The “Little Extra Money” Lie
It’s a perpetual lie in Mary Kay (and other MLMs): You can earn a little extra money.
During the recruiting phase, it’s all about the dream. They talk about the big money. The six-figure incomes. The women who “retired their husbands.” The pink Cadillac that supposedly symbolizes financial freedom. The goal is to dazzle, and they do it well. Big checks. Big trips. Big stories. That’s the bait.
But once you’re in? Things start to shift.
Suddenly, that magical income seems out of reach. The orders don’t roll in. Classes get canceled. Friends politely decline. You see the cracks forming, not just in your own experience, but in everyone else’s too. Your sales director… who seemed so successful… is quietly doing her own deliveries, hinting that money is tight, and pushing you to place “just a little order” to help the unit meet production.
Wait a minute. Wasn’t she the one bragging about her “highest check ever”?
Here’s where the script flips. When it becomes clear that hardly anyone is making real money, the narrative softens. Oh, sweetie, most women aren’t doing this for the money anyway.
Enter: the little extra money excuse.
Now it’s not about replacing your income. Now it’s about covering your daughter’s dance class or paying for a tank of gas. Suddenly, no one was ever really in it to make a profit. It’s all about the fun. The friendships. The community. The lipstick. The “me time.”
It’s a masterful sleight of hand. This carefully engineered messaging, polished over more than 60 years, conveniently reframes failure as choice. When you’re not earning? It’s because you didn’t want to. And if you did want to, well, then maybe you just didn’t work hard enough.
The truth is, this isn’t a hobby for most consultants. It’s a business they were told could change their lives. They were promised flexibility, freedom, and yes, financial gain. So don’t fall for the claim that no one wanted to make money in the first place. It’s not true. It’s just another excuse to keep you from asking the real question:
Why is almost everyone losing money in MLM?
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And what they don’t tell you is most MLM participants must lose money. This is how MLMs work. The money for upline profits comes directly from downline losses. This is unavoidable, as this is built into all pay-to-play endless-chain recruiting systems.
As a research exercise, try to find and identify just one downline in any MLM that is profitable as a whole…meaning in the aggregate, the downline sales force (including all current and former members) has made more than it spends.
It is very, very unlikely you will ever find one. The only possible chance is if you can find an MLM that is not “pay-to-play”. I have yet to encounter such an MLM.
Note: Frontloading is a specific variant of “pay-to-play”. “Qualifying minimums” are another variant. Annual fees to “stay active” are yet another. Starter kits? Same. Each of these creates cash-flow from the bottom to the top without the need for outside purchases.
The money that sustains these systems comes primarily from the sales force, with little or no dependency on purchases made by outside customers.