Monday, June 9, 2014

The Amway Facade

When I was an Amway recruit, I saw the presentation at a nice hotel. The person who invited me told me to be sure I arrived on time because this was business and that time was money. Ironically, the speaker arrived late and I didn't understand the standing ovation that he received. I recall how the speaker was touted as having accomplished something of greatness, as if the speaker was special. Looking back now, I can see that the diamond was just up on a pedestal because it was needed in order to create the Amway facade, or the illusion of something special.

The speaker arrived in a Mercedes and other IBO's ushered him to the stage. He got up and seemed relatable to the masses in the audience. He spoke about how he thought he was "doing okay" financially but eventually realized he was in a rut and running in the rate race. Then one du out of the blue, someone called him and invited him to a financial presentation. Just so happened that he had nothing going on at the time so he attended. He eventually got interested and joined and now he's a diamond.

He spoke about how he wakes up at noon and goes where he wants because of Amway. He spoke about the Petere Island trip that Amway sponsored him on when he qualified and he spoke about golfing and being financially free. Many people in the audience were envious and were nodding in agreement that this was what they wanted. He then proceeded to say that everyone should be open minded that that it should not matter it it was "Amway" that delivered this lifestyle. This was back in around 1997 when Amway was growing in Hawaii.

What nobody realized was that being a diamond isn't all that. I later found out that our diamond was constantly out working the business (probably because he had to) and when I asked about this, my sponsor said he did it for love. I now know this is BS and that he could not "walk away" from the business and live in luxury and residual income. What I found is that many diamonds don't earn that much, and may not even be qualified as diamonds anymore. They keep working because they need to in order to receive tool money (from cds and functions) and likely struggle financially because they put up the "facade" of success. They likely live very middle class lifestyles but need to portray the diamond lifestyle to recruit new prospects.

Take a closer look if you can, and you are likely to see what I saw.

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