Amway - Life Goes On?

As I said in a previous post, I am a former Amway distributor, or IBO. While I was active, my life was consumed by Amway and Amway related activities. If I wasn't at a meeting or showing the plan, I was at coffee shops or at other public places looking to meet potential recruits to add to my group. I was in Worldwide Group at the time and I was always taught that we were "helping people". I dedicated my life to the "cause".

Looking back, we didn't help anyone who didn't join the business. Even those who joined didn't actually receive "help". The help that my upline refered to was simply someone upline showing the plan and helping active IBOs to recruit others. Sometimes this was done for free and sometimes you paid (for open meetings). Every opportunity was used to look for recruits, even weddings and other social events. We never provided anything unless prospects were interested in Amway. If they were not interested, that was end of any help they received. My sponsor would say "They're not bad people, but they just don't get it", meaning they don't see Amway as their financial savior.

When I finally realized that the Amway opportunity was not going to deliver lifelong residual income for me, and due to some conflict with my sponsor, I decided to leave the business. Well, all my lifelong Amway friends never spoke to me again. Most of my group quit except a few of them. Allegedly, one of them continued on in the business and allegedly reached the platinum level. All that means to me is this person continued to be brainwashed and spent tens of thousands of dollars on tools.

The really strange thing for me was after I left the Amway opportunity and Worldwide group, I suddenly realized how much extra time I had on my hands. I also realized that I had extra cash to save as my income wasn't being consumed by PV and support materials. I was able to save and invest some of that surplus and I am glad that I did today. At of this writing, I am living very comfortably because of my J-O-B.

As time passed, I also read and heard about some of my crossline friends losing their homes and/or going bankrupt. I am fairly certain that their consumption of standing orders and function attendance was a major factor in their lives. I also discovered through various media that our WWDB leaders had lied to the downline about tool profits. They had said nobody made a profit from tools. I later found that some of them made most of their income from tools. These leaders have never been held accountable for their lies.

I also discovered later that some uplines lied about paying for their homes in cash, and who knows what they may be lying about today. I believe upline greed has led to many of the problems the business opportunity faces today. I started to learn about some of this back in 2003 - 2004 and I eventually registered as a member on Quixtar blog. I have been debating Amway since then.

The best discovery I have made was that life goes on quite nicely after Amway!