Jessie's Story

In 2000 I moved to a new city where I knew NO-ONE, I met some women online who were doing an Oprah book-club for the Lifestyle makeover Book, so I started meeting with them in Barnes and Noble. Later one of the women started to sell Mary Kay, I was one of the people she invited to her very first skin care class, but I didn't fall for MK then and there.

Although I won a beauty pageant at 18, and was in theater and performing arts in high school (so I knew how to apply makeup) I really wasn't much of a girly-girl, and I didn't use makeup daily. I am very oily and blemish prone as well, so I was always struggling to find a foundation OTC that didn't break me out. Also, I think my friend had us use the Original TimeWise at the class, and since I am very oily, that "just didn't do it" for me.

About 1.5 to 2 years later, though, I was planning my wedding, and had no idea what kind of makeup or colors to wear on my wedding day - I wanted to look good for those pictures - they are around forever.

So, I called my friend and asked her for a makeover. Little did I know at the time, her recruiter was in DIQ. Guess what the date of my makeover was?? April 29th. My friend asked if it would be OK to bring her recruiter along, since she was still learning and the recruiter had been doing this for over 20 years, and had more experience. Of course I said fine. After we FINALLY found good colors through trial and error (took about four tries to find eye shadows that looked right--ended up with Spun Silk, Rose Mist, and Vintage Gold), they asked if it would be okay to tell me more about the company so my friend could learn. Of course I said yes. It took about 1/2 an hour. They were very thorough. I had very few questions and signed up on the spot and came in with a $600 order.

What drew me in? Well, since graduating from college 3 years earlier, I had worked as a contract/agency worker at Caterpillar, and got laid off with no warning and for no reason in September of 2002, it took me 4 months to find another job, that was 50 miles away, for only $10 an hour, with my Bachelor's degree in Business! (the up-side was I was at State Farm Insurance, where I did gain some decent and loyal MK customers with no effort on my part other than giving them their products.) I wanted a fall-back plan and a way to make a little extra money. My Hubby (fiancé at the time) and I were planning that someday when we had kids that I would stay at home, at least until they were in school. Well, of course this seemed a great addition to that plan! Also, still being relatively new to the area we lived in, and working all the time with men, then later working in a totally different community, I didn't know many people around there, and I figured this would be a good way to meet good women and make some new friends.

Here is "the REST of the story." Now, two years later, I only have about 45 re-order customers, only 5 who reorder regularly. I don't often do "classes", and I have way too much inventory on my shelf. As of my 2004 tax inventory, here are the numbers:

Jessie’s Story

Due in part to these boards (MK Survivors and MKOB), and also to the behavior of people I have personally been in contact with, I have come to many realizations about the company just in the last 3 months. Even after coming to many realizations of the unscrupulous people in the sales force, for a long while, I still believed in the company (Mary Kay Ash's original dream), and the products, but lately I have learned more things, and I will be doing some product testing in the near future with more expensive, professional products to see what I really need. I am starting to think there might be "Something More" (pun intended) out there for my skin instead of Mary Kay.

What happened to get me to this point is I got caught up in the Pink excitement and the Star Consultant pressure and the NEAT-O Limited Edition, etc. I have been a star consultant 4 times, three Sapphires and one Ruby. I racked up an more than $10,000.00 debt on a credit card that had 19% interest! I would have had arena seating at 2004 Seminar, but decided not to go and add $1000 more to the credit card, since my husband and I were paying for two house payments and I was "under-employed" at the time because we moved too far for me to commute for $10 an hour. After realizing how much I was paying on that credit card and how much I was NOT selling, I made myself to stop. I transferred that debt to a 0% Capital One card in December 2003, and I JUST finished paying it down to $0 balance last month (January 2005)! (Using money from my REAL JOB!) The piddly prizes and recognition are not worth ruining my credit rating or my peace of mind over.

Right after signing up, I "accidentally" got two recruits who, after their initial orders, were not working much (neither was I). One recruit later decided she was just going to do personal use (order once a year)- and the other "defected" to Avon - since their products are cheaper in price and they don't do inventory or "classes" she thought it would save her money and time, now that I know more about it, I think she is probably right. Her choice, I don't hold it against her and we still talk etc. In fact recently I bought some Avon "gifty" things, and she asked for Eye Primer. I later got two more recruits. One is quite active and is working on a pre-pay basis and has been doing well. But just two weeks ago, her husband left her with 3 kids and no outside source of income other than MK (so she will be slowing down to personal use/re-orders because she needs to find a real-reliable source of income). The other recruit got talked into $1800 inventory by my director in spite of the fact that she is a very shy person who intended to be mostly personal use! We all live far from our actual director, and our original adoptive director was so far "up the food chain" her meetings were not really training (just really party-style recruiting events). So we were all in a sink-or-swim situation and we never had many swimming lessons! I feel bad that I let my recruits be misled and pressured, but at the time I recruited them, I was still in the same position as them and didn't know any better.

So, now what? At the time of writing this (Feb. 2005), I am still in MK, and still selling re-orders and using it myself. My recruiter is still my friend and we are trading amongst ourselves, and she is questioning this whole thing, too, but she is a loyal user as well, and will probably just stay personal use and re-orders, too. Next step, I need to get my inventory down to a level that is reasonable for my size of customer base, at the very least, so things aren't expiring on my shelf. I will start only carrying the Skin Care and maybe a few color basics, and only order (or even trade for) any limited Edition my customers may get interested in. When I was holding classes consistently I moved product VERY WELL, but I haven't been doing that for almost a year now, it has been just re-orders - MOST of the inventory was accumulated before I got my latest real JOB and we moved to where we have a 30 minute commute each way. SO now I don't have nearly as much time to sell, let alone not as large of a market, as I now live in a town of 1400 people, and work back at Caterpillar, in the Engineering department (guess how many women I meet there!?).

UPDATE 12-15-2005:

In August of 2005, I decided things were not moving for me as well as I had hoped, and I decided I would better off with $2400 in my pocket from an inventory return, and less product on my shelf, then if I waited too long and couldn’t return much (if anything) AND couldn’t sell it. I returned mostly Color and Fragrance items, and kept the skincare and body care items I knew I would use or sell.

I sent back a total of $2527.50 wholesale value, the max I was allowed, and 4 weeks later, got a check for $2495.48. I still had over $3000.00 retail value left on my shelf after the return, but I have been slowly using/selling/trading it off, giving it away as gifts, etc. I am down to one shelf of Section one, and one shelf of Section 2 stuff….I think I will just claim the rest of the Section 1 as “Personal Use” and officially close the business as of this tax year.

I have a new endeavor, which is ACTUALLY MINE: making Nativity Scenes from Polymer Clay and selling them. I will be able to do it IN my home, never leaving, except to mail them to their new owners, on my time schedule, with no stupid meetings, classes, or dress code! I have sold 9 sets of 12 pieces each, this year, and made $900 above my materials expense (of course this is not counting the time/effort of making them!) I also already have 4 more orders for 2006! Can you get excited about that?! I sure can!!! LOL!