Friday, May 8, 2015

Business Owner Or Amway Customer?

One of the silly things IBOs say is how they need to be their own best customer. That a McDonald's owner would never eat at Burger King, etc. That is complete hogwash. While there is nothing wrong with supporting your own business, IBOs are blinded by the fact that their business produces nothing. They are simply middlemen distributors. Do you really think diamonds consume thousands of dollars of standing orders because they own or profit from tool companies, which are for profit companies that produces training materials? Of course not. When you purchase something from your Amway business, you make no profit. Any "false" profit you see is simply money out of your own pocket moving to the other pocket. The Amway corporation makes the profit. Yes, you may receive a volume bonus, but that is still a lot of your own money being given back to you. Spend $300 and get back $10. If you can get enough people to follow you and move volume, your bonus will increase, but the increase then comes out of your follower's pockets instead of your own. The only real profit would be selling product to actual non IBO customers.

I know some business owners and they are never the best or sole customer of their own stores. Many Amway business owners are their only customers or their best customer. That simply is not how a business is run. Any REAL business cannot support itself by having the owners and perhaps the owner's employees as the primary customer base. For any business to thrive, you need customers and a demand for products. Without customers and a demand for products, you have no business. But some upline leaders still teach "buy from yourself" as the primary means of doing business. Other leaders may ask you to sell, but to focus on sponsoring others because they are hopeful that this will result in increased volume. Sadly, most IBOs will never sponsor a downline and many will never acquire a customer other than themselves.

It seems as though many IBOs think they are business owners but the reality is that they are simply glorified customers of their own business. Their only hope of making a profit is to sponsor others. In my opinion, this method of doing business is a pyramid because the only way to eventually make a profit is to sponsor enough downline until you can leverage enough volume to fimally break even or profit. An IBO with a real customer (and not buying tools) can make a profit by selling a single product. But many IBOs are not taught this because their upline makes a much bigger profit by selling to their downline IBOs standing orders, voicemail, books and seminar tickets. Many IBOs do not realize that they are simply customers of Amway and customers of the tools system.

For people already involved or considering involvement in the Amway opportunity, you are highly encouraged to seek more information and to fully understand how a profit is made in this business. Simply seeing circles drawn oversimplifies the process as most IBOs never get close to finding six (6) like minded people. Even those who find six are unlikely to be able to retain them. Over time, the cost of the products and the cost of the training will start to add up and the losses will escalate. For real business owners, an assessment of profit/loss and return on investment should be done and if the return is not good, a real business owner would consider other options.

So are you a business owner or a glorified customer?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Joe,

Yet another spot on assessment. I had to laugh as the verbatim McDonalds/BK reasoning flew off the page at me. That particular gem was used on me as I strode through a Walmart with my Ambot in concert with some more utter BS. There in front of us was a case of bottled water. 24 bottles for about 4 bucks and change. Now I had been obliviously drinking PERFECT water for awhile and I suggested we pick up a case of Nestle for what I thought was a good deal. My Ambot would have none of it and explained to me that the Walton family was already rich and that making ourselves rich meant buying products from ourselves. OK here is the crazy part. I asked for the first time how much a case of PERFECT water was. To my utter astonishment I was told it is about 50 bucks. OMG!!! How can anyone expect to be profitable flushing 45 dollars down the toilet?
Oh yeah I forgot the why make the Walton's rich when you can make the Van Andel and Devos family rich. Good god the hypocrisy is so thick that they can't see past the noses.

Joecool said...

Great comments. The perfect water brought back memories of all the shenanigans that the Amwayers pulled when it first came out. But yeah, I actually experiened all of this as a one time IBO. LOL