One of the things IBOs "think" they possess is a "business mentality", but in reality they are far from it. It is not necessarily the fault of the IBOs. Many are sponsored into Amway by trusted friends or family lacking business experience. They will "submit" to upline as they are advised and will try to learn about the Amway business. The problem is that many upline leaders teach self serving business practices such as hard core dedication to their tools system, from which they often handsomely profit. Sadly, these leaders will try to teach their downline faulty, but self serving advice. Let's examine some of the questionable practices.
"Buy from yourself". If you have a business owner mentality, you only buy from yourself if it's beneficial to your business. Many IBOs talk about ridiculous things like a McDonald's owner would never eat at Burger King. That's totally false. Just because I own a McDonald's doesn't mean I am eating Big Macs the rest of my life. You cannot spend yourself to prosperity. If I sold pens for $1.00 and my cost was .50, and my competitor had a special on the same pens at 3 for $1.00, I'm buying them from my competition. It only makes sense when you do the math. Also, buying from yourself makes you a customer, not a business owner.
"Ignore facts if you have a dream". This is probably the biggest heap of bull crap taught by some upline. I have seen this spouted in particular by IBOs downline from WWDB and BWW leaders. A business owner studies the facts, not ignores them. Any REAL business owner wants to know how much he is bringing in and how much is going out. That's how you detect the heartbeat of your business. A site visitor named Gina on this site, posted a profit/loss statement from her real business. Naturally, IBOs were at a loss to discuss it because it was foreign material to them. If you join this business where there is low overhead and expenses, you should be profiting every month, not taking losses because of the training materials that your upline sells.
"Submit to upline" Another load of hogwash. Why should someone submit to upline simply because they "sponsored me" or whatever? A real business owner would think independently and make business decisions based on facts and numbers, not on the advice of someone upline who hasn't taken the time to assess each IBO on a personal level to be able to give advice on an IBO's "Indepdendent Business", or worse, advice on their personal lives".
"Dedication to the system". Silly advice as well. What dedication does the system have for an IBO? If an IBO succeeds (which is very rare), the system takes credit, but for the more than 99% of people who never make a significant income, it is their own fault if they don't make it. Amway apologists will defend this by saying that many may not have signed up wanting a significant income. While that may be partially true, tell me where people show "plans" designed for the guy who wants an extra $100 a month? The plans shown are always (AFAIK) to go platinum or diamond.
IBOs and information seekers, does any of this sound familiar? Is this a part of your experience? If so, I encourage you to ask questions here and get more information before proceeding with any more "business" activity.
3 comments:
So true on all counts. Once Amway hooks a victim, they begin work on pushing aside "facts" and math and instead focusing on "dreams" and fantasies.
All the money they siphon from an IBO's pockets they call "investing", but investing means building something up that has a hope for return. When someone buys the "tools", they aren't investing in anything. They are merely drinking more of the Kool-Aid that stops them from thinking realistically. It doesn't help with their "business", it only keeps them with blinders to keep dreaming of riches that won't come from the scam. They tell them that buying from their own store is "investing", but again, it does nothing to build for the future and only loses more money given they are 1.) buying more products than they would have if they weren't in Amway just to try to make PV, and 2.) they are paying more than they would have if they had bought the same products from a real store. And lastly, they are not "investing" when they buy more and more products each month for their own "store", because if they don't have outside customers to BUY those products, they will never bring a return.
The best investment an IBO can make in their future is by getting OUT of Amway.
I agree on everything you say. The only thing that I would say (and the only good thing I learned from my time as an IBO) is that it is ok to have "dreams". I would however, change that word to "goals". I own a traditional business now and it is doing pretty good. One thing that my wife and I did is come up with goals and dreams that we have for when we reach a certain point in our business. For instance we want to travel and take our kids to see places like Europe, Hawaii among others. While you can for sure do that while working in a job, we have goals that we have set with our business. Something to work towards. But Amway takes it way too far. But I totally agree with everything in the post and with what was stated above.
I agree too. Dreams and goals are vital to someone's life. What you don't need are the false hopes and dreams that the Amway leaders promise.
Post a Comment