One of the things that was heavily promoted when I was an Amway IBO, and I believe is still promoted, is the control of time and money. I recall hearing that "broke" people often have lots of time, but can't do much because of a lack of money, or how a very hard working man and successful might have money but a lack of time as he is working 80 hours per week. So why not join Amway, work hard for 2-5 years and have all the time and money you need for life? Sounds great on the surface right?
Well, it sounds good on the surface, but how many people actually do that? I don't know of any IBO who worked the business 2-5 years and walked away from their Amway business to enjoy control of time and money forever. And there are reasons for that. Attrition. Most IBOs who join don't do much and about half or more of all IBOs won't even be in business for more than a year. IBOs also need to be active and moving side volume in order to qualify for some of the bonuses. It is why I believe that there aren't any diamonds who left to enjoy their time and money because of passive ongoing Amway income. Diamonds and above must continually work the business or their businesses will fall apart like the waves would erode a sand castle at the beach.
For many IBOs ironically, what they desire most, time and money, is what they have less of because of their involvement in the Amway oppoprtunity. It is because of the way many IBOs are taught by the systems such as WWDB, BWW or N21. Many of these groups will teach a defacto PV requirement of 100 PV (or more) which costs about $300 monthly. In some cases, you are getting a small box of goods for the same amount of cash that would have gotten you a cartload of goods at WalMart or Costco. For system IBOs, you are also paying for instruction that basically tells you that this is a great idea and that you should never quit. It seems that those who do so, succeed in spite of, and not because of the system and upline advice.
So now when your family and friends have backyard barbeques or birthday parties, you are absent because you are securing your financial future. Your kids surely won't mind you missing their baseball games or sending them to the sitters while you attend a function. Your family and friends will be wowed when you retire next year and throw them a party to end all parties. It all seems surreal, and for most, it truly is. There may be $10 or even $50 monthly checks rolling in from Amway but is never covers the cost of your expenses. You can't quit because success might be right around the corner. This is the trap of Amway.
Suddenly your sponsor or upline might tell you that the Amway business is not about money. You might be told that you are a nicer person or a better parent (even if you neglect your kids to attend functions), or that the business opportunity has saved your marriage. Which leads to my question. What have you achieved in the Amway business that has given you more control of time and money? Do you have less time and money as a result of your involvement with Amway? I don't know of anyone who actually signed up for Amway with an end goal of being nicer (if that's even true) or signing up to make friends.
During my involvement with Amway, my life was changed, but not for the better. And it wasn't because of Amway. It was self serving teaching by WWDB leaders designed to suck the life out of IBOs. We were to attend all meetings. All means all. We were to submit to upline. Check your ego at the door. We were to buy extra tapes/cds because you can;'t listen to the same ones each day. Wives and husbands needed seperate standing orders. If downline quit, you don't cancel standing order. It is why I saw crosslines go bankrupt, lose a home to foreclosure and many ended up quitting and with large financial loss.
In reality, Amway works to a "T". Amway and the systems were designed to reward a few high ranking IBOs who reap rewards at the expense of downline in the form of volume bonuses and by downline purchasing training materials (books, cds and seminar tickets). The lie is that anyone an everyone can do with. The math bears it out, regardless of whether you can make more than your sponsor. If most people do little or nothing, then of course anyone can make more than their sponsor. But you won't make more than your upline diamond. You can bank on that.
11 comments:
Let me get this straight, Joe. If someone in your Amway down-line quits the business, you have to CONTINUE purchasing his Standing Order? And you and your wife have to have SEPARATE Standing Orders?
That's totally insane. How could anyone swallow that kind of financial exploitation by up-line?
Yes, that's what was taught and that's what was expected of downline. It was on a "true north" tape that Brad Duncan cut. When on of my downline quit and I told my sponsor, he told me to go listen to that tape. Brad Duncan spoke about how you need to go sponsor someone else. It was too much trouble to call upline, who called upline, who called upline to cancel a standing order. Funny, they didn't mind calling upline who called upline to add a standing order. And yeah, crazy as it sounds, they wanted couples to have their own standing order - because they make more money that way.
It was around that time that I started to question upline about the tools profits and soon after I quit.
Anonymous and Joe,
When I attended an FED they made an odd mention of certain diamonds earning their rank individually even though they were married to a different diamond. It was truly odd, because some of the diamonds were married and did it jointly while others were forced to do it separately or so they said. Why on earth would anyone who married into the highest tier of the business be forced to start from the ground up? For that matter, why would you not utilize the spouses connections to develop a significant downline of your own? (I'm guessing that's what they actually did, but they left that part out)
Now that I am more informed, I don't believe these late in life diamonds did anything on their own, and yet they continued to perpetuate the idea that they were somehow doing these things in spite of having a diamond spouse already.
The only example I can think of the Teresa Tsuruda and Howie Danzik. Both were diamonds when they got married and allegedly they are still diamonds. Odd that they are not double diamonds though. Howie was married when he went diamond (married to Susan Danzik). They divorced and apparently, a smear campaign was put on in the Amway world regarding Susan having an affair, but nobody heard Susan's side of the story.
Howie married Teresa and it's like Susan never existed. I actually attended a function where Howie and Susan were the keynote speakers as diamonds.
What uplines say and the actual thing is really the opposite. IBO's have to spend more than 80 hours a week showing THE PLAN to thousands of prospects in order to qualify.
80 hrs per week?? I see negative reviews of Amway and their products from time to time. I get it. An upline told you something and it didn't happen exactly that way or they told you how they did it and it did't work for you. Guess what? No business of any kind is a perfect clone of another business. No product works in your body the precise way it works in another persons body. A person doesn't ha e to work 80 hrs per week at it. They can if they want to! It depends on their sense if urgency. The beauty of Amway is that you don't have to quit your current income to do this. It is highly discouraged to quit your job because the fact is most people don't get to diamond. Just like most people wont earn a million dollars in their career. Amway and the diamond team give you the opportunity to walk away from a job or business you don't like. But ultimately it's up to you! It's your business. So let's address making money on tools. My first job was at a dodge dealership changing oil. I had to purchase tools (wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers, etc) in order to do my job and get a paycheck at the end of the week. The upline support teams put in a lot of time and energy to put together the right tools that they feel will help you in your business. How is that such a horrible crime?
Who am I?? No one special! I own 5 separate business, one of which is an Amway business. I'm not a diamond or even a platinum. My wife and I are getting closer everyday to silver. I market the ag products to local farmers and my wife is selling the ribbon line to people as well as to the largest (7500 employees) employer in our county. My income is capped with my other business and I don't want to start another brick and mortar from the ground up. We have goals and dreams of helping others and philanthropy. Amway is a vehicle we are using to do that and we are helping other like minded people to the same.
I'm sorry if you got a bad upline. They are not all bad! You don't have to spend 80 hrs a week to build a successful Amway business.
Sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes. I was a very poor english student in school. I can build business just don't know when to use a comma properly.
Eighty hours a week? That's about the amount of time a military recruit spends per week on physical training at boot camp!
I doubt that any IBOs actually do this, unless they are part of those stupid buffoons in Amway's CORE.
This "Aaron" is trying the soft-soap approach to dealing with criticism of Amway. Nice try, Aaron, but no cigar.
Many IBOs have reported that up-line persistently and frequently urges them to "Flush that J.O.B!" Is that in accord with your claim?
You say "most people don't get to Diamond." Quite true. But is that told to recruits when they are solicited to join Amway?
Sure, when working as a mechanic you had to buy your own tools. But you only had to buy them ONCE, Aaron. Nobody was telling you that you had to sign up for a standing order of new tools every goddamned month. You had your wrenches and screwdrivers and all the rest, and didn't need to keep on buying new ones. That isn't true for Amway, is it?
Have you actually read or listened to those stupid Amway "tools"? Are they anything other than mindless pep-talks without a shred of practical information about running a business? Wake up, Aaron.
You have four other businesses apart from your Amway operation? Great. But I'm pretty sure that those four other businesses are subsidizing the Amway one and making it financially possible for you to live. Where the hell would you be with just Amway alone?
I notice that you never mention the "functions." You sound intelligent, so I assume even you think they are absurd, hyped-up fantasy-festivals. Do you attend them? Or do you make your excuses to up-line?
Aaron said, "Guess what? No business of any kind is a perfect clone of another business. No product works in your body the precise way it works in another persons body."
Correct, but when the business fails to work for 99+% of people, it is fair to say it is a bad/corrupt business. It takes only two seconds to look at an Amway disclosure statement to realize this is not a "Business Opportunity" of any sort, but rather a swindle to help generate revenue for a fraction of 1% at the top.
Aaron said, "The beauty of Amway is that you don't have to quit your current income to do this. It is highly discouraged to quit your job because the fact is most people don't get to diamond."
Maybe it is discouraged for you, because you are a newer IBO and they are still relying on you to make your payments at the bottom of the pyramid. I have heard many stories of people "retiring" from their "J-O-B's" to do Amway full time even though they aren't making nearly as much, and that is because of the need to continuously find more downline as the churn rate is exceptionally high.
It doesn't have anything to do with most people not going diamond. That is already built into the system, and they even provide the information openly to show you won't ever go diamond without having lottery-like luck.
Aaron said, " Just like most people wont earn a million dollars in their career."
Okay, this is your first bad fallacy. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2014 the average household income was $51,939.00 (It will be higher now with inflation)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States. That means it would take roughly 20 years to earn a million dollars. The average "Active" Amwayer makes $2,196.00 according to their page(https://www.amway.com/en/ResourceCenterDocuments/Visitor/ops-amw-gde-v-en--BusinessReferenceGuide.pdf). That evaluation is before purchasing any necessary products, therefore meaning most of the "Active" IBO's are operating in the red (negative), and that only counts for 53% of ALL members of Amway. On average, it would take "Active" IBOs 455 years to make a million dollars according to these numbers, and this is a generous estimate.
I think I'll take my chances on that nasty "career" or "9-5 J-O-B" over Amway any time.
Aaron said, "So let's address making money on tools. My first job was at a dodge dealership changing oil. I had to purchase tools (wrenches, sockets, screwdrivers, etc) in order to do my job and get a paycheck at the end of the week. The upline support teams put in a lot of time and energy to put together the right tools that they feel will help you in your business. How is that such a horrible crime? "
Here we go with the second major fallacy from Aaron.
First of all, I find it hard to believe that dodge would make you pay for your own tools, but even if they do, at least they serve a purpose in helping you generate a consistent and reliable income. Second of all, these tools are a one time purchase commitment (assuming they don't break).
Amway "Tools" are not tools at all, but rather another income generator for the top level Amwayers. There is nothing of value from the Amway "Tools", and they were designed outside of Amway's corporation by the LOS you belong to. These tools are designed to brainwash and enslave while taking a healthy chunk of money regularly. If you were to sign up for Amway directly, there would be no requirement for tools, because the business is so blatantly obvious.
Side note, if the business is so easy and meant to be so "duplicatable", then why do you need to purchase endless "tools"? (Rhetorical question...the answer is pretty obvious)
The crime is in the deception, and you are clearly a victim of the manipulation they use. Their tools are worth as much as a bucket with a hole, and yet people use that term "tools" to help solidify their value. They are propaganda tapes and garbage, plain and simple.
Aaron said, "I'm sorry if you got a bad upline. They are not all bad!"
Oh Aaron...they are all bad. If only you could see through the masks and deception, then you would know...they are all bad.
No sense talking to this "Aaron" character. He's gone. Anna Banana has nailed it about Amway defenders: when they come to an anti-Amway site to comment, all they do is deny, distract, defend, and disappear.
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