Great Question About Mary Kay

Judi, one of the original readers here and long time commenter asked a question a day or two ago.

While I was only able to briefly respond, many of you lent some interesting perspective to the question.

I have been informed that this blog is a little difficult to navigate, and I concur. I will be working towards fixing that (temporarily and long term) this weekend. I have tomorrow and Friday off work so, for me, today is Friday!!!! *big sigh of relief*!

That said, Judi asks:

The reason I talk about quitting jobs and doing MK full time is because pro MKers all have such positive things to say about MK. They say how wonderful their business is going. They only have inventory that they actually sell. Not much is sitting on the shelves. If it is so wonderful, why hasn't it replaced the other job? If you weren't working at that job couldn't you put more time to MK and make more money? Then you wouldn't have to have 2 jobs. This is what I don't understand. If you are truly making money that is worth the time you put in, wouldn't you be better off devoting more time to that endeavor.

And as for my Director and her finances, I got to her house one day - the house keeper let me in - and my director did not know I was there. I over heard her fighting with her husband over the co pays she had been making on her car and the fact that her business was losing money. That's how I know about her finances. Believe me, she would have never told me that.

And if you can make money by selling only, not having to recuit, then you dont' have to be a director. You can just sell. I don't think being a director is wonderful. I never aspired to that. I wanted to make my $300 per week after business expenses and taxes. I never did it for more 3 weeks in a row. It was not consistant. And I know there are other jobs that the income is not consistant. But I was lead to believe that MK would be. Even after questioning it and saying the if it's too good to be true it probably is. My director said oh, no it's not. That's the beauty of MK.

To recap, if MK is so good and you CAN make money with it, why keep your other job? Why not do it full time? Devote more time to the money making job and quit the other. Especially if you have kids. Wouldn't it be better to only have 1 job? I am not being ugly. I truly want to understand.

In essence, "If Mary Kay is such a solid money earner, why not quit you current job and work Mary Kay full time?"

I think this is a very good question and well worth the exploration it requires.

My immediate response to her question was;

I don't have much time, so I will try to make this brief. Hopefully I can write a full post about it soon because it is a very good question.

Simply put; most sales situations require a building process. You will not be hugely successful overnight. That is why you should always avoid "get rich quick" schemes. They almost inevitably will destroy you.

Mary Kay was never meant to be a get rich quick scheme. Some people (your director from the sounds of it) have *tried* to twist it into that. If you look closely at some on PT, you will see that many of them either tried to do that themselves, or were led to believe that was the case.

Do not be confused by people that tried to "get rich quick" for many years! The fact they were doing the wrong thing over and over again, expecting different results, does not mean that they were not trying to "get rich quick".

While some people CAN start with no job, or quit their current job, it is generally not recommended. The ideal way to build a client base is one customer at a time, and very patiently. You have to demonstrate yourself to be consistent to your clients so that they know they can rely on you when they need you.

There are plenty of stories of women that encountered circumstances in life that necessitated them making an "instant" income to survive. If you look at the hours they put in to survive, you and I would probably pass out from exhaustion just thinking about it! That is not a typical persons ideal!

Most people would prefer to add a little here and a little there until they have something much bigger.

AND

If you can build this way, why drop the other income?

Month 1 - $4,000 from job, $100 from MK

Month 12 - $4,000 from job, $600 from MK

Month 48 - $4,000 from job, $3,000 from MK

I am not saying this WILL happen or that getting to $3,000 will not require more effort than getting $100, but if that was what you were finding, why would you quit the $4,000/month job?

When you come to the place that you are making the same amount monthly that you make at your job, would you rather (in this illustration) make $4,000/month OR $8,000/month?

I would choose the bigger number. Especially if it was not requiring a lot of effort!

More on that later, got to get to work.

Not very brief, I know, but when have you ever known me to be brief?

Anyway, if you have not followed this particular conversation you can pick it up here as there are several other responses there. If you have a response there that you feel is worth repeating here, that is more than OK!

So here is your place to explain how you view YOUR Mary Kay business.

If you only work it part time, why?

If you work it full time and are making enough money to live off, how?

Did you have to build up to where you are? How long did it take? What are you doing to "get to the next level"?


I guess it boils down to, "How do you run your business and why?"