One of the lame things during my time in Amway was what upline called “team” meetings. I mean we are all individual businesses so it seems weird to be referred to as a team, based on my own experience, many IBOs seemed to be their only customer, simply buying 100 PV and having no due line but hanging in there hoping to finally strike it big down the road. While these IBOs have no chance of going diamond or even platinum, they are valuable to the diamond because of the income from tools and functions.
Our team meetings often took place at midnight on evenings when we had to work the next day. Our upline told us that our willingness to do what most won’t do will result in rewards that most won’t see. In the end, nothing useful was ever learned in these meetings and it just made it difficult to work the next day. Imagine that, our jobs that supported ourselves and the Amway business were supposed to be of secondary importance.
Most of the discussion at team meetings were just platitudes about success that our upline wanted to drill into our brains. It was primarily to never quit and to invest more of our money into tools because we were told that standing orders, functions and books were vital to our success. After a while I thought it was odd because so many people were absolutely dedicated to the system but had not made a dime in profit or sponsored a single down line.
There’s a saying that a good tree gives good fruit and a bad tree gives bad fruit. The diamonds used to say this but most people simply had no fruit from their efforts. This is because most people just don’t realize that the Amway system is severely flawed and only exists to provide income to the diamonds and higher ups. There is no documented and unbiased evidence to suggest that the system works.
Sure, occasionally someone can overcome power ball lottery types of odds to go diamond but they are often unable to remain qualified and often disappear from relevance. But these Amway rising stars are the poster children for why the system works. That’s despite the fact that tens of millions or more have failed over the years despite assurances from upline that everyone can be successful.
For information seekers and any IBOs who see this, look at facts and analyze your income and expenditures. Look at your actual prospects of improvement. If your upline tells you that more tools and functions are the answer, get in wringing that these expenditures are refundable in cash if business doesn’t improve, of course you’ll never get it.
But good luck if you read this and still decided to try. 😃
The "Team Meetings" in Amway are designed to create a cultish atmosphere of "we chosen few." Nothing is actually taught at these meetings that will help an IBO develop a down-line, or sell Amway products to retail customers.
ReplyDeleteHolding the meetings on the night before people have to get up and go to work serves a double purpose: it instills absolute and blind obedience into the IBOs, and it pushes the idea that there is NOTHING AT ALL MORE IMPORTANT THAN AMWAY -- not your job, not your family, not your relatives and friends, not your comfort, and not even your financial well-being. Just obey -- because AMWAY IS YOUR NEW RELIGION!!!
Joe, for years you and the other anti-Amway blogs have been repeating that Amway doesn't work, that it is designed for failure, and that only an infinitesimal number of persons ever reach the Diamond level. Frankly, every human being with a functioning brain knows that you are correct. So why does this MLM nightmare continue to draw in people?
The only possible answer is that the pull is psychological and religious. Nothing else. Persons who become hooked by Amway have simply lost the rational function of their brain, and are working solely on a deeply emotional limbic-system level that is immune to logic or argument.