Over my Amway and blogging experience, I have come to a conclusion which I will stand by. And this, in my informed opinion, is a signficant problem with the Amway opportunity. The Amway owner, Rich Devos acknowledged this issue back in 1983 in his "directly speaking" tape and unfortunately, nothing apparently substantial was ever done and therefore, the problem exists today.
The Amway opportunity is one part of the issue, with the tools systems being the other prong. Over the years, the Amway opportunity and the tools systems have formed a symbiotic relationship. It is as if Amway needs the system and the system needs Amway. What I mean is that Amway provides the opportunity, and then the system uses the opportunity to sell the system. In the meantime, the system leaders teach 100 PV, product loyalty, and do most if not all of the new IBO recruiting. Amway benefits as the system teaches movement of PV whether by sales or self consumption, and new IBO recruitment, and the system leaders benefit by having a captive audience to sell their cds, books, seminars, voicemail, and website fees.
A conflict of interest occurs when uplines tell their new IBOs that they "need" to attend a certain function, or that they "need" standing order to succeed. The upline is smart enough not to say the system is "required", but certainly, they will put a defacto requirement by sayimg things such as nobody has ever succeeded without the system, but you can try to be the first, or they may say the system is optional, but so is success. Of someone may say so and so diamond (insert) name is a multi millionaire and he advocates the system, but you can go against his advice if you think you know better.
The bigger problem is that these upline leaders will tell you that you basically cannot succeed without these tools, but at the same time, the more tools you buy, the more profit these uplines make. Some Amway apologists will justify this by saying a college professor may sell his own books to his students. But this is not the same thing. A college professor may spend years researching to write that one book. He will be teaching his expertise that is written in the book. When you attend seminars or listen to cds, you do not have one expert guiding you with clear documentation on how they succeeded. You have very general generic experiences coming from various speakers who may or may not have any common background with IBOs. Thus these upline leaders will profit from their downline IBO volume and also from tools that they advise downline to purchasem regardless of downline success or progress in the business.
As evidence of these bad practices by upline, consider this. If upline truly has "valuable" information that would help you succeed, they would get that information to you in whatever means they could. Either by email, facebook, twitter, text message, MP3, Youtube or whatever. Why would they withhold trade secrets if they really wanted your success? Has it ever occured to IBOs that maybe uplines don't want your success? Maybe it is why you must pay for any piece of advice or support you receive. Maybe upline is perfectly happy with people coming and going as long as there are tool purchases because then there are no new IBOs (platinums and up) to share the tool profits with.
There is a definite conflict of interest with profiting uplines advising you to buy tools. The question if whether you see it or not?
The conflict of interest is obvious. I dont think uplines would not want new IBOs. These new ones are needed to prove to new recruits that people just like them are continually rising up the ladder. I cant understand why more people dont see the tools theft aspect of it
ReplyDeleteJoecool, important thing is we can make apologists understand or admit publicly regarding the business as a whole. I have not seen these apologists admit that FMCG cannot be luxurious. System has been in place for years together to conceal so many things and has designed success for uplines who could sell system tools, and if Amway explicitly stays away it is impossible for these systems to succeed. Amway apologists/cults/begging IBOs say that you need to read books to understand a business but when it is month on month for years together that's always fishy. But by then an IBO would have become a cult so unless he/she has guts to quit and see to make amends.
ReplyDeleteOne insidious thing about the leaders is how they "talk about tools profits", but has anyone seen a written comp plan for how you qualify and for how much or are the tools income still distributed with a wink and a handshake?
DeleteI know realise what you say, I did handshake my LOS diamond up line. I was made to think that, it was an achievement becuase, he is not available to lower pin levels like I was in. That diamond was a god for many, shouting and screaming like tribal forest meetings! He should be so happy to see so many people buying his speeches and books (through his system connection)! Every reason to hate the mass deception.
DeleteMeanwhile Joecool, I have a trivia task - go to 'YouTube' and hit 'amway scam, scandal' whatever let me know what you get in the content of the videos. Amway and systems joint venture has started with a new thing. You might be aware of what I am talking, but I was really surprised the way cults started boasting in 'YouTube'
Ithink the sad thing about amway is that people are ripped off on the tools thing causing relatively big lossses for average people who in anycase get into on a hope that what they hear is true and then get pulled along until they cant afford to stay any longer; Nevertheless it seems to me that there are huge numbers of people out there willing to be recruited and probably able to earn some money if they were coached using correct business principles, sell products, recruit but dont spend money that you have not earned from the business , and tell this to their group; If we look at the entire MLM industry, Amway, Avon Oriflame, Monavie and many others there must be over 100 billion dollars sales annually with probably 30 million distributors involved and I guess half a million signing up every year. So I think the opportunity is there for those with the hard and selfish mind set needed to grit it out; Pity is that greeed of many leads to manipulating innocent people to spend money on tools and eventually lose the little bit of money they had or even worst get into debt
ReplyDelete--the whole point of this blog
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