Origin Stories: Who am I anymore? (1 year in an MLM)
Origin Stories: Who am I anymore? (1 year in an MLM)
Part 2/3. The brief history of my time as a multi-level marketing distributor, and how it crashed and burned in a flaming ball of ash that almost cost us everything.
First time here? Start with Part 1 of this 3-part series: How I got sucked into an MLM to understand how it began.
Opening the boxes of my second Mary Kay inventory order was the ultimate dopamine hit.
It was September 2012, and we just bought our first home. I took time to focus on setting up the house with our existing furnishings and decor. But my brain was set on independence. It was set on what the potential earning of my own money could mean for my never-accessed self-worth. And on building up my overall options as a dependent, stay-at-home parent.
With the $150 profit from the first products sale, I bought some (black, of course) dresses and heels to fit how I thought I needed to present myself. My body changed after having two kids, and my previous professional clothes no longer fit. I had a “pooch” to contend with now—one that went away within the first two months after the birth of my first child, but the second time around it clung like a barnacle.
I was in a new body, a new house, and with two young children, I was perpetually overwhelmed. I associated sadness with having children and being a stay-at-home mom—the more opportunities I could make for myself to be away from them, the better parent and person I thought I could be when I’d be with them by choice, not by requirement.
My mission with Mary Kay was to build a life for our family that looked, to me, like every other modern family out there. And I knew I needed to look and act the part if I was ever going to get anywhere with it.
I was used to acting a part—I could do this.
While many I knew of sought ways to stand apart, I just wanted to be a part of what everyone else seemed to innately know how to access. I mean, they wanted to step away from dual-income households and sometime live-in nannies and home and garden caretakers to have one parent stay at home. That was unfathomable to me. So many moms told me how lucky I was that I didn’t “have to work.” Meanwhile, their McMansions were pristine, they had nannies to clean up after their kids, and housekeepers to clean up whatever the nannies didn’t.
Our modest-but-newer home was one I couldn’t wait to bring a nanny into.
I thought these mothers who said they’d trade lives with me were crazy. I wondered if they would still squawk the same spiel after they’d been at home for a year with their newborn and toddler.
Would they still think being a stay-at-home mom was ideal?
I bought some black bookshelves at Big Lots for cheap, and set them up in a bedroom upstairs, along with Brian’s existing desk and computer. I claimed the space as my office (he didn’t work from home yet), and unloaded my newest skincare and makeup inventory onto the shelves, leaving my books in boxes in the closet.
The inventory was sparse. I spread all the products in pearlescent pink packaging and tubes with black lids further apart to fill out the space of the bookshelves. And I put my file boxes for (hopeful) customer information and order histories on the bottom shelves to eat up the emptiness that beckoned me to fill it with more products.
I was already changing who I was and how I thought—catering to a visual appeal, not just for myself, but for the potential “other” who’d view it in person. Or, when I inevitably posted a photo of it on Facebook in desperation for praise and recognition.
I snapped a photo and sent it to my upline.1 She responded, Looks great! Now get those bookings and move those products!!
My heart fluttered.
I guess to sustain this manufactured environment, I had to sell the items on the shelves. I’d have to be… social.
I took the list of roughly 12 women that my friends and family referred from the first party, and sat down at the desk with them. My heart pounded—behind my eyes, in my throat, in my chest.
What do I say? I texted back.
She sent me a link to scripts pulled together by uplines from around the U.S. But as I read them, I thought: Do people talk like this?
One would go something like:
(Call to book a party) “Hey girl! I’m [your name], and I’m friends with [referring person’s name]. She said you’d love a free facial/makeover! I’m calling to get you scheduled! Would a weekend or a weekday work for you?”
(To be clear: I can’t even make that sound as unnatural as the scripts actually were, they were that bad.)
Then, if she said yes, you’d work out the details—get her address, the date, time, etc.— then say, “Great! I’ve got you down for [date and time]. Now, can you think of any friends who’d like to join you for the free facial/makeover, too? Let’s make it a party! We’ll play games, and there will be door prizes. You can do snacks, if you'd like, but water is just fine! I’ll bring all the fun and everything else. You just bring yourself and friends!”
Even then, I didn’t see how manipulative it was, and how much more costly the scripts made it for ignorant distributors: Door prizes? Those cost money—money rarely ever recovered through sales (if you were lucky enough to get any).
For any prospect not knowing what Mary Kay was (an MLM),2 with all the exclamation points in your voice or via text, most unsuspecting social people might find it interesting, maybe even exciting.
Once they agreed to the party, then you’d say, “Great! I keep a full inventory of products, so if there’s anything you or your friends like, I have them for you to take home, same-day!”
I reworked the scripts to sound more like me. I made the calls, booked a couple of parties, and texted my upline back. She congratulated me on the bookings, but added that I should shoot for four to six multi-person events each week if I wanted to make it full-time. So, I should get on Facebook and message everyone I know. Offer the same “free facials” and/or “free makeovers” to them and all their friends. Get them to book parties and/or provide a list of their friends’ names and phone numbers who might be interested in “the opportunity.”
Within four months, I was the highest-selling distributor on my upline’s team. (Mind you, this was pulling in less than $100 to $300 in profits weekly at the time.)
She, of course, wanted me to focus on recruiting over solely on selling, but I wasn’t interested in building a team. She said it was the only way to advance in the business, yet, that didn’t send up any red flags.
It just lit a fire under my ass to prove her wrong.
I wanted to create my own little subset “empire” of sorts—discover and package a new process that I could offer fellow distributors who didn’t care to prioritize recruiting. Or, if they were like me and didn’t want to recruit/deal with handling a “team” of downlines,3 my process could work for them.
If someone happened to join our teams without the scripted bullshit to manipulate them into doing so, then so be it. But, at the time, I refused to recruit intentionally.
My Orlando-based upline said it was a good idea for me to link up with a local group of Sales Directors (what Mary Kay refers to uplines with 10 or more active distributors under them) in the Sarasota area, so I could have the support of fellow distributors and recruiting-pushing Directors. Looking back, I see how much that altered my experience and goals. It was like she knew it’d be the final push needed get what she wanted: More distributors recruiting.
Recruits meant “working smarter, not harder” in an MLM—making more money than we could ever make solely selling products, by convincing recruits to buy-in so uplines can earn commission off them; masqueraded as “sharing the opportunity for more women’s benefit.”
My entire relationship to the business model changed after she connected me with the local Mary Kay group.
The uplines all had their suit jackets and skirts (I’m only visualizing the heavy wool suits in black with gold accents, but that was actually the next generation of Sales Director attire during my year in Mary Kay). The almost-Sales Directors wore red jackets—all dry-clean only. (Also, this was in Florida. No matter the time of year, you wore that uniform to symbolize that you made it. I remember one new Director going through menopause... Just brutal.)
Everyone was heavily perfumed and heavily made up, with perfectly styled hairdos. I felt like a fish out of water.
Outside of two older women, I was also the only plus-sized person there. The ones that looked like Barbie dolls seemed to move up fast, and people who looked more like me seemed to forever be at the lowest wrung of the distributor level.
Each week I went to the meetings, generally winning a crappy prize for being the person with the most product sales—so often that they just stopped offering prizes within a few weeks of me attending.
Other distributors would ask me how I did it, and when I tried to explain, they’d slowly reverse into a conversation with someone else nearby. The truth was, I just didn’t try to sell anyone (yet). I genuinely loved the products and what they did for my skin and for my overall appearance—how they made me feel about myself, and how they made my skin feel healthy and not tight all the time. I was still excited about the results and the products, and I was excited to share them.
It wasn’t until later, when I changed under pressure, that things started to fall apart.
