One of the things my upline said at nearly every meeting was how we were helping people by sharing the dream and showing others the Amway plan. "Helping people". He claimed that IBOs became better people and were doing good for the community by helping people. I always thought this was odd because the only people we really "helped" were those who got into the business. We didn't hang out with or help anyone else. We didn't do community projects and many of us had little money to help others because we were buying products and discretionary money for most IBOs were mostly sucked up by the system and the tools.
How do you help someone when your life is dedicated to buying and selling Amway products, recruiting Amway prospects and attending Amway related meetings to learn how to recruit more Amway IBOs and to motivate yourself to never quit the business. I used to think about people doing volunteer work, or community service projects, or even outreach through their churches. These are the real everydy heroes who are helping others. While an outreach volunteer feeds the homeless, IBOs are in meetings. When people are doing community service projects, IBOs are showing the plan or prospecting the malls for new recruits. Who is actually helping people?
IBOs only help people who are interested in joining Amway. Aside from that, it wasn't apparent to me that IBOs did much of anything to help others.
Yes, I am aware that IBOs at times, contribute to Easter Seals and the like, but do they invest the kind of time that others do? And I'm not faulting IBOs, but simply pointing out that the Amway business activities can eat away at your time and prevent you from spending time with family and friends, and prevent you from actually "helping others". While the Amway business is no different than other businesses and the like in that regard, I do not feel that the tiny average earnings of IBOs make it worth their while to spend all of that time in meetings and recruitng to make their return on their investment a worthwhile activity. While you trade hours for dollars at a job, you trade hours for losses or pennies in Amway (for most active IBOs).
So in all of the activities you engage in as an IBO, are you helping people? Or are you only helping people who might be interested in joining your Amway business? Are you truly wanting to help others or your Amway business......
i was, but when i saw that i would be doing it through dishonest means, i got the heck outta there. and they say this stuff is built on christian principles? BALONEY!
ReplyDeleteWhile you trade hours for dollars at a job, you trade hours for losses or pennies in Amway (for most active IBOs)
ReplyDeleteI wish I could tell that to my old upline. That was a great point Joe, and a good quote.
My main upline at the time would have run me through a re-check my brain session and make sure I was in tune with Amways thinking, and blame it on broke losers, and the Internet.
What you learn when you are out of the Business. Its called the fliping truth!!
Several years ago, I got sucked into going to a couple of fun events sponsored by Amway. The people were super nice and the atmosphere was friendly. I didn't even know the evens were Amway junctions. I was told they were Christian youth group gatherings. I didn't notice anything Christian-like. I just saw a bunch of people eating, smiling and talking. Then at the end of the second event this guy stood up and talked like a cult leader. He used Christian principles (e.g. helping people, bettering others' lives, having a sense of community, etc.) to make the company sound unbelievably awesome. He described the normal working class member's life as terrible having to work so hard 40hr or more a week for an average pay. Then he talked about how lazy Amway people could be and still make more than 6 figures. I didn't buy any of the BS I heard. He had a couple of diamond sellers and platinums stand up and talk about how there were inside secrets that people only get to hear if they become one of them. After that, the people that had conned me into going kept calling, emailing, and pestering me to attend business meetings. I never attended one. Having had economics and research classes, I looked up Amway's business plan. As I expected it ended up just being another one of those MLM schemes. I told my "friends" that I didn't want anything to do with Amway, "I am not a business major and I don't want to sell". They kept pestering me, telling me how much good they did for people, not selling things but rather people bought things from them. They stayed in the business even after years of dept collections. Most had part time jobs that they claimed they'd get rid of after they started making the big bucks. Big bugs that they never made, that is! That really made me wonder how much brainwashing gets done? How can people really be so dumb to join? I can see why they wouldn't want to quit though. If all their friends are Amway members, they'd have no friends after quitting. They would be psychologically locked into the business. Sucks to be them!
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