A take on the old phrase about keeping up with the Joneses. From Wikipedia:
"Keeping up with the Joneses" is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one's neighbor as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.
Living beyond one’s means can end in disaster. Financial ruin. Debt. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. Divorce.
Kind of like being in Amway.
In Amway the pressure is there all the time to have what everyone else has. Even in our case. We were abnormal in our line of sponsorship. One of very few who actually owned their house, drove nice cars, had retirement savings, etc.
So with us the upline had to go a different strategy and mostly target Ambot because I wasn’t too interested in what they had to say. The upline put the pressure on to reach certain levels: Platinum, Emerald, and then Diamond. All of this to be accomplished in 2 to 5 years. The pressure was put on Ambot to get to that level because everyone else in the WWDB line would be reaching those levels at the same time and we didn’t want to be left behind did we.
Then of course there are the Amway functions with slide shows of the Diamond lifestyle. Mansions, sports cars, yachts, private jets, luxury vacations.
To reach that coveted level we had to buy Amway products and motivational tools and find others to do the same. Ambot always bought more than enough Amway products each month to make over 100 PV but the upline still phoned and badgered him. Upline Asshole has this much PV this month. Surely you want to beat him and get to Platinum before him. That kind of bullshit.
The pressure was always on Ambot to buy things like motivational tools that others in the WWDB group hadn’t bought so he could be one up on them and that meant the rest of them had to keep up with us.
It was just a crazy roller coaster and maybe keeping up with the ambots gets worse the higher up you get. Other bloggers have commented on Diamonds who have declared bankruptcy and gone into foreclosure and provided links to where the documentation can be found online. No doubt in my mind that those Diamonds have to keep up and surpass each other when it comes to material possessions which has led to their financial downfall.
There were other things that Ambot purchased during the time we were in Amway that had nothing to do with the pyramid scheme but were general purchases for things around the house. Things that pissed me off because we had no need for them but he had to buy them so he’d look good in front of the other ambots.
To sum it up when we were in Amway we spent money buying things we didn’t need (both Amway products and material possessions) just so Ambot could impress people I did not like.
Yup real mature. Real good reason to be involved in the shitty Amway business. Gotta keep up with those ambots!
Since practically no Amway products are sold to the general public, it's necessary for up-line to promote consumption by down-line IBOs.
ReplyDeleteThis means badgering them to hit high PV levels, and to purchase all sorts of things that the IBO doesn't really want or need. Up-line will say to down-line, not "This is something nice," but "This is something you have to buy to maintain your status and to look better than somebody else on the team."
The whole thing is the absolute antithesis of a real business. In a real business, you make money by selling products to the general public and by generating good sales figures that will lead to promotion. In Amway, all you do is browbeat your down-line to make their monthly PV requirement, and then order them to purchase other crap that they don't want.
Amway isn't a business. It's a make-believe fantasy world. That's why almost everyone in it drops out after a few months.
Anonymous - as you said - in order to make money real business owners sell real products that real customers want to buy. Amway Ambots are pretend business owners with pretend customers so they self consume. Buy from your own store - Amway cult leaders browbeat the downline. If you're a real business owner you'd know pretty damned fast if you are the only customer - that is not a sustainable business. So Amway Ambots spend a lot of money buying unwanted Amway shit and buying other random shit so they can impress the fucking assholes in the Amway upline. Just to keep up with the Ambots and impress a bunch of fucking Amway losers.
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