At Whose Expense?
Written by Fiona
In Mary Kay we are told to take short term sacrifices for long term gains. But at whose expense? We are told to be women who find a way and make a way. But at whose expense? We are told to share this “opportunity” with everyone, never prejudge. But at whose expense?
We are crafted into believing that we really do want to be directors, that we LOVE that pink caddy, and our lifetime goal and dream is to become that all-glorified NSD. But at whose expense? We are told we are in business for ourselves but not by ourselves. Someone will be there for us every step of the way. But at whose expense? That we can’t sell from an empty wagon. That the product sells itself. We need to stock up on certain products. But at whose expense?
We hear all those beautiful and heartfelt stories of NSDs writing a single check to pay for their children’s college educations. But at whose expense? How the NSD gave her own mother the fairy tale vacation and dream home of her choice. That this is really the “golden” opportunity. But at whose expense?
So I ask again, “At whose expense?”
How about the expense of the marriages strained or torn apart because of the extra financial stress of paying off the ever increasing MK debt? The mothers who are missing so much of their children’s lives because they are making “short term sacrifices for long term gains.” The guilt associated with not making those phone calls or warm chattering that really sharp lady in the store. The guilt of not getting that recruit and letting your director or DIQ down. She was COUNTING on you!
Ever questioning yourself because it’s just not happening for you, but there’s success everywhere around you. You ask what’s wrong with you. Did you say the wrong thing? Are you not “sharp” enough? Slowly your self-esteem drops while you put on this facade of MK perfection. “It’s all in the numbers. It’s a numbers game,” you are told. But you wonder just how many numbers (ie. women) you will really have to go through and how much time you will really have to put into this to make it work.
As you slowly climb up the ladder of “success”, you feel more like a failure every step of the way. You are losing yourself, the real you, and rattle of script after script without really listening. You don’t think, you have memorized all the scripts. You leave a trail of heart-broken, messed up women in your wake who have thousands of dollars of products sitting there, without a penny going to help their families, just like you. Yet you fail to see the truth, yet.
Then the dawn comes. As your dusty discontinued products grow with an alarming speed, you look at your credit card statement with a sinking heart. You realize that you cannot keep up without putting even more of a financial strain on your family. You think back on all your team members and their situations. You are guilt ridden for getting them into the same mess you have gotten yourself into.
Suddenly, you discover answers to questions you were too afraid to ask, things make sense with MK that never seemed right, things that seemed too good to be true. The blinders are coming off. You realize what the MK opportunity has truly cost, and if you don’t get out now, you will lose everything you hold dear and take more women with you.
So I ask one more time, “But at whose expense?”
Visit the
“But at whose expense?” The sales force.
In a traditional retail company, the outside consumer parts with their money to gain a product of similar value. Both parties are happy.
In MLMs like Mary Kay, the sales force provides the majority of corporate revenue out of their own pockets by purchasing way more product than they can ever hope to sell or use personally. The perceived “value” is not in the product purchased but rather in an elusive “oportunity” to make much more money than is spent. For all but a teeny tiny fraction of participants, this never materializes, and in fact cannot materialize.
“You ask what’s wrong with you. Did you say the wrong thing? Are you not “sharp” enough? Slowly your self-esteem drops while you put on this facade of MK perfection.”
One of the big lies in MK is that at some point, you’ll reach the pinnacle, and you’ll finally feel like “enough.” Not true! The system is designed to leave you craving more, more, more. Never content, always striving, always looking around at other women who, on the surface at least, have more of what you want. “She doesn’t have anything that I can’t get fixed.” So you keep trying to fix yourself. And you never measure up. Because what you’re looking at is a facade, a “fake it till you make it” image. And not even she measures up.
When I was a new consultant, I was adopted into a Cadillac director’s unit because I wasn’t local to my own director. She had. it. all. She was young, had a perfect husband and two perfect kids, was living the dream with a balanced life with them, and making bank. At least that was what she would have us all believe… She told a story at a small meeting about the first time she got to attend a Cadillac event. She had a complete panic attack and threw up in the bathroom because she didn’t feel worthy to be in that room. She’s now a national, still pretending she has it all together. I wonder sometimes how many more panic attacks she’s had, hidden away, secretly doubting herself. Just like all of us did in MK. BECAUSE IT’S RIGGED!