yay!  the html worked!

Hi Pinkcaddy,

I have not read the book you mentioned.  I have read some of the stats that you are referring to and feel that they are often taken out of context and are irrelevant.  I want to be careful to not step out of bounds here (on this site) because I know that you are not necessarily interested in "pro-mk" people promoting MK.  I do feel VERY strongly that there are plenty of ways to do it right, and plenty of people doing it right!!!  If it is ok for me to express those feeling here, I will.  If not, I do not ban anyone on my site.  I promise.  I would not mind holding such a conversation over there!

Thanks

There's no way you're going to see a change in MLM because MLM is defined by certain things. If you take some of those things away, it becomes something else. If you did 1 and 2 that pinkcaddy mentioned, you would no longer have an MLM.

The biggie is that MLM makes the companies so much money there is NO WAY they are going to change or give it up. That's why they set their business up that way in the first place.

Sure, companies feed this line of bull that direct sales is the best way to sell their product because they can educate the consumer and all this other baloney. But that's a bunch of crap. They do it because they make a ton of money. Otherwise, put your product in the market like all real companies do and let the market work. If Mary Kay is a "premium" brand, why not sell it in dept. stores like Clinique? Because it would be hard to get people to order $1800 worth, that's why.

And the products would have to be cutting-edge or at least contemporary. Mary Kay doesn't come close to that. Mineral makeup has been around for YEARS (Bare Escentuals started in 1976) and has been the buzz for awhile and just now MK comes out with a mineral powder. Whoopie.

Pinklight, you are welcome here, as is anyone pro-MK, active consultants/directors, etc. But you will get lively discussion and you WILL have to back up things you say.

The only way to "do MK right" is to NOT do anything the company says: no recruiting, no big initial orders, no dumb parties...etc. Well, at that point, you're not "doing MK." You're warping it into something that it isn't. I think I would be considered one of those who did it the right way, or at least my way. I was successful--way more successful than 99% of consultants. And I was still wasting a tremendous amount of time, listening to a lot of hype and baloney, and not making much money.

Enough from me for now...

I am traveling to the East Coast later today, so I will be too busy to reply today.  I will take your responses as permission to explain things from my point of view.  I will warn you though that my point of view shines a favorable light on MK.

I understand that promoting MK is not what you guys are all about here, and I do not hope to sway your opinions.  I simply believe that the MLM model of sales is not really that different from other methods for distributing products.

I don't think that it is an evil scheme on the part of the company using it.

I do believe that people have taken advantage of the MLM system and conned people out of their money - but that is not the way it is supposed to operate, and when those people get caught they usually face fines and are barred from representing the product.

I have seen way too many MLM's that are little more than thinly veiled pyramid schemes - and even more that encourage sneaky sales tactics, manipulation and outright deception to think that MLM is the paradise many people speak about.

However, I have been VERY impressed with Mary Kay thus far.  My director encourages my wife to sell more - but never to place an order "just to meet production" (with the exception of a few hundred dollars if it makes sense)  We are taking our time and building it.  Her (my wife's) client base is growing, she has a few active recruits and a "plethora" of personal use recruits.  She calls people to ask if they would like to order (clients and recruits) but if they do not need anything she does not pressure them.

I really don't have time to discuss in detail why the 99% figure is out of context, and certainly not to prove it, but it basically comes down to the difference in definition of a pyramid scheme and a multi-level marketing model.  The 99% figure is a mathematical FACT for any scheme that requires recruiting to make money.  Mary Kay (I know you will disagree with me) does NOT require recruiting to make money.

There are many other things that set it apart, but I have not even had time to analyze and explain it on my site yet, so please forgive me for not having much else to go on yet.  I could point you to sites like Direct Sellers Association and "quote" things from the pro mlm sources, but I haven't really grasped the whole thing yet myself so I would be doing you a great disservice to talk about things I don't fully comprehend myself.

For now, I WILL say that I know quite a few people myself that are not operating in the way that people here describe.  This leads me to believe that there are people doing it the way I observe - we can call it the "right way" and people doing it the way you observed - we can call it the wrong way.

The question is; How many people are doing it right and how many wrong?  We can only speculate on the answer to that question at this point.  I have a growing number of people on my blog that are coming out saying they are doing it right... and describing what that means for them.  I do not have very many people describing what was done to them that was bad... I am hoping some of you will join the conversation so that we can truly have some balanced perspectives.

As I said, I am not trying to convince you that Mary Kay is good. Nor am I trying to tell you that you "misunderstood" your experience.  I really and truly believe that there are people abusing the Mary Kay "name" and it disgusts me.  I also know there are people in MK that would rather not believe that is happening and turn a blind eye (I don't mean corporate).

But I believe there are a growing number of people like me that recognize the good of Mary Kay (the diamond in the rough if you will) and deem it worthwhile to devise a way to eradicate the bad... or at least minimize it so that less people get hurt, and more people get enriched.

Although I will not always be able to respond to questions posed... I have a full time job and maintain a blog of my own! - I am not fragile.  If you disagree with me, be as blunt as you need to.  I greatly respect where all of you are coming from and ask that you do the same for me.

Thanks, more later. (I tend to write more than I intend almost every time!)

You need to re-read that statement of yours and think more about it.

That "few hundred dollars when it makes sense" is major debt. Most women aren't lucky enough to find enough customers to buy all of it. (We can yap about market saturation, too, if you like).

Also, refuting the statistics on MLM failure with stuff from the DSA isn't gonna fly, either, for the simple fact that the DSA is a whitewashing lobbying organization that is currently going around the country trying to tear down the laws against pyramid scams. They recently succeeded in Utah, and did you see the way the MLM industry flew into a fury over the proposed regulations by the FTC??

All of this points to a very bad motivation on the part of the MLMs. Why do they want to weaken the laws against pyramid scams? Why don't they want to be forced to provide data on market saturation to new potential reps?????

Those of us here who lost a lot of money and saw this stuff up close, already know the answer to those questions.

Pinknight, you said that your wife sells about $750.00 a week in MK, please give us more details, because we've heard this before. So your wife sold $325.00 wholesale MK and made $325.00 profit (which couldn't happen), or she sold $725.00 in wholesale and made $25.00 profit etc.?
This is where I feel that directors and consultants alike trick people.
Read more of our stories and you will see what I mean. We have known consultants to stock pile MK just to win prizes, then sell their stock at cost! So saying that she sells $750.00 a week doesn't mean anything to us!

I want too also say that your remark about generalizing about directors isn't fair (sorry paraphrasing) is way off the mark, because we aren't all from the same unit you know, we are from all over the US and Canada and Hmmm, seem to have had the same experiences. We also have experienced having adopted consultants from around the world in our units and Hmm, same bad experiences shared. Denial is the foundation of the pink bubble, but when the truth finely breaks through the bubble will break. We would love to see someone succeed and prove us wrong, but just in case you don't, we are here for total support. Happy Holidays. Oh speaking of Holidays, did your wife have a Holiday Open House? If so how did it tur out? 

I just sent my inventory back to the company...  I left MK with a customer base of 200, 100 of which were pretty consistent ordering customers.  I am highly educated, and had thrown myself head-first in MK.  I drank the pink koolaid, went to all company events, had facials and classes lined up.  I wasn't failing at the "business" as it were, but I wasn't profitting the way that Directors teach that you should.  There is a cost to doing business correctly.  A "no-brainer" $200 here and there may work for you, but it meant that I couldn't take a profit for my family.  Tell me this...  I have a Masters in Education.  I am a great teacher.  Although I would start pay as a full time teacher at $36,000 a year (chump change to some people), why would I work a bazillion hours "doing" Mary Kay and not profit at all?

You are stuck in the pink bubble.  I was there, I can now see right through it.  Your wife may be dying inside, and by blogging that Mary Kay is an amazing opportnity, that women aren't working their businesses correctly, you may be contributing to her emotional demise.  I caution you to really look deep to make sure you aren't lying to yourself about the validity of this business.  I did it.  I lied to myself for a year and a half.  I was on track to directorship.  I gave it all up (big loss!) for a job in the "REAL" world where I can really effect lives.  What Mary Kay tells women is that they are lost if they don't sell cosmetics.  They brainwash you into thinking that you are nothing if you don't place orders.  That you can't do anything but peddle lipstick, at the cost of your "teammates", customers, family, and friends.  Not to mention the career God is calling you to do! 

I had an uneasy feeling about Mary Kay from the start.  Every woman that I brought into the darkness with me had to hear the canned sales and recruiting tactics.  They had to be told that they NEEDED this opportunity.  Not everything in life is about money.  The NSDs in Mary Kay make money, but at the cost of their consultants' happiness.  My director would constantly ask me what "trips my trigger."  I told her that paying my bills trips my trigger.  That wasn't good enough.  She hounded me time and again to come up with something MATERIAL to work toward.  This showed my how truly stuck on STUFF this company is!  This was not just my director... It is ALL of Mary Kay!  My adoptee director, my friend's directors, NSDs (remember, been to every allowable event).  Even at Seminar, it was about STUFF.  I am not finding that to be a very godly way to run a business.

You're right.  You will get opposition here.  And, when your pink bubble bursts, we will be here for your wife's emotional support.