Friday, April 12, 2013

Amway Tools Don't Work?

Based on my experience in Amway, my blogging experience, and observation of other people who give financial advice such as real estate gurus who teach you to buy property with no money down, or others such as Robert Kiyosaki for that matter, all show testimonials of sucessful people. Obviously they do not show you the vast majority of people who try their systems and fail. They will show you "best case scenarios" of people who may have made some money with their "systems". What is not shown is how sustainable that income is, and whether these folks actually made money as a direct result of the system or whether they were simply lucky and a statistical anomaly. What they don't show is the vast majority of rank and file prospects, who may have put in just as much or more effort than the "successful" ones, only to end up with a loss.

It is my informed opinion that whether it is Amway, WWDB, BWW, N21, real estate or the cashflow business, the vast majority of people who try these systems do not make any kind of significant income. Sure, some do, and those are shown as the possibilities. But if you watch infomercials, you will see in small print on the bottom of the screen, "unique experience", your results may vary. I believe that a similar message used to be at the end of Amway diamond recordings as well. Part of the issue I see is these systems and tools really do not work and these gurus and leaders get rich off the backs of those they promote to. Have any of these folks been held accountable for the results of their followers? Surely such a tiny success rate cannot be completely the failure of motivated and eager students to spend time and money to learn?

These systems in general do not work for various reasons. Many people simply do not have the acumen to work the system. Or the system has too many variables for the system to work, or the system calls for things beyond your control. For example, success in Amway generally requires you to sponsor others, something that is beyond the control of most people. Add in the lazy and people who are hopng for a quick score and it is understandable that most will fail. But these systems are often set up where the majority simply cannot all succeed. Nowhere is that more true than the Amway business where the pyramidal compensation plan nearly guarantees failure for the lower level IBOs. In the common 6-4-2 plan, there are a total of 79 IBOs and only 1 is a platinum. And that has the faulty assumption that all 79 IBOs in the group did enough work and volume to earn a bonus. The reality will always be much worse than the plan illustrates.

So what can someone do? Well, it may no be as sexy or convenient, but a part time job and investing and saving might be something to think about. Even a part time business where you focus on selling products for a profit might work. It just seems prudent to avoid these "systems" as the primary beneficiary of these "systems" are the ones who directly profit from them. Try asking some of these leaders how much they make from the system versus their income from Amway or something similar. I bet you won't get a straight answer!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

LTD (Leadership Team Development) headed by Larry Winters is another group to be included in this blog entry. They recruit top Amway "earners" to be speakers for the required meetings and create tools that are pushed to the Amway IBOs.