Mary Kay pretends to care about earnings claims made by consultants and directors. (See what they had to say about earnings claims on social media here.) They have to care, because if they don’t, the company can be subject to action by the Federal Trade Commission.

But I would suggest that they don’t do enough to crack down on the earnings claims. They are all over social media. It’s easy to find posts bragging about how much money is made, how much you’re going to make, the free car you can get, and how you can sell a bunch and make a bunch of money.

When I was recruited into Mary Kay in 1999, I was sold a bill of goods like the below Kitchen Table Party Math sheet. They showed me that if I was “willing” to hold ____ parties per week, I would have this much in party sales. Then I’d have a certain amount of reorders and my sales of products would keep growing and growing.

It was all fiction because the numbers were based on a perfect little Mary Kay world that doesn’t exist. You are supposed to assume that you could consistently book a certain number of parties, that all of those parties will actually hold, that enough women will attend, and that they will buy enough products to hit the projected sales figure. Then those customers are supposed to reorder regularly, giving you an ever-growing base of repeat business.

The math makes it look easy, doesn’t it? They tell you that you can sell an average of $250 per party. If you do that and hold 3 parties a week, keeping half of everything you sell, then Mary Kay looks lucrative on paper. This is without even recruiting anyone!

But what happens when half of the parties cancel? What happens when three women show up instead of eight? What happens when they each buy one lipstick? What happens when the hostess doesn’t have any outside orders? What happens when your customers don’t reorder on the schedule Mary Kay says they will? How do you even find the women who are willing to book a party to begin with????

And then there’s the famous “50% profit.” Consultants have been repeating that one forever. Buy for $1, sell for $2, and you’ve made a 50% profit. Except you haven’t made that profit because you still have expenses. Samples, hostess gifts, discounts, freebies, credit card fees, shipping, mileage, meeting costs, website fees, expired products, discontinued products, unsold inventory, and all the other little costs of doing business have to come out of that supposed profit.

The recruiting pitch doesn’t spend much time on those details because the details ruin the fantasy. Instead, the prospect is often encouraged to participate in creating the earnings claim herself. How many parties would you be willing to hold? Two? Great! Let’s plug that into the worksheet. Look how much you could make!

See what happened there? The recruiter didn’t necessarily say, “I guarantee you will earn $X per month.” She simply supplied all the assumptions, walked the recruit through the arithmetic, and let the recruit arrive at the exciting number herself.

That’s still an earnings representation. The entire purpose of the exercise is to show a woman how much money she supposedly could make with Mary Kay.

Not a lot has changed since I was recruited into Mary Kay in 1999. Back then, the fantasy might have been presented on a photocopied worksheet at someone’s kitchen table. Today it can be an Instagram reel, a Facebook post, a TikTok video, or a director posing next to a car and talking about the incredible life Mary Kay has provided for her.

The underlying message hasn’t changed at all. It’s still all about the lies regarding how much money you can make, the freedom you can have, and the success that others have with MK. But it’s all a farce. The results of millions of consultants don’t come anywhere close to the projections, and of course the blame is put on them. You didn’t book enough. You didn’t hold enough appointments. You didn’t follow up enough. You weren’t consistent enough. You didn’t work your business.

Funny how the numbers are perfectly predictable when they’re recruiting you, but completely your fault when they don’t materialize.

If Mary Kay really wants to get serious about earnings claims, it shouldn’t just police a few overly enthusiastic social media posts. It should look at the entire culture of recruiting that teaches women to sell the opportunity with hypothetical income, aspirational lifestyles, cars, prizes, and carefully constructed math.

Because whether the earnings claim is typed into a Facebook post or scribbled onto a worksheet at a kitchen table, the purpose is exactly the same. It’s there to make the opportunity look a whole lot better than it really is. Oh wait… Mary Kay doesn’t stop this because the company benefits from it every single time.