When Will Naomi Give Up?
Written by Parsons Green
Naomi State is a Mary Kay Director who is trying to earn back her Cadillac. However, she’s having trouble getting leads to book and hold appointments from vendor events.
100 booked. 3 held.
20 slips filled out. No bookings.
20 people solicited in an office. 5 bookings.
Naomi isn’t paid for her time driving to and from events. Shes not paid for her free samples or her wooden roses. No pay for driving from office to office. Why would you as a consultant think this was ever going to make you any money?
Naomi’s been having struggles for YEARS!
In 2020, she said that booking is a waste of time because of the poor results.
Year end 2023, Naomi’s husband suggested marketing to the clown market. (Yes, he was serious.)
She needed help with fishbowls.
In September 2020, she needed advice on increasing unit production. The more her unit produces, the less she has to order herself.
She wanted to do a $5000 day on Labor Day. Taking away from family time to sell this product. So much for God First, Family second!
She tried to help her 70 year old find customers. I wonder what her first inventory order was.
Five years ago, she admitted she doesn’t like to making booking attempts because they are unsuccessful.
Desperately trying to get her team excited about being a red jacket.
Having trouble getting parties with more than two guests.
In 2018, a potential consultant asked for more info about Mary Kay, and business owner Naomi didn’t know what to tell her.
Naomi stated three common objections. If this product is the #1 Best Selling Direct Sales Makeup and Skin Care why is she having any objections.
Naomi spent an hour on the phone trying to sign up a consultant who just had a passport. Again, Naomi is not paid for this time.
And finally in 2017, Naomi had a consultant who was wanted to get into DIQ. She asked for advice on how she could quickly recruit new consultants. Wouldn’t Naomi know how? (But also… if the consultant can’t even get the 8 needed to start DIQ, how does she think she’s going to finish?)
Naomi has earned ten career cars in Mary Kay. She qualified for her last car in March. She posted several updates on her progress. How many people have her hidden because they’re tired of the begging?
Naomi has been on this ferris wheel of nonsense for at least seven years. When will she realize her efforts are futile? She isn’t the problem. It’s the flopportunity Mary Kay promises but doesn’t provide. They’ve got their inventory order. Good luck selling it.
Visit the
You have to give her husband some credit on the clown suggestion. He is thinking in marketing terms. He sees there is no demand for these products in his wife’s circle, so he’s offering up ideas where he sees possible demand.
She didn’t mention whether he discussed the broader concept of supply and demand with her. My guess is he did, but she did not catch what he was throwing. MLMs incentify oversupply, which puts downward price pressure on an already grossly overpriced product. The oversupply is so great in Mary Kay that even recipients of free product are likely to throw it away. Not to mention the sheer volume of product donated or pitched by consultants and xSDs.
The real demand for MK products comes not from outside customers, but from folks in the sales force who can’t possibly use or sell all the product they order, but who keep ordering to achieve some goal which is completerly unrelated to selling the product.
It makes me think of an episode of Night Court where Mack’s wife gets sucked into a MK ripoff and buys a ton of inventory, but gets sick before the party so Mack has to try to sell it and it’s a disaster. He saves the day when a group of drag performers buy it all up because their own makeup got confiscated.
I actually had several customers who were drag performers, and those men would buy buckets of foundation, concealer, and lipstick from me. I often gave them freebies of limited edition items (which they loved) since they would buy loads (like $500 orders every few months). My senior director thought it was weird that I sold products to drag queens…. “Is that really within the Mary Kay way?” I told her to stuff it because I loved these men.
Surprised your director didn’t try to recruit them out from under you!
When one of the men wanted to sign up as a consultant, I thought she might have a stroke. (This was the mid-1990s.) She was not exactly for it because of the “Mary Kay image” and “how would this look to have a drag performer on your team?” I saw nothing wrong with it since the gent was one of THE nicest people I had ever met. He wanted to sign up for the discounts for himself and his friends.
But I thought you were supposed to offer the flopportunity to everyone with skin!
Honestly, I’m not surprised she was like that; it doesn’t sound like the kind of company that goes in for openmindedmess. I saw that in retail (late 90s-late 00s) when men would be looking to buy dresses or lingerie for themselves and some salespeople would get all prickly about it. For me, a sale was a sale and I didn’t care who was going to wear/use the merch once it was bought. And tons of makeup artists, hairstylists, and fashion designers are men anyway.
How embarrassing! People that know her must run the other way when she comes around. She can’t see that nobody wants her overpriced crap or her expensive, dead end “opportunity”.
Oh, Naomi, the handwriting is on the wall, and it’s the Great Wall of China. You have to know that you’ll never make any progress and that the “surefire” ways of making money are anything but.
It’s too late to get back the years and zillions of dollars you’ve already spent, but you can return what you have and stop the financial bleeding. And people won’t run away from you anymore.
“Who can shares tops and inspiration.” Interesting.
But at least she has a supportive, non-negative, non-toxic hubby backing her.
I think by now, most people know it isn’t “spa treatments”.
I can’t even imagine what her personal inventory stash must look like.
She’s telling us something without saying it out loud. She has “earned” a car and yet struggles to book and hold classes. If she struggles to book and hold classes, she isn’t making sales and thus not recruiting and front loading wholesale orders for car production. So, how is she earning the car? What she isn’t saying out loud is that she is ordering product she doesn’t need.
Lots of Pearl Star orders being placed this month. Must be MK’s biggest revenue month of the year.
All those consultants BUYING inventory to “earn” a car, trip or diamond ring.
Ugh. Probably undiagnosed mental illness or neurodivergence. We always think it’s something “wrong” with us – not that the entire system is toxic. We blame ourselves and keep trying. Quitters never win, and winners never quit!
Until somehow we open Pandora’s box…