My Sister-in-Law’s Success Proves You Wrong
A fantastic email received from a critic:
I’m sure you’ll never publish this on your site because it doesn’t fit in with the negative image you want to give of Mary Kay. But you need to hear this because it proves how wrong you all are about Mary Kay.
My sister-in-law started her business six years ago. At first, she was only making a little extra money here and there, but she stuck with it. Last month she sold over $1,200 worth of product! She even got recognized at her weekly meeting for being a top seller.
Yes, she did have to order some products to make sure she had enough on hand for her customers when she was having a bunch of parties, but that’s just smart business. You can’t sell what you don’t stock! You all don’t understand business. You have to invest and you might not profit right away, but you will if you stick to it. She’s building something real, while you all sit here criticizing from the sidelines.
I’m so proud of her for not listening to people like you who gave up before the magic happened. Some of us believe in supporting women instead of tearing them down.
Visit the
Just came here to say that maximum profit on $1,200 in sales IF you sell it at full price AND don’t get sucked into unnecessary ordering is $480. For a month. With “a bunch of parties.”
Yep, sounds like success to me!
How did someone thumbs down this? It’s literally facts. I mean, thumbs down is def the proper reaction but if some lurker is disagreeing, you’re in denial.
We have tagged them the Ridiculous Downvoter. And when they strike, we laugh at their delusion and celebrate the increase engagement that pushes us up the search results.
Work In Progress scored 2, winning the day!
Right, getting downvoted means you’re ticking off the right people.
I know you are practicing MK math 😉 but subtract gas, car exp, supplies, phone, etc. then divide by hours you put in that week to see you are making less than the McD kid 🙂 Yep, I was smart enough not to give up my McD job when I joined MK. I was even professional and knew makeup application and colors. Circa 80’s.
Six years of effort and she was recognized for being a top monthly seller. It sounds as if you are both very proud. If this is a part time job congratulations on bringing in enough extra money to buy groceries this month or even pay for these extremely high summer utility bills. If this is her full time job, she has my sympathy.
The most time consuming part time job. The most underpaid full time job. Sucks either way.
Sold $1200.. without tax? at best with no tax or discounts or gas or cotton balls she pocketed $600. But we never pocket $600. She used a set sheet that had a heavy discount to get people on the product then live off reorders. Then the tax kills us. $215 repair set is $235. We pocket $107. So I agree with Frosty that it’s more like $480, but that’s still generous. What a kind sister in law you are. Very loyal to stick up for her. But her profit off those sales won’t pay the bills. The mental strain to plan all of those parties and coach them so people actually came wasn’t worth the money made. There’s so much that goes into this. 50% sounds like a lot until you make that order on intouch and watch that money fly away. That 1200 included tax. So it’s more likely $1,100 wholesale because she doesn’t make half her taxes. That’s $550 profit with no other expenses or discounts. But she did bundle the products at a discount. Likely $99, 199, 299, and 399. $99 saves them $20ish and cost her $10ish. $399 saves them $100ish and cost her $50ish. Whatever she has to do to get the product on the face. Then 3 months from now she might have a reorder if she remembers to follow up.
OP, it sounds like she had a good month. The real test for business profitability is in the aggregate. Add up ALL the revenue and commissions for these six years, then subtract all the money she has spent on her business (inventory orders, samples, sales materials, postage, gas). Odds are that this cumulative tally is negative…meaning a cumulative business loss.
Sadly, MK reps are taught to conflate revenue with profit. She may have had $1200 in sales revenue last month, meanwhile her cumulative costs most likely exceeded that revenue, meaning she is not really making any money at all. Rather, her little business is more likely losing money just like 99.6% of her fellow MLMers.
Don’t be fooled by the misuse of business terms in MK. Your sister did not “make” $1200 last month. That was revenue. She near certainly hasn’t yet made a single penny of true business profit.
Exactly right! What does your sister’s last 5-6 years of schedule C’s look like???????
I’m sure you’ll never publish this on your site because it doesn’t fit in with the negative image you want to give of Mary Kay. But you need to hear this because it proves how wrong you all are about Mary Kay.
Here is the start of Victim Blaming 101. I suppose we should be grateful this one didn’t claim to stumble onto the site!
My sister-in-law started her business six years ago.
She’s part of your downline isn’t she?
At first, she was only making a little extra money here and there, but she stuck with it. Last month she sold over $1,200 worth of product! She even got recognized at her weekly meeting for being a top seller.
Yes, yes she is. You wouldn’t know that otherwise.
Yes, she did have to order some products to make sure she had enough on hand for her customers when she was having a bunch of parties, but that’s just smart business.
We live in an age of Amazon/Door Dash/UberEATS, we are used to waiting for our purchases.
You can’t sell what you don’t stock!
MLM-speak.
You all don’t understand business.
More MLM-speak.
You have to invest and you might not profit right away, but you will if you stick to it.
Justification for front-loading.
She’s building something real, while you all sit here criticizing from the sidelines.
That’s just the good old Mary Kay Wagner Rogers Eckman Weaver Louis Miller Hallenbeck Ash’s Polished Pink Flavor Aid Speak.
I’m so proud of her for not listening to people like you who gave up before the magic happened.
I’m so proud that I have indoctrinated her into being a member of my Mary Kay’s Girlie-Pop teamies. On one dippy-day, my Nashy-Nat will beam approvingly on us.
Some of us believe in supporting women instead of tearing them down.
I also believe in supporting women, which is why I choose to share this link. Will you?
https://imgur.com/a/mary-kay-canadian-income-disclosure-2024-hPNN90o
Shame it’s so easy to see that this woman has convinced her SIL to join under her and doesn’t realise just how quickly we saw through her vain attempts to hide the fact that she is her SIL’s upline.
WoW! I didn’t see that coming!!! Thanks for the insight. That’s low! It’s one thing to con people, but another to con your own relative, let alone your own sis!!!! You go to Hell for sure on that one!!!!
“You can’t sell what you don’t stock!”
Sure you can. Print on demand outfits like 4Imprint have made huge businesses out of exactly that. Ditto photo printing sites like Snapfish. Anyone who does custom work, whether it’s a crafter on Etsy (which, by the way, does celebrate REAL women and minority-owned small businesses) or bespoke dressmakers who make $50,000 gowns or software developers who create proprietary software, is selling what they don’t stock..
Ok, you can argue that 4Imprint has to have blank water bottles and pens before they can print them (which is why there’s a lead time for large orders, so they can order when they need to without have excess blanks cluttering up the warehouse) and the dressmaker has to have the fabric (which they’d purchase after fitting the customer and making a pattern, so as not to buy too much they can’t use).
And yet, business is booming for 4Imprint and the dressmakers have as much business as they can handle, despite the lead times and endless fittings while waiting for the sequins to arrive on a literal slow boat from China. Meanwhile, online shopping is slowly but surely killing off brick and mortar shopping… BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO WAIT FOR WHAT THEY WANT WHEN THE RESULT IS WORTH IT!!!
Is waiting a little longer for your MK product worth it? To a loyal customer, yes. Is keeping an inventory worth it to the consultant? Hell no, because sooner or later someone’s going to want something you don’t have (so you have to order it anyway and get screwed by the shipping), and you’ll never sell all of what you’ve got (so it expires and you have to throw it away, and there’s that money down the toilet).
But MK’s consultomers are encouraged to think like little girls playing Store and not like grown women making smart business decisions, and then their sisters in law write in on Fridays to kvetch…
$1,200 in sales may sound like a lot to someone who doesn’t really know how Mary Kay works. What she doesn’t tell us is how many hours did her sister-in-law spend doing “a bunch of parties”, how much money was spent on gas driving to the parties? What were the consultant’s costs for hostess gifts? Did she sell her products at full retail or discount bundles? Was she able to book additional parties from the ones she held? If not her $1,200 month is a one and done and she’ll be lucky if she sells a few hundred in reorders.
Maybe the poster will come back in a few months and update us on her sister-in-law’s “success”.
How much driving did she do? How long did it take to hold this bunch of parties? Did she have to lug all her bags up flights of stairs at an apartment? Did she have a dog pee on her bags once she got to said apartment? Did she have to go into bad neighborhoods all by herself? Did she have to deal with drunk people in the homes she went into? After 20+ years in the top 1%, even if I sold a TON, it’s not worth all the crap that had to go along with it. Nope…..
In MK, $1200 in monthly sales is $500 gross at best. That isn’t as much as you and your sister-in-law think it is. Factor in all of the prep time, driving time, phone calls, supplies, and samples (if she’s lucky to have them), and she will have made less than minimum wage. She would have been better off working part-time at Starbucks or Home Depot.
https://www.pinktruth.com/2007/09/02/mary-kay-math-gets-a-reality-check/
Mary Kay Math Gets a Reality Check …. that $1200 in sales is definitely NOT $1200 in spendable cash.
Excellent article and totally truthful! Now write a part two…the hours spent when she sells zero, or next to zero, at a party, gets rejected, seminar experience, etc. Part three: Boopsie goes DIQ : charge backs, going in the hole, losing car, husband, etc. Then goes bankrupt like in the Monopoly game.
By the way, LW, she had one good* month. How’d she do during the other 71 months out of those six years? How much recognition did she get at her meetings those months? What happend the next month when she didn’t do so well?
*which, as those in the know are pointing out, wasn’t really even that great of a month.
This is an IBC or SD. There is no sister-in-law.
I thought the same thing. Too familiar with everything to be an outsider.
You told us how much she had in sales for one month. $ 1200 at best means $ 600 in gross profit (assuming no discounts), and that’s before any overhead expenses. If that was a good month, I’d love to know what the not so good months were like. But if your sister-in-law has been doing this for six years, what was her net PROFIT (not sales) for all of 2024? What did she put on her Schedule C for her tax return? That is what matters here. You can tell us, nobody knows who you are or she is. I’ve asked this question of the pro-Mary Kay camp so many times but never get an answer.
“You all don’t understand business.”
Sweetie, one has to actually be in business to understand it, and your sister in law is NOT. She’s an independent contract representative for a multilevel marketing company. The two are not the same.
O N E $1200 M O N T H? After SIX years? That is nothing to brag about sister :0. Now subtract ALL expenses, honestly, and divide the left over by how many hours you worked (ordering product, attending meetings, travel, prep, phone calls, etc.) and see if the kid behind the McD counter isn’t making more. PS Reading with comprehension is a good thing. No one said you couldn’t hold a party and sell. What we are saying is it won’t happen consistently to make a living income consistently every month for the 99% who are not stupid the tippy top. When Y O U go join and try to sell, then you can have an opinion. Until then, move alone, you have no clue. Obviously, neither does your sister. If you were a real sister, you would protect her and really research with an objective mind. There are several ladies here, who were Caddilac directors, who walked away. Can they all be wrong? Hmmmmm? They bear a second look and read. If you want to investigate and find the truth for yourself. Did your sis have to sell anything at a discount? Were theses warm marker or pity purchases? Was $1200 really sold at one party? pss. A director will recognize or award ANYTHING. They hand out $1 store prize or ribbon is all. Ever been to a meeting? See it for yourself. I can see you joining 😉 Good luck, it’s a jungle out there!