One of the things so many Amway IBOs and others do is assume that their upline diamond is rich beyond belief. At meetings, the speaker would be introduced as being in the top one tenth of one percent income bracket. While it may or may not be true, nobody ever questioned it, they just assumed it was true because people saw pictures of mansions and copies of 10-year-old bonus checks. Even I never went and studied how the diamond bonuses worked. Most people just assumed that the money would be huge at the diamond level. But looking back, I can recall some things that make me believe that the diamonds were cutting corners and needed their platinums working free at meetings and functions in order to maximize profits.
The diamonds in our group often did not stay in hotels when visiting for meetings, but in the home of another diamond or some lucky downline platinum. The diamonds rarely rented a car. Instead, a downline platinum or higher would be lucky enough to be the unpaid and uncompensated chauffeur for the weekend. The platinums basically were the doormen and ushers at the functions and in many cases, probably didn't even get to hear the speakers since they were busy working. Their reward for their troubles was "spending time" with their uplines.The downline are basically unpaid volunteers. For example, ever see diamonds actually renting a moving van and hiring movers? I believe most of them had downline groupies who did the work for free, just for the honor of being near their upline. Just my opinion, but if these folks had mountains of cash, why wouldn't you hire movers, so your downline didn't have to use up a valuable Saturday or Sunday to do that work? That's like owning a chain of stores but having all of their stores closed. No products sold, no new recruits prospected. If Ray Kroc moved his residence, would all the nearby McDonald's owners close their stores to help him move?
Another things IBOs and prospects should note is that pictures of mansions, sports cars and jet skis doesn't mean someone is actually wealthy. Someone could have all those things on credit or rented after all. And many people who truly are wealthy, do not show off their wealth. It is possible that many diamonds live mundane middle-class lives on their income but need to portray wealth to lure in new IBOs. While your upline diamonds may act and look rich, how would you really know? I can take a homeless guy, clean him up and put him in a suit and a sports car and he would probably look like a diamond.
If your uplines are implying that they are so wealthy, ask them to verify some of the claims. I'm not talking about their personal income, but in business, verifying business income is very common. If you are being invited into the business and a business system such as WWDB, BWW or N21, you have every right to check your upline's credentials. Avoidance of the truth, or an answer such as "none of your business" should be a red flag. It is your business if you are being asked to join, invest your time and money, and follow upline advice.
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Let's look at some basic facts about Amway, and how Amway covers up the unpleasant facts with the usual propagandistic bullshit.
The level in Amway that does that most work is the Platinum level. They are responsible for keeping the down-line IBOs revved up and enthused all the time, and making sure that they are not tempted to quit the racket. The higher level, going up to the Diamonds, depends on the Platinums to oversee new recruitment, to keep IBOs willing to meet their PV and BV quotas, to push the "tools" scam constantly, to convince would-be quitters to stay, to arrange the yearly "functions," and do a great deal of the paperwork and networking that all of this activity involves.
But the Platinums really don't make very much. Many of them simply break even, or do a little better than that. Their main goal is to rise up into the higher levels. But the Diamonds don't really want too many new Diamonds to be created. The money in the higher levels has to be divided, and the pie has only so many slices. The Amway Diamonds are a consciously exclusive group, because it is in their financial interest to be so.
So what really is a Platinum? He's an Amway lifer who has reached a certain plateau or glass ceiling. He'll stay because he's following the "sunk cost" fallacy -- that is, he's already lost so much money he NEEDS to stay and hope that he'll earn it all back eventually.
He does whatever his Diamond tells him, because the favor and help of that Diamond are the only things that will allow him to rise. But the Diamond would like nothing better than to keep the Platinum exactly where he is now, managing the upwards money flow from all the down-line IBOs. When a Diamond has a lot of satisfied and hard-working Platinums underneath him, he's sitting pretty.
The low-level IBOs in Amway will make nothing. Their only purpose in Amway is to be cash-cows, exploited for as long as possible before they quit or go bankrupt.
As for the Diamonds, are they really super-wealthy? Not at all. Most will rake in a small six-figure income (maybe between 100,000 and 150,000 dollars) that is not much different from many professional salaries today. But the crucial requirement is for both Platinums and low-level IBOs to THINK that the Diamonds are super-wealthy. And that is the reason for all the films about their alleged mansions and private jets and yachts and fancy sports cars, and why the yearly "functions" are so important. The illusion of Diamond wealth has to be maintained, because this is the only thing that will keep both Platinums and low-level down-line in the racket.
As Joe Cool has pointed out, what a Diamond earns in Amway is not especially impressive when one considers all the necessary expenses of modern life. The sort of affluent expenditure shown in photos and films at a "function" would require an income of multimillions of dollars.
Diamonds would not be making use of free down-line labor if they had that kind of money. You don't pinch pennies over small, chickenshit things like moving furniture or household repairs if you are a multimillionaire.
Essentially, the Amway business is crucially dependent on two human things: stupidity and hope. And without the low-level down-lines, Amway would collapse in a day.
Thanks for sharing your insight. You are spot on about what happens and how the platinums are the engines of the Amway tools and functions scheme.
Hey Joe, it's been a while. Hope things are well with you. Here's an interesting proposition for you. This is going back a long while, but you may remember during the Amquix days where I proposed a thought experiment. What would the world look like if Amway worked?
Well, let's get even more specific. What if at 1,500 PV, you could see the light at the end of the tunnel, at 2,500 PV, you where breaking even with all your BSM, and at a 'measly' 4,000 PV, all you products were covered and you cleared $800 from your Amway business?
Keeping in mind that an average household spends between 800 to 1,200 dollars per month on consumables, so that actually means approximately $1,600 to $2,000 per month staying in the family budget.
Now this proposition seems small, however, plug that information into Chatgpt or whatever and ask it what the resulting market responses would be amongst ABO's, recruiting, attrition, the outer job market, banks, accountants, financial advisors and the like.
Everyone will say that 'the business would get saturated' and yes it would. However this AI experiment shows what would happen before then.
Good to see you MrMaximum! Yeah I recall your thought experiment. I think I once wrote a post about how for example, when our local electric company hires, thousands of people come to apply even for just a handful of jobs. That's how Amway would look like. You wouldn't need to hide things or trick people into attending meetings. They would seek you out if Amway worked as easily as advertised. But that isn't how it works in real life, unfortunately. Instead, IMO, Amway's results are more like a lottery. A handful of winners and millions of losers.
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