Amway Global - Joecool's Experience in Amway (Re-Print)

About JoeCool

Some people have asked me why I am a quixtar critic so I will tell my story.

I had two brushes with Amway. The first time I was in college and a friend invited me to a beer bust. I arrive at the house and voila! It’s an Amway meeting. Needless to say, I sat through the house meeting and I left after the meeting, very negative about Amway.

Fast forward to late 1995. A good friend of mine called and said he was very excited about a new opportunity he was involved with. I agreed to meet with him and when he arrived at my house wearing a suit, I knew it was Amway. Anyways, I bought some stuff from him and told him if he ever made any money in the business, I would look at it again. About two years later this friend calls me. He said he had become a direct distributor and could teach me how to do it and that it was easy. Seeing someone I actually knew reach a significant level made it seem real, that maybe I could in fact do the same.

I went to see the plan again, and I signed up in 1997. My plan was to retail some specialty product to a niche market, and move volume. My sponsor (an old friend) asked me why I would not strive to achieve more. In other words, if I was going to take the time to run a business, why not try for the big bucks, after all, he was direct and could teach me. So I trusted him and signed up for standing order, and started to attend the functions.

In my first month of business, I did my 100 PV. By month two, I had personally sponsored 4 people and I was at 1500 PV. Fired up, got to cross stage as a brand new 1000 pin at the Leadership function. Well, my group kept growing, three months later I was at 4000 PV. I started to think about going direct, “earning time” with the diamond, and how cool it would be to work the doors at the functions. What’s perplexing to me is that despite making some profit from Amway, I did take note that the tapes and functions were taking away all my profits and then some, but upline kept saying the money would be there, just keep building.

All the while I was building the business, my girlfriend was supportive, and she accepted the fact that I had limited time to spend with her but at the same time she was excited to see my business growing. Well, in month 8 of my experience, I had a counseling session with my upline. He sat down and told me that he was proud of me. He did however, have a suggestion that would propel me to direct, and to emerald. I excitedly asked him what that was. He told me to “ace my girlfriend” Fiancee at the time). He felt that I could build the business faster without her and that a lot of girls would be interested in a single ruby or emerald.

It was at that moment when I decided that the business was not worth it. For the last 8 months, I had spent most of my time building the business hard, and I had nothing to show for it. Now my upline is telling (advising me) to get rid of my soon to be wife. Well, I quit about a week later. I stayed active a little bit longer (retail only) to provide to some customers I had.

In the subsequent years, I read more and more about the tools industry being the driving force behind the diamond’s lifestyles. I later discovered Qblog and due to my wife’s fondness of “snoopy”, I took on the handle of “Joecool18”. The 18 was just a number I once had on an email account but I kept it.

My upline was a very close and trusted friend. When he advised me to trust him, I did. I was one of his close “inner circle” IBO’s. My trusted friend was also my physician, who treated me several times. People ask how someone can do what seems silly in this business. Well, in my case you can see why. I bought standing order, plus 5-7 extra tapes each week. I never missed a meeting. I arrived early, left late. I bought extra function tickets. Luckily for me, I saw the light before too much damage was done.

The business is generally filled with nice, motivated people. The problem is that their critical thinking is turned off, because many like me, were probably sponsored by someone they knew and trusted. (People who are murdered are often killed by someone they know as well). The teaching system, if you are not careful, will slowly drain you of resources, and the system does not produce results. For whatever reason, the government has not looked into the motivational organizations. Until something is done, I will do my best to inform prospects about the secrets of the business so they can at least make an informed decision as to whether they should do the business or not.