Written by Frosty Rose

Well, folks, our dear friend Rachel Ryan is at it again. Every two years, car driving directors must requalify to pick up a brand new leased vehicle. We saw Rachel beg and cry her way into her last one in 2024, predicted that she’d be back, and, well, here she is!

It hasn’t gotten as messy as last time. Yet. But it will. As a refresher, this will be Rachel’s fourth pink trophy on wheels, so it really should be a piece of cake at this point. Of course, this is Mary Kay, so the truth under the thin layer of pink varnish is never that pretty. Requalifying is exactly the same as initial qualification—a six-month period during which you must hit minimum production (for the Caddy, it’s an average of $19,000 wholesale per month). Between requalification periods, once you earn the car, you generally keep it. But if you dip below minimum production requirements (calculated by the calendar quarter), you pay a copay or risk a very public, very humiliating repossession. (Here’s one such repo, although it was because of a different rule.)

So, how’s Rachel doing? The great thing about car qualifications is that directors generally tell you exactly where they are. And if you know how to do the math, it tells you exactly how much they haven’t done the past five months.

In an effort to kill two birds with one stone (finish car qualifications and offload unwanted product), Rachel is selling “grab bags.” And she only needs to sell 200 of these $100 grab bags to complete her Cadillac! Totally doable, right? Ha!

After her update that she’d sold 15 grab bags, the math works out to Rachel needing $9,250 in wholesale orders to wrap up her car in five days. That’s giving her the benefit of the doubt that she’s only going to reinvest half in inventory like she’s supposed to. She may need the whole $18,500 to finish qualifications, but, as always, let’s calculate with the math leaning in her favor.

This tells us that Rachel’s unit has ordered, on average, $17,458 wholesale per month from April-September. That includes June, which is, without exception, the highest production month for any director. So, she’s behind over $1,500 production per month to maintain her current car. That means she’s paying a copay of $185 per month for the privilege of advertising for Mary Kay every time she opens her garage.

The rest of the story is what this tells us about her income. As a reminder, directors get commissions several ways: a director commission of up to 23% on total unit wholesale, a recruiter commission of up to 13% on wholesale production from any unit members she personally recruited, and volume bonuses if she has several unit members join and place a qualifying inventory in a given month.

Rachel’s director commissions are easy to calculate, and so far from executive income it’s laughable. She’s averaging $4,015 per month before expenses. Let’s be very generous and say that 1/3 of that production is from personal recruits. That gives her an additional $756 for her recruiter commissions. If she maxes out recruiting bonuses with five new qualifying recruits, that means an additional $500 bonus. We’ll give her lots of credit and say she personally recruited all five and gets $500 on top of that as the recruiter. Surely all this must bring us to the vaunted executive income? Ha! Her total commissions max out at $5,771/month. Less than $70,000/year.

By the time she pays for her copay, her inflated Mary Kay sponsored car insurance, meeting rooms, travel, consultant prizes, training, seminar, office assistant, postage, website hosting, taxes, etc., etc., etc., she’s at an entry-level executive assistant salary. And she doesn’t even get benefits.

None of this makes it worth the beg-a-thon that we’re about to witness as she wraps up her car qualifications. As of Sunday night, she still had 120 more to go… making that $12,000 retail / $6,000 wholesale to still get done. Only 3 days left at that point! YIKES!

Again, and louder for those in the back, Mary Kay is not executive income for part time hours It’s not an opportunity to live a balanced life and support your family with extra earnings. According to their own disclaimer, approximately 1.5% of consultants reach director status, and a mere 10% of those qualify for “the iconic Pink Cadillac.”

Rachel is among the top 0.15% of Mary Kay distributors. And she’s publicly begging for barely a living wage. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take my J.O.B. with benefits any day of the week (and take a real weekend to hang out with my family after I clock out!).