A New IBO Shares His Story

Hi!

I just wanted to contribute to your blog/website by sharing my story so far.

First of all, I am an IBO. However, my reasons for joining weren't strictly in line with Amway's BFYTODS spoon-fed garbage.

I'm a brand new IBO whose goals are the following:

1. Learn a new perspective on doing business, and see how exactly a MLM organisation works.

2. Help a friend see why Amway is a waste of time.

Amway Australia (from what I've seen) is touting itself as being part of the "Business with a System" quadrant of Robert Kiyosaki's Cash Flow Quadrant. While this is not entirely incorrect, the Diamond speakers at the workshops I've attended are emphasizing that MLM organisations are only what make up that quadrant: they fail to recognise that the "Business with a System" methodology can be achieved through other endeavours (such as franchising). They also completely disregard the Investor quadrant as being too risky; while the stock market has been affected by the economy recently, rising interests rates in Australia have made savings accounts a lucrative investment opportunity.

The most misleading statement I've heard is "setup your business once and then live your life how you want." While an Amway business, in theory, does provide an endless passive income it is far from once-only. The biggest bonuses are only obtained when your immediate downline has a bonus level below your own level. For example, consider the following...

(Note: This part is not included as the table as in the original email, it was all skewiff)

What this means is that the only way to maintain a substantial passive income is to ensure you've got several distributors (with a substantial distribution level - BV) with only people with lower bonus levels as your downlines. Essentially this alone makes it difficult to maintain a steady income, and means that you need to keep replenishing the people in your downline (as people will eventually give up if they're not receiving a substantial income) to ensure that your distribution amount (or Group BV) stays stable.

While Amway does produce some interesting products (eg. Glister Mouth Rinse concentrate), these are not the type of products you want to purchase on a monthly basis. In fact, the only product I think is worthwhile is the XS energy drink range. They're competitively priced with Red Bull, taste fairly good, and have a decent PV value. However, I'd be only buying them for the sake of buying them for the PV (I don't drink Red Bull all that often - a 2 litre bottle of cordial is far cheaper and will last a lot longer), which is absolutely ridiculous. It makes me wonder how the frivolous spending of IBOs affects our inflation.

I think I am done ranting, so if you have any questions please just email me so we can formulate a more structured article/blog post.

Regards,
(name removed)

We have indeed emailed this IBO with further questions but to date have not heard back....ah well, perhaps he achieved his goal of getting his friend out much quicker than he thought!