One of the things I take issue with is how Amway uplines will create an us versus them mentality in the business. Thus, friends and family who care about you suddenly become labeled as "negative" and association with them should be limited. In some cases, people are discouraged from excellence in their jobs or professions because it takes the focus off of their Amway business. What I was told was to do my job, but my radar should always be on for new prospects. Some cross line IBOs turned down promotions at work because they did not want to have to work longer hours or take the focus off of their Amway businesses. Some people took "lesser" jobs in order to have more time to build Amway, thus lowering their monthly income to chase the end of a rainbow.
In some cases, the speaker at open meetings or functions will put down people's jobs. A commonly used acronym was J-O-B = "Just Over Broke". Some leaders also would say that my job was a pyramid because you will never earn more than the boss. A completely ridiculous comparison because someone's job has no relationship with how people view the Amway business (i.e. an Amway pyramid) and in a job, every employee gets paid and has a net gain at the end of the month. Not true in Amway. If IBOs only use KATE for example, an IBO at 100 PV or less will already be at a loss, and that is not considering any other Amway related expenses that IBO may have. And while a job may have a corporate hierarchy, or chain of command, the business owner and CEO or manager earns their salary from customers, not directly from the pockets of their employees. Therein lies a very important distinction that the upline leaders do not talk about.Some uplines will laugh about people's jobs, stating that they wake up at the "crack of noon". What these same uplines may not tell you is that they wake up at noon because they are up at 3:00 in the morning doing Nite owls for their groups and looking for recruits. These same uplines possibly can't do much with their downlines during the weekdays since their downlines mostly tend to have 9-5 jobs. So a diamond's job is basically working the night shift and weekends.
If you are of the opinion that nobody should criticize the Amway opportunity or IBO behavior, maybe uplines and IBOs should not criticize family and friends who disagree with or are not interested in the opportunity, and maybe the same uplines and IBOs should not criticize people who choose to work jobs. Don't most IBOs rely on their jobs as their Amway income is not sufficient to even pay for their Amway business related expenses?
4 comments:
Turning down a promotion and pay raise at your job so that you can "concentrate on Amway" has to be the stupidest move anybody could make.
A promotion means that you are doing good work and your employer likes you. A pay raise means immediate extra income.
And you're going to give those things up in order to recruit assholes at a shopping mall, or to sell more soap suds to your in-laws?
I wonder if people in Amway ever stop to think about what an absurdity they are trapped in.
Joe, you have touched upon a very important point, which Amway defenders have never realized, or which they prefer to ignore. Yes, of course the president of a traditional company makes more than his employees. But he's making that money from REAL CUSTOMERS who are buying his goods or services. He's not making it off the backs of his employees! And those employees in his company are also making money from real customers, because their salaries come from the profits that the company is making.
In Amway it is completely ass-backwards, as we say in New York. There is no significant money being made from the retail sale of Amway products to the general population. All real money is being made from the fees and dues and required PV purchases of registered IBOs. All that money heads up-line, through the chain that goes up to Ada, Michigan. Everyone in Amway would go broke if they depended on product sales to non-Amway purchasers. The products that Amway "sells" are merely a cover that prevents the whole racket from being seen for what it is -- a typical pyramid scheme.
The only thing that keeps IBOs in this dumb racket is the promise that "they too can become rich" by eventually developing a down-line of suckers who will sign up in the scheme. As for selling Amway products at retail to the general population, everyone in Amway's upper ranks will laugh in your face if you bring that silly idea up.
Amway is a direct contradiction of everything that a real business stands for. Its aim is not to grow by means of sales, but to grow by means of increasing its sales force of IBOs.
This is very much like judging the value of an army not by how many battles it wins, but by how many raw recruits it can draft into its ranks.
Thanks Joe. Pyramid is a very sensitive word in Amway, and discussing strategies of how to defend against this is a hot topic in Amway circles, from "the pyramids are in Egypt", to "would I, your friend, be involved in a pyramid?" to "your job is a pyramid".
Yes it is true that in any hierarchical structure, those without any one under them will be the majority. Whether it is a corporation or Amway. That is a mathematical truth. Draw any structure with branching nodes (as circles) and end nodes (squares). The squares will always outnumber the circles.
So given that..
..the question is whether it is possible for those without anyone under them (represented as squares) to get what they signed up for. If not, the hierarchy is a pyramid in the way we use it to describe an unsustainable opportunity. If those at the bottom can get what they signed up for, it is not a pyramid. In Amway, those at the bottom can sign up others under them, but it just passes the problem on, creating even more squares. Wherever it stops (and it will have to, there are only so many people on Earth), the squares will be the vast majority. Always. So the question is whether it's worth it for the squares.
The issue of those who aren't bosses being the majority applies in corporations to, but it is not a problem. I worked for years in a job with no one reporting to me, and I got what I signed up for, and then some. The irony is that I probably learned more about business, than an Amway distributor would. (I eventually started my own business in the same line when I resigned). I was a "square" and boy was it still worth it. We were all happy. We had low staff turnover for years, and we would have nice year end bonusses because the company did well. It was worth it for everyone, including the majority of us with no one under them, like me.
In an Amway group if you sign up to make money, unlike a corporate hierarchy, you absolutely do need people under you. Since the majority can't have that, it is a pyramid.
Amway gets away with that because in theory, officially, you can also make money supplying outsiders with their monthly soap, energy drinks and detergent supplies, where you don't need someone under you. However if you crunch the numbers you'll be working very hard for very little. Besides you'll have to be a really good sales person to serve say 200 customers every month (which is not a fortune if they buy $300 on average, on your commission must come from that, and if every customer on average takes 1 hour to establish and support, you already exceed typical working hours, with no time allowed for admin, planning and training). If you are that good a sales person to keep that together (let alone build it), you can make a killing and get very rich selling just about everything else outside MLM. That's why if you start to talk about this, Amway enthusiasts invariably say "no, no.. you misunderstand me, for what I'm offering you, there is absolutely no sales skills required, only change the place you buy your stuff from, and get others to do the same". Amway itself does not say that, of course, because that would be admitting that in practice it is a pyramid, and admitting that the only way to make money is to recruit people under you. In other words, if you are a "square", you are screwed.
For a variety of reasons (like the fact that in theory you don't need people under you, and Amway itself never said that's the only way to make money, and owners building ties with government) authorities have not be able to stop it. But in practice it really is a pyramid.
(The squares circle analogy is kind to Amway, it assumes every distributor with even as few as two under them, can make money, which is probably not true).
Thanks for sharing your comments and real life experiences and my hope is that information seekers and prospects can find useful information that might help them make a balanced decision based on facts.
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