Are IBOs Doomed From The Onset?

 So many people join Amway (including myself at one time) with high hopes and dreams.  It’s no wonder considering how the recruitment meetings go.  Prospects are filled with delusions of untold wealth and retiring at the age of 29.  They are shown displays of wealth from the diamonds who allegedly live a jet set lifestyle with money just rolling in.  Of course, diamonds expect you to accept their word for it that they live the lifestyles of the rich and famous but if you ask for verification, you might hear excuses or that it's none of your business.  But they expect you to invest your hard earned money (plus time and effort) without any verification of expected results.  That should send you running in the opposite direction in my opinion.  

I believe a look at reality would be bad for recruiting new people into Amway, so they are shown glimpses of wealth that the diamonds allegedly have obtained from the Amway businesses.  But when you study Amway’s own disclosures, you’ll see that diamonds might make a decent income of perhaps 100 to 200k annually but that is gross income.  Taxes, medical coverage and business expenses likely eat up a lot if a diamond’s income, leaving them in debt like most Americans or perhaps a middle-class lifestyle at best.  You could argue that a middle-class lifestyle with no job is good, but you also have no security that the income will continue uninterrupted, as diamonds like to suggest.

Again, do the math yourself and it’s hard to reach any other conclusion.  Imagine a family of four with a gross income of $200k.  After taxes, medical coverage, and business expenses, it's easy to see that they aren’t buying mansions with cash payments.  They likely aren’t even buying a nice car in cash.  Sure, some tenured long time double diamonds might have a nice lifestyle, but these are the exceptions and not the rule.

If not, why is my former diamond (Harimoto) still only a diamond more than 20+ years since I left Amway?  I even heard that he fell back to emerald for a while which raises sustainability questions.  Some years back, crown (WWDB) Ron Puryear asked diamonds to prove they could go diamond by doubling their business into double diamonds and beyond.  Not a single one of them accomplished it and it wasn't spoken of again.  Ron Puryear has since passed away, working Amway all the while.  What happened to walking away to enjoy residual income?

The truth is that most IBOS are doomed from the start.  They peddle average products at premium prices.  They also have negative cash flow because of the cost of the inefficient training system.  Just because a few new people manage to achieve higher levels doesn’t change the fact that more than 99% of all IBOS make nothing or lose money, because they are doomed from the start.