So, I went to MK Seminar in August that year. It was well over 100 degrees with 99% humidity - in Dallas. And, we were expected to be wearing clothes that complied with Mary Kay's dress code - skirt, hose, close toed shoes, white blouse and black or red jacket, depending on our 'Career Level'. I actually had a really good time, and I came back with stars in my eyes. I wanted to be a director and win all the cool jewelry and drive a free pink Cadillac. So, I went to work. I booked appointments 5 days a week, I went to every MK function, I had guests at a lot of meetings, I passed out fliers and free samples all over my neighborhood, I hung business cards on cork boards, I handed out business cards at every cash register and drive thru I visited. I also reinvested every single dollar into my inventory to grow it to profit level - $3,600 of wholesale product.
Let me be very clear: I made absolutely NO money that year and actually even took money out of our regular household income to buy even more inventory. Even though I had at least one of every single item, people didn't want the random items that eventually collected dust. They wanted the regular stuff like certain shades of lipstick, mascara and foundation. If anyone would have been truthful in ANY of their inventory speeches, they would have told us to stock up on those items and the main skin care products and just order the other random things. The problem is, a consultant that does not order unnecessarily is not putting money into her sales director's pocket.
I worked and stretched and invested for about 18 months. About 1 year after I signed up, I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma. I went in for surgery to attempt to remove it in May of 2006. That surgery and the 4 weeks of recuperation time following really brought my MK business to a grinding halt. I also began to reevaluate things. I ended up feeling pretty lost when I was able to return to working MK.
My warm-contacts (family and friends) were already tapped. I didn't have very many or very good cold contacts and I just couldn't get any traction. It was worse than starting from scratch. I was about 10 steps behind starting from scratch. The sales directors began shoving some of the 'movers and shakers' - women who had made it to NSD quickly, such as Dacia Weigandt and Allison LaMarr. If they could do it, anyone could. Right? So, I still wanted to reach my goal of being a SAHM or WAHM. Since I had hit a huge wall, I decided to do a google search on Dacia, to get any tips or information on how she did it.
I ended up finding a website called Pink Truth. At first, I was appalled by the stories that were told on that website. Surely, MK was bad or deceitful...Then I read an article on the total overhaul of the color line. This overhaul was scheduled to happen 9 months after I had read about it on Pink Truth. Why hadn't my trustworthy sales director told us about this? Why was she pushing inventory ordering if she knew that everything we were ordering was going to be obsolete in less than a year? So, I watched and I waited.
In the meantime, I was trying to get my MK business back in gear, with no luck. Seminar time came around again. I decided to spend the $2,000 to go and get recharged and geared up to work my business again. After all, there had to be different ideas offered than last time right? That's what all the sales directors were promising. WRONG!!! I totally wasted my $2,000. I was hot, sweaty, shared a bed with a women who has nightly night terrors and talks and kicks in her sleep, I ate overpriced crappy food and learned absolutely nothing.
And nothing was said about the product line changes that I had learned about only a couple of months prior from Pink Truth.
Fortunately for me, my husband got a different job shortly after Seminar. It required him to be out of state for 3 weeks for training and then his schedule for quite sometime after was extremely variable. At that point, I had decided to tell my sales director that I was unable to work the business as a consultant any more and that I would only be personal use. I figured I could continue to order the products for myself and for a few customers who were loyal to the product but didn't want the pushiness. Then, I sold EVERYTHING. I sold it all on eBay - the products, the shirts, the bags, the tacky jewelry, the samples...EVERYTHING.
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