Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 522 - The Mary Kay Opportunity! The Dark Truth About MLMs

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

Mary Kay Ash turned a $5,000 investment into a cosmetics empire that promised generations of women financial independence, recognition, and—if they climbed high enough—that famous pink Cadillac. But.... behind the makeup parties and “girl power” sales pitch, DID Mary Kay create a revolutionary path to female empowerment? Or did she prey on her own sales force and help perfect the highly manipulative and exploitative multi-level marketing machine that would leave countless aspiring entrepreneurs buried in unsold inventory and broken promises? Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com  Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :) For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast. Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's the 1960s and you're getting home from school, only to find that there are some unexpected people in your house. Except they're not strangers. They're your friend's moms, the local housewives. You're used to seeing an aprons, chasing toddlers, doing laundry. You've only ever known them as wives and mothers, because in the middle of the 20th century in the U.S. society has not really offered them many other boxes to easily fit in. You have no idea if they've ever had other dreams to build a career, make loads of money or run a business outside of domestic life. Today, something about these women seems different. They're laughing, sipping coffee, sitting around your dining room table,

eyeing a glittering array of pink makeup jars, and standing at the head of the table is the most fashionable-looking woman in town, dripping in furs, wearing a massive diamond ring, and she is not gossiping or complaining. She is pitching your mom and your friend's moms, what you and the world will come to know as the Mary Kay opportunity. She tells these women that they don't have to choose between being a good mother and earning a real living.

They can have it all, baby. And they don't need to fight for some corporate job where dirtbags will leer at them, proposition them, underpay them to do it, where they will be locked under a glass ceiling. No, girl, Mary Kay won't do them dirty like that. Instead, they can take the skills they've already spent years perfecting, making themselves in their homes beautiful and cultivating a large social network of other women,

interested in doing the same, and turn all that directly into cold, hard cash and prizes, baby. Woo-wee! And all in the few quiet hours between the morning school bus and the afternoon schools out bell. And the best part, every woman they recruit can do exactly the same shit. Get a girl! Women helping women. Girl power! Ladies are looking out from one another through endless, gloathing. is supposedly self-sustaining multiple levels of marketing.

Each level supporting and being supported by the others, girls supporting girls being supported by girls, we're all in this together, ladies, level after level of riches. All of this was the brainchild of one woman with over two decades of experience in direct door-to-door sales, Mary Kay Ash. Mary Kay Ash was born Mary Kathleen Wagner in Hotwells, Texas, a little community outside of Houston, no longer even known that name that wasn't much more than a collection of failing businesses as hopes and dreams when

she was a kid. Despite being a gifted student and a natural and Uber competitive salesperson, Mary Kathleen continuously found it hard to get ahead in a world where, from her perspective, only wealthy, well-connected women ever had a chance of making a name for themselves. And when she found herself pregnant, married as a teenager, and then a grandmother at just 36, it was assumed that that would be the entirety of Mary Kathleen's life. Looking after kids, kids, keeping house, trying to get by on whatever money her flighty husband brought home. But that would not be. In 1963, she launched Beauty by Mary Kay, a business that for the first few months made most of its sales off of other company's wigs rather than from its own beauty products. Within a few months, the fledgling company was promising a lot of women, a lot of things they felt that the world had denied them.

Steady paychecks, luxury furs, brand new pink Cadillacs, and perhaps even more importantly, recognition, and praise. It sounded like ultimate female empowerment. Was it? Or was it the same grifty-ass blueprint used by so many modern-day MLMs, dreams of glossy and often hollow promises, manipulative, shady recruitment tactics, almost certain financial ruin for the overwhelming majority of its female acolytes, all packaged in the language of feminist liberation. Mary Kay's Beauty Empire and an examination of the business ethics, if not just MLMs, but businesses in general. And this week's, should you, and do you even care about what kind of companies you support

addition of TimeSuck? This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck. Welcome. Welcome back to the Cold of Curious. I don't know if I'm that excited. I just made it sound. I just wanted to yell like that.

That's a fun way to start. That's a fun way to start the week, right? Happy Monday, motherfucker! Not bad. I'm Dad Cummins, a master sucker. A man who will not be having a drink made by Charles Sobrage, ever, no matter how old he is. And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, praise B to Good Boy, Bojangles, glory be to Triple M.

My friend Kelsey Cook recently had a new special drop on Netflix if you're looking for something new to watch. And you want to hear her fiance, Chad Daniels get made fun of? Because that's always fun. It's called Happy Hour. And you can stream it right now. And yeah, congrats to Kelsey. She just keeps getting better. She's a solid kick-ass lady sack.

Was Mary Kay also a solid kick-ass lady sack? Let's find out. Okay. Okay. Okay. As the moral framing goes, there are good companies and there are bad companies. But, of course, that assignment is subjective. What one person considers bad, somebody else can see as good.

If there's one thing I've learned here more than anything else, perhaps, it is that morality is subjective. I mean, I wish it wasn't. It doesn't feel like that internally to me. I wish everybody subscribed to my, what I think should be objective, interpretation of good and evil. However, many, if not most of you,

probably feel the same way about your interpretation. We want others to follow our rules on some level, don't we? But your interpretation, not necessarily exactly what mine is. It could be wildly different. Whatever your view, I'm guessing you have companies you think are doing good overall in the world, Right, net positive. And other companies you think are not doing good, net negative, good companies and bad companies.

For me, one example of a good company is one that stands up for what they believe in, even if it cost them some short-term profits. They might take initiatives to combat climate change, for example, or use a part of their proceeds to help people from under-resourced places. However, as crazy as it sounds, philanthropy can really rub some people the wrong way. Over the years on time, suck, we have probably lost more. more listeners due to donating to charities that certain listeners have not liked than we have from me just, you know, sharing opinions that riles people up. Help and other people who some don't think are deserving of help has led to listeners thinking, nah, what?

Fuck that. Oh, he's not who I thought it was. I will not be complicit in this financial support. I'm out. For these folks, I am a bad company. Never get tired of that song. Perhaps unsurprisingly. The counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s in U.S., my favorite historical period in America, gave rise to more socially conscious companies than ever before.

One was the body shop. Founded, and this didn't happen in the U.S., the counterculture was also happening in the U.K., founded by Anita Roddick in 1976. The U.K. cosmetics brand transformed retail store windows into activist boards or billboards, you know, with stuff like Save the Whale posters against, you know, animal testing, or save the will, you know, campaigns, posters against animal testing, displays attacking mainstream beauty standards, and that read as fucking bullshit to a lot of people. Don't you fucking tell me what to think? Who I'm supposed to care about, Body Shop? You've challenged my beliefs for the first and last time, motherfucker.

And they took their business elsewhere. Luckily for them, everyone who left were replaced by those who liked their stance, and then some, and the activist-led identity laid the groundwork for the brand's massive commercial boom in the 80s and 90s. Ben and Jerry's, another brand that has done more than their first. fair share of activism. Man, if I've fallen off the wagon a little bit, I'm currently recommitted to an ultra-low sugar diet, and it fucking sucks!

Dear God, do I miss Ben & Jerry's. I don't care that I don't process sugar very well anymore or that I'm lactose intolerant. I still crave. That sweet, gooey, chocolate fish food. That shit is practically orgasmic. 1988, Ben and Jerry's launched the Peace Pop, donating 1% of its profit to a nonprofit called 1% for Peace.

Adds up. An organization with a goal of redirecting 1% of the U.S. National Defense Budget towards funding peace promoting activities and projects. Weak, fucking weak. Real men only want to kill. Weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin immediately responded with a counter campaign called Peace is for Pussies, with the goal of raising as much money as it takes to create a new law, making it legal to kill hippies on site, with the ultimate goal of completely exterminating them.

They raised several million dollars selling highly flammable explosive hacky sacks. that will combust and explode if kick six times inside 60 seconds or less. Great way to raise money while also getting those peace-loving fucks to take themselves out. For real now, Ben and Jerry's also established a 5-1 salary cap ratio, meaning that the CEO could only make five times the amount of the lowest-paid worker, which was bumped up to a 17-to-1 ratio when co-founder Ben Cohen went to retire because they could not find any qualified people willing to take his place for what equated to less than 100K a year.

I mean, yeah. One company doing this is never going to work. It's got to be all or nothing or close to it, unfortunately. Not going to find too many people willing to take an incredibly demanding high pressure, high stress, tons of hours job on for about $85,000 a year. If another employer is going to pay them several million dollars to literally work the same hours and do the same shit. The current CEO's annual compensation, not publicly disclosed, but estimated to be a decent, a healthy seven figures.

Ben's right. In the 1980s and 1990s, tech giants frequently used the good-slash-bad binary system to overthrow incumbents by framing software choices as moral choices. A 1984 Apple ad, for example, depicted IBM as a totalitarian big brother entity controlling the masses. While Apple, others are artsy, hammer-throwing rebel, liberating humanity? Oh yeah, because they're so different. Both Microsoft and Apple, to be clear, have used cheap, exploitive third-world labor, four years. One has just done a much better job at marketing itself as being cooler than the other. And I say that is an Apple user who likes their products. But in many ways, they're all the same,

right? Sony, Nintendo, so many other tech companies, they all rely on horrific third world manufacturers. You know, places that are known for pretty ruthless and exploitive business practices. In today's global economy, you're going to have a hell of a time finding a white night. Just do a quick search yourself. I ask the internet, do any major electronics companies not use, third world labor. Here is the answer I got back. No major multinational electronics company completely avoids

manufacturing and developing nations or utilizing complex global supply chains where lower cost labor is common. Even brands with strict auditing programs rely on facilities in Asia, Mexico, or Eastern Europe for assembly and components. But that doesn't stop many of these companies from trying to position themselves

as being one of the good guys. Another example of this manipulative moral framing is Google's don't be evil campaign, which was included in its 2004 IPO prospectus in alignment with company co-founder Larry Page's claim that Google wanted to be a company that, quote, does good things for the world, even if we forego some short-term gains. But then, some investigative reports uncovered that a lot of Google shit, like Google Pixel smartphones and Google Nest smart home devices, have had a lot of their parts manufactured in Chinese and Vietnamese third-party sweatshops. You know where workers regularly log

over 100 hours of overtime each month and will continue to do so if they do not want to be fucking fired, but are still often never given benefits because they've been hired from a temp agency equivalent, little workaround profit margin savings situation. A lot of these sweatshops are places where minors, so children are labeled as interns, but treated like any other worker. You know, for example, pressured into overnight shifts, massive amounts of overtime again. workers in remote locations are often housed, including minors, in cheap dormitories with up to six people in a room

where they are never transported off-site unless it is to work where they are verbally abused, psychologically intimidated into lower wages, etc., etc. Suicide rights, off the fucking charts at a lot of these places. And I could go on and on. And this is not some Google problem. This is the norm now. So does this mean that Google is evil?

Maybe, maybe not, right? is up for you to decide. They're definitely, in my opinion, partially exploitive, by definition, exploitive in the same way that any business that sells anything made in a place like Vietnam and China is probably exploitive. But even if you buy or sell shit that is made in America, where was the material to make it harvested? Where was it, you know, bought?

Where were the machines used to make what you're buying bought or assembled? How far down the assembly line or supply line are you willing to look based on your principles? I bet every single person listening right now, supports multiple companies currently that are complicit in some type of bad business on some level. It is sadly, unless you are living off of nothing that you didn't buy at your local farmer's market or made yourself from fucking locally sourced material, damn near impossible to not sell and or purchase something that does not involve the exploitation of someone and or some place. With artificial intelligence, there is currently a lot of talk about good versus bad,

mostly bad, right? There are deep and I think very valid. valid concerns about the environmental impact of data centers, the impact on jobs, you know, there are privacy concerns, job replacement concerns, concerns about the theft of intellectual property, the dehumanization of art, concerns about the faster spread of dangerous misinformation and the destruction that leads to in so many, you know, arenas and the destruction that leads to in so many arenas on and on. So obviously bad, right? But also, AI machine learning models have literally already saved human lives by doing things like finding new applications

for existing medications. AI is making waves currently right now in cancer prevention, treatment, and diagnosis if AI models could say eradicate cancer in the coming decades, while without those models, it might never be eradicated. Would you still want to eliminate it?

Would you sacrifice those future lives, possibly the lives of your children, your grandchildren, possibly your life? The morality of business is all very complicated if you are willing to take an honest, non-emotional look at it. It's going to be hard to get a lot of people to agree on which big businesses or types of businesses are good or bad because of that with certain exceptions.

One of those exceptions seems to be MLMs, right? Massive, lickable memories. I mean, multi-level marketing companies. People like memories. Poking around on Reddit and elsewhere. It's hard to find a lot of love for MLMs by, anyone who is not the owner of one or a high-level exec currently making a lot of money in one, you know, or somebody just getting into it fucking drinking that MLM Kool-Aid or flavorade,

certainly appears that most people, including a lot of investigative journalists and watchdog organizations, think MLMs are just basically objectively, inherently bad. Words like unethical, deceptive and exploitive, those get tossed around a lot. Why? Why do they receive more hate consistently than, say, you know, the tech companies I just went over? Well, the reason MLMs occupy a unique tier of cultural disdain seems to come down to a structural distinction. Most corporations, even the most predatory ones, are designed to profit from the product they sell to the outside world. That product might be made in part in some unethical ways, as I have went over, but also at least the people making it. Even the people on the bottom, the direct employees, are making some money.

Unlike the majority of MLM distributors who actually most often lose money. Oftentimes, a lot of people, these traditional business model companies are making good money, right? To use Google, Microsoft and Apple, again, as examples, and I could have picked so many different other companies, but Apple currently employs roughly 166,000 people. And they offer a median compensation of $139,49,000, which means well over half, likely more than 100,000 employees earn at least $100,000 a year. That's a lot of people with really good jobs, contributing a ton to taxes, you know, with a discretionary income, to, support a lot of other businesses. Microsoft has around 223,000 global employees. The average compensation, don't have the median number, unfortunately, is 227,000, or 200, excuse me, 227,000. Jesus Christ, 227,000. Forgot how numbers work, roughly. U.S. federal filings indicate that

typical mid-level employees make close to $194,000 a year, a lot of money, a lot of good jobs. it is estimated that well over 150,000 people earn at least $100,000 a year in total compensation or base salary. Google, AKA Alphabet has roughly 198,900 total full-time employees. SEC filing shows that median total compensation for a mid-level Google employee was $331,894. That is a fucking big number, meaning well over half make triple figures in the hundreds of thousands. A lot of people making a lot of money. A lot of direct employees, the majority, in fact, making excellent livings that allow them to have health care, retirement plans, own property, pay for their children's educations, take vacations, eat quality food, support tons of businesses in their areas, pay property taxes, and support schools for other people's kids. Live pretty damn good lives.

So while they're not perfect, while they do some bad shit, third party employee-wise, these companies do also take care of a lot of their employees. and they do that by selling their products, not their people. MLMs do not do this. And MLM is designed to profit from the people selling their product more than from the product themselves, which makes a lot of them not just an MLM, but a pyramid scheme by definition. MLMs, by design, essentially, prey upon their own. And I'm only hedging here because they're very good at hiding their accounting and not looking like pyramid schemes for, you know,

because of reasons I'll get into by the end of the episode. They've had a lot of governmental help in making sure they don't cross certain lines, at least on paper, but studies have shown they are for sure fucking crossing those lines. It just can't be proven in a court of law. But yeah, MLMs, they fucking eat their young. And I should add on top of eating their young,

the products they and their young sell are often created in the same types of third world factories I just referenced with Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. So Mary Kay, you know, they do have a big production facility in the U.S. in Texas, but they also have another big one in China. And a lot of the raw ingredients, materials and packaging components used, even in the Texas facility are sourced globally from international suppliers that adhere to very different lower business standards. So they're often engaged in that troublesome situation. And on top of that, they are financially fucking devouring their own distributors. So how are they devouring their own?

Why do I say that? because I'm a piece of shit and I have an axe to grind because my fucking family was killed by them no, because many if not most MLMs do not sell the majority

of their products to random customers, they sell directly to their distributors. And if those distributors don't then sell to anyone beneath them, which they very, very often do not,

then they eat the cost to those products and lose money thanks to the Mary Kay opportunity. Let me break down how this is different from traditional retail sales.

Since I'm not part of an MLM, if I were to buy, say for a random example, a glow in the dark cock ring for some fun at home, or for use at maybe an EDM festival after party orgy. Right? I buy it to use on my cock, period. It's for me. It's for my cock. It's an ethical transaction in that sense. I have a cock. I would like to put a glow in the dark cock ring on for funning games. But with an MLM, the majority of glow in the dark cock rings are not being sold to people who need slash want them for their own cocks. Or for the cocks of their families. They're being sold to people who hope to then resell these glowing

cock rings to other people for a commission for them to put them on their cocks, but then also have them convince still more people to put those on their cocks and make a commission for themselves and a bit of commission money for the person above them while also having the person below them get a cock ring commission and recruit someone new beneath them and so on and so on. Multiple levels of cocks, all marketing, the same glow in the dark cock rings to still further levels of cock until everybody is drowning in more cock rings than there are cocks too many fucking cock rings not enough cocks does that make sense it's not a straightforward transaction it's to me and many other is slimy and when i share some stats by the end of this episode i hope many of you if you

don't already think it's slimy we'll find this tactic slimy too uh mary k's one of these mllms founded on uh september 13th nineteen sixty three by mary k ayesh in dallas texas mary k incorporated one of the world's largest, most famous direct-selling MLM cosmetic companies. Originally named Beauty by Mary Kay, the company was started with a $5,000 investment, allegedly Mary Kay's life savings, according to company Laura, but I don't buy it, and a single storefront staffed by Ash and several salespeople, whom she called beauty consultants, even though they didn't really receive any real training. Today, the business operates on a dual-income promise selling beauty products directly to retail consumers

and recruiting a team of subsellers, a downline, to earn commissions on their wholesale purchases. In this model, the consultant purchases products directly from Mary and Kay Incorporated at a 50% wholesale discount. Think of it like buying 100 bucks worth of retail stock for 50 bucks. When she sells that item to a customer at full retail price,

she then keeps her 50% profit margin, which sounds great, right, when you're sold that little spiel. But to keep that 50% discount, privilege, and qualify for team commissions, a consultant must maintain, quote, active status by ordering a minimum wholesale volume, at least $225 currently wholesale every three months, directly from the corporate warehouse. And here's how you make money from those in the levels beneath you that you have recruited.

And this to me is where it starts to get really fucking scammy and grifty. If you have one to two active recruits, you earn a 4% commission on team orders, and a $50 team building bonus is available to you whenever a new recruit places a $600 wholesale order. fine. If you have three to four active recruits, you still earn on commission on team's orders of 4% for production under $1,000, but then that jumps to 6% for production of between $1,000 to $17.99, then to 8% on production of $1,800 or above, and $50 team building bonuses are available when a new recruit places again, a $600 wholesale order. And it keeps going like that. Incrementally, you know, getting better, the more active recruits you have until you make it too. until if you can make it two, what is called the sales director level. It's a bit complicated, and I won't share every detail slash qualification,

because it's a lot. But essentially, if you have at least 24 active unit members, which is yourself plus 23, and have been actively accepted by the company into the official Mary Kaye director program, and you have held that many active unit members for at least three consecutive months, which is partly how you get accepted in the program,

while also hitting a bunch of minimum sales thresholds over that same three-month qualification period, then you transition from earning commission solely on your personal recruits, those people, one level down, to earning a commission on the total collective wholesale volume generated by your entire unit. And your unit includes your personal recruits, your level ones, and also their recruits, your level twos,

and also their recruits recruits, your level threes. So you are now directly paid for production two levels beneath you. And if a consultant, two levels beneath you, then climbs the range. and they become a sales director, they, quote, break away from your immediate unit to form their own unit.

And when that happens, they are no longer in your unit volume calculations. Instead, they have become a first-line offspring director. Still following? Pay attention. Trying to extend the Marrakeh opportunities

you're ungrateful ass. The least you can do is fucking focus. Regarding first-line offspring directors, you will no longer earn unit overrides on them, but you will transition to earning offspring unit commissions of four to five percent on their entire new units volume.

So now in theory, you could be earning commissions on someone 20 or 30 or fucking however many levels beneath you, provided that enough people between you and them are also crushing it to the level of becoming sales directors themselves. Okay. Okay. It's not a straightforward level system. Okay? It's even more complicated than I laid out because there are additional levels above sales

director. Okay? It's a lot to keep track of, okay? It is not nearly as simple as you buy some makeup here and there and get somebody you've recruited to buy a little makeup here and there, and then they get somebody they've recruited to buy a little makeup here and there, and on and on, and because you started that particular chain,

you get a little slice of all of the pies in that chain, whatever the size of the overall chain and pies happen to be. No, there are all sorts of ways. You can be cut out of your slices. You have to hit all sorts of minimum monthly sales thresholds while also maintaining a minimum number of active sellers directly underneath you, who are cumulently, continuously, hitting monthly sales thresholds month after month and on and fucking on

until the break it on in order for you to make more than your personal sales commissions. Oh, and by the way, no matter how high you climb, you've got to keep buying a minimum of $600 worth of product at that level. Once you get to that level per month, every month, to maintain active status or you could lose it all and get dropped down. The grind never stops. You can't stop, won't stop. You don't get to climb to the top and then manage a team and coast.

There's no coasting in the Mary Kay opportunity. This is not the good God Amway, maker of neutral lighting. extended release vitamin C capsules for the low quality price of $54 per 180. This is the angry, vengeful god of Mary Kay, and the Mary Kay God will raw dog fuck your butt with a time-wise miracle set skin care set for $166, okay? Okay? But for real, you're always buying more and more Mary Kay shit forever. To keep your status is a Mary Kay good girl who always goes peeping the potty.

This doesn't seem unfair to you. imagine a rough version of that same business model applied to, say, the automotive sales space. You're managing a dealership. And if you don't sell a minimum quota of cars yourself personally, then you don't get to make any money at all from any of the sales of the people that you are managing. You just don't make literally any money now. Even though you hired all those people, even though you've been managing and guiding them. That's fucking insane. This business model can and does lead to problems.

Salespeople who are not making enough sales are pressure to keep ordering month. after month after month, even if their personal stock is overflowing to keep that status within the company, to please their Mary Kay overlords above them. Do you hate Sharon now, you lazy bitch? Do you not want her to get that pink Cadillac? Do you not want her to have a nice house? No?

Then get the fuck up and get out there and sell some skincare, sell some perfume, sunscreen, lip gloss, you fucking loser. Because the status of the uplines depends on the downlines, beneath them, keeping their status. Often by simply ordering more stock, that means consultants face continual, constant pressure to spend on shit they do not need from the very women who have promised to mentor them and help them with financial success. When they're not being pressured directly, consultants are faced with a whole lot of indirect pressure to keep this all going. Awards gala's where consultants talk glowingly about how much money they've made through Mary Kay, where they're awarded fancy prizes, including a lease on a pink Cadillac, international vacations, you know, all performance-based.

At these gala's consultants listen to motivational speeches like this, what I'm going to play a little clip from from 2017. We're senior national sales director Dave Van Moll talks about going full Mary Kay with her pink sister, best friend Shiro. Now we work together enriching women's lives, wearing matching suits, have matching diamond rings,

and we travel the world together thanks to Mary Kay. We have been all in for each other's success, and we have always been in for Mary Kay. So who is your best friend? None of your business. Is she with you at this seminar? Too personal. Is she your customer?

Don't you fucking talk about. Write her name down right now. Or give her a big old hug if she's sitting beside you. I love the sisterhood in Mary Kay. I feel like all of us are best friends. And don't you love doing life with your pink sisters? Yes, like I said, it's only day one. And I promise you we can all go home right now.

We've heard from the top three nationals. And oh my goodness, isn't it good to see Kathy is number one? I mean, feel her energy. Can you tell she loves her life? She's my Shiro. Seriously, I love my Mary Kay, and I love Mary Kaye, Ash and her family. I need a Shiro. Come on, don't you want to wear her?

matching Mary Kay Diamond rings with your best friend Shiro? Is she buying from you or not? Why not? What kind of fake-ass pink sister backstabbing dirty bitch is she? If she's not buying hundreds and hundreds of dollars with a Mary Kay every fucking month, huh? Why don't she be your Shiro? Spend all... Why don't she spend all her money on Mary Kay?

Just spend all and fucking die, bitch! Okay? Just fucking die already. If you're not full pink sister Shiro, Mary Kay material, I hope centipedes eat your fucking eyeballs out of your head. That might have been too much. I want to hear that at one of the rallies. These rallies.

They're also a merry-kah theme sing-alongs, which also, you know what they are by the time you get to the gala because you have been singing them in weekly meetings. You know, women wearing specialized outfits are singing them, corresponding to their ranks in the company, so much fucking glitter, so much pink. I got that Marri-K enthusiasm up in my head. Where?

Up in my head. Up in my head. I got that Mary Kay enthusiasm. Up in my head. Where? Up in my head. Fuck yourself. I got my pink glittery outfit

and I'm crying real tears. I'm crying real tears. I'm so sad. My life is fucking falling apart and none of my pink sisters care. I wish I wasn't even alive. I don't know. That was the subtext I heard in that song.

That was what I heard them. That's why I heard their soul singing. There's so many videos out there of a big group of women singing Mary Kay rally songs together. Here's an old Mary Kay brainwashing training tape from 1972 talking about the power of these Sing-alongs.

Sing-along with Mary Kay. Some wise person said, act enthusiastic, and you will become enthusiastic. The very act of singing stirs enthusiasm. Brainwash yourself. We suggest that you learn these enthusiastic little ditties written by enthused Mary Kay consultants. Be a she row.

And sung for you by our company cheerleaders, the Vicaro. Be a sure. And I am their leader, Sue Vickers. Bow to the leader. When you are feeling low or have a show, sing. Your spirits will rise and you'll arrive at your show, feeling enthusiastic in spite of yourself. Brainwash yourself. One consultant tells us she gets up every morning and gets herself in the mood for her business day by playing the sing-along record.

She's brainwashed. Try it. We began all of our sales meetings by singing a couple of the Mary-Cableness. song. Drink to Kool-A. It sets the pace for a positive thinking meeting and builds a spree decor among the unit members. This is the purpose of the sing-along record. Are you ready? Yes. Sing along now with the vicaro. Give your soul to Mary Kay. You are no longer an individual. You are part of Mary Kay. this perfuming and nail polish.

The legacy of Mary Kay is a very complicated one. She was a genuinely groundbreaking, groundbreaking pioneer for women's financial autonomy, and yet she also engineered a psychological recruitment system that led to the blueprint for modern MLM coercion and all of those, you know, I've got a real great opportunity for you DMs that populate in so many of our inboxes. To unpack how all of this happened, let's head on over to today's time suck timeline. Okay? I think that sounds real nice, okay?

But first time for today's First of two Mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, how funny it would be if a Mary Kayad popped up. Please sign up to be a space leader on Patreon. Help us make monthly charitable contributions,

get the catalog, ad-free, episodes three days early, and more. Now let's truly jump into that timeline. Okay? Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-sunk timeline. In the spring of 1989, a savior was born in Texas.

Texas or baby girl. Probably lots of baby girls were born that spring. I'm going to guess. But this one in particular was the fourth and final child born to Alexander, Edward Wagner, and Lula Vember Hastings. Ooh, that's a good name. Lula Vember Hastings. Both Alex and Lula were hardworking people. They hoped their third child, one born 10 years after her last sibling, would be born into better circumstances than the ones they currently found themselves in.

Lila herself was born into what was once. an old money family in 1883 or 1884, old money a long time before that. Her wealthy ancestors had immigrated to Maryland in the late 1600s. A few fought as loyalists, aka on the side of the British, and the American Revolution, and generation by generation they moved south. As they did, unfortunately, their money and status gradually disappeared. More and more of them became sharecropper farmers, blacksmiths, and harness makers, making just enough to provide a living for their families.

By the Civil War, Lula's grandfather, James Dimmit, Cross. No shortage of interesting names in this family who would come would come to settle in Fall counties or Falls County, excuse me, Texas. He was a destitute Confederate soldier who had to literally fight barefoot because motherfucker didn't even have boot money. While his wife, Julia Parton Cross, endured 13 pregnancies and looked after their farm. True rural poverty, living off the land and just barely. Soon another hard scrabble family was making its way into Texas, the Wagner's. Born on May 28th, 1878, and a small farm in Cook County, Illinois, Alexander Edward Wagner was the seventh living child of Prussian-born

Martin Wagner, probably Martin Wagner, and his Prussian-born wife, Katrina, Catherine, who had her first baby when she was 17 and her last when she was 45. Just 28 years of pregnancies, no big whoop. Lady had a fucking light manufacturing facility for a uterus. Eventually, the Wagner's wound up in Texas, and Alex and his brother Conrad found work as farmhands in Port Arthur, a recently settled stretch of the Gulf Coast. But their timing was not the best. They arrived right before the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, and the brothers would be just in time,

would get there just a time, to see the hurricane ruined crops, ravaged the seaport, set off floods and fires, it killed at least 8,000 people and damaged countless houses and businesses. Had any of you heard of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane before? If I had, I forgot about it.

It's wild that this stuff just doesn't, you know, float around in our consciences now. Between 6,000 and 12,000, people died in a natural disaster in the U.S. not all that long ago, 8,000 being the most accepted estimate, and we never even talk about it anymore. Why? Well, too much

should have happened since. And also, you know, less media saturation back then. And also, because I think tragic deaths weren't seen as much of an aberration back then as they are now, right? That shit was expected, part of life. One year, a whole bunch of people die in a flood. Next year, a bunch of people die of the flu,

consumption, childbirth. They're killing tons of people every year and on and on. Death was just all around you. Meanwhile for the living, as it always does, life went on. And it would go on in Texas. And soon Alex, a dark-haired, thin young man met a girl with a short, sturdy figure, mousy hair, and a pale, pretty complexion. And that was, of course, Lula.

With no savings and no homestead, the two were married by Justice of the Peace on January 4th, 1902, when Alex was about 22, Lula was around 17 or 18. Nine months later, their first child, Delia Cosette, strong name game, continues, was born, and they had a son, Cecil, or Cecil, Cecil DeWitt, in May of 1907, two years later, Daisy, a vet was born. Now with five mouths to feed, the Wagner's worked as rice farmers or picked up odd jobs in small towns all around Harris County. They never owned land to work for themselves, but like most of us at one time or another, they had big, big dreams. Dreams that did not pan out. After a few years of failing to strike oil or make their fortune farming, the Waggners took jobs at a hotel

in Cyprus, a railroad state, town about 20 miles from Houston. There back in 1907, wildcatters, drilling for oil, had hit a 108-degree hot spring instead. And that looked like a very different kind of financial opportunity. A decade later, the Hot Well Improvement Company was busy trying to recruit investors to transform two cement pools of smelly-ass water, 30 acres of weedy land, and one rickety barn into a destination spa resort. Headed by an Ohio-born Wheeler and dealer named Frank Connable, the Hotwell Improving Company

had not really found its footing. Its greatest success had been luring Houstonians out to Cyprus on Sundays with advertisements of a 50-cent chicken dinner that became pretty damn popular. Must have been some delicious-ass chicken.

When Lula and Alexander arrived on the scene, Frank was more than happy to give them jobs. For Lula, it would be cooking those delicious chicken dinners and doing some light housekeeping, while Alexander would act

as a handyman and site manager. And the Wagners were excited. Was this their chance to make a business, big to get in on the ground floor of something that was going to become not just prosperous but life-changing on paper it sure as hell seemed that way texas at the time was dotted with successful resorts like uh wizard wells sour lake and sulfur springs where health seekers handed over chunks of cash right just gobs of cash for supposed miracle cures a huge health fad back then hot springs

were like the peptides of the turn of the 20th century so many people wanted them would pay to access them, even though they had no fucking clue if they worked or not. Not a knock on peptides, by the way. Just cracks me up how many people I know who take them have zero clue whatsoever how they're supposed to work. If they're supposed to work, they've read zero peer-reviewed studies. They don't know anything. They've just heard they work.

Just take it. Just put the needle in your arm. Just feel better. Put the needle in your stomach. Feel better than you've ever felt. Trust me, I'm not a doctor, but I do look cool in a lap coat. Soak in that fucking spring. Watch that arthritis.

melt away, put on that Lavelle Thrive, My GLP edition 24-7 DFT that supports weight and appetite management and supports mental clarity and focus and supports cardiovascular health and improves your metabolism and makes your dick bigger and supports healthy blood sugar levels and makes your pussy tighter and over like a thousand

more things. How are you even fucking alive without it? If you're not thriving you dying! You get it. Up in Palo Pinto County, a resort called mineral wells consisted of two sanatoriums for consumption patients, more than 40 hotels and boarding houses and a manufacturing plant that shipped more than 3 million bottles of so-called crazy water a year. A water that was regulated just as tightly as Alex Jones's vitamins when it comes to proof that it's all cure-all or that's cure-all miracle claims you actually worked.

Closer by in Marlin, whose town tagline was, if you're ailing or your health is failing. Reminiscentousin of if you're not thriving, you're dying. There was even a hot spring resort set up behind the courthouse. And Marlin advertised that its local wonders could cure everything from tobacco addiction. Just fucking get in the water. Are you having trouble stopping smoking? Just fucking soak for a little bit. I could also cure a bunch of things that fell under the dismissive catch-all title of female complaints.

What's your silly broad complaining about now, fella? Get her a bottle of crazy water. That'll stop her yapping. This all made what was happening in Hotwell seem, you know, pretty promising. If things went very well, Frank and the Wagners might even aspire to own their own resort like the Hot Wells Hotel and Spa. A resort near San Antonio, whose new bowling alley, fandangled telephones and attached ostrich forms, even attracted the likes of Teddy motherfucking Roosevelt. Indeed, Frank Connable had big, big plans for Cyprus.

Its hotel was surrounded by over 100 acres that the Hot Well Improvement Company planned to split into plots for resort homes, enticing prospects with a dollar a share in the spa company for every $10 spent on the land. prospective guests would have many more luxuries to look forward to, a roller coaster, a skating rink, a tennis court, quote, other contraptions for the amusement-loving public, as the advertising said. And there were plenty of fun things to do in Cyprus proper. Directly behind the depot was Yergen Saloon

and a dance palace called the Tin Hall. Go dance that Charleston, girl. Shake that ass! Shake that motherfucker! Tell it falls off at the tin hall! And thanks to Cyprus's proximity to a fast-growing port flush with oil money, Frank expected not only customers, but rich customers. Ones with deep pockets, ones that would buy plenty of magical water from the spa's bottling plant and ship it far and wide.

Both Frank and the Waggners thought that big money was going to come in any day now. Until then, they just had to work hard, fixing up the property, making those chicken dinners on the weekends, working seven days a week. But then, as the month stretched into years, hard work was all anybody had to show for it. The promise of big money never came. and soon the cure-all mineral springs faded as fads always do. And for the young Wagner kids, they were now stuck in a place. They didn't give a fuck about preparing the next generation for opportunity, for success.

You know, they were not being educated. The state legislator had fought tooth and nail to keep public high schools out of the state. Jesus Christ! These fucking idiots have always been around. They believe that, you know, those kind of institutions made working class people unhappy with their current circumstances. And you know what? They were right.

It is easier to be happy with your present circumstances. If you're being exploited, if you're fucking dumb. Too dumb to realize, shit doesn't have to be that way. And the more things change, the more they stay the same. Beware of those forever who want to keep you and your kids from becoming truly educated. The motivation behind that is always the same. Control. Fuck the anti-education crowd forever.

No one loves an empty-headed vessel. A sheep desperate for a shepherd to tell them what to do more than egomaniacal politicians power-hungry pastors and money-loving, unscrupulous business leaders. Stay dumb. Obey your masters. Even getting elementary schools had been a battle in this area, since a large contingent of politicians felt that it was ridiculous to force people to pay taxes to educate other people's children.

Yeah, I bet those same politicians went to school, though. I bet their kids went to school. But you know what? Fuck poor people, right? Don't extend a hand and help their kids. Don't help change, you know, multi-generational poverty. Nah, just fuck them. keep them down there on the bottom

so you can keep standing on their necks and backs to lift you and yours up above them. The fight continued until 1915 when Texas became one of the last states to require compulsory schooling but the law only mandated that kids spend 60 days a year in school, just 60 days. That would be raised to 100 days in 1918, thankfully.

But even then, nobody went out of their way to enforce that, and the absentee rate at rural schools was around 40%. To that end, most elementary schools in Texas, for one and two room buildings with a water pump in the yard, kerosene lamps on the walls, a reeking outhouse outback, and a small handful of very underpaid and overworked teachers.

Those teachers were frequently homesick 14 and 15-year-old girls who were forced to share bedrooms with their female students who rarely got their small salaries paid on time. Teachers and a formal education not being respected or rewarded by large swath of the American public is sadly nothing new. Stay dumb. Submit. The Wagner kids were assigned to Big Cypress School number two, a one-room schoolhouse, two miles down from the old Shell Road.

There a lone teacher presided over a pack of poor students in a single room, which was notoriously hot in the spring and fall and freezing cold in the winter. When graduation rolled around, the closest high school was over a dozen miles away in attics. Very few bothered going. This was the life that little Mary Kathleen, as she would eventually be named, was born into on Sunday, May 12, 1918, after Lulu had finished. cooking and serving chicken dinners to work for the day. Excuse me, no reason not to go work and still get dinner made. Put on the table while you're going into labor, ladies.

Come on, enough with your female complaints. According to Mary Kathleen, she was, quote, born blue. And to get her to breathe, somebody had to dunk her in a pot of water that had recently been used earlier that day to scald chickens. And why are the chickens being scalded?

Well, because, fun fact, chickens love it. They fucking love to be scalded. It revs their little engines. Gets them going. Gets her blood moving. Scalalding water is the equivalent of a cup of hot, delicious morning coffee for a chicken. It's how they like to wake up and, you know, get their day going. Or it's how you loosen their feathers and open their pores so you can pluck them and get them ready to be butchered.

Get them ready to be, get them ready to be defeathered. Excuse me. Not ready to be butchered. That was a weird slip there. Now, you scaled them after death, to be very clear. Please don't, on my advice, start scalding live chickens. It's frowned upon. Kind of makes you a complete psychopath.

after newborn Mary Kathleen, having welcome to the world with some piping hot chicken water. Lula and Alex had another mouth to feed. Luckily, things were actually looking better on the business front. Good chunk of Houston had banned alcohol sales. Get that devil water out of here. The band ended right next to Cyprus. So the hope was that Houstonians would soon be flocking their way to get their drink on. But it didn't pan out like that.

A series of strikes halted local shipping. And with that, the local economy. By August, the county was in a recession, or excuse, me the country was, and spending money to splash around in smelly water to cure their gout was not on the top of many people's to-do lists. To make things worse, by the fall, the Spanish influenza made his way to Houston, and the mayor then outlawed public gatherings, especially at bathhouses, which were considered places where diseases spread quickly. Not wrong. In November, the end of World War I should have brought so much need of relief, but when the army announced the closure of nearby Camp Logan,

that left a few locals who had managed to hang on to steady jobs unemployed. And then in early 1919, the 18th Amendment passed, outlined alcohol nationwide, ushering in the beginning of prohibition. Within the year, Yergan Saloon would go out of business. The Hotwell Improvement Company soon went bust, and with that the Wagners were mostly out of work. They were at a loss for what to do next. In January of 1920, the census reported that the Wagners were still living at the Hotwell Hotel,

still serving up a few chicken dinners, and the three oldest children were still attending the one-room schoolhouse down the road. A 12-year-old girl who worked on the property, Mamie Jackson, was probably taken care of a little Mary Kathleen. Mammy, Mamie Jackson. Finally, the family decided that rural life no longer held any appeal, no longer had any economic prospects for them. And like much of the country at the time,

they decided that cities were the best bet for steady work and maybe for a better life. So with that, the Wagner's move to Houston Sixth Ward, hoping to find jobs at the Houston Ship Channel or one of the areas of many oil refineries and cotton processing plants. Life in the Sixth Ward, very different than it had been in Cyprus. North of the city center, the Wagner's new neighborhood, had recently been filled with neat bungalows that housed workers largely for the nearby Grand Central Station, housed all sorts of all sorts, people working as ministers, bus drivers, bakers, factory bosses, salesmen of various sorts, even professional musicians, a lot more job variety than existed back in Cyprus.

Peck Kelly, who would later be called the finest white jazz penis of all time by many people, lived over on State Street, and at the end of the Wagner's block stood a brick mansion with stained glass windows and Corinthian columns, a clear reminder of the kind of prosperity that was up for the taking if you had grit and luck on your side. This newfangled city world was difficult to navigate for the Wagner's. In Cyprus, Alex and Lula could go for days without speaking to another soul besides a other family who worked at the hotel. Neither had more than a sixth grade education. neither had ever negotiated a mortgage. But Alex would do his best.

He agreed to pay $3,650 for a two-bedroom shotgun cottage on Cain Street with a mortgage of $40 a month, which was roughly half his income. But it was something of their own. And that was a big accomplishment. To help support the family, 15-year-old Cecil became a clerk at the South Texas Commercial National Bank, while Daisy just 13 became a cashier at Foley Brothers, the downtown department store. Man, you got a fucking 13-year-old. working at the department store and a 15-year-old working at the bank. Gone are those days.

Dealia, the oldest at 19, was a sales lady for a dry goods emporium. Lula became a cake baker at Colby's rooms. Right, amazing chicken dinners, and I bet she was making delicious cakes. Lula was a wizard in the kitchen. Alex's big ambitions were not diminished by things not working out in Cyprus. His years as the Hotwell Hotel's proprietor, at least that's what he called himself, had given him a taste of what it might be like to run his own business. and soon he leased a double lot at 1821 and 1823 Washington Avenue for the Kings Trail Auto Repair Company.

He'd be on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day, primarily repairing radiators, which was his specialty, but eagerly accepting any work that came his way. He bought advertisements that pledged, We employ only experienced mechanics and guarantee all work. Alex was on to something with this. In 1921, Houston would boast the highest rate of car ownership in the entire country, and Alex was smart enough to concentrate on Ford's, which gave him an edge over some of his competitors,

but would it be enough to really set the family up for prosperity? No, unfortunately, some went wrong. By 1922 the very next year, he was already forced to sublet. The lot to somebody else. And then in 1923, the year after that, he would sell Kings Trail all together for little to no money. And then the historical record on the family's business,

wheelings and dealings goes pretty silent after that. Not clear what he did or how he made money in the years to come, clearly nothing spectacular. Mary Kathleen would later say that he spent three or four years now in the state tuberculosis sanatorium outside of San Angelo, another victim of consumption, but this may have been a story to hide the truth

because of the 1920s, three years would have been an extended stay and patients at that sanatorium were limited to a one six-month stay. Other people would say that Alex simply spent those years getting drunk off his ass. depressed that try as he had he just couldn't turn big dreams into reality

and drowning his sorrows in a bottle the family overall kept going though 1923 Delia married a man who worked for humble oil and settled near San Antonio right did well Cecil when he turned 21 married a 17 year old girl named Ruby Massey they moved out

then in 1925 Lula started to advertise space in her home for borders and boarding houses we have talked about them before and other stories set around this time they had originated in Europe and the U.S. in the 17th and 18th centuries, they served as transitional, affordable, communal housing, where a landlady provided private rooms,

prepared meals, and laundry service for a weekly cash payment. By the 1900s, these extra services like meals and laundry, well, those had largely gone away. And boarding houses were generally run by people who had to supplement their small incomes, especially widows and divorced women. They were just like motels. So, was Lula planning on getting a divorce?

Is that why she wanted this extra income? Yes. As soon as she had rented out enough space to support herself and the kids, she sued for divorce, which was granted in April of 1926 when Mary Kathleen was seven. Boarding did not cover all the bills, though. And to put food on the table, Lula left her old job to cook at Blanchard's, another downtown restaurant, before leaving to become a waitress at yet another restaurant. Then in 1927, her brother also moved into the small house on Cain Street, bringing his wife and kids. Not sure how Lula and all her kids and a brother and his wife and kids and boarders were. all living in a two-bedroom house,

guessing maybe a brother became the new border in his families, still while, the two families with multiple children each, all sharing a two-bedroom home. Does that make you feel a little better, a little more grateful about whatever living arrangements you have right now and maybe past arrangements? Uh, it does me. In 1927, second youngest child, Daisy Wagner, married to California,

settled out in San Francisco, doing well there, and now it's down to just Lula and Mary Kathleen and the family. But that wouldn't last long. When Mary Kathleen was 10, her parents remarried. Dad stopped drinking, so move back into the house on Kane Street. Soon after, Lula opened a greasy spoon, leased in a rundown storefront at the corner of Washington Avenue and White Street, which she called Wagner's Cafe. Man, Lula apparently could cook up fucking anything. The cafe specialty was waffles, but they also served cornbread, black-eyed peas, barbecued ribs, and chicken and dumplings.

My God. Anybody else salivating? I bet that shit was delicious. Love me some chicken and dumplings. Mary Kathleen would not work in the cafe though Like her sibling she was expected to contribute But her contribution would be different She got a job

Modeling clothes for porcelain dolls Random Doll making was apparently huge At Houston at this time And when dollmakers needed to think up new outfits For their dolls they would hire kids to try on Various outfits to see what the dollmakers thought would look the best

You know slash cutest What would likely sell the most You know stuff kids would also wear To dress like their dolls probably sounds easy, but I guess the work was pretty grueling. These kids would sometimes try and upwards of 100 outfits over the course of a 12-hour workday. Some especially demanding dollmakers could take months to settle on the next round of outfits. It was very competitive.

If they were working on, say, a winter line, well, that would mean making kids stand around in coats and snow suits in a warehouse in Houston where it was 100 degrees in human outside. How hot was it inside some big building with no AC, no airflow? lots of machines making dolls all the time. Right, it was bad. It was very bad. Bad enough for new laws to be passed, prohibiting doll modeling in Texas in March of 1928, after, I guess, somewhere around 10 kids died.

Some sources say seven, others go as high as 14, while wearing stuff like thick cotton leggings, rubber, felt-line boots, these really heavy, thick, velvety winter dresses and gloves and hats for a new line of Christmas North Pole-themed dolls. Who? Quick question.

for moving forward. Had anyone heard of that before? Did anyone buy that doll modeling bullshit that never happened? I feel like some of you did. Admit it. On the one hand is patently absurd.

But also, absurd jobs have existed. So why not, you know, doll clothes being modeled? Mary Catherine did not try in outfits to inspire dollmakers. That's fucking creepy. Her new job was taking care of her father, which is also,

this is sad. She would later say that his crippling illness, his supposed tuberculosis, made him need round-the-clock care, maybe he did have that or maybe he had that and drank too much or maybe he just drank too much, who knows.

Alex did also keep working just not for very long, just in little stretches. He would hold different jobs at places like the Bluebird Creamery, LB Price, Mercantile. Sometimes he would even pile up goods in his car and try and sell them door to door.

And all that meant that young Mary Kathleen was an early version of a latchkey kid and a caretaker. Probably a lot of kids were in similar situations back then. Her mom was working 16 hours a day, seven days a week most weeks. Fuck. A lot of cooking.

So it was up to Mary Kathleen to fix her dad's breakfast, head off to school and hurry two blocks home to then fix his lunch before her afternoon classes. That's weird. Anybody else find that weird?

So what? So dad is well enough to take odd jobs but can't make himself breakfast for lunch? Fuck what's going on with Alex. Sounds like a deadbeat. Sounds like Lula could have a sword

with a different better partner. They could just, I don't know, make themselves a fucking sandwich. after school, Mark Kathleen made, or excuse me, Mary Kathleen, I don't know who Mark is, made dad's dinner, made her own, and did the housework. Daddy Baby could not possibly prepare any meal ever or clean anything ever. I wonder if she burped Daddy Baby, too. Maybe tucked him into bed, read him a story, helped Daddy Baby fall asleep.

Afterwards, Mary Kathleen waited up to tell her mom what she had done that day and get little bit feedback on how she could do it better. She did go to school, at least, and she got to go to a good one. the Dow School, just two blocks away. Unlike that shithole, stayed dumb and submit forever school back in Cyprus. Dow had separate teachers for each grade, classrooms lined with blackboards,

there were bathrooms with running water, hot meals in the cafeteria. Fuck yeah, bro, give me those tater tots! Give me those hot tots! In all, Dow was the second highest-rated elementary school of the 55 schools in Houston's independent school district. What that school taught was also different

than anything Mary Kathleen had ever experienced. Her old school had focused on what was then called the three R's. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. Nice. But Dow, thanks to the pioneering work of early civic-minded educational reformers,

wanted to teach children to be successful, to be good citizens, future business owners, prosperous Americans. Imagine that. Unfortunately, it was hard for Mary Kathleen to fit in. She came to school each day in a faded old, limp-ass dress that she washed herself with her hair fashion into a low-maintenance bob, while other girls wore new pressed dresses

and had their hair curled by their moms. she looked like a fucking idiot. I hope she got pushed down into mud puddles. I hope she got pointed out, laughed at for coming to school looking so fucking stupid. She looked so fucking. For real, though. I guess she did stand out as the exceptionally poor kid in class.

And this drew the attention of another young girl, Dorothy Gladys Zap, and through her, Dorothy's mom, Augusta Zapp. Man, so many good names, the Zaps. When the girls became friends, Augusta soon realized how neglected Mary Kathleen was, or Kathleen. Soon she was having the little girl come to her house

each morning to pick up Dorothy and secretly so she could offer Mary Kathleen breakfast. And this would have an interesting I don't know what dad was doing. Dad was starving, I guess. Daddy baby. But this would have an interesting

unintentional effect on Mary Kathleen's development. Because Augusta was worried that Mary Kathleen would be embarrassed if she said she was taking care of the little girl because her family basically was not and risk making her feel ashamed of her family's financial situation,

Augusta said that she was glad to have Mary Catherine around, because she was a good role model for her Dorothy. And now in Mary Kathleen's mind, that meant she always had to do better than Dorothy. So if Dorothy got an A, well, she had to get an A plus. Because otherwise, the arrangement would stop. Otherwise, Dorothy wouldn't need her as a role model.

And she wouldn't get all the nice breakfast and such. And that made Mary Kathleen extremely competitive. And when the Zaps later moved across town, the competitiveness state. The competitiveness state. Mary Kathleen started doing all the things that the Zaps did by herself. went downtown, used the money she earned to buy a nice cotton dress, you know, made sure to press it, would treat herself to a movie here and there, would occasionally sit for lunch at a nice lunch counter,

you know, giving herself a taste of what she wanted for herself, you know, later in life. She would teach herself to work harder than anyone around her to get ahead, you know, give herself to things her family couldn't slash didn't give her. By middle school, her new mindset had led to her becoming one of the most successful students in her class, coached by a teacher slash tutor named Miss Scott. she entered extemporaneous speaking competitions that required her to speak on subject matter like she was an expert, even if she didn't know anything about it. Sounds like a class into how to become a con artist, right? Speaking like an expert about something you don't know shit about or when you know it's not when you're saying it is, but you say it is anyway.

That's like a grifter is one of their greatest skills, isn't it? In one competition, Mary Kathleen had to give a speech on Stone Mountain, Georgia, a place she'd never been to. she got second place where she really shown was her extracurriculars not sports or arts but community organizing in particular selling

every week there was something new to sell for the school like a raffle a backslap a fundraiser a bake sale and no one sold more than Mary Kaplan

soon she was looking for more opportunities to refine her new skill and she found one in the brand Cloverine South Cloverine was an all-purpose oint kind of like today's

aquifer or Vaseline it was advertised as a remedy for chapped lips, burns, or itching piles. Itching piles? That sounds disgusting. Suffering from itching piles? Try clovery. America's number one itching pile remedy.

No one deserves to suffer from piles of itch. From itch stacked upon more itch stacked upon still more itch. Rub clovering salve on that nasty itch pile and you'll look less like the creature from the Black Lagoon. more like a human being. Children will stop screaming at your lumpy, misshaping rash-covered visage. Villagers will stop chasing you with pitchforks

and torches, you scaly monster. Try clovery! Or just throw yourself off a bridge already and be done with it, you disgusting, covered and flaming red towers of itch and pus freak. There's no longer an excuse to be that goddamn ugly. You deplorable abomination! You blight upon humanity! You living testament to how wicked and filthy you are,

how a low character lifestyle can manifest upon one's body in shameful piles of itch. Try cloverine. Or do it all a favor and just end it all. God damn it. My God, they used to run some particularly aggressive commercials back then. Itch piles, just a term for hemorrhoids back then. A lot of people were apparently suffering from hemorrhoids because cloverine was booming. Everybody wanted some of that self.

The brand was known far and wide, thanks to some solid and innovative marketing in 1890. shortly after commercial manufacturing began, the inventor's son came up with a way to get his dad's products out there. With no money down, any kid across the country could ride in and get 12 tins of salve. Oh, what kid doesn't want some salve? 12 tens of sall to sell along with 12 posters

to give away as they saw fit. The poster served as almost free advertising, while the kids who sold their tins simply had to send the $3 they would make from selling those 12 tins back to the company, which would then make them eligible to select a prize from a catalog full of toys and gifts.

Trusting kids not just take the salve and run, but instead become unpaid salespeople spreading the brand far and wide, worked big time. Made the company so profitable that its manufacturing headquarters in Tyrone, Pennsylvania would be built to look like a fairy tale castle

further emphasized the involvement of children in their business model. How this business model worked was really interesting and obviously influential on Mary Kay. Let's find out what that model was right after today's second or two mid-show sponsor breaks.

Thanks for listening to those sponsors. I hope you heard some deals that you liked. Now let's check out the Cloverine Child Labor Business Model. In theory, these kids could actually take the cash commission, subtracting their earnings from the amount they mailed back to the Wilson Chemical Company. But in practice, almost none did. The company's reward catalog was just too good. It held the world-famous Daisy Air Rifle,

Betty, the prettiest dolly you ever saw, an imitation diamond ring, and a sparkly new watch. top sellers could even help their families buy a real working radio a portable phonograph or a set of fine china I guess I said bye but really win at the peak of this early MLM scheme

a young person who sold 420 packs a salve could even select a real live pony not sure how they mail those ponies out poor bastards with choices like that what kid would choose a measly amount of cash for her part Mary Cathan didn't win a pony

like most of the company's underage sales force, she succeeded mainly in flooding the market with so much salve. Outside of salve sales, her life was, uh, fine, okay? Even though she had learned grit, determination, and polish, she still felt less than the girls who had grown up in wealthy families, girls who had opportunities, led them to mastering foreign languages and traveling the world. At the age of 14, she didn't get nominated for any pageants, didn't win any national awards, wasn't queen of the school's May celebration. But on May 12th, as she was getting ready to celebrate her 14th birthday at school, news came that the remains of the Lindbergberg baby had been found

and everybody else rushed home to listen to the gruesome details in the radio, leaving Mary Kathleen alone. And then something wonderful happened. Mary Kathleen found out she had been voted the girl with the highest scores in honor, courage, scholarship, leadership, and service, which meant she was a winner of the American Legion School Award. The program had begun as a way for Legionaires to promote the can-do spirit that was credited with winning World War I.

And by 1932, the year that Mary Kathleen won it, it was a prestigious national program. The award gained her entry into an honor society called Lambda Sigma Alpha, and as luck would have it, one of the largest chapters was at the school where Mary Kathleen would be spending her next four years, John H. Reagan's senior high school. John H. Reagan, home of the Bulldogs, was just a couple miles away in Houston Heights, a neighborhood that was considered uptown and thus fancy. Alongside the Bulldogs, there was also a drum and bugle group for girls called the Redcoats,

who wore fancy high-necked wool jackets and white oxfords, they drilled for athletic games for two hours before school and an hour after classes. Being a red coat was intense. There was no room for failure. Even the uniforms often gave the, even though, excuse me, the uniforms often gave the girls literal heat strokes, they would then be giving smelling salts and expect you just to pop up and keep going. And that's actually true.

Not more of my doll maker type nonsense. Or doll modeler. Mary Kathleen excelled. Not afraid of hard work. She adapted easily, marching in formations to spell the school's initials or make an outline of Texas, traveling to away games, strutting in parades, assisting with bridge parties, fundraising dances, volunteering opportunities that also made up the Red Coats work.

Her first year at school, Reagan's football team made it all the way to the semifinals, the state championship, and 160 Red Coats went to each and every game, including Mary Catholic. She also made great grades, entered competitions, including the typewriting competition that she won. She made a bunch of new friends. Mary Kathleen would excel to the point she was encouraged to do. to skip her junior year, going straight from being a sophomore to being a senior, also became an officer in Lambda Sigma Alpha and joined the school's inaugural debate club.

By her senior year, she had started wearing makeup, pencil in her plucked brows. She had bought herself some stylish sweaters, skirts, and stockings with money made from odd jobs. When graduation rolled around, there was no valedictorian prizes, though. Houston had stopped giving them out in 1934. The daughter of an executive won the Red Coat's top prize, and a bubbly brunette was elected most popular. There were no awards for most hardworking, only for the final product. And usually the final product was a girl who was richer, more connected, better dressed than Mary Kathleen.

And so with that in mind, she did what most young women were simply expected to do. She got married. At the age of 16, she high-tailed it 50 miles outside of town to elope with Julius Ben Rogers, a 19-year-old on July 20th, 1934, just a few weeks after graduation. Very typical of the times. If you weren't married within a year or two of leaving high school, oh, you're an old mate. possibly if not probably destined to a lonely and miserable life staying home with your parents until they died

or barely scraping by doing jobs like cleaning houses or something with your fucking desert puss. For Mary Kathleen, she hoped a new marriage would serve two purposes. Afford her some stability and also a shot at star power because her handsome husband was a catch, a big dreamer just like Daddy Baby. He was a good-looking guy, had already been on the radio as part of a band called the Hawaiian Strummers. He had a good voice.

However, Julius also like Daddy Baby had no money, no property, no real job prospects. He had left school after eighth grade, still didn't have a steady job. His band wasn't making any real money. Never would make any real money. And so the newlyweds moved into the front room of Lula and Alex's house. Fuck yeah, bro. That tiny two-bedroom shotgun home continues to be insanely cramped. By the fall, it would be more cramped.

Mary Catherine would be, well, it would be honest. way to be more cramped because Mary Cathon will be pregnant. On May 17th, 1936, she would give birth to Marilyn Yvonne Rogers at Memorial Hospital in Houston. Then it was back to the drudgery that had marked her whole life for the most part, taking care of borders, still living in the same tiny house she'd spent most for childhood in, cooking, cleaning, now taking care of a husband and a baby and probably also still daddy baby. Pretty soon, another baby was on the way. 18 months later, and only two days after Mary Kathleen cooked a big old Thanksgiving dinner, Julius Ben Bunn. Bubba Rogers Jr. was born. And while Julius, Julius Sr., held down a short-lived job at the Buccaneer Cafe, doing what exactly is not clear, Mary Kathleen cooked, cooked clean, also worked at the cafe as a waitress, and took care of a baby and a toddler. She was exhausted, but that did not stop her from dreaming. But how was she going to get herself the fancy life she still craved? Julius was not nearly as ambitious as she was, so it probably wasn't going to come from him. Could she, as a woman, carry her family to Richie?

not likely back then. While the average annual wage for men was $1,027 in 1936, the average annual wage for women was just almost exactly half of that, $525. Even if the woman was doing skilled labor and the man was not. And it was even harder for married women than single women to make good money. They were assumed to be liabilities, right? They would almost certainly get pregnant again and again,

have to take more and more time off because they had more more kids to care for. so they were a last kind of hire, the last resort hire, if they were even hired at all. Most school systems, banks, insurance companies, utilities actually banned married women from being hired, and if they were hired by other employers, unmarried women, usually were the first to protest saying that they needed the jobs more than a woman who already had a man to provide for her. Added to this was the fact that in the midst of the Great Depression, there were just not that many jobs in general to go around for anybody. Because of that, some people inevitably turned to what was frequently called peddling. a.k.a. direct door-to-door sales. Peddling already had a long history in the U.S.

and not a good one, not a good reputation. In colonial America, peddling was a so-called mean calling, seasonal, inconsistent, iterant work according to Walter Friedman in birth of a salesman, his history of salesmanship in the U.S. In the agrarian age between the colonial era and the Civil War, peddlers also called canvassers or agents served an important purpose. They varied goods between then small manufacturing centers and rural households. But they also had a pension for, quote, hatching schemes and setting traps, according to one 1879 expose. I guess a lot of people looked at them like we look at telemarketers today.

Scammy and super annoying, right? Just stop bother me. Read the sign, asshole, no solicitors. After the Civil War, railroad shipping lines in the telegraph opened the country up like never before, and a new brand of traveling sellers called drummers emerged, called drummers due to their relentlessness. They initially most often sold goods to general stores as middlemen for wholesale companies. Then as the decades wore on, instead of general stores, Americans began buying things in department stores and mail order catalogs, and the drummer faded away. In response,

manufacturers themselves began employing their own armies of traveling salesmen to directly peddle items under national brand names like Heinz, Singer sewing machines, and Kellogg's. Companies send in all sorts of salesmen to sell all sorts of products to Americans' door to door. H.J. Hines, founder of the ketchup behemoth, began his food business in 1852 when he was just eight years old, selling baskets of horseradish door to door from the family's garden. Years later in his 20s, he would go door to door again, selling glass jars of grated horse radish carried around in a cart.

Funny what people used to sell door to door. Can you imagine that now? Some dude knocks on your door, asking if you want any graded horse radish? Fuck no! What are you insane? Get out of here, you weirdo. By the 1920s, thanks to industrial manufacturing, and a growing middle class, assembly lines were homing along with thousands of products the customers

didn't often need but might want or be convinced to want. These were things like hosery, makeup, housemaking devices like the Electrolux vacuum. There was also this growing feeling in business that a buyer didn't just buy something because they needed it or aspired to have it. They could be convinced to want something. While this was not entirely novel, the volume of this happening was new. Big corporations selling more and more luxuries to a nation never before connected by so many ways to transport goods with a new manufacturing infrastructure thanks to the Industrial Revolution and more citizens clustered into towns and cities than ever before. They began looking at marketing and advertising in new ways, treating sales concepts like leads, prospects, and closes as a science

to be refined. Historian Eric Baker describes this as a nationwide shift from an industrious work ethic to an entrepreneurial one, even as true entrepreneurial work declined and wage employment was precarious, the idea that the clever dedicated modern worker could make your own job. job now prevailed. The salesman, therefore, became a patriotic figure. Well, some salesmen. Instead of the trickster and the con artist, many salesmen now represented the reforms of the progressive era. They represented the possibilities and improvements of modernity, rather than its opportunities for sin and excess. Indeed, every element of the American dream of a stable, productive life, a house, a car, insurance was sold by salesmen. However, these salesmen were not

the door-to-door kind. The direct door-to-door seller, they were generally still looked down upon. It was a very tough gig, not for the feign of heart. For starters, it was more precarious than regular sales, right? You had to go door to door, obviously, often encountering annoyed people, sometimes aggressive dogs, getting sweatier, more on camp by the minute. For another thing, direct sellers were not salaried employees, but independent contractors who paid for their sales materials and gas. It was a risky, you know, unstable business. A job mostly seen as a last resort for people who had tried other things and failed. people who largely had very little training or education.

This last resort nature of the job prompted company executives to do everything they could to boost morale and motivate their sales forces. In essence, these people, management, they now evolved to sell the concept of selling. Direct selling companies emphasized the job as a pathway to independence, a way to leave farm or factory work. And so, for most American families in the mid-20th century, a day did not go by where some salesmen did not knock on the door to pitch some gadget. but Mary Kathleen, she couldn't even do that. Women at that time were not thought capable by most of these companies of selling door to door. They thought they could not carry a sample case, right?

Their little lady arms are too weak. They couldn't calculate prices in their heads or little lady brains not strong enough. And they couldn't go to a stranger's house alone because that would imply that they were some kind of loose woman. And no company wanted that brand or wanted their brand associated with that. Why are you really going door to door, lady? Are you selling vacuums or pussy?

Why the fuck were people thinking? in that. Oh, because most of the species has always been kind of dumb. That's why. Never underestimate the overall stupidity of much of humanity. An unfortunate truth. Only two brands. J.R. Watkins and the California perfume company which would rename itself

Avon products in the coming years, allowed women to work door to door on a part-time basis. And in their advertising, they made sure to depict older women, kind, sexless, grandmotherly widows who could not be accused of trying to get paid for intercourse.

What another crazy and cruel view? Oh, you're past your childbearing years? Are you also done trying to fuck? No more makeup? No more showcasing your feminine charms and curves? Good. You're hired. Now get that dry puss out there and sell some shit.

Both those companies had their greatest successes in small towns and rural routes where things like perfumes and spices were in short supply as well as opportunities to socialize. And sellers would capitalize on the kindness of neighbors willing to help out a poor, very un-sensemitter. sexy, might as well be a nun or dead widowed lady. Still, even if those companies, all of the actual management was made up a men. And the more successful the companies got, the more wages those widows made, well, the more men started to line up to take their jobs. By just before World War II, roughly 6,000 firms would have about 1.75 million full or part-time salespeople knock on about 5 million doors a day, even though statistically most of these people were more likely to come out of door-to-door sales with less money than they had started with, not more.

But of course, new sales prospects did not ever know that. They were never warned, never given the real grim odds of their success. So many people were getting in on the door-to-door sales game. Farmers started to hustle eggs, milk, meat, turkeys, anything else door-to-door, underage peddlers were selling toys, candies, whatever else came their way, leading many to think that door-to-door sales was quickly becoming a serious national nuisance. So what was young, poor, ambitious, good at sales, Mary Catherine to do? She didn't know.

And while she figured it out, tragedy was about to strike again. On mid-July, 1938, on a humid 96-degree day, her daddy baby, Alex Wagner died of sudden infant death syndrome. He died in his crib. No, he died of a fatal heart attack. Though tragic, he was only about 60 years old. This did allow, he's a 60-year-old baby. This did allow Mary Kathleen's husband, Julius, to step into his baby, father-in-law's job

at the standard mercantile, a grocery store. Mary Kathleen, meanwhile, started working at the tabern. anacobaptist church on Cain Street, not too far from the house, helping with Sunday school in some fashion. But that job wouldn't last long because Mary Catherine was about to have her first adult encounter with direct selling.

One afternoon, she was at home when a weary looking unsexy dried up old prune of a puss possessing old widow. Nobody would ever dream of fucking because that would be as ludicrous as sticking your dick into an ant-hiel or a badger's den named Ida Blake,

came to her door peddling a multi-volume set of encyclopedies about childhood behavior. It was common courtesy to invite such people in, and it gave the lady of the house a break in her often otherwise mundane day. Mary Cathen was very excited to talk to Ida about these books. She loved anything to do with psychology. But when Ida told her the price, 50 bucks, Mary Cathen, no longer interested. She told Ida no way she could afford those. To which Ida responded, excuse me, that was okay.

She was actually too tired to take the books home with her. So how about she just leave them there for the weekend, right? No big deal. What? Was this sweet, unfuckable old maid? Just being kind? No. No, this was an old salesman trick.

Then went back to the 1830s based on the idea that most people will not turn down luxury once they've gotten a taste of it. And then when Mary Kathleen still worried she could not afford to buy them, I'd have recruited her, told Mary Kathleen that anybody who managed to sell 10 sets would earn a free set for themselves. Well, this unlocked the recently dormant, competitive spirit that had been a Mary Kathleen since childhood. Using the Sunday school roster at Tabernacle Baptist, Mary Casson spent that weekend calling parents and telling them about the wonderful books, and by Monday, all 10 sets were sold. Fuck yeah, bro.

Crushed it. However, like we just said, door-to-door sales simply was not considered an appropriate career for a young mother. Lucky for Mary Cathan, Ida Old Desert Puss Blake would step in as her own personal mentor, and Mary Cathan quickly proved herself to be a dedicated salesperson. And someone with that fake-it-till-you-make-it personality that so many salespeople and body. For example, when Ida told her to get behind the wheel of a car, Mary Cathen did, even though she didn't know how to drive. When Ida directed her into the middle of Houston's rush hour traffic, she went, and she figured it out. Or maybe she made up that story about driving

traffic with no prior driving experience. Mary Kay, like so many of the co-leaders we have covered here in the past, and like a lot of shifty grifters, embellished her past to the point of leaving exaggeration long behind, and just lying. For example, she once claimed that she sold $75,000 worth the books at this time, like in a short amount of time. And the commissions from those books would have allowed her to buy a car, a house, anything else she and her family needed. But she and her kids still lived in that same crowded shotgun house on Kane Street. So that makes no sense. She did not sell nearly as well, clearly, as she would later claim.

And I'm not sure exactly how she, I'm not sure if she went with Ida. I'm not sure how she, you know, pushed past that, you know, attitude of if you're a young, attractive woman, you're selling door to door, you're seen as a harlot. maybe they were like a team, right? Like the old lady and the young lady. I don't know. Maybe she pretended like she was out of fucking, I don't know, maybe she dressed like a hobo. I don't know.

She doesn't explain that part. But Mary Cathon, however she sold the books, nine months into selling them, she had already gone through everybody in the church's records and had ran out of elites. And then complaints started up. The books looked bad. Paper was thin.

Cheap ink was smudged. Psychological tips for getting kids to behave? Bullshit. To Mary Kathleen, this was an important lesson in what not to do. Encyclopedias were a high-ticket item, meaning they generated more commission, but they were also a one-time purchase.

And when people got bored of them, they started to find flaws and complain about it. Despite these complaints, she believed that she could find the right thing, real sales success would not be far off. When Julius lost his next job, soon after her book sales, the couple both moved into sales.

They started selling aluminum cookware door-to-door as a team, right? Because that's how lady could get around it. If she was chaperoned by a man who'd make sure she didn't fucking throw her puss around once you got inside. So to selling these aluminum cookware door to door, you know, it was hyped up for its ability to cook vegetables with little to know added water needed,

which would in turn produce tastier, healthier food, as the thinking went. They joined a company called Wherever Aluminum, which issued charts to salesmen so they could show that boiling reduced 48% of produce is iron, 32% of its calcium, and 45% of its magnesium.

Now, is that all true? Oh, no, of course not. No, they literally made a lot of that shit up. Iron's a mineral, not a water, soluble vitamin like vitamin C, meaning it does not break down from heat. While some minerals can leach into boiling water if cell walls break down, total mineral losses very widely by vegetable and cooking time and iron often stays stable or changes very little compared to delicate vitamins.

That's just one example of untruth. But it sounded true, and it worked. One of the most frustrating things about shady sales schemes is that they do often work, rewarding people for bullshit. Salespeople were encouraged to show up to people's houses with a bag of groceries, persuade the housewife to cook a big meal, then have friends come over and compliment it, which would drive up sales for everyone involved.

What a fucking weird time. To have someone you've never met, not only come in your house and pitch you something, but make a big meal and then your friends come over and you all eat together. There's this random salesperson in the house. Okay. Salespeople also encouraged never to use the word buy. Instead, they needed to say adopt, invest,

or place in your home. Because the company preferred men, Julius, often the one doing the talking while his wife, Mary Kathleen, guided the housewives through making the food. Still, Mary Catherine would soon decide to try her luck alone. In 1939, a direct-selling company called Stanley Home Products started admitting women to its sales force. The thinking was, if war with Europe began in earnest, young men from across the country would be enticed by higher paying jobs, manufacturing for the war effort, and their employee base would plummet. So reluctantly, they let ladyfolk give it a shot. figuring that women could try some tactics men couldn't.

Like offering up lady sex, slinging around that hot puss, which obviously ladies cannot help themselves to not do if they find themselves in strangers' homes. Once they walk through those doors, they start feeling a fire in those loins, a hankering for cocks unknown, or for others' ladies, private bits, for anybody of any age, of any gender,

to join them in a fucking wet, Jezebel, reckless, hedonistic synorgy. Or they thought that women might be better than men when it came to inviting their friends over for teas and lunches, which would make their prospective customers feel happy and socially fulfilled. Oh yeah, no, that's it.

That's the info I was supposed to share. They also thought that because they did not want to seem like ungenerous guests, housewives would pay up. The idea was called party plan selling, and it worked. Worked better than anybody expected it to. Indeed, much to the executive's surprise, they found that within just a single year sales of their cleaning products doubled.

Next year, doubled again. The fuck? How is that? I double, I triple check these things. And that is apparently true. I don't get it. I don't get it.

How did ladies with their little lady brains pull that off? How? How could they do something better than men? I feel, I feel dizzy. Satan was involved, right? He fucking had to be. If women do well at something, it's because they're tricksters.

It's because they use their manipulative feminine charms and wiles. That's what they did. They used wiles to bam. They bamboozled people. They bamboozled hapless dopes. Anyway, thanks largely to Satan's evil power. There was seemingly an endless supply of women who wanted to work for Stanley. Next to ads like, white girl wanted to work in sandwich factory.

Cringy historical reminder of what was acceptable back then. Stanley Holmes' description of work that might pay 35. or more a week to women able to speak in public who had a knowledge of tidy housekeeping looked really good. Even if it didn't show up on a statistical employment surveys, didn't count as being employed according to the government and didn't offer a regular salary or any benefits. But it looked perfect to Mary Kathleen. She quickly put down $2 on a $30 a $30 Stanley Home Product sample case. You can still buy this shit, by the way right now, online, through the Fuller Brush Company, Galaxy Brush, doing business as Fuller Brush

because they acquired the Stanley Home Products trademark. things were slow going at first. In the early days, Mary Kay was averaging only $7 a party when the company expected parties to bring at least $20 in order or to put in at least a $20 order. She wasn't even affording enough to pay for the myriad of gifts she was expected to give the hostess of the party and anybody who showed up in order to entice them to buy more.

And the more unsuccessful parties she co-hosted the less likely anybody was to come back. Things went on like that for a few weeks when she heard about an upcoming Stanley rally and she decided to go. Problem was, that would mean spending, even more money, including a $12 convention fee and whatever she would have to spend to get to Dallas and then stay there for two nights. Still, Mary Cathlin determined to go. She borrowed money

from a friend, packed up her nicest dress, and threw in a box of crackers and cheese for sustenance because she didn't know if meals were going to be provided. And then it was off to the Adolphus, Dallas's swankest hotel. Pretty funny, I talked about that exact hotel not long ago in an episode of Scared to Death, episode 332, Room 1009. Allegedly it's one of the most haunted hotels in Texas. And people claim to experience all sorts of strange paranormal encounters then or there. But that was not its reputation back at this time. It was a bougie place to be seen. Inside the hotel, Mary Kay walked into what felt less like a modern-day sales convention and more like a revivalist tent rally. She listened to impassioned speakers, testimony of salespeople who had changed their lives, all of it interspersed with lively sing-alongs and big band music.

As the intensity-mounted, people in the audience would start to literally weep and shout about how they would set new personal records. They promised they would redouble their efforts and change their lives. They would do what the inspiring speakers had done. They would be tenacious and never give up and never accept no for an answer. Then, frankly, Stanley Beveridge, the company's founder took the stage to share a very sermon-like motivational speech, saying stuff like, I fucking love you bitches. You bitches bought my house.

Can I get an amen? You bitches bought my second house. Can I get an amen? You bitches made me a millionaire. A multi-millionaire, and with God is my witness, I wish I could fuck every last one of you bitches. I wish I could keep fucking all of you until my dying day. Can I get an amen?

No. No, he didn't say that. He said, you can achieve any goal that you set for yourself. You just have to keep working toward it. There were, of course, no mentions of hard economic facts, details about the products, or practical tips, do the job better. There was just a lot of talk of the Stanley Opportunity. Sound familiar?

Along with dozens of other catchphrases. The kind of shit I used to see in those fucking dorky inspiration post. that people would put up in their offices in the 90s and early 2000s, right? Attitude. Your attitude almost always determines your altitude in life. You know, written beneath a fucking image of a bald eagle soaring over foggy tree tops. You want to be that bald eagle, motherfucker? Or do you want to be some worm, slithering through the mud beneath those trees?

Or maybe like perseverance. There is no challenge too great for those who have the will and heart to make it happen. All that written beneath a image of a lone, steely-eyed, runner sprinting up a steep mountain path, maybe some stadium bleachers. And you know what? I mean, there's some truth in those quotes. There is. Sometimes a lot of truth.

But they're always so oversimplified, right? Perseverance, important. So is attitude. But also not everybody built to succeed in the same fields in the same way. For example, number of studies have shown that people perceived as being exceptionally physically attractive. Experience a substantial beauty premium, giving them a big initial advantage in sales, higher earnings, and a higher perceived trustworthiness or competency.

That doesn't mesh well, though, with an inspirational poster, does it? Attractiveness. Beauty is only skin deep. But that's plenty deep enough. No one can see it underneath your skin anyway, so shine it up and get beautiful, you ugly creep. If you're not hot, you'll never have a yacht. Ugly people don't get nice boats.

All that written under a sepia tone photo of a young, beautiful, preposterously fit, couple wearing almost nothing on a gorgeous boat pointing and laughing at some scared dirty hobo drowning in the water beneath them. Anyway, the big speech Stanley gave didn't seem to be about him and his personal journey to success, but instead this continuous mantra of trying better, doing better, reinventing yourself, redeeming your life. Still, Mary Kathleen took all that and ran. During his speech, Mary Kathleen decided that she would be the next year's queen of sales. She would win that top prize. She would win that top prize, an alligator handback. Oh, get that, get that gator back, girl, get it.

Then it was back to Houston to get started. Now, whenever she could, she booked two parties a day, three if she was lucky, waking up at 5 a.m., she'd clean the house, literally timing herself to see if she could do it more quickly than the day before, then wake the kids, get them to school, then head to one or two Stanley parties. Ideally, the hostess would invite around 15 friends over, and the more she invited, the better her chances of getting a reward gift. Once everybody showed up, if anybody showed up,

the demonstrations would begin in her trim suit and high heels with her petite fit figure hair perfectly quaffed Mary Kathleen would demonstrate polishing silver vacuuming the curtains wiping down a table with a big winning smile on her face. Women who had already purchased

some of the products were encouraged to share about how they'd used them. Then it was time for the catalogs to come out and each woman would fill out orders for what they wanted. There was no hard sell, no direct request instead Mary Kathleen would give women enough trinkets, books or riddles and puzzles for example to make them feel like they needed to reciprocate. Sometimes they'd play parlor games,

and the winners would get a gift for free. All of these gifts came out of Mary Kathleen's own pocket on top of her transportation costs and any money she needed to pay for babysitting. When all was said and done, she made commission at the rate of 45% in order. If you could sell well, you could make a lot of money. If you didn't, you could lose a lot of money. It was feast or famine in this business. It was also a big-time commitment for an overloaded mother. A successful Stanley party could last up to five fucking hours. And after that, Mary Kaye, meet the kids back at home, get dinner made, feed them, leave them with the babysitter so she could fit in another party.

On a good night, she could squeeze in two before heading home, grabbing a few hours of sleep. Then the whole thing would start all over. Mary Kay did it all in her own since Julius was rarely home, and Lula was always at the cafe. Every Monday, she also had to go to her unit manager sales meeting, where the group would, quote, excuse me, sing quote, two appropriate songs,

according to Stanley's guidelines, and then tackle important skills to roll playing. Okay, interesting. sales meeting, I do get that this kind of shit works for some people. But God, it would leave me miserably depressed. I had to go to some sales meetings when I worked as a personal trainer at 24-hour fitness for a year or so right before and right after I got him to stand-up comedy. And I fucking hated it.

I had to, like, you know, be part of shit like this. This is a clip from an actual Westgate timeshare sales meeting in Las Vegas just a few years ago. This kind of shit, it's just so fucking cringy to me. Good morning, whiskey! Why are we here? The saved lives. The saved lives. And you thought you were just selling time sharing, didn't you?

We sell vacations. Vacations are healthy for you. Do you believe that? Yes. I can show you the articles and the studies. Those who take the fewest amount of vacations are most likely to have a heart attack. You're just like a dog. doctor, a nurse, a fireman, a policeman, a lifeguard.

You're the same. You're the fucking same. High pressure sales for timeshares. You're the same as a doctor. You're the same as a police officer. You're the same as a fireman. I'll be 100% in the back of the room at this meeting thinking, how the fuck did I get here? How did things go this so wrong? I'm not a fucking, I'm not a fireman. I hate this dork. This is ridiculous. Why is he yelling? Mary Kay liked this vibe, spoke to her, and she soared at work. She soared like a fucking bald eagle on an inspirational poster above some dirtworms. Sorry if that scared your dogs, or you.

The next year, just as she had promised herself, she was Queen of Sales at the Stanley Dallas annual meeting. But the prize that year was not an alligator handbag. It was something else that she didn't fucking bother naming because it pissed her off. It was probably okay. But to Mary Cathen, she wanted that handbag. and she got screwed. You know, her not getting that handbag was proof of how male sales

or managers did not understand female employees. They didn't understand how a fancy handbag can change your life could give you a feeling of so much accomplishment and dignity

in front of your customers, customers whose houses, you were literally cleaning to show them how the product worked and they would not look down in you the same way if you had an alligator handbag

all they wanted for a year was an alligator skinny handbag She was really mad, though. And then another perceived indignity we soon follow. Mary Kane, her husband Julius, had been having problems and grown apart. They had talked about divorce, and he ended up moving out, and they were separated. She had not been much of a dad or husband for a couple years, I guess.

And by 1940, the army had started drafting divorced men, which meant being effectively single had a good chance of sending somebody to the front. That year, he would reappear at the Kane Street House ready to make amends. And with that, Mary Kathleen got pregnant again. On April 15, 1943, Mary Kathleen gave birth to her third and last child, Richard. Raymond Rogers. Little Dick was a triple R. Soon afterwards, Julius was drafted and left for the Army in February of 1944, but I guess maybe didn't go to the front lines. This meant more work now for a woman who was already stretched very thin. By 1945, the year Mary Cathen and Julius would actually finally get divorced. She was used to supporting her family by herself, but with the end

of the war, as hundreds of thousands of men poured back into the U.S. the job situation for women more dire than ever. Mary Cathen ended up finding secretarial work at Stanley and also a new husband. Clarence Blair Ekman was the polar opposite of Julius. For one thing, he was old enough to be her father and was in fact a grandfather with two married sons. He was five foot, four inches tall, had a little pot belly. He was bald and had diabetes. But Mary Cathen felt like she had learned her lesson. She wasn't looking for a heart throb.

She was looking for stability. Clarence was the area manager for Stanley Home Products, which gave him not only a salary job, but a salary job in direct sales. Their marriage would finally get Mary Cathen out of the sixth ward and into the coveted Dallas neighborhood of Oak Lawn Heights at 5206 Maple Springs Drive, a storybook cottage with gable windows, a wide chimney, and a steeply pitched roof. On July 19, 1946, Ekman signed the deed to that house. Two weeks later, the 55-year-old sales manager and 28-year-old secretary would get married there and fuck.

And then it was back to work. For Ekman, that meant spending hour after hour behind the wheel of his 1940 Chrysler Windsor as he sped around Texas, coordinating Stanley product sales. Mary Kathleen, meanwhile, rented out the back of the house for free in exchange for babysitting her kids. She, too, was going back to work, even though she didn't really need to. After all, she was now exactly where she had wanted to be in a nice house, married to a high-earning guy, living in a neighborhood where men went to work and women stayed home. Well, at one point in life, I guess she wanted that.

In all likelihood, she's probably bored to death by being a housewife. Did not give her the rush that high-pressure sales did. Did not give her an income that was just her own. She missed the sense of accomplishment that came from hitting sales goals and winning for cash and prizes. And Dallas seemed to be bursting with accomplishment-oriented energy. Between 1940 until August of 1946,

the month Mary Catholic moved there, the city's population had grown by roughly 50%. That is explosive growth. Construction was planned on a multi-million dollar merchandise mart, a massive business-to-business shopping mall. Several shopping centers were planned. Stores of office or scores of office buildings

and factories were being built or had been built recently. All these new people, occupying these new spaces would need Stanley products. Mary Catherine soon became busier than ever, her star rising at Stanley and in her new neighborhood. But then, Ekman started to get very sick. He'd had diabetes for years, but it lived his life as though he hadn't. Did not stick to a diet. He would smoke regular cigars, maintained his grueling work schedule, drink too much.

Over time, he started to get thinner and thinner. And then on May 14th, 1947, two days after Mary Kathleen's 29th birthday, things had gotten so bad, Echman wrote out of will. Mary Kathleen would have his house, the furnishings, or, you know, their house, all his furnishings, and a bunch of his stock in Stanley if he passed. And he would pass in very short time. Just two weeks later, June 1st, 1947, at 7.40 a.m. in the morning, Ekman had a heart attack at Baylor Hospital. He died instantly, and they'd been married less than a year. Now, Mary Catherine was left in the continual predicament of direct sales, stop selling or even take a break, and you risk putting yourself right back where you started with no customers, no leads, no sales, right?

It's a momentum-based game. And despite what Ekman had left her, the money would soon run out without regular work. Mary Kay had three kids in a house she couldn't afford, and things would get worse because then Mary Kay got sick. Her sickness started like a flu, then she started hurting so much she could barely move. Doctors finally gave her the grim diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.

A chronic autoimmune disease with the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the lining of the joints, causing painful swelling, stiffness, and potential bone and cartilage destruction, most commonly affects the small joints and the hands, wrists, and feet. Despite waking up most days stiff and in pain, Mary Kathleen would not rest. The message of direct sales had been drilled into her.

You were your own boss. You decided your own salary. When there were not enough parties, she would knock on doors, prospecting, as she called it. Within a year, she felt better. Rheumatoid arthritis, inflammation cycles can come and go, and you can have a long period of dormancy. And on June 7, 1949,

when Stanley Home Products had its long-expected initial public stock offering, She got rich. It sold out within two hours. She had inherited Ekman's private stock made out very, very well. Sources don't say exactly how well, but it seems like she could have stopped working. So guessing she had the equivalent of hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more dollars. An important note, Mary Kay always conveniently left out of her life story. She, of course, did not stop working. She loved it. She wanted to crack the top 1% of sellers.

Thanks to her prominent position in Stanley, due to the shares she held, she got to attend all the conferences, days-long affairs, where sellers will be treated like royalty, awarded prizes. They'd sing songs together, commit to improving themselves as a way of improving their sales, and she fucking loved it. Love the attention.

Love the energy. Then she got married again. On June 9, 1950, Mary Catherine married Alfred Al Lewis Miller, an art dealer at Joseph Sarder Galleries, husband number three, another man of means. Exactly how well off he was.

We do not know, but sources do seem to indicate that he was well off. Mary Kathleen, Mary Kathleen Wagner Roberts, Ekman Miller, she didn't actually keep all those surnames, not about to let her new husband

or anybody else take time away from her pursuit of sales, though, especially not now that her star at Stanley was on the rise. All of its salespeople had brought in a lot of money the following January, Corinette magazine, which had a bigger circulation

than Time magazine back in 1951, ran an article titled The Stanley Way of Making Money, which described a young couple who had made so much selling Stanley, that the husband was able to quit his job as an aviation engineer. Indeed, Stanley was raising his public profile, raised the number of prizes to be won,

contests to enter, free vacations for the taken if you made it at the top. By this point, Mary Cathon's schedule was a little easier. By the early 1950s, only Richard, Triple R, the baby of the family now live with her. Ben Jr., aka Bubba, had moved back to Houston to live with Ben Sr., and Maryland had moved back to Houston to live with Lula.

And there, in Houston, Maryland would follow in her mother's footsteps. Like her mom, she attended John H. Reagan High School, and the similarity did not stop there. On March 8, 1952, 16-year-old Maryland eloped with 20-year-old Korean War veteran Vernon Schumacher. Eight months later, on November 17th, Maryland gave birth, meaning that either the baby was about a month premature or that she was already pregnant by the time she got married.

And that made 34-year-old Mary, Kathleen, a grandmother. At the time, her age was considered to be solidly middle-aged, with more of life behind her than ahead of her. my god over the hill at 34 life moved so fast though she had made it into an upper middle class suburb and though her unit the area of land whose sales she supervised was the third highest performing unit in the country it seemed like she was never going to make it to the top in january of 1953 mary catholic once again filed for divorce we don't know why owl never even showed up for court and the divorce was granted on march thirtieth then this being mary cathlin another marriage was just around the corner this time it would be to Charlie William Weaver, the brother of one of Mary Kathleen's top sellers. Charlie was short, bossy, occasionally foul, tempered. Why did she marry him?

Who the fuck knows? In the summer of 1954, she left Dallas for St. Louis to live with her husband number four. This was a huge sacrifice. It also meant leaving behind her customers, receipts, status as a unit manager, an independent income. Oh, that's why she married this guy. He had a lot of money.

Charlie was also rumored to be pretty fucking loaded. Another part of her life, she never talked to. about. Never mentioned, as part of her inspirational single mom makes a big Mary Kay story. The Weaver moved into a two-bedroom ranch house in Kirkwood, and there, without her work, keep her busy, Mary Kathleen started to hate it. Meanwhile, Charlie's sister, Mary C. Crowley had taken over Mary Kathleen's position as unit manager, and she hated that too. She particularly hated Stanley's policy of assigned territories, meaning that sellers were not allowed to infringe on other sellers' designated areas. In fact, lots of people were getting dissatisfied with Stanley,

and soon sellers were being lured away by a new company called World Gift, a direct sales company founded by a young veteran named Edwin Richard Dick Kelly. So much Dick in the story. He started this company out of his apartment. Dick had heard about direct selling from his wife, who had gone to a Stanley party, came back with a mop. When Dick protested about her spending too much money, she said, let me tell you the story of this mop.

A light bulb went off after Dick heard the story. He realized what kind of things people were willing to buy if a story was attached to him housewives he thought would fucking love hearing about ancient traditions good luck rituals, foreign craftsmanship and they would love telling those stories to other housewives. When Mary Crowley heard about it, she decided

to go to work for him and soon she brought Mary Kathleen in on this too. Now it was back home to Houston where Mary Kathleen would hawk so-called souvenirs and she loved it, loved direct sales. The stuff she now sold included ceramic figurines, cuckoo clocks, bells, hand-painted plates, lazy susans, fake flowers,

artificial Christmas trees, all were intended to get housewives minds off of what she called the three D's. Diapers, dishes, and Dick. Stop thinking about the kids. Stop thinking about that housework. And stop lust and after your hubby's cock already. Sheesh. No, the third D was debt, not Dick. Now hostess parties became gift shows.

Dealers were displays. And the annual sales rally became a seminar, which sounded like a symposium for self-improvement. but the most important thing was that each piece of merchandise had a story. And to no one's surprise, Mary Kathleen was great at making up stories. By the end of her first year, Mary Kathleen's territory accounted for just over half of World Gifts business. My God. She was making over $1,000 a month and had recruited almost 200 displays. When her friend Crowley convinced Dick Kelly to start offering international trips as prizes,

she began to travel around the world as World Gifts National Training Director. In 1957, she moved into a three-bedroom house in Glenbrook Valley, a neighborhood in southeast Houston, now known for mid-century modern and ranch-style historic homes. Her house had the newest and technological offerings, top-of-the-line appliances, an intercom that allowed the family to communicate across the house and something called a new tone,

which could blend drinks, juice fruit, sharpen knives, and more. Kind of a funky little thing. The motor for this thing would be installed directly into your countertop, and then you just get all these attachments for drink blending, fruit, juicy, knife sharpening, and more. Mary Kay hardly ever used her stuff, though, because she was barely home. She was busy taking World Gift into 43 states. She would fly to a new city, run a classified ad for a salesperson,

then check into a hotel and wait for somebody to show up. From there, it was on to the next city, and the next and the next. As America's birth rate climbed and suburbs filled with stay-at-home moms, those moms signed up to sell for these direct sales companies by the tens of thousands. In 1955, Stanley held the 4404.4.000. place on the very first edition of the Fortune 500. But of course, very few of the women who sold or even managed sellers actually got any recognition for being the powerhouses behind these companies. But that was about to change.

Sense and blood in the water, Mary Crowley went behind Dick Kelly's back, signed a slew of exclusive contracts with World Gifts bestsellers. Next, she secured a line of credit with Arranger, which was one of World Gifts original suppliers. they in turn rented her to other wholesalers or referred to her to other wholesalers and soon Mary Cade Crowley had her own company which she incorporated as home interiors and gifts on December 5th, 1957. Like dozens of others, her new company stuck to the Stanley formula of praise, prizes, and recognition. But something would be different.

In other direct sales companies, women were expected to be grateful for the opportunity, either to buy or to sell, excuse me. They were expected to abide by any limitations. The company set out like, the kinds that Stanley had put on territories. But Crowley said that her salespeople could work as hard as they wanted, where they wanted, earned as much as they wanted. And if a displayer recruited somebody who built their own unit of people selling beneath her,

she'd get a share of those sales, right, the modern MLM model. Then as displays became more experienced and built bigger units, they would rise to the ranks. It was a guaranteed way of making sure that high performers got rewarded, that there were no male managers who could force them back into their boxes, citing company policy. In time, this would make Mary Crowley, a Dallas-based multimillionaire who preached the empowerment of women and used the slogan, think mink, as she awarded furs and catalogs and jewelry to her top earners,

as she had placed one diamond-decked hand on a mink-covered Bible for theatrics. She moved back to Dallas, where she started a line of beauty products, which had become more and more popular in the direct-selling space. It was, after all, more fun to invite women over for makeovers than invite them over to watch somebody clean. But there was an undeniable champion in that space already, Avon. Between 1950 and 1960, Avon sales jumped up from $31.2 million to $168 million. A ding-dong Avon calling ad campaign depicted glove and hated Avon ladies. As they were known, knocking on doors and offering a line of glittering cosmetics

that were still affordable to the average housewife. Avon calling. Take time out for beauty when Avon comes calling. Use Avon cosmetics and you'll be enthralling for a pleasure-filled break in your daily routine. It's time to take time out for beauty. Avon calling. Fun, take time off for beauty. By the end of 1958, home interiors was gleefully broadcast than any woman who felt that she was being discriminated against in her job ought to quit and join the Home Interior's team. Despite a diagnosis of cervical cancer, Crowley kept growing her business.

and when her cancer went into remission, she used that as proof that God wanted her to be empowering women through direct sales. Now, God is part of this MLM. In 1960, Mary Kathleen divorced Charlie Weaver, and with that she was free. Ben and Maryland both had their own families now. A baby boy, Triple R, he's in college.

Unfortunately, two years later, a years-long twitch she had had in one eye finally prompted her to see a doctor, and the diagnosis was not good. a progressive neuromuscular disease called hemophacial spasm that could lead to loss of sight, smell, and speech. In true Mary Cathon fashion, she combined brain surgery with a recruiting trip. Jesus Christ. She would end up missing the recruiting trip, though, because her recovery kept her in the hospital for two months.

Yeah, yeah, you don't want to fuck around with brain surgery. After that, though, she was back to work, and soon she met George Arthur Hallenbeck, another salesman who loved himself a tailored suit, a snazzy dresser. after serving in Europe during World War II and winning a bronze star and a purple heart, maybe. This guy's full of shit. He had recently been employed by a company in California called Neutral Bio, a line of vitamins

that claimed to fix anything from busy schedules to digestive problems. A busy schedule vitamin sounds awesome. Wonderful helps you grow a clone of yourself. Go get some of your work done. In large circulation magazines like Life and Look, full page ads, pitch NeutroBio is something that could, quote, help each member of your family to be more alert,

calmer, more pleasant, and enjoy a greater zest for life. life. Internally, the company's corporate jargon aggressively promoted the law of abundance, the idea that the more expansive your dreams were, the more likely they were to come true. To that end, Neutral Bio was also a multi-level marketing company. In Neutral Bio's framework, getting somebody to buy into the organization was more important than convincing a customer to buy the product. Because a new person under you meant they could convince someone under them to join and so on and

so on until everybody, obviously, was insanely rich. until everybody on God's green earth was all hopped up on neutral bio vitamins Fuck yeah bro If you're not surviving you're dying A multi-level marketing was in their view Proof that abundance Attracted abundance

But within a few months the company began Appearing in newspapers and magazines for different reasons Neutral Bios claims to treat everything From a lack of normal intelligence To heart trouble were characterized as Misleading by government agencies What? Are you telling me That their vitamins couldn't make you more intelligent

clear up your schedule, give you greater zest for life. And so George Arthur Hallenbeck, the sharp-dressed salesman, Mary Kay had recently met, was out of work. He would make his way to World Gift, looking for another opportunity,

and there he would find Mary Kathleen. And, you know, I said he was full of shit about his background earlier. Actually, I was going off script there, and I was thinking about the next guy she will meet. And this guy, maybe not as grifty. I don't know.

Maybe that was unfair. Anyway, Mary Kay was starting to regret her choice to stay with the company now. According to later, later legend, World Gift apparently asked Mary Kathleen to train a young man who would be promoted to a position at twice her rate. As Mary Kathleen would later say,

that was the final injustice. On May 13, 1963, she quit World Gift. That same month, Home Interior, her buddy Mary Crowley's company announced its first million year, and now Mary Kathleen got an idea. It was time to start her company. All she had to do was find a product. For a while, she considered a plan where she would lease

large floral arrangements to offices and industrial venues. Then she considered selling plastic plants to, well, anybody. But then she thought of something better. George's old boss at Neutrobio was now starting his own line of beauty products called Ovation Cosmetics, which he, of course, planned to sell through an MLM. George convinced Mary Kathleen, or Mary Catherine had the idea of herself, that they should do the same. She paid a housewife. She had met through hostess parties for that housewife's family recipes and took those

formulas to Elwood Goodyer, a manufacturer who made beauty products for world gift. He packaged the cosmetics in nice white jars and labels dyed in gold. Mary Catherine, meanwhile, found a storefront in Exchange Park, Dallas's up-and-coming area for office space, retail and recreation. Beauty by Mary Kaye was now set to open in September. But first, in July of 1963, Mary Kay and George Hallenbeck would tie the knot, husband number five. But then just a month later, on August 13th, back headed out for his daily morning jog. Temperatures was brutal, hovering around 100 degrees. But he finished his jog, went home, and he and Mary Kathleen started talking about company financials

over breakfast, and then had a heart attack and died right in front of her. How much did Mary Kay inherit from yet another very short marriage? Again, we do not know, but also again, this is left out of her Mary Kay story. Mary Kathleen was now worried her new company was dead. She did not think she could start the big neutral bio-style beauty franchise without him, but she'd already put all her savings into her storefront and product and the bills were piling up, including bills that George had supposedly racked up without her knowledge. Her accountant advised her to cut her losses, go back to selling for somebody else, but instead she would bet on herself. Instead of Hallenback as her business partner, she would take on Triple

R, her now 20-year-old son who had recently married a 16-year-old. Richard decided that they needed another product to round out their beauty line and picked an interesting one, wigs. Mary Kathleen had worn wigs since her brain surgery, eager to high. the scar in her forehead and her gray hair now. Since wigs were expensive between $100 and $300,000 and $300, they would generate bigger commissions, helping to get new salespeople in the door. With that,

Beauty by Mary Kaye planned to launch with nine products, five of them in its core skincare regimen. The core regimen was priced at $1595, equivalent to about $175 in today's money. That made her skincare more expensive than other direct sales brands like Avon and more expensive than

drugstore brands. But Beauty by Mary Kay wanted to replicate, department store, luxury brands like Elizabeth Arden and Revlon. Importantly, there would be no old-school cold-calling door-to-door selling. Her beauty shows could combine the demonstrations she had used at Stanley with the self-improvement spin she had used at World Gift. To do all this, consultants were equipped with a beauty showcase, a blue vinyl case from Woolworths that looked like something between a briefcase and a duffelback.

They would contact a hostess, who would then invite five or so friends over to her house for a free facial using magic mask, an oatmeal-based powder that was mixed with water, And if the client wanted a little bleaching for age spots or freckles, some lemon juice or buttermilk. After that, it was time for the skin freshener and the super night cream, made with an ammoniated mercury, a chemical exfoliant. Finally, she would bring out the makeup, a palette with five lip colors and five eyeshadows. That was followed by a chance to try in a wig. Mary Kay, with an educate women about health and beauty, emphasizing that to see real results customers would need to use the products regularly, which of course meant buying them regularly.

And with that, beauty by Mary Kay was up and running. with their first storefront opening September 13, 1963. A splashy ad for the company in the Dallas Morning News read, No woman need ever look 40. Oh, love it. 40-year-old women are so fucking gross. Women who look 50 and 60 years old or older? It should be illegal for them to leave their houses without wearing masks.

Enough, scaring people with wrinkled faces. It's not okay. Also, at our new storefront, there would be discounted wigs for opening. day, free makeovers, free champagne, the same gifts ideology that had once gotten women to host Stanley parties. Unfortunately, nobody showed up. Mary Kay thought the 500 or so women who worked at nearby office buildings would be shoe-ins for customers, but she didn't realize they only had half an hour for lunch, and after work they often had to race home to do the cooking and cleaning for their families.

Recruitment also stalled. By the end of its opening week, Mary Kay had signed only eight women on as consultants. By October, she began running help-wanted ads that read fashion wigs. sell by wearing socially or on the job. But that didn't help either. By the first week in November, Mary Kay had sold her new home in Glenbrook Valley to keep the business afloat. And then on November 22nd,

1969, President John F. Kennedy, was shot in Dallas, which would now be known nationally as the city of hate. That did not help her business either. Still, Mary Kay offered prizes, giveaways, anything that would bring people in the door, either as customers or as sellers.

And then, it all started to work. people started to get interested in wigs working women who wanted to spend less time getting ready between making sure their houses were spotless and getting to work as Mary Kay predicted but also all kinds of other women including sex workers the sex worker aspect would not make its way

into Mary Kay's official corporate history neither with the fact that had she not had equity and savings to drawn paid in part or mostly paid by money from past marriages her new company would have never survived at slow start why does that matter because it was

fucked up for her to sell other women on a dream of all you need is the Mary Kay opportunity to live the life she ended up living if you're willing to work as hard as she did when in fact it took a lot more than just hard work and a good idea to get where she got also took money she did not in fact uh you know make money that did not just come from hard work and good ideas back to her business because a lot of people couldn't afford the hefty price tag of her cosmetics baby boy richard followed the example of used car dealerships and offered presto charge. This financing plan where wig buyers could pay for wigs and installments. And that opened up a lot of new clients. By Christmas, Beauty by Mary Kay had cleared about $17,500 in sales, with almost all of it coming from weeks. Going full throttle at the company's Christmas party, M.K. announced that the consultant with the highest cosmetic sales for December would win a big prize. But of course, Mary Kay knew that it wasn't just the prize women were fighting for. It was the validation, the opportunity to succeed after they had been boxed out. Time. and time again for more so-called legitimate careers.

After she figured that out, recruits multiply. Some are housewives, women whose husbands, fussed at them if they bought something for themselves. Some were secretaries or school teachers, hardworking and underpaid with large social networks. Many had been cheerleaders, homecoming queens, straight-A students, young girls with big dreams. Almost all of them had grown up with some sort of cultural representation of femininity like the following antique print, which actually hung on the wall of one of Mary Kay Sellers' homes. titled The Six Greatest Moments in a Girl's Life It lists each with a Gibson girl illustration The Proposal, The Trousseau, The Wedding, The Honeymoon, The First Home, and the First Child.

Right, nice subtext. Girl, you ain't shit if you don't have a man and a baby. The hidden catch of this agenda, of course, was that these events, assuming they happen at all, usually take place in a span of about five years early in female adulthood. None of these women had a script for what came next. Mary Kay was happy to provide one. By the summer of 1964, Mary Kay had moved to a one-story headquarters

slash warehouse at 1220 Majesty Drive, which had proper offices, a kitchenette, a conference room big enough for sales meetings. Mary Kay also added an internal newsletter called Beauty News and Views that described sales strategy, slogans, and sketches, and product tips, delivering on the mentorship she had felt she had lacked. The company would end its first full year with $198,500,000,000, and $14 in sales. And fewer and fewer of those sales

were coming from wigs with each and every month. On the company's first anniversary, September 13th, 1964, there was a massive gala full of food, prizes, and black and white television for the woman with the highest sales.

But nobody went home empty-handed. Every woman got at least a charm for her charm bracelet, and Mary Kaye called all of them her daughters. Make Mama happy. Please, Mama. Get that maternal validation girls. That year, she would keep pushing the prizes

and rewards. So it looked like everybody, buyer or seller, was getting what they needed. A $400 order, for example, would earn the customer an extra $65 in free products, which then got the consultant close to qualifying for a $500-level monthly sales award. She also made sure that there was no opportunity for sellers to get out once they bought in. At Stanley and World Gift, sellers would be on a payment plan for their inventory, and they could always send back what they did not sell if they decided that selling was not for them and get their money back. A much gentler kinder approach than what Mary,

K would employ. At Mary Kay, you had to buy the inventory in full, and there was no giving them back. When consultants were staring down their monthly bills, plus paying for their inventory, they were very motivated to sell. Of course they were, right? Their assets are on the line now. Not selling the product could mean not making rent, not making a mortgage payment. It could lead to potentially marriage-ending arguments about money at home. What was supposed to be your salvation, your ticket to financial stability, could doom you. Could be an albatross around your neck, weighing you down, bringing you down to financial ruin. Also, Mary Kay provided a lot of aspirational motivation. She wanted new recruits to see people higher up in the company, live in the

good life. They dreamed of half of themselves. At the company's second annual retreat, this one also at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas in September of 1965, Mary Kay did not just give them useful prizes like Stanley's vacuum cleaners and brushes. Instead, she treated top sellers like beauty queens, fill in their arms with roses and draping furs over their shoulders, awarding them pink Cadillacs and diamond rings. She made a big, don't you want this to show out of it, made them big stars in the Mary Kay world, but stars only in that world, right?

If they said goodbye to Mary Kay now, they would leave behind all the pageantry that came with that powerful psychological motivation to stay inside the Mary Kay pool. All this at the second retreat was another new development, a stocky 60-year-old salesman named Mel Ash. Ash had gotten his start in medical sales. He had started his own business.

Ash medical supplies before his second wife sued him, complaining that she had invested $2,000 in his business, and yet he had refused to support her after their divorce. In 1945, he had been charged with selling a mislabeled drug in Washington, D.C., and in the year since, he had gone by multiple aliases, as good people often do, including as Melville, Melville, oh my God, Melville, Jerome. I don't know why my brain wanted to be like V-Ville.

Melville, V-Zerome. Sounds like a grifter. Mel and Mary Kay have been set up on a blind date and on awards night at the gala. Ash waltzed her around the ballroom looking dashing in his tuxedo. Not long afterwards, he popped the question and they set a date for December 6th.

But then two days before the wedding, Ash disappeared. And the night after Christmas, a man came to Mary Kay's townhouse asking about the rental next door. Before she could answer, he took out a gun, barged inside and led in two more mass gunmen. They bound and gagged Mary Kay, ransacked her duplex,

stole fur coats, cash, and rings. What the fuck? Less than two weeks later, Ash reappeared. And then the two would get married in a small ceremony on January 6th, 1966, and why do I feel like he had something to do with that robbery? With this marriage, her sixth, Mary Kay entered her final form

with the name she would carry until her death, Mary Kay Ash. Together, Mary Kay and Mel would commission a 4,000 square, house that would completely round and finish with white marble rubble, which would go on a $21,000 lakeside lot in Windsor Park that they bought in the summer of 68. The house was, of course, also a business project. It would host sellers who hoped to become directors, in essence, those who wanted to jump up another rung in the MLM. Their directors and qualification, D.I.Qs, who paid their own way, because Mary Kay believed that would make them absorb more, would descend from the bus to a

Hollywood perfect exterior with flawless landscaping. Inside the house was just as flawless, and DIYs would be limited to a basic tour. They could open any drawer, any closet, to find the couple's perfectly arrayed possessions. There was even a tradition of DIYs taking photos in the massive bathtub because as superstition had it,

that meant you would succeed as a director. Despite how great things were going, some trouble was not far away. In 1966, just like Mary Kay had done with world gifts, two of Mary Kay's top sellers broke away and announced their intention to start their own company, beauty control.

Their corporate structure was virtually a mirror of Mary Kay's, and Mary Kay sued them immediately. The two sellers countersued, and things got nasty quick. They even got nastier when in March of 1967, Arkansas-born beauty control representative

Ramona, Jean, Rochelle, her nerves frayed by the selling opportunity that was supposed to change your life, shot herself in the chest, leaving behind four young daughters. By 1969, the court battles had ended with a draw, and the judge's ruling,

beauty control was allowed to use the supplier Mary Kay had originally contracted, including their name and likeness, while Mary Kay could use the story of the supplier, but not the family name or any photos. But that didn't matter. Why? Well, the 1968 feminism,

and by extension, Mary Kay caught a break. Up until that year in Texas, a wife was not supposed to write a check, accept a job, or make decisions about her property, without permission from her husband. That changed when Louise, Rajo, a former assistant district attorney, drafted the Marital Property Act, which finally gave women in Texas a right to own separate property, secure bank loans, and start businesses

without their husband's consent. Now instead of only the middle and upper middle class women whose husbands had allowed them to start selling, Mary Kay's seminars were filled with women who had not graduated high school, immigrants from South America, and farm wives who had never seen a penny for their hard work. For these women, Mary Kay became their primary source of validation. The company sent them birthday cards on their birthdays, additional cards, praising them for their sales, and of course all sorts of opportunities to be recognized on stage of various events.

Even pink slips were warm and personal. If 60 days passed without a minimum wholesale order of $100 or more, sellers would get a cartoon of a sad-looking woman saying, can it be true? With a notice that they would be terminated in just two weeks unless they bought more. Meanwhile, Mary Kay H.Q.

had moved to 8,900 Carpenter Freeway, a massive 20,000 square foot building painted pink with the Mary Kay logo mounted on the front. And in January of 68, Mary Kay was ready to go public. She would be the chairman of the board, while 24-year-old Triple R would be president. Her son, Ben, now running the warehouse, would be VP of merchandising.

Just before Easter, Triple R registered 195,000 common shares with the SEC with 165,000 shares outstanding. Then on August 8, 1968, 83-year-old Lula Wagner, Mary Kay's mama died of heart arrhythmia. Mary Kay went to Houston for the funeral and to give her mom one last facial. Just three weeks later, Mary Kay's company went public, shares open near $12, rose to $30, settled around $25. Richard sold $30,000 unissued company shares, netting $33,000 for reinvestment and expansion.

Mary Kay, meanwhile, sold a chunk of her own $585,750 shares and netted over $1.8 million, which Richard would then subsequently invest in oil wells, which would net her untold millions going forward. When the day was done, 76% of the company remained under family control. And with that, Triple R bought their supplier, turning it into Mary Kay's subsidiary in a deal worth $7.5 million.

Then Richard bought 11 acres and broke around for what Mary Kay advertised as the most modern cosmetics manufacturing plant in the southwest. Within a decade, the company would also have distribution centers in Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, and New Jersey. Places where more recruits could be trained.

The parking lots were full of pink Cadillacs. Most of them, ones that the company had not given to sellers, but rather leased, and allowed them to use and paid a portion of the lease in accordance with how much that seller was currently selling. There were also ones that sellers themselves bought just to fit in. As the company grew, Mary Kay added echelon after echelons, so there was always a higher step, some more prestigious status that sellers could chase.

She was a master of keeping a never-ending series of carrots in front of these sellers. Recruiting three new recruits made a woman a red jacket. You got a prize of wearing an official Mary Kay red blazer to work. Five recruits made the consult a team leader.

Eight made her a future director. Ten earned DIY status and a trip to the roundhouse in Dallas. Also towards the top of the latter, Mary Kay added senior sales director to signify a director who had recruited five women who had also become directors.

How much Mary Kay status could a girl? a tank. How large of a fish could you become in the Mary Kay Pond? National sales directors had recruited 10 directors, and there were simply a battery of titles that had to do with how much you had sold, like Star Consultant, Golden Girl. Of course, all of that could go away practically instantaneously if your sales lagged or someone below you had their sales lack. And that happened way more than anybody wanted to admit. We don't have data from back then, nor do we have data from the U.S. currently, since American multi-level marketing companies are

not required to disclose average incomes for their contractors. But Mary Kay does release these figures in Canada because their disclosure is legally mandatory. A document called an earnings representation would reveal that 85% of Mary Kay independent beauty consultants earned $0 in commissions in 2022. 85% lost money or made no money, you know, zero or less. a further 12.71% earned an average of $208 a year before expenses. So, 97.7% of Mary Kay consultants made $208 a year or less before expenses. Almost 98% of all these Mary Kay women made less than $18 a month before expenses.

Gross, barely above 50 cents a day. So they fucking lost money. All the rallies, all the stuff. alongs, all the dangling carrots of pink Cadillacs, diamond jewelry, international vacations. You know, that was bullshit. The dream they were selling was basically a fucking pipe dream, almost impossible to maintain. Odds are you will not make shit with Mary Kay. In fact, you will almost certainly statistically lose money.

The sales directors in Canada, the best of the best selling loads of Mary Kay and managing and mentoring dozens on average of women beneath them, sales directors who make up just 1.911. percent of participants only made an average gross, $20,907 a year, below the threshold for what qualifies as low-income household. That breaks down to $40 a week. And if you work $40 a week, that would break down to $10 an hour. And again, fucking gross, not net. And that's for the cream of the crop. All that to not make what you would make working the drive-thru at McDonald's. And some third-party analysis from outsiders makes it look even worse. A 2011 study of 350 MLMs conducted by John M. Taylor, a former contractor for a Utah-based cosmetics and health multi-level company called New Skin, found that 99% of participants did not just earn

nothing, they lost money. 99% of direct sellers. Not only did not make a fucking dime, they lost money. That is an eye-opening, alarming stat. The direct selling association has long had an answer for this multi-billion dollar business in which most people earn nothing or lose money. A majority of its contractors are part-time. You know, in other words, they just don't want to make that much money. The only reason not working full-time is because, I don't know, they just don't care about making them much money, right? They'd rather not. They would rather not. They enjoy losing some money. They're just not dedicated enough. They're lazy. You know, fucking people. Ninety-nine percent of these people are fucking lazy. It's such a grift. While the overwhelming majority of

her sellers were almost certainly not making shit or losing money, Mary Kay was overall doing great. The 1970s U.S. recession was good for Mary Kay and other direct sales companies. Each passing months seemed to create new pools of Americans ready to hear a pitch about getting creative to get ahead. But more employees also met more people who would statistically eventually come away dissatisfied with how little money they had made and soon government officials started to hear their complaints and take notice. Many middle class people are out of work and they may have a couple of thousand dollars around to invest. A deputy attorney general from California told LA Times in 1971.

State injunctions and federal lawsuits began to pile up against companies like Holiday Magic, Coscott, Best Line. Seemed like Mary Kay, Amway, or Avon could be next as people took there a little bit of money that they had lying around and invested it in these kind of sales companies, these MLMs. Amway co-founder, Richard, another Dick, DeVos, father-in-law, Betsy DeVos, used his connections to important politicians helping companies like Amway and Mary Kay not to get taken down. Amway would be charged with price fixing, restraining, competition and unfair practices in 1975, though,

but they would survive in part thanks to DeVos having a close connection to Coors' Beard's beer error, Joseph Coors, who co-founded a new think tank in 1973 called the Heritage Foundation, those shady motherfuckers who gave us Project 2025, and would fucking love to establish an honest-to-god handmaid's tail-type Gilead to replace U.S. if they could. So grifty. DeVos also gave $25,000, along with Coors, to the Christian Freedom Foundation, a grassroots group, started back in 1950 by Sun Oil President Jay Howard Pugh. It was reinvigorated in the 1970s by Christian businessman

and would be the breeding ground for televangelist Jerry Falwell's moral majority. All these forces would mobilize to usher in Ronald Reagan and a new era of deregulation for American business. Kind of like the deregulatory era we're in now. Because the more power you give business leaders, the better they take care of their employees, obviously. It's not like there's an inherent and wildly troubling conflict of interest there. Business leaders, if not regulated, will take care of you just like the robber barons,

used to take care of factory workers during the Gilded Age, when they made enormous fortunes in large part by just fucking destroying people in sweatshops. By 1975, annual net sales at Mary Kay were nearing $35 million. In August, Mary Kay became the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange. New York Stock Exchange welcomes a lady, set an ad listing Mary Kay alongside AT&T, IBM, and Exxon. stock certificates were of course pink. Three years later, Mary Kay was included on Horatio Alger Association's list of outstanding Americans

whose triumph over adversity was reminiscent of the 1940s children's book Hero Horatio Alger. Then in 1978, Mary Kay would be in the news for a different reason. As she did every year, Mary Kay had dreamed up a new version of the apparel required to be worn at that year's seminar, not just a standard uniform, but different shades for every level. On the hunt for matching accessories, an NSD National Sales Director named Beverly Sue Vickers,

who had started out as a Mary Kay consultant when she was a single mom and now drove a pink Cadillac and had over 5,000 sellers beneath her, she drove to a Dallas suburb and scored a pair of matching shoes. Sue, the same lady who recorded that instructional tape we listened to earlier about the power of Mary Kay sing-alongs was in the parking lot when she was abducted, robbed, raped, and ultimately strangled to death. When that year's seminar then went on as planned, including the creation of the Go Give Award in Vickers' honor,

a lot of people started getting suspicious. They felt this was in poor taste. It was too soon, and they wondered, did Mary Kay really care about women's empowerment? Did she really care about the women working beneath her, or did she mostly just care about lining her pockets, you know, growing wealthier off their backs? Then in May of 1980, her husband Mel Ash

was dies nose with lung cancer, given just weeks to live. He would die two months later, July 7th, 1980, but both Mary Kay and the company and Mary Kay the person kept chugging along just fine. Factory and headquarters staff would double between 1980 and 1983. Mary Kay would exceed $500 million in sales through 220,000 consultants. Four years later, its sales would almost double to $950 million. Meanwhile, Mary Kay was busy solidifying her legacy.

In 1981, Mary Kay Ash's autobiography, Mary Kay, the success story of America's most dynamic businesswoman was published by Harper and Row. A lot of shit I talked about was left out of it. Three years later, she would publish Mary Kay on people management. Mary Kay also ran some national commercials around this time. My skin is different than my skin. And my skin is different than my skin. But we all have one thing in common.

Mary Kay. Mary Kay is a scientifically formulated skin care system. Created to work with your type of skin. And talk to you by a professional Mary Kay beauty consultant. To find the Mary Kaye. Mary Kay beauty consultant nearest you. Look in the yellow pages under cosmetics. Because every skin is different.

You need skin care that's different. You need Mary Kay. You need Mary Kay or your life is shit. Then in 1993, after passing a billion dollars in revenue and boasting roughly 400,000 consultants in 21 countries, Mary Kay's company finally debuted on the Fortune 500.

That year, the company opened the Mary Kay Museum, which would display seller's uniforms, Mary Kay's seminar gowns, the body of that one lady who was murdered. Not, no, didn't do that. Plenty of opportunities for buying cosmetics and books. But Mary Kay was getting tired. There were always more people to call, more people to motivate, more recruits to meet, on top of all the work of being a high-powered executive.

She had based her brand on her personal touch and direct encouragement, but the bigger the company grew, right, the more work, of course, that generated. There was also this thing called the Internet to figure out how to use, and Mary Kay was working on figuring that out, too. but then February 26, 1996, she had a stroke, left her unable to speak. When a subsequent stroke put her in the wheelchair, her public appearances stopped, and Chairman Triple R and a team of national sales directors led the company, continuing its expansion through Europe and into China.

By the summer of 2001, Mary Kay's health problems had multiplied, and Richard and the executives, who had been debating a big merger with multiple other companies decided to keep the company's ownership private. To help him out, he enlisted his own son, Ryan. Then on November 22nd, 2000, 2001, Thanksgiving, Mary Kay died at home at the age of 83 from complications related to her strokes. She'd already made it clear that she wanted her body cremated and her ashes interred next to Mel's,

which would be exactly what would happen after her funeral on November 28th. At the ceremony, hundreds of Mary Kay employees gave speeches about how she had changed their lives. And it would have surprised nobody if Mary Kay, the company, did worse after her death. After all, not every company survives the demise of its charismatic founder. other direct sales companies like Stanley and Avon were similarly experiencing a downturn but Mary Kay the company was smart it doubled down on the internet and by 2003

85% of its sales would take place online but the internet also accelerated backlash in 2006 ex-consultant Tracy Conan launched the blog Pink Truth which repeatedly exposed a major contradiction of Mary Kay Ash's official narrative her supposed three marriages not six

these blogs called out that though Mary Kay had often publicly claimed she raised three kids alone as a self-made single mom that was complete and total bullshit. She was actually married again six times and often according to the blogs to wealthy men. This revelation undermined the foundational myth of Mary Kay cosmetics that a woman could support a family solely through direct sales. In reality, Mary Kay's lifestyle was not funded solely by the MLM model. She sold to millions, but in large part by the financial security of her husbands. This criticism would also hone in on another aspect of Mary Kay's business model, how nobody knew how much product was being bought by actual customers, as opposed to sellers.

How much of the company's sales went to hopeful sellers, who then could not move that product? Viewed in that light, how much of Mary Kay cosmetics went to making women feel more beautiful versus how much represented unfulfilled dreams and fucking debt. In 2012, Laura Bettler, Mary Kay's vice president of compliance, was quick to emphasize that, quote, absolutely the majority of our products end up with the end up with the end up. and customer. But when pressed, she also had to admit, quote, we can't and do not track retail sales. Well, then how the fuck can you claim that, Laura? You have no idea where your products end up.

Or you probably do, and it's not what you're saying. All the available data out there points to them not ending up with the end consumer, not even close. Criticism intensify when people online started talking about the fact that a Mary Kay saleswoman can also charge their inventory to their Chase Mary Kay rewards visa, meaning the company is potentially profiting from these women multiple times over. And this would point to an interesting trap. To avoid falling into the Federal Trade Commission's official definition of an illegal pyramid scheme, it is very important for Mary Kay and all other multi-level marketing companies to insist that their primary goal is getting their products out to actual retail customers, that they are not just selling the idea of selling

primarily. To avoid being exposed as a business where the vast majority of its sales force, is actually losing money in face criminal charges, all of these companies have to claim that they have no idea what those end retail consumers are spending. All Mary Kay knew or claimed to know is that they earned $3 billion roughly from wholesale orders

placed by their own workforce in 2011. Now do the math. According to the company, Mary Kay's global sales force at that time was $2.4 million strong. If all of those Mary Kay ladies earned $3 billion cumulatively in commissions, You know, from their $3 billion wholesale investment, that works out to $1,250 per consultant per year, which is $104.16 per month.

None of that accounts for what women lose on recruitment attempts, on trips and parties and childcare, etc. That is gross, not net. Not to mention how much of that $3 billion in wholesale sales, not actually product going to end customers, but instead unsold product left in the hands of salespeople. and based on the stats that we went over earlier, most of that product was almost certainly left in the hands of the Salesforce. Which means the consultants

were not making an average of 1250 year, not even fucking close. They were probably losing a 1250 a year or more. Mary Kay very, very is likely selling a lot more bullshit dreams than they are makeup. Their grift might be coming to an end, though.

More people seem to be wising up to MLMs in recent years. MLM firms have faced declining profitability nationwide. The world's largest MLM Amway, those fuckers, peaked in 2013 at 11.8 billion in profits, fell to 7.4 in 2020. Right? The good God Amway, maker of artistry, longevity, rich cream, practically being given away at $365 per 50 milliliter container is dying. Herbalife peaked in 2021, has since fallen from 5.8 billion of revenue to $5 billion in 2024.

Lavelle, makers of Thrive, DFT patches. they do not publicly disclose company earnings in any regulated way and independent watchdogs and consumer protection investigators such as tina.org note that typically earnings claims made in marketing materials frequently lack realistic financial disclosures so we don't know if thrive is still thriving but we can hope they're dying this downturn has come for mary k as well in twenty twenty three ryan rogers triple r's son became president and CEO of mary k

initially this was hailed as another great move, but in February of 2026. Not that long ago, news reports revealed that Triple R had accused Ryan of mismanaging the company back in August of 2025. In a letter he had urged that the company be sold or restructured, citing financial collapse being imminent. Quote, the company's financial situation has become dire and continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate. He wrote citing that the first half of 2025 showed net sales of $707 million, which was on pace to be 30% lower than the firm's 2.08 billion in sales in 2021. The company's total assets have dropped as well. In June of 2025, total assets were $1.11 billion down from $1.46 billion in 2021,

or a decrease of 24.2%. Hope the fall continues. And more and more people, you know, as more and more wise up to the dark lure of MLMs. Get rich quick schemes are usually just that fucking schemes. And now let's get out of this timeline and talk about what, we've talked about. Good job, soldier. You've made it back.

Barely. All right. So, Mary Kay. Good, overall, or bad? Well, I don't think you'd be surprised for me to argue bad. Really fucking bad. Just like the rest of MLMs.

I mean, how good can a company be if over 90% of its employees? If around 99% of its employees, not only don't make money, but they fucking lose money. Circling back to the beginning, if 90% plus of the people working for Microsoft, Apple or Google spent more on Microsoft, Apple, and Google products needed to keep their jobs

than what they took home in paychecks, that wouldn't just be bad. It would be fucking criminal. Hopefully, right, literally be criminal. Mary Kay's business model reminds me of horror stories of old company towns, like the ones we covered in, you know, episodes like 349, the 1928 Banana Massacre, when we explored how American fruit corporations like the United Fruit Company exploited these shit out of Central and South American nations and their people

by doing shit like offering accommodations and a company store to workers, but then charging so much at those places that the people would work their asses off way over 40 hours a week, not spend money on anything other than basic necessities only to still find themselves falling deeper and deeper in debt to the company they worked for. They essentially became slaves. Is Mary Kay as bad as that? I mean, not quite because the type of labor required is different.

But in spirit, yeah, I think they are actually. They are so exploitive. You sell the dream of making. making all this money in a complicated and convoluted system where, yes, it is technically possible to get rich, but statistically not only very unlikely, but also simultaneously, you are very likely to lose a lot of money. That is so different from a normal business model. It is statistically unlikely to climb, you know, climb the corporate ladder all the way to CEO. But at least you still get paid for standing on each and every rung, right, along the way. At least you can climb a little

ways and still make a very decent, livable wage, maybe a very, very good wage, right? You climb a little way within a Mary Kay or even a long, long ways, and you still make less a year than you would at a minimum wage job, right? Fuck Mary Kay. That is a horrible business model. And fuck Mary Kay, the person, too, for building such a predatory business model, which she knowingly did when she made the decision, and she alone made the decision for her consultants to not be able to return unsold products, but instead to leave people,

saddled with debt. Is her story inspirational and aspirational? Not for me. Just because you work really hard and you bet on yourself, you launch your own company and you make millions, to me, that does not just inherently make you an aspirational, inspirational person. If financial achievement is the only metric when it comes to determining whether or not somebody is inspirational or aspirational, well, then a lot of really successful people have been fucking shithole con artists and manipulative, fucking unscrupulous, predatory motherfuckers who fuck over whoever and whenever they can to line their own pockets, right? In a global economy with global supply chains that have made it harder and harder to tell

which companies are good and which companies are bad, based on how exploitive they are or not, I do think it is very easy to judge and stay away from MLMs. The Mary Kay opportunity is mostly the opportunity to waste a lot of your time, a lot of your energy, and a lot of your money on something that is never going to put you in the driver's seat of a pink Cadillac, but instead is going to saddle you with so much debt. And I imagine trying to get out of debt is the reason you went there in the first place. So stay the fuck away from Mary Kay. Time shock.

Top five takeaways. Number one, Mary Kay originally called Beauty by Mary Kay was founded in Dallas in 1963 by Mary Kay Kay Ash after she had spent nearly two decades in the world of door-to-door selling. Though most of their sales were originally wigs, Mary Kay would borrow from Stanley's party plan to equip salespeople called consultants with makeup cases that they would demonstrate to rooms of housewives, giving those housewives some much-needed socialization and potentially the opportunity to make their own money through selling with Mary Kay. The Mary Kay opportunity. All of this was revolutionary in a time when women

were not allowed to make their own decisions about their finances and their property, when their contributions to the household were minimized or overlooked entirely, and when the other option, going to work for a company, left them boxed out of traditional careers oftentimes. Number two, all of this would make Mary Kay a legitimate rags to Rich's story. Born in Hotwell, Texas, to Alex and Lula Wagner, who had spent years chasing opportunities without success. She spent most of her childhood doing the cooking and cleaning while Lula works 16-hour days at Wagner's Cafe. Mary Kathleen would do well once she finally made it to a functional school, even winning multiple competitions and performing as part of the Red Coats. But she got Mary Ched out of high school and then had three children.

Added desperation to make money, and with few opportunities, she finally started to sell for Stanley when they allowed women to become door-to-door salespeople, which would pave the way for her to start her own company. Number three, at the same time, though, Mary Kay was not honest about the reality of selling for most women. She made it seem like she supported herself and three kids alone off a door-to-door income, when in fact she had multiple well-off husbands and multiple inheritance when those husbands died. that narrative would become obscured when she launched Mary Kay, first called Beauty by Mary Kay, which would go on to become one of the first female-led Fortune 500 companies, the first female-led company to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and a leader in the cosmetics industry worldwide.

Number four, Mary Kay would use that framing of women's empowerment to be your own boss, that narrative, to obscure the financial reality of direct selling for almost everyone. In fact, there was and is very little that remains empowering for Mary Kay consultants. they are routinely put on a hamster wheel of buying more and more and more products, which may or may not, but probably will not make it to the market. You know, to make their uplines look good so that their status is not compromised. Mary Kay invented a system where there is always more ranks to move up through,

always more opportunities supposedly waiting right around the corner, opportunities that on paper are not nearly as good as they sound in motivational speeches. This has led untold women, perhaps even millions, to put themselves in very bad financial predicaments, risk their relationships with their loved ones and their communities, and keep them from pursuing actual, real, right, legitimate opportunities. Number five, new info, so many politicians seem to be in bed and have been in bed with these MLM motherfuckers on all sides of the political spectrum.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris was serving as Attorney General in California in 2015, for example, when she declined to investigate allegations that herbal life was a pyramid scheme. The case, as reported, was potentially very winnable. So why did she not take it on? Well, her husband, Douglas Mhoff, was employed at the very law firm that represented Herbalife. Weird that she wouldn't prosecute her husband's client. Madeline Albright, Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, was a fucking brand ambassador for Herbalife, who earned a whopping $10 million roughly between 2008 and 2014 from that company. We talked a little about Rick DeVos, founder of Amway, how he became deeply embedded in the formation of institutions

like the Heritage Foundation that would go on to shape the modern conservative movement. Thanks to the MLM money that Amway channeled into these institutions in 1979, the FTC ruled that Amway was not an illegal pyramid scheme based on internal rules the company claimed to enforce, such as requiring sellers to resell 70% of inventory. The FTC accepted those claims without requiring proof. Sounds bribey. Betsy DeVos, a major shareholder in Amway, while her husband Dick DeVos Jr. was a former Anway CEO whose father co-founder of the company in 1959

was appointed U.S. Secretary of Education under Donald Trump, which is fucking preposterous, after donating some $82 million to the Republican Party. And according to Forbes, Trump himself made over $11 million endorsing two MLMs in the 2000s. Those two endorsements were his most lucrative side deals at the height of his fame from the apprentice. Trump's most lucrative deal, $8.8 million over a decade, was for promoting ACN. an MLM whose members sold telecom equipment and services. Trump nabbed another 2.6 million licensing his name to the Trump Network, another MLM that sold shitty vitamins before that company sold its remaining assets in 2011

when the owners declared bankruptcy. Before running for president and serving as HUD Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson had a lucrative multi-year relationship with Manatech, a supplement MLM. What does endorsing and protecting and profiting from an MLM say about a politician? why does all this matter? To me it says that at the end of the day, they don't give a fuck about protecting the little guys and the little gals. And if they don't really care about any old worker, right,

maybe some struggling single mom or down on their luck single dad, getting driven into further financial ruin by being sold predatory and bullshit dreams, why would they care about a voter? They fucking wouldn't. And they don't. That's pretty obvious to me, which is why after studying a few different MLMs now, I am not going to support them or their politicians, you know,

connected to them. If an MLM ever sneaks an ad into our feed, please let me know. We approve or disapprove categories for automated ads. While there is no MLM category, an MLM could be labeled as belonging to health and well-being, for example, and sneak on in there. Email us, please, at Bojangles at timesugpodcast.com, if you ever see that happening, we will tell them to cut them out. Like I said earlier, it is so hard to, you know, only support good businesses, but I can at least do some small thing to work on not supporting objectively bad ones.

Time suck. Top five takeaways. The Mary Kay Opportunity. The dark crook. The dark crooth. The dark truth about rimmer rims. The dark truth about MLMs. It's been sucked.

It's hot in here today. Maybe that's why my brain's all over the place. Thank you to the bad magic productions team for all their help in making time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Thanks also. to Logan Keith helping you publish this episode and designing merch for the store at bad magic

productions.com. Thank you to Sophie Evans for her thorough research this week for finding this topic and seeing if I wanted to do it. It sounded fun and I hope it was fun for me. Hope it's fun for you. Also thanks to the all-seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the Mod Squad making sure your Discord keeps running smooth and everybody over on the Time Sucks subreddit

and Bad Magic subreddit. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. updates. The first updates sent in this week to Bojangles, well, the first update this week that I'm reading that came from emails being sent in to Bojangles at timesug podcast.com comes from Mayor Anonymous, a wonderful meat popsicle who sent in a wonderful Cumminslaw message. Good morning, afternoon, or evening. Depending on what unfortunate hour you happen to read this abomination of an email. First and foremost, I want to thank you, the Queen of Bad Magic, and the entire team that works so tirelessly to make all of this glorious bad magic happen.

I've been a listener of Time Sucks since episode two. I know. I'm slacking. At one point, I was a patrol deputy and we listened to every episode while riding around on patrol. Oh, man, thanks. And thanks for what you do. Eventually upgraded to major crimes, death investigations, and arson investigations where I continued to enjoy episodes while steadily working my way through the endless

mounds of paperwork. For the past six years, I've had the dubious honor of serving as the mayor of my small town. I want you to know that your open-mindedness, willingness to accept criticism, ability to laugh of yourself, and overall commitment to being a decent meat sack have genuinely influenced the way I approached this job. Oh man. You will probably never know just how much of an impact time suck has had on the way I conduct myself, critter the people, and try and generally be a good human, or as we prefer to say in these parts, a respectical meat popsicle. You must live somewhere cold. Now that the four plays over, let's get to the

big O. I've always taken immense pride in the fact that despite years of listening to Time Suck I had somehow managed to avoid ever getting Cummins Law. Well, years of laughing at the less fortunate have finally caught up with me in the worst possible way. I love this so much, by the way. This is one of the best Cummins Law things that's happened in a while. Recently, I had a meeting with contractors, investors, and members of the community regarding a massive upgrade improvement project for our town park on the way to the meeting. I happened to be listening to the Mary Shelley episode.

When I arrived, I shut off my truck, got out, and proceeded to greet all of the unfortunate people who had gathered for this very respectable civic meeting, except my truck apparently had other plans. For reasons, I still cannot explain. It continued blasting your wonderful, energetic, and beautifully inappropriate, getting freaky with Frankenstein. Oh, not a clip. Not a few seconds.

The entire damn thing. So there I stood, surrounded by contractors, investors, and community members, while my truck enthusiastically announced to everyone with an earshot that their mayor had apparently chosen a very different kind of soundtrack for a discussion about municipal park improvements. I pride myself on being fairly nonchalant in uncomfortable situations. So I simply stood there,

looked around and said, well, that's unfortunate. I did eventually explain that it was a podcast, that it's comedic, and that everyone should absolutely check out everything bad magic has to offer. Whether that explanation helped

or completely destroyed any chance of getting this park project approved remains to be seen. At this point, I can only hope the town remembers me for my leadership, public service, and commitment to improving our community

and not as the mayor who accidentally introduced an entire group of potential investors to getting freaky with Frankenstein at the beginning of a business meeting. Only time will tell. And as a true politician, I categorically refuse to apologize

for the length of this email because politicians never do anything wrong, right? Sincerely, Mayor Anonymous. Oh, man. Mayor Anonymous, first out, thanks for the very kind words. And next, thanks for letting us know what happened to you. I so hoped something exactly like this,

what happened to somebody. Because the passage I read it was just so fucking graphic. It's so niche. At this point it takes a lot to make myself embarrassed but as I was reading that I was like I was getting a little like

flustered like a little flushed. I was like this is very pornographic and I'm not a prude but just reading it's so funny like I don't have a problem with any of that stuff but when I personally am reading like

and then grabbed his throbbing cock and pushed it into her fucking wet soaking vagina like just not every time, but a lot of times I'm like, whew, ha ha, oh, I get a little embarrassed. And I can't imagine, like, as embarrassed as I got doing that in an office where no one is around me, if I was you, I would have wanted to fucking melt into the ground and never have to see any of those people ever again.

Ah, I love, and that went on for what? Four minutes? Went on for a fucking long time. I don't know. Maybe, uh, maybe it'll help you out as mayor, you know? I hope it doesn't affect, uh, you know, your future. political career in any negative way, but maybe a lot of people secretly love monster smut. And they love to be around, you know, somebody brave enough to, you know, not be ashamed of it.

You know, good, good for you being so sex positive. Now they can vote for a voice they can trust. Hail Nimrod, Mayor Anonymous. Thanks for all the service-oriented work you do and have done. And now for a very honest email from another anonymous sack. Send in with the intriguing subject line of Secret Time. Dear Dan, I listen every week and I've written in a few times. but the recent episode

Death Before Divorce reminded me of one of the darkest thoughts I've ever had. I considered killing my ex-husband. I would have benefited. I would not have benefited. Oh, wait, excuse me. I would have benefited

as his beneficiary, though not even close to the tune of what Corey thought she was going to get. However, I knew a couple of things off the top. Number one, I didn't think I could live

with the knowledge that I did that. Number two, I cannot keep a secret. So at least three people would have known, and there's a saying that only two can keep deep a secret if one of them is dead. Number three, I knew my dumbass self would get caught. It was one of the darkest thoughts I've ever had. But I got divorced instead. He did not want to. There were other reasons, of course, but I knew once I had that thought, it was time to go.

Does divorce suck? Yes. My divorce wasn't even complicated. We rented. My name was not on his car, nor his on mine. We did not have any children together. We carried our own insurance. As far as divorce goes, mine was not terrible, but it still wasn't fun. But the fact remains a divorce is easier than sitting in prison for the rest of your life. If you have the thought of harming your spouse, it is time to get divorced. No amount of money would be worth all the bullshit that would follow. You will move on from divorce. Maybe in financial shambles, maybe not, but everyone lives and let lives.

I happily moved on. I wrote this from the comfort of my own home with my new husband and our beautiful baby girl and not from prison. Whoa. Shit. That was a wild thing to fucking write. But you're allowed to read it on the pod if you so, choose. Anyways, three and a half out of five stars, a star, excuse me, hail Lucifine and all that jazz. Do not read my government name aloud. Love the honesty anonymous. Yeah. Yeah, divorce does

suck, right? Mine sure did too. We do have two kids together. Right. Our finances, future plans, were very, very much intertwined. I knew my kid's new stepdad was also going to be the guy she left me for, right? So that was fun. The timing of the divorce wreaked havoc not just on my personal life, but on my professional life, but it didn't affect hers, which if I'm being honest, very much pissed me off for a long time. I did not see at the time

how I could ever get to a place where I did not fucking loathe both her and the new guy. I didn't think about killing him, but back then, being totally honest, if they both would have been hit by the same bus and obliterated,

would I have been devastated? I would not have. I would have been sad for how it affected the kids, but that would have been it. But over 15 years later, we all co-parent beautifully together. We all get along very, very well. You know, they are good people in the long run, keeping a cooler head.

You know, not giving in to rage and anger and hurt was a great decision. I do not want them dead now, not even a little bit. Also, like you realized, I knew on some level that, you know, if I would have considered wanting to kill them, I would have never gotten away with it. right yeah just get divorced with or without kids how many spouse killers are sitting in prison cells today years after their murderous rage is worn off thinking why the fuck did i do it why couldn't have i have just gone to therapy instead of you know to the store to buy a fucking body disposal kid or whatever but also in some cases if they're violently abusive and trying to kill you well all right maybe killing them self-defense other is that last up funny sucker kent hinterman sending the following message with the subject line of calliope Ace of Base. Hey, Dan, you majestic, dastardly, and the reason I want to occasionally burst an eardrum, even though I realize it's too late and I can't unhear what I've already heard. I present to you one of those moments, Ace of Base.

I saw the sign with hints of Calliope. You are welcome. I hope you hate it. Definitely don't share it with the rest of the audience to enjoy. Respectfully yours, Kent. Oh, Kent, I will share this glory with the suck verse. I actually don't hate it. There's something about it that's very soothing.

to me, kind of. It both sucks and is soothing. Technically, it's not the Calliope. You did say hint. It's its lesser-known cousin, the mechanical organ, which uses low-pressure air, push through internal wooden or metal pipes, instead of higher-pressure air, pushed through big whistles.

But they do sound similar, and this ace of bass cover is played on a mechanical organ with built-in percussion. I am impressed. Come on. That's pretty fun. Enjoy it. It opened up my eyes.

I don't know the words. We all did. That'd be a fun karaoke song if you had a good voice, which I don't. But thanks for listen to another bad magic productions podcast. Be sure and rate and review time suck. If you haven't already, please not sell anybody on some kind of get-rich scheme. this week. If you know damn well, there's around a 99% chance. They're more likely to fucking lose money than make money, you piece of shit.

Don't grift. Keep on sucking. And now let's hear from Brittany Jenks. Oh, an executive senior sales director right now with Mary Kay out in Columbus, Ohio. Or early she was when this video dropped in 2022. Brittany wants to share her heart with you. She wants you to know that you are, where you are, because you believe that's where you should be.

That's a fun message that allows Brittany to think that she's doing well because she believes she should because she's just, she's smarter that way. She's better than other people suffering. If you're suffering, well, you're just doing that shit to yourself. Who cares if you have a debilitating disease that riddles you with pain and fatigue every day? Who cares if you were sexually abused throughout your childhood and then you marry your father and now the abuse cycle continues and confused and scared and don't know how to get out of this fucking hellish reality?

thanks to the real risk that your partner could kill you. You have a low education level and no mentors to help you, thanks to generational poverty, right, in isolation. You just got to start believing, you silly little sugar plum? Ha ha! Gosh, dang, oh, my heck. Enough of me yapping. Just listen to vapid Britney's vapid little shiny, happy speech.

Well, hey, everyone. I am so excited to be with you today, so we hear little pitter-patter-patter-s if the I am Britney Jinks. I'm an executive senior sales clerk with Mary Kay from Columbus, Ohio. I'm so excited to be with you. I have a six-year-old, a four-year-old, three-year-old. There are pitter-patters of feet all around this house all the time. That's so much bitter-patter.

But I'm so excited to be here today because I get to share with you my heart and my vision and my mission. And I'm just pumped to have that opportunity because you really are the cream of the crop. And I have a huge goal today. I pray that something I say today, you encourages you, changes you, somehow, some way for you to just think differently. I have a saying that you are where you are because it's where you believe that you should be. And I believe that many times we are where we are because of our belief level. You know, many time in our businesses, our belief level determines our success. We might be stuck at a certain level, title,

car or lack thereof because of our belief. And today, I am praying that that change because your belief is going to change. Change your belief. Fuck hard economic data and stats and an MLM, Mary Kaye system stacked against you. Just believe, you little sugar plum. Who cares if you're tired?

Because you have six kids. Just see through that target, you silly goose. Who cares if you're paralyzed from the next down? Just fucking believe. You just got to keep running. You got to keep pulling. Who cares if you have crippling social anxiety or a bipolar? Have schizophrenia.

You just got to be part of that top 1%. Come on, just fucking do it. The red jacket is waiting for you. Everyone who's poor deserves it. Everyone who's rich has earned it. God only loves you if you're the best. God only loves you if you have a red jacket.