September 2026 Nsd Commissions
When we last updated you on Mary Kay national sales director commissions, things weren’t looking good. There are about 105 nsds left. (20 years ago there were a few hundred!!!) Mary Kay only publishes commission checks that exceed $10,000 for the month, and the numbers have gotten so bad. In July only 37 nsds made the cut, and in August only 33 made the cut.
Let’s see if September has gotten any better for the pyramid toppers! We’ve got a total of 52 national sales directors with commissions of $10k or above, broken out as follows:
- Sapphire 19
- Diamond 19 (and Jamie Taylor finally made it after sitting out a couple of months!)
- Emerald 14
The numbers are better for September and will likely keep going up as consultants are encouraged to place large orders for holiday products. But we’ve still got less than 50% of these “executives” making $10k per month (before business expenses).
I’d be sad for them, except scammers do not deserve our pity.
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These numbers reflect gross pay only and do not include taxes (state, local, and federal), expenses, or chargebacks. Since they are self-employed, their FICA taxes are doubled at over 15%. For the tippy-top NSD, Patrica Turker, that amount is over $8,700 for September.
The so-called executive income of most NSDs is laughable. While I’m not in an executive role, my income is considerably better than your average NSD. Plus, I have a pension, a retirement account, paid time off, paid sick time, paid travel (hotel, airfare, conference registrations, etc.), annual bonuses, and more. And no, I don’t have to share a hotel room with some stranger when I travel.
Let’s look at who made $20k or more. 11 of them. 11.
Given the fact that this is gross income before any business expenses, $240k in commissions still would not be the “executive” income they claim. Maybe 5 of the women are making executive income. IN THE ENTIRE COMPANY.
Beat the overwhelming odds to get to the top of the pyramid. And then only 5% of those pyramid toppers can truthfully say that they make executive income????
5 out of a few hundred thousand – don’t have the latest figures of IBCs, SDs, NSDs, etc. MK doesn’t publish that (wonder why?). Recruiting is down so the ~400,000 figure Tracy uncovered in 2009 is likely around 250-300,000 faces (blek how dehumanizing but that’s MK lingo for you) in MK. So that’s 0.001818182% making “executive income” before expenses, chargebacks, taxes using an average of 275,000 people from IBC to NSD. Again confirming 99.9% lose money in MLM. And showing even the tippy top of the pyramid take home very little.
$18,000, isn’t that the highest commission check Jamie has seen for a while? I wonder what changed, especially in light of MyShop and the new requirements. I wonder how much of that came out of Rachel, Kelly, Lindsay, and Chelsea’s pockets and how much product is moldering in their basements. Is this why Chelsea is mumbling about becoming a preacher, she’s now tapped out?
Rachel had to finish her Cadillac requalification in September so I think that had a lot to do with it.
Echoing Parson’s Green, Rachel’s Caddy had quite a lot to do with it. Add to that the other teamies stockpiling unneeded inventory to meet production and encouraging their downline to stretch, be a star, be a team player, stock up for the holidays, the usual order provokers. As we near Christmas ordering goes up and the same tired limited edition cello bag clad “goodies” from last year are rebranded, rebought and remain on the shelf to moulder away as nobody wants to buy them.
I wonder what doozies we’ll be treated to this year? Of course we’ll get the usual fuzzy socks, the googly-eyed shave cream and various combinations of hand cream but I wonder what new innovative limited edition product will be appearing in the Look Book this year?
“what new innovative limited edition product will be appearing in the Look Book this year?”
Snail mucin.
Hmm maybe. Let’s face it it’s been on the market for 10+ years so that’s keeping in MK’s product development timeline. It’s less of a trend now due to the crunchy cruelty free vegan clean cosmetic trend that’s exploded. So that’s another checkmark as MK is a trend follower a decade behind the times and is out of touch with current trends and market desires. So maybe you are onto something lol.
If you’re right I’ll send you a J-Lo pink ice carbuncle ring from Temu (sorry, quarterly star prize as MK calls Temu tat).
On recommendation from someone on the board, I got the Cetaphil cleanser, $15 for 16 oz. No snail snot in the ingredients.
16 oz of any of the Mary Kay stuff would be about $80.
I happen to still be on my friend’s PC mailing list. The fall holiday is some kind of K-Beauty skincare nonsense and a body cream soufflé with a ridiculous name ( which is already sold out) and the never ending leg and foot energizer with socks. Also more eye shadow sticks and eye brow kits and a men’s face scrub. The Mary Kay packaging gets uglier and cheap with each new launch. They can’t even manage to make a pretty perfume bottle anymore. Who even buys this stuff besides consultants?
Ah yes the (in)famous fuzzy socks and mint foot lotion. Eyeshadow sticks that don’t work (dry out, crumble, don’t twist up or down and are impossible to return to MK who cheaped out on the formula and packaging and caused the debacle in the first place) in four shades of colors nobody wears since 1980.
The packaging is indeed terrible and gets worse – more and more generic. If you pay $275 for skincare at least make it look like it’s not on clearance from the sample bin at Target. It’s got no edge or uniqueness that shouts what it is – the Timewise set could be tubes of mayo or ranch.
I’ve just checked out the packaging for the k-beauty stuff (y’know the thing that entered the US in 2009-2010). It’s so generic. It’s something from the Dollar Tree. There’s snail gel eye patches after all. I owe Parson’s Green a Temu ring now. That’ll be a great seller I’m sure now that the latest trend is clean and vegan beauty…
Regarding the eyeshadows and blushes damaged in shipping that appeared a few weeks ago, part of the blame is on Fedex and their poor shipping practices (MK changed from UPS to Fedex recently to save $$$) but most lies on MK. Changed formula to use even cheaper ingredients in the formulation, turned down the heat in the ovens for baking to save electricity and so it doesn’t bake properly and crumbles and shatters easily. And the problem is it can’t even be repaired as it’s pulverized to fragments. At least they don’t use waffle pans so there’s no shards of ceramic tile (they are baked on metal pans). And MK makes it impossible to return defective products from the consultomer back to MK by arbitrarily changing and applying policies at random.
Pro-tip, be careful with baked products that have shattered and are trying to repair if it uses a ceramic waffle pan. The ceramic waffle pan or bullseye the product sits on can fragment when dropped and you can get ceramic fragments in your eyes if used.
I used to use Laura Geller color cosmetics, which come in ceramic pans, and one time received one damaged. But that was from QVC, which actually has good customer service, except for the croissant incident. Plus LG’s products are good quality and last forEVer.
Of course I’m going to tell you about the croissant incident. My mother liked to (make me; she paid but was the queen of learned helplessness and claimed the automatic ordering system was too complicated for her) order food from them despite the cost and shipping being insane. One time she (made me) order a croissant assortment, but to be fair we’d ordered the croissants before and they were really good. This time, however, a major winter storm fouled up shipping over a good 2/3 of the country and the end result was that it took us over a week to get them and of course they were moldy lumps of defrosted dough. Maybe QVC shouldn’t ship out perishable food when the national weather map looks like Lisa Frank threw up on it?
So she (made me) call customer service. I explained the situation and asked for either a refund or replacement. The CSR was extremely snotty and said they didn’t take returns on food and what were they supposed to do, they can’t control the weather.
So I wrote an extremely polite email – when I get quiet and polite it scares the hell out of people – to their customer service department, and received a very conciliatory response and a promise that they were retraining their customer support staff, got my mother’s money back, and 20% off her next order.
Haven’t watched QVC since she died. I think it’s PTSD 😀
Absolutely!!!
Good lordt, mail order croissants by TV? What a world we live in lol. Which reminds me, it’s grocery day tomorrow. If I get there early enough there’ll be fresh croissants, I’ll have one in your honor for the QVC ones that didn’t make it lol
I feel like most if not all the NSDs on the list are married. No one ever talks about that being a factor in their “success”.
Of course you can “rise the ranks” and spend whatever is needed to get to the next level when you have a spouse/partner to help take care of your real bills. I highly doubt a single woman could take care all of her regular needs and make this biz model work for her to get to the NSD level.