Kayla: No, not like that. Like this.
Chris: Sorry.
Kayla: Is that okay? Just so when you talk, it's more at this. Okay, now we're recording.
Chris: Welcome to 1% invisible.
Kayla: I'm gonna stop doing this podcast with you.
Chris: I'm Greek Aries.
Kayla: I don't know if Greek Aries sounds as good as Roman Mars.
Chris: It doesn't. It doesn't. But he's already that, so I. You know, I have to take the scraps. Do you even want to be here?
Kayla: Nope. I'm hungry, tired. I'm hot.
Chris: I mean, is okay. It's the most depressing banter, if that's what this is.
Kayla: I didn't know we started already.
Chris: Well, you said were recording.
Kayla: Yeah, but recording isn't necessarily a one to one. As long as you need time to get ready.
Chris: Fair. You gotta warm up, get into it. What's on your mind?
Kayla: Hungry.
Chris: Hungry. Okay. So what do you want to do for dinner?
Kayla: Why are we doing. Why are we doing this?
Chris: I don't know. This is banter.
Kayla: This is not banter.
Chris: Well, then banter. I'm trying desperately. I'm asking you questions, and you're like, good. Huh. Yep.
Kayla: I don't like that banter.
Chris: Huh. So why don't you ask me a question?
Kayla: Here's an intro for you.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Why are you so lucky that you get to do two episodes in a row? Two different episodes in a row.
Chris: Wait, why is that luck? I consider that to be a burden.
Kayla: Well, it just means the people get to hear you more.
Chris: Oh, that's true. Well, the people want to hear me more. You got your teal episode was two.
Kayla: I know, but that was two parts of the same episode. You're doing two different episodes. You're doing the intro episode and then the first episode of a series.
Chris: Okay, right. But last episode, which. Which, just in case you're. By the way, if you're jumping in, this is like, the first episode you listen to on our podcast. I highly recommend that you go back to the previous episode and listen to that one first, because this episode is actually the second part in a million part series. I don't know.
Kayla: Non sequential series.
Chris: Non sequential series.
Kayla: It's basically a corner. It's like a. We're gonna have MLM Corner.
Chris: MLM Corner. Right. Lmm corner with your host, Chris and Kayla.
Kayla: Podcast within a podcast. And maybe we'll even get a podcast within a podcast.
Chris: I don't know what even that would be.
Kayla: It's. If there's some sort of.
Chris: If we get Jane Marie on the show to talk about her podcast. Okay. Yeah. But, yes, that's. That's why we're doing two in a row is because we're really here to talk about today's topic. But we had to do a whole episode of kind of lead in to understand how MLMs work and what makes them so.
Kayla: MLM stands for multi level marketing.
Chris: Gross.
Kayla: I think you probably know that it does.
Chris: Yes. And it goes by many other names, such as direct sales or network marketing, because they like to brand themselves different ways to kind of keep escaping the ire of people who notice, like us. Mm. Yeah. So this time on weird or just religion?
Kayla: No, it's culture. Just weird.
Chris: Well, you just said we're rebranding to kind of like to dodge people, though. So what are we gonna rebrand?
Kayla: Oh, I meant they were rebranding to dodge people like us.
Chris: Oh, yeah. They definitely care about us.
Kayla: They care about us.
Chris: First and foremost, we're big time.
Kayla: I'm speaking of us. I'm Kayla.
Chris: And I'm Chris.
Kayla: And this is culture. Just weird. Yes, we are. I don't know how many episodes in, and we still haven't quite nailed the intro to the podcast, and I hope we never do.
Chris: No, I don't think we ever will, frankly. I mean, I guess we can sit down and figure it out, but I.
Kayla: Don'T want to do that.
Chris: Yeah, that's, I'd rather play video games.
Kayla: Same.
Chris: But, yeah, so I guess this is the second. So welcome to culture. Just weird. But also welcome to the second part of our MLM corner, which, I don't know, we'll call it apples, oranges, and roses. So if you ruin all of those things for me. Well, I mean. So, actually, let me go back to the topic of last. Just hopefully, you go back and listen to that whole last episode we did. But as a recap for you guys, since it, you know, gets a little complex, I'll just give you some of the basic facts and tenets of Mlmsen. If you are listening to this, if you're, like, binging this stuff all in a row, then you might want to fast forward, like, 20 seconds, because this is basically just copy pasting from last time, like a boss.
Chris: But anyway, the first basic fact that you should know about mlms, is it normal? We just sort of talked about the metaphorical oranges, apples, and roses. Well, what I mean by that is your normal businesses will exchange things that they make value that they create for money, and then that's how they create value. Right. That's how they're a legitimate business. And that's like. Sort of like the apples and oranges metaphor, right? I trade you apples for your oranges. Mlms, however, are more designed about transferring wealth up and down a structure of recruits, or that looks like a. I don't know. What are those things in Egypt called?
Kayla: Pyramids.
Chris: Oh, yeah, like that. And they use these, again, in the. In the metaphor, they use these roses to sort of tokenize the process. Right. So that's their products. Now, as you mentioned last episode, sometimes these products can be very good, actually. Like.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: You know, it varies. It's all across the spectrum from just like trash to good products. But that's trash to treasure. But it doesn't change the fact that fundamentally, the network recruiting model creates this. This shape that looks like a monument in Egypt. So that's the first thing, actually. The second thing is. Yes? Is that they emphasize recruiting, and then that exponential nature is what makes it mathematically, inescapably fraudulent. Third is that this is less of a. Like a, you know, a descriptor, and more of just like a fact to keep in mind is that less than 1% of the people that get involved as distributors for an MLM do better than break even.
Kayla: Less than one person, less than 1%.
Chris: Less if you're in it for something other than money. Okay, fine. We talked a little bit about that, particularly with women in the workforce or women not being able to participate in the workforce as much. MLMs can fulfill some of those same needs, but if you're in it for money, you're better off going to Vegas, literally, mathematically. So by quite a bit, actually. The other thing to keep in mind, MLMs employ a lot of crazy psychological techniques to maintain the flow of people into the scheme, because once they lose that flow of people into the scheme, they essentially lose their main source of revenue, which is their own distributors. So they use a lot of techniques to recruit that, including the selling of that financial independence dream. They use pep rallies, they use carefully constructed language, and sometimes they even use bully tactics.
Chris: And that. I'm specifically referencing the thing we talked about where they'll say, hey, if you don't, you know, you can't do it's your own damn fault.
Kayla: You have no one to blame but yourself.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: This is a foolproof system. You just gotta have the passionate energy. Clearly, if you can't hack it, you're not a passionate, high energy individual.
Chris: Exactly.
Kayla: You do not have that entrepreneurial spirit.
Chris: And how do they get away with all this? They use a combination of propaganda, which is to maintain this whole illusion with the general population. And then they also use lobbying, which is also to maintain illusion, but in this case, for the law. So Mlms.
Kayla: Mlms.
Chris: And remember, we also talked quite a bit about the airplane game, which was the literal pyramid scheme that was popular in social circles around the eighties.
Kayla: And I'm definitely doing it right.
Chris: And you really want to do it because for some reason you, like, want to get in trouble with the law. But, yeah, so. And then that. Remember that one lady used that sort of token rose to lightly whitewash the scam? Total genius.
Kayla: Lady artist. A con artist. If you.
Chris: Con artist. Yeah, but, yeah. So that's kind of where that whole metaphor that we've been using kind of comes from. So all of that brings us finally to our first MLM of our little mini series.
Kayla: What did you pick?
Chris: The keeper of the pink, the consultants of beauty, the Mary Kay Cosmetics company.
Kayla: God bless. When you said pink in the previous episode, it, like, it made me think of Susan G. Komen.
Chris: Well, they're not an MLM.
Kayla: They're not an MLM. Please don't do that.
Chris: It's actually interesting that you say that, because both Susan G. Komen and Mary Kay are very. They're well known for their usage of pink.
Kayla: That's what made me think of it.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: But, yeah, now that you say it, Mary Kay Pink. I love it. This is exciting.
Chris: Yes. On the show for you today, we have some very special treats.
Kayla: Oh, you said, you mentioned this last.
Nancy: Yeah.
Kayla: You said you did interviews.
Chris: Mm. Yep. We're gonna play some interviews for you. The first time in the show, I'm going to give you a quick overview and history of the company first, and then we're going to hear from two people. Firstly.
Kayla: Okay, sorry. Go. I know, I know. Yes. I know. Now.
Chris: Right. You know why I interviewed my mom now.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: So, firstly, a former beauty consultant and director level distributor who did this for five years in the early eighties, and secondly, a former distributor as well, who did it more in the, like, in the late nineties or early two thousands, if I recall.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: And is currently an activist in the MLM space.
Kayla: Oh, shit.
Chris: Are you excited?
Kayla: I mean. No. No. Yeah.
Chris: Good. Let's then let's call it. Hopefully our listeners are.
Kayla: This is a perfect opportunity for a joke. This is not gonna be in it. I'm gonna cut it out.
Chris: No, don't cut this.
Kayla: I'm going to.
Chris: Especially now that you're gonna attack me like this.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Please keep this part in.
Kayla: Very excited.
Chris: First of all, please keep that part in, though. You know what? Actually, I'm editing this one.
Kayla: I'm very excited to hear your mom's experience, because I know that she did this, but I don't know anything about her experience doing it.
Chris: Before I interviewed her, I had a similar. That was kind of where my head was, too. I knew she did it. Tiny little baby kid. I kind of remember some of the. I don't know. I think she had a sticker on the car, but I didn't really know anything about it. And then I was really lucky to talk to this other lady, as well, which we'll get into. So, this episode, it was super easy to decide what to talk to you about first, because, I mean, first of all, we always sort of talk about the charismatic leaders first anyway.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And in this case, her name is the company, so it's, like, kind of the obvious starting point.
Kayla: There's actually a person named Mary Kay.
Chris: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Kayla: I had no idea.
Chris: Oh.
Kayla: I just assumed it was a.
Chris: Not only is there a person named Mary Kay, she is as charismatic as they come.
Kayla: Do I want to do Mary Kay?
Chris: I don't know. Withhold that until we're done with this episode. I guess it kind of depends on who you ask. But let me tell you about Mary Kay, please. Our charismatic leader, Mary Kay Wagner, was born May 12, 1918, in hot wells, Texas.
Kayla: Damn, girl.
Chris: A state where she lived her whole life, which was actually more mostly in Houston and Dallas, which I believe that's where Mary Kay is headquartered now, in Dallas. She married early, or maybe. Maybe this wasn't early, you know, earlier in the century, but she married at age 17, had three children, all with her first husband. In her early career, she was a working mother but also a homemaker, and she worked at a home products company. So one of the things that she did with this home products company is conduct home parties to sell their goods.
Kayla: Ooh. Was that, like, original?
Chris: Interesting.
Kayla: Melmore.
Chris: Well, I mean, as if you recall from last episode, or did we even talk about this, that home parties is, like, one of the things that a lot of mlms use to sell their products.
Kayla: Do any mlms not use that, like. No, truly?
Chris: I think some. I mean, like, you know, these days, there's a lot of usage of, like, social media.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Some of our listeners probably have gotten, like, a, hey, girl, you want to be a boss ass, babe, and sell these oils? So I think that's a thing now. But really, bread and butter for this stuff? Selling it is selling it to your family and friends via these parties.
Kayla: And, like, I mean, have you ever been to any sort of MLM party?
Chris: I sat around when I was a kid at some MLM party. It might have been. I think it was pampered chef.
Kayla: Okay, right? Pampered chef is.
Chris: I remember, like, they were, like, demonstrating these products. I was like, cool.
Kayla: I know. Same.
Chris: Heals cores and slices the apple. Holy shit.
Kayla: Well, it just. It also makes me think of when I was. I don't know if I've told you this before, but, like, when I. When I don't know how old I was, but my. One of my friends was turning, I think it was her 16th birthday. And my piano teacher, I guess, also did. I think. I think it was Avon. It might have been Mary Kay.
Chris: Avon's, like, as Og as it gets.
Kayla: It was either Avon or Mary Kay. I forget. And so she, my friend's birthday party was literally this. This lady coming over and, like, doing a party for us teenagers, and she, like, taught us, she taught us how to do makeup. She, like, showed us.
Chris: Your friend's birthday party was an MLM. It was really fun sales party.
Kayla: But it's like were all, like, 1516. Like, none of us could buy anything. So there wasn't, like, any sort of high pressure sales. Maybe there's. There might have been high pressure sales. My mom. I have no idea. I might have bought. I don't know.
Chris: But, like, was there anything said, like, hey, girls, when, you know, when you're 18 or when you graduate high school, if you need a job?
Kayla: I think it was really being done more as, like, a favor rather than as, like, a true party. Like, it was a. Hey, I do, as a consultant, forgive me being skeptical. As a consultant, I do this thing. How fun to go teach a bunch of teenage girls how to properly do their makeup, and maybe I'll get some money. I don't know. There probably was some incentive there, but I still use some of the techniques she taught, and that was half my life ago.
Chris: That's interesting.
Kayla: I know. It was really fun. There's pictures from it. I'll see if I can find some pictures from it and we can use it for our.
Chris: Yeah, actually. And please find out whether it was. If you can find out whether it was Mary Kay or Avon. They both use similar techniques. And actually, there's others, many other mlms out there that are makeup related, and they also use that technique of, you know, somebody coming to your house, throwing a party, and then doing your makeup for you.
Kayla: Right, right. I.
Chris: And it's like, oh, it makes you feel good and teaches you how to do this and that and the other. So, anyway, that's something that Mary Kay, at the time, early in the 20th century, was sort of pioneering. This.
Kayla: That's really cool.
Chris: Yeah. She rose because of this, sort of this and just her general energy and everything. She rose to become a manager at this company, but she ended up moving on to a different consumer goods company called World Gifts in 1952, after her first marriage ended at this company, she was a very high performer and even developed her own sales training techniques involving sales incentives. Incentives. However, it was also at this company that the straw finally broke the camel's back. She had been getting very frustrated with the way she and just women in general had been. Had been being treated in the workforce.
Kayla: Understandable.
Chris: She'd been dealing with this for her entire career. She was obviously very smart and high energy and ambitious because she was developing her own shit as she was working here. But it was at this company that she witnessed the promotion of several men to higher positions and salaries than her, men that had far less senior. Wait, wait. Men that had far less seniority than her. And, in fact, she herself trained.
Kayla: Yeah, that still happens.
Chris: Yeah. So that still happens. But she was like, fuck this.
Kayla: Yeah. Understandable.
Chris: So she ended up leaving the company.
Nancy: Good.
Chris: She initially wanted to write a book about her experience in the workforce, but instead decided to start a company. And in 1963, at the age of 45.
Kayla: Don't say that like, it's super old.
Chris: For starting a company.
Kayla: Is it?
Chris: I don't know. I feel like entrepreneurs are like, oh, like, Mark Zuckerberg is, like, 19 and blah, blah.
Kayla: Well, for, like, tech, sure.
Chris: But I don't know what I just think. I'm not saying that as, like, oh, man, she's so old. Like, 40. Five's not old. But it does feel like, you know, you're midway through your life, you're starting a company. That's pretty great.
Kayla: It is great.
Chris: It's demonstrative that, like, you don't. You can start a company whenever you want.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: You can quit even if you've had, like, two really successful jobs.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But, you know, you're frustrated for obvious reasons, and you can go do your own thing. I mean, I don't know. Maybe you also have to be Mary Kay to be successful at it. But point is, she was 45 when she finally started. Mary Kay. I thought that was interesting.
Kayla: That is interesting.
Chris: She started with an investment of $5,000 from her oldest son, and she used it to buy rights to a beauty cream. And she started beauty by Mary Kaye. So part of the philosophy with this new company was actually to help solve these problems that she encountered in the workplace as a woman. So the Mary Kay company made it their mission to basically to give women, to help give women opportunities to succeed on their own terms.
Kayla: This is really great.
Chris: While still being able to be a devoted wife and mother. So she was still very much into that sort of, like, traditional, because she was very christian.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: And the company carries that sort of ethos with it today. I believe their motto is like, God first, family second, Mary Kay third, or work third or something. So they still have that. And we mentioned that last time that a lot of these MLMs actually do have sort of a Christian flavor to them. But, yeah. So the rest is sort of history. Mary Kay cosmetics went on to become one of the biggest success stories in 20th century american business. There's a Mary Kay foundation now that uses charitable donations to combat domestic violence and cancers that affect women. Started by Mary Kay herself, of course. I believe in the nineties.
Kayla: I'm not. So far, I'm not hearing anything.
Chris: Well, she's charismatic.
Kayla: Really negative about charismatic, though. The foundations of this company.
Chris: Sure, sure.
Kayla: Like, charisma itself is not a negative quality.
Chris: No. But for the criteria.
Kayla: Right. No, I agree.
Chris: There's a separate criteria for harm.
Kayla: Yes, true.
Chris: Right. This is charisma, and she is quite charismatic. I mean, aside from all of this, like, you know, goody goodness that she does, which is for sure there. She's also pretty like a pretty charismatic person. She started the Mary Kay foundation herself, and that was on the heels of lifelong charitable contributions that she would make just to various causes. She's written three books about her life and philosophy and approach to business.
Kayla: I'm going to go out immediately and read them.
Chris: Yeah, you've probably heard of them. One of them is called the Mary Kay way. One of them is called you can have it all. I forget what the third one's called are off the top. I didn't write them down, but maybe we can link to them in the show notes. And she's gotten some random awards and things like that. So, for example, she's been named greatest female entrepreneur of the 20th century by Baylor University.
Kayla: That's extremely cool.
Chris: And then in some sort of collaboration that I didn't really understand, but I guess PBS and my very own University of Pennsylvania's Wharton school, she was named one of the 25 most important business persons of the past 25 years.
Kayla: Hell, yeah. Get it? Mary Kay.
Chris: That's a short list.
Kayla: She's my hero. She is.
Chris: And this was in 2004 that they did this. So the 25 years before that, I guess. Okay. It's actually the year after I graduated Penn, so. I don't know. Weird. I guess we can cut that part. Cause that doesn't make sense. I don't know why I wrote that. Just, like, 2004. That was a year after I graduated.
Kayla: Isn't 2004 the year you graduated college?
Chris: This year I graduated from UF business school.
Kayla: You only went to Uf for a year?
Chris: Yeah, year and a half. Cause we started in the summer.
Kayla: Wait, how did you only go for a year to grad school?
Chris: It was a year and a half.
Kayla: How did you only go to grad school for a year?
Chris: Because that was the only. That was how long the program was most, like, legit mbas are only, like, two years. This is just, like, a compressed version of that. Yeah. And as I mentioned, she's gotten a bunch of other similar mentions and awards, just, like, a bunch of random stuff that would take too long to list here. As for the company themselves, well, they're an MLM that sells makeup to consumers, and, of course, they also sell a dream to its distributors like any other MLM.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: In my research, I've seen the company's product described along a whole spectrum, all the way from it's okay to some of the very best in the industry.
Kayla: Yeah. Their makeup is, like, as far as I know. And from my experience, like, their makeup's quality makeup.
Chris: I've seen it. Like I said, I have heard that, and I have also heard less than that.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: They went public in 1968, only five years after starting. But keep this in mind. They, in 1985, went back to private.
Kayla: Interesting.
Chris: And these days, most.
Kayla: Haven't some, like, tech companies done that.
Chris: Recently, companies have talked, like, Elon Musk said he wanted to do that with Tesla, but it's like. I mean, it's hard to do. Okay. But it's for, you know, there's a lot of companies also that are just, like, still private. And there's. There's the criticism for that is, like, once you get big enough. Okay, if you're still private, why are you still private? Like, what are you hiding? And actually. So I was just gonna say most mlms today are private because that means they don't have to disclose as much information.
Kayla: Gotcha.
Chris: If you're a public company, there's, like, all this stuff that you have to disclose.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Also, interestingly, Fortune magazine. At some point, I couldn't figure out when, like, I saw this in a few places, and I, for the life of me, could not figure out when they said this, but they named Mary Kay one of the hundred best companies to work for. Now, I don't know whether that.
Kayla: Do they mean, like.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. I don't know whether they mean, like, the corporate office.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Or as a distributor. That was not clear to me.
Kayla: Because, again, if you work for an MLM, quote unquote, as a distributor, you technically don't want work for them.
Chris: No. You don't.
Kayla: You're not an employee.
Chris: Nope. They are supporting you and your business.
Kayla: Right. You're your own business, and you just get the products from there.
Chris: Yep. And in 2015, which is the last year for which this data apparently exists, that I could find, they had 3.7 billion in revenue globally.
Kayla: Jeez. With a b?
Chris: With a b, they employed 5000 staff. So that's, again, working for corporate.
Kayla: Okay. That's a lot of people to work for corporate.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And. And some of those are actually, like, you know, they're. They're working on. So, one of the things we're talking about is, like, quality of products and whatnot. They. They do, I think, employ people. I was reading. They do employ people that are, like, you know, chemists and biochemists and whatnot to actually, like, develop new products.
Kayla: So they, like. They make the makeup?
Chris: I don't know if they, like, contracted out, but I think that they probably. It sounded like they designed the makeup.
Kayla: Okay. Okay.
Chris: I don't know if they actually manufacture it.
Kayla: Got it.
Chris: And 3.5 million beauty consultants across the globe.
Kayla: That's a lot.
Chris: That's a lot.
Kayla: That's a lot.
Chris: That's a fuck ton.
Kayla: That's a lot of people.
Chris: Yeah. So think about that when you think about how big, like, a quote unquote normal company is.
Kayla: How big is a quote unquote normal company?
Chris: Well, it's more like in the thousands, right? I mean, it depends on how your global reach and whether you're retail or not or whatever. But it's not 3.5 million, like, that's a lot.
Kayla: Now, I know you're probably going to get to this, but I just have to ask, of that 3.5 million, are you telling me that only 0.1% of those people make any sort of profit?
Chris: So the 0.1% number is for the MLM industry as a whole?
Kayla: Is there a different number specifically for Mary Kay?
Chris: I was not able to find one specifically for Mary Kay. And I doubt that one exists because it is probably pretty likely that the only way to arrive at a number like that is to aggregate data across the industry because individual companies are so reticent about sharing data. So for me to say whether it's higher or lower for Mary Kay would be speculation.
Kayla: Got it.
Chris: I don't know, but, yeah. So that's quite a bit. Also, I've mentioned beauty consultants a few times. That's their branded name for their distributors. They call them beauty consultants. So that is the charismatic leader, at least her history, and a bit about her company.
Kayla: I am sold. I love her.
Chris: Well, let's get some more info, because we need to also talk about the other criteria. Of course, can we not?
Kayla: I don't want to have my illusion shattered.
Chris: Well, it's complicated.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: And of course, there's more to Mary Kay cosmetics than just the charismatic leader. But since I'm lazy and mostly illiterate at this point, thanks to phone games and weed, I decided to ask someone who has a firsthand account of the company to describe her experience for us.
Kayla: Can I say who it is? Because I know.
Chris: Well, I mean, we already said it.
Kayla: Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. Never mind. I'm not so happy. But.
Chris: No, go ahead. Go ahead. Drop that. Drop that bomb.
Kayla: Your mom.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Who's amazing.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And wonderful.
Chris: Yes. So we are starting to really pretend hard at this journalism stuff because we're doing real interviews now with your mom. With. Well, hey, she was a.
Kayla: She was a beauty consultant.
Chris: She was not only a beauty consultant, but she was also a former sales director. So she actually did very well.
Kayla: What does that mean?
Chris: I think she says what that means. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, without further ado, here's my interview with former Mary Kay beauty consultant and sales director Nancy Carlson.
Kayla: Did you get her permission to say her first and last name?
Chris: I did not. I will do that before we publish. Here she is. So I'm gonna pull up my notes. These questions, you don't have to answer them exactly. They're more of a guide than a script. So feel free to Adlib or go on tangents. So, with that, thank you for being on the show. How are you today?
Nancy: I'm doing well, thank you. Looking forward to sharing my stories about Mary Kayden.
Chris: The first question about was actually going to ask just for context for our listeners. You're my own mother, so I think I would probably know everything I need to know. But can you tell us a bit about yourself for our listeners?
Nancy: Well, my name is Nancy, and I have two sons, Chris and Sean. I live in Orlando, Florida. Married almost 45 years, work at Walt Disney World.
Chris: How long have you worked at Disney?
Nancy: 23 years.
Chris: Wow. And what do you do there?
Nancy: I manage a team of technical writers who write technical documentation for maintenance of the attractions.
Chris: Okay. So that's, like, all the rides and all the shows as well?
Nancy: We don't do the shows. We just do the rides.
Chris: The rides. Okay. And that's, like, how to turn the machines on and turn them off and what you should do in emergency situations. Is that correct?
Nancy: Right, yeah. And procedures to keep the, what we call cast members safe.
Chris: Got it. How big is your team?
Nancy: Twelve riders.
Chris: Got it. What did you do before Disney?
Nancy: When I first came out of college, I worked at General Electric, and then when I moved to Florida, I was a stay at home mom for several years, which will probably lead into.
Chris: Oh, I remember that because that was me.
Nancy: That was my fault.
Kayla: Your brother.
Nancy: Yep. Decided to. I decided to make that part of my career, being a stay at home mom and volunteering and just being here for my children.
Chris: I remember you were secretly the mascot of my elementary school. I didn't realize that till I was an adult.
Nancy: Right. Billy Bobcat.
Chris: What?
Nancy: What?
Chris: You didn't know that?
Kayla: No one ever told me that.
Chris: Yeah, she.
Kayla: So she secretly was the mascot of your school?
Chris: Yeah, like, the. You didn't know why? There was just like a. Like a. Almost like a Disneyland character, like a suit.
Kayla: Why didn't you know? Why would they keep it from you?
Chris: Nobody told me because I was just like, oh, it's Billy Bobcat. And then, like, much later, my mom was like, oh, yeah, that was me in the suit the whole time.
Kayla: Was that, like, figuring out Santa a little bit.
Chris: A little bit. It was more traumatic way after, like, Santa was like, whatever. I was, like, five, but this was like. I don't know, I was like a teenager and was like, oh, yeah, God, I love you. Guess what? I'm gonna shatter your fucking reality here. She's the best. Yeah, it was pretty trippy. It was cool. What did you do at Ge?
Nancy: I was a quality engineer for aircraft engines.
Chris: Jet engines?
Nancy: Yeah. Military jet engines.
Chris: Wow. Okay. That's. That's intense. Basically, so is ge. Quality control on military jet engines. Stay at home mom for a bit. And then that was when you went to work at Disney, was after that phase?
Nancy: That's correct.
Chris: Okay. That's quite the career experience. So, getting into our topic, which you mentioned earlier, today's episode of cult, or just weird, is about Mary Kay cosmetics for our listeners that may not know how would you describe this organization briefly in your own words? Like, what. What is Mary Kay?
Nancy: Well, Mary Kay cosmetics, I believe, was a pioneer in the skincare industry, which, of course, is huge, even today. And. But it was back when I did Mary Kay. Again, I don't know how it's run today. It was a kind of a home base, you know, where you go into people's homes and do what we would call a beauty show.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: You'd have everybody do a facial, you know, at the table. All the guests do a facial. They put. Do all the skincare regimen, and then put on makeup and. And. And obviously with the intent of hopefully selling them the product.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: And the reason I did that is I'm not a huge makeup person, but I had used the product, and I really liked what it had done for my skin.
Chris: So you like the product itself as a consumer?
Nancy: I love the product as a consumer, and I don't think you can be a good salesperson unless you really believe in the product.
Chris: Yeah. So just kind of interjecting here already, or maybe this is the second time if we keep that stuff about Billy Bobcat, but this is one of the first things that I kind of went, huh. Interesting. But still, if the consumers like the product.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: That's more of an air of legitimacy to the business. Right.
Kayla: Well, it's also like, yeah, I don't know. I don't even know what I want to say about that. Just that, like, given where we. How we kind of came away from our previous episode, the previous MLM episode being like, oh, God, this is all really bad. Like, I still have. There's still this part of me that's like. But some of these products are really good products.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Like Mary Kay's good products.
Chris: Yeah. And, yeah. That's honestly what makes it, I think, such a apropos topic for our show is that it does feel sometimes like it's gray. Now, there's other companies. There's a lot of mlms where it doesn't feel gray. But, sure, this is one of the things where I was starting to feel a little bit like, okay, I mean, she was in it for the product, so that's like.
Kayla: That's not exploitive.
Chris: That's not exploitive. But. But again, remember, it's not the product that's exploitive. It's the business model.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So it's this weird gray area. Right, right. And also, there's. There's other people who disagree with her about the quality of the product. But that's not to say that she's wrong. There's a lot of people that agree with her that the products are amazing.
Kayla: So, I mean, I agree.
Nancy: So tie it back into being a stay at home mom. This was something that I could do while I raised my children and, you know, while I was at home, and it would help me raise a little bit of money, you know, make some money. And also not as much that as, you know, getting out of the house, meeting other women, and just doing something for me versus just being a mom.
Chris: Sure. Yeah, yeah. From some of my research myself into Mary Kay that I've done for this episode, that's. I believe that's a common sentiment. I think that's something that a lot of that Mary Kay even like themselves, the company. Would you agree that the company sort of engages with that sort of narrative, too, that they. That they want women to be empowered and kind of like, go do something for themselves? And do you think they sort of, like, targets? Maybe not the right word, but stay at home moms is kinda kind of like part of their bread and butter.
Nancy: I would say that they have all different types of women. Right?
Chris: Oh, interesting. Okay.
Nancy: But I think that women that are looking to make extra money on their own terms, making their own hours, that flexibility was probably what sold a lot of people on it, because back when I did it, there were a lot more, I believe, a lot more stay at home moms at the time. That is not as common today. And being able to be invited into somebody else's home to do a beauty show was much more common, akin to, like, a tupperware or something like that. Mary Kay was kind of parallel to that same marketing model.
Chris: Gotcha. My next question is, actually, I think you basically already answered it, but if you want to flesh out at all, if you have anything, is basically. I was going to ask, why and when did you start doing Mary Kay? It sounds like the why. A lot of it is what we just talked about. You wanted to make some extra money on your own terms, get out of the house, meet other women, do something for yourself.
Nancy: And I like the product.
Chris: And you like the product?
Nancy: I like the product. I like what it represented. I just. I had a friend who was in it, my friend Meg, who, as they call, recruited me into it.
Chris: That was my next question.
Nancy: It's a multi level marketing company. So you recruit people to join you, if you will, into the. Into the company. And, you know, Meg, and for our listeners who don't, she's the most enthusiastic passionate person.
Chris: She's a high energy individual.
Nancy: High energy and a good salesperson, for sure.
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: So I'm sure there was a little bit of a sales pitch, if you will.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: We were friends and, you know, she. She knew what my capabilities maybe were and that I might be successful. And she loved what she did, thought I would love it, too. And so she recruited me into Mary Kay.
Chris: When was that? Like, what year?
Nancy: That was around, I would say around 1981.
Chris: Tell me what that recruitment experience was like. Was it at, like, a party or did she mention it to you or.
Nancy: No, it wasn't at a party. She probably just mentioned it to me. I think we used to do, like, jazzercise together or something. You know, I think she mentioned it. One of the things about Mary Kay in retrospect is, you know, you're always sort of had to be on looking for the next. Probably the next person to recruit or to sell to or whatever, because that's how you grew your business. Right. And so she was very good at recognizing people that might be potential for the product. You know, that is what the business is selling to other women and obviously hoping to grow your business. You can't grow your business without bringing other people into it because it's a multi level marketing company.
Chris: Interesting. When you say that's key to multi level marketing, like, what does that mean? Like, why is that key? Why is it not just selling stuff?
Nancy: Well, that's not how it was built, right? I guess the thing is, you are selling stuff, but you're also selling it to others who, as they bought product from Mary Kay to sell you, as the recruiter, would get credit. So much money, or whatever it was per recruit. So if they sold so much, you would get a percentage of what they sold, and the person who recruited me would get a percent. You know, everyone gets a percentage.
Chris: So whenever you bought wholesale from Mary Kate to sell yourself, Meg, who recruited you, would get a small cut of that.
Nancy: Right. And I don't remember at this point what it was.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: That's how.
Chris: And then that would continue down. So if you recruited someone.
Nancy: Right. So then if I recruited, then I would do that, do the same thing when they sold, then I would get a percentage of what they did. Okay, so that's what the multi level is.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: So obviously, the more people that Meg could recruit in, or I could recruit in would grow our business. So it wasn't just me going out now selling the product, it was others going out selling the product as well.
Chris: Right. So what was the onboarding process like, so after you said to Meg, you know what? This sounds like a good idea. I'm in. I'm on the board. I'm on the board. We'll keep that one. So I sound like an idiot. I'm on board with this. Let's do it. What was it like after that? Like, did they send you stuff in the mail? Did they call it, like, what was.
Nancy: Right. So it was sort of a welcome kit, if you want to call it that. And we paid so much money to get all our initial product.
Chris: How much was that, roughly, do you remember?
Nancy: I would want to say about $500.
Chris: But I'm so in the hundreds. Not in the thousands of.
Nancy: Right. No, maybe about $500. And what that gave us was a. The. What I would call, like, say, the demonstration kit, what you would use when you would go out to beauty shows, what you take with you, all the supplies, everything that you would need so that the other ladies at the table could do their facial. So your supplies, sort of a presentation that you would go through, and then, you know, all your presentation materials, all your supplies, and then all your initial product. So, I don't know. It was quite a bit of initial product of all the different types of skincare and whatnot. So that kind of gave your start in terms of what you would sell initially.
Chris: Okay. It was just, like, all across the board. It was like, moisturizer and, you know, base and just everything.
Nancy: Right? Yeah. So Mary Kay's philosophy was it wasn't just their goal wasn't just to sell, say, one product. It was. It was a skincare system, which you still hear about today. Other companies, many companies who do the same thing. You know, it's several steps of skin care. So where you're cleaning and you're toning and you moisturizing, and then you put the makeup on, that kind of thing. They're probably one of the pioneers in that regard, I think, where they did a whole skincare system.
Chris: Right? Yeah. I've definitely heard that buzzword on, like, commercials for other beauty companies before the blah, blah. Skincare system.
Nancy: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris: So this is one of the things that. Yeah, I totally found interesting was this, like, skincare system idea, which I guess I probably should have mentioned earlier when were talking, because I just said, oh, they sell makeup. But. But really, they had, like, they were also a pioneer in this whole, like, skincare system. Like, you know, what? Do one and step one, step two, step three, and then reach a product that you can get from us. I thought that was interesting.
Kayla: I had no idea that they were, like, even started, really, with that skincare situation. And, like, skincare's always kind of been a thing, but, like, definitely now in terms of, like, beauty trends, especially, like, western cultures really gotten into the, like, gotten back into the, like, multi step, like, skincare regimen.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I just think that's really interesting that I didn't really even know that it was stated, at least in part, with Mary Kay.
Chris: Right. Yeah. Back in the early eighties, no less. You said yes to Meg. Let's do it. She signed you up, and then they sent you something. You paid your money, and then they. In the mail, they sent you product to sell, to demonstrate, and they also sent you presentations and training materials.
Nancy: Right. And then Meg would also train. Part of the whole Mary Kay piece of it is regular meetings.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: So Meg was what we call the director. Okay. And she would hold meetings for all of the people that were in her, quote unquote, organization.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: Right. And that's where all of the motivation and inspiration training would come into play.
Chris: Mm.
Nancy: So that's when you think about Mary Kay. You know, dad, kids, about the song that we would sing. You actually would sing a song?
Chris: Mmm. Oh, really? So. So Meg would have actually. Okay. So I'm just trying to picture this in my head. So she'd have this essentially, like a. Like a team meeting in all hands. Okay. With her people that are downstream. Is that what I've heard this buzzword, downline. Was that used in Mary Kay downline?
Nancy: I've not. I don't. I don't remember that term.
Chris: They didn't use that word. Interesting. Okay. So the people she recruited would be part of this meeting, and then it would basically just be sort of like,
Nancy: She, like, rented a hall.
Chris: She'd have a hall and half's half pep rally.
Nancy: I would say it was like a pep rally. Yep.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: And it would be recognizing your accomplishments for the week before.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: So, you know, she'd ask someone to. She used to call it crowing and crowing. Being. Bragging, sort of on yourself. So one of the things there is to recognize your accomplishments, but also build confidence, because a lot. I always had a lot of confidence, but not every woman that joined Mary Kay had a lot of confidence. And I think that's one of the things that Mary Kay sort of sold, was building up your self esteem and being able to speak in front of people and build up their confidence. So, crow about what you did this week. Well, that could be. You had beauty show, and you sold a $100 whatever it was. And then, you know, everyone would, you know, recognize and cheer you on, that kind of thing. So people would quote unquote, crow about their week.
Nancy: There might have been a sales topic of the week or sales tips, you know, that she might share things. So there was always like either maybe product knowledge or sales knowledge.
Chris: She held this meeting every week. Every week.
Nancy: We'd have it every week.
Chris: How mandatory was it? Was it like you kind of had to go, or was it more like you should?
Nancy: Nothing was really mandatory because, remember, it's your own business, right? They tout that it's your own business. You can make as much of it or as little as you want to make of it. That was one of their things because, of course, you know, one of the, I've learned a lot from Erica in terms of sales, and one of the things we learned was combating objections. So, you know, they anticipate what objections would be. So, so let's say I was trying to recruit somebody. They may say, well, you know, I can't put a lot of time into it. I have young kids, or I'm not very good at sales, whatever it is. And so part of the comeback, if you will, would be, well, you can make as much of it, as little as you want. You can do it full time.
Nancy: You can do it an hour a month. You can do it, you know, whatever it is. There are no real parameters around. You have to do it as a director, however, there is, you do have to have, you have to meet certain goals. But. So women would come to the meetings. Most people did come, though, because, again, you know, they were with like minded women. Probably got them out of the house, right?
Chris: Sure.
Nancy: They got dressed. We would get dressed up. You put on your face, your makeup. Right. You'd go out. And it was a very motivational and uplifting type environment.
Chris: So again, we kind of come back to this idea of like, you're getting more than just your monetary investment out of it, you're getting this other value, right. This confidence in public speaking and business and whatever value.
Kayla: If I have to sing a song, I'm out.
Chris: You don't. Stay tuned.
Nancy: And so there was a Mary Kay song. It wasn't just at our meetings that, but it was something that was like.
Chris: Mary Kay, like the company wrote it kind of thing.
Tracy Coenen: Right.
Nancy: It's. Would you like me to, if you.
Chris: Would like to sing it, I would love for you to sing it, if.
Nancy: I can remember, basically says, I've got that Mary Kay enthusiasm down in my heart right down in my heart I've got that Mary Kay enthusiasm down in my heart Tuesday. So you would sing that pretty much at every meeting, or as you called it was like a pep rally. Right. It gets people motivated and excited, and the women would sing it. They weren't. They weren't embarrassed because it was just other women there and.
Chris: Sure. And everybody's singing the same song.
Nancy: Everyone. Right. And, you know, obviously, there's something to that, or else they wouldn't have been, you know, incorporated that into their process.
Chris: Right. Would you sing that song at the beginning of these rallies?
Nancy: The beginning, I think I'm calling them rallies.
Chris: Sorry, meeting. Yeah, I keep doing those pep rallies. So one of the things that I also found in my research about Mary Kay in particular is how, like, I think she talks about this a little bit more, too, but positive oriented. Like, everything was like, you know, positive mentality, positive thinking. Power of positive thinking. Don't be negative. Like, you know, let's. Let's. Let's keep each other, you know, feeling good and positive. So there. And sometimes that I have, in my research, found that sometimes that is good, and people are like, yay. And sometimes I have read people that say that it was stifling and there wasn't any room for criticism.
Kayla: May I say, do you remember. Do you remember that documentary we watched about the Fyre festival and Billy McFarlane? I know that our listeners have probably never heard of this before.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: We've definitely never talked about it on the podcast.
Chris: Yeah. It's been at least an episode or.
Kayla: Two, but there was definitely that whole, like, we're solution oriented.
Chris: Exactly.
Kayla: Don't. If you say anything that's like, pointing out a problem, you just kind of get met with either. Like, we are a solutions oriented group.
Chris: And if you don't want to be solutions oriented, you can get the hell out. Right. Yeah. So I think it's similar to that in the sense that it's like, it's really hard to tell whether that's a good thing that supports a vision.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And keeps you. Keeps everybody oriented towards that North Star, towards that goal, whether it's a festival or, you know, selling skincare or is it stifling of legitimate criticism and ignoring realities and whatnot. Right. So it's. Which, for Fyre festival, we can definitely say which one it was, but with this, it's, like, harder to tell. Right, right. I actually had some follow up questions for you about, specifically about the combating objections bit were those objections that were sort of. They were common objections, and then Mary Kay company sort of catalogued what they were and then gave you ways to overcome them, is that sort of how that worked?
Nancy: I would say they would be tools of the trade. So I think that any sales organization would probably use the same thing, except they would anticipate. So, for example, if were trying to sell, quote unquote, the idea of you having a beauty show in your home, you know, you might say, oh, I'm way too busy. I don't have a very nice house, you know, whatever I might be. But I might say, well, you know, we can do it anytime that's convenient for you, or, you know, you don't have to have a nice house. You don't have to do anything. I'm going to bring everything to you. You know, those types of things.
Nancy: If I was trying to sell you on a product and you said, I don't have a lot of money, you know, or, I don't have enough money, would say, oh, you know, you could put it on a charge card. You could give me a check. You could give me cash. You know, you try to make. You try to anticipate the types of the objections that most people would give you. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time, those types of things. And I think in any sales organization, those are okay. Just like if you went to buy a car and you say, I really don't think I'm ready now. Well, but this deal today is just the best. You know, I can only do it today. You know, they anticipate everything.
Chris: You might.
Nancy: There's so many answers that you're gonna use. Right. So Mary Kay was, you know, the same. The same thing, because people are fearful of get making a commitment or getting involved or having people at their home or, I have to cook if I. If you come, you know, those types of things. Women typically probably have the same concerns. Right?
Chris: So.
Nancy: Sure.
Chris: Yeah. To be fair, she's absolutely right about this. I mean, the sales. Combating objections is a sales technique. It's not an MLM thing, you know, as direct sales companies, obviously, it's an element of it, but it's not as far from unique to mlms.
Kayla: Just go to the mall any Saturday afternoon. Those kiosk folks are. They know how to get you to buy a thing.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And they have answer for everything. And honestly, it's an art form.
Chris: It is. Well, that's kind of what she's talking about.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: Is that it's like learning that art is its own thing. I actually had some follow up questions for you about, specifically about the combating objections bit. Were those objections that were sort of. They were common objections, and then Mary Kay company sort of cataloged what they were and then gave you ways to overcome them, is that sort of how that worked?
Nancy: I would say there would be tools of the trade. So I think that any sales organization would probably use the same thing, except they would anticipate. So, for example, if were trying to sell, quote unquote, the idea of you having a beauty show in your home, you know, you might say, oh, I'm way too busy. I don't have a very nice house, you know, whatever I might be. But I might say, well, you know, we could at any time that's convenient for you, or, you know, you don't have to have a nice house. You don't have to do anything. I'm gonna bring everything to you know, those types of things.
Nancy: If I was trying to sell you on a product and you said, I don't have a lot of money, you know, or I don't have enough money, would say, oh, you know, you could put it on a charge card, you could give me a check, you could give me cash, you know, you try to make. You try to anticipate this, the types of the objections that most people would give you. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time, those types of things. And I think in any sales organization, those are okay. Just like if you went to buy a car and you say, I really don't think I'm ready now. Well, but this deal today is just the best. You know, I can only do it today. You know, they anticipate everything.
Chris: You might.
Nancy: There's so many answers that you're going to use.
Tracy Coenen: Right.
Nancy: So America was, you know, the same thing, because people are fearful of getting. Making a commitment or getting involved, having people at their home or I have to cook if I, if you come, you know, those types of things, women typically probably have the same concerns. Right? So, yeah, so that was one of the sales techniques that, you know, we learned along the way, which, frankly, has been very helpful in many things.
Kayla: Right.
Nancy: Because you can anticipate somebody's response, even in an interview, for example, or if you're interviewing somebody, you can anticipate what they might say. And if you want to kind of combat that was some feedback or something, you can do that. So it's a skill, I think that.
Chris: I took away from that sales is definitely a skill. What I'm curious about my second follow up question for that is, and I think you sort of hit on this a little bit, is were you combating objections to people buying Mary Kay cosmetic products, or were you combating objections to recruiting other consultants into your network?
Nancy: All of the above.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: Buying the product, having a beauty show at their home would be another thing because, you know, as I indicated earlier, it's a home based business where you go into their home and do a beauty show, we called it. Right. That's where you made your money, obviously, by bringing other women in and selling to them and then wanting them to have a show so they can bring in their friends. Because obviously you have a show, then you're friend has a show, then every, you know, it keeps growing in that regard. Right. So that was key, getting shows and then also bringing people into the business.
Nancy: I liked the business well enough that I wanted to bring other people in because I felt like it was a great product and I liked the camaraderie of being with the other women and the enthusiasm that, you know, it generated. I liked helping other people when I. It was very satisfying. For example, if you went to a. If you did a quote unquote beauty show and watched somebody pretty much transform in front of you, they always looked so pretty at the end of the night, and they always felt so good about themselves. It was rewarding.
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: You know.
Chris: Yeah. Having somebody else feel good about themselves.
Nancy: It was just rewarding because people were like, oh, I don't do makeup and I don't do it. And, you know, I don't think I whatever. And then, you know, just do it. You know, they would play along and participate, and then at the end of the night, you notice I them sort of radiate and glow a little bit. It was a good feeling.
Chris: That is nice. Was there more of an incentive on. Not incentive. Emphasis on recruiting or more of an emphasis on selling the makeup?
Nancy: I would say both.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: It's hard for me to gauge because I'm such an overachiever, that once I got into it and enjoyed it, then I felt like it was a natural thing to sort of recruit people. Like join me kind of thing.
Chris: Sure.
Nancy: But for somebody who really didn't seem to have that skill or so. For example, your aunt Patty was one of my recruits, and, you know, she's very shy, and she, I don't think she would ever try to recruit anybody, but she enjoyed, you know, the makeup and using it herself and having shows for people that, you know, she enjoyed that part of it, but I don't think she would ever have the motivation to recruit. So it was a little bit of both. But for me, it was sort of a lot on recruiting because I got so enthused about it. Right.
Chris: How long did you do this for? Like, when was your last Mary Kay year?
Nancy: So when we built. When we moved to Florida in 1987, before I moved, I. I gave the position up. And the reason for that was I did not want to have to rebuild in a new area. Rebuild, rebuild my organization, which would have been. Because it's a constant thing. Right. So I had an organization which I can talk about because I became a director.
Chris: So a network of people.
Nancy: Essentially, a network of people on my team. Right. And so people are always coming and going. Obviously, people join and quit, and some stay longer than others, you know? So it's one of those types of businesses that you always have to be working at.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: Like any job, you have to work at it. Right. It becomes more of a job when you're recruiting people. Right. And moving to a new area. Maybe it would have been ripe for meeting people, but I didn't want that to be how I met people. I wanted to be able to learn how to live in a new area organically. I didn't want to feel pressure of talking to people, and I didn't want anybody to think that's the only reason I wanted to be their friend or something, or they wanted to.
Chris: I see.
Nancy: And I wanted to focus on my family and getting. I had never moved out of my home before, and I wanted to have the ability to just grow my life here in Florida without having any. I'm gonna put quote unquote, pressure of having to do any sales, having to look for women to recruit or whatever. I just. I think I was done with it from that phase of it. And my children were getting to the point where they were getting into, you know, school, and I wanted to spend more time volunteering and helping grow, you know, the family. So I gave. I gave it up in about 1987, so I probably spent five or six years.
Chris: I suppose that's a good amount of time. How many people were you able to recruit during that time? How big was your own organization? And did you do the same things that Meg did with the meetings and everything?
Nancy: Yep. So I eventually became a director.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: And actually, quite a short amount of time. I got very lucky and very engaged. I was. I think it's 24 people you had to recruit.
Chris: Wow.
Nancy: And then when you did that, you became what they call a director and qualification. And they sent you to Dallas, where Mary Kay headquarters were, and you spent, I think it was either a week or two, getting all sorts of sales training with other women from around the country.
Chris: Interesting.
Nancy: Other directors, people that were becoming directors.
Chris: Becoming new directors. Okay. Right.
Nancy: Directors and qualification. They call it DIQ week. I think it was a week. I guess it was a week. And you get all sorts of sales training, obviously, motivation stuff, you know, everything that you would need then to go back out sort of into the country to work with your own teams. Tips and hints and, you know, things that you could do to make your meetings better.
Chris: Is there anything you remember in particular that they. That they taught you during DIq week? Takeaways or tidbits that stick with you?
Nancy: How to motivate people was probably. Probably a big one. Right. And, you know, just in general, how to run the business. New product knowledge. Right. New products coming out and what, you know, how would you sell on that kind of thing? How to deal with maybe. Maybe hints and tips in terms of, let's say it was holiday time and how you could maximize sales during the holiday by making it festive or putting baskets together, perhaps, so that you can sell it to the husbands of women. That kind of thing.
Chris: Right. As gifts.
Nancy: As gifts and that kind of thing. So hints and tips and stuff like that.
Chris: Okay. When you say to run the business, is that like financial accounting type stuff or was that more like probably a.
Nancy: Little bit of everything, I guess. Right. Because they considered it your own business. Right, right. So I think it was all sorts of stuff to help you grow your business when you went back home. The key thing about that director on qualification week was we met Mary Kay personally.
Chris: Oh, wow. Tell me more about that.
Nancy: And the highlight of that week, traditionally, is going to Mary Kay's house of her own house, her own personal house, and sitting on the couch of Mary Kay and her talking to you about.
Chris: Was it a pink couch?
Nancy: It was. Ron Townsend was very pink. A lot of her things were very.
Chris: Pink because I know that was like, that was her.
Nancy: That was her shtick, if you will. Right.
Chris: And the company. Right.
Nancy: And the companies, you know, if you succeeded and recruited so many people and you did so many sales and all of that, then you got to drive a pink car.
Chris: Right. Didn't I think I read that was a reserved color for whichever car company that I forget. The car company.
Nancy: They weren't allowed to make any Cadillac, Buick and Cadillac.
Chris: Cadillac. Right. They weren't allowed to make any other cars that had that exact shade of pink.
Nancy: And it was very pink. Very recognizable. Right. So it was quite the. I mean, actually, it was quite clever marketing, I think, in terms of success. And my friend Meg did drive a. Oh, she did. Pink Buick regal.
Chris: How long did she get to drive it for?
Nancy: I forget how long, honestly. But it's when you become a director, you have to sell so much and you have to maintain so much monthly or quarterly or whatever, in order to kind of maintain that status. So it's not like they gave it to you forever. You had to continue to earn it.
Chris: Right. Kind of like a company car.
Nancy: Almost like a company car.
Kayla: They can take your car away.
Chris: Well, they can take their car back. I mean, it's like a luxury. It's a luxury thing, like.
Kayla: But it seems. It seems like not to criticize the car. It was a wonderful cardinal. It seems like maybe more stress than it's worth potentially.
Chris: The car thing has its supporters and detractors, because one hand, it's like, oh, wow, what a great incentive. But on the other hand, it's like, as you just heard her mention, it can go away if you don't meet the quotas. And we talked about those tiers and quotas and needing to meet them for XYZ incentives is a classic example of that, which can motivate you to want to keep going at it and keep putting. We were talking about that sunk cost. That's part of why.
Nancy: But we met Mary Kay, and we sat on her couch, and she did whatever she had to just sell it to us and excite us. You get to meet Mary Kay, the founder of this company. It was pretty cool.
Chris: Did she have a southern accent? Because she was in Dallas?
Nancy: She didn't have a southern accent because.
Chris: That'S what I picture in my head.
Nancy: Blonde, like, blonde hair, sort of. Kind of like a dolly Parton look, kind of like the blond hair. And, you know, and then she was known. She had a big, round bathtub, and the directors and qualification would. The thing to do when you went to Mary Quays house was to sit.
Chris: In the bathtub and have a picture taken with the. With the bath not full.
Nancy: No, nothing. No water.
Chris: Just. It wasn't like a literal baptism.
Nancy: No.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: I don't know why. Who started that?
Chris: Yeah, I mean, was it a fancy bathtub? Is that. Yeah, it was like a lion feet and everything.
Nancy: Fancy bathtub or whatever, you know, I don't remember too much about that, but.
Chris: I mean, can you show me that picture later.
Nancy: I probably have it somewhere. I have to find it.
Chris: Okay, so I have photos of this adventure as well. Actually, my. You know, my mom does. Miss Carlson does. But I took photos of the photos on my phone. As an aside, Miss Carlson had, like, a plethora of stuff, so photos and I think, like, some certificates and I think a sash. And I took pictures of all of it. So we will share it with you, our listeners, our devoted fans, but I will also be sharing it with you right now. So here is Mary Kay herself on the couch and with my. My mother.
Kayla: Okay, cool picture.
Chris: Mm.
Kayla: Disappointed the couch isn't pink.
Chris: I know. I was a little disappointed, too. It's like, a yellow color.
Kayla: Can I please describe you may Mary Kay for everyone. First of all, gorgeous hair, perfectly coiffed.
Chris: Definitely. The first thing you notice when you look at a picture of her is like, holy crap, the hair.
Kayla: Incredible blonde hair, great makeup. She's wearing a glorious red dress festooned with all kinds of jewelry and accoutrement. She has a small white dog on her lap that appears to have a pink bow on its tail.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, I didn't ask about that. I don't think.
Kayla: Okay, so that's the picture of just her second picture is your mother, Mary Kay. I'm assuming that's Meg.
Chris: No, I don't know who that third person is.
Kayla: It's some really third director, sales, whatever. And the dog with what appears to be a pink bow on its tail. Your mom has. What is that, like a. What is that called? A pink ribbon? Like. No, it's not a sash. It's like.
Chris: Oh. It's like a. Like a. I'm the prize chicken ribbon.
Kayla: Yeah, but it's pink.
Chris: Mm.
Kayla: Incredible dress.
Chris: So the relevant bit here is the third one. Right. And if we go to the next picture, it is her in the aforementioned bathtub. So. Yeah, and so the bathtub, as she mentioned, is, like, a thing. It's a ritual, if you will, that director level people, when they go to this conference, it's like a thing that they do. It's like, oh, cool. You got to take a picture in Mary Kay's bathtub. I don't know how it got started.
Kayla: Somebody was smart. The bathtub itself is not pink. It's white. But the surrounding area, including some curtains.
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: Are that blush pink? There's also what appears to be, like, a fine art statue of a bathing woman.
Chris: Yeah, I hadn't noticed that the first time I looked at that picture. But you're right. Like, marble white porcelain, maybe your mom.
Kayla: And the accompanying lady. Flawless makeup. Gorgeous.
Chris: Here is a picture of Mary Kay on stage at this conference.
Kayla: My God. She is my hero. Oh, my God. Okay. There's a lot here to un.
Chris: Yeah. I think that we could maybe just sum it up by saying, like, she's like. Looks like the fairy godmother.
Kayla: She looks like the white queen with Dolly parton hair.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And flawless 1920s style makeup.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. She's got, like, a full white robe. What is that?
Kayla: Don't call it a robe. It appears to be a dress.
Chris: Dress that looks. With a tunic.
Kayla: Looks like a robe. She's amazing, first of all.
Chris: Yeah. And her hair. Crazy.
Kayla: I would follow this woman into battle.
Chris: Yes. So when I said charismatic, this is what I mean.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Right. Just. Just on visual inspection.
Nancy: And then we got a little cookbook that was pink.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: And Mary Kay's favorite recipes. Oh, and I still have it. And I used the ginger crinkles was my favorite cookbook.
Chris: Oh, yeah. You. You've made those many times. And that was from Mary Kay's Ellen recipe book. That's cool.
Nancy: So, you know, it was a very exciting week. Very motivational. Of course, you meet other women from all over the country. You room with kind of like probably if you went to a beauty pageant and all the women room together and.
Chris: Yeah. You know, share another conference or women's.
Nancy: Conference or something, you know. So it was a great week. Learned a lot. Very exciting. You know, we got dressed up, they took pictures of us in our suits, and it was a big. It was a big deal. And then, you know, when you get through it, then you become what they call a director, and then you're, like, up in the management. Right. Of the organization. No. So anyway, so I did that recruiting. And because of that, you asked about recruiting. So because of that, I actually, I did it so well that I got an award of some sort of recruiting award. And when went to, they had a convention every year, and I actually got to go up on stage in front of all these thousands of people to receive a special award for the recruiting efforts that I had. I have.
Nancy: That's what the sash is that I have in the bag.
Chris: Oh, yeah. I asked you to bring out your props, and so you have a. Describe the sash to me real quick.
Nancy: The sash is a purple sash that says queen of recruiting. Queen's Court of Recruitment, 1983.
Chris: It has a little personal background.
Nancy: And I also got, which Mary Kay was known for a diamond studded bumblebee pen.
Chris: Oh, wow.
Nancy: Which I have since converted into a ring.
Chris: But that makes sense. Cool.
Nancy: But dad was there and I wore gown and I was on stage, on this big stage with the big screens and came down the stairs. It was quite, it was quite an impressive moment.
Chris: Yeah. So I'm curious about the timeline a little bit. So you said it took a few months for you to get your 1st 24.
Nancy: Wasn't a few minutes, probably a year. So I don't remember the time or whatever it was.
Chris: Was short.
Nancy: Was short. And which is why I was recognized with probably.
Chris: So you got that recognition. This is during your, during that first DIQ or was it the next?
Nancy: Well, so you went to DIQ, which is a director that was actually become a director, and then a separate award was becoming a queen of recruiting. You didn't have to do all those recruits in that short amount of time. You could take years. And then when you got to your quotient, then you would go to directors of qualification.
Chris: Yes. So this part, when she talks about this, it reminds me a little bit of the stat of the, you know, less than 1% of people that get involved actually succeed. So clearly there are some people that succeed for some reasons and don't succeed for other reasons. But the reason I'm bringing it up now, though, is because I don't know what that stat would have been back when my mom was doing Mary Kay.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So I know that stat was calculated recently. Okay.
Kayla: I mean, do you feel like that the, that percentage has gone down just as mlms? Like, the more mlms there are, the less returns individual people are getting because there's just so many mlms? Like, is that a thing? Like, right now I have the option to go if I want to go buy makeup direct from my friend. I have Avon. I have nu skin. I have about 15 other options.
Chris: Right. Yeah.
Kayla: As opposed to, like, just Mary Kane, Avon.
Chris: So this is complicated. So individual mlms, again, because of the geometric progression of recruits, going down the pyramid eventually will saturate whether you're the only company in the market or not. And that's when the whole thing sort of breaks apartheid part. And the people at the top make their money and the people at the bottom do not now. So, like, that can happen regardless. But is there, you know, is there more competition now that makes that even harder? Maybe. It's tough to say, and I don't have exact facts and figures on that to say for sure.
Kayla: Got it.
Chris: But what I will say is that things have changed over time.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And we will talk about that more. So sit tight.
Kayla: I'm sitting.
Chris: So, you know, so is a roughly 24 recruits in the first year. How many more would you say? And totally, I know you probably don't remember the exact number, but that's what you needed.
Nancy: I wanted to be a director, so you had to keep it, I think, at that level, which meant you had to continually try to bring people in.
Chris: I see. So you had to continually have 24 people, which. Yeah, you have to keep bringing people. Yeah. I guess it doesn't matter the exact numbers levels.
Nancy: Right. You had to keep a certain level of sales and a certain level. I'm not sure if it was even people as much as it was the sales. So I don't know whether the number 24 sticks with me for some reason, but the details, I'm not. I couldn't tell you really what the number was for the sales or anything, but like anything else, people join and people quit. You might have an overachiever in your own group that would sell. Fantastic. And you might have somebody that sold, you know, $50 a month or something. Like with anything else, you have the people that are really go gung ho, and then you have the people that just sort of piddle along. Right. And do whatever they can do, and that's okay.
Nancy: But in order for you to make that quota, you know, you have to continually, you know, motivate with the meetings and things and continually bring people and recruit people into the organization.
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: So I never made it. I never made enough sales to, like, get a car. You know, I never made it to that level.
Chris: I do actually want to harp on that one more time just to be certain. So was it more about, in your memory, it, was it more about the number of people in your organization and potentially, you know, even further down than that. Like, you know, your, your downline, I guess you use that word, but your further networks down. Was it more about the number of people or was it more about the sales of the product?
Nancy: Well, I think at my point, when you're a director, it almost becomes about the numbers and the same. But the sales is an interesting numbers of the sale. No sales.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: Because obviously, the more people you have, the more sales you get. Right. And the more product that's going out the door.
Chris: Okay, interesting. So it's more about.
Nancy: So it's sort of a combination, if.
Chris: You will, sales of the products by the individual consultants to the consumer, more than it is about recruiting new people and having them buy wholesale from Mary Kay?
Nancy: I would say so.
Chris: Interesting.
Nancy: I would say so.
Chris: I think that's a, you know, we'll talk about that more maybe a little bit, or maybe we will have already talked about that by the time I play this of you on the podcast. But that's actually a key distinction. Whether the product is valuable to the end consumer and the sales is oriented around that or whether it's more oriented around recruiting people to buy wholesale. That's actually a key distinction. So that's why.
Nancy: And I think there are other organizations that are that way. Right. Multi level marketing is not just Mary Kay, obviously.
Chris: It's very.
Nancy: So I would say that the product is very, very important to the end. To the end consumer.
Chris: Yeah. In fact, that may even be the most important.
Nancy: And I feel like, and again, this is just my perception. I feel like that they always were trying to have better product, trying to educate you on the product. And I think that Mary Kay, you know, I could be mistaken, but I really felt that she was sincere in terms of wanting women to beautiful and wanting women to be empowered and all that. And I think obviously, it grows and grows from there.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: And probably other things might filter themselves in, but I think her initial intent and having met her, I felt that she was a very sincere, she was obviously a shrewd businesswoman. Right.
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: Very clever, very creative with the pink cars. I think there's books.
Kayla: Yes.
Nancy: She wrote Mary Kay, and there's a couple. I probably had read them at some point, but, yeah.
Chris: Still around or not? She's not still around, but the company.
Nancy: The company is still around, but you don't hear as much about it anymore. And I don't know whether, because she's gone or whether the, you know, the cosmetic industry is so competitive, and there's so many people doing the same type of thing. The world is a changed world today, and people don't have home parties as much anymore. That was a, that was our vehicle of selling.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: Right. So people don't have those parties anymore. You don't hear very much about Tupperware parties or anything. Women are busy. They're out in the workforce. A lot of women are working, and so they don't have time to be a Mary Kay consultant. The market is just different, and maybe the need is different now, the niche that it was maybe back then. So the world has changed. So the product is still a good product, but, and I'm sure they're still making millions, but I don't know really how they do that anymore.
Chris: Mm. Yeah. I mean, it's possible that there's still an appetite for that kind of thing that they can kind of tap into. But I don't know either. That's just me speculating.
Nancy: I don't know.
Chris: So would you say I'm digging into that just a little bit. The aspect of having parties with your friends and everything, did you ever feel like you were pressuring anybody or you were being pressured by Meg, or do you ever feel like the relationships with your friends and family were being exploited in any way? Or did you always feel like it was more, you know, you were bringing like, a value to them and informing them and, you know what I mean? Like, which way did that lean?
Nancy: Right? So I would say I believed enough in the product that I wanted to sell it. Right. But you certainly do. In any of these types of businesses, even if you become a financial advisor or whatever, you sort of have to rely on your immediate, sure, friends, your immediate family to sort of do you a favor, kind of to have a show kind of thing or whatever. So I'm not gonna lie about that. I don't know that I felt like I was exploiting them, but I do think it's a natural thing that you have to sort of start somewhere. And so you start with the natural people, right? Your neighbors, your friends or relatives or whatever, and then you have to, of course, branch out from there because that's. They saturate that market pretty quickly.
Chris: Right? Yeah. I've certainly browbeat enough of my friends and family to listen to this podcast. That rings true.
Nancy: So you, so, you know, you have to start somewhere. You have to, you know, you have to get a foothold somewhere. And that's usually where it is with family. But like I said, even if you were selling finances, you'd have to start the same way, you know, how.
Chris: Many of your recruits would you say were friends and family and how many of them were.
Nancy: Oh, in the beginning, yes, a few of them were friends of him. I can't even remember. Honestly, if you were to tell me, could you repeat who they all were? I couldn't do it. Honestly, I couldn't do it.
Chris: Yeah, well, it's 30 years ago. It's a lot of people.
Nancy: It's been a long time ago. And Aunt Patti was one of them and, you know, another relative was one. But after that they were just people that you sort of met maybe at beauty shows, Orlando or. I'm trying to remember where I got everybody, to be honest with you, because.
Chris: 20 some odd people is not a small number of people.
Nancy: It's a lot, actually. I think one was a wife of a guy I worked with at work. I mean, just people you meet sort of along the way. I don't even, you know, I honestly can't remember 100% who they all were and how I got them, to be honest with you.
Chris: Right. But it sounds like some of them were maybe, like one or two degrees of separation with a co worker or a friend. Did you ever, like, cold recruit anybody? Like, you meet someone in the grocery store?
Nancy: Yeah, probably. Yeah. I think you have to. Which is one of the things that was, I would say, I don't want to say it's a negative because you're trying to grow your business, but one of the hard things about being in Mary Kay and really wanting to succeed was you have to sort of be on all the time. Right. So when you would out go to the mall, you would make sure you looked good. Right.
Chris: Interesting.
Nancy: Right. And you would wear, maybe wear Mary Kay pins, because then someone might say, oh, Mary Kay, I love Mary Kay.
Chris: And they initiate.
Nancy: Then you start talking it up and you talk and talking to people. I mean, there was a lot of that went on as well. Right. So I probably did meet people along the way. That way, you know, you get excited about it. You talked about, why don't you come to, you know, why don't you come to one of my meetings? You know, have you ever done a beauty show? Would you like to do that? You know, and the part of the sales technique was, what's better for you, Monday or Thursday? You didn't say, can you do it?
Chris: You would pass the sale.
Nancy: Right. You might say, I'm going to be in your area next week, so which day is best? So you didn't ask them if they're going to do it. You sort of. Sort of, oh, I guess Wednesday, you know what I mean?
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: So those are sales techniques that you learned along the way.
Chris: Right?
Nancy: You know, yeah. I mean, it was interesting. I have no regrets about doing it. I learned a lot. I think it built a lot of confidence.
Chris: How diverse was your. Was your group? Was it like old, young, both black, white?
Nancy: I think both, I think older and younger. I didn't have. Have any black ladies. I didn't. But. But older and younger, you know, professional people, single, married, you know, kind of all over the place, you know, but you go, if went back to the meeting, I was talking to you about meetings and what else? What else we did, we also. They would recognize. We would recognize you know, maybe somebody for an accomplishment. An achievement, or would say, okay, if you get so many sales next week, you know, you can. You could win this glass. We have crystal glasses, for example, that, you know, so many sales, you could take one home. And so a lot of times, women would be like, oh, that's really cool. I really want that. You know, the.
Nancy: Obviously, the things that we did were to, you know, were motivational to women. Women like pretty glasses. Women like pretty things. I hate to stereotype, but it's true. Right. And so, you know, they would work for something. We all like tchotchkes. You know, a lot of people run marathons just for the metal.
Chris: Of course. Yeah, it's. It symbolizes the achievement. Right. It's not. It's not the metal. It's the. Whenever you look at it, you remember that time that you ran the thing, and when, you know, whenever you look at the sash, it's. You remember the accomplishment that you did. Yeah. It's totally understandable.
Nancy: Yeah. So we would motor, you know, we would sort of inspire people. And I still have crystal glasses, but probably in the cupboard there that I got from Mary Kay. Right.
Chris: That's cool. Yeah, I remember you had the thing on the car, too, the. I still remember on the station wagon, the Mary Kay sticker.
Nancy: Sticker, yeah, yeah. And again, we don't see. You don't see them that often. You don't ever see a pink car anymore. It used to be very common in New England, especially before I moved down. You'd see pink cadillacs and pink cars a lot. Right. So I do think that. That. I'm not even sure that's a part of their marketing thing anymore. I don't know.
Chris: Can we zoom back to Mary Kay, the person, for a minute? Would you characterize her? I think I maybe know the answer to this already, but as a charismatic.
Nancy: Person, yes, I think she was charismatic.
Chris: Did she. I mean, in what way? Was she just, like, well spoken and radiate confidence? Like, what was it about her?
Nancy: I would suppose she was well spoken, but I just think that. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe because she was iconic.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: So when you met her, you were almost in awe of meeting kind of like a celebrity.
Chris: Kind of.
Nancy: Okay, right.
Chris: But did she bring that to the table, too? Like, when. When.
Nancy: Like a genuine, sincere you. I think that's what you got out of there. She was genuine and sincere, that she really cared about you as a person, and you had directors and qualification and that you were joining this, you know, this business and all that, and so I would say she was charismatic. I mean, I don't know that she. She wasn't somebody that was like a meg that was, like, all over and, you know, ringing bells and all that kind of stuff.
Chris: I think she was less energetic and more.
Nancy: But just kind of a. Like a genteel woman from the south would you think would be right, who.
Chris: Just kind of, like, has, like, an appealing way about her. It's just sort of, you know, talks. Talks nice and.
Nancy: Yeah.
Chris: Feels authentic, friendly. Right. Interesting. Okay. And this is sort of, I guess, maybe also already answered, but were your directors above you also charismatic? And it sounds like Meg was, but for a different reason. Her style of charisma was different.
Nancy: Yes, because she. You mean different than Mary Kay herself?
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: Yeah. Well, I think you bring your own. Wherever you go in the world, you bring your own personality. Right. And how you approach life. And that was just the way she approached life. Everything she does is with enthusiasm and fervor. Right.
Chris: She's like a business cheerleader.
Nancy: She's just. She just. That's who she was.
Chris: Right. Yeah. What about your style? I mean, because you were a director yourself, I mean, what do you think was charismatic about you and about the way you were able to recruit?
Nancy: I don't know. I don't have the same style, certainly, as what she. I do feel it. I do believe I was enthusiastic, and I brought it up a couple times already. I think that I was good at it because I believed in what I was selling. If it was solar panels or something, I might not have been as enthusiastic. Right. But because I really believed that I looked better and that the women that use the product look better, and it built confidence in my appearance that I could sell it easy. It wasn't. It wasn't a sales job to me. I was being very sincere, and I think that. I think sincerity comes across when you. When you work with people.
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: And I think people trusted me, and I didn't. I don't think anybody ever felt like they were ever going to be, like, scammed or anything like that. So I think they felt comfortable, probably, with me. I think I. I think I sort of have that in my nature. I'm a nurturer, and I think, you know, I helped people, and I think that they just felt like it would be an okay thing to do.
Chris: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. There's really no substitute for authenticity. I find, too. You know, it's like if you really believe in the thing, then it's, you know, it's that much easier to kind of just communicate that you believe in it. And, you know, why not? If you trust me, then, and I believe in it, then it's easy for you to believe in it, too, right?
Nancy: I mean, I never tried to mislead people. I never. I never tried to pull the wall over anybody. You know, I could never do that in good faith because it's just not who I am as a person. So I just think believing in the whole concept of the product, being a good product, but also being a good way to make some extra money. And it wasn't even really as much about the money as it was about the friendships and the camaraderie and seeing people that had not a lot of confidence really blossom, you know, in the environment and being cared for by other people and being part of a group, you know, like any big group. You know, people like to be involved.
Chris: Sure. They like to feel like they're, they.
Nancy: Like to feel part of something grew great relationships. You all kind of shared the same goals. So there were a lot of things about it that it wasn't about just money, certainly, at all.
Chris: This is actually a good segue because I wanted to ask if there was anything that you felt was not transparent, particularly between the company and yourself, particularly before you joined and after you joined. Like, was there anything that you found out that was like a surprise fee or a surprise like requirement, like you can't earn money till you get this level or anything of that nature that you were surprised to learn after you joined?
Nancy: Not that I can think of. I do think, though, as you climb up and you recognize that, you become a director, you know, you recognize that there are obviously goals that have to be met, right. Sales goals that have to be met. And so as much as the company or somebody might say this is, you do it on your own terms and as much or as little as you want. Well, obviously, when you get to a certain point, it really isn't as much or as little as you want. You really have to meet these goals. If you just want to sell, you know, $50 a month, that was fine. If you just want to sort of be a standalone kind of person. But even then, you know, we would try to encourage people to sell, right?
Nancy: Because they're selling and ordering, and then if they order, then you get the credit for the order. Right. So it wasn't like were on the phone beating on people, but you certainly would try to encourage them at sales meetings and whatnot, to buy the product and try to have more beauty shows. Maybe you only want to do one a month, but maybe we would try to encourage you to do more.
Chris: Right, right.
Nancy: But not ever heavy handed or anything.
Chris: Got it. So you would say maybe it was a little unexpected. How? Like the time commitment was maybe like a little unexpected, but I. But there was nothing explicit that was like a surprise. Gotcha. Or anything like that.
Nancy: Right. I think that's a good. Probably a good way to put it. I never felt like anything was deliberately trying to be underhanded in any way. But the reality is, in order to grow the business, you have to work at it like anything else.
Chris: Right. Which is true.
Nancy: You have to talk to other women. You had to make calls. You had to go out at night to do a beauty show. Show. Sometimes you didn't do very well, and you had to overcome that fear, you know, that failure. I remember the first time I had a beauty show, went all the way to some place maybe 20 miles away, and a group of women and I sold $4 worth.
Chris: That's it.
Nancy: And I was devastated.
Chris: That's a character building moment right there.
Nancy: It was just devastating, you know, and my director had to. Had to build me up. Right. So as a director, you found yourself in that situation. We had to build somebody up and tell them not to, you know, dwell on it. And there'd be, you know, the old sales adage, you know, you have to get ten no's before you get your first yes. Right. It was a constant. It was a constant thing because you're talking to different people in your organization, and women go to women to say, I didn't do very well, and I went all that way. I lugged all my stuff. And I remember saying, and all they were interested in was having the dessert at the end. Dessert and coffee, you know.
Chris: Well, I can respect that.
Nancy: I mean, you know, and that. And it was like, that's hard.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: But sales is hard, of course.
Chris: Yeah.
Nancy: And I don't. They don't necessarily tell you that when they recruit. When you're recruiting people, you're not going to say, well, it's going to be really hard. You know, you're going to have to work at it. But I think that's where the hidden piece of it is that it is a hard. It is hard. You get a lot of no's right to get the beauty shows right. It's never as quite as easy as you think it's going to be from that perspective. I think it's kind of like when you get into any job, you see what the reality of it is.
Chris: Sure. You know, it sounds like your experience overall was very positive. Do you feel like that is a common experience, or do you feel like there were other women that you knew in the organization that maybe felt like it was more of a false hope and they didn't get what they wanted out of it? Or, like, did you have any visibility on that at all?
Nancy: I would say yes, always. You know, there's always people that join hoping to be successful. Right. You're watching somebody like a meg who is so enthusiastic, so positive all the time, and you always hope that it'll be that same way for you. Right. And it isn't right. It just isn't right. Everybody's different. Everybody has a different ability. They sell things differently, they appeal to people differently. And so I would say that there were people that were disappointed, and it wasn't what we told them it would be right because they couldn't get the beauty shows going. They didn't want to drive someplace to do it, or they didn't want to go out at night or, you know, whatever it might be. Right. So, of course, there's negative. There's not going to ever be 100% positive.
Chris: Sure.
Nancy: You know, and then that's why, as I alluded to earlier, people coming and going all the time.
Chris: Yeah. Was there was a lot. A high level of turnover and I.
Nancy: Don'T know, you know, high level, but I do. It was. I mean, I would say it's continuous. You always had to. You always had to be on, as they say, to get the next person in or the next set of product, because people do come and go, you know, it's just the nature, I think, would be the nature of sales. I don't know. We just marry K, but I just think it's the nature of sales. So what the percentage of turnover was, whether it was considered high or not, I don't. You know what? I don't know the answer to that question.
Chris: When you finally did leave the. In 1986 or seven.
Nancy: Yeah.
Chris: What was that like? Did they have, like, a going away party for you? Did they try to convince you not to leave? Did they do both?
Nancy: I don't recall that anyone did a going away thing that maybe my group did. But from an organizational perspective, I do think the organization tried to have me transfer it down to Florida, of course. Right. And that there's directors down here they could. I could work with. In other words, my director would have always been Meg on paper, but they would have been fellow directors here or other leaders that I could have relied on to help me build my business here. And you can carry it because, you know, you could still have consultants there, and they can still be selling, Mary Kay, while you're in Florida. It's not, you know, and then you can just grow your business in Florida. So I do think they tried to do that. I would. I would think that have been.
Nancy: It would have been a natural thing is to try to keep somebody in the organization. Right. Somebody that they kind of groomed and brought into the fold, if you will, you know.
Chris: Right. Who got all of your recruits, all of your people underneath you. Did those just go to your director?
Nancy: I think they went. They went to my director. Yeah. Whatever I had or whoever I had at the time.
Chris: Gotcha. And so then at the end of the day, and I thinking, maybe I know the answer to this one as well. Did you. Did you make or lose money doing it?
Nancy: I made money. I wouldn't say I made millions or anything, but, you know, we had a pretty hefty commission in terms of what we bought the wholesale for and what we sold it for. You know, obviously, you sell and then you reinvest. Right. And you reinvent. And so I had lots of inventory, and I was able to, you know, sell pretty much. So, I mean, I made my. It probably made enough money to make me happy in terms of. That's all I really wanted was sort of some pin money anyway.
Chris: Sure.
Nancy: Yeah.
Chris: You weren't just money. It was.
Nancy: Right. I wasn't out to make millions. I was just out to just maybe just to buy little extra things. You mean for the kids or for myself or whatever. Never really was in it to make a ton of money.
Chris: Mm.
Nancy: You know, but you.
Chris: But you netted positive.
Nancy: But I meant netted positive. Yeah.
Chris: Do you think most people did or do. Are you not sure?
Nancy: I would say price. Some people broke even. Right. They put their initial money in, made some sales, you know, maybe made their initial investment back. That would be what I say about netting even. Maybe some people lost money. How you would do that is if you ordered and then never sold it. Right, right. You know?
Chris: Right. If you had unused inventory.
Nancy: Right.
Chris: Do you have any other interesting stories that we haven't talked about? Like, oh, this one time, you know, XYZ happened, and it was kind of weird or anything, maybe off or strange or.
Nancy: Well, I suppose that, you know, the conventions were, you know, as you called it, pep rallies. They were on a massive scale in Dallas. Right. And so, you know, I did director and qualifications. I went to Dallas. That was just people that are becoming directors. But then annually they would have a convention. And, of course, that was where you wanted to go. Right. As a Mary Kay consultant, that was the thing to do, because, of course, Mary Kay was still alive at the time, and she would speak at the conventions and whatnot, and they would have live entertainment, you know, big name entertainment. And it was a big thing, just like any conference you go today. You'd go to seminars on different topics and whatnot.
Nancy: And there's women came from all over the country or whatever, and dad went to a couple of them with me, and, you know, they would have golf tournaments for the husbands and things, and we still have Mary Kay pink golf ball that he got there. And we, I think it was, Johnny Mathis was one of the guests, entertainers that one year. And so they're wonderful. They were wonderful, you know, again, motivational, rah ZisKumbaugh type of thing. Of course, I would imagine any big sales convention would be very similar, you know, or any big religious event where you go to see Billy Graham or somebody. I'm sure it's all very similar. Right. You're in the. Because you sort of get wrapped up in that mentality, right. Everybody's all pumped up and excited, and that's what they play on.
Nancy: That's exactly how that's that type of business, what it is.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: You can't go in there just like, oh, let's sell, you know?
Chris: Right. Of course. Yeah.
Nancy: You know, so I would say, I don't know that's unusual, but I think that those are definitely memorable.
Chris: Yeah. The conventions, did you feel like they were, like, encouraging that sort of like a certain mentality, a certain, like, way of living, like, rah, rah, be positive and.
Nancy: Oh, absolutely.
Chris: If you're positive, then you'll get what you want kind of thing.
Nancy: Oh, it was always about positivity. Right. I think it has to be. You know, as a matter of fact, at our sales meetings, we would, and you might have heard me say this through the years, you know, we would discourage being negative, and we would call you a negative Nelly if you were being negative at the sales meetings. Right. Because you don't want to be a Debbie downer. Right. Negative Nellie or a Debbie downer at the meetings and, oh, you can't sell and, oh, whatever. Right. So you'd have to try to turn it around from a positive perspective. Right, right. Which is why they would encourage you to sort of brag on yourself to say, well, you did. And then.
Chris: So what constituted negativity? Was it basically coming in saying, like, I've had a tough time selling.
Nancy: Right? Yeah. Yeah. I had a hard week. I didn't sell very much. I only sold $4 at my show. Right. Or I wasn't able to book any shows or, you know, any number of things, you know, and, you know, you might feel bummed. Right?
Chris: Sure.
Nancy: You feel bummed. You're trying to. Trying to grow your business, and you didn't have any luck. Or I wasn't able to talk to anybody this week, or I had all these goals, and I didn't make, you know. Didn't make them.
Chris: Yeah. So the negative Nelly thing is actually something that I saw in my online research, as well. And it ties back. Of course. Well, that ties back to what we're talking about is the whole positivity negativity thing. And again, it's, you know, I saw people that were like, yeah. You know, I love that Mary Kay is so positive. And I saw people that were like, you know, I feel stifled by, like, you know, being said, I can't be. I can't voice concerns, so.
Kayla: Because sometimes it's just like, you need to. You're not necessarily being inherently negative if you're, like, venting about the bummy things that happen to you. Like.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: That's not an aspect that I personally would respond to. Like, I'm somebody who needs to be able to, like, air both sides.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: For me, that would not be a motivating tactic.
Chris: Yeah. And, I mean, it sounds like with Miss Carlson, like, that happened with her as well, you know, where her very first experience was kind of a, you know, a big downer for her. So clearly, whatever her director did was able to kind of, like, get her over that hump and motivate her.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So, you know, I don't know what it was that she did. You know, I'm not. I doubt that she said, don't be a negative Nellie and get the hell out of here. She probably said words that were more encouraging than that. Right. So, I don't know. It's. It's. It's. Honestly, it's probably. And I think. I think I talk about this, actually. I think I'm just gonna be repeating myself again. But. But I think a lot of it just comes down to the actual person, too, you know, who some people are good at motivating and being encouraging, and some people are probably not as good at it.
Kayla: Right.
Nancy: I alluded to the fact earlier that the world was different then. You know, we didn't have cell phones or anything. We would cold call out of phone books a lot of times to get names. Right? Yeah, I would. I would. Personally, I would go up to my little office, and I would set aside time every. I don't know, every night or every other night or whatever to literally cold call.
Chris: Wow.
Nancy: And try to get people to open up their home, which, when you think about. It's kind of brave right now, but. And then you'd meet people, like, in the grocery store or at the whatever. Then you'd have to follow up on them. You know, you might put out a little thing at, like, a fair where they, you know, you give away something for free, and you put your name in the drawing, and then you take the drawing and you. Then you'd call people. So, you know, there's a lot of follow up and there's a lot of work. And so I think a lot of times people would come into the meetings kind of like, maybe they would be overwhelmed or. Sure, they're not nearly as aggressive or. I don't want to say they're not hardworking, but they're more timid. Right.
Nancy: And it's hard for them to call and talk to somebody. So that's what people would be. Maybe more negative.
Chris: I am a little bit curious about the. When you say, like, oh, don't be a Debbie downer or negative, Nelli. To me, as an outsider, it feels a little bit like some of those feelings might be legitimate. Like the week that you struggled and had your dollar four party. I think it's okay to feel bad about that. So would you say that it was more about building you back up and. And making you feel encouraged? Or was it more like, don't bring those negative feelings in here?
Nancy: No, no. I would say the other, I would say try to. Try to build them back up and say, you know, whatever it was that we would say that you're going to have what? You know, you're going to have a bad show in there once in a while, you know, kind of thing. And don't let it discourage you and.
Chris: Okay.
Nancy: You know, blah, blah. Like that.
Chris: Gotcha.
Kayla: Yeah.
Nancy: But they. They certainly. People would certainly bring it. Bring it. Because that's where you would bring it. Right. Those are the only other people that'll understand what you're feeling anyway, right?
Chris: Of course. Yeah.
Nancy: How did. Because it's discouraging.
Chris: Of course it is. Yeah. It's legitimate. Yeah. So you mentioned the other members of your organization sort of had a unique perspective on, like, the trials and tribulations, so to speak. That reminded me. How did I. How did dad feel about all this? Was he, like, super encouraging? Was he. I mean, he went with you to the conferences, so it sounds like he was into it.
Nancy: I think he was encouraging because I think that's his nature anyway. He's very supportive of whatever I would choose to do. And he probably felt like if I wanted to do it good, you know, it gave me something, quote unquote, for myself to do, focus on. And I do think I gained confidence in terms of, at least from a sales perspective, and how to handle that, how to be motivational with people, how to say the right thing to make them feel better, because you sort of have to. As a director, especially, you just have to know the right things to say when you have a four dollar show or you don't sell anything.
Chris: Right, right.
Nancy: You know, you have to sort of acknowledge their concern and then help them move on to a different place, you know? So I think that all those are positives, but I don't think he ever felt.
Chris: Was he ever skeptical of the financial implications, like, that might cost you money potentially?
Nancy: No, I don't think so, because it really wasn't much money, really. Do you know what I mean? You invest that initial amount to get you training kit and all of that. But I. But it wasn't like you're talking thousands and thousands of dollars or anything like that. You kind of ordered as you went. Right. So I might get low on inventory. So then I would need to order more. Got it.
Chris: So it wasn't like you had to pay several thousand dollars upfront.
Nancy: No, no. So I. Maybe then I think you might be a little more skeptical.
Chris: So it was interesting. You were just talking about some of the things that you. The skills you developed as a consultant. Consultant and later director and trying to encourage people who are having bad sales days or, you know, recruiting sales, all that stuff. Would you say that was a key piece of your career development that later enabled you to be an effective leader at Disney?
Nancy: I think that the skills are transferable. It certainly, as a director, Mary Kay, you were. I was a leader. Right. I had to learn how to motivate and inspire and all that. And I think that's something that I do quite well with my team members today. So I think that there's probably indirect transferable skills there.
Chris: Yeah. You'd say you got that sort of like that training skills, almost like you sort of had some. Some leadership training that later benefited you later. You got value out of.
Nancy: Yeah, I think so. On the sales piece of, say, I find myself going to that not all the time, but definitely anticipating people's responses and how perhaps, like, if you're going to do have maybe a meeting that you anticipate some confrontation or something, you can kind of anticipate what the comments might be and how you might want to in advance kind of set the stage so you can combat those objections. Sure.
Chris: Sure.
Nancy: I mean, it's not objections in terms of sales, but I think you always have situations with his confrontation, potential for confrontation and anticipating what that might be. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of skills that I could transfer, but I don't know that I could say because of Mary Kay, I am where I am today. You know, it didn't hurt. Right. It was helped in a lot of ways, and it served, ultimately, I guess the answer is it served its purpose at a time in my life that it happened at a good time in my life where I had given up my career at GE, needed to feel fulfilled, wanted to accomplish and achieve something in the context of being a stay at home mom. So it served its purpose at that time in my life.
Nancy: I think it's a good way to put it.
Chris: That's. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I thought that was a really interesting summation of some of the stuff that we've been talking about, and we'll continue to talk about regarding the, you know, intangibles, regarding the non monetary things that. That you get out of engaging with something like this. Right. It served its purpose at a time in my life and in particular a time in her life when, you know, she had been in the workforce and then, you know, was a homemaker but still wanted to fulfill some of those social and achievement needs. So that, you know, it's an interesting summation of that to me. So the name of the game, as you know, of course, is cult or just weird. As an insider, someone with firsthand knowledge of Mary Kay cosmetics, what would your verdict be and why?
Nancy: Well, I think your gut would be that because of, like, the pep rally ish aspect of the singing, the song and the charismatic leader and all that, you know, the follower, you know, the follower mentality and sort of the adoration. Right. Of America, an iconic symbol who built this business for women. You know, I think your gut would go towards when you hear about the cultish aspect sometimes of other cults. Right. But it doesn't I don't believe it meets the other criteria in that, you know, no harm. You know, there's not been harm. There was never like, oh, you can't get out of this now, you know, you have to stay, you know, in the business, or you have to buy $10,000 worth of product, and, you know, there was not any of that heavy handedness or anything done against anybody's will.
Nancy: I don't think it was anything was misleading or anti factual or whatever the terminology was. Having been sort of on the inside. I think that they were clever in their marketing. They knew how to appeal to women, what excited women and what women sort of needed in their lives. But I don't ever think it was in a negative way. I just think it was the marketing and the pink cars and the. And the tchotchkes at the meetings and things. I think they appealed to him, but I don't think they did. They were growing their business for a product that appealed to women. But I never felt, you know, in retrospect, I never felt taken advantage of or scammed or threatened or. The only thing that was, you know, difficult is that it was a business.
Nancy: And like anything else in life, you sort of got out of it what you put into it. And maybe some women joined thinking it was going to be easier than it was and that, you know, things would come their way. And again, nothing ever comes your way. You just sort of have to work at almost everything in life, whether it's a relationship, whether it's at work, whether it's at a business or whatever. And I think that's so. And. But I don't think it's just weird either. I just think it was clever marketing.
Chris: What about the song? The song wasn't weird.
Nancy: I think the song, you sort of laugh at it now, right? And that's, in retrospect, yeah. But I think it served a purpose.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: Just like. Just like a cheerleading session does it at a school, you use the term pep rally. Why do they do that? It gets to get people pumped up and excited about stuff. So I think it served its purpose. It sounds silly now singing it, but at the time it felt okay, right?
Chris: Sure. Yeah. And it's like any other, like you said, there's. Universities have their own fight songs. Sure.
Nancy: They have fight songs and cheerleaders and all that. So there's obviously a reason for that type of thing that people do. And I think it's the exact same thing. We didn't have people cheerleading at the front of the room, but we sang.
Chris: And we sort of did in a way.
Nancy: In a way, I guess it just sort of helped everybody just bond together.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: Right.
Chris: Well, I appreciate your time. This has been a fascinating discussion. Is there anything else you'd like to say to our listeners before we sign off?
Nancy: No, I don't think I have anything more to say, you know, about Mary Kay, other than I wouldn't. I hope I didn't portray it in a negative light. It served its purpose in a different time. I think it would be different today.
Chris: Yeah. To me, it sounded like you from everything you said, you had a very positive experience.
Nancy: I had a positive experience. It was hard work, cold calling, talking to strangers. But that's how we had to grow the business. It probably might be easier today with social media. Maybe we be easier today. But back then, it was a lot more personal contact and really having to, as I said several times to be on. And from that perspective, it was difficult because you could never let it go.
Chris: Right.
Nancy: It was always sort of in the back of your head that I should talk to that woman behind me in line, that I should talk to that lady at church or whatever. And if there's any negative, that was what it was. But not because were forced to do it, but because we knew that's how you got the business.
Chris: That makes sense. Thank you for your time, misses Carlson. It's been great having you on the show. Maybe we can talk again at some point later. And of course, if you think of anything in between now and when we actually record and edit the rest of this episode, you know, feel free to email me any details or let me know anything.
Nancy: Okay.
Chris: Thank you for your time.
Nancy: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.
Chris: So that was interesting. I know we talked about bits as went, but I guess, like the first thing, by the time I had done this interview, I had already done a lot of the online research, and I had listened to the dream and whatnot. And so my first thought was kind of like, what the fuck is going on here?
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: And I think we sort of have some insight on that now a little bit, which we'll talk about. But it was very confusing. And I. I do think the first thing I thought actually was, well, this is appropriate for the show because it's like I'm confused now.
Kayla: Right, right. The more confusing the better.
Chris: But. But, yeah, like, there's. There's certainly a discrepancy between what she described as her experience and what we know to be true about mlms in the industry in general and the structure I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about that? Because I definitely want to get your take, because like I said, right after this happened, right after I heard these answers from her, I was pretty confused. So I'm curious about what your thoughts are right now.
Kayla: I guess what it just makes me. What all this makes me think about, like, thinking about the previous episode where you talked about the nature of, like, mlms in general, and then being able to hear the experience of somebody who seemed to really enjoy their time in it and seem to have success. And success doesn't necessarily need to be measured by, like, the amount of money you make.
Nancy: Right.
Kayla: Like, because there are multiple reasons to get involved with an MLM. You could lose money and still be successful. You know what I mean? Not for somebody who is financially desperate and not somebody who's being taken advantage of and exploited in that way by an MLM. But if you're a person that's going to a Mary Kay or going to a lularoe or going to a whatever, simply with.
Chris: Probably not that second one, but, yeah.
Kayla: With more of a. For you. There's a variety of ways to find success that don't necessarily hinge on the financial component.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: I guess it's like the system is exploitive, but not to everyone. And I think a lot of systems that are exploitive are like that. Like, you know, we talk. This is gonna get deep, but we talk about that a lot with various systems in society. Like, they can be exploitive to marginalized people and not exploitive to non marginalized people.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So I think maybe that. Don't you think that's danger, though?
Chris: I mean, like, sure, of course.
Kayla: But I also think it's something that you and I talk about a lot. The, like, social justice versus individual justice, how sometimes those things don't quite line up.
Chris: They don't line up sometimes. Right.
Kayla: This system, which is built, unfortunately, to be exploitive, that's not necessarily going to be the nature of every. In every individual experience.
Chris: Yeah. I'm also not convinced that all of these systems were built to be exploitive.
Kayla: Okay. When I say that, I don't. I don't mean, like, consciously.
Chris: Well, no, I know, but I think some. Some definitely are.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Based on my research, and then some, I think, find themselves being drawn more that way.
Kayla: What's the nature of the beast? Like, if you are an MLM, if you. If you're. If the way you make money is not by creating value.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Then isn't that gonna kind of just happen?
Chris: Yeah. Well, it's in. But that's the thing, though, right? Like, maybe Mary Kay is creating a value with their skincare products, right? But it, once you pursue a business model that involves this sort of, like, mathematically unsustainable thing that can, at its core, is, you know, prone to exploiting, then it almost doesn't matter what the product is because now you're doing that and you can get sucked more into it. And in fact, we talk about this a bit more. But I just, I wanted to get your initial take because after that interview, I was like, what? What's going on?
Kayla: But, yeah, I mean, it's, honestly, it's very, it lightens my heart a bit, honestly, to hear. And granted, we're right now, we've only listened to one person's experience. But it does lighten my heart to know that it is possible to have a good and successful experience in the system that is, unfortunately, by conscious or unconscious design, can hurt a lot of people. It's nice to know that doesn't always happen and that there's different ways.
Chris: To find, at least in Mary Kay.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: In 19.
Kayla: Right, right. I'm talking specifically about Mary Kay in 1981. I have no idea what the situation is now or in other organizations. It just, it does make me, it makes me feel good to hear that this was a good experience, especially for somebody like as baller as your mom, you know?
Chris: Yeah. So I definitely have more to say about this whole thing because this is the thing that, again, after I did this research and then had this interview, I was, this was the thing that was kind of, like, boiling in my brain. So what's going on here? So that's kind of the thing that I followed up on. And so I'll tell you what I think my own personal conclusions are. But before I do that, I want to walk you back to a few weeks ago when I was still being stumped by this enigma. I wanted to reach out to a second person that knows about Mary Kay, was involved more recently than the eighties, and might be able to offer some perspective for that.
Chris: I reached out to a woman by the name of Tracy Conan, who runs a website of one of my primary research sources. So I actually talked about this in the previous episode as a research source. And this is the website pinktruth.com dot.
Kayla: You talked to the person who runs pink truth? Like, I've heard of pink truth.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Damn.
Chris: Yeah. She did an interview for Cultor. Just weird.
Kayla: That's amazing.
Chris: Yeah. I don't know why she did that? Like, we're small time.
Kayla: Thank you, Tracy. That's amazing.
Chris: Yeah. And she's sort of on the baller level of Miss Carlson, it sounds like I keep wanting to, like, say, like, miss Carlson and not my mom. Cause I don't want it to be like my family in the show, but.
Kayla: That'S what it is.
Chris: Yeah, I know. Anyway, so we haven't really talked about pink truth, other than the fact that I've said that. I did a lot of reading on it. But essentially, it's, at its core, it's an informational resource for current and former Mary Kay beauty consultants, but also a good resource if you are considering becoming one.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: If you recall from last episode, and even from this episode, information is hard to come by in the MLM space by design.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Pink Truth is definitely highly critical of the company and its practices, but really no more so than we have been about mlms in general, starting with last episode.
Kayla: Got it.
Chris: So, yeah. So Tracy was kind enough to join me on Skype for a quick interview about Mary Kay and mlMs. And specifically, I reached out to her again because I was confused. I was like, do you know why this might be the case? What's going on here? And she had a lot to say. So without further ado, we will play my interview now with Tracy Conan. First of all, thanks for jumping on the call. I really appreciate your time. If you could give us a quick background on yourself, who you are and where you come from, that kind of thing, just to kind of level set for our listeners.
Tracy Coenen: I'm Tracy Conan. I'm a forensic accountant. I have been in solo practice for more than 19 years. I'm based in Milwaukee. I do quite a bit of my work in the Chicago area, but I do take cases around the country, and I was in Mary Kay between 1998 and 2000. So quite a while ago now, never achieved the levels of success that were, of course, presented to me as possible.
Tracy Coenen: And after a couple of years in Mary Kay, I had started my own forensic accounting practice, did both of the things at the same time, and at some point decided that forensic accounting was really where my future was and had kind of gotten wise to what the deal was with Mary Kay, in essence, that it is a grand scam that takes money from millions of women every year, and I wanted no part of that anymore. So left Mary Kay to focus completely on forensic accounting, and about five years later, got interested in researching multilevel marketing, found some people online who were discussing Mary Kay and other multilevel marketing companies and got involved in discussions about, you know, the abuses that I saw in the company, and my ultimate conclusion, that it was a scam and that multilevel marketing in general was a scam.
Tracy Coenen: And from there, after, you know, being involved in some various discussion boards and things like that, I decided to start a website in 2006 focused on Mary Kay. And initially it started really as something that was going to be just for fun, kind of a gossip site. And I got some great interest in the site early on, and a lot of people discussing the company. And I decided within a few months that maybe this was something that I should use a platform to really educate women about what's going on in Mary Kay and other mlms. And then I started to take the site more seriously and started to really push to educate women and the general public about the facts of multilevel marketing and, of course, Mary Kay specifically. And that's how pink truth started. We started in July of 2006.
Tracy Coenen: So I think that makes us almost 13 years old now and still have a very robust following. You know, I watch the statistics about how many people are visiting the site, and, you know, we have over a million unique visitors a year that come to the site.
Chris: Wow. One of those is me now.
Tracy Coenen: Excellent. Thank you.
Chris: Yeah, I've been poking around there for sure as part of my research on this episode.
Kayla: Okay. This is nothing to do with Mary Kay.
Chris: Is this for the podcast or are you just telling me something?
Kayla: This is. This is for the podcast.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: What the fuck is a forensic accountant, and how do I be one?
Chris: Why don't you unpause it?
Kayla: But I'm talking to you now.
Chris: Yeah, I'm telling you should probably unpause the. You should probably resume the interview.
Kayla: Oh, God.
Chris: So you actually covered, like, my first two or three questions.
Tracy Coenen: Sorry, I just ran with you.
Chris: No, that's great. That's great. That means that I was on the right track. That's awesome. Forensic accounting, by the way, sounds. It just sounds really interesting to me, actually. So this is not a question I had written down, but a little curious about what's involved in that work.
Tracy Coenen: So my practice focuses completely on forensic accounting. I do not provide any traditional accounting services. Provide mostly fraud investigation services. That's the easiest way to sum it up. My practice is roughly divided into thirds. A third of what I do is the fraud investigations, typically involving corporations and upper level management and executives stealing from the companies. A third of what I do involves divorce work for very wealthy people who have interesting financial situations and are potentially hiding assets and hiding sources of income. And then the other third of the work is litigation work that involves contracts between businesses gone bad and people losing money, maybe business divorces, things like that. And so all of this sort of encompasses a fraud aspect to it, usually in some way, shape, or form.
Chris: Right. That sounds super interesting to me.
Kayla: I want to do that. I want to do that job.
Chris: Did that answer your question?
Kayla: How do I be that? That's the coolest thing I've ever heard.
Chris: Well, you have to. Math good.
Kayla: Can't.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Can I do it anyway?
Chris: I mean, you are into doing, like, in depth research, so, you know, maybe.
Kayla: Can we call ourselves forensic podcasters?
Chris: I mean, I don't see why not. Yeah, let's do it. We don't need to have a license or anything. So.
Kayla: Yeah, that's amazing.
Chris: Yeah, I thought that was pretty. I was like, sitting there listening to that, going like, whoa.
Kayla: Yeah, that is definitely a whoa.
Chris: So, regarding going back to pink truth, I guess you sort of answered this question a little bit. But what motivated you to pursue that project? Was it your time with Mary Kay? Like, what was the impetus for that for you?
Tracy Coenen: So, in talking with other people online about their experiences in multilevel marketing, and more specifically in Mary Kay, I found that there were a lot of people wanting to talk about it. And various websites would come and go, various chat boards would come and go. And so I had this idea that I wanted to create a website that would live on into infinity for people to do this. What I saw was that people would get afraid because they'd be threatened with litigation or they'd be doxxed by other people and have their identities exposed. And there were things that made running a website like this a little bit scary for people, or they simply just got tired of it. It's a topic that can wear you out.
Tracy Coenen: There's a lot of abuse heaped upon you when you have a site like this by people who are involved in mlms. I can't tell you the amount of verbal abuse I've taken in phone calls, voicemails, emails. I had a group of people who literally set out to destroy my forensic accounting business by attempting to contact my book publisher, clients of mine, professional organizations that I belong to, filing false reports with licensing agencies about me, and things of the sort. When you are impacting people the way that pink truth has, they can get very vicious. And so I didn't actually know how serious it could become and what these folks could do when they're angry with you. But I did know that people are being scared off from having these websites. And so I said, okay, here's what I'm going to do.
Tracy Coenen: I'm going to start a website and I'm going to keep it running. And what's funny is within about the first year of the site being active, and it was very active right away, Mary Kay Incorporated was of course, notified by its salesforce that this was going on. And they put out communications to their highest level of people in the pyramid and said the best way to deal with this is to just ignore it because eventually it's going to go away. Well, 13 years later, here we are. And I'm actually pretty proud of that fact.
Chris: Yeah, of course. Yeah, 13 years. Wow. That's so crazy about the sort of the retaliatory stuff. I don't necessarily want to go too much into that, obviously, but just the fact that it's happening and that's so, ugh, man, it's scary.
Tracy Coenen: It's gross.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, gross is a good word. Okay, sort of a two in one question here about mlms in general. Do you think there are any MLM companies that could be considered, quote unquote, like legitimate businesses? As a forensic, since you're an expert here, is that something you think any MLM company could be a legitimate business? And if not, then is there maybe a spectrum of legitimacy, do you think? Are some mlms more up and up than others? Or is it just kind of, they're all bad based on their, you know, fundamentally on the business model, MLM is.
Tracy Coenen: Always bad and it's always a scam. And here's the reason, because they are always based on endless chain recruiting. Number one, mathematically it can never work because you run out of people too fast. Number two, they will try to focus your attention on the retailing of products. But what we have seen through research, through the data that is provided by the companies themselves, we have seen that retailing occurs in such small amounts that it is nearly impossible to make a living simply from retailing the products. So the recruiting doesn't really work. The retailing doesn't really work. It's not actually a business. Now, there are some mlms that are going to refer to themselves as direct sales, and really it's a misnomer. And it's meant to draw attention away from the recruiting.
Tracy Coenen: If there were a business that was strictly sales, which is what direct sales tries to be, that might be okay. But again, you go back to the way the numbers work, and what we've seen is that these products and the pricing and the way the competition is set up in these companies, it is almost impossible to actually make a living selling their products. So direct sales sounds fabulous, but your possibility of actually being able to do it successfully and make a living from it is almost impossible.
Chris: Right. I've heard the number that I've come up in doing this research is it's less than 1% chance of success.
Tracy Coenen: Right. Less than 1% of people involved in multilevel marketing actually turn a profit. So you'd better going and sitting at a roulette table.
Chris: That's why I say almost the exact same thing. And I've already started writing the script for the episode and what I say that about, but I say I use slot machines instead.
Tracy Coenen: Sure.
Chris: Do you think that there is a possibility that certain companies can become more MLM y, for lack of a better word, over time? Like, can they transition their business model more towards that or away? And do you think that's something that could possibly have happened with Mary Kay? And I guess by Mlme, I mean, like, you know, like, let's say I have a business and it's, you know, I'm just selling things like normal, and then I, you know, suddenly I'm like, hey, wait, what if I started doing a recruiting scheme and then now I'm becoming as a business, more. More like an MLM? Do you think that's something that's possible or that may have happened with Mary Kay or could have happened in the.
Tracy Coenen: Early years of Mary Kay? There definitely was a greater focus on selling. And I think that at that time, it was possible to develop a viable retail business because women didn't have as many opportunities to buy their personal care products.
Nancy: Right.
Tracy Coenen: There were so many stay at home moms who didn't get out of the house a lot. And so this in home party model saw a lot of success early on. It was a really great option for women to be able to buy things and so you could develop a retail selling business that way. But as time went on, Mary Kay and her executives found that recruiting people and getting them to buy inventory packages and getting their money in hand immediately, whether or not they had sold to any customers, was very lucrative. And that's what we see happens with companies that maybe start out with a. With a quote, better model that is focused on retailing.
Tracy Coenen: Once they see the amount of money that can be made by the owners of the companies by doing this recruiting model and then enticing the recruits to buy, either buy inventory packages or buy products recurring on a monthly basis, things like that. There's so much money to be made that these companies all eventually become more and more MLM like and more focused on the recruiting, because that's really where the money is. When you go back down to the retail sales level and you look for third party customers actually buying the products and you see how little there is there. You have to focus on the recruiting and getting the distributors to buy the products. And whether those products sit in their basements or garages, who cares? The company's already made their money.
Chris: Right. Right. That's a little off script for my questions here, too, but it's so fascinating that evolution sort of just based on seeing the bottom line. Like, I can. I can picture that in a boardroom. Right? Yeah. So you'll notice there that now, of course, I didn't talk to Tracy ahead of time about all the word shenanigans I was going to use on the previous episode with making money versus getting money.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But I think that it's actually instructive to talk about it just. Just for a second here because it sounds like that's what, to me, what I hear when I hear about companies that evolve in the manner that she describes is I hear executive teams and I hear boardrooms and leadership in these companies that lose focus on that value creation aspect. And if you're more focused and more focused on just getting the money rather than making the money right, then it doesn't matter how you get it, as long as you get it right. And it seems like it's. When you lose that focus that this type of evolution is, I mean, scarily natural.
Kayla: That's what I was gonna say, is that it, like, it almost feels like a virus.
Chris: A little bit.
Kayla: It almost feels like if somebody comes up with an idea that has the potential to be. Become MLM, it's gonna be like you. You're gonna become an MLM?
Chris: Yeah, potentially.
Kayla: It's like. Like when you just. When you just said that, it's. It's almost natural like that. I don't know, that just makes me think of, like, weird slippery slope situation. Like, it's really easy to understand.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: How this happens.
Chris: Sure. I think I might even say a little bit of this during the interview with her. But, yeah, I mean, I can totally envision that. That meeting, right, with the CFO and presenting to the boardroom. Hey, look, we changed our strategy, our marketing model, and our sales went up 300% last quarter. And then, like, great job, Jim. You know, let's start doing that now. Right. And then it's like, okay, well, but where is the room at the table for that to talk about the. The ethics of the, like, the, you know, triangle structure there, right. Like, it. I don't know. It's. It's. It's tough. It's so tough. And it's. You know, and that's. I mean, now we're. I don't want to, like, go too much into this because then we start talking about just, like, corporate ethics in general.
Chris: And, you know, MLMs are certainly not the only corporations that engage in questionable ethics. So, you know, this is a rabbit hole that we have to rapidly back out of, or else we will sink. Maybe we'll talk about this stuff on a future show. And by maybe, I mean definitely. But, yeah, I can see where absent strong ethical leadership, this type of thing can happen.
Kayla: Right. Even maybe with strong ethical leadership, like, it's probably really easy to. It's kind of like we all have two people operating us, and it's probably really easy to kind of let the little, like, baser man living in your head kind of run rampant with this thing while you have, like, the higher level. You being like, no, we're really providing.
Chris: Freud would call it the super evil.
Kayla: Yeah, sure. That I choose to not invoke him. Cause he sucks. But you know what I mean? It's like, you can probably really convince yourself as an ethical person. Like, I can't. I just can't picture everybody being, like, mustache twirling.
Chris: Yeah, we talked about this last episode, right. How I think that, like, a lot of these CEO's, a lot of these people in these leadership positions, I'm sure they're drinking their own Kool Aid.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: They have to be. Right. And another thing. And then we'll go back to the interview. But, you know, we talked about this earlier in the episode. Mary Kay Ash herself gave a lot of money to charity.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: She started a foundation that, you know, so one hand, she's doing something that's, you know, like, good with her money.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But then on the other hand, on the income side, it's, well, how many women is she hurting by doing that? So it's so hard to end. I mean, the devices do the same thing. The devices give a lot to charity.
Kayla: Well, so they're also now in our government, so.
Chris: Yeah, that's. Again, trust me, that will be an episode.
Kayla: Oh, God.
Chris: What do you think about Mary Kay's product itself? Like, that, about their actual beauty products? Because, you know, we talked about, like, the product being sort of more of a token. And it's less about that than it is about just recruiting more people to buy it and stuff it in their garage. So that's why to me, it seems like important to kind of suss out, like, is it a quality product? Do people want it? Is it not like, is that any part of the compelling bit of it at all?
Tracy Coenen: The Mary Kate product is okay. It is on par with what you can get at Walmart, Target, a drugstore. So it's a mediocre type of product. It works fine for some people, but it is priced at the level of department store products, which are much higher quality. So basically, the Mary Kay product is overpriced for what it is. Does it work very well for some people? Of course, everyone's going to find some sort of product out there that works better for them than something else. But as a general rule, the product is overpriced for what the quality is.
Chris: Just say it again on the mic.
Kayla: You can attest to this. I have been through the wringer when it comes to skincare in particular.
Chris: Right. Because your face is all fucked up.
Kayla: Yeah, I'm disgustingly disfigured and it's horrifying. And I've been. I have tried so many different products and I have experimented with so many different products and I have researched so many different products.
Chris: Have you tried Mary Kay?
Kayla: I have not tried Mary Kay for skincare, and I will not. But that's because I have a particular skin condition that.
Chris: Oh, right. For you, it's less about the brand and whatever, and it's more about the, like, specific.
Kayla: It can't have anything in it for me, it can't have anything in it. I'm a sad sack. But before my skin flipped out. Yeah. As a teenager, in particular, I used Mary Kay products. And I can't really speak necessarily to the quality of Mary Kay products outside of, like, I enjoyed every product I had from them. But I just want to say that, like, in terms of things you can buy at the drugstore and or at Target or a department store are not necessarily worse or better than something you can get anywhere. There's quality products depending on what you need, there's quality products at every price point.
Kayla: From my experience, like one of the, in my opinion and in a lot of dermatologist opinions, one of the best skin, like one of the best moisturizers for your face is something you go to the drugstore to get. Serazi, it's literally like, oh, yeah, it's the one that I use or, like, cetaphil is also, like, those are, quote unquote low quality or, like, drugstore brands, but they're really great. Like, so I just, I. And I think something that's also important to say, not to be, like. I'm not, like, trying to argue. I just. It made me think of it when you. You buy things for different reasons. You know what I mean?
Kayla: Like, if you're at a party that your friend is having and you get a makeover and it's fun and you're, like, having a good time buying a lipstick in that environment, you're buying it for a different reason than going to the drugstore and trying to get, like, whatever's the cheapest. You know what I mean? Or whatever's, like, the quality matches the price.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: You're. You are getting a different. You're purchasing a different value.
Chris: So for. Yeah, I mean, I forget whether this is something I read in freakonomics or some Malcolm Gladwell claptrap, but there were. There was a study done or maybe multiple on people's purchasing, and then, like, the. Essentially the utility they got out of it, which was. I think they measured that biochemically. I think they, like, somehow, or maybe. Maybe it was a subjective survey, I'm not sure. But either way, they had some measure of, like, the value that the person felt like they got out of it. Basically. They would try different products that were actually the same inside the. The packaging, right. But the packaging was different, and the packaging influenced how much subjective value the person felt like they got out of the same exact thing.
Chris: So, like, the better looking, the prettier, the more, like, you know, rustic or whoever know, you know, whatever it is the package looked, the more they enjoyed, you know, eating the olive oil or mustard or whatever the fuck it was.
Kayla: And it's hard to say, like, whether or not that's, like, bad or good. You know what I mean? It's hard. You can go like, oh, it's all a scam. Like, everything is just a scam. Like, packaging is a scam. You're getting the same thing, blah, blah. And also you can go, the experience you have, even if it doesn't match the quote unquote quality of the product, like, the experience that you have is still the experience that you have.
Chris: Right. No, I mean, I don't know if this necessarily applies back to mlms, but certainly, I mean, my opinion on the packaging thing is. Yeah, I mean, if somebody wants to buy the olive oil that looks like glass shaped like an olive tree, or whatever the hell, because it makes them enjoy the olive oil more then fine.
Kayla: Right? That's actually something that does relate back to this for a long time. I was really into, in particular, this, like, beauty and skincare podcast growing up. I think that they actually just, like, went on hiatus. Definitely. Check them out. Esther and Caroline glowing up podcast when they would, like, talk about makeup and skincare products and do unboxings or talk about their hauls or whatever. One of the things they would talk about in addition to quality of the product, if they like the color, if they like the feel, whatever was the packaging. And that's especially for people in my age bracket and younger. Packaging is really important. And like makeup companies are.
Chris: It's not just your age bracket.
Kayla: Cooler things with packaging than they've done in the past. Like, that's honestly a big part of, like, the whole Kardashian beauty empire. Like, they focus a lot. Sometimes they steal their packaging ideas from other people, and it sucks. But that's just indicative of, like, packaging is not unimportant.
Chris: No, no. I mean, think about, what's the chef competition show? Think about chopped. One of the main, what is it, two or three or four criteria is plating. It's presentation.
Nancy: Right.
Chris: And I mean, that's something that's an important part of the experience or any, you know, higher end or even, you know, semi higher end restaurant is the presentation of the food. And don't tell me it doesn't make you enjoy it more when it comes in, you know, weird, right? A weird circular thing or is, you know, presented in a way on the plate that makes it very appealing. I think we're really tangenting here, but I just.
Kayla: I want to say, I do want to say one other thing. I don't want to necessarily defend MLM companies in this regard, even. Even Mary Kay, because if you are advertising your product as better than something you can get at the drugstore, like the product itself, not the experience, just the product itself, if you are advertising that it is like a luxury product or is, quote unquote better than something you can get at the drugstore, that's not necessarily great, right. But also, MLM companies aren't the only companies that do that, and especially in beauty like that is. That's a really big issue because regulation is very complicated or non existent. And there's also not necessarily a lot of, like, studies done about the products that go into making these products or the ingredients. And there's not a lot of, like, dead monkeys.
Kayla: It's all dead monkeys. But just you can say, you know, you can say on a bottle of lotion like this has rose petals so it'll make your skin softer. Do we know if that's true? Not really. So you can kind of say whatever you want.
Chris: Also cure your gouthen.
Kayla: Definitely cure your gout. Yeah, put the rose petal lotion on the skin. Your gout again, right?
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Are you done?
Chris: Thanks, Buffalo Bill. As you say that the other thing I can kind of picture is developing sort of a motivated reasoning, which is a thing that we talk about a lot on the podcast for these, for the leadership to say like, okay, if we change our business model, if we continue to evolve in this direction, then we'll make more money, it'll healthy for the bottom line. So now I have this motivated reasoning to want to believe myself as, you know, as a Mary Kay or as an executive that this is not a bad thing, that this is not a scam, that this is a legitimate thing.
Chris: So I guess my question from all of this is, do you think that a lot of these top of the pyramid people, do you think that they themselves kind of believe their own, you know what I mean? Like, do you think that they believe that their business is legitimate or do you think that they know that it's not? Somewhere deep down?
Tracy Coenen: So if we talk about the sales directors and the national sales directors in Mary Kay, we're talking about around 9000 people in the US and only about 1000 of those really see significant success with this. And when I say significant success, I'm talking about someone who is grossing $40,000 a year or more and actually making a living doing this. And I think many of those believe the hype and they really truly believe that they are offering a legitimate business opportunity. And the rest of them understand the truth and understand that, you know, they're going to be responsible for downlines of thousands of people are going to be recruited into this company and almost none of them are actually going to turn a profit.
Tracy Coenen: And these people at the top of the pyramid absolutely know this, but they continue the con because they are able to say, if I could do it, you can do it too. So in their minds, if even one person can do it, then it means it's possible for anyone.
Chris: That's interesting. It's like they're taking that one anecdote and then that somehow weighs against the 99% of people that don't. That's crazy. So I think I might have mentioned this to you before, but one of the main reasons I wanted to reach out to you, other than the fact that you are one of the biggest experts out there on this, is that I had an additional interview. My other interviewee essentially had a pretty positive experience with Mary Kay. And, you know, after I interviewed her, I was pretty puzzled because all of my research suggested basically all of. Pretty much all of the stuff that you've already said in my research is stuff that I've seen, and I understand the math and all that. So I was just very confused as to why that she might have had this positive experience.
Chris: And I have a few different hypotheses for it. I just, for full disclosure, so you have all the context. She sold Mary Kay from 1981 to 86, maybe 85, but it was a roughly four or five year period in the beginning of the eighties, and she ended up going up to, I think, a director level. She ended up doing the thing where they have a conference, I believe it was in Dallas, right?
Tracy Coenen: Seminar, yes.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And she did the whole schtick where you meet Mary Kay and you take a picture in her bathtub and that thing, like, what are, like, I know we can't possibly sit here and identify the exact reason for this discrepancy. Like, you know, this, you know, cognitive dissonance that I'm having here, but what are some possibilities, do you think?
Tracy Coenen: Here's what I've seen over and over. I've seen women say they had a very positive experience in Mary Kay. And if you were to look at their tax returns, you would see that they made very little money or lost money, but they will still talk about their Mary Kay experience in positive terms, and they'll say, I learned so much. I made wonderful friendships.
Nancy: Yeah.
Tracy Coenen: I didn't make a lot of money, but I made something. And, you know, really, it was my own fault. If I had worked harder, I could have made much more money. But at that time in my life, it's what I chose to do. There are a lot of rationalizations that I see, and so even when they are not successful from a business perspective, and that's, as we said, almost everyone, they still come back and say it was a positive experience, and they will focus on these certain positive things. And that is all, to me, part of this very sophisticated con that is run in MLM. And there are talking points that we hear over and over and things that they want you to focus on. And so when you fail, it's completely your fault, and it was your choice.
Tracy Coenen: And also, if you failed, don't focus on that. Focus on all the positive things and tell people about that.
Chris: Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. And I've seen that. That's one of the, again, doing the research, the emphasis on if you fail, it's your fault is. Yeah. So it's so like the word you use before. Gross.
Kayla: Gross.
Tracy Coenen: Yeah.
Chris: Okay.
Tracy Coenen: So eighties word to use.
Chris: So the last few questions kind of to wrap up here. So of course, our podcast is called cult or just weird. So what we do is we typically, and we typically have a whole list of criteria that we go through to make that call. All very scientific, of course, you know, but I'll spare you that process and just I'll just kind of ask you just instead, I've seen so I've seen multiple places saying that Mary Kay is cult like, kind of using the c word, including some folks that post on your own site. So why do you think that word is thrown around? Like, we've talked about them being scammy and not gross, but why do you think the C word is thrown around? What aspects of the company make people draw that comparison?
Nancy: Sure.
Tracy Coenen: One of the categories of articles on our website is cults, and Mary Kay is very cult like. If you were to go, you know, to an objective site and look for characteristics of cults, I think you would find in the top ten characteristics. I bet Mary Kay fulfills at least eight or nine of those. You know, there is, and it sounds really extreme, right? So people laugh when you call it a cult and say, oh, you're being too dramatic about this. But when you think about the mind control that is used in cults, they're very much those characteristics in Mary Kay. There's very much emphasis on the things you are allowed to think and the things that you should say and do and really trying to control the behavior of the sales force.
Tracy Coenen: And so, you know, someone recruits you and is immediately trying to change your way of thinking and make you go along with the party line and things like that. And so there's a lot of manipulation of relationships as well and kind of wanting you a little bit isolated from your family and friends. Don't tell your husband these sorts of things because he's going to have this reaction and we don't want that poisoning your mind and things like that. So it's those kinds of things that, as dramatic as they sound, if you really get to know this company and you read the scripts that are used over and learn some of the techniques that they use, it really is akin to how cults draw in people and keep them a part of the cult.
Chris: That's really interesting. So it's. And it kind of ties it all back to that fundamental bit that you mentioned before, which is the recruiting.
Nancy: Right.
Chris: That sort of central piece that sort of defines what an MLM is.
Tracy Coenen: Yep.
Chris: All right, so then I got to ask, because it's sort of our thing. In your opinion and your expert opinion, is Mary Kay a cult or just weird?
Tracy Coenen: Yes.
Chris: You're saying, yes, it's. Yes, it's a cult. Final. Final answer.
Tracy Coenen: I'm going to say Mary Kay is cult like.
Chris: Okay, that's a very fair answer, and I think I agree with you based on what I've seen and heard. So that actually wraps up my questions. Is there anything else that you'd like to add or that you'd like to tell our listeners?
Tracy Coenen: That's an excellent question. I'm sure once we're done, I'll have something brilliant that I want everyone to know.
Chris: Well, you can always email me back and if there's anything that you want to add to.
Tracy Coenen: You know, it's just. It's interesting to me the amount of denial that goes on in order for people to continue to participate in multilevel marketing in general and Mary Kay specifically. You know, I have, you know, hundreds of articles on pink truth that break down the numbers and how little money people are actually making. Even these people who are at the top of the pyramid and are this tiny fraction of 1% of the entire sales force in the US. And there's this massive amount of objective data about who's making money and who's not. And the data proves that almost no one is making money. And yet they are still able to recruit women by the thousands every month. It's astonishing to me.
Chris: Yeah. And I think that. That you can't even do that without having that sort of. That denial piece. Right.
Tracy Coenen: When I was recruited back in 1998, there was no information out there on the Internet about multilevel marketing and the truth behind it. And so what I was presented with at the time was material that came from my sales director and my recruiter. And they had sheets for me that showed, you know, had these earnings claims, how much people were making and. And how easy it would be for you to hold this many classes a week. And you're going to sell this much at each class and you're going to make, therefore, this much money. And so you need this much inventory. And Mary Kay was pitched as this christian company. And so, of course, I thought that these women would never lie to me.
Tracy Coenen: And that when they said, this is what people are making and this is, you know, you can have this many classes a week, of course, this was the truth that they were telling me. Right. And then I got in and found out that no matter how hard I worked, I was never able to achieve those numbers that they had set forth for me. And I had worked really hard. And I was out there pounding the pavement looking for people to have skincare classes with, etcetera. And amongst the people that, you know, amongst the large group of people in my area, I was one of the most successful. And yet I was struggling, and I wasn't able to hold as many classes a week as I wanted to.
Tracy Coenen: And so there was no information out there at the time from an objective source that was going to tell me what's the real deal with this company. And so that's why I felt that developing a website and putting this information out there and focusing on the education was going to be really important. And so I get criticized and still get criticized today from people who say, you're trying to take down Mary Kay. And that was never the point of this site. Sure, if Mary Kay fails, the world's going to better off, no doubt. But that was never the focus of the site. The site's focus is education.
Tracy Coenen: Because I felt that if women were being recruited into Mary Kay and they were going to take the time to go do an Internet search for information about Mary Kay, they would find pink truth and they would be able to know the truth about the company before they signed their agreement.
Chris: Right. Yeah. And that's, I mean, from what I've seen, again, there's such a lack of information from the companies themselves, which, of course, is part of what they're able to recruit. Filling in those informational gaps is great. I wish that more. I mean, maybe I'll find that more mlms do that. But, I mean, the pitch is very compelling.
Nancy: Right?
Chris: Like, as you say, like, when they pitch you, it's, you know, it's not, it's not like they've perfected it. It's not some, like, sleazy, weird thing that you kind of go, like, what? I'm not going to know. They're, it's a very compelling, I mean, I almost sold cutco when I just out of college for the same sort of reason, because it was like, they just do such a good job of selling you that financial fantasy of like, oh, you're going to make so much money and you're going to be independent, and you're going to be. Own your own business. And it's like they really know the language to use. And at least in my own personal experience and from what I've seen from these recruiting videos, be your own boss.
Tracy Coenen: Unlimited earnings. On top of those earnings, you can get wonderful prizes. It's all very carefully crafted. You know, Mary Kay has had, what is it now, more than 55 years in business, where they have perfected the scripts and how they sell it. And it's largely the same formula for selling the recruiting opportunity as they always have had. And way back when, Mary Kay herself was a master of figuring out how to motivate the sales force with prizes. And the concept was Mary Kay spends as little as possible on a prize to get the maximum amount of orders out of consultants. And they still have. They still use this formula today, and I have seen it perfected on the part of Mary Kaye.
Nancy: Wow.
Chris: Yeah, that's. I know about the. It's a Cadillac. Is a pink cadillac. Is that. Or is it a pink. Yes, it's a Cadillac. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, I really appreciate your time, by the way.
Tracy Coenen: No problem.
Chris: Thank you so much. And, you know, thank you for. For what you're doing, too. You know, from, like you said, like, the. It gets over. Even doing the research got a little, like, mentally taxing, you know, just like all. There's so many out there, and it's like. It's growing, and it's just like, it was kind of hard research to do a little bit at times. So I really appreciate that you're sort of out frontlining it. Okay. All right. Thanks, Tracy. I really appreciate it.
Kayla: Okay.
Tracy Coenen: Have a good one.
Chris: So, in talking to Tracy, I feel like I definitely got some more context for where Mary Kayden fits into the overall MLM industry, but I'm not sure how much closer I got to solving the why did Nancy have a positive experience conundrum? I think we got a little bit of information on that when were talking about the evolution of the company, which, as we said, we'll get to that. But at this point, I think I should just go ahead and tell you what my theories are so I can get your thoughts on them. So, are you ready? Because this sort of ties it all together in one nice, neat little conspiracy narrative.
Kayla: I need that. Please feed that to me.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're all about conspiracy theories here on the show where we talk about being skeptical all the time. Okay. So my theory has three components.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: The statistical component, the intangibles component of, and to me, the most maybe interesting of all, the time component.
Nancy: Ooh.
Chris: We should call it the temporal component first. The statistical components.
Kayla: Why are you laughing?
Chris: I don't know. Because I make myself laugh. That's what I do, and nobody else will. So in any given low probability situation such as mlms, you are still going to have some cases of success. And I think that there's a pretty good chance that something resembling that is what happened with Miss Carlson. My mother is fucking awesome. Sort of a force of nature, as you know. And I'm pretty sure that, like, as long as. As long as the thing is, like, team and leadership driven, she could probably turn a profit on a business selling stale turds.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: So, you know, her energy and force of leadership and personality were probably all a very good fit for selling things. The quote to the Mary Kay way.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And I think there's a good chance that she's one of those rare success stories that, you know, they would, like, trot out on stage at rally. Well, which they did trot out on stage.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So that's the statistical component. I think that it's, you know, very possible that. That she was able to beat the odds based on, you know, sort of her demeter, let's.
Kayla: Demeanor. Not demeter.
Chris: I meant to say demeanor. Just.
Kayla: You're just talking about the demeanor.
Chris: Demeanor.
Kayla: Let's take your mom to Vegas, is what I'm hearing.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, if she can, you know.
Kayla: Does your mom play the lottery?
Chris: When it's. When it's huge. Yeah.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: When it's like, you know, 100 and some odd. Whatever.
Kayla: Got it.
Chris: So, that's the first component of my theory. My second component is one we've been talking about sort of over and over, particularly on this episode, a little bit on the previous one. There are reasons other than pure income that people work. Some mlms do provide this value. Now, it can definitely be predatory because. Or I don't even want to say can. It often is predatory because mlms provide this value to populations that lack it, such as, you know, women that lack the opportunity to participate in the traditional workforce or, you know, low income people who lack opportunity, or, you know, ex felons that lack opportunity. And they do that for a tidy penny, but there is some value there. And, you know, we just heard from.
Chris: From Tracy, you know, talking about how some women will say, well, you know, I didn't make that much money, but it doesn't matter because I got all these other values from it.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And I think that it's, there's this, like, weird gray area there where it's like, even though you're, even though from the MLM's perspective, it's kind of like a, you know, a. A one way relationship. It's maybe also not the other way. It's almost like, I don't know. If you get conned by someone that's really good at it and beautiful, you're like, I don't even mind.
Kayla: I don't think that's a real thing that happens, isn't it?
Chris: I don't know.
Kayla: Don't think so.
Chris: It's like, if you get assassinated by just the hottest dude or hottest chick, then it's okay.
Kayla: I don't think that's a thing either.
Chris: No?
Kayla: No. I think you'd still be pretty pissed, frankly.
Chris: I don't know. Like, what if it's, like one of those, like, sex assassinations? We should probably cut this part. Sex nations sexassinations.
Kayla: I forgot what I was gonna say now, but. Oh, I guess I. I guess I just wanted to say that, like, I think it really comes down to, on an individual level, why are you getting involved? Are you getting involved because of all of the, like, predatory things? Like, did all of the predatory mechanisms work on you? And I think the number one thing it comes down to is, are you doing this because you think you can make unlimited income, make your own hours, you can support your family on this? If you are getting taken in by that, if that's your motivation, well, that's.
Chris: Where it feels dirty.
Kayla: Wrong. Yeah.
Chris: Yeah. That's where it feels dirty. Because it's like, if the company was saying, like, hey, you're not going to make money doing this. It's probably not going to happen. But you're going to meet some women, you're going to network, you're going to learn how to sell, and that's why you're doing it, then it would feel better. But instead, oftentimes they're using this language of, be your own boss, make a ton of money. So that's the part where it starts to feel dirty. Right. Because it's not up front.
Kayla: I just, I want to, I don't know why I feel, like, impassioned about this, but I just, I do. I believe that mlms are predatory. After we've talked about this, I believe that generally they should be steered away from.
Chris: Mm. Yes, absolutely.
Kayla: I think that they have way too much power.
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: And I also think that the intangibles, that somebody could get in like, if you get involved for the intangibles, not for the money, then your experience was valid and valuable, right? Like, you. It's. I don't think it necessarily is. Like, yeah, you were taken in and you kind of got these, like, consolation prizes. If you went into this going. Like, my. My motivations are getting out of the house, talking to other people, getting to exercise as part of my personality, doing.
Chris: Makeovers for women and making them feel.
Kayla: Beautiful, making people feel beautiful, getting to get experience that I wouldn't be getting otherwise because I'm not in a workforce, a traditional workforce, in that way. If those are your motivations and, like, money is six or doesn't even come into it's almost a different thing, right?
Chris: It totally is. And it seems like that is definitely the case with my mom. I think that, you know, because my dad was working at the time right there, you know, it's not like they were hard up for income for her. The intangibles were the thing. Those were the reasons that she did it. It's not like, you know, they didn't. They didn't need extra money. Right. But if you're, like you said, if you are, that's the group you're in where you are desperate and, you know, your next felon. And the only thing we can do is sell essential oils, then that's a different case.
Kayla: Right? It's kind of like. It's kind of like what we talked about with teal, how teal, I think, from our perspective, and I guess we kind of go back and forth with teal because it's like, is teal inherently bad and evil? And some people have a good experience, or is teal. Some people have a bad experience, but most people have a good experience. You know what I mean? But I think it's kind of similar to that where like. Like something you and I said on the Teal swan episode was that, like, even if her work is helping everyone, helping 99% of people, and 1% of people are committing suicide first, do no harm, still want to avoid that. So even if MLMs were, like, helping out everyone, but still had that predatory element for, like, 1% of people, obviously it's the opposite way.
Kayla: That would still be bad.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: And they are flipped where it's 99% of people are having the bad.
Chris: There's another thing, too, that I think, I don't know if I want to talk about it now on the show, because I don't want to go too far down this, but let's just do it we can cut it later. But we, you know, we talked about this. We have in the past, even before we had this show, we have talked about people like Yuri Geller or how.
Kayla: Are you gonna fit this in?
Chris: People like forever or people like who's the, who, the pastor, healers that, whatever the, who is that?
Kayla: I don't know any of the names.
Chris: I don't know. But basically people that are, you know, frauds and quacks.
Kayla: People who are frauds. Sylvia Brown.
Chris: Sylvia Brown, right.
Kayla: Fake psychics. Fake. Who are faith healers.
Chris: And you say, and it's, you know, the argument always seems to be, well, you know, what's the harm, right. And especially for, you know, for somebody that's like only doing harm, that's easy. But for somebody that is, you know, fancies themselves a healer.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Or somebody that helps people, it's much harder because now you're saying, well, they're helping people, but then they're also harming people. So what does that equation look like? And I've seen a lot of skeptics also get into, it feels like a lot of the time that is, that's the defense. The defense of the skeptic is to say this is the harm. Right. So that they're just trying to point out, like, okay, these are the immediate impacts of this falsehood that this is going to cause harm in this way.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And I think based on doing a lot of the stuff on this show, that it, that's the wrong way to defend against things that are false. And a lot of this comes hopefully everybody's seen Chernobyl on HBO. It's excellent. You know, you have to gear up for it being terrible. But the thing that they say at the end of the show is it's a little cheeseball, but I actually really like it. Every lie you tell incurs a debt to the truth.
Kayla: I don't think that's cheeseball at all, honestly.
Chris: And I think that it's easy to say, oh, well, what's the harm? But when you do that enough, eventually you will have to pay that back. And you don't know how you're going to have to pay that back. You don't know who's going to pay that back. You don't know the eventual harm. And in the case of something like Chernobyl, eventually the lies that were told, if you watch the show, eventually all of the lies or live through it, eventually those lies caught up and resulted in the explosion of a nuclear reactor and harmed and killed many people. So. So, to me, the stronger defense of something as a skeptic or the stronger offense against the falsehoods that surround us is not what harm are they doing, but the very fact that they are false.
Chris: And every single one incurs a debt to the truth that eventually must be paid.
Kayla: Right. Damn.
Chris: Mic drop.
Kayla: Don't hit the mic.
Chris: Boom. I can be reached for commencement addresses at nine. Oh, sorry.
Kayla: Oh, you were gonna give our address out, not your phone number.
Chris: I'm old. Yeah, or my email address, like normal culture, is weirdmail.com. There is a third component, which is the time component or the temporal component, as I called it. So this, to me, is actually one of the more interesting ones.
Kayla: All right.
Chris: Tracy got involved with Mary Kay in the late nineties, early two thousands, and started pink truth even later than that. Nancy was involved in the early eighties and met Mary Kay herself while she was still alive.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: That's a lot of time in between. I do believe that the company has evolved since then. And you'll recall that Tracy even gave us a really good breakdown of how companies exploring an MLM sales model can be drawn to it more over time. It's also possible that the retirement and later death of Mary Kay Ash had some effect, but the company is currently run by her son, who helped co found it, so maybe not that much effect. There's also the fact that in 1985, Mary Kay went back private from public.
Kayla: Right? 1985, yeah. Okay.
Chris: Right around the time.
Kayla: Wait, say that. Say that again. So it went back in 1985. It went back from public company to private.
Chris: Yeah. So it was a public company from, like, 1960, I want to say eight, until 1985. So it was traded on the stock market, and then for some reason, in 1985, they went back private. And if you'll recall from the previous episode, most mlms are, in fact, private.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And the reason for that is that they don't have to share as much information.
Kayla: Isn't so 1985 right around when your mom stopped?
Chris: When Nancy left? Yes, exactly. So you'll also remember that there's something that we've been hinting at sort of throughout last episode and this episode, and we keep saying we'll get to it, and it's something really big that might actually be hugely influential on why Mary Kay might be a different company now than it was then.
Kayla: Tell me.
Chris: And that, my friends, is the decision in the case of FTC versus Amway Corp. Or INRI, Amway Corp. Or in the matter of Amway corporation.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: This was a case brought against Amway by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, after having successfully prosecuted mlms as triangular shaped and fraudulent for the ten or so years leading up to this case. So the FTC was doing pretty good against, not just, like mom and pop, definitely a fraud, fly by night airplane games, scams, but actual, what we might call today, mlms. They talk about this. They have a whole episode about this in the dream. It's fascinating.
Kayla: God, I can't wait. Let's listen to that.
Chris: So, yeah, so this case began. They talk about this case, too. This case began in 1975 and ended in 1979 after four years of being tried. So that's, you know, 1979 -75 is four years.
Kayla: Thank you for the math.
Chris: Yeah, I'm good at math. I do math good. There were a bunch of complaints levied against Amway by the FTC, and some of them stuck, such as the charges that they were price fixing their products and a few other charges. And so the price fixing is basically saying to their distributors, you have to sell the price, the products by this much.
Kayla: Okay?
Chris: Which now, like, how can you do that? And then also have them be independent distributors? So that was a charge that did stick, and a few other charges stuck, too. But the primary thing that they were trying to do, which was basically say, hey, your pyramid scheme, it was absolved of that. And in fact, what this case did was establish the boxes that you needed to check to mark yourself safe in the eyes of the FTC.
Kayla: Fuck.
Chris: Essentially, it was a blueprint for immunizing your triangle against prosecution. So, safe to say that this decision was nothing less than seismic in the MLM industry landscape, and it opened the floodgates. But don't take my word for it, though. How about this quote from mlmlegal.com, comma, which I shit you nothing, is a website dedicated to helping mlms get going and protect themselves from prosecution and all kinds of everything. You need one stop shop to get your MLM going. It's a gross place, but, listen to what they have to say on their site about the Amway case. The industry owes Amway.
Kayla: Oh, my God.
Chris: No legal ruling has had more impact on the direct sales industry than the landmark FTC versus Amway decision. In 1975, FTC accused Amway of operating as an illegal pyramid. After four years of litigation in 1979, Amway prevailed. An administrative law judge ruled that Amway's multilevel marketing program was a legitimate business opportunity as opposed to a pyramid scheme. Had Amway lost MLM history after 1979 may have been non existent. Amways Victory paved the way for hundreds of MLM companies that would follow. So significant was the decision that the FTC during the next 20 years focused on deceptive practices of MLM companies, such as earnings representations or medical claims. Rather than attacking the structure of MLM programs, the industry owes Amway a debt of gratitude. End quote.
Kayla: That's bad.
Chris: That is from mLmlegal.com, which, I will remind you are about pro MLM as you can get. So that's from the horse's mouth.
Kayla: Horthoth Mouse.
Chris: The horth of moutheth.
Kayla: That's scurry.
Chris: In 2013, Forbes wrote about the Amway case as context in an article about another MLM, which we will definitely talk about on the show, and we've already mentioned several times. But yeah, you know that communist propaganda rag, Forbes, you know, the revolutionary ones, like, the ones that are going to be like, rah, down with capitalism, you know, Forbes. So they wrote about it, too. Here are a few choice excerpts that I think illustrate what we're talking about here from that article. While the eventual ruling in the 1979 Amway case didn't make Amway look very good, it also shielded other mlms from prosecution. And later in the article, in 1979, the FTC didn't shut Amway down. Instead, it wagged a finger at the company and set three future guidelines for operating an MLM legally.
Kayla: Why did they do that?
Chris: So the dream makes the case that they did that because there were people from Amway in the highest levels that were influencing things.
Kayla: I don't think it should be difficult to deduce here that there was probably some pro MLM influence that had a hand in making this decision.
Chris: Oh, yes, like I said, we're getting conspiratorial here on the show. Anyway, finally, the article from Forbes. So it cites doctor William Keep, who is dean of the College of New Jersey's business school, which, you know, those business schools, again, they're like really socialist bastions. Quote, that opinion actually made things worse, keep wrote in an email. The result is that, quote, even relatively straightforward cases can drag on for years. And because of that, the FTC is overly cautious about filing charges against any MLM. That's not a blatant scam. The FTC tends to pick only very easy cases, keep says.
Kayla: But they're all blatant scams.
Chris: Well, that's the thing, is that the FTC only goes after the, like, the really SCSI blatant, scammy ones, and then the ones that are harder to identify that way and are like more like, no, no. We're not a triangle. We're an MLM. We're a direct sales.
Kayla: It all comes back to packaging. Packaging is important.
Chris: It does. It does. So the amway case is essentially what I am calling the time component in this whole theory of mine. I believe that Mary Kay became more mlme over time. Now, of course, you know, in the interview with Nancy, she talked about how there was recruiting at the time, and Tracy talked about how that's how Mary Kay started out, by being very savvy about incentivizing her salesforce and doing the in home parties and everything. But I do think it's also gotten more damaging to its distributor force over time, to the point where it would require this sort of informational website.
Kayla: Yeah. It's like if a company, if an MLM company is able to survive as long as Mary Kay, it's going to become this. Like there's no MLM. Like every MLM lives long enough to see itself become the villain.
Chris: Oh, boy. Yes. No, I mean, that's. That is. That's the thing.
Nancy: Right.
Chris: And, like, maybe. I don't know. Maybe back in the day, recruiting salespeople seemed like a good idea, and, you know, there's maybe some guidelines on. On whether you can saturate your market and, you know, don't recruit more than three levels because there won't be enough humans. I don't know.
Kayla: Well, it's like we talked about with the airplane game, like how there was almost like a spiritual element to it, like the secret or of like, new thought. Like, you weren't necessarily looking at it and going like, show me the numbers. You were going and looking at it as, like, I'm putting this thing out into the universe and it is going to return to me.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: And just instead of it being. Giving your friend a bunch of money and pretending they were an airplane captain, it was built into a business model.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. So I think in the case of the conundrum of Miss Carlson, the Mary Kay sales director, I think it's those three components. I think one is just the statistical. Like some people actually do manage to make it work. I think some of it is just, you know, you're there for the intangibles. Nothing necessarily making a living. Right. And I think it's this time component that was basically, mlms were one thing before 1979, and as an industry, something totally different after 1979.
Nancy: Right.
Kayla: Right. Interesting.
Chris: So is it time after this long frickin marathon, this is gonna be a four hour episode. Holy crap. And we didn't do this last episode, so it feels like forever since I've. You're the only person able to do that. I guarantee you there's at least.
Kayla: One listener that got a bunch of reviews. They all said, don't do it.
Chris: I know that's not true because I look at our reviews. So anyway, here's your stupid paper.
Kayla: Oh, right. It's my decision.
Chris: It's your decision.
Kayla: All right.
Chris: Thou must decide. Although we've already had two people make a call. One person said no, Miss Carlson said no. And Tracy said cult like aspects.
Kayla: Well, let's go through our criteria one by one and decide where you and I stand.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Expected harm, number one towards individual, socially, physically, etcetera. I'm going to go ahead and say that expected harm is extremely high.
Chris: Yes. And I think that. So just. Just for context here, we're talking about Mary Kay in 2019. Not Mary Kay in 1980 or 1985 or 86.
Kayla: It's gonna be hard to judge. It's gonna be hard to do this for just Mary Kay.
Chris: I know, but we have to.
Kayla: Well, expected harm.
Chris: Cause we didn't do this the last episode, so if we wanted to do it, then we could have done it then.
Kayla: Expected harm. High.
Chris: So you're sticking with high?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Okay. Even though there's intangibles that can potentially, for the right person that is doing it eyes wide open and knows they.
Kayla: Won'T make money, I think that percentage is very low.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I think it's way less than 50.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And so I think that if you are gonna jump into Mary Kay, you should expect to be harmed.
Chris: Yeah. Just statistically presented, certainly financially and then potentially other ways as well.
Kayla: Population of cult or is it niche? We need to come up with a new criteria for this one.
Chris: Is it niche?
Kayla: Is this niche versus mainstream? Yeah, pretty mainstream.
Chris: This is mainstream af. Yeah.
Kayla: Yeah. We all have heard of Mary Kay.
Chris: She was named one of the top 25 business people of the last 25 years in 2004.
Kayla: Right. Like.
Chris: And not niche.
Kayla: We all know somebody who's in Mary Kay.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: All right. Antifactuality. Closed. Logical system. High. Very high.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Just because there. I think it's even higher than the expected harm. Because, like, the recruitment techniques are anti factual.
Chris: Right. The recruitment.
Kayla: Be your own boss, make your own hours, unlimited earnings, easy. Just whatever. If you fail, it's your fault. You can do it. Just have energy. Like, all of that is. Is very anti factual. Percentage of life consumed. I don't know.
Chris: Variable.
Kayla: It seems extremely variable because there's certainly people who probably do it once and they're like, I've got a bunch of Mary Kay products, and they never do it again.
Chris: Right. But then there's some people that like. But then there's, like, their garages get taken over and they lose everything.
Kayla: Or people like your mom and Meg, who. It's like a second job.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: So I don't know how to answer that.
Chris: I'm gonna say some. Depends on the person.
Kayla: Some percentage of your life will be consumed.
Chris: Maybe say it can consume your life if you let.
Kayla: Especially, like, the way your mom talked about, like, weekly meetings. And then she also talked about, like, you had to always put your makeup on and look nice when you wanted to go out. You were always on. You had to always kind of be, like, looking for new people to sell to. That feels like a large percentage of your, if you have to put on a full face of Mary Kay makeup before you go to the grocery store.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Like, that's a lot. And, like, granted, a lot of women do that anyway, but on all the time is. But if that's only relevant to 1% of the people doing it, then it's not. You don't jump into it expecting a huge percentage of your life to be consumed.
Chris: Right. Yeah.
Kayla: So I think you're right that it's variable.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Ritual.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Kayla: I don't know about ritual now. I know about the ritual stuff that your mom talked about, that Miss Carlson talked about.
Chris: I don't know if they still do the song. I have no idea.
Kayla: Like, the song and the meetings and.
Chris: I'm sure they still do the meetings.
Kayla: The can't be a negative Nelly.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, I've seen a lot of that's like, the meetings and the negative Nelly stuff on pink. Truth. I, I want to say that I saw somebody talk about the song in more recent terms.
Kayla: One is just one of the parties. Like, is that ritual?
Chris: Oh, I think the makeover party at home parties are absolutely ritual. Yeah.
Kayla: So then there's a high amount of ritual.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: I don't even need to do this last one. Charismatic leader. Clearly there's no charismatic leader here. What are we talking? I'm just kidding.
Chris: Yeah. What's the name of the company?
Kayla: Charismatic leader. Af. Probably only, like, next to teal, Swan and Romtha. You know what I mean?
Chris: Highly charismatic. Yes. So where does that leap us?
Kayla: I think I'm going to take a page out of one of our interviewees books. I'll agree. I think that Mary Kay is cult like.
Chris: Wait, you don't get to do that.
Kayla: I just did it.
Chris: She gets to do that. You're a host on cult or just weird? You have to answer cult like or just weird.
Kayla: Cult like.
Chris: So cult. You are literally not allowed to do this. Are we gonna get suede from Mary Kay? Yeah, I doubt it.
Kayla: Why?
Chris: Well, we could say cult. What's wrong with that?
Kayla: Why do you think she specifically said cult like and not cult?
Chris: She runs a website that is dedicated to exposing information about this company. We do not. She has much more to lose with the women that she's trying to protect and inform. If something happens to her website, that would be very detrimental. So, in fact, we should probably say that these opinions, everything that we say on this show is our opinion and has nothing to do with any opinion that. That Tracy or pink truth or Miss Carlson have on their own. Their opinions are their own. Our opinions are our own. But in our opinion, it sounds like they're probably a cult.
Kayla: It's a cult.
Chris: It's weird, right? Because I feel like.
Kayla: I don't know if it was always a cult. I think it's a cult now.
Chris: I feel similar to when were talking about cicada, when I wanted to say it was a cult, but, like, a beneficial cult. And this one, I want to say, like, it's not a cult, but it's, like, a harmful. Not a cult. I don't know. It's weird, right? Like, with cicada, the one criteria that we didn't have was harm, because, like.
Kayla: Mary Kay doesn't necessarily have a vested interest in, like, keeping every single one of their cult members. You know, like, they just need to get your money.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: Like, if you're somebody who.
Chris: But they do. No, they do like to keep you on the hook.
Kayla: They do like to keep you on the hook. Yeah, I guess it's.
Nancy: Yeah.
Kayla: I don't know.
Chris: They'll vampire you as long as you have blood to give.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: I mean.
Kayla: I mean, by going by our criteria, by the standards of this podcast.
Chris: Yeah, it's a cult. I think it is. Sorry, mom.
Kayla: I'm glad it worked out. Look, it's been a positive experience for some people. I really am. I really am glad. And I think.
Chris: Absolutely.
Kayla: I think that whatever we have to say here doesn't negate that it doesn't. That individual experiences have been positive, and you don't necessarily need to be deluding yourself to have had that positive experience.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, it's kind of like, even when you're talking about teal. Right. Like, just because we're on here saying, like, oh, I don't know about teal. I don't know about her.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: That doesn't mean that we think that the people that follow teal or enjoy her teachings or benefit from them. We're not saying that their experiences are invalid or dumb or bad.
Kayla: Right. That doesn't negate the individual. Like me saying that I think teal's one is a cult. I still think about the video that I talked about on the podcast, and I still get benefit from that, even knowing that there's, like, that. I think that inherently what she's doing is cult. Like.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. And you're a freak, but. Right, but other people. No, but seriously, though, like, the point is. Yeah. Is that just because we're calling something a cult and, you know, and judging it by these criteria, which, you know, and I. I trust our research, doesn't mean that people involved in it aren't getting involved for valid reasons, that the things that they get from it are not valid and beneficial to them. So that can still happen. But at the end of the day, I also can't sit here in good conscience and recommend that anyone get involved with an MLM unless you are super eyes wide open with all of the.
Kayla: Information, if it's a hobby and you're just like, money's not an object here.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: I just like to sell milkshakes.
Chris: Know you are MLM.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: But we'll definitely be doing more of these on the show.
Kayla: Hell yeah.
Chris: As you can tell from our. Our last sort of narrative bit there about that FTC case, there's more to tell on that front.
Kayla: Interesting. MLM are just weird.
Chris: And there's more to tell on other fronts as well.
Kayla: Hell yeah. We should just do, like, an entire season about, like, mlms that have touched our lives. Because between Mary Kay and Cutco and beachbody and, like, candlelight and tupperware and pampered chef and cook in the american way. And, like, that's. I'm sure there's others that I'm not even thinking of.
Chris: Oh, yeah. That when I looked at the list, I was like, that's an MLM. Oh, my God. How do you want to. How do you want to have this roll on out of here?
Kayla: Last time you were like, don't say fall. Subscribe. So do you have one of those things?
Chris: Oh, yeah. Right. So instead of going and liking sharing, subscribing, leaving five star reviews, remember what you're supposed to do now is you're supposed to go get two of your friends to listen and get two of them to listen and then get two of them to listen. By the. Actually, if you did that last episode, this episode should be going out to the entire population of Earth, so. Hello, Earth.
Kayla: Thanks for listening.
Chris: Is there anyone you want to talk to?
Kayla: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. That girl in high school who told me that if you. No, it wasn't even high school. It was in junior high that if you didn't pluck your eyebrows, there was something wrong with you.
Chris: Yeah, fuck off. Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: I'm so glad I finally get to say fuck you to your ears.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: That's the only reason we did this podcast.
Chris: Yeah, same. Should I, like, is it like, maybe have, like, an old crush or something that I can be like, huh? I have a podcast now.
Kayla: You missed out.
Chris: You dunked on old crush.
Kayla: You could have had all of this.
Chris: You could have had all this weird podcast about Mary Kay. Well, anyway, I'm serious about getting your friends to listen, though. And other than that, I guess I'm Chris.
Kayla: And I'm Kayla.
Chris: And this has been cult or just weird.
Nancy: Never gonna get it.
Chris: Nope.