Anyone Can Succeed in MK
A pro-Mary Kay woman attempted to post the following comment:
What does it matter how many people drive a pink Cadillac or how few people make alot of money? Most people in most businesses fail because of numerous reasons… Mainly they don’t work hard enough. As long as the guidelines are understood, which they are, then its up to the individual to make it happen, regardless of who makes what above them. Selling isn’t for just anyone and most people realize they don’t have what it takes and a few succeed. But if a few can succeed, doesn’t that mean anyone can?
Her conclusion is that “…if a few can succeed” then “anyone can.” This comment is typical of the delusional nature of Mary Kay. I suppose if “someone” broke the world record running 100 meters, then “anyone” can break a world record,” right? If “a few” people got a perfect score on the SAT, then “anyone” can, right?
Wrong. Not “anyone” can be in a pink Cadillac, and it’s simple math which makes this true. The MLM business model requires continual recruiting, and eventually those at the bottom of the pyramid have no one left to recruit.
The point I am making here when demonstrating how little money Cadillac drivers make, and how few of them there are, and how they’re at the TOP of Mary Kay yet still not making a lot… is to prove how impossible this business is for almost everyone.
14,000 Mary Kay sales directors in the United States are working their asses off every day, and most of them are barely making minimum wage. If you can slog through the process of DIQ (i.e. cheat to finish, as everyone does) and eventually make it to sales director, your chances are still slim of making even middle management wages.
No, “anyone” can’t be successful in Mary Kay. In fact, almost no one will even turn a profit. That is the truth behind MLM.
Visit the
In real businesses, it is at least possible for everyone involved to make positive money, from the owners to the management all the way down to the line employees. Everyone comes home with positive money. There are examples of this all around us.
MLMs like Mary Kay fall, by definition, into the category of pay-to-play endless-chain recruiting schemes. In these schemes, most participants must lose money for the system to function. The losses cannot be avoided, as they are part of the design, and are a mathematical certainty given how these systems function.
You could clone the highest performing Mary Kay participant, and fill a huge downline with her clones, and the loss rates of that downline would be the nearly the same as the the non-clone downlines. No amount of effort on the part of these clones can change the abysmal aggregate performance of these schemes. The loss rates are built right into the design. An honest look at the true aggregate P&L of any downline will show this to be true…every single time.
While it is possible for someone in a downline to make money, it is a mathematical certainty that every downline will lose money in the aggregate, regardless of effort, with nearly every individual participant losing money.
Get rid of pay-to-play or get rid of endless-chain recruiting, and the calculus changes. It is this combination that guarantees so much loss in every downline that incorporates both.