One of the things I heard as an Amway IBO, and I believe still taught today is that a job is a disaster, or "just over broke". Uplines apparently use this tactic as a means to get prospects and IBOs to buy into the concept that a job limits your earning potential and that a business mentality doesn't look at an hourly wage. While it may be true that many business owners do not earn a wage, you can bet that they are aware of how much time they put into their business against how much they take in. A true business owner, if he determines that he isn't earning enough for his return on his investment of time and money, will often make adjustments to what is done to become more efficient, or fold up the business and start another one, or may even get a job. Amway IBOs conversely, are told to spend more on training and functions when they are succeeding, which is a powerfully bad business practice.
It appears to me, that the context in which IBOs are told not to look at their business as a job is because many/most IBOs don't earn a net profit, and the few that do, probably earn less than a minimum wage equivalent when factoring in the hours spent building the business and costs associated with doing so. But hey, it's ok because you think like a "business owner", right? This appears to be just another distraction given to IBOs so they overlook monthly losses, just as how IBOs think the business is about being a nicer person, or that running the business actually makes you a better spouse or parent, when in fact, the opposite may be true.
In this day and age, there is nothing wrong with having a job. There is nothing wrong with earning an honest living trading hours for dollars. Many people live comfortable lives and have even amassed wealth with a job. The problem for many, as I see it is that they do not currently earn enough to fulfill the dreams that they see displayed on the stage at a function. For example, a job that pays $10 an hour will gross you about $1600 or $1700 a month. Certainly not enough to retire at the age of 30. But what if you earned $1000 an hour. That would bring you $160,000 to $170,000 a month. Would that make a job enticing? Of course! So the problem is not that you trade hours for dollars, the important factor is how much you earn per hour. The same goes for a business.
Real business owners look at the bottom line. For example, if you earned $6,000 a month in a business, but you spent 80 hours a week to earn that, then your hourly pay is less than $20 an hour. But if you spent 10 hours a week to earn that, you are now getting about $150 an hour equivalent. Many Amway promoters will tell you that the business will take up 10 to 15 hours per week, but the average IBO, according to Amway, earns just about $115 a month (and most earn less than that), which averages out to less than $3.00 per hour on average. This is why your upline might be saying don't look at an hourly wage as a way to rate your business, because the income is embarrassing.
IBOs and information seekers, do the math. Ask tough questions and demand answers. Don't be discouraged if you have a job. Most IBOs have jobs, Don't worry about trading hours for dollars. It is very likely that trading hours for dollars is a more efficient way of earning money than what you are being presented with.
This is such a basic concept that it is what made it clear to me that the Ambots spruiking their delusion to me were doing exactly that.
ReplyDeleteSo many facets of this made it clear they were clueless in terms of actual business fundamentals, that it convinced me first up it was a way of milking money from the gullible led by the stupid or corrupt.
No understanding of return on capital, no understanding of what capital is (including their own), no understanding of profit and loss, no real market, no retainer, the paltry commissions, and the list no goes. Taught by upline to actively discourage talking about these things or even asking questions about them.
Fundamentally it is a con, to convince people to dream big while they are enthralled and then milked by the system they promote by their "friends".
If someone tries to enlist you in Amway, one of either two things are true:
1) That someone is not your friend, they just want your money for nothing really;
2) They are seriously deluded, in a cult and need external business and mental help that does not involve "upline" or other conflicted with self-interest parties.
It is a system of cults that are enlisting people into a membership/rebate scheme to buy crap they don't really want or need and the authorities can only be corrupt themselves to allow it to have gone on or to continue to go on.
Walk away. You have been warned.
The above commentator has made a very important point: In Amway, you are actively discouraged from talking about the business or even discussing it in an offhand manner!
ReplyDeleteTell me: What other business in the entire world is terrified of discussing itself, or throwing around ideas about how it is run, or how it might be improved? Even the organized crime rackets have meetings to discuss business and profit margins.
Amway is terrified of THOUGHT and REASON. Thought and reason are threats to the entire Amway operation of pumped-up enthusiasm and brainless hype.
Every job involves "trading hours for dollars" in some way, shape, or form. That's the nature of work, whether for other people or for yourself.
ReplyDeleteActually, being in Amway involves an incredibly huge amount of time and energy. You're trading seven-days-a-week labor for a lousy $10 monthly PV.
In fact, Amway's official printed literature admits that 99% of Amway IBOs don't make a dime.
Amway (and its various corrupt LOS subsystems) is nothing but a con for dim-witted small-town rubes.
The Amway attitude that a job is "Just Over Broke" is actually a revelation about the type and class of person that Amway recruiters aim at.
ReplyDeleteAs Joe Cool says, many jobs are quite lucrative, and provide salaries that certainly don't leave people "just over broke." But Amway aims at the low-level salaried employee: the burger-flipper, the gas station attendant, the hired help at a big store, the garage mechanic, the teenager fresh out of high school. For these people, yes -- their salaries leave them "just over broke."
Amway may recruit the occasional doctor or other professional. But that is the exception.
I have a friend who is an executive who earns close to 7 figures. I bet he's satisfied with his hourly wage and he's nowhere close to "just over broke". But yeah, to young and naive prospects who earn minimu wage or entry level salaries, the thought of working your way up the ladder and working for 30 years sounds lilke a lot of time and effort so Amway has some appeal. It pisses me off when I hear of young people who are told they don't need college if they join Amway because I suspect some lives have been severely ruined or damaged by bad advice by these Amway charlatans.
ReplyDeleteAnd what makes it worse is nobody gets held accountable. I wish some would would record and speech where people are told to skip college to join Amway or to skip your mortgage or rent payments to attend functions and then file a class action against these diamonds for financial fraud.
LOL, not exactly going to put "Amway CDs" on the resume.
ReplyDeleteIt does take a real kind of gullible and delusional to get sucked into it.
Oh well, maybe it is kind of a Darwinism in action thing.
There is a sucker born every minute.
Amway is designed for suckers.