Russia: Land of Opportunity

What country’s individual tax rate tops out at 13%?

Hint.  It isn’t the USA where federal and local taxes in New York are projected to reach a 57% bite.  If you are rich? Move to Florida or Nevada to avoid State Income Tax.  If you wanna be rich?  Move to this new “land of opportunity.”

What country’s higher education fosters a curiosity and practical involvement for its student body in free enterprise?

Hint.  It isn’t the USA where ironically the very corporations who fund university endowments are seen as the enemy by professors and students alike.  They are viewed as polluters and exploiters of a beleaguered laboring class.  But in this country, this new “land of opportunity,” the professors, themselves, own real estate businesses, factories and sit on the boards of directors of major corporations.

Meanwhile, state corporate taxes in the USA have reached scandalous proportions and all but kill the chances for a new, emerging, small business.  For example, all fifty states have higher corporate taxes than the nation of France, which has the fifth highest corporate taxes in the world and is frequently held out as the poster child of anti-small business and entrepreneurs.  But in this new “land of opportunity,” the maximum federal and regional corporate tax is 20%.

What country has sensible consumers who pay their bills on time and save their money?  Only one in 100 even carries a credit card?  Where capital investment potential abounds?

Hint.  It is surely not the USA where Americans carry 450 million Visa cards alone and where their credit card debt approaches $2 trillion.

What country is a true metling pot of religion, culture and race, where Moslem, Jew and Christian live and work side by side and their values are openly appreciated?

Hint. Not here in the good old USA, where government and big business restrict language and clothing in schools and the public marketplace. (I have a friend who writes screenplays for television movies.  He tells me that “Jesus” cannot be mentioned on one of the networks except as a curse word.)

What country boasts an airline where the stewardesses are still tall, trim, bright and attractive?  They still smile at their passengers, and wear elegant white gloves as part of their smart uniforms.

Hint. It isn’t the USA where a $15,000, first class, round trip international ticket on a US airline will get you a bitter, grouchy stewardess, who hates her job, her passengers but has union guarantees that virtually prevent her from ever being fired.

Answer to all the above?

Russia.

Welcome to the new land of opportunity.

Yes, there are still problems galore in Russia.  The roads outside of the major cities are still in disrepair. Grade schools are awful.  Airline equipment is dated, even for the clever, well run, Rossiya Airline. The government still struggles to deal with endemic corruption. (If security personnel at the airport will steal your coins going through the x ray machine, which happened to me, it kinda makes you wonder how vulnerable they would be to a terrorist bribe.)

The biggest problem of all?  Excessive regulation.  Perhaps, a hangover from the Soviet years or needed to combat corruption or maybe just part of the Russian DNA.  A new restaurant, for example, faces endless government regulations not only regarding hiring, but even regarding the choice of entrees on a menu.  And such rules not only limit the imagination of their people, they are cleverly exploited by competitors to block the emergence of any newcomers.

In complex industries, like “Direct Sales” the DUMA is vulnerable to manipulation by big companies who seek monopolies by regulating competitors out of the market.  Members of the DUMA must be generalists and can’t be experts on everything so some will be innocently led by foreign companies seeking to “clean up” their industry.  The result? Expect new regulations that will confine and harass their own Russian work force and limit their income opportunities, all to the advantage of big foreign corporations.

Nevertheless, Russia under Putin brought law and order to the streets, began an aggressive campaign against corruption and released an entrepreneurial spirit that is quickly producing a growing middle class and a Russian nouveau riche.  When the “dreamers” and “doers” outnumber the “takers” Russia will truly explode.  The atmosphere is right.  Immigrants, the bane of fortress America, are welcome in Russia where they are needed and wanted.

And the Russian Miracle is not just a Moscow – St. Petersburg phenomenon. There are business and cultural zones now popping up all over the Russian landscape.  For example, Putin helped the city of Kazan win the 2013 Universiade.  The city is being transformed in preparation. Yekaterinburg is a showcase city.  Distant Khabarovsk has it all.  Booming Black Sea resort Sochi will host the 2014 Winter Olympics and anyone who has visited this exotic city can tell you that it will forever after become one of the world’s glamour spots. 

So when President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin sit down together in the coming days to discuss their relationship and their future, they hold the hopes and dreams of millions in their hands.  And they are on the verge of history.  What has happened in Russia, its diversification, its wise use of the oil boom, its new freedoms for the marketplace now make it a “land of opportunity.”  And just in time for a world in global crisis.

Новая страна возможностей

В какой стране мира индивидуальная налоговая ставка, ниже 13%?

Намек.  Это – не США, где федеральные и местные налоги в Нью-Йорке  достигают 57%.  Если вы богаты? Переезжайте во Флориду или Неваду, чтобы избегать налога на прибыль.  Если вы хотите быть богатым?  Переезжайте в эту новую “землю возможностей.”

В каких странах высшее образование поощряет любознательность и личное участие студентов в свободном предпринимательстве?

Намек.  Это – не США, где по иронии судьбы сами корпорации, оказывающие материальную поддержку университетам,  рассматриваются профессорами и студентами, в качестве врагов. Они рассматриваются как угнетатели и эксплуататоры рабочего класса.  Но в этой стране, этой новой “земле возможностей,” профессора сами владеют фирмами по продаже недвижимости, фабриками и сидят в советах директоров этих корпораций.

Тем временем, налог на прибыль компаний в США достиг скандальных размеров и тем самым убивает возможность развития появляющихся новых фирм малого бизнеса. К примеру, все 50 штатов имеют более высокий налог на прибыль компаний, чем  население Франции, чей налог на прибыль компаний пятый по величине в мире  и часто воспринимается как враждебный малому бизнесу и предпринимательству. И в этой стране максимальный федеральный и региональный налог на прибыль компаний – 20%.

В какой стране есть здравомыслящие потребители, которые платят по счетам вовремя и копят  деньги? Где только один из ста человек имеет кредитную карточку? Где огромный потенциал капитальных инвестиций?

Намек.  Это – несомненно, не США, где американцы имеют только 450 миллионов карточек Visa, и где долг по кредитным карточкам доходит до 2 триллионов.

Какая страна является местом, где реально переплетаются религии, культуры и расы, где вместе живут и работают  мусульмане, христиане, евреи  и их ценности принимаются?

Намек. Не здесь в старых добрых США, где правительство и крупный капитал ограничивают язык и одежду в школах, и общественный рынок. (У меня есть друг, который пишет сценарии для телевизионных фильмов. Он говорит , что имя “Иисус” нельзя упоминать на одном из каналов, т.к. как там оно звучит как проклятие).                                                                                                                Какая страна может похвастаться авиалиниями,                                                                                               , где все бортпроводницы высокого роста, аккуратны, умны и привлекательны?  Они все еще улыбаются пассажирам и надевают изящные белые перчатки как часть  своей элегантной униформы.

Намек. Это – не США, где заплатив $15,000 за билет первого класса на международном рейсе американских авиалиний, вы  получите обслуживание, которое вам предоставит вредная, ворчливая бортпроводница, которая ненавидит свою работу, и своих пассажиров, но имеет гарантии профсоюза, которые фактически делают невозможным ее увольнение.

Ответ на все эти вопросы?

Россия.

Добро пожаловать в новую землю возможностей

Да, все еще есть проблемы в изобилии в России.  Дороги за пределами главных городов находятся все еще в ветхости. Образование в школах ужасное. Авиаоборудование устарело, даже в такой умной компании с хорошим управлением как Российские авиалинии. Государство до сих пор борется с эпидемией коррупции. (если служащие охраны аэропорта украдут ваши монеты проходящие осмотр, как это произошло со мной, то это заставляет задуматься на сколько их легко их подкупить террористам.)

Наибольшая проблема всего?  Чрезмерное регулирование. Возможно, пережиток  Советских времён, либо нужно было бороться с коррупцией либо возможно только часть Русской ДНК.  Новый ресторан, к примеру, сталкивается с бесконечными государственными ограничениями, не только по вопросу найма, но  даже выбору блюд в меню. И такие правила не только ограничивают воображение их людей, их умно эксплуатируют конкуренты, чтобы блокировать появление любых новичков.

В комплексной промышленности, подобно «Прямые Продажи» Дума уязвима к манипулированию большими компаниями, которые ищут монополию путём ограничения конкурентов вне рынка. Члены Думы должны быть универсалами и не могут быть экспертами во всем, таким образом, некоторые будут невинно приводить зарубежные компании, ищущие «очистить» их индустрию. Результат? Ожидайте новые ограничения, которые ограничат и будут беспокоить их собственную русскую рабочую силу и ограничивать их возможности прибыли, все для удобства больших иностранных компаний. Однако, Россия с Путиным во главе, принесла закон и порядок на улицы, начал агрессивную кампанию против коррупции, выпустила предпринимательский дух, который быстро создаёт и развивает средний класс и русского nouveau riche. Когда “мечтатели” и “исполнители” перевесят количеством “потребителей” Россия по настоящему взорвется.  Атмосфера правильна.  Иммигранты, the bane of fortress America, желанны в России, где они нужны и где их ищут.

И Русское Чудо – не только феномен Москва – Санкт Петербург . Есть деловые и культурные зоны ,которые сейчас возникают по всей русской территории. К примеру, Путин помог городу Казан выиграть в конкурсе по проведению универсиады в 2013 году. Город преобразовывается во время подготовки. Екатеринбург – город витрин. Отдаленный Хабаровск так же имеет все. Быстро развивающийся Сочи, курорт на Черном Море примет в2014 году, зимние олимпийские игры и кто-либо, кто посетил этот экзотический город, сможет сказать вам, что после их,  это будет одно из самых эффектных мест в мире.

И так, когда Президент Медведев и Премьер-министр Путин садятся вместе, чтобы обсудить их взаимоотношения и их будущее, они держат надежды и грезы миллионов в их руках. И они на грани истории.  Что случилось в России, её диверсификации, её мудром использовании нефтяного бума, её новых свобод для рынка сейчас делают её “землёй возможностей.”  Как раз вовремя для мира в глобальном кризисе.

Russian scientists close in on Fountain of Youth

Now, this is interesting.  An international group of scientists have embarked on the ultimate quest.   To find the fountain of youth.  Not since Ponce de Leon has the world been this hopeful. This time we should all expect a little more due diligence.The goal of the project is “to extend the period of human youth.”  And – get this – a biochemical laboratory of Russia’s Southern Federal University has joined the project.  This is getting serious.  And they are testing the affects of various stimuli on the DNA of lab animals. Vladimir Chistyakov is the senior scientist at the lab.  Apparently, in the 1970s, an academician named Skulachev “dissipated the energy of a living organism on the molecular level.”  This according to Pravda. Human cells produce a toxic by product which speeds up the aging process and Skulachev developed nano-constructions to neutralize the toxins.  Sound likes XanGo’s new secret product x51. Anyway, Skulachev’s experiments worked on rats, (which means it should be immediately effective for most politicians.)  The rats remained vigorous throughout their lives but it did not extend their average life spans.   It translates into a life of longer youth but not of longer years. Meanwhile, a group of English doctors have compiled a list of everyday, ordinary things that have already proven to extend life.  And what is the one, single, biggest thing that most people don’t do that has been proven to extend life? Floss. Now, when the Russians figure out how to extend a youthful life without flossing we will be getting someplace.

Why I Chose XanGo

“Arriving at one goal is the starting point of another.”

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

For twenty-one years I have been a student and writer of American history.  It is how I have made my living.  It is what has consumed my time.  But in between this Spartan business of researching and writing about people who are long dead and events that are mostly forgotten, I have had to do other things to make a living.

Since 1974 I have also written and studied network marketing.  For four years, I actually built my own Amway business, reaching the diamond level.  And for many years thereafter I have traveled the world, learning from networking leaders and sharing that knowledge with audiences at their great conventions.

By 1979 my philanthropic work, starting the charity awards, and my political work for the Reagans and Bushes, began dominating my calendar.  But I had never forgotten the idea of a residual, ongoing income for retirement and how it might possibly fund my dreams of even more reading and writing of history.

Recently, when it became known that I had formally retired from Amway, I was contacted by eight other networking companies.  The owners of five of the enterprises called or met with me personally, extolling the virtues of their companies.  One owner-distributor offered me a million dollars to join him.

But I chose my steps carefully.

I was looking for a business that would be the easiest, for the average person, to make the most money with the least amount of time.   I had learned well the lesson, that if an opportunity doesn’t work for the average person, like myself, it will eventually stop working for the exceptional person.

The first thing was a fair plan.  A binary was out.  They were devastating to the average person.  I struggled with that.  One of my best friends was in a binary.  But I did not want in a business that hurt masses of people and left them feeling guilty about their failure, even when it was the expectation, indeed – even a necessity for the company’s survival – that they fail.

But I was also warned not to get into a business that front loaded the payout.  One very chastised and humble networking leader told me that his company was failing because they had moved the bonuses all to the front.  His people could easily make $500 a month, he said sadly, but they could only double that with great difficulty.  As one of my friends commented last night, a networking business needs a vast middle class, like the United States, with many who quickly earn enough to justify doing it fulltime, a strong base from which to launch higher. Again and again I was told of the one company that had the perfect plan.  And twice this information came to me from the mouths of the very owners of the other companies, men and women who were trying to get me to join their enterprise.  Twice I was told that they had copied this plan.

And secondly, the company had to have a product with a compelling reason for people to buy.  There are several companies with good products that make it easy to build a network.  Distributors who get into those companies are astonished at the amount of money they can make in a short period of time without breaking a sweat.  “Yes, but how much do you make off the product?”  Someone will invariably ask.  “This IS off of the product,” comes back the answer.

Well, it so happens that my wife, Myriam, used the product of this particular company, insisting that it was making a difference for our youngest daughter.

“It’s a placebo,” I said, chuckling at her naiveté.  No one wants their wife looking the fool.

“Well, so what?” she would glower back, “It works.”

And then one night after an hour on the internet I told her that she could get the same benefits from buying pomegranate juice at the grocery store and save us some inconvenience and money to boot.

Well, my wife did just that.  We bought juices at the grocery store.  But within weeks all the symptoms came back.

“Look,” she said. “Our daughter has been to doctors in Arizona, Texas, Virginia and Maryland.  We have driven her to holistic clinics in Pennsylvania, arriving home exhausted at midnight.  She has had MRI’s and CAT scans and more blood tests than we can count.  She has taken endless bottles of medicines or vitamins and mineral combinations or nothing at all.  In ten years this is the first thing that has given her any relief.”

“Okay,” I pouted, “Back on the placebo.”

When you combine a fair marketing plan with a compelling product narrative it does not take long to build a network.  And you can stand in front of people and look them in the eyes and know that you are sharing an idea that can be replicated.

The process of networking has long left a distasteful feeling in my mouth.  I am too private a person. And there can be no recruitment without rejection.  A part of me would rather live with less money, on a college campus, reading and writing than taking an emotional risk.  I have a low threshold of pain.

But this company soared to $500 million, even without an educational, tool based system.  They did it on three things, a fair marketing plan, an easy to sell product, and credible branding.  (There is a nice story in a recent issue of Nutrition Business, featuring the style of their bottle, of all things.) For me, this company takes the embarrassment out of networking.

And finally, the future of this company’s founders is directly related to the success of the field.  They are young and their success in life depends on the success of their distributors. This is not a cow that they milk.  They aren’t manipulating the numbers or starving markets of product in order to keep down costs and control growth.  They want and need their company to grow and that bodes well for those of us who are taking this adventurous ride with them.  If they have succeeded without systems it is not because they are afraid of them.  Indeed, they have openly embraced systems that will help the field, saying to professional networkers, “come on, do your thing.”  They are not afraid of the prosperity of their distributors.  They are counting on it.

And so I chose the Lamborghini of network marketing.  Other enterprises have risen and fallen around them.  Many others will do the same in the years ahead.  This one proved to me that it is the easiest for the average person to make the most money with the least amount of time.  It has a sure and steady trajectory. I chose XanGo.

Watch the XanGo story on YouTube.

MLM Hall of Fame

Having traveled the world for many years now and spoken at networking conventions and met and known many of its leaders, here is my own subjective list for a networker’s hall of fame.

I have not included many of the legendary founders, like Rich Devos, Jay Van Andal, David McConnell, Mary Kay Ash, Mark Hughes, Aaron Garrity, Gary Hollister, Kent Wood, Bryan Davis, nor did I include the popular speakers, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, Billy Zeoli and Robert Kiyosaki.  Maybe someday I will do those lists.  But each one of the following men and women actually built their own significant, personal networks into the hundreds of thousands.

Many on this list have made mistakes but so to have most of the rest of us.  And some have done extraordinary things for their countries and the world. They work with different companies and each have their different ideas and personalities.  What they have in common is uncommon results.

Nowadays, there are many phony “trade lists” of income earners floated on the internet by shill websites.  Some of them list names of leaders who have been paid out huge sign up bonuses.  Some have never sponsored a single person themselves. But I have met most of the people on my list and spoken to their groups in coliseums or soccer stadiums and been in their homes and I can say that their accomplishments are real.

Doug Wead’s Networking Hall of Fame

Robert Ankasa: This former vice president of the Bank of America in Jakarta has built the largest network in Indonesia and has filled soccer stadiums and auditoriums across the fourth largest nation in the world.

Jeff Boyle: Founder of Jus, he is included in this mix because he actually built his company’s own networks. Young. brilliant, with a big heart.  No one knows the science of networking any better.  He is the Alvin Toffler of the industry.

BK Boreyko: He hailed from a family that built one of the largest organizations in the Matal Company and when a corporate crisis occurred he stared his own company, New Vision, which reached the $100 million sales mark in record time.

Bill Britt: At one time his organization may have represented half of all Amway volume.  He transformed the networking systems by being the first to build his own cassette manufacturing company.

Craig Bryson: He is Nu Skin’s biggest lifetime earner and one of the industry’s greatest storytellers.

Bill Childers: He built the largest, single, cohesive group in networking history.  His secret?  He insisted on always appearing as the second man to his upline, even when his own group was at times much larger.

Jim Dornan: The founder of Network 21 has the largest and most efficient system business in the world. His organization has donated $100 million to World Vision..

Tim Foley: He defied the accepted wisdom of all the other North America networking leaders and proved that system networks could be profitable outside the United States building giant groups in Brazil and Spain.

Attila Gidofalvi: This Hungarian businessman is the father of networking in the former Soviet Union, Attila built 120 Amway diamonds in two years and held meetings at Olympic Stadium in Moscow.

John Godzich: He built a network in France and then a company that reached $200 million in sales in two years and annually filled Bercy, the largest auditorium in Paris, four weekends in a row.  80% of the money was made from retail sales, allowing new people to make money too.  It is still an industry record.

Hal and Susan Gooch: They hosted some of the largest networking events in the United States, filling the 90,000 seat Indiana Hoosier Dome on multiple occasions.  While most wives of American networkers were limited to roles as “speakers,” Susan played an integral part in the organization of the business.

Bob Goshen: “Mr. Enthusiasm,” he was the first system’s person in Sunrider and drove its success.

Brig Hart: Already very successful in networking, he felt cheated by his experience and joined a new company.  Brig proved wrong the old networking adage that successful networkers are too soft to build it twice and took his new company, MonaVie, into the stratosphere, making himself a legend in the process.

Randy Haugen: He had a great run in the west.

Don Held: In his heyday he filled coliseums in Ohio and Canada, and launched an educational system, showing that a network can do more than just make money.

Dave Johnson: He is the giant of Nikken. Supposedly 99% of the company is in his downline.

Gordon Morton: He is the father of the so called “Cadillac of compensation plans” and built his own networks in several different companies before venting his frustration by co-founding one of his own.  XanGo reached $500 million in its first five years.  Its compensation plan, which puts money in the pockets of its distributors quickly, is copied by almost all new startups.  It is called the perfect plan.

Joe Morton: Gordon’s brother and ally in XanGo, Joe showed how to build a network on products that people “had to have.”  It spawned a whole new category in networking.  Now all new companies copy the model.

Ken Pontious:  He was top earner with Enrich, was once taking home a monthly income which was twice the annual salary of the president of the United States.

Vladimir Pozdnyakov: He is nicknamed “The Poz” by his American colleagues, he is one of the new Russian millionaires, who developed a network out of trust, in a difficult environment.  His groups fill auditoriums.

Ron Puryear: He built one of the largest networks in the Britt system and for awhile, ruled in the northwest USA, filling the largest coliseums in Portland and Seattle to capacity..

Kaoru Nakajimi: He has more than 700,000 in his downline.  He built Amway in Japan.

Nathan Ricks: The charismatic legend who helped build Nu Skin.

Mitch Sala: He is the great Australian networker who solved the problem of isolation downunder by exporting his business worldwide. Sala has one of the most geographically diverse groups in the world.

Rick Setzer: He was once the third leg in the Yager-Britt stool.  Great systems knowledge.

Sherman Unkefer: A legend in XanGo, with an estimated $350,000 a month income off his XanGo business, Sherman’s simple prospecting package called “The Magic Wand,” helped him build a resilient networking business in only a few short explosive months.  No one has reached the top quicker.

Don Wilson: He succeeded by hard work.  Yager didn’t like flying on airplanes so Wilson soon owned the Yager system in the west.

Dexter Yager: The father of the so called “system,” he may be the greatest networker of all time, he has not only built one of the biggest organizations, he has maintained it big for the longest time.  His secret?  He keeps starting new groups and for years he has outworked everybody else.

Mark Yarnell: Formerly of Nu Skin, he is networking’s thinking man and its most prolific chronicler.

Natasha Yena: A wise and resourceful strategic thinker, Natasha is the mother of all Russian speaking networkers, Her events fill auditoriums across Russia and Ukraine and have spawned dozens of other networking women leaders with enormous businesses of their own, clearly disproving the misogynist declarations of some American networkers who insist that women can’t build the business by themselves.  Indeed, in Russia, it is mostly the women who do.

James Vagyi: He is a Hungarian whose business exploits put him on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.  He successfully launched networking in Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Moldavia, Belarus, Romania, Slovenia and Croatia, making him “the networking father of many nations.”  And while others have appeared and died in some of those markets, Vagyi’s groups continue.

Jody Victor: He proved that networking can survive and even thrive into a second generation. Victor has seen the dozens of seismic changes in networking and landed on his feet each time.

Orrin Woodward: He took the so called “systems building” to its ultimate extreme.

Amway Diamonds and their “tools”

After all these months I am still responding to the points that Tex has been making. This is my last post on this subject, before moving on. I haven’t been arguing with Tex, although he may think that, I am just offering explanations about how it happened. Actually, I agree with most of what he says, especially with what it has become.

I recently sat with one of the most famous diamonds and he was rationalizing his life of selling tapes by saying that what he tells the people is that “these tapes are good for you, they will build your life,” which is true.  He just doesn’t talk about how they relate to the business because while they will indeed build the business, the business may not offer as much money as the tapes. He knew that the tapes had bought his mansion, not his networking business.  So I think his conscience was bothered by that.

Now, in fairness, some network companies need CD’s badly and should be promoting them much, much more.  Their people are suffering for ways to build their businesses and a good system would solve it. And the difference is that if they build their businesses they will make money off of them because they have products that have a compelling narrative.  In Amway, we had a diversity of products, and that was our narrative and what we tried to sell.  I think if we had linked the tape bonuses to qualification in the business it would have solved a lot of problems.

Today we are experiencing a strong reaction to these types of extremes.  And Amway is cleaning it all up.

So here we go… my last answers to Tex’s comments, there is much, much more that he raises, I am just ready to move onto other things.

Tex: You don’t address whether ANY IBO’s below [Platinum level] were making a net profit with all of these tapes, books, functions, etc. THAT is my main point. It involves tool PRICES and system PRACTICES (unnecessary long distance travel in particular).

Well, in our group, I think we started giving a break at “Silver.”  We considered a break for everyone but it was so small at the lower levels that it wasn’t an incentive to anyone and diluted the power for a person who had made it to “Silver” or “Direct.”

As to distant groups?  Five of my six diamond legs came from groups that were more than 1000 miles from home.  In fact, they stretched from Seattle to Orlando.  I found out-of-town groups much more expensive but easier to grow and less high maintenance.  Even while I am retired from Amway and no longer an IBO, some of these groups are still going.

There is a whole science to starting out-of-town groups and they are expensive to get going but within a year or two they can be very low maintenance, self sufficient groups.  But I could never conceive of a way to build them without CD’s or tapes.

Tex: [ You talk of losing money.] How was money lost? Wouldn’t they sell them for at least the cost of producing the tapes?

Well, you had to buy and maintain the machinery.  It was always breaking down and so you were always buying new slaves or new machines.  There was no four year service plans from Best Buy back then.  You had to hire someone by the hour to do it and you usually had to do it yourself or have your kids because it was only hourly work and you were on the road sometimes.  You had to print and affix your own labels, which was a chore.

And even when tape duplicating companies started appearing you had the bookkeeping for all the different accounts and some never paid, which means you lost all of your profit and sometimes went in the hole.  What can you do?  You can’t kick them out. If you complain to the company they say, “That’s your problem, not ours.”  So sure, sometimes you lost money.

My White House experience

Let me give you an example.  I served on senior staff at the White House and my business was put in a blind management trust.  I couldn’t even contact my downline.  While I worked at the White House lawyers divided my group between Dexter Yager in the east, Bill Britt in the midwest and Jim Dornan in the west.  When I finally left the White House my Yager groups were very small, my Britt groups had transferred out, picked clean by the Diamond who had been assigned to “protect” them for me.  But my west coast groups had survived.

Now, Dexter was mad at me during this time.  I had gotten into “stacking,” it was something like the methods of today’s MonaVie and Dex had warned that it would not last and it would eventually destroy my group, that the newest people would be hurt. But I didn’t listen to him and I needed something to help my leaders survive and “stacking” creates excitement, you get a big group fast, even if the money only goes to the top.  No one in my group was making any money.  My business was collapsing.  In fairness to Amway, no one was retailing.  And frankly that was not so easy.  So stacking, or turning my Amway business into a hybrid binary caused some enthusiasm, at least for awhile.

But all of that is a different story. When I came out of the White House, with Dex upset at me, and my groups under Jim Dornan in the west surviving, I plugged into him.  Well, one of my Emeralds started to quickly run up a debt.  He was buying the tapes from me and selling downline to his group but he wasn’t paying me.  You don’t know what to do.  You love the people you are working for in your downline and they need the tapes to survive and build their groups.  And you care for the Emerald, who may be broke and making house payments.  And he thinks you are rich, that you don’t need the money, and he keeps promising that he finally has the money.  If you cut off the tapes you lose the whole group.  Well the debt climbed to almost $40,000. You ask how someone can lose money on the tapes?

Eventually, I could have gotten some of that back.  He would have had to pay something.  My new leader, Jim Dornan would have held his feet to the fire. We could have by-passed the Emerald and he would have lost his leadership.  But the Emerald went to Jim and cried on his shoulder.  This is a classic story, this happens all the time.  And the Emerald said, “Doug was in the White House, and now he is thinking about congress and he is too busy to help me.  We need to be transferred to another diamond.”  So a very big group was transferred, my tape money from the groups was cut in half.  And the debt of the Emerald was forgotten.  I was left holding the bag.

Tex: I think the “rules” in those days were based on favoritism; specifically, how hard the IBO pushed the tool system.

Sounds to me like you were in a very bad group with leadership that was greedy and not really smart. But again, I would want to hear it from their perspective too.  I never had any pressure at all.  Dex never pushed tapes on me.  In fact for a long time he gave them to me free but he started charging me for them, saying that it was bad for me to get them free.  And he was right.  I didn’t even listen to them until I had to pay for them.  You should never just give something away without a plan.  You can’t just go to Calcutta and throw money off of a rooftop.  You have to have follow up and responsibility or it is all a waste and can even do harm and make people dependent.

Tex: The question isn’t whether the tapes (or other parts of the tool system mentioned above) worked, it was whether the tail was wagging the dog, and whether the pre-Platinum IBO’s made a net profit.

Well, sadly, they did not.  And you are right that the tail was wagging the dog.  But again, did the fault lie with the selling of tapes?  Or the plan and the type of products and the price of those products?  At least the tapes kept people trying.

Tex: [You say you told everybody, everything up front.] What exactly did you tell them?

I told them that the suggested plan called for retailing the products.  I had learned from Jody Victor to do this and not immediately assume that they would not retail.  Of course, very few did retail. Like almost zero. And there was a danger in promoting it because when they tried and saw how hard it was you lost all credibility.  That’s why many would “dis” retailing from the beginning, not because they didn’t want it to happen but because they knew that no one really would do it and they had more credibility to say so up front.

Then, I would say that there was income from tapes and educational products at silver and above.   So they knew that it would be a lot of work.  And many still stayed with it, believing that they could get to the higher levels.  And I was one of those who did, and I am very, very grateful for what I experienced and grateful to the company and for my friends.

To start at the begining of this series read Doug Wead Amway Adventure

Tools or products?

As to the whole networking issue of selling products or tools, which refers to the CD’s and books? The answer is that a good network needs both. While there are some companies that boast a good payout on product sales, their leaders will not retain their networks if they have no system in place, no CD’s and functions to encourage and teach. Their people will come in the front door and walk out the back.

Below are some responses to my ongoing correspondence with Tex. It touches on this subject. If you are new to this series you should start at the begining, Doug Wead Amway Adventure, and then work your way back to this point.

This means you are no longer an IBO, or you are still an IBO, but inactive?

I am no longer an IBO. My whole life in recent years has been studying and writing about American history. As far as netwokring goes, I am just someone who enjoys some of the more remarkable rags to riches stories. And enjoys learning about networking and what works and what doesn’t.

[Referring to those who operate at a loss at the pre-Platinum levels because they have decided that they cannot sell the product at retail, or they don’t want to.] – You need to define “they.” Is it the upline or the new IBO? Many prospects are told they don’t have to retail, and most people, by nature, don’t want to be a “salesperson.”

It is clearly defined as written. “They are operating at the pre-Platinum levels.” “They” would be anyone who is pre-Platiunm, that is, a person who has not yet reached the Platiunm level. The fact that they do not want to be a “salesperson” is not the fault of the tool business. The company likely knows this and still lays out its plan and sets its prices as it choses.

[This is the problem that Eric Scheibeler raises, saying that the likely incomes at these entry levels are wrong.] – I don’t understand what you’re getting at, please expand.

Well, Eric can speak for himself, but the issue raised, as I understand it, is that the price of the products, combined with the compensation plan and the rules, corporate and governmental, make it difficult for one in Amway to make a profit at these lower levels. If this is the case then it has nothing to do with the tools and is a separate issue for the company to address. It is not your upline’s fault.

But lack of retail is DEFINITELY the fault of the tool business (or more accurately, the people who profit from the tool systems)… Customers don’t buy tools, IBO’s do. Why would your upline want you to “waste” your valuable time with selling to customers, which make THEM pennies? The upline would much rather you use your limited time to sponsor new IBO’s, as they make FAR more money when those IBO’s buy the tools.

And why do you see this as a fault of your upline? Some might argue that this was a fault with the company as it functioned a few years ago and a fault that it has been addressing and correcting both from the corporate and the field but it is not a fault of your upline.

If you, Tex, were a successful upline in those days and your dearest friend came to you and wanted to get in, you would pull him aside and say to him something similar to what your despised upline told you. Namely, it is in your interest to build a big network as quickly as possible. You would likely say this to your friend, not because you saw your friend as fodder for the tool business, but because you knew, and you would openly tell him, that there is more money with the tools. You would want him to fullfill all the sales requirements but to move on as quickly as possible.

Perhaps you are angry at your upline for hiding his tape income from you and you felt used when you discovered it and perhaps your upline was a bad person, a selfish jerk and greedy and someone who didn’t care about you but what he was teaching you was not only apparently in HIS inerest it was also in YOURS. At least it seemed to be at the time. It is probably what you would have told your own brother or dearest friend. The only difference is that you would have told your brother “why” and your upline didn’t do that for you.

And, of course, if your brother said, “No, I don’t care, I want to sell.” You would have supported his decision.

Now, some of this is a moot point since the company is remaking itself to allow for easier retail. (You can look at Jim Dornan and Network 21 to see how streamlined and effective the new retailing can be.)

I am not against the tool CONTENT, I am against the distorted and false profit model the current prices and practices with tools create. And tapes are only PART of the equation, there are also books (remember the 80% discount you mentioned?), various meetings, voice mail, websites, etc.

Good point. I agree. My solution was to tell everything to the people I was sponsoring. This was in the 1970’s, long before Al Gore invented the internet. But it just seemed stupid to hide this from people.

Did you ever try to get the required support, by rule, without using the tools? I did, and went from “best buddy” to TOTALLY ignored after going off standing order tools. People are TAUGHT not to help those not “feeding the beast” the tool scam represents. There is some sense to this approach, as those looking to learn new things are easier to train. However, it is CLEARLY against the Amway written rules.

Dex was pretty patient with me. He did not force the tapes on me. I picked it up from watching other groups grow and hearing new diamonds rave about how they helped.

But after experiencing my own growth I remember having that sense myself. Why waste time with someone who isn’t listening to the tapes because if they aren’t willing to invest that much time and expense, why should I have to take the time to tell them everything? This gets especially tough when your group grows. You run out of time and depend on the tapes.

BTW, if you were wiling and wanting to go out and sell product, you were very special indeed. In those days it was pretty hard to find someone willing to do what you were willing to do. I wouldn’t call them cowardly, lying uplines, I would call then “stupid,” cowardly, lying uplines. But there are two sides to every story and I don’t know how they would explain what happended.

Last in the seris. Amway diamonds and their tools.

How the Amway tools became a big business

If you are new to this series, start at the beginning, Doug Wead Amway Adventure or otherwise it will not make sense. And the follow each successive post. As many of you know, I am retired from Amway now, but my experience was a fond one and I am trying to share what I learned along the way.

And right now, that means responding to one of the newer and more prolific commentators on this blog by the name of “Tex.” This will probably be an exercise in futility, we experience and see things differently, but I am determined to learn from him and share a little of my own perspective too.

In the words of Tex: I and others have mentioned on numerous occasions the tool scam started out as being a help to the IBOs and later turned into THE primary source of income for the upline, and more significantly, results in most IBOs below Platinum to operate at a net loss. Does this sound like a moral and ethical business model to you, Doug?

They are operating at a loss at the pre-Platinum levels because they have decided that they cannot sell the product at retail, or they don’t want to. This is the problem that Eric Scheibeler raises, saying that the likely incomes at these entry levels are wrong. And it is a good point. But Amway doesn’t force people to sign up and it is certainly not the fault of the tool business.

For example, I was told to follow the corporate model in order to get my required ten customers but in the process I soon found it was pretty hard selling the products. Sure, it was possible, I could sell to relatives or friends who would help me out, but I could make more money spending my time doing something else. My sponsor, who was Dexter Yager, advised me to concentrate on sponsoring, to get to a bigger level where the income would be better, and I soon found that the only way to get that going was tapes. (Nowadays CD’s.) I indeed spent more than I was making but it was a calculated investment. The company didn’t make me and neither did Dex.

BTW, the purchase of tapes did not automatically result in growth. I had to use them and learn from them. It sounds absurd to say “learn” from them because they were not especially profound but then that is part of building a big network, it is going to appeal to the “average” person. And if it doesn’t work for the average person it will soon fail to work for the exceptional person. It is by its nature pedestrian.

Also, you don’t address whether ANY IBO’s below were making a net profit with all of these tapes, books, functions, etc. THAT is my main point. It involves tool PRICES and system PRACTICES (unnecessary long distance travel in particular).

Hmm, I’ll get to that last point in a future post. It is a good topic in itself.

At first no one made money off of the tapes, except indirectly because it helped build their groups, and more importantly perhaps, resulted in better retention. And even into the 1970’s, making tapes for your group was a drudgery which was passed off to a new diamond as soon as possible. Some ran it like a business and made a profit, but some lost money keeping it going only because it grew their group.

Then, a bright, young man, who will remain nameless, changed everything. He sat across from Dexter Yager and Bill Britt in the coffee shop of the Fontainebleau Hotel and told Yager that for a $50,000 investment he could buy the latest machinery and set up his own tape duplicating company. Dexter turned him down. Britt said, “I’ll do it.” And so the modern networking tape business was born.

According to this widely told story, Britt’s new company prospered and eventually, even Dex was buying tapes from Britt. Nobody could beat his prices. The rumor was that for awhile, anyway, Amway itself was buying their tapes from him.

It was beautiful. Large tape orders from rock stars or political campaigns were sporadic. A company could make a fortune off of them but how could they afford all of that expensive machinery that had to sit idle between elections and runaway musical hits? Well, Britt, with the steady demand from networkers, could keep them humming. And he got rich.

Soon, everybody wanted their share. Dex decided that since Britt was in his downline, he should be getting a proper share, after all, he was selling to “his” group. And so a pricing system developed and rules emerged and it all continues to evolve to this day. And it is a hotly debated subject with cries of “unfair, I should be getting a bigger cut.”

Now, here is the rub. This is what you must keep in mind as we pursue this. The tapes worked. That is, they helped recruit, and motivate and develop a culture that retained distributors, even those whom you say were not making money, could grow their group and some did exactly that. Indeed, I did that and eventually made money.

Second, and this is an important point, the “new” tape business that emerged did not take “new” money away from the distributors. The prices of the tapes were the same. All along they had been giving their money to distant, unknown manufacturers. Were those manufacturers raping the people? There were certainly no complaints about them for as long as the profit was going to a stranger far away, no one cared. But in fact, this new arrangement was only bringing the production in-house. The cost to the newest IBO was the same.

Now, among the problems this would raise would be the issue of a conflict of interest. And this seems to be at the heart of your angst. As long as they promoted tapes that were manufactured elsewhere, no one was upset. But when they started promoting tapes that they, themselves, profited from, people cried foul.

Was it foul? You can say, yes, this poor person would never have succeeded in networking so their investment was only lining the pockets of the manufacturers, who were now their own uplines. Or perhaps it was the wrong time to build, the marketplace was hostile. But then, who would have predicted the success or timing of Dexter Yager? He lived in a tenement and shared a toilet with people on the same floor. Or Hal and Susan Gooch, who had to sell blood at hospitals to get money to eat? Should the upline decide who should be allowed to buy tapes and who was only wasting their money? Sometimes, they actually tried to do this, out of kindness, but that wasn’t fair either or even legal.

I knew that many groups kept this entire process secret. But my instincts told me that this was foolish. I told everyone, everything, right from the beginning. I never sponsored a person who didn’t know the whole story. Those who made a secret out of it only hurt themselves. At least in my humble opinion.

Next post in this series? Tools or products.

Amway in the UK

Apparently, some of my facts were wrong when I referred to the Amway – UK thingy.  Here is a correspondent offering a correction.  Meanwhile, I will truck on with this series and get into some of the delicious negative that will delight some of you.

This from Ibofightback

Doug,

Enjoying your posts and looking forward to the future ones. A few important corrections re the UK – Amway was not shutdown by the government. The DTI (now BERR) did petition to close Amway and it went to court where Amway won the case. When the DTI indicated they were going to pursue the case Amway (not the DTI) suspended all sponsoring for 60 days. At the request of field leaders the sponsoring moratorium was extended until the case was finally over. Amway otherwise operated fully supporting existing distributors. Contrary to the predictions of folk who believe Amway is a pyramid, even with no sponsoring for 18 months numerous folk continued to qualify at Platinum and above.

Secondly, the case was not primarily about product pricing. BERR did claim the products were overpriced but Amway dropped pricing on only a dozen or so of over 450 products. The case was in fact remarkably similar to FTC vs Amway, with the problem being excessive income claims by distributors and Amway failing to monitor the field.

Third, while Amway did “suspend” the field BSM organizations, the case wasn’t about “tools” and the court explicitly noted this in the judgment.

BERR vs Amway court documents are available on Amway Wiki

It’s since been confirmed that much of the BERR case was actually driven by petitioning by well known anti-Amway and anti-mlm critics. I believe that one of those critics, David Brear, may be the original source of the incorrect stories regarding yourself and Amway France.

If anyone has more to add to this subject, or further corrections, you are welcome to weigh in.  Opinions are surely welcome, as well as anecdotal information, but facts are most appreciated.

If you want to follow this ongoing series from the beginning start at Doug Wead Amway adventure and follow the posts.  Continue from this one to How the Amway tools became a big business?

How the Amway tool business began?

Okay, by popular demand, or I should say, because Tex wants me to take on this subject, here is part one in a series on the famous “tool business.” Are there abuses and controversy? Obviously so, as online debate shows. But I am going to take this one step at a time. You cannot understand where it is now and how it can be useful or corrupted if you don’t know how it began and why it began.

What is a networking system?

When you are in networking or an MLM and you hear someone talking about “the system” or “system building” or how to make money off of “the system,” what are they talking about? The word “system” is short for “a systematic way to build a network from the standpoint of the field.” This is what has become known as “the system.”

Okay, I will try to explain. Every networking company is launched with a product and a systematic way to sell it and build a network of others to sell it as well. This “system” seldom works. It is developed by well intentioned corporate people who have very idealistic concepts about building networks and even when it is developed by experienced networkers, people who have actually built networks of their own, well, as they say in war, “no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy.” Or in this case, no plan of recruitment and selling works the same way in reality as it does in theory.

To recruit people and sell products, the networkers in the field have to be nimble and quick on their feet and willing to adapt to the reality of the marketplace. And so the methods, or system for building a network, quickly morph into something different from the corporate template. Sometimes, the corporation has to jump through hoops to keep up. They have to make sure that what the field is saying and doing is legal, ethical and not counterproductive.

To speed up the process of networking, the leaders who have success, use books, cd’s and functions to promote what works and to promote each other so they gain the credibility or stature to teach others.

“The system” is a living organism that is changing with the culture and marketplace around it and so the things that work sometimes change in subtle ways. Methods used a year ago may not be perfect for today.

On the surface there is nothing sophisticated about the materials in “the system.” Indeed, they may tend to be mediocre because the art of networking is to find the common denominator and that may just be fifth grade. If your system will only work for exceptional people it will soon cease working even for them. To be successful it has to work for the “average” person.

If there is a father to “the system” it is Dexter Yager, a beer salesman from Rome, New York who was sponsored into Amway in the 1960’s. Dexter discovered positive books, like The Magic of Thinking Big and the books changed his life. He told his upline, Charlie Marsh, about what he was reading and as Dexter told me, Charlie said, “Oh sure, I’ve read all those books.”

Well, Dexter hadn’t read any of them and he wasn’t about to assume that his emerging network of distributors had either. So he started pushing the books along with the Amway products. At first he loaned out the positive books but he couldn’t easily keep track, so he just gave them away.

When I met Dexter Yager in the 1970’s he told me solemnly that there was no money in books. He and his fellow “diamonds” had just financed a book about the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, a large, coffee table book with poetry and color pictures and boxes of these books had sat in their basements for years left to rot, unsold.

I tried to talk him into publishing a book with a little of his own ideas. After all, he had thousands of people in his network. But Dexter was afraid that it wouldn’t work. I had to ghostwrite it and pay for the printing and shipping myself. Dexter didn’t pay a dime upfront. It was published by Bethany in Minneapolis and we called it Don’t Let Anyone Steal Your Dream. I believe that I had 30,000 copies printed and sent to the Charlotte coliseum. We sold them all retail within minutes.

In any case, in the 1960’s, Dexter would start an out of town group only to return a few weeks later to find it dead. Leaving behind a few books to read sometimes started a spark. Sometimes there was more excitement when he returned. There was no money in the distribution of these books. Thousands of them were purchased in bookstores at the full retail price. When I met Dexter he was surprised to know that he could get an 80% discount for full print runs and buy such books direct from the publisher.

Likewise the emergence of tapes was not a moneymaker. In the summer of 1966, Dexter stopped by a motel in Utica, New York to visit with Fred Hanson, one of the more successful distributors in Amway. Hanson had a reel to reel tape recorder and was listening to a motivational tape. “This is what you need Dexter,” Fred said. But the big, bulky machine cost $58.00. The price was too steep for Dexter.

Sometime in the fall of 1966, Dexter Yager recruited (or as they say “sponsored”) a flamboyant, down on his luck, piano player in Schenectady, New York, by the name of Tony Renard. Tony was a chubby, vivacious character with an outsized personality and suits so old that they were practically back in style. Dexter was totally charmed. Tony was a big dreamer and his wife Sue was hopeful. She would sit nervously looking back and forth at Tony and Dex as they talked about all the great things they were going to do, hoping, just hoping that maybe, maybe, a little bit of it would come true.

Dexter finally bought himself a tape recorder and he would haul the big heavy machine up to Schenectady and play motivational tapes for Tony Renard. For a while, anyway, Tony and Sue could believe.

The problem was that they were absolutely broke. The more Dexter tried to help them, the more it didn’t work. Tony thought that if Dexter could stay in town permanently it might take off. And if he couldn’t do that, maybe he could help them buy a tape recorder and they could listen to positive tapes?

Dexter promised Tony that if he hit $1,500 a month, he, Dexter, would buy him a tape recorder. And then he could listen to motivational speakers like Earl Nightingale all he wanted. Well, Tony made it and Dexter bought it. That five inch reel to reel Craig tape recorder may have been the best investment of the 1960’s. Tony built his business and the lesson was learned. If you want to build a successful network, listen to positive tapes.

Now, this story isn’t over. It will take many posts for me to help the reader get to where we are today. But it is important to know the history behind this. You can’t really understand where we are today if you don’t know how we got here.

For several years I was the only speaker who was invited into all of the different streams of networking groups and from my standpoint the lesson was clear. The hottest groups, the fastest growing groups, were the ones who moved the most tapes. This was not a gimmick, it was a reality.

I remember one year speaking for Rex and Betty Jo Renfro at the Washington Hilton. They were in the Bill Britt group and they were hot. Everybody wanted to know their secret. Well, I knew the importance of tapes and so I made sure I mentioned it in my speech, referring several times to the “tape of the week.”

I was pretty proud of myself until Betty Jo caught me just offstage and said,” Don’t you ever talk about tape of the week to our group. We move more than one tape a week. We have the tape of the day or the tape of the hour.” And they had the group that was growing fastest at the time and it would produce many money makers and leaders in networking. I have seen the same thing all over the world.

But the fact is, when the promotion of tapes and books began they were not big money makers. Not at first. Indeed, they were often a bit of a nuisance. When I first started giving speeches at Dexter Yager’s annual convention in Charlotte, he was making tapes off of a cheap Wollensak duplicator with one slave attached. It was placed on a board on top of a pool table in his basement. His daughter, April, was in charge. And distributors complained about not getting their tapes on time. And Dexter couldn’t wait to break a new diamond because then they would have to make their own tapes and he wouldn’t have to mess with it anymore.

So keep this in mind as we talk about the emergence of “the tools.” Tapes and later cd’s became part of “the system,” because they helped people build their networks. They were not produced to make money, at least not initially. They were begun to build networks and eventually they did indeed make lots of people lots of money, but precisely because they worked. They were not a scam. They were the key to successful networking growth. And while greedy and unethical people may have corrupted the process, that fact is true even today.

(To start at the begining of this series go to Doug Wead Amway Adventure.)

(To go to the next thread.) Amway in the UK

Are MLM’s evil?

This is part of an ongoing series on network marketing that will hopefully, eventually, cover everything and cover it as fairly as I can. If you missed the beginning seeDoug Wead, Amway Adventure.

So are MLM’s evil?  The short answer to the question is “no.”

People can be evil and their motives can be evil and the way they do things can be evil but MLM’s are not intrinsically, morally wrong in and of themselves. Websites that purport this idea may be good theatre but they are not logical. No major government outlaws MLM’s. The laws that would be needed to do that would have ramifications far beyond the Direct Sales industry and some believe that they would cripple insurance, real estate, car sales and many other industries including a huge number of internet enterprises.

What? But aren’t MLM’s pyramid schemes. No. They do not have infinite payout. A person can earn more than the one who recruits them. And people in the industry are always saying that the biggest earner probably hasn’t yet been recruited. While sometimes luck and circumstances and personality all play a factor in success, and I have seen many fail at a MLM and go onto become very successful in other enterprises, I’ve also seen that rubric proven over and over again throughout the years. Some declare the industry dead and leave it, just as others get in and go right to the top.

But didn’t the British government recently shut down Amway in the U.K.? Yes, but if you will research that story you will see that it was related to the pricing of their products and the promotional system developed by their field to grow their networks. Many other MLM’s operate freely in the U.K.

Are there problems with MLM’s? Sure. Scandals? Yes.

But there are problems and scandals with retailing too. Petland was accused of misrepresenting the origin of their puppies. Burlington Coat Factory was allegedly caught selling fakes.

And there are problems and scandals with manufacturing companies. Chinese toy makers were using deadly lead paint on toys that were marketed to the children of the world. An American peanut manufacturer was overlooking the issue of contaminated peanut butter to keep their profits flowing uninterrupted.

Hey, there are even, occasionally problems and scandals with banks, hedge funds, NBA referees, Olympic ice skating judges, the medical system, the law, the courts, university admissions, and, oh this will be hard to believe, but even with the government of the United States itself. Noooooo.

There are even – get this – problems and scandals with sites that attack MLM’s for being unethical. I don’t know how accurate they are about other things, but sites such as MLM Survivor, Scoop – New Zealand, Glenn Hauman and others have published false stories about me and kept them on the web for years, refusing to correct them.   (See Doug Wead, Amway Adventure.)

Now, there are indeed problems in MLM-land and in future posts I will get into what can go wrong but if you are getting your information from sites that declare that all MLM’s are evil all the time, well, it is sort of like visiting those odd ball sites that insist Barack Obama is not really a U. S. citizen. It may make the angry partisan, person feel good for a moment but it is not going to change reality.

Pronouncing MLM’s as evil and retailing virtuous is kind of like saying that multiplication is bad but addition is okay.

For the next in the series see Glenn Hauman and lies on the internet

And after that there is Amway and the Tools