It has been on a downward spiral.

Legacy direct selling companies have not done well during the last decade. Avon, once the major player, has been broken up, bought, sold, and resold. Tupperware declared bankruptcy in 2024. Mary Kay’s company seems headed the same way.

As reported by D Magazine in February of 2026, last year’s operating loss was nearly $16 million. Overall, comprehensive income plummeted from $51 million in 2021 to a $46 million loss in 2025. During the same period, net sales were off about 30 percent; total assets were down almost 25 percent.

Richard Rogers, who co-founded the company with his mother Mary Kay, accused his son Ryan, the current CEO, of mismanagement; he asked the board to restructure and name new leadership. At the time of Richard’s death in March 2026, father and son were engaged in mudslinging lawsuits. That same month, Ryan put the company’s 13-story pink headquarters in Addison up for sale.

For all that, the Mary Kay Inc. legend continues to obscure the current Mary Kay Inc. reality. Case in point: in a July 2026 essay published on The New Yorker’s online site, Lauren Michele Jackson treated the company as a booming business, writing “as the years and the profits of the company amass . . .”

None.

I was not born or raised in Texas. I can go months at a time without applying lipstick. I hate pink.

But I do love a good story. And I grew up when Mary Kay’s media exposure was at its peak.

I also grew up with someone who spent a year as a Mary Kay sales rep: Paulette Schwoebel—a no-BS, civil service employee of the U.S. Army—who taught me to ride horses and muck out barns. I knew that Paulette had gone at direct selling gung-ho and that, decades later, she still used the products. I wanted to hear the why and how. So, when I began this book, she was my first interview.

Her answers caught me off guard.

I wanted “selling opportunity” to be read two ways.

In the most straightforward sense, a “selling opportunity” is the direct sales industry’s euphemism for a job that is not a job in the traditional sense. It’s not a guarantee you’ll earn money—it’s a chance to earn money. Maybe.

Signing up for a selling opportunity means that you’re an independent contractor. You don’t have benefits. You don’t have a wage. You don’t have employment protections. You don’t have taxes taken out of your checks.

In a more figurative sense, I also hoped “selling” would be read as a verb. Mary Kay Ash was not selling skin care and makeup—this is not a book about the cosmetics industry—she was selling something less tangible.