Many people see the Amway plan and get unrealistic dreams of attaining incredible material wealth and retiring in a few years. I find it strange that nobody has been able to point out anyone who actually got in, worked a few years and then walked away from the business and is now enjoying buckets of cash rolling in while they spend their days on exotic beaches sipping mai tais. The more likely scenario will be debt, higher credit card bills, and boxes of unused cds and other various products. Can anyone really dispute this? It seems to be a pretty common claim among former Amway IBOs.
So why would someone joining the business become annoying? It's because to the average person, it becomes clear that to achieve this, you need to find "six" people. Thus to find six people, you need to make contacts to show the plan. Cold contacts of people on the street would be unlikely, even for the boldest of people, so new IBOs start lookin at people they know. They start with people they are familiar with, or family and friends. They may also think their family and friends will want to get rich with them. And that's when you friends and family begin to get annoyed when you pepper them with Amway related BS.Sadly, for most new and enthusiastic IBOs, they will find that they are shunned by family and friends. Over the years, IBOs have done too much damage to Amway's reputation and overcoming this challenge is too much for the rank-and-file IBOs. They will hear stories on failures and opinions that Amway is a pyramid and/or a scam. Of course, IBOs will have "canned" answers to respond to from their upline. One of the humorous ones is that Amway is praised by the BBB or the FTC and is the shining example of an MLM. To those familiar with this line of reasoning, it can become side splitting humorous. Sure, the diamond may ask the rank and file to use his credibility to be able to recruit downline but, in the end, the results are generally futile.
At first, the family and friends may humor the new IBO, but relentless persistence can eventually turn ugly. This is where uplines will teach the new IBOs to avoid "negative" and to shun these family and friends. This is why some people charge the Amway leaders with being cult - like. It's at about this point where IBOs might realize that Amway products are costly and try to sell off some of them to reduce their own costs. Often times, sympathetic family and friends might make a token purchase to show support. but that can get old in a hurry also. Most IBOs will eventually quit and make amends with family and friends, but some lose friendships for good.
To information seekers and new IBOs, hopefully this message is food for thought....
Amway's tendency to split up friends and family (and even spouses) is now abundantly documented by the testimony of countless former IBOs.
ReplyDeleteYou're correct when you suggest that this has something to do with the resentment and frustration that an IBO feels. If you slave week after week to get new people into the Plan, and you can't convince a single one to come to a meeting, you'll be angry. If you can't convince relatives and friends to buy more that just a few token Amway items, you'll get even angrier. And if your spouse then starts complaining that the Amway racket is destroying the family's finances, your rage will skyrocket.
This is what creates the "Us versus Them" mentality that is extremely common among Amway freaks. Everyone who is not in the Plan, or who refuses to listen to the Plan, or who asks critical questions about the Plan, is now easily demonized as "the Enemy." They are seen as persons who want to hold you back, or who are envious of your new career, or who are too stupid to see the facts, or who are just slaves to their hopeless "jobs." And your up-line will actively encourage you to break away from them totally.
That's all bad enough, but it becomes really toxic when you and your fellow Amway freaks begin to become fanatical and self-absorbed. You then really start to constitute a cult. You have your special language, you have your fixed ideas, you grow deeply intolerant of any dissent or criticism, and you become ferociously loyal to your up-line and to everything that up-line demands.
This is when Amway REALLY starts to become evil. A cult is actually a small-scale religion. And in a religion, the most important things are FAITH and BLIND OBEDIENCE. These are much more important to you, psychologically, than making money or getting ahead. And for this reason many Amway freaks will stay in the racket for years and years, despite never making any real profit. They have been hooked.
This scenario is acted out over and over, in every Amway AMO subsystem, and in every line of sponsorship. It is the real source of income for the Amway Corporation. Without thousands of new IBOs who lose money every month before they quit in despair, and many more thousands of old IBOs who stubbornly stay in the racket even when they have gone hopelessly into debt, Amway could not survive.
Great observations! Spon on assessment!
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