Why I decided to leave Younique after only 60 days..

January 9, 2019 I made the huge scary leap to join a direct sales company. Younique. They specialize in make up, skin care, and even fragrances.

For the first month, I was super excited, extremely motivated, and definitely bound for success (according to my upline and teammates). I double promoted in the first 18 days.

Let’s back it up a minute.. I have never been a huge make up mogul. I wore crap from Walmart and the dollar store. I didn’t know what good make up was.

Younique said I didn’t need to have experience. That I will learn as I went. Seemed easy.

Okay, back on track. So double promoted in 18 days. Let’s talk about that. When you buy your kit, they send you a white status charm but you’re not actually white status until you sell $125 in personal retail sales (PRS). Then, once you sell $500 PRS, you promote to yellow. You will never drop below yellow again. Yellow comes with another charm, and a permanent pay raise (yep! Now you make 25% commissions on your sales).

Here’s the part that no one realized – I basically bought my own promotion. I bought two booster bundles (exclusive to brand new presenters in their first 30 days) that gave me commissions and went towards my PRS. Plus, I bought Kudos of the month. So my commissions weren’t actually commissions. They were simply discounts for myself. Plus I did a couple mystery bags and sample bags. So someone bought a bag for $25-$30 bucks and then I sent them a product valued at more than the bag. I paid the remainder of the product, the shipping to me, and the taxes. Then, when I received the item, I paid the shipping at the post office. (I shipped 3 small packages and it cost me $56 dollars from my own pocket!)

Over my 60 days, I spent more than I made.

In the first month alone, I spent 10 hours a day on Facebook following training, messaging people, posting, doing live videos. When I did the math, I was making 0.36¢ an hour. That’s it. It absolutely was NOT worth my time, or effort. Maybe one day, but not today.

I kept trying to push through, and tell myself that one day, it will be worth it. One day I will be black status. One day.

So let’s just dive right into the business aspect of the company… If I could use 3 words or phrases to describe this company, I would use the following: Cold messaging. Friend farming. Spam.

You spend all your time in your messenger, cold messaging people to join your team, host parties, or sell them your products.

Let me just say: cold messaging is bogus. I had more people block me than turn into a customer or recruit. Those people were potential customers and my spammy messages deterred them from even being my friend. I struggled so hard with cold messaging. I only did it the first month or so. I annoyed myself.

Friend farming – well, that’s simple. The virtual parties we hosted? Yeah, we didn’t really care about qualifying the party, and getting sales. We just wanted access to your friends list. Every single person you added to the party, we added as friends, and then messaged them for more parties, sales, and recruits. It was a vicious cycle. The parties were copy and pasted from one party to the next. It really wasn’t personalized. Then again, we didn’t care about that, we cared about time efficiency. We rarely qualified parties and if we did, they were our own. If we had big bulk orders or our own orders we were taught to put the parties in our own name to reap additional rewards. We were even told to create party links for our spouses or kids in order to get hostess rewards (you got more Y Cash and better free products as a host, instead of a presenter)

Spam. Oh boy. All our messages were generic. “Hey darlin’!” or “Hey girl!” was always the start of the message. Why? So we could mass forward the messages to hundreds of women at the same time. Again, not caring to be personal.

The only time we got personal was during relationship building. Why did we relationship build? So you would join our team and buy our products. I hated the fact I was told to use your statuses as a way in. If someone was having a hard time, to message them and offer a listening ear. Just know, if I messaged you to offer you a listening ear – it was not to exploit you, it was because I genuinely care.

Now, I met a couple pretty awesome women, and formed real true bonds. But, those bonds were over my sobriety, not my company. These women were not customers or recruits. These women didn’t get spammy messages from me. These women messaged ME to talk about ME and we bonded over ME. I’m thankful those women haven’t seen me as selfish, because that’s how I feel.

That being said – the main selling point of Younique is to Uplift, Empower, and Validate other women, right? Well maybe for some, but not all. I still saw cattiness and bullying. I still saw people talking smack about other women – including other presenters. I’m sure this blog post won’t go over well, once it’s out.

Can we actually talk about the products now?

So, I went to my best friend’s house over the weekend and she only uses high end products.. Urban Decay, Kat Von D, Becca, Tarte, etc. She was genuinely curious about how Younique eyeshadows compared to her Tarte palette. We figured out that the Tartiest Pro palette was $3.77 per gram while the Younique palette was over $8 per gram. So, her thoughts were “Younique better blow Tarte out of the water!” and then we decided to do a swatch test. Weeelllll, Younique failed. Miserably. It’s patchy, muddy, and unable to blend. The only color that held up during the swatch, was their metallic shade. Two matte shades FAILED.

On 3 swatches, the top shade is the Tarte and the bottom shade is Younique. That picture above is before blending..

The Younique colors almost completely disappeared after blending!

We then put the liquid lipstick to the test. We put both lipsticks on, and waited 5 minutes. At the end of the 5 minutes we ran our finger over the spot. This was the result…

The bottom lipstick… Is $10 Covergirl Outlast lipstick. The top is the Younique Liquid Lip Splash – which is $32. I’d like to state that lipstick should not smudge or transfer especially when advertised as kiss proof.

Let’s just show one more thing.. My friend has clear skin. No dryness, no patches, no acne, etc. I gave her the Touch Cream Foundation to try, for free. This is what happened..

Check out her cheek and nose! That’s not what should happen with a $36 foundation! It doesn’t even cover her freckles! She let it sit for 15 mins and it was also transferring like crazy!

I had a friend return the 3D-Fibre lashes THREE times to another presenter, before I finally offered her an Epic mascara for free, plus a lip gloss for her trouble. She didn’t like the Epic, after all that. So, I lost $61 in products to have a non-returning customer. Lovely, huh?

Well, then I managed to get my butt into Sephora for the first time… Oh my GOD! It was AMAZING! I walked in, and was helped right away. Within minutes I had brand new foundation on my face, tailored to my skin type, and skin color. I went with Laura Mercier. She created her foundation specifically for women who have horrible acne and rosacea. This FULL coverage, matte foundation is amazing! No transferring, covered ALL my blemishes, not cakey, or flakey… I couldn’t believe it. It was only a few dollars more than Younique’s liquid foundation which is dewy, only a medium coverage, and transfers so bad that my black winter coat has a white collar now! (the closest I’ll ever get to white collar lol).

These photos have no filter or beautifying tools on my face. Similar colors used. Both photos taken in selfie mode on my Samsung S9.

Younique Products

Sephora Products

****crickets****

Excuse me, but how do you call yourself high end make up?

Younique presenters state the following to their potential customers “Younique products are comparable to Huda. The eyeshadows are better than ABH because they have fall out and we don’t”. Uhm, if I was affiliated with Huda, I’d be PISSED. To my knowledge, Huda is better than Tarte, and Tarte kicks Younique’s ass.

Now let’s discuss what happened when I brought this up to my upline..

So, I messaged my direct upline – meaning the woman who sponsored me, telling her about my discoveries with the swatches, and how dissatisfied I was in the products. Told her I’m having a hard time being passionate about these products. Asked her for reassurance.

She had two responses.

The first was to trouble shoot the products with me.

You need primer. You need setting products. You’re using too much. You’re not applying it right.

Wait… So I need to buy more products to make these products work? (Which is exactly what I posed to her)

Her next response..

If you don’t like it then don’t sell it. I don’t have time to justify or convince you otherwise.

Ohkay. So, let me get this straight… You boast about sisterhood, yet, you’re response was THAT? I thought we were friends? Guess not? What about if I was a customer? Would you just block me and move on?

This company preys on women who do not know make up, so they don’t question the products.

NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED!!

Well, I didn’t know make up and I still found out it’s garbage… I feel AWFUL for selling these products to my FRIENDS – because I didn’t sell to a single person who isn’t a friend. I didn’t get random people ordering from my website. I harassed my FRIENDS to try the products. My credibility is out the window with these people, yet I still have to look them in the face.

That’s what Younique did for me in 60 days.

At first, I stated how much confidence they gave me, and how wonderful of a company they were. No! I gave myself confidence and Younique is not wonderful.

I didn’t need Younique to become an inspiration to other people. My sobriety did that, not Younique.

Younique is a scam. They sell crap products to innocent women who don’t know any better. (No offence – I didn’t know any better either)

They will say make up artists use our products but, ask any presenter to name a make up artist (who isn’t affiliated with Younique!) who willingly uses these products – betcha they can’t name one.

Jeffree Star won’t even touch the stuff!

I’d like to also take a quick second to talk about Younique posts.

^^^ that is an actual post from a Younique representative to try to discredit SEPHORA! Say whaaaat?

Or how about this…

I Google image reversed that photo – they are not even Younique products!!!

Oh gosh! Another one!

I can’t even.

We are taught to change our entire profiles and only be positive. No rants, no negative comments, no controversy, no drama. Our Facebook profile is our store. Makes sense but… Who is TRULY that positive ALL the time?

The biggest thing I’ve seen said amongst reps is

Fake it until you make it

Well, faking = lying.

We are taught to make ourselves appear more successful than we are. Our customers are ourselves.. Yes, that’s right! You heard me correctly! Younique representatives are the customers! (In fact, the presenter perk for March is to sell 10 overpriced kudos but only 5 of them have to go through under someone else’s name. You can buy 5 yourself! And don’t you worry, you can just put the orders under your husband or kid too, to get the other 5)

Wanna know another lie? “Younique is cruelty free”. That’s right, we have to keep up with the facade that we are cruelty free. Uhm, no, Younique is not cruelty free. All mascaras have beeswax in it. NO products are tested on animals (so they say) but they do NOT trace their ingredients back to the original source. They SAY that they are in the process of getting approved as cruelty free… How many years can you say that for in a row, though? Needless to say, even if they don’t personally test on animals… They aren’t cruelty free, and if you are vegan, you should AVOID Younique.

I think I’ve pretty much said all that I’ve needed to say on the subject other than this…

To my friends and family who purchased from me to support me – I thank you for that. Truly. I am also very sorry for any spammy messages you received. I’m EXTREMELY sorry for boasting about products that I no longer stand behind – even if I once did. I will never ever stop feeling bad about that.

To my customers who are waiting on orders: Your orders are at the post office and I will be shipping them out in the next couple of days.

Lastly, to anyone who joined my team: I am so deeply sorry for leaving Younique, and leaving you. If this article has changed your mind about selling Younique, we can fix this.

I love you all so much and have big things planned for the future. I cannot wait to share it all with you, and I still want to do live videos!

Now, time for me to go and remove a BUNCH of people off my Facebook. Lol.

-SM.xo