Monday, June 23, 2014

Your Bottom Line?

In my point of view. one of the most critical mistakes that many IBOs make is to ignore the bottom line when analyzing their Amway businesses. (Many IBOs don't even analyze their businesses) Most business building IBOs, sadly, are taught by their uplines to ignore losses, or to view losses as investments into their businesses, or that money is really not important. Some upline may teach that the business is more about making friends or being a nicer person. All of these things may be nice side benefits of reading personal development books, etc., but when running a business, the only goal should be to turn a profit.

For many IBOs, their businesses consist of listening to standing orders, attending functions and meetings, but not focused on selling products and earning a net profit. And for most IBOs, nobody can blame them as upline may give them bad advice and because the Amway business is person to person selling, it is so inefficient that many groups end up teaching IBOs to simply buy their own volume and get others to join the business. For groups who operate primarily in this manner, you are probably running an illegal business because new and existing IBOs can profit only by continuing to add more downline IBOs in the hope that they too, will buy their own volume and sponsor others.

When you look carefully at the business plan, whether it is 6-4-2, 9-4-2 or some other variation, the majority of these business building IBOs will have low volume and likely to earn only about $10 a month. But to earn that $10 a month, you are likely to have to spend $300 on products, and if you are on standing order, voicemail and functions, then you likely spend anywhere from $150 to $250 monthly to participate in the teaching system. Thus these IBO's bottom line is a net loss! It is only when you are able to sponsor many downline that your losses will get smaller and you will only profit when you have a sizable downline. That means your bottom line is a loss. And while Amway defender will argue that Walmart doesn't even give you $10 a month, you can certainly get more products from Walmart for $300 than you can get from Amway for the same price. Walmart will match any advertised price on a product that they and a competitor may carry. Also, Walmart's advertising reaching millions of people, which is much more effective than person to person. While Amway runs some ads now days, they do not directly drive customers to IBOs. The vast majority of IBO business is still to themselves and their downline, and not to non IBO customers.

I challenge IBOs to look objectively at their bottom lines. It is likely a new loss. If it is, ask your upline how long this is expected to last. Set hard goals and if you are doing what is advised by upline and results to not improve, you may have to ask yourself what willl change to make your business profitable. Basically, if you aren't adding active downlines and customers regularly, you aren't gooing anywhere and are likely to be running your business at a loss month after month after month. It won't take long before you realize that you have lost thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars.

As a former IBO with a 4000 PV business with eagle parameters, I was not making a net profit. I saw my bottom line and although doing and achieving what my upline advised, there was no money. I decided the effort, time and money invested wasn't worth it. Plus my upline started to interfere in my personal life. I saw my bottom line and wasn't satisfied, and I left Amway. I later discovered the lies my upline had fed me to keep me in the business and to keep me buying tools. It is why I started blogging. For now, my bottom line is to get the truth out about the tools scam run by upline. That is Joecool's bottom line.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wait, you can't count that $300 because that's money you were ALREADY spending at Target and Walmart. Riiiiight? Except when you first get started when you are taught Business Mentality 10 which is invest in your products so you can be an example to your downline.....

Yes folks, this is magical Amwayland where one thing can be 2 things - except when it's not. And no, I wouldn't expect you to understand because you're broke and have job mentality. Once you learn "how to think" (wowza) like a millionaire (like me) then you will understand. Just plug into the system and eventually you'll get there.

The more I write, the more absurd it all sounds. This is quite therapeutic though....

Joecool said...

I recall the line about changing your shopping habits can make you rich. It was a load of guano. Amway logic is like bizarro world where the opposite is true. LOL

Anonymous said...

I remember listening to CDs that stated savings from retail to wholesale and the 3% bonus as incentive to build the business. These audios stated that one would be ahead $800-1000 per year if that's all an IBO did and we showed the plan as such.

What they failed to mention is the "savings" was from AMWAY retail to AMWAY wholesale, not savings over Walmart and target as suggested. Wholesale Amway is 25-35% higher than retail anywhere.

Just stop buying those $77 vitamins (retail - months supply) at Harris Teeter and switch to Amway. Yeah, right cause I was doing something that stupid before.......

Joecool said...

Yep, I remember upline talking about "profit" but the profit was from my own pocket, paying full Amway retail to myself. I guess I was a tool back then,. LOL