What is this account about ?

This is an account of some of our experiences over a three year period as Amway distributors in the United Kingdom, within the International Business Systems (IBS) Motivational Organisation. IBS is an organisation run by two couples, Pat and Greta Gregory and Jerry and Mandy Scriven, that states as its aim that it is there to help Amway distributors develop their business.

1. Purpose of writing this

The purpose of producing this is to share our experiences with others who may be interested in gaining some insight into the workings of an Amway Motivational Organisation (AMO) here in the UK. The views expressed here are my own and are based on personal experience of being an Amway distributor within the IBS AMO.

I hope that the information in this article may be of interest to those who wish to find out more about Amway and IBS, and also to distributors who may be assessing their current involvement in the business or who have left the business and who would like to try to come to terms with the experiences that they have had.

I would also like to address the question "Is IBS any different from other AMO’s that one hears about, and if so in what ways?". This is important because AMO’s generally have come in for a lot of criticism from several quarters (Including the Amway Corporation itself) but as distributors within IBS we were always told that IBS was not only different to, but also better than, other AMO’s that claimed to help people develop Amway businesses. I will only be able to partially answer this questions because we never developed the business to a level where we would have become party to information that would help to answer certain questions. What would be required for that to happen would be for IBS to become much more open about the way that they operate certain aspects of the organisation or for one of the higher level distributors (Emerald or above) to become disenchanted with the set-up and ‘go public’ with their experiences - as has happened, I understand, in other AMO’s.

This account is also partly cathartic. Our experiences in IBS were mixed, but mostly negative. It is now about 3 years since we severed all ties to IBS and Amway and I now feel able to look back objectively at our experiences, evaluate them and try to finally get IBS out of my system!

In writing this account I will probably be using words and phrases who’s meaning may not be clear to someone who has never been involved in, or studied, multi-level marketing (MLM) e.g. up-line, sponsor, pin-level, prospect etc’. Readers who would like to obtain an understanding of what these mean and how the MLM business model works are recommended to visit http......... ........ ....... ....... Also, I have, in places, provided links to other sites where aspects of the business are more fully explained.

You will note that this account is anonymous. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly I am generally not proud of my involvement with IBS. In fact I’d go further and say that I’m really rather embarrassed by many of the things that I found myself doing in IBS (all fully condoned and ‘taught’ by the the IBS ‘system’). Secondly I make some personal references in this account e.g. with regard to our up-line, and so I consider that I owe it to them, as a common courtesy, not to cause them any embarrassment.

A word here to current Amway/IBS distributors who read this account and who may be prompted to e-mail the host of this site with comments. I’m sure that Ron Johnston would be happy to receive comments that are constructive and that add something to the debate surrounding Amway/ IBS and AMO’s generally. I would ask thought that if you just intend to send in some of the usual "...... so you’re just a broke loser who couldn’t see the whole picture, who lost the dream, who is prepared to be a slave to your J.O.B and who was not prepared to pay the price etc’ etc’ " then I’d ask you please not to bother. It has all been heard before, it is mostly nonsense, you are just repeating what you’ve heard others say, I know why you are saying it because I used to say the same things - and in addition to all that it is very boring! If that is all that you have to add to the discussion then you’d be better off ignoring this site and putting your energies into going diamond. However, if in the future you re-evaluate your activities in IBS then, when you’ve come to terms with that situation, it would be interesting to hear your views on your experiences. It would also be interesting to hear from ex IBS distributors about how their experiences compare with the ones we had.

I am indebted to Ron Johnston for agreeing to host this on his site. Without his support this account would not be ‘aired’ as it is probably fair to say that I know more about brain surgery than I do about computers and creating web sites!

Background - How we came to be involved.

About 6 years ago I bumped into an ex-colleague. After the usual pleasantries he informed me that he had his own business and that it was going really well. He asked if I had ever thought of developing my own business. I said that I had not and he replied that he was somewhat surprised to hear me say that, given what a talented chap I was etc’. (Anyone heard that sort of thing before?) As we parted company he mentioned that there might be an opportunity for someone like me to work with him in developing his business and that, although he could not promise anything, he might be prepared to meet me sometime to discuss it further.

I gave him my telephone number and put our meeting to the back of my mind.

He rang me about a month later and suggested that he and I and my wife meet up for an informal chat about the business that he had mentioned. He called around to our house one evening and showed us the Amway Business Plan. I will not go into details about what was presented to us that evening as that is covered quite well on other internet sites. See http........... and http ........................

If you are really curious you could always invite yourself to one of IBS’s open business meetings where a "very successful person" will explain the Amway business plan to a group of people - usually in a function room in a hotel. You can go along and listen. Just dress in a business suit and they will let you in. If they ask who invited you there just say that an old friend contacted you about the IBS business and suggested that you go along to that meeting to find out more, and would they mind if you sat in and listened. You’ll probably have to pay about £3-00 ‘admission’. Who knows, you might conclude that an IBS/Amway business is the best thing since sliced bread and so decide to become and IBS distributor. Be careful though, you’d be well advised to visit several anti and pro Amway sites on the internet beforehand so that you are well informed before you throw yourself into their arms. You should be aware that many of those people have PhD’s in Advanced Cunning awarded by the University of Cunning - and that many of them have even adopted Cunning as their middle name You have been warned!

Anyway, the upshot was that we went along to a half-day IBS Business Seminar and then got started as distributors who, with the help of our sponsors (very experienced Direct Distributors intent upon becoming emeralds) intended to develop a network of downline distributors. We were ‘on-board’ and we were ‘fired-up’!!
 

3. Our degree of involvement

As we were personally sponsored by Direct Distributors, who had considerable experience and a sizeable business, we were in ‘good hands’ in the sense of being taught ‘correctly’ how to develop our business. i.e. according to the IBS System. We did everything our sponsors advised us to do in order to be successful - i.e. attended every single Local Plan Training, Monthly Regional Business Seminar, National Weekend Seminar, Upline counselling, purchased at least one tape every week (and often more), purchased at least one book every month, used the products, dressed correctly, retailed the products, showed the plan and sponsored people (albeit not many).

For the first year both my wife and myself were enthusiastic and fully active in the business. During the second year she gradually became less interested and finally quite ‘anti’ . By the end of the 2^nd year I was less active re. frequency of showing the plan to prospects. During the third year I contact very few prospects about the business but continued with everything else - retailing, functions, tapes etc’. During our time in the business we sponsored two couples and worked with them to help them develop their businesses. They each stayed in the business about 18 months before escaping.

Our sponsors, as very active Direct Distributors , were personally ‘counselled’ (guided and assisted) by Emerald Direct Distributors. As we were quite active in the business for a while we got to spend a lot of time with our upline directs and, on occasions, meet our Emerald up-line. I mention this because, unlike the majority of IBS distributors who are not personally sponsored by Direct Distributors, we spent a lot of time with them and this tended to give us some useful eye-opening insights into the business.
 

4. Why we quit the business

There are really two version of why we quit IBS. It really depends who you choose to listen to.

Version 1

This is what a ‘signed up/ fired-up ’ IBS distributor would say,

"You quit because you lost the dream, you probably let them steal it away from you, you are no longer a winner, you are a broke loser, a quitter in life, I pity you".

How do I know they would be saying this? Because that is what I used to say about people who quit the business when I was involved in it. Why did I say it? Because that is what one is taught to believe ........................ and at the time it all made so much sense!

But now I definitely have the advantage over those in the business who may say these things - because I believe that I can now see things clearly from both sides.

So version II below is my ‘take’ on what happened.

Version II

"Leaving IBS was one of the very best decisions that I’ve ever made in my life!" I can’t say it plainer than that - but read on for an analysis of why this should be so.

5. Some Background

Before going any further, if you have never been an Amway distributor, then it is useful to understand the mind-set of a typical ‘committed’ IBS distributor.
 

It is quite difficult to explain to anyone who’s not been involved but there is a kind of siege mentality - an ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ mind-set. This is combined with a belief that IBS’ers are on the side of goodness and right and are something of an elite in society.

The ‘Us’ are fellow IBS distributors who have had the "vision" to see just how good the business really is, have decided to get involved and who are therefore all "successful people".

The ‘Them’ refers to all those people who did not have the "vision" to see how good the business opportunity is. This especially refers to people who have been shown the business but who have rejected the opportunity and do not want any involvement in it. The view taken of these people (by IBS’ers) is that, at best, they did not understand the concept or perhaps did not need it at that time (this was the charitable view). More often they would be portrayed as losers/ broke experts ( As our up-line would say "They are ex-spurts - because an ex is a has-been and a spurt is a drip under pressure"), and people to be avoided. Note - these labels would be applied to anyone from a casual acquaintance to a close family members.
 

This translated into a feeling, deeply felt by most IBS distributors, that the business is a superb opportunity and that it is really very difficult to comprehend why anyone would not be interested in getting involved. A typical distributor comment that one might over-hear would be "I showed the business plan to xxx last week ...... they just could not see it....... I thought that of all people they would see it. I just don’t believe it - surely they want a better life..... they didn’t strike me as a losers ......"

Another thing you need to understand is that distributors will never admit that there is anything wrong with the business, or their involvement in it. This is either because that is what they really believe (perhaps because it is what they have been told over and over and over again) or because the alternative is too painful and awkward to even consider. many people have put (are still putting) years and years of their lives into the IBS business at considerable emotional and financial cost (see below) and to even begin to admit that their efforts have been wrongly directed is a very painful process. It probably seems easier by far (in short term at least) to deny any doubts and bury oneself even deeper into the business and surround oneself with others who are also in the same situation.

I ought to mention cults at this stage because it has been suggested that IBS is a cult. My understanding is that this may not be strictly true in terms of the accepted definition of a cult BUT I think it does have cultish tendencies/ elements. And, importantly, these cultish elements (along with other factors) do make it difficult for people to leave the business.

I’ve already said that we spent 3 years in the business and, given all the bitching and whingeing that you may think I’m doing in this article, you’d be entitled to ask why we got involved in the first place and why we stayed in for that length of time. Well, these are two important, but quite distinct, questions and I’ll address the first of them here - the second question is addressed below.

6. What did we like about the business?

This is actually more difficult to answer than I imagined it would be. I think that this is because of the rather clever way that IBS distributors are trained to show prospects the business. When our sponsor showed us the business plan he got us to play the ‘what if’ game. What if money was not object? What if you had all your time to yourself to do as you pleased? What would you do? Where would you go? etc’ We were quite happy to enter into the spirit of this with the result that we almost ran out of paper making a list of the things we’d like to have or do. So apart from that very ambitious list we were probably not very sure, initially, why we were interested in the business. However once we’d thought about it more clearly there were 3 main reasons.

1. As a means to have a second income - i.e. a safety- net in case we were no longer employed.

2. Earlier retirement than would be possible in a job i.e free time while still young enough to enjoy it.

3. Just to have some extra £££ to allow us to follow interests and to travel.
 

7. The disenchantment.........!

I don’t think that there is anything wrong with wanting these things (as part of a balanced life) - so why did we decide that IBS/Amway was not the way to go about achieving them?

Well I can summarise this by saying that during our time in the IBS business there was a growing ‘discontinuity’ between the IBS view of the world and what was supposedly important in it, and what I would call the ‘real world’ that we all live in, and what was really important in Life. As time went by I found these two views increasingly in conflict.

Let me try to explain what I mean by this. The first part of this explanation will seem a bit wooly but please persevere through it to some specific examples that follow.

It was as if we were living in two worlds at the same time. We would have regular and frequent contact with the IBS business - through tapes, functions, up-line etc’ and through that contact we would be presented with a particular view of the world and the way things were supposed to be and what was supposed to be important in life. Within the confines of that particular ‘environment’ e.g. an IBS business seminar or time spent with ones up-line, one could probably accept that their view of the world made sense. But then one would leave that IBS/ upline environment and go back to the ‘real-world’ and then the many contradictions between the two ‘realities’ would become apparent and one would realise that much of what one was ‘taught’, and encouraged to do, in the business was actually wrong - factually, morally and ethically. That process - the two’ing and fro’ing between these two ‘realities’ is quite difficult. But all along one is being encouraged (by up-line in the business) to make a larger and larger investment in the business in terms of time, as well as emotionally and financially. So the tendency is to develop a kind of shutter between the two ‘worlds’. This is not very pleasant at all and is probably very unhealthy, mentally, in the long term.

Ok, so here are a couple of examples so that you’ll get a better idea about what I’m rambling on about. The rest of this article gives several more examples.

We would go to IBS business training seminars and be told by speakers, who had achieved high pin-levels in the business, that Amway products are superb quality and very good value for money and that we should not let other people, who do not know what they are talking about, tell us differently. Everyone who is at an IBS seminar really wants to believe this because if the products are not good quality and value for money then, firstly, one knows that it will be difficult to retail the products in any volume and, secondly, we were trained to tell people (new prospects for the business) how great the products were, how easy they were to retail and how much money one could save by using them in preference to products in stores. So then one would go to the supermarket and notice that the products there are, nearly always, significantly cheaper than Amway products and equally good, and often better, quality. Then to make it worse a customer would tell us that they would not be re-ordering products because they were too expensive. So, in order to try to reconcile these opposing views of reality you’d say to yourself something like "Well the supermarkets may occasionally be cheaper but our products are better quality and we offer a door-to-door service with personalised product advice so we (IBS/Amway) actually provide a better overall service. And as for that customer who said the products were expensive she probably did not use them properly so she cannot really judge!!". So you rationalise - i.e. you try to tell yourself rational-lies in an attempt to reconcile these two ‘world views’ - but as time goes on it gets more and more difficult.

A more ethically taxing situation is faced by IBS distributors when they tell prospects certain things about the business. Just one example - we were taught to say "You can make an average saving of 30% on the products by buying wholesale from your own business - so why pay retail when you can buy wholesale and save yourself money every week" This is a very misleading statement for a number of reasons (see .http... for part of the explanation) but the upshot is that shop retail prices are often cheaper than Amway wholesale prices! Also, did you notice the use of the word ‘average’ in that statement - this refers to an average ‘saving’ over a wide range of the Amway product line and NOT (as most people probably take it to mean) an average saving on the products you would normally expect to buy for your day to day use! I’m afraid that I have not really got space to go into this fully here but suffice to say that when you tell this to people you are, at best, being economical with the truth (and I am being generous in expressing it like that!). This is important because what you tell people at that early stage, when explaining the business to them, will have a big influence upon whether or not they continue to show an interest and deciding to get involved. So after a while we really had to ask ourselves if we wanted to continue telling people these lies (sorry, I mean economies of truth) But then we’d go to another IBS Seminar and be told that we were doing people a huge favour by introducing them to the business and so one would find oneself going out to new prospects and spinning them the same old lines - believing, I suppose, that the end justified the means. (Not to mention being driven by the materialistic outlook on life that I believe the business fosters) If you are reading this and are saying to yourself "That sort of behaviour is really not on, I would not do that sort of thing myself " then you’d be right, it really is not on - but you’d be surprised how many otherwise decent people get drawn into doing it.

8. So what did I find wrong with the business?

What I’d like to do, below, is to explore some of the ‘difficulties’ we had with the IBS business. Some of these are more significant than others but the combined effect was that we could not stay in the business and be true to ourselves.

(I)Is it really ethical

If there is one ‘mantra’ that defines IBS, and which one hears constantly, it is the phrase "Anyone can do this". Or variation of it such as "Hey this isn’t rocket science, if we can do this then so can you" or "My up-line said to me - if you cannot succeed in this business with all of the help that is at hand then you will not succeed at anything in life" This is meant to convey that anyone, who really wants to, can develop an Amway business to the point where they can quit their jobs or current business, and earn a good income from Amway.(i.e. the Emerald level and above) IBS state that all one has to do is follow their advice, put the work in and in time this will happen for anyone. I would dispute this.

Let’s take a look at just some of the qualities that are required of a person to develop an Amway business to the emerald level. Single mindedness - a disregard for the (very high) opportunity costs, being a counsellor, a coach, a mentor, putting up with years of tedium and boredom, a willingness to give up free thought, a confessor, a business administrator, not to mention having a really thick skin, accepting probable alienation from some members of family and friends ------------ along with an almost fanatical devotion to the soap (sorry, couldn’t quite resist slipping that last one in - apologies to Monty Python!)

So how many people are really capable of doing that and sustaining it for many years with the single-mindedness that is called for? In reality there are probably quite a few who could do this but to say that "anyone can do it" is very unrealistic and misleading. The skills, effort and determination required to do this should not be underestimated and one really has to admire the people who manage to do it (though whether one can respect them for doing what they do is quite another matter ).

There are, I would suggest, 3 types of distributor in IBS. (1) Those who have the abilities and personality (charisma?) to be successful at just about anything they choose to put their minds to. (2) Those who, with enough sheer perseverance and doggedness could probably develop the skills and aptitudes necessary to hold together a large Amway business. (3) Those who, with the best will in the world and bags of determination, will never reach any significant level in the business because they will never be able to develop the wide range of skills and aptitudes necessary.

My guess is that the majority of ‘signed-up’ IBS distributors fall into group 3. Don’t get me wrong, these people are not daft or anything it is just that they are not, and never will be, leaders in a very demanding, people-centred business. There is probably a largish tranche of people from group 2 and a small proportion that make up group 1.

I would say that the vast majority of people who are in the IBS business have very little chance of achieving a basic direct-ship in the business, and really do not have a hope in hell of building the business to Emerald level (generally recognised as being the ‘retirement’ level in the business). Determination can take one only so far in the Amway scenario.

So why is this important from an ethical point of view? Well, because at the same time that the leaders in IBS are telling everyone "You can do this" they are, on an ongoing basis, charging these same people large amounts of money for the IBS business training system - the seminars, weekend functions, tapes and books - not to mention encouraging people to use expensive products and condoning the purchase of products that would probably not normally be purchased.

Two examples (out of many) come to mind. Firstly a couple in our up-line’s business. Quite young, very nice people, competent at what they did professionally but in all honesty not a hope of ever becoming directs in the business. They spent almost five years following the system 100% and spending money that they really could not afford when they were desperately trying to save to buy a house. Finally they quit - probably feeling like failures. Another example - a divorced lady in her late 50's, again a very nice person apparently very good at her job and well respected for her work but, to be honest, there was more chance of me winning the lottery 3 weeks in a row than of her ever going direct. And all the time our up-line were quite happy to take her money week after month after year. She really should have been putting that money into a pension plan, or using it to pay off her mortgage, and not spending it on the IBS system.

Finally, towards the end of our time in the business, I tackled our up-line directs about this and they first of all gave me the usual "they can succeed if they really want to" line. When I pressed them about this I got the next ‘stock IBS response’ which was "well they may never reach the top levels in this business but the books, tapes and teachings are helping them to become better people". There is an element of truth in this because there is no doubt that some of the books supplied by IBS were useful and worth reading and a few of the tapes were worth a listen. However, all of the beneficial information supplied by IBS could have been obtained outside the business, for a couple of hundred quid, through half a dozen books and a good set of self esteem/motivational/’get your life sorted out’ type tapes. To go on for years taking money off these people was, in my opinion, indefensible. Our up-line never did acknowledge this - but then they have to live with themselves.

The question that I had to ask myself was this - was I prepared to make use of people such as this in my quest to become a Direct Distributor in the business. I concluded that it would be wrong to do so.

(ii)Sick of misleading people

There were many ways that we were taught to mislead people about the business in order to get then into, and then keep them in, the business. Here are just a few.

When contacting people about the business we were taught to avoid telling them that we were going to show them an Amway business. IBS has lots of advice and teachings on how to get people ‘hooked’ into looking at the business without them realising that they are looking at Amway. Like most distributors we got quite good at doing that.

If they had already heard of Amway and had a negative image of the company then firstly we would tell them that Amway is now different and they are probably thinking of the ‘old Amway’. If that did not work then we explained to them that by concentrating on Amway they were missing the point because the important thing was to understand that IBS was the key to the business - and so thereafter we would hardly mention Amway and would always talk about IBS.

At the meeting where one explains the business to them then we’d go all-out to identify the things that they really wanted (i.e. travel, cars, boats etc’ - known in the business as their ‘hot-buttons’) - and then fully exploit that knowledge to get them interested. One way we were taught to utilise this was to mis-use a Zig Ziglar decision making technique (I think he called it the Napoleon Bonapart technique) Basically you get the prospects to draw two columns on an A4 sheet. The left hand column is headed "All the things we will do with our lives when we are earning £80k p.a. from our IBS business" Your then give the prospects a lot of help in making a list of things. i.e. cars, houses, boats, playing golf, travel, educating the children - anything in fact as long as they want it and it gets them excited. Then when they are panting and flushed with excitement you head up the second column "What we’ll do with our lives if we just carry on as we are" You then sit back and watch them stew for a little while. Then you say ........ "Perhaps I can help you here. Will you buy the huge house? -No - Will you have the stables and 500 acres of land? - No - Will you have the foreign holidays? - No". So you go through the whole list putting crosses next to most of them! Then you say something like "Well don’t worry - although I cannot promise you anything at this stage the good news is that I am prepared to help you take a look at this opportunity and then we can decide if you would qualify to work with us to achieve these things."

We were taught to avoid, at all costs, the chance for prospects to make product-price comparisons when they were first looking at the business - the idea was to first get them hooked on what the business could (allegedly ) give them and how they would be able to develop a network of distributors under them. One would let them find out later about the products - the idea was to get them to business seminars, get them excited and get them contacting people to start building a network of their own at an early stage. Our up-line used to be able to get to the stage, with some prospects, of having them on the phone inviting their friends to come around and look at "an exciting business opportunity" when they had not even seen any of the products. He was a real expert!

I was always amazed at how easy it was to divert people away from product issues. For example, when the new people, inevitably and quite rightly, started to jib at the prices charged for most Amway products then you would divert them from the issue by making some sleight of hand comment such as "Well you must ask yourselves, are Persil/ Vosene/Colgate etc’ going to pay for you to travel around the world/ put your kids through university/ walk the beaches of the world etc’ like Amway is going to?" And when they hesitate for a moment to think about that then you get straight in there with a comment such as "No they are not are they, so let’s sit down and talk about how we are going to help you develop a huge business that will allow you to realise your dreams..." You’d be surprised at how often such false reasoning will throw people off the issue and shut them up!

When you take new people to a training seminar you point out how many people are crossing the stage in recognition of new levels they have reached in the business so that the new people will think that the business does grow fast. What you don’t tell them is that, quite often, up to five couples (it is usually couples) can cross the stage and be ‘recognised’ just because one of those couples has reached a new level. i.e. A sponsors B who sponsors C who sponsors D. D then achieves, say, the 15% level and so A, B and C also automatically qualify as 15%ers as well and get to cross the stage and be clapped and cheered. However without D their business volume could be virtually zero! But if one does not realise this then it looks as though the business is thriving.

We would always explain how much saving could be made by buying wholesale from ones own business - I’ve covered this elsewhere.

The cost of the IBS business system. One thing you absolutely did not tell people is the cost of the seminars, tapes, books and ‘tools’ required to build the business in IBS (if that is, they expect to have any help at all from their experience up-line in building their business) You let them find out gradually what the cost is and the fact that they will be expected to fund this on an ongoing basis. And furthermore that, in reality, they will not even begin to break-even in the business until they reach the 18% level - and even then probably only with a very well structured business.

I could go on and on but you get the idea. So let me just give you one more example. This is a small issue and is actually quite humorous looking back - but it does give you an idea of the constant trickle of partial truths and lies that one is taught to come out with.

One of the important things, when introducing people to the business, is to get them to go along to one of the major weekend functions held at the NEC in Birmingham. This was not particularly easy because they would have to fork out for tickets for the function (£90 each) plus hotel accommodation for 2 nights (circa £60 to £80) plus food and travel. So just one of the, many things, that we were taught to say was "Come along and you’ll get to meet some of the most successful people in the world - people who can teach you how to build a huge business and help you to walk the beaches of the world etc" So when they got there they would find that they were one person in an auditorium of 8,000 other people and they’d realise that the nearest they would get to ‘meeting’ these successful people was by looking at a huge screens a couple of hundred yards away! If they picked you up on what you seemed to have promised them i.e. actually meeting the people, then you were taught to say something like "Ah yes but I’m sure you found that what they had to say, and the way that it related to your dreams, meant that it was as if they were speaking to you personally" !!! I kid you not.

The upshot of all this is that I became more and more uncomfortable with doing these things.

(iii) Retailing issues

Whenever we showed new people (prospects) the business plan we would explain how each distributor would create a certain amount of retail business and so make about £40 profit each month. In practice I would say that these figures were rarely achieved and much of what we told prospects was misleading. We also told them that the products were of exceptional quality, very good value for money and all one had to do was show the products to customers and they would buy them and love them. We had to decide if we wanted to stay in the business and go on blatantly misleading people by telling them these things.

In our experience (by that I mean both our personal experience and also by observing many other distributors - as one can easily do when one is sponsored by successful Directs) most IBS distributors had a very poor retail business and they mostly just bought products for their own use.

When reading about other Amway AMO’s one frequent hears that distributors are either not encouraged to undertake retailing of Amway products, or they are specifically told not to bother with retailing and that the business is all about self-use and developing a network of self-users. This was never the case in IBS. They did encourage self-use but they also stressed the importance of retailing because it would 1. lead to a network of distributors who would be creating a large business volume and hence developing better income bonuses within the network and 2. the profit made from retailing could be used to offset the cost of the IBS business system - the tapes, books and seminars. The importance of retailing, and how to do it, were quite often the subject of seminars, tapes and books, and our up-line gave us every advice and encouragement to develop a good retail aspect to our business. On more than one occasion our sponsor (Mrs) accompanied my wife on retailing visits to teach how to do it effectively.

Although IBS’ers were encouraged and taught to retail the Amway products and develop a solid customer base I would say that in practice the vast majority of IBS distributors actually had a very poor customer retail business and that most of the products (perhaps almost all in many cases ) were purchased for personal use only. Doesn’t this seem rather strange given all the encouragement and training from IBS? Well, not really when you have had experience of Amway products and prices!

We made quite a lot of effort to retail and at the height of our retailing success we had about seven regular customers and about as many occasional customers. The profit we made from the retailing was nowhere near enough to cover the cost of the IBS system, as we had been advised it could.

The bottom line is that Amway products are difficult to retail. This is because they are

generally not price competitive - there are plenty of other products in the supermarkets etc’ that are just as good, if not better, and significantly cheaper. We found that price was a very important factor for most consumers.

Amway products have, allegedly, got 4 or 5 marketing advantages over ‘normal’ products.

1. A personal service - distributors who can sit down with customers and talk to them about the products and how to use them.

2. A personal delivery service to peoples’ homes.

3. They are a bit different i.e. not available in normal outlets and perhaps have a bit of a ‘special’ cachet.

In our experience only the first of these was of some (limited) use in the selling of the products. We found that the personal delivery service was, more often than not, just a nuisance to the customers. Lets face it, the last thing that people who lead busy lives really want is another person calling on them - not to mention the hassle of finding a time, convenient to them, to call around. We had just one customer who liked the products because they were a bit different but even she jibbed at the relatively high cost of most of the product range.

There are two other marketing advantages that Amway products apparently had, but have lost in recent years. Amway are no longer the only producer who make concentrated (cleaning) products and nowadays most producers have jumped on the ‘environmentally friendly product’ bandwagon.

We found that we could manage to sell a reasonable range of the products to a customer for the first couple of visit but thereafter the high prices either put them off completely, and we lost them as customers, or they would only be prepared to re-order a very small range of the products. These were nearly always the same ones - washing powder, LOC, Zoom, window cleaner spray and a couple of others. You don’t need to be a marketing genius to know that you don’t make much profit on such a small range - especially when these ‘basic’ products attracted the lowest mark-up’s - about 15%. The only way to keep customers regularly buying a reasonable range of the products was by deploying, what I would call, low-key hassling techniques. You know the sort of thing, you ring them up and ask leading questions - "Which products would you like to try this month...........the xxx and yyyy are excellent.....I remember you mentioned that you used these in the home........I expect you’d like me to order them for you to try them out..... what size would you like, the regular or large?" Most distributors (quite understandably) feel uncomfortable doing that sort of thing.

The big mark-ups are on products such as cosmetics and food supplements. On the occasions that we tried to retail the cosmetics we found that the customers were generally ‘underwhelmed’ by their quality (and overwhelmed by the prices) We got the impression that most of the cosmetics that are sold to customers are through the party-plan type "colour clinics" that some distributors organise - where the ‘captive audience’ often feels obliged to make purchases.

The outcome of all this is that we made little retail profit and spent a lot of time doing it i.e. collecting the products from our up-line’s house and delivering them to customers. By the time that one had done all that driving one hardly covered petrol costs. Not to mention the opportunity cost that one could assign to ones time.

There was another phenomenon that we experienced with the retail side of the business - that of losing our best customers to other Amway distributors! This happened twice and on each occasion a niece or nephew of the customers took up the Amway business and the customers then transferred all of the business to their relative. This is, I think, a reflection of the poor market penetration of Amway products (if the products were so competitive why were they not taking custom away from the main retail producers rather than other Amway distributors?) But they were also examples of what I call the ".... and my mum became my best customer..." phenomenon. Basically it means that ones family is a soft touch when it comes to selling the products. (The thing is, of course, that only a git would sell the products to their mother at the retail price and so there was usually no profit to be made on such sales.) NB - we lost our best customer of all to Better-Wear!

In our experience IBS did not enforced the Amway 10 customer rule. I had noticed this rule (in the Amway literature) and had queried this with our up-line sponsors. I was told "You don’t need to worry about that until just before you go direct - at which time we’ll show you how to fill out the necessary documentation to ensure that you satisfy the criteria".

Basically we were told a lot of partial truths and misleading things about Amway products and the retailing side of the business (as opposed to the sponsoring side) and we got sick and tired of telling these same things to other people.

(iv) The guilt trips

This was a frequently used ploy to try to get distributors motivated to work their businesses - or just to stop them quitting.

A typical example would be a high- level distributor at a seminar saying something like "......for those of you who have kids and who might be thinking that they cannot do this business...... try to imagine yourself in a few years time and your children come up to you and they say - Mummy, Daddy why can’t we go ski-ing and live in a big house like the xxxx family do. You can explain to them that xxxx are living a fantastic life-style because a few short years previously they saw an opportunity to develop an Amway business and they developed it to the point where it has now set them free. Now tell me, are you going to be able to look your children in the eye and say - We too saw the business at the same time as them but we could not be bothered to build the business - and that’s why you can’t have the things that they now have...........".

Excuse me for just a moment while I go away and retch!

This idea was often presented in ‘short-hand’ with the phrase "Don’t make your children your excuse for not building the business - make them your reason for doing it." This was a clear reference to 1. distributors’ concerns that the business may be damaging their family life and 2. the idea that one was making sacrifices to build the business, not for one-self, (heaven forbid!) but for the sake of ones children.

Well, you’ll get a good idea of my views on that (see below), but suffice to say that I think that one can quite appropriately turn that phrase around and help people to see the rampant materialistic attitude that they are being encouraged to develop by simply saying "Don’t make your children your excuse for building the business"

(V) The IBS retirement myth.

When showing prospects the business plan we were taught to stress that with an Amway business one could develop residual income once the business had been developed to a certain level i.e. emerald and diamond. That is to say one would have an income stream that would go on and on even after one had stopped building, and being involved in, the business.

This was one of the things that most attracted us - to one day have sufficient residual income from Amway that we could give up our jobs and have more free time.

We gradually came to realise that this talk of ‘retirement’ was probably just more IBS- speak. When we were in the business there were about 4 diamonds in IBS and approximately 15 emeralds - a lot of them seemed to have very established businesses with, presumably, very good incomes and yet none of them had retired or, from what they said, had any intention of ever retiring.

After a while we came to realise that what the term ‘retirement’ probably meant was that one would be able to give up ones regular employment (or business) ...................and become full time Amway distributors! But even so, we reasoned, surely there must be a few emeralds or diamonds who might wish to give up the business and retire properly as we were so often told would be possible.

(Note - In practice the lifestyle of an IBS emerald/diamond seems, from what I could ascertain, to consist of running the business (most) weekends and most evenings until late at night, then sleeping until mid-morning and having the day free. In other words they appear to have swopped the day job for a night shift! It reminds me a bit of the lifestyle that many entertainers seem to have.)

In trying to explain why Amway distributors do not properly retire then I think that there are a number of things one has to appreciate.

The first issue/ question is one that affects almost everyone sooner or later - without ‘work’ then what is ones life really about? I’m not suggesting that one necessarily needs work to have a meaningful life, but that to give up something that often forms such an important part of ones life is a huge change to make. This probably applies even more to IBS distributors - the business would have been a huge, dominating, part of their lives for many years (perhaps decades) and so to walk away from it would be a major, and potentially traumatic, life change. Also, I think this is made worse because there is a strong tendency for IBS’ers to lose contact with associates and friends who are not in the business (not to mention quite possible falling out with family members) and so the IBS organisation has a strong tendency to become their socialising outlet as well as a quasi-family. They know that if they gave up the business then all that would also be lost. (It is an interesting but sad fact that one’s up-line, with whom one has apparently been "developing a deep and lasting friendship", don’t actually bother contacting you ever again once you’ve decided to walk away from the business!).

The second issue is to do with the degree of permanence/ robustness of an emerald or diamond business. I came to realise, from reading between the lines of what our sponsors used to say, that contrary to what we were taught to tell people, an Amway business was potentially rather fragile and could, without the right attention, just wither away. An emerald-ship is based upon 3 directly sponsored people maintaining the direct pin level in the business. The thing about a direct-ship is that it does require constant hard work, diligence and attention to hold it together and maintain that business volume. A direct distributor has to continually work hard to motivate those people in his business who slacken their efforts, as well as replacing the people in his business who quit. My understanding is that it does not take much for a direct-ship to stop growing, then start to stagnate or go completely pear-shaped. All that it needs is for the Direct Distributors to get cheesed off, ill, divorced, complacent or whatever and suddenly the Emerald pin has got security of income problems.

In theory, an emerald direct distributor can retire completely from the business and his up--line diamond will, as we were often told, then take over the running of his business - because it is in the up-line diamonds financial interest to ensure that the (emerald-ship) business thrives. This may be true, but look at this from the point of view of the potential emerald retirees. Even if they completely trust the intentions of their up-line diamond they know that he (the up-line diamond) probably has plenty of other fish to fry and so that particular emerald-ship is important, but probably not absolutely essential, to that diamond’s financial well-being. On the other hand, for the potential emerald retirees, the business that they have build up is everything that they have. So if you were in that position would you, having spent many years and having endured huge sacrifices in building your emerald business, risk it all by not keeping your hand very firmly on the rudder?

There is a third issue that I cannot reliably comment on because it was hardly discussed in my presence - that of the so-called tools scam. This has been covered in many other web sites, as operated by other AMO’s, but I’ve seen little discussion of this as it affects IBS. It is clear that there are large amounts of money being generated by the sale of tapes, books and function tickets to IBS distributors. Where does all of this money go to? My guess is that the tools business, and the distribution of the profit, is operated in IBS just as it is in other Dexter Yeager Amway networks. So this presumably means that a proportion of the tools profits are ploughed back into the running of the ‘system’ ie. employing staff to administer tape production, distribution, booking of seminar venues etc’ (the IBS head-quarters in Frome ) and then most of the rest is distributed to the Diamonds and Emeralds as tools bonus/ management fees/ speaking fees etc’.

We were always told by our up-line that IBS was ethically and morally above reproach and if that is correct then it would appear that IBS have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, on this issue. Perhaps they should lay all their cards on the table so that everyone in, and outside, the business knows where the money goes and what is going on. My point is this - if the tools business is run in IBS in the same way as it is apparently run in other AMO’s, then this is another reason why Diamond and Emerald Direct Distributors may be reluctant to properly retire from the business - i.e. perhaps they would lose all the tools income that was being generated in their business.(and if figures provided for other AMO’s are anything to go by then this could comprise a significant proportion of a Diamond or Emerald’s income).

We have been out of touch with the business for a while now and so perhaps emerald and diamond distributors are actually retiring from the business - perhaps there are people reading this who can comment. Actually, I was recently looking at Jerry and Mandy Scriven’s Web Site and there they have a list of IBS Diamond direct distributors. I noticed that there was no mention of the Bernie and Janet DeSousa (spelling?). When we were in the business they were a diamond couple who seemed to have a huge business. Does anyone know why they are not listed as IBS diamonds on the Scriven’s web site?

(vii) Effects on family

IBS top pins will tell you time and time again how the business is good for marriages and the children of those in the business. They argue that the business brings couples together because they are doing something together - often for the first time in years. (This is probably true if they both believe in what they are doing) They will also argue that the business teaches couples to be happier because it encourages each of them to take on ‘traditional’ roles in the marriage. For ‘traditional roles’ read ‘fundamentalist biblical teachings’ - you know the sort of thing - the man is the master, the decision maker, the leader in the family while the woman is the subservient follower who looks to her husband for guidance in all matters etc’. This view of how a marriage should work came through clearly in the books that IBS encouraged us to read and in the lectures we received - particularly from the USA Diamonds. I do not intend to debate here whether this view of marriage is ‘correct’ (you can decide yourself) but it is interesting to ask how it came to be taught in IBS. As far as I could make out the trail of influence can be followed backwards to its roots like this. IBS Diamonds ------ USA Diamonds -------- American Cultural and Religious environment ------- Christian Fundamentalism -------- Right-wing views generally. Now you can call me a bit of liberal relativist if you like but I think that these ‘roots’, if I’m correct about them, should make people rather uneasy.

Being a man I’m far from being an expert on women but I have learned one thing over the years - most women are pretty damn smart and they often realise what is going on long before their partners do! So what often happens, I think, in the IBS set-up is that the female half of the distributorship realises that they are extremely unlikely to get anywhere in such a business (because of the way that Multi Level Marketing Schemes are structured) and that it is costing them a small fortune being part of the IBS system. Some of the more cynical ones might even come to the conclusion that they are just getting scammed! This then leads to arguments with their partners who have become convinced that they are heading for Diamond (distributorship). So the woman starts to express her concerns to her partner about what is going on - this leads to arguments - and often big arguments at that. By now the man has had significant exposure to IBS teachings, and the influence of his up-line, so that he goes along with the idea that he is the Leader in the marriage and his wife’s role is one of submission - so he tells her where her place should be. (That usually goes down well) He will also have had the idea put into his head by up-line that the reason his wife is negative is that she doesn’t really understand the business (poor wee mentally challenged thing that she is) and that, being a woman, she does not have the ability to think and plan long-term. He will have had it explained to him, on many occasions, that women are temperamentally incapable of waiting for gratification and that she will not understand that sacrifices will have to be made in the short-term in order for them to have a better lifestyle in the future. And it will be very clearly explained to her that she should be so proud of her husband because he is making huge sacrifices (going out showing the plan etc’) so that she can have a better lifestyle in the future. The result of all this is that she is made to feel guilty and wonder if, after all, she is the one who is wrong. Clever don’t you think? So now we have the situation of wife versus husband + up-line + repeated teachings in tapes and books and at Seminars. It is no good her going to women in their up-line because those women will almost certainly back-up the official IBS line. So she begins to feel very isolated - and if they have been in the business for a while, before this happens, then it could well be that they have already alienated the people who she could have turned to in the past for help i.e. family and friends.

We would often hear the following ‘story’ recounted by distributors (on tape and at Seminars). Wife Speaking - "I was so very negative about this business ......I just did not understand it............but my husband insisted that we do it......I did not realise that he was a true leader............I did not understand why we were using house-keeping money to buy tapes and attend Seminars............ but I finally realised he was right....... and I should not have doubted my husband.............I’m so proud of him .....he’s my hero......I finally realised just how good this business really is.....and what good people our up-line are and how much they care about us....so ladies here today, if you are having any doubts about the business then talk to your up-line...........they will explain things to you...............and so now we are Direct Distributors in the business and we have a wonderful future ahead of us......". Well I suspect that the truth is often much more a case of the wife saying to herself something like "If I don’t start pretending that this business is a good thing and ‘supporting’ my husband as we are being taught then I could end up losing him to the business and I’d rather have a husband who’s in this crazy IBS set-up than have it end up in separation and divorce." I’m not saying this is always true - but after a while one does learn to read between the lines.

The IBS business encourages distributors to study and understand body-language to try to tell what people actually mean rather than what they are saying - this is supposedly so that one can explain the business more clearly to people so that they have a better chance of understanding the wonderful opportunity ( but a more honest appraisal is that it is to manipulate people when showing the plan etc’. ) However, this ability is a two-edged sword because these skill can be put to use elsewhere - and having met direct couples at the basic direct, ruby and emerald levels (in quasi-social settings where one can chat and observe) I would put money on the fact that quite a few of the women actually really hated what they were doing. In spite of their smiles, adoring looks at their husbands and all the ‘aint it great’ phrases they had learned to come out with it was quite difficult for them to hide those feelings fully.... .......... rather sad don’t you think. Now I’m not saying that there aren’t lots of couples in the business who wake up every morning, smile at each other and say "Whoopee! thank goodness were in IBS" - all I’m saying is that when it comes to people who are involved in the IBS business, and the way that they portray themselves, then what you see ain’t necessarily what you’re getting. Be aware!

Time away from children - If a couple are putting enough effort into the business to actually make reasonable progress then they are definitely putting many many more hours per week into it than is portrayed to new prospects. Having observed our up-line direct sponsors then I’d say he was consistently working the business about 35 - 40 hours per week, and often more. (In addition to a full-time job) And they had apparently been doing this for about nine years - and even then their progress was not exactly rapid! This is rather different from the 12-15 hrs per week, for 2 to 5 years, that all prospects are told is necessary to develop the business to the point where they can retire !

Anyway, the point is that this huge time commitment has a dramatic effect upon the amount of time that active distributors can spend with their children. Because, don’t forget, this is usually all in addition to working full time. "Aha" you’ll hear IBS’ers say - "This is ok because it is only short-term and in "a few short years" we’ll be walking the beaches of the world with our children." The phrase "a few short years" is one you’ll hear a lot in the business - another example of ‘IBS-speak’ I’m afraid. It does not necessarily mean a small number of years. That would be too easy - it actually means (and I know because our up-line direct explained this to us) that the (very many) years that you’ll probably spend building the business will, looking back when you’re successful and have retired, seem short!

He have children and one thing I’ve learned is this - once they get to a certain age (i.e. mid teens) then absolutely last thing they probably wish to do is hang around their parents - and this I’m sure is completely natural and healthy and is to be encouraged at the pace that suits each child. Sure, they’d like to be walking the beaches of the world - but with their own peers as they learn about life on their own terms and forge their independence. The point is that by the time most of the people in the business will have got the time to spend with their children then the kids will be long gone. Obvious really but it is something that most distributors find too painful to admit.

The other ‘stock’ IBS answer goes like this "Ah yes it is true that we spend less time with our children than most parents but the time that we do spend with them is quality time because most parents waste their time with their children by doing things like watching television or taking them shopping." So what do I think of that argument? - well .......let me think for a moment.........hmmm ............ a word does come to mind ............ and it rhymes with ‘rollocks’ In my view children do not want quality time with their parents - they just want time, and lots of it. The other problem I have with the concept of quality time is that it seems to be the parents, and not the children, who are deciding what it is that makes quality time.(assuming it even exists) I strongly suspect that if children could express what was important to them, in terms of time spent with parents, then it would probably be the unexpected and obscure things that they valued rather than the scheduled 15 minute chat with daddy after tea and before he dashes off to show the plan.

So what about the effects upon the woman when a couple is building the business? Think of it like this - the husband is out late most nights "building the business" and he knows he’s doing this for his wife and family and he normally feels good about it. Sure, he realises there are sacrifices but, hey, he’s on a buzz - the adrenalin, the activity, meeting people, doing something that does, lets be fair here, take a lot of guts and will power - so he’s on a roll and despite the up’s and down’s he sees himself as a winner - because he’s been told that so-long as he is active in the business (even if he’s ineffective!) then he’s a winner and that sooner or later it will "happen for him". Now think of his wife - she’s either at home in the evenings on her own (a networking widow) or being dragged off with her husband to meet new prospects in their homes and sit quietly by his side listening to him show the business plan for the x hundredth time. For her the business largely means a combination of loneliness, mind-numbing boredom, paperwork and leaving the kids with baby-sitters for yet another weekend away at a seminar or working with down-line across the other side of the country.

I used to visit our upline’s house every week to collect the Amway products and the tape of the week (when my wife had had enough and refused to go!) and, because of commitments, I usually got there quite late when all the other distributors had been and gone. I really got the impression that Mrs Up-line Direct was really rather lonely and was just pleased to have someone to talk to - so quite often I’d spend up-to an hour there just chatting generally. I think that apart from anything else she was just deeply relieved to talk to someone who had varied ideas, interests and opinions about things other than the business! (You need to understand, Direct Distributors really LIVE the business - so when they are not talking to other people about it they are listening to tapes or chatting to upline etc’ etc’ - and they have not got time to meet ordinary people and talk about other things). To my way of thinking as an outside observer (and I’m aware I could be wrong about this) that was not a good basis for a relationship.

The IBS top ‘pins’ will always tell you that the business is actually very good for the children of distributors because .......hmmmm.....errrr ...............well to be honest with you I never fully understood why the business was supposed to be good for the children - but basically I think it had to do with 2 ideas. The first was that the top pins portrayed the business as being very ethical and that it taught distributors to be better people i.e. through the tapes and books that were sold to distributors. And so therefore, it was argued, people would become better parents as a result of the teachings in the books and tapes. Now this argument is not completely without merit because people in the business are introduce to some interesting and useful books (amongst, it has to be said, a lot of crud and some, frankly, dodgy ideas). However, I’m not particularly convinced by this argument.

The other idea was that ones children would be introduced to lots of other people who were in the business and who, ipso facto, were thus honest, decent and moral people - and so the children would have good role-models to aspire to. In practice though the children of distributors do not spend that much time in the company of other IBS distributors. (But they do spend an awful lot of time in the company of babysitters!- and if you can just forget the implications of that for a minute it is actually acutely ironic and rather amusing. Picture, if you will, thousands of IBS distributors sitting in the NEC in Birmingham listening to a Diamond Direct Distributor from the States telling them how much their children will benefit from the business - and then encouraging the distributors to arrange baby sitters and to go out night after night and to come back the following month to hear basically the same thing again)

I can think of lots of ‘types’ of people who I’d like my children to associate with but I can honestly say that ‘committed’ Amway people would not necessarily be very high on my list. They would not be at the bottom of the list - but there are better role-models in the world.

(vi)‘Wake-up’ calls - Divorces in IBS.

IBS never get tired of telling distributors that one of the side-benefits of being in the business is that it will have a really beneficial effect upon ones relationship with one’s spouse. They are fond of quoting statistics about how few divorces there are between couples who are in the business. See http......... for some discussion on this very debatable ‘fact’.

Our observations were that this may have been true on occasions but it was equally true that the business could put a heck of a lot of strain on a relationship as well.

For us, this issue was brought home when one of the Emerald couples in IBS split-up and (I think) got divorced. Our up-line sponsors were (a bit too) keen to assure us that the demise of that relationship had absolutely nothing to do with the Amway or the IBS business. Whether that is true or not it certainly got me thinking. Shortly after that, two couples in our sponsors downline also split up - one of these couples was almost at the direct distributor level and clearly earmarked as being one of the ‘legs’ that would have made our up-line sponsor an emerald direct distributor.

As far as I was concerned these were akin to wake-up calls - a warning.

(Viii) Saw the real effort required

When explaining the business opportunity to new people we were taught to tell them that they could build the business to the ‘retirement’ level by working 12-15hrs per week for a period of 2 to 5 years. This was very misleading - just as we were misled by our up-line sponsors on this issue.

Our sponsors were direct distributors who had gone direct in about 3 years and who had been in the business about nine years. They had been working very hard during that time and had apparently been following the IBS system to the letter. But even when we left the business they were a long way from the emerald level. As mentioned elsewhere in this article I estimate that Mr Up-line direct was working the business about 40+hrs per week and his wife was probably putting in 15 to 20+ hrs.

I don’t think that this was particularly unusual - my impression of the business is that, with determination and hard work coupled with some aptitude, then reaching the basic direct distributorship level is difficult but achievable - there are apparently a large number of basic direct distributors in the IBS AMO. The really difficult part, and our up-line confirmed this, is going from direct to emerald direct. There is a huge quantum-leap in difficulty and degree of effort required. One only has to look at the size of the IBS organisation and the relatively few emerald direct distributors that there are.

Basically the ‘hook’ worked like this - one would say to people "You can do this business in only 12 to15 hrs per week and in 2 to 5 yrs time you’ll be financially free". So people would become involved in the business and then find that they were making little, if any, progress with that level of time input. When their up-line considered that they were sufficiently enmeshed in ("committed to") the business then they would be told something like " Look, this is a serious business with serious rewards - when are you going to get serious about putting in the effort required to get those rewards?" or "The rewards from this business are extraordinary and I know you would not expect to get this for nothing - so when are you going to make the decision to put in some extraordinary effort?"

I came to the conclusion that I no longer wanted any part in that deceit.

(ix) My attitude to people

It does not take long for a change in one’s attitude to people to take place. What happens is that everybody, one knows or meets, becomes a potential ‘prospect’ for the business and very soon family members, colleagues, casual acquaintances and even complete strangers become potential ‘hits’. That’s fair enough if one goes along with the IBS teachings that says that the business is so good that if you know someone and do not show them the business then you are doing them a great dis-service.

However, the big problem that I had with this is that after a while I really found it hard to tell whether I was being nice to people, showing an interest in them and being personable because I was genuinely interested in getting to know that person for who they were or whether it was just to get them into the position of saying "yes" they would like to meet me to discuss a business opportunity.

The imperative to ‘contact’ people, that is continually emphasised by the IBS system, can gradually take over and cloud ones judgement about what is appropriate behaviour and what is not!

(X) Politics

What have politics got to do with an Amway business. Well I suppose there is a link because any business has to operate within a country’s economic climate which can be influenced by the political ideas and dogmas that are being put into practice.

IBS did not overtly preach any particular political viewpoint but anyone who was around the business for a while and who had more than a couple of politically aware brain-cells knocking around in their head could work out where most of the top pins in IBS and the up-line USA diamonds stood on the issue. The message came over clearly in Seminars - the USA diamonds just could not resist making the derogatory remarks about the Clinton administration and Democrats generally. Nearer to home I once had to, along with a roomful of people, (at an informal gathering) listen to an IBS emerald air his views on what a wonderful prime Minister that Margaret Thatcher was and, just before the last election, I had to put up with a lecture from our up-line sponsors about how the country would be destroyed if Labour ever got into power. I could go on.

I don’t mind people holding these views (in my life I’ve voted for all the main parties at different general elections - there’s nothing like being inconsistent!) but I resented these views being laid on people like they were. When my sponsor contacted me he said "Would you like to develop a business that will give you a substantial second income?" he did not say "Would you like to get involved with an organisation who’s leaders promotes right-wing politics when the opportunity arises?"

(Xi) Religion.

If you read about Amway AMO’s in America one of the recurring complaints that people have is that the business is being used to promote (Christian) religious beliefs - and usually fairly fundamentalist ones at that. Did this happen with IBS? Yes to a degree - and by the time we came to leave the business it appeared to be getting worse. The introduction of religious ideas into the business happened in two main ways.

When USA Diamonds came over to speak to IBS there was a tendency for them to weave phrases into their speeches such as "...and so we persevered with the business and the Lord blessed our efforts .......... ", or "......... and we needed guidance on whether we should be doing this business at all so we asked the Lord for guidance........." - or words very similar to those. Now personally I could just about live with that sort of thing because I know that for American speakers (whether or not it is sincere) this sort of thing is often a social/cultural habit. When listening to tapes of the USA Amway seminars then statements such as these would always be greeted with rapturous cheers and whistles from their audience.

We noticed that something similar was starting to happen when some UK distributors were on stage talking about their experience in building their IBS business. A typical comment that one occasionally heard was ".......and through this business we have learned how God has a plan for our lives and we have come to know and accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour..........." And I’m thinking to myself "Excuse me but I thought that this was a business meeting - I’ve never heard anything like that at any of the business seminars that my employers have ever sent me on" What was more off-putting was that towards the end of our stay in the business such statements were being met by enthusiastic cheers and whistles from the audience.

The other regular source of religious influence was in the books that IBS distributors were encouraged to buy each month. We were regularly supplied with books by authors who liberally wove biblical teachings into their works. Often these would be books about ‘success’ or ‘business’ but the unavoidable theme running through the book was that, without a deep and sincere Christian faith, then nothing worthwhile in life was possible. I remember one book in particular - I can’t remember the title- that was a blatant christian text thinly veiled as a book on how to succeed in business.

That sort of thing really began to cheese me off. When I’m in a charitable mood (!) I’d describe myself as agnostic but most of the time I am atheistic in my view of life. I take the view that using a business opportunity to foist religious ideas onto people is inappropriate - and I’d like to think that my religious stance is irrelevant to that sentiment.

I once asked my up-line if this sort of thing hacked him off as much as it did me. I think that he was clearly embarrassed by the whole thing and the best answer that he could come up with was "Well you see, this emphasis on religion could come in very useful if you want to sponsor religious people into the business........." Well on that basis I think that one should have expected to see books being sold to IBS distributors that promoted and extolled the virtues of other world religions such as Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc’. None were forthcoming during our time in the business!

If you are interested in this subject then it would be worth taking a look at http....... and http.......... where there is some discussion on this phenomenon within Amway AMO’s and especially the influence of fundamentalist ideas and the promotion of prosperity theology.
 
 

(Xii)Cost of the system

This issue has been well documented on several other sites in regard to AMO’s generally. The same thing is true of IBS. Basically, if you are a couple and you cannot afford to spend about £130-00 + per month on an ongoing (probably long-term) basis then don’t even think of getting involved with IBS. This figure takes into account the basics of the IBS system - function tickets and hotels, tapes, books, and some babysitting. True, it does not take account of the bonus cheques that you’ll be getting from your up-line if your group of distributors generates sufficient business volume, but then neither does it take into account the cost of running a car for several thousand extra miles a year or the true cost of baby-sitting. Neither does it account for the extra money you’ll be spending each month on household products that you’ll be buying from "your business". (And if we really wish to be thorough here it does not account for the opportunity-cost of the time you will be spending attending functions etc’ i.e. money that you could have earned in that time or effort that you could have put into developing your career or your (normal) business.)

If new prospects were told about these costs up-front and were encouraged to draw up a realistic cash flow for the business then that would be reasonable - but that never happened.

(xiii) Environmental issues

This may be a non-existent issue for many people who are in, or have been in the business, but it began to concern me more and more. IBS frequently told distributors how environmentally friendly the Amway business is. This seemed to be based upon two ‘facts’. Firstly, the claim that their products were environmentally friendly (now there you have a can-of-worms-of-a-debate for anyone who wants to get into it - by that I mean that deciding what is, or is not, environmentally friendly is quite a complex and highly debatable matter.) Secondly, it was claimed that the networking method of distributing goods is very efficient. i.e. the products are imported, transported to Milton Keynes (Amway HQ), trucked to Direct Distributors throughout the country and then passed on down the networking line to the eventual user - be it distributor or customer. Is this an efficient way of distributing goods? I find that difficult to answer - I suppose that one ought to be asking questions such as - efficient relative to what? - time taken, pollution caused, the distribution methods of, say, supermarkets? I cannot answer these questions but I did become more and more aware that charging around the country in a car attending functions and showing the plan was not environmentally friendly - and neither was driving across an already congested and polluted city to a customer’s house to deliver their carton of washing powder.

There is an interesting area of study here for anyone who’s interested in the subject. Maybe one day someone might show me that I was wrong and that networking is the last word in efficient and environmentally friendly product distribution. I’m just telling you how I felt.

(Xv) Cultish elements

The question as to the extent to which IBS is cultish is a really interesting issue. Let me just list some of the elements of the business that seemed to me to be cultish.

1. Isolation. "Try to associate with positive people and avoid those who go through life with a negative attitude." was a frequent bit of advice given out. At one level this is quite good advice if taken to mean that one should try to associate with those of a positive ‘can-do’ attitude to life as opposed to the neer’do wells. We were introduced, through IBS to many books that espoused the importance of attitude and expectations in being successful in life and they were often very good - and have no doubt helped many people re-evaluate their approach to life. That’s fair enough but what happened in practice in IBS is that the advice to avoid ‘negative’ people tended to strongly translate into "avoid those who are critical of the business, and your involvement in it, and spend as much time in the company of people who will support you in the business (i.e other distributors ). This tended to mean that one become more and more isolated from people outside the business - the very people in fact who were in a position to give one a, much needed (!), reality check..

Worship of leaders in the business - Imagine this. The NEC in Birmingham, 8,000 people in the audience, it is getting late on a Saturday evening and people are tired but there is a growing sense of excitement, the music builds and a voice announces "please stand and welcome your leaders and diamonds directs xxxx & yyyyy". Then a couple walk onto the stage waving and holding hands............ and the audience ..................... goes absolutely crazy! Clapping, stamping, shouting and whistling - and it goes on and on.........for minutes on end sometimes. You look around and people are generally transfixed, a look of beautification on some faces, tears streaming down others............ . amazing! For many people in the audience the couple on stage were the epitome of what it means to be an ideal human being - pure hero worship.

We are your family The phrases"We are family" or " Hey, this is more than business - this is family" are ones you’ll a lot of in the IBS environs. That’s lucky really because after some time in the business ones real family may be finding it harder and harder to relate to you - and so it is nice to have a ready-made IBS family ready to welcome you.

The business is the best reality there is. Phrases such as "listen folks, there is absolutely nothing out there to touch this business" are common. If one hear that enough times then one tends to believe it - even if it contradicts reality. Of course if you have spent years telling family, friends and colleagues the same thing then you can easily understand how you can paint oneself into a corner! This is one of the reasons why people are reluctant to leave the business - they realise that a lot of people will be able to say "...told you so.......".

Abrogating decision making to others. Time and again one would be advised to ‘counsel-up-line’ when making decisions about ones life. A typical story one would hear from emeralds would be how they came to a stage in their lives where they, for example, had been offered promotion at work - and how they ‘counselled up-line’ and were advised that if they put the effort in to the business, instead of accepting promotion, then they would be making more money from the business than from any job. We were also advised to take up-line advice on all financial matters, major purchases, relationship issues etc’.

Unquestioning attitude

We were quickly taught not to question any of the advice that upline gave us because it had come "all the way from the top" i.e. from the diamonds in the business. The implication was that they had everything to teach and nothing to learn from those below them. It was also a way of ensuring that the diamonds had very close control over the way that all of their downline acted and behaved. Here’s a small example out of the many I could give you. Our sponsors went through a phase of not switching their answering machine on when they were unavailable. This was pretty inconvenient because they were hard enough to contact at the best of times - so one found oneself phoning them dozens of times a day to try to catch them in just to leave them a message. And the reason they did not use their answering machine? Because their up-line diamond had decided that it was impersonal and was bad business practice. I know that this caused them considerable inconvenience but they apparently did not question it. About a year later their up-line changed his mind on this issue and then the machine was in use again! Crazy.

(Xvii) What is a balanced life?

If there is one good thing that has come out of my experience with IBS it is this - it encouraged me to re-examine what it is that makes for a balanced and healthy life. Basically, and I don’t expect any prizes for this because it is probably self evident, I conclude that one has to achieve a sustainable [note the emphasis] balance between the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions to ones life - and it is up to each individual to decide what each of those means in practice, and then act on that.

My big concern about developing an IBS/Amway business is that if one is doing that on top of holding down a job or running an existing business (as most people do) then there will simply not be the time to nurture each of those elements properly in order to lead a balanced life.

And this, I think, comes to the nub of why most people quit the business. When they finally realise what would be required to develop the business to the so-called retirement levels then they realise that the opportunity costs are simply far too high and that they are not prepared to pay that price. They instinctively realise that it would be a deeply unhealthy state of affairs for any length of time.

Here is a little ‘game’ that people can play.

Write down the number 168 - this is the number of hours in a week.

Then ask yourself the following questions, consider them carefully and then jot down the answers you arrive at.

1. How many hours of sleep a week do I require to have a quality life (i.e. not feeling permanently ‘on the edge’) and to sustain my health long-term? (don’t just think physically - also mentally and emotionally)

2. How much time would I like to spend with my spouse - on structured activities and just ‘hanging-out’?

3. How much time would I like to spend with my children - on planned activities and just being in each others company?

4. How much time with extended family?

5. How much time with friends?

6. How much time on the ‘domestics’? i.e. the things that must be done to avoid ending up living in a pit, and smelling like a gorillas armpit.

7. How much time on the practicalities of life - getting the car serviced, gardening, house maintenance, etc’?

8. How much time on personal development? - education in its broadest sense - anything from a night-class to reading a mind expanding book..

9. How much time on the spiritual side of ones life - reflection, church etc’?

10. How much time developing interests, skills and hobbies?

11. How much time making a contribution to wider society - charity, neighbourhood issues?

12. How much time on career development?

13. How much time at work - realistically?

14. How much time just completely chilling out and getting complete rest?

15. How much time for the unexpected things - children ill, parent’s wedding anniversary, watching the next comet that comes around etc’.

Add up all the hours and subtract from 168.

If, after you’ve done your sums, you still have 40 hrs per week left over (mainly in the evenings and at weekends) and you are prepared to devote this to a networking business for week on month on year on decade then you have got time to develop an IBS business to the Emerald level.

If not then ask yourself some really serious questions about what it is in your life that you are prepared to cut back on - in the long-term. Don’t kid yourself that it is just for a short period of time.

(Xviii) The Boredom - or does the end justify the means?

This is one of the things that really got to us - the repetition and boredom involved in the business was mind-crushing.

Basically there is a set pattern in trying to get people sponsored into the business - contact them, show them the business plan, do a ‘follow-up’, get them started - build a list of contactees, actual contacting etc, get them to a business meeting and a Seminar ........and so on round and round. So one of the ‘secrets’ of success is just to do that over and over and over - in fact by the time someone has achieved the Emerald level in the business they have probably shown the plan many hundreds of times! For anyone who has more than half a brain, and who cares how they spend their time, then that can be mind-numbingly boring. True, it is quite exciting when one is taking new prospects to Seminars and helping them to get them going in the business - but after a while that begins to pale.

The half day, and weekend, business seminars are something else as well! Now to be fair here the IBS business seminars could be very entertaining in parts - there were some very good and entertaining speakers. However, a lot of it was pretty dire - just the same old thing over and over again. It had to be like that because there is a high turnover of distributors that the continual stream of new people always have to hear the basics.

I think that people who decide to make a go of the business, and who put up with that for many years on end, must work on the basis that the end justifies the means. i.e. put up with years of tedious repetition because one day it will all be over and one can retire and forget all about it (in theory). Well, I generally take the view that how I go about achieving something is as almost as important as the actual achievement itself - or to put it another way, life is too short to spend a big chunk of it being bored numb.

11. and a few (slightly!) tongue in cheek reasons why we just had to get out of the business.

(i) "Thank goodness I can’t afford that dress.....!"

This, more than anything else, probably put my wife off the business! Some of the diamond and emerald ladies used to come on stage wearing dresses that could best be described as ‘inadvisable’ and could probably better be described as a cross between ‘Wuthering Heights and Michelin man! Huge frilly shoulder adornments and layered dresses - they had to be seen to be believed! (To be fair though a few of the women really knew how to dress well - and it was clear they’d decided that there was just no way that they would be persuaded to follow the lead that was being shown by their up-line.)

(ii) Makes Ben Hur look like an epic

Every time the Emeralds and Diamonds went away somewhere on one of their freebie Amway trips then someone always had a video camera to hand. They would show these videos at Seminars and the idea was, presumably, that others would see this and develop an even more burning desire to ‘go diamond’ and join them on the trips. Well, to be honest, those videos were so boring, inane and badly filmed that they were actually funny - sometimes we used to sit there almost wetting ourselves !

(iii) When ones up-line have become film critics

I recall some USA up-line diamonds (one of the Harteis brothers I expect) once saying that they had seen the film ‘Brave Heart’ and that it was a great film - wonderfully inspirational and embodying the spirit and attitude required to build an Amway Business. So the very next week our up-line sponsors went out and hired it and told us that it was a super film. I’m sorry if this offends anyone but in my opinion anyone who thinks that ‘Brave Heart’ is a great film really does need to get out more!

(Iv) All that kissey kissey stuff In IBS you never just said hello to someone when greeting them. You had to either give them a really good ‘success handshake’ if they were men (firm and slightly pumping) or give them a hug and a kiss on the cheeks if they were women. So when two groups of distributors met it often got really quite complicated - you needed quite a good memory to keep a tally on who you’d kissed or not. It was better to kiss someone twice though, rather than mill them out, so if in doubt one would just keep on going! I remember one time our up-line and half his downline fell ill with a bug of some sort - now how did that spread so quickly I wonder? (One good thing about the business - at least it has taught thousands of people how to shake hands properly. Don’t you just hate it when you shake someone’s hand and it is like getting hold of a damp dishcloth. Good on you IBS).

(v) Let me just fob you off one more time with my rapier wit

Even seasoned emeralds and diamonds in the business seemed to realise that one cannot totally ignore all of the thorny issues all of the time and so they would attempt to deal with issues through the use of ‘humour’. For example, a rhetorical question that one occasionally heard from speakers was "So is this business a cult as I’ve heard said?"

There seemed to be two sock responses given out,

1 - "Some people do say that this business is a cult and that I’ve been brain-washed - well I’d rather have a clean brain than a dirty mind"

2 - "If this was a cult then all my distributors would do what they were told and I’d be a lot richer a lot quicker"

As a rhetorical device in a speech one can get away with it but I got very similar answers when this issue was raised directly with up-line!

(vi) Here’s a book I can really recommend..... I’ve already mentioned that some of the books we were introduced to by IBS were very good - real eye-openers. Unfortunately, among the gems there was quite a lot of real dross. I think at one stage some of the emeralds or diamonds in IBS must have decided that they could turn their hand to writing and so we were sold books by two unknown authors that were produced by some little known vanity press. One in particular comes to mind - the story of how an office worker received guidance on success from a talking owl that lived in his bosses office. As an idea it is not completely without merit I suppose but................oh boy oh boy, that book really was something else!

Anyway, enough stuff and non-sense, time to wind this up.

9. Summary -

There is a favoured phrase that is regularly heard at IBS functions.

"The prize is bigger than the price"

In other words there is a large price to pay to achieve high pin levels in the business but the rewards that are supposed to arise will be far greater still.

I gradually came to two conclusions. The first was the realisation that the prize was probably not be as great as I’d been let to (wanted to) believe. I came to realised that the achievement of high pin levels in the business did not really offer ‘freedom’ - but rather just another type of control structure within which one would be firmly enfolded.

The second realisation was that the price of achieving it was actually much much higher than one is led to believe when introduced to the business. I’m just thankful that we were sponsored by active direct distributors - if not then it would have taken a lot longer to realise this.

Once I understood these things then it was not a question of ‘if’ I would leave the business but rather of ‘when’.

The most important conclusion that I came to was that it would be impossible to build an IBS business, with any degree of success, and at the same time act ethically and lead a balanced life.

Looking back I have a variety of feelings about the business.

1. Somewhat used - but at the same time rather embarrassed and foolish at allowing myself to be taken in.

2. Ashamed at being willing to partake in the half-truths, distortions and lies that were involved in trying to develop a network of distributors.

3. Wiser for having come through it.

4. Thankful that it is now out of my system.

To those people who are busy developing their IBS businesses I would say - take some time to evaluate what you are doing. If it still feels ok, and you really do not relate to the things you’ve read here, then just get on with the climb and when you get to the top I really hope that the view is worth it.

If it does not feel ok then be assured there is life in abundance outside the IBS web that has been woven through your life. If you do decide to walk away though just be prepared to accept that it could take a long time to get it all out of your head and to start to appreciate and enjoy the richness in the world again.

If you are someone who is thinking of getting involved with IBS then I’d advise you to be very circumspect. Firstly, ask yourself what it is that is really important to you in life. Then ask yourself if what you are being offered will meet those needs. Always be aware that what you see is not necessarily what you are getting and that many of the people you will meet in the business are wearing expertly crafted masks.

And finally.....

I’d like to leave you with a couple of quotes that seems appropriate to this discussion.
"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it"
- Philip K Dick.

"In time even these things will appear amusing"
- Virgil

And finally finally

Here is a quote that has nothing to do with this discussion - but it always makes me smile and so I’d like to share it with you.
"The toughest time...in anyone's life...is when you have to kill a loved one just because they're the devil".
Emo Phillips.

Visit Ron Johnston's site: The Great Amway UK Rip-Off