Happy Easter everyone!
I normally don't blog on weekends but as I passed a Starbucks today, I actually saw someone "showing the plan" at a Starbucks near my home. I remember being shown the plan the first time. I was in college and invited to a "beer bust" and I show up and my friend who invited me is wearing a suit and I thought WTH? So I was tricked into seeing Amway for the first time and to make it worse, I thought we were going to drink some beer!
But over the years and having personal experience in Amway, I can say that Amway can be dangerous. I don't mean dangerous as like an electrician's job or some other hazardous work, but dangerous because if you get involved in Amway, the leaders try to slowly gain your trust and subtly convince you to do things that you probably wouldn't normally do.
I recall seeing new IBOs come and go and many people are leery about spending money on functions and other high ticket expenses. I'm from Hawaii so IBOs who commit to being CORE are expected to travel from Honolulu to the west coast for major functions (4 times a year). Taking one specific example, the Summer function (Used to be called Family Reunion) was held in Portland Oregon at the (then) Rose Garden where 15,000 - 20,000 may have been in attendance. The cost was $250 which included 2 nights hotel and a lunch. The airfare was about $700 round trip and then you need a rental car and some other incidentals.
The danger in all this was some people only joined to make a few dollars, while others were dreaming of striking it rich. The upline will invite all to try it and eventually, you'll be pitched on buying cds/tapes and other tools. That these materials are vital to making money in Amway. Oddly enough, there was really no individual assessment of one's business before they recommended you buy these tools.
They certainly seemed to be encouraging and wanting you to succeed because they said so and they often love bombed the new IBOs. As if IBOs belonged to some kind of special "brotherhood". And therein lies the danger. If you buy into this feelng of "team" or "family", it's nearly impossible to not participate full on. What IBOs don't realize is once you stop moving PV or if you start to miss functions, you're forgotten and maybe even called a quitter or loser. Because to upline, you are no longer lining their pockets. In other words, when you're buying cds and function tickets, you're a valuable "customer" to the upline. That's why they're nice to you. ut many IBOs fail to recognize this and mistakenly believe that the upline truly cares about you. THey don't.
As evidence of this, a week after my involement in Amway stopped, my dad passed away. All the friends that I had shelved to do Amway were there for me, calling to show support and to offer help of any kind. Not a single Amway friend or "brother" called me or offered any support at that time. You see, I was no longer valuable to upline so I was as old as last week's news.
That's why Amway can be a dangerus game. You think you're doing something special to help people or that you're part of a team or brotherhood but the reality is an IBO is simply a customer of the toll systems sych as WWDB, Network 21 or BWW. You're nothing more or nothing less. Some people do succeed, but in order to do so, you have to overcome overwhelming odds and you'll have to lie and deceive your downline into thinking they're a dedicated team. Most people quickly realize this and snap out of their Amway trance and quit. I was a slow learner and took some months before realizing what was going on. Now I blog so others can avoid the potential pitfall that Amway has the potential to be.
yep!...it was an unmitigated perpetual cash drain alright....and i worked the biz hard!!....just to have slick upline say to me "you can do it winner!!"
ReplyDeleteEven though this post is from last year, it resonated with me. I was in Amway as an IBO from June 7th 2018 to September 13th 2018. I felt dumb for joining now in hindsight since I am 30 and most of the people in Amway in my area were all in the 20's usually early to mid 20's with only a small handful of older people in their late 20's, early 30's and above. My sponsor was a 21 year old college girl and her upline was a 26 year old dude. I was not in Brit World Wide but Leadership team development which is similar to the other "education" groups associated with the Amway IBO "opportunity" AKA pyramid scheme. I was skeptical from the start but saw all these older people who had good careers saying it works etc so I stayed. But I didn't realize how diffcult it was to try to sell this over priced products to friends and family and trying to recruit them to the team. A few unfriended me on social media and others tried to warn be about Amway being a pyramid scheme etc.
ReplyDeleteMy sponsor the college girl was and still is completely brainwashed by Amway and is sold out to the cause the uplines and diamonds sold these people on. Her upline is said to only been in Amway two years and makes 5,000 in bonus as he just hit the platinum level. He seemed cool at first, but when I questioned spending money on going to a conference he sort of got an attitude and our relationship changed. As time went on I saw the dangerous stuff the cults of personality, uplines etc would tell these people and it was clear they didn't give a crap about their downline. All they wanted was for them to keep spending money so that THEY could collect a paycheck. Of course, they try to cover that by saying that have invested interest in your success and they care, but again, it's all self serving BS.