Her sixth husband died but is rarely mentioned. And Mel Ash, the one so many are familiar with, is the seventh, the last, and the one who gets the most air time.

Written by The Scribbler

The official Mary Kay Facebook page recently posed the question, “We are looking forward to the long weekend ahead. What are your Memorial Day Weekend plans?”

Since Memorial Day occurs at the end of the month, I’m guessing there’s going to be a whole lotta workin’ going on amongst Mary Kay directors and consultants.  Month’s end on planet Mary Kay typically brings with it a frenzied buzz of activity, as directors far and near race to wrap up any production quotas hanging over their heads.  Same goes for directors-in-qualification; being one body short of the required 24 recruits needed renders months of recruiting and pulling production null and void.  It’s a bad scenario to be caught in, and so the chances of catching a Mary Kay lady working on the 30^th or 31^st of the month are quite good, holiday or not.

One Mary Kay sales director has her husband help her sell the Mary Kay “opportunity.” He writes these letters to the consultants in her unit.  A letter for husbands of Mary Kay consultants:

I have to admit at first I was skeptical of my wife getting involved in a Direct Marketing business. As a Christian, I believe we should be good stewards; therefore it was my duty to look into this. I checked it out thoroughly and to my surprise everything checked out. For every $100 of retail products our wives sell, they only pay $50 for it, so immediately $50 of the profit is ours to keep.

What does Mary Kay do with their $50? They put a lot of it back into the pockets of the Consultants and Directors (your wife and mine). Of that $50, Mary Kay pays for manufacturing the product, warehousing, offices , shipping, salaried employees, etc. Plus, they pay lease payments on Mary Kay Cars, Commissions that start at 4%, 9%, 13% and go up to 26%, and Monthly Bonuses $50, $100, $500 and on up to $5000! Since commissions come from the company, it is not a pyramid.

The Company doesn’t pay 1 million a minute to advertise on TV and they have a very low overhead (no big stores to run). In other words, no one above you makes a dime of your sales, as is most often the case in other sales businesses, instead Mary Kay Inc. gives of their 50%. Why do they do this? Simple, they are paying us for advertising! Instead of the major networks getting the money for advertising, they have consultants and directors out there driving around in mobile ads…Red Grand AMs, Pontiac Vibes, Grand Prixs, and the Pink Cadillacs! This tends to get US Husbands on fire for Mary Kay Inc, as we see what it can do for our families!

I have to admit, it’s a guy thing, that you don’t want your wife to out-earn you. We feel like we might loose control or something. That’s normal. I went through that too, but I would be crazy not to let Diane make all she can. We look at it like it’s a family business. I actually help her by delivering product, helping with the newsletter, I go to meetings sometimes so we have more family time, and I get contacts for her. When you look at it as a Family Business and you get involved too, everything is still in its proper order. So OK, Diane can out-earn me, more power to her. I still control the major finances in our home and she has no problem with that. We just have a lot more money to control, is that a problem? Could be worse!

Looking at it from the Family Business perspective; say you opened a Doughnut Shop. Could you only show up two days a week, for 1 or 2 hours at that and expect your business to prosper? Of course not. Plus, could you have just a few doughnuts on the shelf and tell someone you’ll order one for them and have it next week? Of course not, again!

I guarantee you, if you stock your shelves and run your business 5 days a week, it will prosper. That’s what happened to us! The first two years Diane was in Mary Kay, she only fiddled around part time. Hey part time was great, she averaged $200 per week profit in only a few hours, …3 classes a week… and who can’t use the extra money?

But when she quit her job (Just Over Broke) and went full time into Mary Kay, it really took off. It has been a real blessing. You just don’t know until you try it. I don’t think God wants us to be rich, which is not our goal. He does however; want us to be out of debt (Prov. 22:7). That way, we can serve Him more and not have to be always struggling financially, which takes up most of our time and effort. By the way, this is the best part of this career, having the time to do what we want.

Just pray about it. God used Mary Kay to free us financially. He can do the same for your family.

In His Service, [Mary Kay Husband]

I love Husband’s statement that it’s not a pyramid because the company pays the commission. Is he serious? If he was so knowledgable about the Mary Kay business, he wouldn’t make such a silly statement! A pyramid scheme is not determined based upon who pays out the commission.

He also shows his lack of information when he mentions the fact that the company doesn’t advertise. Has he seen Glamour Magazine? Has he seen Oprah? That’s called advertising, and that costs money.

I love how he says Mary Kay “gives of their 50%”. Ummm… that’s called taking in money from the consultants and directors in the form of wholesale orders, and spending that money to run the business. How on earth does that make the company fabulous?

Husband also says that he sometimes goes to Wife’s meetings so they can have “family time”. How does a rah-rah meeting for Mary Kay turn into family time? This guy is nuts! He is brainwashed!!!

And if you needed any further proof that life as a Mary Kay consultant is ALL MARY KAY, ALL THE TIME… Here is something that Husband wrote in July 2006. Notice that basically, Wife’s entire vacation was spent “doing Mary Kay”. How sad for them that they think just being on vacation together would be a waste of time.

It’s Summer of 2006. It sure is good to be home this year. We’ve already been to a family reunion the last week of June and will have seen 4 fireworks displays by the time the 4th of July weekend is over… all this while Diane worked the business.

One thing she has always done is take the business along on our vacations. I will admit at first, I didn’t think I was going to like it. I thought a vacation was supposed to be a time away from work, but as I saw Mary Kay literally pay for vacation after vacation, we could afford to take more of them and longer ones. How could I complain?

Plus she didn’t work the whole time. She would plan parties ahead or pampering sessions at a local Restaurant or the Hotel we were staying in. She offsets the appointments, example: she’d book an appointment in the afternoon keeping the morning and evening to be on vacation. Then the next day she may have booked a party at night (from the pampering session the day before) so we’d have all day again. Make time to play too! You just get used to figuring out how to work and play at the same time.

Now we couldn’t just relax a week without doing some business, it would be such a waste of time, and really we wouldn’t enjoy it. What I’m saying here is, because of mixing work with play, we do alot more of both! Something we found out was that one actually helps the other.

Ask yourself, how many times have I not gone somewhere or done something because it costs too much or you didn’t want spend that much. Now what if you were going to make money while there? Would that change anything? You know the answer. I will never forget the first time we took a small vacation in Gatlinburg and came back with more money than we left with, Diane had a party there that was over 800.00 in sales! Not to mention the contacts she made there and the future business that has come over the years. That is the power of this business.

This is just the beginning too. If worked like a business, it has so much more to offer, just give it the time you do now to that J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) and see the results.

As you are working your business, remember to remove the words “Buy & Sell”” from your vocabulary and you will sell alot more products. I know it seems crazy, but people have a pavlovian response to those words, So, don’t use them! Use “TRY” the product instead. Ask them to, give me your hands and then just put satin hands on them. They will do the rest. It’s the same with parties, etc. Ask contacts to get people together to SHOW them the new products or to do Color Analysis or to let them TRY products for free to see if they like them. If they do (& they usually do) they will ask if you have it in stock (got to have inventory!) & how much is it?

Employee Pampering Sessions are so good because that’s what they are doing, letting their staff try stuff! They like to try for free! Diane gets most of her contacts from pampering sessions. They become a customer, host parties and keeps going on from there… if you work it!

Thank you for another Mary Kay Year, July 2005-June 2006!

In His Service, [Mary Kay Husband]