Monday, April 22, 2013

"Walking Away" From Amway?

One of the things that many IBOs mistakenly believe is that they will build their Amway business (once) and then they will have the ability to "walk away" from the business while the income continues to flow in. I believe if there was such an incredible benefit such as lifelong residual income that could be achieved from Amway, I'm fairly certain that Amway would advertise this as a benefit of being an IBO. But Amway does not. It is very likely that your LOS such as WWDB or one of the others will promote this benefit while telling you that your bext chance to achieve it is by subscribing to their "system".

One thing that goes unnnoticed all too often is that there seems to be nobody who is actually retired and living off the efforts of having built a big Amway business once upon a time. Seems that even the crown ambassadors still have busy lifestyles running from function to function and participating in other business related activities. While many of these leaders may claim they love their downlines or some other bunk, it is my belief that these leaders keep working their Amway businesses for one reason only. That is they need to keep working in order to keep the income flowing in.

The diamond lifestyle that is often portrayed may seem like a great goal or dream to achieve, but the fact of the matter is that a "diamond lifestyle" cannot be sustained on diamond income. The average diamond, according to Amway, earns about $150,000 a year. While that may seem like a great amount of income, it's not nearly enough to sustain the kind of lifestyle portrayed by diamonds. Even if that income is supplemented by income from the sale of tools, you can't fly your family around the country first class to do all kinds of functions and still end up with much leftover to own fancy homes and cars.

If I deposited $1000 in the bank and never touch the money, the bank would pay me a certain amount of interest each year, guaranteed. That is residual income. In Amway, you can basically earn income in two ways. You can sell products for a profit, but there are problems with this. First off, Amway products in general are more expensive than local retailers. It is why you hear so many justifications about quality and concentration, because you are hard pressed to argue cost. Secondly, you are severely restricted from advertising, thus selling can be difficult. The other way to generate more income is to build a downline in hopes that the downline will help you to leverage your volume. But then your downline will have the same problem that you had in moving products. That being said, even if you achieve some level such as emerald or diamond, your business will immediately begin to fall apart once you stop working because attrition will take its toll. It is why there are hoards of "former" platinums. If platinums are not sustainable, then neither is any other level.

There are many many instances of diamonds quitting, resigning, or falling out of qualification. People come and go in this business every day. Do you really think you can bank on retirement and residual income under these circumstances? If you believe that, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just came back from Spring Leadership in Washington D.C this past weekend. I'm not an IBO I'm just checking out the business to support a friend of mine who's been doing it for 13 years and yeah, you guessed it - hasn't made it to the first level yet. While some of the seminars are great because they are crossover suggestions that you can apply to ANY business or to your life. But what I saw - was sitting through HOURS of these 'LOVING' couples (aka Harlequin geezus) parade across the stage to emotionally tell the lemmings in the audience that they too can make to riches! What this organization hides is that it's chauvinistic, Christian, right-wing. I didn't notice ANYYYYYY "singles" in the hierarchy nor people of color. After attending this conference, I don't believe this program is applicable to minorities (including women) at all! What a crock of nonsense. But my friend is so entrenched in this poppy-cock, he'll never walk away. He doesn't realize that HIS buying the products, HIS paying the weekly fee to attend the meetings and HIS money to attend the conferences is what's making his upline rich. PFFT!!!

Anonymous said...

Thats correct. You are trapped in this business for life. Its 7 days a week for years if you wish to be diamond. And there are no new diamonds now for years. Then its certain some of your legs wont requalify and you fall back. Thats why even the older diamonds are no longer qualified. So you have to redo it all again. You can never retire from it as it will all crumble.

ScamFighter said...

Thank you for this blog, and for AnnaBanana's blog as well for keeping me SANE. I'm glad I'm not alone in this. Im currently dating a newbie IBO. We were together before he joined this. It hasn't even been a year since he signed up wow has he changed. All this BS he's fed, it's sickening to watch him sell his soul. I don't know what to do. I don't know how much more I can take. But I don't want to let them win.

Anonymous said...

Actually, most IBO's do have 'residual income', and it averages about a NEGATIVE $55/month... That's if they do absolutely nothing, and buy no products (but let the auto debit--for WWDB fees-- keep sucking their bank account

Joecool said...

Thank you, glad my experience has been a help to you!

Anonymous said...

ScamFighter - i can totally relate to how you feel. Except that my boyfriend of 4 years chose to dump me after 1 year in amway because i was being 'negative'. I hope you'll face an alternative outcome...

Joecool said...

Part of the reason why I quit was because my upline wanted me to dump my finacee' because they felt I could build the business faster without her. She wasn't even negative about Amway.

Anonymous said...

Joe Cool - were you together before amway?

Anonymous said...

My parents and entire extended family used to be in Amway. I used to get dragged to the conventions where I had to watch women dressed up like southern belles talk about how all women need to support their men and how women should never wear elastic waisted pants because it makes you think you are skinnier than you really are. The chauvinism was disgusting and rampant. What was also shocking was the hate directed at those who chose to not join the cult because the idea of drawing circles in the living rooms of strangers every night for the rest of their lives sounded less than appealing. The brainwashing, the materialism, the mysogyny was everywhere. And yes, there is no place in this organisation for singles, especially single women. Often at these events there is a portion of the day when the men and women are separated. The men get business advice and the women are told things like they should never leave the house unless they are in full make-up as they have an image to portray - they must always appear to be both glamourous and successul. During one of these times, my single aunt asked if she could join the men and attend the business session, she was told no, she belonged with the women. It is a toxic organization that prays on people's desire to get rich, all the while setting women's equality back by about a 100 years. I do not miss those days at all!

Joecool said...

You're right. The WWDB leaders taught how the woman was supposed to be at home while the man showed the plan and did the work. They tried to portray a Leave it to Beaver family where the mom stayed home with the kids and the dad did the work and everyone was happy. It was cult-like.

Joecool said...

We met during my rise in Amway.