In the Amway business, most active IBOs are advused to trust upline. To think of upline as a coach or a mentor. These upline mentors or coaches are supposed to have your best interest at heart and they will guide you to success if only you will be open to learning. Many uplines, including my former uplines used to coin the term "copy" or duplicate. If you can do that you will be successful. Even the simplest of people can copy. The upline may crack a joke about getting thru school by copying. Thus, many IBOs follow exactly what their upline advises them to do.
But then uplines turn the responsibility away from themselves. Many Amway defenders will also claim that downline should not simply follow the advice of upline. They may make a ridiculous claim that standing orders and functions contain advice that must be discerned. That information is like a buffet. You pick and choose what you need and discard the rest. If you are a new IBO or prospect, let me tell you that is a load of guano (crap) that is being heaped on you. Your upline is touted as having experience and wisdom in the Amway business, which is why you are paying good money for voicemail, books, cds, and functions. So why would their advice be something you pick and choose? How would a new IBO know what to pick and choose?
Imagine hiring a guide for a trek in the wilderness. The guide is supposed to be an experienced outdoorsman, perhaps an expert. So if he recommends that you eat certain plants or fruits, you trust that he is going to guide you right. Imagine eating something that made you sick to your stomach, only to have the guide tell you that he just points out plants and fruits and you have to discern which is good for you and which is not. You would fire the guide and tell everyone you know not to use that guide anymore.
But here we have these "systems" such as Network 21, WWDB or BWW that have been "guiding" IBOs for up to 20 years or more in some cases, and the number of diamonds are negligible. Sure there are many new platinums, but many tool consuming platinums have been found to be losing money or making very little money for their efforts. What's more, it would appear that Amway is losing ground in North America based on sales. One can reasonably guess that any new platinums that break are simply replacing the volume for a platinum that no longer exists or a platinum that no longer qualifies. My former upline diamond appears to have all new qualifying platinums from the time I was in the business and here's the kicker. My former diamond had 6 downline rubies. As far as I know, none of these rubies are qualified as platinum anymore, although I have heard that some of these are still active.
Uplines also program their downline to take responsibility for the failure. Thus you have IBOs who did everything that was asked of them, only to fail. Yet these IBOs often blame themselves for their failure. It is my opinion that former IBOs who did everything asked of them only to fail should file a formal complaint against their LOS with the better business bureau. Amway defenders like to think that a lack of formal complaints means that the system works when clearly, there is no unbiased substantial evidence to suggest that the system works. It looks like some succeed in spite of the system, not because of.
The catch in all this is uplines skirting responsibility for the outcomes of those they "mentor" and profit from. IBOs should ask if upline really cared about their success, why do you have to pay for any help that you receive from your upline diamond?
If the Scamway product or business was actually worth anything there wouldn't be any need for those phony "tools" the alpha shysters push onto their flocks of little sheep. All that motivational crap to the poor IBO isn't going to convince the rational public to invest in that junk.
ReplyDeleteThey lure you in with smoke and mirrors. They get you to lay that first money down and hope you will spend the rest of your life throwing good money after bad, including those stupid "tools". What can possibly be more ridiculous than paying good money to listen to the same old hot air b.s. from different b.s.ers that has no useful purpose in life whatsoever other than to separate you from your hard earned money?
Simply amazing that this scam still exists. They've been over fifty years now and still virtually nobody outside of Amway buys or uses their crap but they still manage to sell distributorships for a product line that never gets distributed outside of the distributorship itself.
Good insight. You're right. They take it slow on you until you start buying tools, then they raise the bar and say a serious business owner buys the tools he needs succeed. After you've invested for a while, it's pretty hard to just admit you screwed up and walk away. So people hang in there thinking success is right around the corner.......
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine has hundreds of tapes and CD's that say the same shit over and over. He tries to get me to sign up by dragging me to the stupid weekly meeting and then pops in these ridiculous tapes and CD's that harp on how the same dozen or so diamonds lived in a house with dirt floors story, yada, yada yada. It's sad, people think that shelling out 5 or 10 bucks for the same weekly meeting and listening to these ridiculous tired tales of rags to riches nonsense will make them rich. It's a total scam and my poor friend can't see it and continues to throw time and money into this hole. Break out another thousand. Smh.
ReplyDeleteThe cds are a double scam. They tape them while at functions (which IBOs pay for) and then sell them the same recording as a "standing order" subscription. The sad thing is that the cds and functions didn't do much to help anyone's business.
DeleteJC, it's funny you mention that because not only did my friend shell out about 40 bucks (about 4 months ago) for a few of us to sit through one of the weekly suckfests, he then recently bought a tool CD and guess what? Yep it was the meeting I cringed through months back crackling through his crummy speakers in his run down truck. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteAmway claimed something like eleven billion dollars in sales last year, down a bit from the year before. While I'm sure that's still enough to keep themselves up to their armpits in junk they don't know how to get rid of, I wonder if that number reflects the actual value of all their product they unloaded on others last year or if it is based on their ridiculous retail prices that nobody in the world but them would pay. Because if that's the case their real product volume is about half that number.
ReplyDeleteAmway didn't release figures for US/Canada sales but I suspect they were flat because I', sure Amway would toot their horns if sales were up.
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