Hi Amway Readers! Joecool will be vacationing in Las Vegas for a week, no thanks to Amway or Amway related income. In the meantime, I will leave this article entitled "The Information Buffet"?
In the Amway business, most active Amway IBOs are advised to trust upline unconditionally. To think of upline as a coach or a mentor. These upline mentors or coaches are supposed to have your best interest at heart and they will guide you to success if only you will be open to learning (Amway types call this being Teachable"). Many uplines, including my former uplines used to coin the term "copy" or duplicate. If you can do that you will be successful. Even the simplest of people can copy. The upline may crack a joke about getting thru school by copying. Thus, many IBOs follow exactly what their upline advises them to do. Why blaze a new trail or reinvent the wheel? Copy your upline and ride their coattails to certain success!
But then uplines subtly turn the responsibility away from themselves. Many Amway defenders will also claim that downline should not simply follow the advice of upline. They may make a ridiculous claim that standing orders and functions contain advice that must be discerned. That relevant information is like a buffet. You pick and choose what you need and discard the rest. If you are a new Amway IBO or prospect, let me tell you that is a load of guano (bird crap) that is being heaped on you. Your upline is touted as having experience and wisdom in the Amway business, which is why you are paying good money for voicemail, books, cds/audios and functions. So why would their advice be something you pick and choose? How would a new IBO know what to pick and choose? Aren't they paying for tools and functions so that get actual real life advice and something that needs to be sorted through?
Imagine hiring a guide for a trek in the wilderness. The guide is supposed to be an experienced outdoorsman, perhaps an expert. So, if he recommends that you eat certain plants or fruits, you trust that he is going to guide you right. Imagine eating something that made you sick to your stomach, only to have the guide tell you that he just points out plants and fruits and you have to discern which is good for you and which is not. You would fire the guide and tell everyone you know not to use that guide anymore, and rightfully so. This is why Amway and the upline have such a horrible reputation.
But here we have these "systems" such as Network 21, WWDB or BWW that have been "guiding" IBOs for up to 30 years or more in some cases, and the number of diamonds are negligible. Sure, there are many new platinums, but many tool consuming platinums have been found to be losing money or making very little money for their efforts. What's more, it would appear that Amway is losing ground in North America based on sales and revenue. One can reasonably guess that any new platinums that break are simply replacing the volume for a platinum that no longer exists or a platinum that no longer qualifies. My former upline diamond appears to have all new qualifying platinums from the time I was in the business and here's the kicker. My former diamond had 6 downline rubies. As far as I know, none of these rubies are qualified as platinum anymore, although I have heard that one or two of these are still active, but as customers and not as leaders in Amway.
Uplines also program their downline to take responsibility for the failure. Thus, you have IBOs who did everything that was asked of them, only to fail. Yet these IBOs often blame themselves for their failure. It is my opinion that former IBOs who did everything asked of them only to fail should file a formal complaint against their LOS with the better business bureau. Amway defenders like to think that a lack of formal complaints means that the system works when clearly, there is no unbiased substantial evidence to suggest that the system works. It looks like some succeed in spite of the system, not because of. The vast majority of Amway system IBOs lose money.
The catch in all this is uplines skirting responsibility for the outcomes of those they "mentor" and profit from. IBOs should ask if upline really cared about their success, why do you have to pay for any help that you receive from your upline diamond? Functions, standing orders, meetings, books, voicemail, etc. All of these are profits for upline diamonds. Also, if relevant information is like a buffet, how many of you consume from a buffet every week or perhaps several times a week?
See you all next week!
Joecool
1 comment:
Platinums in Amway generally don't make a huge amount of money. They might clear around $30,000 a year if they are especially energetic. But the thing most people don't realize is that they are the real workforce in Amway -- they are expected by the higher-ups to carry out all the orders, do all the dirty work, make all the arrangements, and keep all the IBOs in line.
They also face a glass ceiling -- the Diamonds don't want to admit too many people to their ranks, because that means that tool and function money has to be split too many ways. So Diamonds are happy to keep Platinums at the Platinum level.
The big problem in Amway in North America today is its very bad reputation, which translates to extreme difficulty in recruitment. It takes a huge amount of convincing to get somebody to go to an Amway meeting, and much more to sign him up in the racket. And without constant and steady recruitment of new IBOs, an MLM scheme will eventually die.
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