Caption This Photo: Linda Toupin Milk the Cows

After another long break from Caption This Photo, I’ve got one for you. Linda Toupin is calling her January jump start “Milk the Cows.”  I think we should come up with a caption for the photo… in other words, a new title for her event!


  1. MLM Radar

    “It didn’t matter if you were tired, in a bad mood, or a relative had just died, the cows had to be milked.”

    How very appropriate.
    If you’re tired, you still have to recruit and frontload. If you’ve hardly slept in a week when you’re short on “production” (again) because you just got whammied by a big chargeback due to your previous aggressive recruiting and frontloading, you STILL have to recruit and frontload.

    If you’re in a bad mood because everyone else is wearing “fake it til you make it” smiles, and you’ve just been shamed for daring question why you have to spend more $$$ for a conference where you hear EXACTLY the same thing you heard at Fall Retreat (even the guest presenters are the same!), you STILL have to Recruit and Frontload.

    If your father just died and you have to make the funeral arrangements yourself because mother collapsed into a weeping mess, and you’re short on “production” again because you get no vacation days and no excess production rollover credit, you STILL have to RECRUIT AND FRONTLOAD. Because, you know, funerals are a GREAT opportunity to pitch “your business” to people you seldom see, and you have to Milk Those Cows!

    Thanks Linda. We always believed you were a selfish tyrant. Now we have proof. “Cluster B Personality Disorder” anyone?

    1. TBnoMKforME

      I am reading this at home after a long two days at the hospital with my terminally ill father and realize how fantastic my “real” job is in that I am out of sick days for the year so I figured maybe I could take several days’ unpaid leave to be with my dad, and my company told me to not worry about it, I can claim additional sick days and not be deducted any pay. In addition I think about my 401k, health insurance, and paid vacation, and salary of $55k as a salesperson, and wonder what kind of spiel a Mary Kay Bot would give me to convince me to leave all of that and jump on the pink wagon.

    2. Melanie

      I think this is the thing many women don’t understand about MLM “opportunities” – most women can’t ever stop working, not for a minute. Because every minute you’re not working, you’re not making money, and margins are so thin that not making money can leave you with bills you can’t pay. The idea that you will get to a point where you don’t have to actively be working the business every day is a fallacy. If you have customers, those customers have to be served – and they don’t always contact you between 9 and 5 Monday through Friday. If you have a team, that team has to be managed – and again, that doesn’t just happen during “regular business hours.”

      I haven’t known anyone who has had any measure of financial success in MLM. I have had a couple of friends who started their own businesses providing services – and then closed them. Not because the businesses weren’t making money – in both cases, the businesses were doing well. But because they got tired of never having time off, where they weren’t thinking about or working on the business. One friend described it as being on a hamster wheel that spun faster the longer she was on it. Another described it as a pie-eating contest where the first prize was more pie. Both said that owning their own business gave them tons of *flexibility* but almost no *freedom.* Unless you are the kind of entrepreneur that wants to build a business that can, eventually, run without you – and that can take 10 years or more of 24/7/365 work – it’s really, really tough. Especially with a family.

      I’m grateful for my job, that provides me with health insurance, paid vacation and sick days, FMLA leave if I need it, and other protections I can’t get as an “independent contractor” in a business like Mary Kay, that really doesn’t allow folks all that much independence.

  2. ParsonsGreen

    Linda is currently complaining on FB about how expensive her insurance is. If Mary Kay was such a godly company, wouldn’t they provide health insurance to their consultants?

  3. Morningstar

    In order to milk the cows they have to be fed. She is certainly feeding her milk cows a bunch of [email protected]

    Here are some more sayings around the family farm in Minnesota:
    Gotta go pick the eggs.
    Is the four wheeler fixed?
    Where you born in the cabbage patch?
    Their car is always pointed toward town.
    Are your ears painted on?
    Those people are so crooked when they die you have to screw them into the ground.

    All of these sayings can be found pertinent to MK
    This is a ridiculous analogy especially if you are from the city. Her knuckles are scraping the ground- The fix satin hands. Lol

    1. BestDecision

      Some NSDs get away with it, and some don’t. There’s major preferential treatment in Dallas, and it’s horrible. For example, Allison LaMarr, former NSD, got different treatment than Pam Shaw or Gloria ever have.

  4. raisinberry

    “Hoodwink the Hamsters”

    Please join us for another session of useless rhetoric and phony “I-stories” that are designed to keep you running the wheel, as if one more stationary circle returning to the exact same place was going to get you anywhere! Learn how to kid yourself into believing that one more attempt at cage running your little legs over the same terrain is moving UP! You too can Create the dizziness and indigestion that comes from doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results, while also engaging in self condemnation for not running fast enough, 24/7/360! Yes, these are the choices for Success!

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