An ambot named Frank stopped off to leave a long winded comment to one of my posts. Too long to reprint here. Be a blog and a half itself! But I’ll give Frank props for using his real name. Most ambots past and present are too humiliated to admit being affiliated with Amway.
To start off with Frank sets off all the female readers on my blog into fits of giggles by saying he is 20 years old going on 21 with the mind of a 28/29 year old. All women know that men get to age 12 to 15 years old and they hold on for decades! Give them till their 60’s before they “might” get to the mind set of someone in their 20’s! Maybe not even then!
Like the typical 20/21 year old who leaves comments here they’re all know it alls at that age. Big important business owner and the rest of us are doomed to be lazy losers who quit Amway because we didn’t try hard enough and aren’t hard workers and blah blah blah typical Amspeak bullshit that we’ve heard a million times before from the assholes in our Amway upline.
I’ve said it tons of times. Just because someone puts on a business suit, is glued to their cell phone, and marches off to 8pm meetings doesn’t make them a real business owner.
Real business owners follow procedures in starting up/running their business. I’m going to put some of them here in no particular order and this not a complete list. Just off the top of my head right now.
1. research – is this a viable business opportunity that will earn them money or is the market already saturated or is there no customer interest in this type of business
2. purchase or lease a place to operate the business
3. choose and register a business name
4. get a license from the city to operate the business
5. get a lawyer to help with incorporation, etc if needed
6. get an accountant to help set up the business accounts, file taxes, etc
7. hire other professionals as needed for business set up or ongoing basis
8. hire employees
9. get a tax number
10. get insurance to cover business, employees, and customers
11. create a business plan
12. have a bank account under the business name
13. purchase inventory
14. decide on prices for the products or services
15. purchase equipment needed to operate business
16. decide on hours of operation
These are some of the steps taken by real business owners and there is a cost to starting, owning, operating a business. Varies depending on the business and how much work/capital the owner can do themselves.
People who are employees whether paid hourly, salary, or commissioned salespeople do not normally have to take any of the above steps.
Those are some of the differences between a real grown up business owner and a child playing a make belief game of owning a business.
And some of those children show up on my blog and accuse us of being lazy and not owning our own business, etc etc. Yeah right someone who is lazy and doesn’t own their own business just takes those above steps and expenses for no particular reason other than they’re thrill seekers maybe???!!!
You fucking ambots want to insult us because we don’t own our own businesses have probably never taken any of the above steps to get their business legally operating. Quit repeating what the fucking assholes in your Amway upline are telling you and get out into the real world and learn what its really like to own a business and quit playing make believe games.
You ambots are nothing but a bunch of low paid commissioned salespeople and you have to pay money to an organization like WWDB or LTD for the privilege of belonging to a cult.
You’re not playing on the same level as a real business owner. You’re just playing a game that the assholes in your Amway upline make the rules on.
Anna Banana,
ReplyDeleteI am going to choose to remain Anonymous, as I do not want any negative backlash from anyone who may know of my husband's and my names as former Amway IBOs.
I started reading some of your posts last evening after I found out that Rich DeVos, owner/founder of Amway, donated nearly $500,000 to National Organization for Marriage. My husband and I were involved in Amway for 6 months last year. I am commenting on this particular post because the reason my husband and I joined Amway was to get out of debt, ourselves.
I just wanted to say that reading your blog has helped me realize that our decision to leave Amway was absolutely the right choice. My husband had an easier time than I did about leaving, but I literally sobbed for an hour or so because I thought I was going to neglect the future of my family and put us all in a financial hole, simply because we were no longer pursuing this "business." The system had gotten to me, and I couldn't believe it.
My husband and I did everything we were advised to do, and we were not getting any results. We would be out until 2-3:00am on weeknights, having driven 3 hours to some places to "show the plan." All the while we were thinking, "Why are we doing this?" We put thousands of miles on our brand new car and tried presenting the "plan" to our friends, as if we really believed in what we were doing. We wanted to believe in what we were doing.
This organization, in my opinion, stifles creativity, independent thinking, and literally brainwashes people into thinking that this is the only way they will live a happy and fulfilling life. We left an event early once because we had committed to our nephew's birthday party, and as we were leaving, we were stopped by an upline, telling us that our Diamond was giving a "teaching", and that we ought to stay. We did not stay. It was at this point that we were realizing just how much of our lives they wanted us to dedicate to this. If you want to "succeed" and become financially independent, you HAVE to make this your entire life. Some people are fine with that, and that is great. But we just didn't like what our future held with Amway.
There were a few members in our upline with whom we were close friends. I loved and trusted them as people, and I do believe that they believed in us and thought we could succeed as IBOs. In fact, our immediate upline was one of my good friends. In fact, they would probably be hurt that I am posting this, but now I know I have a right to my opinion and I am not a "lazy" "poor" citizen of this country because I don't own my own "business." I really think they were all too far gone into the Amway mindset to truly understand why my husband and I left. Competition was SO fierce in our organization, even when we were doing "team building" events such as playing games, that I just got downright disgusted. I hated the way one of our upline seemed to treat and talk to my husband, too, during these competitions. I just felt very, VERY different from everyone else in that group.
We did have some positives in our experience. I liked the products because many of them are natural. There were two girls with whom I was particularly close and we got to know each other well. I reconnected with some friends in the past (however, these meetings were over-shadowed with guilt that the only reason we were meeting with them was to "show [them] the plan", and not to catch up.) Mainly, though, my husband and I communicated a lot more and on different levels, since we were so deeply in this together. Our decision to leave was one of the best of our life, because we decided what we really wanted.
Anyway, I know this was a long-winded comment, and I am not intending to begrudge people who "believe" in the Amway-way. I just feel like this is an appropriate venue to express my opinions about how drastically our life has changed since we left Amway.
Hi Anonymous. Thank you for reading the blog and leaving this comment.
DeleteNo problem being Anonymous. Just about everyone who posts here is. It is very humiliating for people involved in Amway past or present to admit their affiliation with this scam.
The reason you got into Amway is very normal. The same reason as many others who got in Amway. If you talk to most people why they got involved in Amway it is probably for very normal reasons. To get out of debt. To buy a car. To buy a house. To put their kids through college. What they don't know is their finances will be sucked dry thanks to the assholes in their upline who pressure them to buy more and more mway products just so some asshole upline can meet that months goal/quota. Pressure to attend all Amway meetings and buy tickets to all major functions, buy CDs of the diamonds bullshit propaganda, and buy books. Also buy membership to whatever cline they're in and more useless stuff like Communikate.
We all have the same story told slightly differently. We were all abused by our upline. We heard the same stuff from the cult leaders. The financial losses differ.
But way to go for finally figuring out that Amway will never make you the money promised by the liars in your upline.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll probably feature your comment just in case some of the readers miss it.
Thank you again for having the courage to write about your experiences and the courage to get out of Amway.
Great comment Anonymous! You sound a lot like me and My wife. Though Only half of us quit. My wife is still involved. I feel the very same as you. At first when we joined, I was excited about financial independence, and always knew that entreprenuership was the best way to go. My parents are successful business owners (a grown up business)! My first impressions at the the plans and rally's were very awkward. The whole thing felt weird. The standing up and applauding of the big time diamonds and how everyone crowded around these big pins like it was Jesus teaching the gospel. I remember at our very first seminar, a diamond was speaking, and my Wife leaned over to me and said she didn't like how we stand up to applaud people for their financial success... which I agree with. I think it is a level of envy that is unhealthy. Well, 2 years into it she is all about Amway. I think mostly because she has developed emotional bonds with our upline and became real friends. That is hard to break for Women. Mostly for them it is an emotional thing. For me, I didn't see any real money so I was outta there. Forget the people. This is supposed to be business. I didn't decide to join in the beginning for flippin friends. You get shown the plan and it's all about how easy it is to make six figures and buy your house cash and cars blah blah blah.. Then once you're in, the tune changes. Then it's all about emotional stuff, like growing and personal development and don't think about the money, or don't think about why you aren't retired yet like the plan said you could be. The system creates a dependence, then supplies you the remedy. I know that there is absolutely no advantage to going to any plan, or seminar or rally, function, or reading any book or listening to any cd. None of that does any good. The one and only thing that could possibly do you any good is literally showing the plan a hundred times in a few months. My parents built a real business and are now acheiving what they have always wanted. Not once have they listened to a stupid cd, read any business book, attended any stupid expensive seminar. They have never had to be a member of any stupid business owner association. They just needed an idea and frickin worked to do it. They literally just did what they thought about. Something that needed to be done. Here is a big fat clue for the Amway pretend business "Owners" : PEOPLE WANT TO BE OFFERED TO HAVE SOMETHING DONE FOR THEM, THEY DO NOT WANT TO BE OFFERED TO DO SOMETHING EXTRA FOR THEMSELVES. Showing them a plan where they have to put in extra time AND their money isn't going to have a high success rate. Offer a straight up service, and you will catch more. Think about this: only 1% of people will be entreprenuers in their life. The other 99% want something done for them, and will PAY for it... Why on earth would you put time and work into a plan where you have to find the 1%, when you could have a real business that serves the 99%??? Is it any wonder almost no one has any success in Amway? It doesn't take rocket surgery to see where the advantage (and money) is.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - good analysis of what it's like being inside the Amway cult. And yes it is awkward and creepy. And yes most people start their own business so they can make money not so they can fuck around at Amway functions. Pretend business owners actually work not worship greedy assoles n their upline.
DeletePART 1. COMMENTS APPARENTLY HAVE A LIMIT OF 4096 CHARACTERS
ReplyDeleteHi, I posted up a comment a month or 2 ago asking how to get rid of CommuniKate (to this date I've just blocked all notification emails and have changed my credit card number), and am finally getting around to sharing my story, though it's all probably stuff you've heard of before.
My entry into Scamway wasn't with the intention to make money. I liked how the "business" offered the opportunity to purchase various leadership/motivational mediums at a discounted price. Regarding the diamond lifestyle, retiring at a young age, and all the other normally enticing things that I was told of though, I could care less for.
I was sponsored in by a young married couple more or less my age (22), who were apparently looking at Scamway as a secondary source of income (the wife works odd jobs while the husband has an on/off supervisory position in a construction firm). The uplines and crosslines I was introduced to seemed like nice people as well.
I didn't make any money to start with given how expensive purchasing products was, not to mention how uncomfortable I was with calling a number of my friends to tell them about this 'opportunity' and set up meetings to show the plan. In hindsight I should have trusted my instincts back then :L
I was ok with that though, as I was told that I would develop eventually, and I could start covering my costs.
As time went on, I began to see the various expenses and costs of products / tools burn through my finances, barely leaving any for things I actually wanted to buy. After buying several CDs, I realized that they were all full of the same stories. So-and-so was a poor struggling person who found the light with Amway thanks to God (I personally am not religious by the way) and now is financially free and able to help others and speak at functions etc etc
Anonymous - thank you for dropping by with your story.
DeleteI have no idea how many characters blogger allows for comments. I know a few of my responses have ended up in cyber hell and I only typed a few sentences.
As I'm sure you found up buying those business and motivational books and CDs from Amway at a discounted price really wasn't. You could buy them cheaper on Amazon or Craigslist. You'd probably find much better entrepreneur or self help books just about anywhere else even your library.
Yup just about everyone is uncomfortable telling friends they're in Amway and pushing them to buy products. It's because you have to lie and most people can't do that. To succeed in Amway you must be a good liar.
PART 2
ReplyDeleteI was disappointed by my first mini-function thing as well (the official Scamway name escapes me at the moment). Basically some jobber and his wife, who were apparently a lawyer and a former prosecutor or something or other, hastily showed the plan near the end, and spent the rest of the time talking about their life history (how much of it is true I'll never know) and cracking jokes. It certainly didn't feel like an actual business-oriented session like it was made out to be, even though everyone was dressed in business attire.
A month or so later, I attended my very first major function (not cheap to attend btw), Spring Leadership, in the Washington area. It was fun hanging out with crosslines (all of whom I apparently wasn't supposed to associate with according to the upline), but the actual function itself was far from what I expected.
I was told that the event would be a life-changing experience for the better, and that I would learn more about running the 'business' and so forth. What actually transpired was a whole parade of middle-aged men and women showing off videos and pictures of their material wealth, gushing about how God (again, I'm not religious and could care less) gave them such a wonderful opportunity in Scamway. These bragging sessions were interspersed with horrible songs by some band sponsored by Scamway. As a result, their lyrics were all about Scamway and the 'business'. I can't recall what the band's name was nor do I care, all I remember was that they were singing something about the diamond way or whatever.
When Sunday, the last day of the 3 day function came about, I was encouraged to attend Sunday Worship. I didn't have a clue what was going on given my lack of religious beliefs, and was rather perturbed when at the end, a slew of donation buckets were passed through the audience, leading into the beginning of the Sunday session, where predictably, there was more drivel of fanciful lifestyles and such, as well as product advertisements for material authored by some of the guest speakers.
The night owl session was no better, with various fellow newer members sharing how why joined, their dreams, etc. While that doesn't sound so bad at first, the degree to which some of them embraced Scamway, their products, and the lifestyle shocked me (eg they viewed X guest speaker as their hero, felt X product was amazing, etc)
At the end of it all, I was pretty bummed by what I had experienced, and made a mental note not to attend a major function again.
A few weeks later, already disillusioned with 'the business', I attended yet another guest speaker mini-function thing, where Brad Duncan was speaking. I couldn't believe it. The ENTIRE time, night owl included, all he was doing instead of actually teaching people productive stuff was cracking jokes and making a fool of himself.
Anonymous - very good description of every Amway function. They are all life changing events. They are all the same thing. Diamonds bragging about how rich they are whether or not that's true. They all thank their dear friends who showed them the plan and thank god and it's all creepy. The teachings are nothing as you described. Usually some asshole that thinks he's a comedian telling jokes or bitching about other cult members.
DeleteThe IRS has determined Amway meetings are not really business meetings because no one they've audited has had an increase in business profits after attending. The IRS has determined Amway meetings are. Itching but social gatherings and expenses can not be deducted.
Waste of time and money. You summed it up accurately.
PART 3
ReplyDeleteThe final straw came when my uplines kept pressuring me to attend the next major function, Family Reunion, stating that it was completely different from Spring Leadership and that it too would be a life changing experience. I read through the event itinery and noticed that for essentially the same price as Spring Leadership, a 3 day event, I would be attending a 2 day event, with essentially the same type of content (product advertisements, rich people sharing pictures of 'their' wealth, etc). The only difference was that participants were able to dine in the presence of our upline double diamond, which I didn't give a shit about doing. She's not a real celebrity or anything, so why would I PAY to do that, never mind that I wouldn't pay to dine with an actual celebrity anyway.
I declined to attend of course, citing financial reasons, which was true to some extent, but more so as to not hurt my upline's feelings, but I was incredibly disturbed when I was recommended to apply for a line of credit to shoulder the credit card debt that would amass from attending this function. Essentially, using debt to pay off debt, which made absolutely no sense. The answers with which they attempted to address my concerns sounded so fake and mechanical that I couldn't help but pity them.
After that, I finally threw out all my CDs, had my credit card number changed,and ignored all attempts to reach me from those in Scamway.
I suppose the one good thing I garnered from all this, aside from the costly knowledge to never again associate with a MLM, is the strong emphasis that Scamway had on the power of association: Don't associate with people that will bring you down or don't have your best interests in heart, etc, as you'll become like who you frequent with. Cut them completely out of your life, and don't regret it.
Scamway has been cut and I certainly don't regret it. My finances don't either. I feel bad for the couple that first sponsored me in as well as my crosslines, but as far as the rich speakers, upline diamonds, and whoever else like that is concerned, they can all go suck on a fat one. And choke
Anonymous - the assholes in our upline were pressuring us to attend the next Scamway function while we were still attending the current one and had their hands out wanting to pay now. These functions are how the Diamonds earn most of their money. Speaking fees from the ticket proceeds the cult followers have to pay outrageous sums of money to listen to these bullshitters.
DeleteYup the Amway upline assholes counsel with all the cult followers to go into debt by way of credit card or bank loan to attend the next life changing can't be missed once in a lifetime opportunity function that's coming up. You may have even been counseled to skip paying your rent. You'll be a homeless broke Ambot then!
Yup get your sanity back by dropping all contact with Amway and the assholes in your upline. These are probably the most evil people you will ever meet in your life. Amway - the cult of greed.
@Annon.
DeleteAnna, this guy is impressively smart at his age. He learned fast and @ a young age the following wisdom:-
"I suppose the one good thing I garnered from all this, aside from the costly knowledge to never again associate with a MLM"
I am impressed by this exambot!
ExAmbot