Monday, October 4, 2021

Walking Away?

 One of the things that many IBOs mistakenly believe is that they will build their Amway business and then they will have the ability to "walk away" from the business while the income continues to flow in. I believe if there was such an incredible benefit such as lifelong residual income that could be achieved from Amway, I'm fairly certain that Amway would advertise this as a benefit of being an IBO. But Amway does not. It is very likely that your LOS such as WWDB or one of the others will promote this benefit while telling you that your best chance to achieve it is by subscribing to their "system".

One thing that goes unnoticed all too often is that there seems to be nobody who is actually retired and living off the efforts of having built a big Amway business once upon a time. Seems that even the crown ambassadors still have busy lifestyles running from function to function and participating in other business related activities. While many of these leaders may claim they love their downlines or some other bunk, it is my belief that these leaders keep working their Amway businesses for one reason only. That is they need to keep working in order to keep the income flowing in.

The diamond lifestyle that is often portrayed may seem like a great goal or dream to achieve, but the fact of the matter is that a "diamond lifestyle" cannot be sustained on diamond income. The average diamond, according to Amway, earns about $150,000 a year. While that may seem like a great amount of income, it's not nearly enough to sustain the kind of lifestyle portrayed by diamonds. Even if that income is supplemented by income from the sale of tools, you can't fly your family around the country first class to do all kinds of functions and still end up with much leftover to own fancy homes and cars.

If I deposited $1000 in the bank and never touch the money, the bank would pay me a certain amount of interest each year, guaranteed. That is residual income. In Amway, you can basically earn income in two ways. You can sell products for a profit, but there are problems with this. First off, Amway products in general are more expensive than local retailers. It is why you hear so many justifications about quality and concentration, because you are hard pressed to argue cost. Secondly, you are severely restricted from advertising, thus selling can be difficult. The other way to generate more income is to build a downline in hopes that the downline will help you to leverage your volume. But then your downline will have the same problem that you had in moving products. That being said, even if you achieve some level such as emerald or diamond, your business will immediately begin to fall apart once you stop working because attrition will take its toll. It is why there are hoards of "former" platinums. If platinums are not sustainable, then neither is any other level.

There are many many instances of diamonds quitting, resigning, or falling out of qualification. People come and go in this business every day. Do you really think you can bank on retirement and residual income under these circumstances? If you believe that, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never felt so much freedom as I did the day I walked away. I was in URA and I left my hotel room early in the morning on the Sunday morning of Winter Conference after spending the entire weekend in my room and not coming out except for breakfast. Wait, I did come out for the unnecessary Day Owl where we break out into our teams and waste another three hours of our lives. But that was it.

I still remember being terrified of not wanting to run into anyone that I knew when I was in the hotel restaurant since IBOs weren't allowed to have anything outside Amway bars and snacks and XS and water (except for the random times we ordered pizza).

Now, I'm self-made and financially well off and will be retired from my Corporate job in the next six months. And I didn't need Amway or an MLM to do it. Amazing how I did that in three in a half to four years after being in URA, easily losing five figures, and wasting hundreds of hours of my life over the same amount of time.

My quality of life has increased an infinite amount and I hope that anyone in any Amway AMO who reads this will reconsider their current situation and ask themselves if they are better off financially.

If somehow they are convincing themselves that they are doing better overall, then I have a heck of a lot of hopium to sell them.

Joecool said...

Congratulations on your success. Amway people think Amway is the only way someone can succeed and nothing is further from the truth. Thanks for sharing your story.