Stop Blaming the Company
I was reading some of these stories and all I could think was, “Where was your common sense?” Nobody from Mary Kay held a gun to your head and made you order inventory. Nobody made you charge something on your credit card. Those were your decisions.
You keep saying you were manipulated, but at some point adults have to take responsibility for themselves. If someone told me to buy more than I could afford, I’d say no. It’s really that simple.
I don’t know why everyone acts like consultants have no free will. You can order what you want. You can work as much or as little as you want. If you decide to chase every prize and every promotion, that’s on you, not the company.
Seems to me like it’s easier to blame Mary Kay than admit maybe you made some bad choices.
Visit the
I was reading some of these stories and all I could think was, “Where was your common sense?”
Where was the “common sense” of the up-line who was recruiting this hypothetical woman? OH yes! Trying to wring out as much money as possible from her latest victim before she came to her senses.
Nobody from Mary Kay held a gun to your head and made you order inventory. Nobody made you charge something on your credit card. Those were your decisions.
They why do many sales directors demand that they create the initial order, the biggest one that a consultomer will ever place? Is it because the SD knows better or is it to get the best possible financial reward for the SD?
You keep saying you were manipulated, but at some point adults have to take responsibility for themselves. If someone told me to buy more than I could afford, I’d say no. It’s really that simple.
Again, there are far too many women who learned at the pink pump clad heel of Mary Kay Wagner Rogers Eckman Weaver Miller Hallenbeck Ash and her later followers. There are reams of scripts that are used to lure the unwary into the coils of the serpent. These people have ways of changing your “No” to their “Yes”.
I don’t know why everyone acts like consultants have no free will. You can order what you want.
As long as you order at least $225 wholesale every quarter, remember? You need that in order to keep your 50% “discount”. So that’s not ordering “what you want”.
You can work as much or as little as you want. If you decide to chase every prize and every promotion , that’s on you, not the company.
But if (general) you don’t chase “every prize and every promotion”, then the rest of your team deem you to be lessor, unworthy, not a team-player. How dare (general) you not push for Sally Sales-Director to “win her pink Caddy”???
Seems to me like it’s easier to blame Mary Kay than admit maybe you made some bad choices.
Except the women who write so candidly here have admitted that they not only made bad choices for themselves but also cajoled other women into making the same bad choices. Something I don’t feel you, Ms. PTC are capable of understanding, yet.
Here’s a look at the differences in commissions earned in 2024 and 2025 based on Mary Kay Wagner Rogers Eckman Weaver Miller Hallenbeck Ash’s company Income Disclosures for Canada. Ask yourself why MKI only releases these where it is federally mandated to.
https://www.pinktruth.com/2026/03/02/pathetic-income-for-sales-directors-in-2025/
“Seems to me like it’s easier to blame Mary Kay than admit maybe you made some bad choices.”
I do choose to blame Mary Kay, and I never participated in any MLM. PTC, you are blaming the victim for falling for a scam. I am blaming the perpetrator of the scam for exploiting the participants.
People of all walks of life can become vulnerable to the tactics of con-men. The panacea for the con-man is willing participants who think they got a good deal even after losing their resources. Such folks can be counted on to give even more resources in the future. And trust me, the con-men know who to invest their time and energy in, and who to put aside. They even use clever scripts to quickly separate the savvy from the vulnerable so they don’t waste their precious time.
Sound familiar? Once a downline MLM participant can no longer contribute resources to the upline, they are marginalized. When you shed light on the underlying scam, the participants get downright hostile. I know…I’ve been there. These weekly PTC posts also show this to be true.
Where does the company’s responsibility come in, though? Do you think the company has ZERO responsibility for lying to people? Or from withholding the truth about how many consultants are in your area?
For example, things I heard from a recruiter: executive income on part-time hours. And they gave some exaggerated hourly earnings statement like $56/hour. You have the products women want. The products really do sell themselves. The reality is there are already LOTS of MK Consultants in my area, many selling at a 50% discount and those earnings claims or no where near reality. No matter how hard I tried to find new customers.
“free training?” But you have to pay a “room fee” for weekly meetings, you have to pay for Career conference, Seminar, Fall retreat, etc. Training materials: books,CDs, flyers were available- for a FEE.
“No quotas”- but there is quota to get your 50% discount, a quota before you’re terminated as a consultant, a quota to maintain directorship, a quota to avoid paying your car.
“If someone told me to buy more than I could afford, I’d say no. It’s really that simple.”
It’s not the fact women are buying more they can “afford”. It’s the fact women are presented this as a way of MAKING MONEY and the claims have no basis in reality. Women are told they’re gaining a career, but what they get is a money pit and constant pressure to order more products. The problem is 99% of MK participants lose money. How many people would place an Initial order if they knew they had a 99% chance of losing money.
I’ll stop complaining about Mary Kay when EVERY recruiter gives a real income disclosure to everyone they try to recruit.