One of the biggest loads of BS that upline diamonds often tell their groups is that they really want success for their downline IBOs. It's very obvious to me that your upline diamond doesn't give a rat's ass about your success as long as you are buying tools and attending functions. The bottom line is they make money when you buy tools and attend functions and they make nothing if you don't. Your dedication is money in the bank for the upline diamonds. They will tell you that you are a warrior or a fighter to make you feel good, but behimd the scenes they could care less. You might even see someone commended by upline for buying extra cds or making an extraordinary effort to attend a function. That's because they want everyone to do the same.
Now I believe your direct sponsor probably does care about you succeeding, but technically, your sponsor is supposed to train and motivate you free of cost, which is why your sponsor can benefit if you purchase or move enough volume. The problem with this is that your sponsor is also very likely to be immersed in the tools system which takes away income from his/her business to feed the upline diamond. IBOs are taught things like "success" is right around the corner or delayed gratification because it keeps people hanging around in the business longer than they otherwise would.
If you take a close look, you will see that the advice given from stage at functions or big meetings are so generic that it usually does not apply to you as a person and if so generic, then you can get that same advice on a cd. Yet, the diamonds expect IBOs to attend major functions every three months. I suppose to supplement their Amway income. These diamonds are not mentors. They don't analyze individual businesses and your personal skills. How can they guide you in this type of business without knowing these details? They can't. They give you feel good information or tell you some inspiring story to keep you around "that much longer" because they need tool income to survive themselves.
Think about it. Your upline wants your success or do they want your money? Practically anytime you receive "help", it costs you. Open meetings, attitude sessions, functions. Every one of these has a cost of time and money with no direct cause and effect of people succeeding and receiving the mythical residual income. If your upline says this, ask how they can assure that it happens, aside from a dedication to functions and cds? The Amway business is supposed to be about selling products and getting others to do so also. How much training do you really need for this? If people actually made a decent side income selling Amway stuff, there wouldn't be a need for endless cds and functions. A growing bank account is great motivation.
Food for thought. If you actually went diamond, your leaders would get less tool money. Do they really want your success or are they just saying it? The answer is obvious to me.
Thanks for your blog! I'm a 22 year old female student that started in amway/wwdb 6 months ago. Im actually just trying to muster up the courage to quit. It's hard when you genuinely care about the people and want them in your life as friends but know that their love is conditional. Just that fact alone reveals the cult mentality. That I'm afraid to quit for loss of love. If I left my church all my friends from my church would still want to be in my life....but anyways to me the numbers make sense so I don't know much about if what you're saying is true or not about how the diamonds make their money and the scam part. But there is to me, something dirty about making money off of other people like you do in MLM's....thought I could do it but I can't. It's gross. What really just gets me though, is the prosperity gospel that is being preached. What a perversion of the Gospel. That always kind of bothered me but I was overlooking it and downplaying it. It wasn't until my upline told me that being involved in my church was a selfish thing and this business is a selfless thing that I knew I had to quit. I was just appalled.. she told me that taking a night off from building this business to feed homeless people is selfish because it grows my faith and brings me closer to the Lord....That's when I realized that these people don't have my best interest at heart. They may think they do but they don't. One thing my upline said was "it's all about what you get from what you do" honestly just thinking that makes me feel so dirty. Anyways. I definitely appreciate your opinions and your research and the fact that you're not bashing them in a mean spirited way. Just stating facts. Telling people to look at the true fruit on the tree. I also don't know if you know this already, you probably do. They take people through a "process" to weed out the people who aren't serious. It makes it all seem more legit. Just started within the past 5 years. That's why I thought this was a great opportunity for so long and thought it was so much different then other MLM businesses. Anyways. There are subtle brainwashing techniques that they use and I think the fact that I'm afraid to tell my upline that I'm done is a huge red flag. Anyways thanks for your blog it really has helped me lots!
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing and sharing your thoughts. You're right. The Amway folks pretend to care deeply about you but if you stop attending meetings or quit, you'll quickly become a "broke loser" or someone who lost their dream. They will justify the split by saying you walked out on them. Like you said, how dare they tell you that helping the homeless is not a priority. I was told that I should go diamond and then donate $10,000 checks to the church. Oddly, some diamonds who had financial trouble had their finances exposed and they donated zero to charity.
ReplyDeleteAmway is littered with redundant advice. For example, they teach you to get out of debt which is good, but turn around and tell you to charge your next function.
Basically they teach you whatever you need to hear to keep you in the business longer. They don't make money off you if you quit.
Amway leaders don't screen people out. They use what's called "posturing" to make like they will turn away people. The reality is most Amway people will sponsor or prospect anything with a pulse.
I don't bash anyone because I just want to share my experience and knowledge with people who can use it. My thought is if you get all the information you need and you still join, at least you did it with full disclosure. But if you have a nagging feeling like something is not right, I want to help clear up that by sharing what I've learned or experienced over the years.
Please feel free to ask me anymore questions. My contact information is on m profile on this blog.
Joe, what is this "posturing" that you mention?
ReplyDeletePosturing just mean they pretend that they don't really need you. That you are actually "applying" to be a part of their team. In reality most IBOs are desperate to sponsor anyone.
ReplyDeleteNeither Amway nor its various subsystems want too many people to become Diamonds. More Diamonds means that the tool scam money has to be divided up among more persons.
ReplyDeleteThere are all sorts of little ways in which your Amway up-line cam prevent you from rising too high. After all, he wants to keep you as a profitable leg.