You Didn’t Try Hard Enough!

“You didn’t try hard enough!” Is the battle cry of brainwashed ambots.

I’ve heard it lots of times. At Amway meetings and especially since I’ve been writing this blog. Some brainwashed ambot who has been religiously studying at Amspeak College shows up to accuse me of not trying hard enough.

However not one single ambot who I know personally or who enjoys reading and commenting on “negative” blogs like mine has ever once defined the criteria of what is “trying hard enough”. Or for that matter what “not trying hard enough” is either.

My ambot husband wanted to succeed at this Amway business, even though the odds - with a 99% failure rate - were stacked against him that he wouldn't. More than the promised financial freedom with the gazillions of dollars in residual income that would magically show up each month in our bank account, success in Amway would mean basking in the bliss from the Amway cult leaders that he adored so much.

All over the Internet are blogs and forums from former Amway IBO’s who say pretty much the same thing. They worked hard, put a lot of hours and effort into building an Amway business, and despite doing everything their cult leaders told them to do and being CORE it didn’t work out.

Similar to the ambot battle cry of not trying hard enough that is also the same flimsy accusation they fling out at former IBO’s who didn’t sponsor anyone - because they didn’t try hard enough.

Some Amway IBO’s sign up due to pressure from whoever the recruiting ambot is - more than likely a family member or good friend. Anyone else and they would have probably told the ambots to go fuck themselves. These unwilling IBO’s paid their $150, got their start up kit, and that was the extent of their Amway involvement. They never had no intention of putting in any work, just wanted to help out the person who hounded them into signing up and get them off their back. Those are not the same people who get the word out on the Internet about how they were scammed into the Amway cult and tell their story of what really happens when you’re an Amway IBO because they really have no idea what happens if their only involvement was paying the registration fee and telling the sponsor to fuck off and leave them alone.

My Ambot worked hard and put in plenty of effort to build an Amway business. He spent hours glued to the computer taking the Amway university program. He spent hours studying the Amway literature and product magazines. He memorized everything. He could answer questions about the Amway board plan or Amway products and knew as much or more than his upline. He spent hours listening to tapes. Oh fuck. Make that CDs! Every time I say tapes instead of CDs IBOFB shits his diapers and demands to know where I found tapes from since no one’s made them forever! Ambot read books that his upline pressured him to buy. He spent many hours each week hounding prospects to come to meetings. He went to every Amway meeting, rally, seminar, and major function. All those meetings ate up at least 50 hours a month and if a major function out of state for the weekend was in there, easily over 100 hours a month attending Amway meetings including travelling to them.

Let’s not forget the hours each week he spent talking on the phone and dealing with the endless text messages from the fucking upline assholes.

Ambot easily doubled, if not tripled, Amway’s estimate of 10 to 15 hours per week once all the meetings, listening to tapes, and studying Amway is added up.

Ambot put in plenty of time and effort and his upline still rode his ass accusing him of not working hard enough. He was told the reason he wasn’t succeeding at the Amway business was because he was lazy and not trying hard enough.

Let’s see. Someone investing at least 100 hours a month into any project is not a lazy person. They are on a mission and determined to succeed and accomplish their goal even when the odds are stacked against them, like Amway’s success rate of making around 100k/year is a fraction of less than 1%.

Uh dumb ass ambot husband. That’s less money than you make with your legitimate business. And more hours invested in Amway than your legitimate business. You going backwards just because you’ve been brainwashed by some lousy fucked up Amway cult leaders?

What kind of motivation techniques is the upline using accusing people of being lazy, not trying, not working hard enough? This is clearly more than my Ambot’s upline because so many former IBO’s have the same story that their upline said the exact same thing. And clearly is still being taught today judging by its pretty much in every comment left on my blog by some angry brainwashed ambot.

“Didn’t try hard enough!”

Yeah? Well fuck you!

What exactly is the definition of “trying hard enough” when it comes to Amway? Clearly it is spending more than 100 hours a month attending Amway meetings, functions, prospecting, etc. It is clearly spending more than $1000/month on Amway and Amway tools like my ambot husband.

And how does the fucking Amway upline motivate their cult followers to keep trying? Oh wait. Those bastards do not motivate. They brainwash. Like the good Amway cult leaders they have been trained to be, they scold, they mock, they punish, they blame. Even more than wanting to succeed at an Amway business, the followers want to please their leader. They try harder, they put in more effort like 100 hours a month wasn’t already trying hard enough. The ambots are scolded and belittled time after time when they don’t get results. The Amway cult leaders blame the ambots for their own lack of success.

Never blame the Amway system designed for failure and Amway tools and overpriced Amway products. Blame the ambots instead! They didn’t try hard enough.

Fortunately, many IBO’s get tired of this degrading treatment and quit “the business”. Now the only thing they have to do is try hard enough to keep one step ahead of their Amway upline who will be hopping mad that they have lost this stream of income.

Who's Really Running the Scam?

Anna Banana has been accused of running a scam from my Married to an Ambot blog from an anonymous poster from Bangalore, Karnataka, India, ironically enough on a post I wrote about how Amway causes hate and rage cause this person must really be feeling the hate and rage from Amway or I doubt they would have dropped by to read. http://marriedtoanambot.blogspot.com/2011/09/amway-creates-hate-and-rage.html

Maybe its the language barrier?

So I checked dictionary.com for a definition of scam:

a confidence game or other fraudulent scheme, especially for making a quick profit; swindle

For those of you who don’t know a confidence game is how “con” or “con man” came into being, just a shortened version of confidence game. If you are running a confidence game you are befriending someone and gaining their confidence so that you can swindle them out of their money or other belongings.

Just like what happened to us - or more specifically my Ambot! - when we were in Amway.

So I thought I would break it down for my ignorant Indian visitor on who is really running a scam here.

	Anna Banana	Amway
Charges annual fee	no	yes
Sells useless products	no	yes
Sells overpriced products	no	yes
Sells useless products	no	yes
Sells any type of product	no	yes
Sells motivational material	no	yes
Exaggerates product benefits	no	yes
Makes phony income claims	no	yes
Sells tickets to seminars	no	yes
Causes financial distress	no	yes
Destroys marriages	no	yes
Destroys relationships	no	yes
Makes others ask permission	no	yes
Controls information	no	yes
Causes bankruptcy	no	yes
Running a cult	no	yes
Brainwashes people	no	yes
Encourages people to lie	no	yes
Labels people losers	Only ambots!	yes
Cares about people	yes	no
Tells the truth	yes	no

To recap I do not charge anyone a fee either annually or per visit to read my blog. I do not sell any products to my visitors. At least not as of November 15 2011. Who knows what the future holds? Ha ha. Really I got nothing to sell. I do not ask any readers to send me money or material possessions. Oh. If anyone has any leftover Halloween candies they want to get rid of I’d be happy to take them off your hands! Ha ha!

The thing about Anna Banana is that I do not try to get money or other items off any of my readers. I am not collecting anything other than information about what really goes on when a person is involved in Amway. I am not lying about how much money can be made in Amway. How can I be running a scam if I don’t receive some kind of benefit? What’s in it for me?

I’m afraid I have fallen victim to a brainwashed ambot who doesn’t know they’re being scammed. In their anger and confusion this anonymous poster from India is twisting the truth for their own benefit and accusing me of running a scam.

People can come here and read my Married to an Ambot blog for free. They are not being fucked over and ordered to hand over some cash before reading the next post.

Very odd. Perhaps Anonymous from Bangalore, Karnataka, India can come back and clarify how much money I’m earning from this scam of a blog because so far I ain’t seen a penny!

Amway is the Best Business Opportunity in the World! According to one IBO....

So what did you all do? Go back to jobs without any security? Amway is the best business opportunity in the world.

The above gem is part of a comment a brainwashed ambot left on my post about Amway CDs and tapes http://marriedtoanambot.blogspot.com/2010/11/amway-tapes-and-cds.html

His entire comment was full of the usual amspeak bullshit that every brainwashed ambot who feels compelled to leave a comment on my blog uses. How original. Not!

As for the “Amway is the best business opportunity in the world” promotion I included it here so that everyone can shake their heads at his stupidity. Also I think his quote is something that I can see brainwashed ambots searching for. Seeing as how my blog gets thousands of hits a month and I’m high on the search engines for just about everything some brainwashed IBO can possibly search for, I’m taking advantage of these key words to propel myself to the top of the search engine pages for this one too. Probably not what that little bastard had in mind but oh well. That’s what happens when you leave a comment anonymously you can’t go back and delete it.

Hmmm....I went back to a job without security after we quit Amway? Nope. My husband and I now had more time to concentrate on our own business and have more free time together instead of wasting time at Amway meetings and being bored by ambots. We also have more money in our bank accounts and no longer have to worry about running up more credit card debt trying to fund the Amway dream of financial independence.

That comment about jobs with no security came straight from an Amway meeting. Full of doom and gloom. There’s nothing else out there except for the Amway business opportunity (gotta get more keywords in!). To further punctuate it the Amway cult leader preaches that there are no jobs out there with job security. Certainly there are occupations out there where job security is a thing of the past. With the computer age and technology jobs have been eliminated. Some industries shut down and have a trickle down effect to other jobs in the community. There are many people in service positions whose jobs likely won’t be eliminated. For all that rotten little ambot knows I drive an ambulance and as long as people need to be transported for medical attention I have a job.

At least 95% of IBO’s who sign up with Amway lose money and quit within the first two years. What kind of security is that? Paying your Amway employer hundreds of dollars every month and barely making any money back in commission. Always at a net loss.

What kind of security is there in getting involved with a scam?

It never fails to amaze me how every ambot out there thinks that everyone else, especially me, has a job. And how they always accuse us of working a job for someone else like that is a horrible, evil thing to do. As far as I’m concerned nothing else could be more horrible or evil than Amway! It is apparently inconceivable to brainwashed ambots that there are people in the world who do not have jobs working for someone else. Many people do have employers and there’s nothing wrong with that, unless of course you’re an ambot and sneering at them. Other people are self employed, own businesses, unemployed, medically incapable of working, or live off their investments. Amway ambots refuse to accept that there are tons of reasons why not everybody has an employer and is working a job.

When ambots quit Amway they better hope they have a job or your own business or some other kind of income to support them and pay off some of the debt they accrued thanks to Amway.

As for going back to a job without any security, if I had the choice between finding a job or getting involved with Amway again I’d take the job option. Its called choosing the lesser of two evils.

Having Trouble Quitting Amway?

I’m amazed and a little concerned over the amount of people showing up at my blog after doing a Google search for “how to quit Amway”. Many hits daily using that search criteria. For me quitting seems simple enough. Stop buying Amway products. Stop buying tools. Stop going to meetings. Stop going to functions. Stop listening to tapes/CD’s. Do not renew your annual membership at year end. But apparently quitting Amway isn’t that easy for everyone because they search on the Internet for how to do it. And I really feel a lot of sympathy for these people who are trying to quit and get their lives back in order and need assistance to GET OUT.

Is the real question “how to quit Amway” or is it “how to quit the cult”?

Being an Amway Independent Business Owner is just a glorified way of titling a commissioned salesperson. Commissioned salespeople work for other people. If you work for someone else then you have a job. Quitting a job is easy enough. You either put in your two weeks notice or you say fuck you I’m outta here. And then you walk and don’t come back. What do you invest in a job? Time and effort. In return you get a paycheck. What do invest in a cult? Time, friendship, money, brain cells.... In return you get a depleted bank account, debt, destroyed relationships, and emotional distress to name a few.

Just shows what brainwashing does to a person involved in Amway.

The IBO has been conditioned by their upline to shut out people who are considered “negative”. These are family and friends who have researched the Amway cult and try to show the IBO the truth about what they’ve gotten themselves into.

Once the IBO figures out they’re not making any money at Amway and unlikely to ever do so, they know its time to quit. The IBO finds themselves in a position of fighting back against the mind control techniques that have been used on them to motivate them to stay with Amway. They might be reluctant to ask friends and family for assistance because they’ve already shut out these negative people and admitting Amway defeat might subject them to a bunch of “I told you so’s”.

The best thing for someone who wants to quit Amway is to get on the Internet and find blogs and articles written by former Amway cult members. They need to get information about Amway and the cult brainwashing techniques and the best place to understand is from someone who has already gone through this.

Depending on how deeply the IBO has been brainwashed, therapy might be a solution particularly if a therapist experienced at dealing with cults and deprogramming former cult members can be located. Not an easy task in Smalltown, USA which is why many turn to the Internet.

I remember reading Eric Scheibeler’s book Merchants of Deception when he’d figured out the truth about Amway and the tool scam and was trying to quit. He thought leaving Amway might be difficult for his wife because the two of them had devoted ten years of their lives to building their Amway business to the Emerald level not to mention tens of thousands of dollars invested in the scheme. He was surprised when his wife told him she hadn’t listened to an Amway motivational tape in months. She was deprogramming herself.

During the last 6 or 7 months my Ambot was clinging to Amway he stopped buying CD’s. I’m not so certain that he just wasn’t playing the old ones over and over but his name must have been shit with the upline when he stopped buying CD’s, though he attended one major function and paid up his WWDB Premier Membership ($49.95/month) and Communikate ($36.95/month) nearly to the end. During those last months Ambot bought Amway products totalling under $1000. Whew! What a relief when during the first few months of his involvement he would easily spend over $1000 in one month. In 2 of those last months he met the minimum 100PV to earn a check around $10. You can see how outraged his upline was because they weren’t making as much money off Ambot anymore.

Sometimes quitting Amway has to be a gradual process. Stop buying and listening to their brainwashing CD’s. Stop going to meetings or cut back. I mean how many times a week do you have to listen to the sack of shit Platinum say the same thing????  Eventually one of the leaders is going to ride the IBO’s ass about buying tools or products or attending functions so there might be some minor setbacks because the IBO is still indoctrinated enough not to disobey the cult leader’s wishes.

Amway is a trap. Getting into Amway is the easy part. Busting past the Amway exit barriers including unable to recover money invested and the psychological damage is easier said than done.

Like any other bad habit not everyone can quit cold turkey. Hang in there. Keep researching. Claw your way back to reality. Getting your life and finances back in order is the next hurdle. Been there done that. Good luck to anyone else on that journey.

How to Listen to Amway Tapes

OK. Who would do a search titled “how to listen to Amway tapes”?

Umm. You put the tape into a cassette player, push the play button, and listen to it?

Years ago I worked for a company that was located in a 5 story building. A couple of other companies had offices in the our building. I was down on the main floor bringing some work to the receptionist and probably chatting for a few minutes. A couple walked across the lobby and got into the elevator. The man - in his 20’s - held the door open, poked his head out, and called over:

“Which button do I press for the third floor?”

“Three?” The receptionist suggests in the tone she uses when dealing with idiots.

The elevator door closes and we break down laughing.

OK well maybe you had to be there....

Perhaps this poor lost IBO has already asked his upline that question and didn’t get a satisfactory answer so he now takes to the Internet in his quest to find that information and ends up at my post about Amway CD’s and tapes.

“How to listen to Amway tapes?”

Hmm, maybe you should be drunk first? Turn the volume way down so you don't piss off anyone else within earshot. Do whatever it takes not to get brainwashed by that shit. A better plan would be to burn them.

I wonder if IBOFB is reading this post. He’ll be shitting his pants demanding who has got their hands on Amway tapes because he claims they went out with the last century.

Amway Nightmares

Don’t you just hate it when you wake up and can’t get back to sleep again? Even more so when whatever you were just dreaming about keeps you awake thinking about it and then thinking about other things that may be connected to that dream.

Well last night was one of those nights for me or I should say early this morning.

I was dreaming that I was standing somewhere talking to a person when out of the blue someone shot them. I saw who it was. Our Amway cult leader so I decided to get the hell out of there ASAP. That was when he started chasing me and kept shooting. I eluded him for a long time and then he caught up and shot someone else who was near to me. Then the Amway cult leader tells me he’s shooting people who won’t listen to tapes and that he won’t shoot me as long as I go to this location and listen to a tape. And just so he knows I’m going to the location he gives this top to me to wear that has a recording device on it so he’ll know if I’m asking anyone for help so he can kill both of us. I remember getting to the location but didn’t listen to the tape before I made another getaway and woke up. Even in my subconscious I still refuse to listen to Amway tapes! Fortunately my Ambot was not in my dream so I know he wasn't killed. Yeah it was a bizarre dream with the cult leader killing anyone who wouldn’t listen to Amway tapes. The man chasing me didn’t look a thing like our Platinum cult leader. He looked more like another infamous cult leader - Charles Manson - except this one’s hair and beard were a lighter color.

When I read Eric Scheibeler’s book Merchants of Deception he stated that some of the Amway cult followers told him they would do anything for their hallowed leaders. Die for them. Kill for them. No hidden message here about the threats. He genuinely feared for his life and his family.

Its incredible the horrible acts that cult followers can be induced to commit that they never would have considered prior to joining the cult. I don't think Scheibeler's upline were all that different than my own.

At meetings our Platinum cult leader often told us about the guy who recruited him into Amway. I never met the guy. He had long since quit Amway. Several people upline of the Platinum had quit over 10 or 15 years so now the person directly above our Platinum was the Emerald because everyone else inbetween had dropped out. When the Platinum sack of shit told us about his sponsor he said he threatened him when he signed up with Amway. Told him that if he didn’t make any money at Amway then he would break the guys arms and legs. Sometimes he’d change the story slightly and say the guys arms and legs would be torn out. You know if it was me I wouldn’t go around bragging about something like that. If anything ever happened to that sponsor, even after all these years, who is the first person who’s going to be a suspect?

Our Platinum claims to be a good Christian and at every Amway meeting told us that God is number one in his life. I don’t know. Good Christians go around threatening to tear out people’s limbs if they don't make money in Amway?

For Christsakes we'd be running into one armed and one legged people everywhere we go!

Kind of like Jack the Ripper. This guy ought to be known as Platinum the Ripper.

I just thought it was kind of stupid of the Platinum telling us this story at all and especially telling it when we’ve got a tape recorder running. One of these things that could come back and haunt him. I think the Platinum used that story as a moral that he made money in Amway because its easy to make money in Amway, therefore his sponsor didn't need to go in for limb replacement surgery.

But is our Platinum really making any money? For all I know there's a guy somewhere out there who's had his arms and legs removed all in the name of Amway upline devotion.

Another Wife's Amway Horror Story

Here’s a post I found on the Internet from a few years ago and the wife refers to the cost of tapes ten years before, so lets say they were in Amway through the mid-90s. Just in case anyone is wondering I didn’t edit the story just copied and pasted. Even though they used a bunch of  **** to avoid saying bastards, I have no problem saying it like it is!

Its so spooky even 15 years apart how so many of us have similar stories:

When I realized my husband would never be able to bring himself to do the things they asked in order to "build the business", I asked, and then begged that he stop spending the money on books and tapes, seminars and major rallies.

He just kept going on with it, and the longer it went the more I realized that the primary reason we could not get any real help from our upline was that they were already making plenty of money from us off of their share of the tapes, books, seminars, and rallies. Just one example; it costs pennies each to mass duplicate a tape of one of these "upline" talking at a rally, and our price for the two tapes of the week ten years ago was over $7.00 each!

Finally I asked our oh-so-caring sponsors to talk to him and get him to drop the business since he was obviously not going to work it. Instead, they encouraged him to continue having contact with them behind my back, he got a credit card that I did not know about and put $6,000 on it while pulling the bills out of the mail so that I never saw them.

This was because I was working a second job to try and pay off the other two credit cards, 80+% of which were charged up with Amway crap. I was giving him $400 a month that he was supposed to be directly applying to charge cards. Instead, he was making the minimum payments and spending the cash on more motivational crap. They told him he was doing the right thing because once he became successful it would all be made up to me, in spades.

$16,000 spent in four years. One marriage nearly ruined. Bankruptcy. And to this day he will not throw out the pictures of himself with those Diamonds and Emeralds. He's not the same person and never will be, thanks to the brainwashing techniques they use, which strongly resemble those used by religious cults.

The only time in my life that I would refuse to urinate on one of those rat-faced Amway ba****** would be if he or she were on fire.

To read the original post and the ensuing comments

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/amwaycom-quixtar-c3441.html

It has the usual typical following with people sharing their Amway horror stories but it doesn’t take long for the first ambot to show up and say there was something wrong with their marriage to begin with. A few brainwashed ambots show up to praise the glories of their hallowed cult with the typical Amway speak. Like we’ve all heard it hundreds of times before.

They’re lucky only $16,000 was spent in four years. These days that would not be an unreasonable amount to spend in only one year. There are more tools related expenses these days, cost of functions has gone up, as well as travel, food, and accommodations for the functions.

Let’s compare this wife’s story against mine using this check list:

1. Wife asks/begs husband to quit. Check.
2. Upline making money off the downline victim. Check.
3. Sponsor doesn’t give a flying fuck about the wife. Check.
4. Husband racking up the credit card bill. Check.
5. Husband sneaking around behind the wife’s back to associate with the Amway cult. Check.
6. Husband only making minimum payment on credit card bills so he still has money to buy more Amway shit and motivational products. Check.
7. Bullshit propaganda from the upline about how one day the husband will be successful. Check.
8. Thousands of dollars spent on Amway. Check.
9. Marriage nearly ruined. Check.
10. Husband has been brainwashed by the cult. Check.
11. Wife calls the upline “rat-faced Amway bastards”. Check.

OK. OK. I know on point # 11 I call those upline bastards a lot worse than she does but close enough so you get the point.

I did not write that story but I could have just as thousands of other Amway widows could have written it. Its my story, their story, our story. The story never changes. Just the players.

Amway Tapes and CD’s

I’m sure there are many spouses out there who hated listening to the dreaded Amway tapes or CD’s that were purchased weekly.

These tapes/CD’s the upline said were crucial to building your business! “If you’re serious about building your business you must buy the tapes!” That was the broken record recording from the cult leader.

Not a single one of those tapes offered any solid business advice. Mostly they’re what could loosely be termed motivational or more clearly “see how I overcame life’s obstacles to become successful at Amway”. These bastards all have the same story told slightly differently. The wife works at McDonald’s. The husband works on a pig farm shovelling shit. Their meager incomes barely cover their monthly living expenses. Then a very dear friend showed them the plan. They had to scrape money together to make it to the functions. And how come every one of them had to borrow $20 from a relative to put gas in the car’s tank to drive to a function? And now look at them. They worked hard and now they have a mansion and fancy cars and walk the beaches of the world.

Its bad enough listening to this shit. But get this. Ambot cranked the stereo. Now it became like one of those fire and brimstone sermons that I’ve seen in the movies where the preacher is screaming at the congregation at the top of his lungs so that they can find salvation.

Play any one of those Amway tapes with the stereo cranked and you get the same results: ARE YOU CORE? WHY NOT????? ARE YOU TAKING DOUBLE X EVERY DAY? DO YOU KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU DON’T TAKE NUTRILITE VITAMINS? YOUR BODY WILL SHUT DOWN AND DIE!!!!!

Oh my God. I hated those tapes! All those fucking idiots screaming at the top of their lungs. What was even worse was sometimes we’d be driving friends or family somewhere and Ambot would blast the stereo. Very rude! How are we supposed to have a conversation with our guests with some asshole on a CD screaming: DON’T DRESS LIKE A SLUT FOR BUSINESS MEETINGS!!!!!!!!!

Its bad enough listening to that shit at normal volume but cranked as high as the car stereo will go? Ohhhh. Shudders. The horror of it.

Then there are the stacks of CD’s that were never opened and listened to. We were always told that our sponsor and/or upline would take them back and refund our money. Nope, that was another lie. When Ambot got out he asked his sponsor Captain Fuck Up to take the unopened CD’s back and refund his money. Captain Fuck Up refused stating he was broke and had no money to refund him. Ambot went further upline and finally got someone who offered ten cents apiece. Well yeah even at ten cents that’s too much money for that shit but Ambot bought them for $2 to $5 apiece and that money was paid to Captain Fuck Up who didn’t always give him the CD’s or books that he’d purchased because he’s a disorganized asshole and couldn’t find them.

Yep we’re just a couple more suckers who got ripped off in more ways than one being in the Amway business.