Anyone in Mary Kay Can Get a Pink Cadillac
According to Mary Kay sales director Emily Schuette, anyone could get a pink Cadillac if they were willing to do the work. She says: “Only 1% of consultants earn it, and that’s not because 99% can’t. It’s because it takes “heart work” — consistency when no one’s cheering…”
Isn’t that interesting? If you’re not in a Mary Kay car, you must not want it enough and must not be willing to do the work.
But is that really true? Of course not. The reason more women aren’t in MK cars is because MLM is an impossible system. It guarantees failure for almost everyone. Take a look at the career car stats that Mary Kay publishes:
Key statistics:
- 1% of consultants drive a MK car, and there are 3,600 cars on the road now
- 1.5% of consultants make it to director (it used to be 2%)
- 10% of directors get a Cadillac
Mary Kay stopped publishing the number of consultants in the U.S. years ago, because the dwindling numbers made them look bad. In 2006, the company had 700,000 consultants in the U.S. Based on the numbers disclosed above, they’re only at about 360,000 in 2025 and continuing to drop.
That’s a great statistic, but equally as interesting is the fact that the disclosed numbers show that about 1/3 of directors NEVER GET INTO A CAR. Can you imagine? Something Emily says is so easy if you’re just willing to put in the work. Presumably, if you get to the level of sales director, you’re willing to do a bunch of work. Yet not enough to go a little further and qualify for the car?
Of course not! It’s not because they’re not willing to work hard enough. It’s because the MLM system is rigged against them in a way that guarantees failure.
But if we went with Emily’s theory about women not being willing to put in the work…. Apparently Emily is lazy too. 21 years in MK and still not a national sales director. I guess she doesn’t have the consistency, discipline, or courage.
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And how many women in your unit, who spent spent spent and recruited like the Vietnam War draft to put your butt in that car, will get to drive it?
It’s just another example of how your sacrifice in MLM only benefits your upline. As much self-congradulatory alliterative spin as she tries to put on it, the only reason she has what she has is because she’s milking her cash cows for all they’re worth.
Imagine a real job, in which your sales manager pretends that if you sell more, the trip she gets to go on as an incentive “belongs to all of us.”
“If Stachia wouldn’t have hosted a party for new consultant Deb, this never would have happened.”
She was that close to not qualifying, and probably still threw some of her own money in. Oh to see the long term business ledger of these Cadillac drivers!
I know Emily personally. She really is a nice person and means the best for those she leads. She is smart and she works hard, consistently holding 3+ parties a week.
For the life of me, though, I can’t figure out how she does it. I did everything she does, and it didn’t work for me. For 20+ years! I promise. I DID EVERYTHING! The only thing I can think of is that those who live in small towns or seem to do better than those that live in a metropolis.
I think that small towns and specifically the mid-west has an easier time of getting people involved in facials/ parties and recruiting because those people have fewer things to do available to them. In a large city, there are so many more interesting things to keep you busy. I’d be interested to know if the largest percentage of consultants come from small, rural areas vs larger cities.
MK doesn’t ever talk about that and even when I’ve asked NSDs about that statistic, they look at me like I have 3 heads.