One of the reasons I left Amway was because my sponsor started to get weird where he basically told me I needed to submit and to listen to counsel. I thought it weird that the qualification for someone to counsel me was to Jon Amway before me and really no other reason.
I recall attending a function where they say you need to be teachable or coachable but in reality what they want us for you to give up control of your life. They actually advised IBOs to check upline for things like getting married, having kids, buying a car or buying a house. It was allegedly because they wanted to help you in important life decisions but the reality is a stark difference.
The reason upline is so concerned about your important life decisions is not because they actually care about you and your Amway business. What they want is to make sure that you don’t spend your discretionary monies on non Amway things. Put off that new car, buy more tools and functions. Put off having kids or or buying a house and buy more tools and functions.
The main theme will always be to save your discretionary money for tools and functions. In the end I never saw anyone put off any major purchase and got rewarded because of the money rolling in from Amway. Upline advice always steers the rank and file into spending more and more on tools and functions.
I even sat in a function where the diamond taught the audience how long you could put off paying your mortgage before foreclosure would take place. They even taught how long you could put off paying your bills before the water or electric would get cut off because they literally want the shirt off your back.
But upline wanting control of my life to the point where it got weird, it finally led me to quit my 4000 PV business. I told all my downline what was going on and they all quit with me except 1or 2 very indoctrinated folks who believed the upline over me.
In closing, an interesting but true story. I bought my home in the year 2001. I bought my house in Hawaii for $305,000. The real estate agent who served me also knew my sponsor. She advised my sponsor to buy a home as well. My former sponsor said he won’t buy a home unless he can pay cash. Well, my $305,000 home is now worth a million dollars and my former sponsor is still renting trying to save a million dollars to buy a home. This is the kind of damage that upline can cause to their faithful down line. Be careful with upline advice.
Amway up-line doesn't even really care whether their down-line IBOs make money in the business. All they care is that these IBOs stay in, and continue to pay all sorts of fees for functions and tools.
ReplyDeleteUp-line isn't stupid. They know damn well that most IBOs are going to drop out of Amway within six months to a year. They'll have to be replaced by new suckers. So the main push is to get IBOs to buy lots and lots of useless tools during the time that they are still in the business.
One thing is true -- the control exercised by Amway up-line on low-level IBOs grows stronger and more intrusive the longer an IBO stays in the business. Up-line generally handles new IBOs with kid gloves for the first few months, in order to keep their good will and enthusiasm up. Those few IBOs who do stay on after a year are now considered "cash cows," and they must be kept in Amway at all costs. So the control becomes more dominating, more fear-inducing, and more tyrannical. All kinds of vicious psychological pressures are brought to bear on these IBOs -- guilt, shame, ridicule, arbitrary nastiness, and manipulation. That's the only way you can keep a slave afraid of you, and in perpetual slavery.
When an Amway Platinum speaks of his "loyal down-line," he means his slaves.
The great psychologist C.G. Jung analyzed patients for more than fifty years. He said that the deepest and most dangerous evil in a human being was the desire to have dominance and control over others.
ReplyDeleteAn Amway big pin wants to make money, certainly. But an even deeper and sicker need is to lord it over helpless and struggling IBOs, make their lives difficult, and rejoice in their abject obedience.