Seminar: The Biggest Fraud of Your Life

Written by Raisinberry

Over a decade of postings on Pink Truth from consultants and Directors have yet to produce an honest response from the company or the Nationals concerning the abuses suffered from starting a Mary Kay distributorship. I say distributorship because it certainly is not a “business.”

Thousands of women have posted here about their years of working it, multiple earned cars, status on the career path, and still they have come away with the realization that they can rarely be truthful about the internal workings of Mary Kay because women wouldn’t join if they knew! Telling the TRUTH would definitely curtail all the enthusiasm!

The scripts have been revealed, the tactics discussed, the poor conduct and unethical behavior of those we were supposed to trust are now out in the open. Mary Kay Cosmetics, the Corporation, has the power to issue an apology, or at a very minimum, make their regret known concerning the core values that were compromised along the way. Instead, we are barreling towards a celebration in Dallas saluting how well we all deceive each other

It would be easy to say that Corporate owes us no apology. But that would be another deception in a long line of same. Corporate knows and has known all the atrocities that have been perpetrated on consultants and Directors for years! They choose to look the other way because they need the money… they want the money… they MUST HAVE the money.

They are totally aware that orders will come in to win a bonus product or a Mary Kay token. They are completely abreast of how many orders are placed on hold, or declined at month end. They can see how many orders are delivered to a Directors home in another persons name, and they also see the chargebacks. They know that consultants deep in the pink fog will order $1,000 worth and more to win a prize from corporate and to receive recognition from their NSD and Director. In fact, they bank on it. And Seminar is the great culmination of all those orders and recruits.

The fact that the company NEVER wants to see your actual retail sales, never requires your weekly summary, never requires them as mandatory, never asks you to include sales tickets, when doing so would be as easy as posting them on intouch under the PCP… this should SCREAM VOLUMES to any women with an ounce of sense. If they did, they would have to acknowledge that no honor bestowed at Seminar is legitimate.

The year end extravaganza has you, me, all of us, sitting in our seats, applauding not ONE SINGLE OUNCE OF RETAIL PROOF. What kind of mind control must exist if after 45 years, women still flock to a giant awards night to PRETEND they earned a RETAIL SELLING AWARD with the greatest portion of the wholesale still sitting in boxes or on consultant shelves.

This isn’t the “greatest night of your life”. It is the “greatest fraud of your life!” And you are paying for it. PAYING for your dress, PAYING for your transportation, PAYING for your food, PAYING for your hotel, Paying for your registration to sit in a Convention center and pretend! Those who are new to the game of course think it is all real. Plus, you get to sit the following day and listen to top director stories that are sanitized from what actually occurred for the sake of the newbies and the “PMA secret pact.” The actual events that led up to the so called “miracle year” can not be made public.

One of my offspring applauded her Queens Court of Sales winner at our area Seminar Awards night. She wanted to be QUEEN. It was her goal. When she found out who she had to beat, she coughed up the dough to achieve it. No, she didn’t sell it. She just wanted to BEE it. All night long, I sat there, watching the attention paid her, and the climatic moment as the NSD read off the Number 1… “Our girl”.

She wore the tiara, sat in the throne, got the microphone, shared her secrets to success… all those secrets anyway that didn’t involve interest rates. And I thought to myself, we are all supposed to swallow this as true. Smile and Nod.

In this area event, we watched a microcosm of the grander fraud happening in every hotel ballroom all over Dallas. Do some sell it legitimately? Sure…probably a few… those who do not recruit and those with a volume selling scam. Selling $40,000 a year means you sell $110 a day, everyday… $3,300 a month. Other than holiday open houses where big discounts are given, and fundraisers once or twice a year, the typical consultant is nowhere near that figure legitimately, so I think we can all agree that Queens Court rarely equates to $40,000 sold much less $20,000 in profit.

So there you have it. From start to finish, Seminar is a phony awards night, clapping for phony achievements while phony achievers sit on a cardboard throne, with a faux tiara, telling a phony story about how they achieved this grand accomplishment.

Since they can not reveal the total truth about the real condition of their area, or achievement, even their humble acceptance speech is phony. The only thing “real” about Seminar is the sweet deal they got on all the jewelry awards and the hard earned cash you’ll part with just being there. We are told Seminar is the Emmies, Broadway and the Academy Awards all rolled up in one! That is very true. It is true because all those awards programs recognize excellence in ACTING- which is the ability to stand on stage, convince your audience of a fictional reality and be a credible pretender! Sounds like a perfect description of Seminar.

12 COMMENTS

  1. A few years ago, a deluded MK husband opined that Mary Kay was doing great because it was a company “in renewal.” He based that opinion on the fact that about half the crowd responded when asked to raise their hand if this was their first Seminar.

    “In renewal” sounds much better than “churning,” but let’s call it what it is. And let’s not miss the significance of only half the attendees at any given Seminar feeling it was worth going to more than once.

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    • There’s a job seeking/career advice blog I read quite a lot. One of the blogger’s “run like the wind away from this company” signs is rapid turnover because it means disfunction within the company. ~50% turnover (not including the n00bs who weren’t present) indicates to me not just disfunction, but “holy smokes, that’s some major disfunction right there” disfunction.

      And I’m 95% convinced that those deluded MK husband letters are actually written by the deluded Kaybots themselves to reinforce the illusion that men are cool with their wives being up to their neck in MK.

  2. “It is true because all those awards programs recognize excellence in ACTING- which is the ability to stand on stage, convince your audience of a fictional reality and be a credible pretender!”

    Not just at Seminar, but the entire “business” of MK is acting. Remember “fake it ’til you make it?” Pretending to be successful in a pretend business requires “acting” alright, but when the audience of your acting does not know you are acting, it is known as lying. Once someone gets hurt by this acting, such dishonesty crosses over into fraud, as Rasinberry spells out so colorfully above.

      • can find out if you really want to know. on-stage story told by nsd was her pacemaker reset itself and didn’t bring her heart rate down after it did. she talked her way out of hospital to sit in the chair…which is, uh… positive to a fault.

    • A defibrillator just shocks a heart that is beating abnormally. It does not restart a heart that isn’t beating. That’s called asystole, and we do CPR. In this woman’s case, she *could* have been dealing with some atrial fibrillation or superventricular tachycardia, hence the defibrillation (or in these cases, cardioversion). Also, being cardioverted hurts like a mo-fo. That’s why we give you a few drugs ahead of time unless it’s an emergency.

      Having said all of this, if this DID happen to her earlier this week, she likely should NOT have been traveling to Dallas. Patients who have been cardioverted are out of work for 3-10 days, depending on medical history.

  3. As I read this, I could just hear Carol Anton shouting from stage, “Are you ready for the most exciting night of your lives?”

    No, that was not the most exciting night of my life, not even close. Not even a little bit. And this article perfectly explains why.

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  4. Just wondering, at the Mary Kay annual Seminar, do they have anything like those stupid “Night Owl” meetings they had at Amway conventions? Basically another event after dinnertime, after a whole day of events and you’re already tired, they have some other type of meeting that goes well into the night, like two or three AM. It’s supposed to be about more secrets on selling and building your business but it is likely nothing more than a well documented sleep-deprivation technique so you won’t think for yourself and you’ll be that much more loyal to the Amway cult and think MLM is so great. It all comes down to mind control and not much different from what Jim Jones of Peoples’ Temple or David Koresh of the Branch Davidians (and of course Amway) did. Does Mary Kay do anything like that at Seminar, or any other regional meetings?

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