Over the years, I have encountered many Amway IBOs and they often have a common theme. They trust their upline and in some cases, consider them mentors. Now in a business venture, it might be good to have a mentor or someone to guide you, but in the Amway opportunity, most of the upline mentors make money off those who they mentor. That is a major conflict of interest but IBOs simply fail to see it. Rather than mentors, maybe a paid consultant is a better description of the relationship. What IBOs also fail to see, is that there is an utter lack of success overall in the field of rank and file IBOs. They tell you to portray success but reality paints a stark contrast. You see guys in broken down clunker cars wearing suits as they faithfully attend functions and meetings.
When an IBO sees the plan in a big meeting, the speaker will often be built up as a financial guru, and possibly as an expert on how to succeed in Amway. An IBO may have heard something about the trail was already blazed by upline and you just need to follow the trail. Don't re-invent the wheel, just copy what upline did. But as I have said many times before, duplication sounds easy and looks good on paper, but in real life, the vast majority of IBOs run into problems that they simply cannot overcome, such as the bad reputation that the Amway name has in the US. Add that to the less than competitive prices that Amway products sell for, and you have a problem.What is troubling however, is that IBOs are taught to trust upline and do as they say (defacto requirement), but they are also taught that failure is due to their own shortcomings, even when they do exactly what upline told them. It is also troubling that many uplines will tell their faithful followers that they need to purchase more and more tools (voicemail, cds, seminar tickets). In some cases, an upline may advise their downline to sacrifice basic family needs to buy these tools. Some IBOs were advised to skip meals to buy a cd, or skip paying the mortgage/rent to be able to attend the next big function. How is that good advice?
I might also add that as a newer IBO or prospect, you may have heard that "everyone starts at zero", or that it's a level playing field. It is not. As a new IBO, you will likely be in the 100 PV bracket. Since Amway pays out about 30+% in bonuses, your upline(s) will split up the lion's share in bonuses off your efforts while you get a 3 %bonus. That doesn't sound very level to me. And upline is entitled to that because they were in Amway before you?
So each IBO should look at things objectively and see if your upline is helping you or simply helping himself by giving you advice that ends up in profit for himself with little or nothing for you.
Amway tells all new IBOs the following: "Everyone starts at zero." Unfortunately they don't add this: "Almost everybody stays at zero."
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in URA, they used to yell at the guys who said they couldn't afford the next conference ticket during the breakout session of the conference they were at.
ReplyDeleteThese "leaders" would tell the guys to pawn their sports jackets to pay for their next conference ticket because that was an investment and they could take their increased earnings and buy their jackets back. They could barely afford the "discounted" ticket for their first conference anyways and were asked for fork over another $93 for the next conference to show that they were "all in" with their coach or mentor or whatever.
There were some loyalists who always said that conferences were "guaranteed to move your business forward by six months" and that you could never miss one. Those words could not have been further from the truth.
Up-line puts the pressure on IBOs at the end of a conference, because they have them as a captive audience, surrounded by Amway loyalists. This allows them to shame people into forking over the $93 for the next conference. Everything in Amway is about public pressure, groupthink, and shaming.
ReplyDeleteAs for a conference putting you "six months ahead" of anyone who doesn't attend, that is such utter bullshit that I'm amazed anyone believes it. The only thing that happens at these stupid functions is a lot of screaming, shouting, singing, and mindless hype. You don't learn a bloody thing about how to sell Amway products, or how to manage your business. It's nothing but a fantasy-festival for morons.
All the Amway subsystems are corrupt, but URA, WWDB, and Network 21 are especially loathsome rackets that bleed IBOs dry.
It is never good business sense to have someone involved in the network where your business expenses are channeled, as a mentor. What would one expect them to say? Go slow on expenses? Unsurprisingly they never say that.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to think of a more compromised mentor. A mentor should either be uninvolved (has no relationship with the busness) or is a shareholder and beholden to the bottom line for better or for worse. But a supplier of expenses as a mentor? Only in Amway and other fake business MLM’s.
Quite right, Kwaaikat. If your up-line profits every time you spend money for Amway-connected services, it's in his interest to make sure your expenditures are high. Somebody in up-line with a 6-4-2 structure below him is essentially living off what his legs send to him every month by getting a significant cut from it. If you point this out, the only really honest thing he can say is "Well, when you develop your own 6-4-2 down-line, you'll be in the same position."
ReplyDeleteThat's precisely what characterizes a pyramid scheme. And that is what all MLMs are, no matter how they try to disguise the fact with all their soaps and vitamins and cosmetics and scented oils.