Written by Raisinberry

The pressure to attend seminar is strong. Your director might tell you that in 3 days, you will have a college degree equivalent. In a normal year, you can spend about $1,000 to get yourself to Dallas, stay in a hotel, attend the banquets, pay for meals, and the whole nine yars.

Here, you can learn what you would be taught in Dallas…… FOR FREE! (You don’t even have to pay the fee to attend this year’s “virtual” seminar!)

Mary Kay Cosmetics wishes for you to attend seminar so that you can feel rewarded and special, and catch the “dream”with the hopes of motivating you to reach the next career level. They haven’t really ever wanted you to excel at sales, since they don’t track sales. (We all know that we are supposed to “inspect what we expect” and the fact that no one inspects your retail sales should be a big eye opener.) What they do track is recruits and wholesale orders.

The idea is to be able to get through a skin care class without making false product statements, to get to the close, and ultimately to the recruiting interview. It would be a perfect world to MK if you could hold 3 appointments per week and recruit one new person per week. Of course following this principle means you are forever replacing your lost customers… the ones who you are giving to your new recruit to help her get started! Which of course means you are quickly out there again planting fishbowls and warm stalking.

Of what will your training actually consist? First you must be warmed to Mary Kay herself, so a few excerpts from various videos will be shown to you so you can have that tearful moment of intimacy, believing that Mary Kay Ash is the mother you never had, or the warm supportive grandmother, the savvy entrepreneur who is in your Amen corner. This is necessary in order for you to be emotionally tied to this company. To duplicate this experience, search the internet to find some videos of her old speeches.Watch them every day at 5 am so you can share Coffee with Mary Kay as a 5 O’clock Club member. Total cost: free.

Second, you will need to see a skin care class. To keep up the charade that MK offers a legitimate opportunity, we have to pretend that people are holding classes and selling products. So let’s do a sample skin care class to ensure that consultants are holding classes correctly. Production from classes held, of course, is the opposite of what the NSDs tell directors, which is that production comes from new recruits. So for a while, we are going to pretend production comes from classes as you work your business.

You will see a role-played example of a skin care class, orchestrated by the MK Sales Development team, NONE of whom have even HELD a skin care class. We veteran consultants have always found this amusing. Even their fake-o “problem customers” are never as realistic as the Harley babes who came sans showers, or Aunt Agnes who thinks a hunk of meat on your puffy eyes works as well as eye cream. To recreate the “class training” simply attend any local meeting where an equally rusty director will simulate the last class she held 8 months ago.

Seminar classes will also include that fun high “I” director who forgot her notes and thinks the whole thing is so funny and really just wants to tell you an extended version of her “I” Story. To simulate this experience from home, we suggest you find the most annoying self important director you know and make a call. Tell her how inspiring she is to you and ask her to retell her journey in Mary Kay. Within 10 minutes you should be arriving at that glazed over “get me out o here” training experience typically achieved before noon on the second day.

Seminar also has focused career path classes for your particular level. During your targeted segment, you will be given information on how to “grow your business”. This segment is outlined from corporate and your teacher is to stay on point, using her own opinions and personality. The segment is the same in most rooms. Tell your “I” story, briefly, and then hit booking and recruiting. End with an inspiring phrase of motivation like, “I will see you at the top!” Or “You can too!” Or “If it is to be it’s up to me!” Or “Take God as your business partner! And we’ll see you ON STAGE next year!” The simplest way to replicate this is by finding more videos online for free. Look for some senior consultant training or red jacket training. It’s all really the same thing, and you’ll learn virtually nothing new.

Lastly, no Seminar training is complete without the telling of those commanding Top Director speeches. Technically they fall into the motivation category, but there are some training nuggets inside the text if your antennae are up. Generally they start with the setting of a goal from last seminar. Then they tell of the disaster event that made the goal seem impossible, followed by a “talking to” they received from their National or their 3rd grader. The 3rd grader’s input brings the audience to tears as each ones heart strings are yanked, in the hopes of duplicating that event in their own home. It is just touching when your children are proud of you, and motivate you to go on towards the goal! The message is to suck it up-dust it off and get back to work.

The speech will conclude with the high drama of everybody having done their best, but still needing $60,000 wholesale on the last day. This goal will be miraculously achieved in tears and struggle with thanks to such a Number One awesome Unit!!! If your antennae are up, you will have heard her say, There was NO more that could have been done. Every last order was in, yet $60,000 was still achieved before close of business on June 30! IT’S A MIRACLE!!!

This is where you learn the real training goal of Mary Kay. Find a way or make a way! $60,000 worth of skin care classes didn’t happen on the last day. What happened was $60,000 worth of credit card charges were made for products that were unsold and unneeded.

Applause, applause, applause! Your seminar training is over. You can duplicate this training simply by watching seminar speech videos on YouTube. Then to apply your training, apply for more credit cards and hold them until the end of a big goal like car, or Unit. Wait until the last day and/or last hour and then be ready for your high drama moment when you pull it out of your shorts and “make it happen.” You will get an opportunity to retell the miracle tale at the next unit meeting amid tears and flowers and recognition! Using your seminar training, be sure to omit the details of how this was achieved, just PRAISE your team to Success for being the AWESOME women that they are! They will figure it out eventually.

Class Over – You just saved more than $1,000 by staying home.

23 COMMENTS

  1. “Then to apply your training, apply for more credit cards and hold them until the end of a big goal like car, or Unit. Wait until the last day and/or last hour and then be ready for your high drama moment when you pull it out of your shorts and ‘make it happen.'”

    Well doesn’t that just sum it up. The consultants pay for everything in Mary Kay…including the “high drama!”

    Great article Raisinberry!

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  2. Also, stop by the dollar store and get yourself a tiara to wear while you read Pink Truth. Then you’ll have gotten the entire Seminar experience. You’re welcome. 👑

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  3. Remember to get an ill-fitting, gaudy prom dress from the clearance racks or thrift store. Wear it as you parade and wave across your living room in front of the videos of Seminar applause.

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    • Speaking of gaudy dresses… I recently sold a fully beaded gown on Poshmark. I wore this thing to Seminar over 15 years ago. The person who bought it told me it was “perfect for the drag show” he and a buddy were working on.

      I’m thrilled that someone is going to love it!

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  4. My mom once came back from seminar in literal tears because she was so upset by the whole experience. Her DIQ had sold her this amazing, inspiring, luxury business retreat/conference event. We saved for months to make it happen- we had a yard sale, my dad picked up overtime, my brother and I even put up a bake sale stand at the local park because she was so damn excited and convinced THIS would change her life; and we all love her endlessly and wanted this for her. She’s amazing, and we believed in HER.

    Fast forward to picking her up from the airport: she’s having a complete breakdown the second we get in the car because it was miserable. She was singled out as an example of ‘not wanting it enough,’ scolded for her accent (unprofessional), sent back to her hotel room when she showed up in the wrong f*ckin shoes and just made to feel awful the entire time. If I could drive to Dallas to personally sh*t on the hood of every Caddy in the parking lot at seminar, I would.

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    • That is horrible! It’s supposed to be a Go Give culture and praise people to success. Ha! They take the “Fake it til you Make it” concept to a whole new dysfunctional level. Women will get cosmetic and dangerous weight loss surgeries to fit in. Mary Kay Ash preached to get whatever you didn’t like about yourself “fixed.” She had so many facelifts her eyebrows were up to the middle of her forehead. Very sad.

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    • If someone dared to shame my immigrant mother about her accent, I’m serving them up some knuckle sandwiches. Whether it’s a foreign or regional accent, that is completely uncalled for.

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    • Wow. That’s the worst Seminar summary I’ve ever heard…let me know when/if you’re going to Dallas…I’ll bet half of PT will go meet you there…

  5. That same DIQ got Botox on the regular and told everyone that it was her MK skincare results! Her upper lip was so stiff and full of fillers that she could barely smile without looking like a deranged clown.

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  6. Anybody remember Nancy Teigen (?) she had so many lifts she couldn’t get her lips together anymore… The one who packed shotgun shells, and recruited 3 or so future nsd’s at a skin care class???

        • Yeah… between Nancy, Rena, and Cindy Williams, the amount of plastic surgery has been insane. If memory serves, a director (Robin something, I think) died following liposuction back in the late 90s/early 2000s. She lived in either Colorado or Utah…

          • Robyn Kaye Varley was the director who passed from cosmetic surgery. From what I recall, her passing helped ‘promote’ Tammy Crayk to NSD.

            • SW12, yes! Robyn Kaye Varlety was her name, and yes, Tammy absorbed a lot of Robyn’s unit and downline from what I remember.

              And what’s this about her husband marrying her NSD? Someone needs to spill the tea on that!

              • Suzanne Brothers, now retired, if I remember correctly. I don’t know if she changed her name or if they’re still married.

  7. Don’t forget! Applaud for three hours straight morning, noon and night until your palms are raw. That is the primary memory I have of Seminar 2000. Doesn’t applause start to lose meaning if the audience never stops?

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