Top Director Quits Mary Kay and Loses Her Friends

Last year Kelly Brock was a top director in Mary Kay. She had recently gone on the “top director trip” with her husband. She was celebrated in Mary Kay as one of the up and coming future national sales directors. She was charismatic and well-liked. She was a recruiting machine, and her upline certainly enjoyed the money she made for them when she frontloaded new recruits with big inventory packages.

And then she quit Mary Kay.

And she lost all of her Mary Kay friends. Why? They had no use for her anymore. Her upline doesn’t make any money from her, and they’re taught to only spend time with those who earn them a living. More importantly, she was a QUITTER. In MK, there is to be NO negative talk. Quitting is negative. Women may see that Mary Kay isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If a top director leaves???? Why???? Questions, questions, and suddenly maybe the truth is revealed to more consultants.

Listen to Kelly talk about her new coaching business and the success she had this week. And the heartbreaking part about how she was discarded by her Mary Kay “friends” when she quit.

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42 COMMENTS

  1. Someone should start a 12 step group for individuals who would like to leave MK and other mlms.

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    • That would be a great idea, but I think the reality is that the person who starts the group would be an MK or other MLM-Er who uses the group to continue to prey on the MLM victims, and find a way to profit from their heartbreak and pain.

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    • Not quite 12 Steps, but there are quite a few groups on Facebook that support and help people out of MLMs and ‘recover’ after. It really does take a while to figure out your life after leaving. Monica Hayworth’s Anti MLM Group was the first one I joined after watching her YouTube videos about Mary Kay and she then helped me leave. I’m also in a few others, like Life After MLM – The Group, Anti-MLM Support and Recovery, The Light at the End of the Pyramid.
      Ive left MK nearly a year ago now and I’m finding it remarkable how few ex-MK consultants are in these antiMLM groups and how few are speaking openly on multiple platforms about the Cult of Mary Kay. There’s a group called Mary Kay Victims which has all of 10 members, its a group linked to F.A.C.E.S, another website with all things truth about Mary Kay. I’d love to see a group of ex-Mary Kay Consultants to share our experiences on Facebook… I would also love to see the company close, but that’s seriously a D.R.E.A.M. (I think).

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  2. The comments on her video show another Sales Director who says she is quitting after 30 years. Things must be pretty bad.

    • KT Martin, a Million $ Director, left, too. Lots of people have left. My only regret is that I didn’t leave sooner.

      It’s been VERY hard getting back into my original career. The dilemma of listing MK on my resume versus skipping it and appearing to have had no employment for a decade is HARD. I’ve been mocked and laughed at, and no one takes MK seriously. They have no idea what I sacrificed to build a business/unit, and they’ve no idea the consistent hard work I put in for that long.

      But, she’s very correct that losing your “friends” is really tough. No more Christmas cards or birthday wishes. No more checking on me or saying hi. They’ve completely vanished, but it really becomes easy to see they were fake all along.

      Still very glad to be out!

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      • I cringe every time I see a MK director talk about “doing life” with another MK director. Or has other directors as bridesmaids in her wedding. Because just quit and see how long they’ll stay friends with you.

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      • Hey BD, I don’t know if I can help you, but if you’re still exploring career options, maybe message me here. I can figure out how to frame your resume in a way that the “glaring MLM part” is not so “glaring”. At least, I’ll give it a good go.

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      • I think it’s generally recommended to leave out any mention of MLMs from resumes and just explain the gap in some other way, like “raising kids” or “health issues” or something.
        But if it was a position where you absolutely had to list everything, you could list your Mary Kay years as “self-employed reseller” or “independent salesperson” and just list the bare-bones skills you were using, like cold-calling, organization, prepping advertising materials, etc., while putting much bigger emphasis on your other work.
        If asked about vagueness, you could say work wasn’t your focus at that time and that was just side income.

        Some might say that’s dishonest, but it’s not like most job posts are any less vague, so whatever works, as long as you don’t outright lie.

  3. Her thousands of friends at the start quickly became thousands of followers by the end.

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    • “Her thousands of friends at the start quickly became thousands of followers by the end.”

      I caught that too. I think it is very sad when someone conflates followers on social media with friends. I’m probably showing my age, but several of my best friends aren’t even on social media.

      It is a problem when your self esteem comes from how many “followers” you have.

  4. Does every high level Mary Kay director that quits become a business coach? I’ve read about quite a few of them who went into that business after quitting Mary Kay. I suppose it’s a better business than doing Mary Kay but how many independent business coaches does the world need?

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    • I think it’s just another way to monetize their time in the MLM. They can sell their “services” to other distributors.

      The lower ranks are constantly told how they must do more, do better, “dream harder”, etc. etc. These “business coaches” and “life coaches” are just capitalizing on the indoctrination already in place.

      “If your business is stagnating, I have the answer! Buy my business/life coaching class/package/journal/videos/etc!”

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      • Yes, yes, yes! The MLM thing is sold as “leadership” and “mentoring” when it’s really just recruiting and selling inventory packages. What do you turn those “skills” into? Coaching!

        Now… I actually think Kelly is good at the coaching. And I’m partly happy she has found her real career.

        But at the same time I think Kelly SUCKS because she’s selling to MLM women. She won’t say the truth about MLM (that all you’re really selling is a recruiting opportunity), because it’s a source of business for her.

        I’d respect her much more if she’d pull back the curtain on the scam of MLM.

        And I know that SHE KNOWS it’s a scam because in her video she said:

        “…I wasn’t actually asking anyone to be anything. You see I’m not selling a transformation of becoming a coach or becoming a network marketing leader….”

        She knows what she was selling in MLM. And she’s not selling it anymore.

        So just admit that publicly and help pull back the curtain on the MLM scam.

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      • Hey Neverpink, I expounded (significantly…way too long and I’m cringing about it eek) on your topic, below. I think they pursue “coaching” because they can’t transition to a “real” job…and they cannot see the hypocrisy in “charging others for you to teach them how to do something that you yourself was unable to do.”

        Their downlines are their only business markets, and many are also unwilling or unable to admit defeat; that they didn’t achieve the pinnacle of the MK career, BUT they can tell others how to do what they couldn’t.

        I mean this in relation to the run-of-the-mill directors, or even lesser, the failed directors. While a few NSDs have thrown their hats in the coaching ring, I’m talking about bottom-rung Directors (or FORMER bottom-rung Directors like Kimberly Perkins) who are laughable as “coaches”. The aforementioned Kimberly Perkins is a great example of “why on Earth would you pay this person to help you achieve what she herself was woefully unable to achieve?”

        (I hope she shows up here to tell us The REAL Pink Truth! As in, here’s a huge list of reasons why SHE chose to leave her supposedly successful MK Career…maybe because God “put it on her heart” to “step down” from directorship in order to “lead” others to success…or maybe because she couldn’t make production and has run out of credit limits…it could go either way, really…)

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        • You’re very right! That’s something I didn’t consider – that they couldn’t transition into a “real job”. I think it’s easier to stick with the manipulative, rah-rah, fake-it-til-you-make-it mindset/personality/skillset.

          It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. They know it works and who it works on.

          Thank you for the expanded explanation, Mountaineer!

        • back in my hiring days as a manager i was told by HR to not consider MLM as a job skill. I didn’t think much of it until I came across a resume with 15 years of Amway listed and not much other work and no education. I mean, what can you do with 15 years of MLM other than work for yourself?

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    • It’s because literally the only thing being at the top in an MLM qualifies you to do is to tell other people how to get to the top of an MLM. That’s it.

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      • I do feel sympathy for these women who’ve become trapped by MLMs. So much wasted time in a scam instead of work experience. Someone here in PT, I don’t remember who, put a positive spin on this and listed some transferable skills they gained from Mary Kay. A lot of people didn’t like that because it may have been interpreted as minimizing the damage done to self and others by being involved in the scam. But survivors can come away with strength and wisdom. If you’ve already made the mistake and gotten involved, you can move on and away.

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    • (My apologies; book ahead lol…thank you for your patience with me guys)

      Hi Charles! IMO:

      They pursue “coaching” and try to brand themselves as “business coaches” because they have no other options.

      Truth be told, they have lots of other options of earning a true paycheck by working actual hours at an actual job…whether it be minimum wage or otherwise…but they either think they’re more knowledgeable than the thousands of other MLM directors who’ve also failed at MLM, or they think that a wage-earning job is somehow beneath them.

      I think a statistically significant number of current/previous MK Directors are clinical narcissists; if they didn’t “make it”, it’s not for their lack of trying…while they didn’t “make it” and had to “step down” (or whatever catch phrase they’re using to describe “failure” these days), they STILL somehow know exactly what OTHERS need to do to “make it”…hence the move to “coaching”. It smacks of the old adage, “do as I say, not as I do”…(but why are you not “doing it” when you claim to know how everyone ELSE should be “doing it”…a true question indeed.)

      Sales Director Kimberly Perkins is an EXCELLENT example of this…search her name here on PT and you’ll see what I mean about how a failed Director can be so inherently narcissistic as to think that she can coach others about how to NOT be a failure (at EXACTLY WHAT SHE HERSELF FAILED AT, OVER AND OVER) and GET PAID to do so! Ah, the lulz.

      My observation is that Mary Kay “Directors” of ANY level…I.e. SD, EESD, NSD, TNT (hee hee)…are only known as that title within the MK pyramid. Their titles don’t translate to any other profession. So they cannot make what would be considered a “lateral” move…ie a Sales Manager for one company leaving that company to become a Sales Manager for another company.

      And to make such a transition even harder, the MLM business model (singular because it’s the same for pretty much every MLM…shout out to Char for driving this point home on the regular…) is so many light years away from any “legit” business model that no hiring executive looking for a legit Sales or Business Manager would consider a resume of MLM “success” to be a substitute for “real” experience. Even Mary Kay Corporate themselves have stringent requirements for their corporate “sales development” positions; most of the current independent “directors” alone wouldn’t qualify for them (Google ‘Mary Kay Careers’ for funsies if you have a few hours to kill).

      Best Decision’s comment above can attest to this resume issue; her interactions here are always professional, polite, genuine, and well-spoken, and my interpretation is that she is a very professional and put-together person whom I would absolutely consider for a position if I were hiring, but she devoted years to MK…and per her words, regardless of her “success” during her MLM time, that MK splotch on her resume has been hard to overcome.

      An example of my assertion above (about MLM “executives” not crossing laterally into non-MLM positions) would be Jamie Taylor. Yes, she’s an MK NSD (find a way, make a way, amirite?). And she probably makes significant money (I have no idea…I defer to Tracy et al for that info).

      BUT: her MK title does NOT translate into other “industries”. Just her social media posts alone (which she uses to “work her business”) are immature, tacky, riddled with typos, and frankly embarrassing in ANY OTHER INDUSTRY besides MLM. Sure, she might be making over 10k per month with MK (I really have no idea)…BUT if the MK gravy train were to turn off the spigot at any time, she will NOT be able to attain a similar “executive” position in a non-MLM company making anywhere near that amount. I promise that.

      If she were to apply for even a mid-level position at a non-MLM company, her application wouldn’t make it past the initial stage once they looked her up online and saw the grade-school slumber party social media posts she uses to drive her “business”. Hell, if I were the hiring manager I *might* move her beyond the first screening if she would just take the time to PROOFREAD and consider even BASIC GRAMMAR in those juvenile social media posts.

      But instead, her “body of work” carries NO weight except for within the little insular world of MK. (Same thoughts for her protégée Chelsea Adkins…her social media posts that supposedly are part of her “working her business” would have me tossing her resume in the trash if I were filling any type of sales management position.)

      I hope this is a good answer as to why so many mediocre MK Directors try to parlay their lukewarm MK “careers” into successful business coaching gigs:

      First, they’re experiencing some degree of failure as directors and this has them wanting to get out of their positions. This alone should raise major red flags to anyone considering paying them for “coaching”…if they hold the keys to success in that position, why on earth would they leave that position? It’s one thing if they leave the position to do something COMPLETELY different (ie leaving MK directorship to teach middle school math…two different worlds and fair enough). BUT if they leave their MK position and then turn around and attempt to make a business of trying to tell OTHERS how to succeed at the position that they JUST LEFT, they’ve lost every bit of credibility they may have had.

      The excuse list for why they left directorship (and thus why you should still trust them to coach YOU to do better than THEY did) will be miles long: personal stuff, family stuff, personal family stuff, illness (of my second cousin twice removed), God put this on my heart, God told me to leave, God told me I should be leading you, I hate the Directors suit (whoopsies, truthiness just leaked out)…there will be no shortage of reasons they give as to why you should PAY a dropout to guide you to the success that they couldn’t attain themselves. And here’s where the potential fool and his money are hopefully not parted.

      Why would you pay to hear “advice” about how to achieve something from someone who FAILED TO ACHIEVE THE ONE THING YOU WANT TO LEARN ABOUT? You shouldn’t. And I hope every lurker reading this realizes that.

      They tout this new coaching gig because they really think they have no other options. But that’s not true. Actually, they have options..many options. But they won’t consider any options that are “beneath” them. Most of them could, if they were willing to earn fair pay at an hourly wage job, do so. There are a ton of companies hiring right now. Many of the jobs are low-paying. But they have benefits!

      Now maybe that’s not for them…instead they could (because they’ve been killing it in MK and thus have tons of money saved up) GO BACK TO SCHOOL and get a degree in a fulfilling field (I’d suggest nursing, but they especially make fun of nursing…LMAO, the career nurses here on PT are absolutely KILLING IT financially…CardiacRN case in point).

      Or, heaven forbid, they could don a UNIFORM *collective ICK from the entire MK “independent sales force”* and go to WORK in any type of service industry. But if you’re working at a J.O.B. where you don’t get to “make your own schedule” and you’re at the supposed bottom of a “pyramid” of managers and CEOs above you, how can you ever attain the unlimited income that MLM promises?

      Plus, (and maybe most importantly for some of them such as Kimberly Perkins et al), how can you call yourself a “boss babe” in front of your friends/family/social media when you are working FOR someone else and at a schedule that you yourself didn’t set? Nah, I’ll just proclaim to be a “business coach” and profess to hold the key to success that I personally was woefully unable to find for myself when I was in the MK grind.

      If even ONE potential “coaching” client of Kimberly Perkins or any of her ilk sees this and chooses to NOT pay for any of these coaching services, we can call this a “win”. I will!

      *dismounts soapbox and thanks everyone for their patience*

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        • I’d love you to! Just please double check for typos…when I mount my Mountaineer Soapbox I often type faster than my brain can process what I’m typing! 🙂

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      • “(I’d suggest nursing, but they especially make fun of nursing…LMAO, the career nurses here on PT are absolutely KILLING IT financially…CardiacRN case in point).”

        I doubt they could even make it into nursing school. Almost every school, including the for-profit ones like South University, ECPI/MCI, and more, requires a HESI or TEAS entrance exam. Those exams cover foundational knowledge of math (YES! Us nurses use a crapload of math!), science, reading comprehension, composition, and more. And nursing school isn’t a bunch of memorization and regurgitation. Everything builds on everything, and you have to critically think (GASP!) through situations. Sure, it’s great to know what A, B, C, and D are, but you have to put them together into big picture D. I used to tell my students our bodies are like a giant Jenga game puzzle. Sure, you can pull one piece out of alignment and things will still stand, but it’s that ONE removed piece that throws everything into chaos and sends you to the cath lab, emergency department, or more.

        So yeah, I doubt most of these women could even pass an entrance exam to get INTO school. If they somehow did, they will likely wash out. Nursing school is not for the faint of heart. It’s hard. I worked harder in nursing school than I did for a BS in electrical engineering.

        So yeah part 2 – I make a nice salary as a nurse. I’m in clinical education at a level one trauma center; I left bedside late last year and moved into a different role. When I did travel nursing, I made BANK! I made more in a month than most top SDs, and work stayed AT WORK.

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        • I’ll take a nurse’s net profit to a Director’s net profit any day. Zero benefits and all fluff.

        • Yes, I’ve thought that maybe one of the reasons they attack careers like nursing and teaching is that they aren’t capable of attaining the degrees necessary to achieve careers in either field. It’s much easier to talk down a particular career as beneath them than it is to prove that they have the intelligence and other necessary characteristics necessary to actually earn the required degrees let alone achieve any success in those fields.

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      • A friend high up in Pampered Chef left and started her own coaching biz. She rented a ballroom to “kick off” her coaching business, and invited hundreds of people to attend her promotional debut…at $50 a head!

        You can take the lady out of MLM, but you can’t take the MLM out of the lady. Only MLMs charge attendees to listen to a sales pitch.

        Unless the former-MLMer-turned-coach is selling coaching to train other coaches (who train other coaches etc.), she will have only one “level” to sell to. I think she will quickly find that making money this way is just as hard as selling Mary Kay (or any MLM) retail out of her home without recruiting recruiters.

        While choosing MLM reps as your target customer may make sense because you already know this audience is gullible, only a fraction of failing MK reps are likely to have any additional money to spend on top of thier recurring MK losses.

        Better to get a job working for a company (or start a company) that produces a real product or service that customers choose to buy because it has value outside of some esoteric “opportunity.”

        • “…invited hundreds of people to attend her promotional debut”

          DJ, my drama llamas really want to know how many people showed up and if she came anywhere close to breaking even on this event.

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      • I know this is late but I legitimately make way more money as a crew member at Wendy’s than any level of directorship in an MLM. Maybe she should try applying in fast food and working her way up.

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  5. Gosh, she was shocked–just shocked–that they all dumped her as soon as she quit. We feel your pain, Kelly.

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  6. Two observations:

    1. Kelly feels the hurt of being dumped by her former MK “friends,” and I don’t blame her. I just wonder how many who quit out from under her got the same treatment. That’s pretty much how it goes in Mary Kay as well as any other MLM-cult. What goes around comes around.

    2. I am sick to death of the stupid “dusty film” effect in social videos. It’s just a handful of white-fleck frames cycling endlessly over the image; distracting and cheesy, and it seems to be all the rage even so. Why? Is it just me? Maybe it’s just me.

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      • OMG I had no idea she was former Mary Kay, but now it rings a bell. What is this “Luxe Investments” crap? She’s a coach but her Insta bio says she’s a Luxe Investments Investor. I have no idea what that is.

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        • Everything I could find with any combination of “Luxe” and “Investments” in the name seemed to be associated with real estate. But there are too many of them to pin it down to one.

          Maybe I spend too many hours on the behindmlm site, but part of me is thinking it might be a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. MLM types seem prone to being sucked into those things. I hope that’s not it.

      • Really? Melody Fox is still listed on mk.com and also IN Touch heritage . I figured she was on her way out . But why haven’t they scrubber her info yet like they did when Lamar left??
        I won’t have any way to check after this month as I’m T’ing put .

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  7. Is there a thread yet about Laura Bitler? I think she’s worth a post or so. A few thoughts:

    (From some news source that I’d mention here except for their seemingly sketchy existence…)

    Laura Beitler is a direct sales veteran who brings over two decades of channel experience to Rodan + Fields. Ms. Beitler has spent the last 20 years at Mary Kay where she began in the legal function and worked her way up to Associate General Counsel. Driven by her knowledge of the industry and her passion for encouraging and facilitating field leader success, she transitioned to the sales side of the business. Most recently, she held the position of Head of U.S. Sales and Marketing at Mary Kay. As Chief Global Sales Officer for Rodan + Fields, Ms. Beitler is responsible for the Global Sales Organization …

    So Bietler is no different from every Mary Kay bot, except she her worked CORPORATE position to gain a pension or at least some type of retirement income.

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  8. They become coaches because becoming a ‘coach’ OR becoming a ‘psychic’ are almost the only two things you don’t need a license to do. Let’s see how long this new ‘career’ of hers lasts.

        • Interesting. When I met her, she didn’t have the greatest of skin. Hope that’s gotten better…with TimeWise, of course!

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          • She appears to have gotten a COVID makeover which involves losing a TON of weight (congrats, Laura) and otherwise upping her game in caring about her appearance.

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