The Tools Cult: History of the Amway Motivational Tape Scam | #AntiMLM

“CHRISTIANS” WENT FULL IN ON THIS BULLSHIT, NOW IT’S tRUMP AS A SAVIOR THEY EMBRACE. GOD SAVE US FROM CHRISTIANS.

Useful analysis thank you

Anyone who tries to sell me any shitty scamway product will get told to fuck off.

My dad got hooked up in this. Amway shit in every closet of the house.

amway destroyed my family over 30 years ago, unfortunately we never repaired all the ruined relationships. after my brother and his wife figured out it was a dead end (which took years) they never apologized for all the horrible things they said to us that didn't join. i showed up one time at my nephews birthday party at my brothers house and all the guests were amway associates and they stared us down like we were not welcome. very sad, when i stumbled upon this video, it took me back to all the hurt and trauma that arrived when my brother joined amway

I really don't understand the digs at Dale Carnegie. His so called manipulation techniques are genuine ways to engage with people at least the ones mentioned in "How to win Friends...". It's not cynical or vapid like pretty much every other self help book.

I don't understand how people fall for this. I can get joining and trying to sell stuff for a month or two. They make it sound like you can make so much money but you quickly go through all your contacts and maybe only 10% will buy. That changes the dynamic of the friendship too. You're no longer just friends, your using your friendship to sell to them and no doubt many won't like that.

After something like 3 months, unless you're a phenomenal salesman, you should realize this isn't sustainable. It could be a decent hobby but won't replace your primary source of income.

So why do they double down and act like buying motivational content will change it. I could understand buying maybe 3 tapes but you should realize that they're full of generic nonsense and won't help you. It should click that this is how they make money not the products they give you to sell.

It should run its course in about 6 months. Yet they double down again and keep going. Even when many of their friends and family tell them to stop. You're gonna ignore all the people who care about you for a bunch of people you recently met? I struggle to comprehend the mindset that allows them continue.

Guess it's kind of like drug addiction. You know it's bad and it changes your behavior so much but yet you continue to steal and use. But with drugs, the dopamine rush is so powerful I understand why people won't quit.

I spent 10 years in this and only left after it left me in a divorce, no career, lost friends, and found myself at odds with the LDS mormon Church, that my upline ushered me into. I left Amway/ Quixtar in 2005.

Well I do not understand why this business is still in operation today? If so bad why not close it down?

I live in Grand Rapids Michigan. The De Vos's are so wealthy. All off the back of these poor people. Sicking.

Do the simple maths on these Pyramid schemes. If 1 person sponsors 5 and it goes 14 deep, it is the current world population. Men women and children. I was sucked in 3 times. The last time cost me $3,000 just after a broken marriage. Money i could ill aford to loose.

Amway came twice in my life. The first time was when I was a fresh graduate, a colleague of my then boyfriend tried to recruit us. We went to some of the rallies, and were loaned some tapes. The rallies used very compelling diamond people, loud music and there was a lot of clapping as they gave appreciations to the distributors for taking certain challenges in a time period, on the stage. The ambience of the rallies was uplifting, but I could never finished the tapes. I am a skeptical person, and could never sell anything in my life, so I stopped. I went abroad for studies, and found that my then boyfriend had joined. He even got my parents to join but they just used it to buy some vitamins. They never recruited anyone. After a while they stopped.
My second encounter was when I returned from overseas, my diamond friend told me about all the new products, including a range of vitamins and lent me a tape. She was part of Network21. I told her I will join only to get a better (normal) price on the vitamins. So I joined and she left me out of the recruiting activities, which means no tools are pushed to me. When other vitamin brands came to be available in my country, I switched brands and that was the end of it. I'm glad I did not get involved 'emotionally' with this cult.

Is Amsoil the same sales system?.

The tapes caught my attention. I wrote my doctoral dissertation in anthropology on Alcholics Anonymous. Anyone familiar with AA knows that conversion narratives are a core practice. In the 80s and 90s various organizations ran mail order business selling cassette recordings of such performances. I suspect the internet has killed that tape market. Swora, MG 1997 Rhetoric and Remembering in Alcoholic Anonymous. Uniersity of Rochester.

I remember the 60s, 70s & 80s years when there were many MLMs around with their lure of making good sideline income. There were these product parties and recruitment meetings going on all over the place. You couldn't avoid them.
BTW The Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami was unofficially owned by The Mafia and was a favorite hangout for the Wise Guys and anyone on their payroll. Meyer Lansky had a significant financial interest in that place.

Just like Scientology.

DeVos' daught, Betsy DeVos, was secretary of education under donald t.

Pyramid scheme. That should have been obvious to anybody in the 1970's.

This is fascinating. I was a distributor in the 90s and the Yeager tape system was still VERY much in use. We gobbled up the “tape of the week” and listened to those things over and over… I eventually left because I realized it was a cult.

Sounds like a steven universe review

If you can't sell enough soap and shampoo to buy a few Mercedes, you need to buy our self help tapes! Sucker!

If you are gullible enough to 'believe' in the fictional god characters, and religious cults, you are ripe for the con!
For a person to voice their skepticisms in a crowd of unskeptical believers, may often feel the pressure from those sold on the con-artist's rants.
Oh how important it is to teach critical thinking skills at every level of primary and secondary education.

When people prioritise imaginary growth, over a reasonable breakdown of actual operations, they will lose.
One night I went to a MLM presentation; as I shot holes in their products' profitability, they suggested that their system might not be for me. I was the odd man out in a room of suckers. The longer I sat there with my questions, the more doubt I sowed in the minds of the gullible.

I had friends (we were all military pilots) get into Amway at Ft. Brag. You’d think military officers and pilots no less would be able to take a serious look at their business plan and dismiss the whole thing in minutes. I looked at the sales part of the program and it didn’t take long to figure this whole thing to be BS. In any business if you don’t produce revenue you don’t survive and Amway sells junk at double it worth. What a bunch of BS. It really ruined a number of my friends but what makes it hard to say no to them is that no one wants to destroy one’s dream.

MLM, pyramid schemes and their allies are a pernicious ideologies which can only be Satan sponsored. I was initially introduced to it in Bible School by a lecturer who had just returned to Kenya from the US. We never got a grasp of the concept because the lecturer himself didn't understand it. In the mid 2000s thousands and thousands of Kenyans lost billions of shillings in a pyramid schemes which operated in churches. Then there was Tianshi, followed by AIM Global and the current craze is BF Summa, all pretending to offer health products but they offer nothing. Watching this video I am now aware where the Charismatic insanity came from.

Being in Amway over 6 years in the early to mid 90s, I will say about 95% of this is accurate. However the 5% is a little over exaggerated and simply politically motivated. However you do a good job with your videos.. Even though I disagree on some...

Damn.. can you butcher Ponte Vedra Beach any worse?? Lol...

"Coffee is for closers...."

You can find a tour of the Amway house in Idaho online. It's insane

One day i was involved as a sound engineer to big amway meeting. Mixing desk was stand literally in the middle of hall and i was able to hearing what people are speaking of. When the amway guy on the scene start to telling some joke (not funny at all, btw) few ladies was start to smile and whisper like "Oh! Oh! Thats a good one! Thats a good one! Shhh, listen him, listen!". I was listen those ladies and the people whom they brought with them after this and they told what they came to those meeting from different (and far away, btw) city for basically listening literally exactly the same bullshit with same jokes in the same moments as on previous meetings. And there was a lot of people like them.
For god sake if they spend that time for a regular job or a small business of selling some handmade stuff they already make more money!

Amway is Scientology...

🤯

This reminds me of a scam when i first came hlme frlm the military where they really targetted immigrants and forced them to run around spraying people w perfume in the bigger cities and told them they were selling perfume and also sell sets of cooking knives. I had so many friends try to sell me crap through the years. And it just astounds me.

Somewhat interesting video, but the real proof is reading peoples stories in the comments.

People are willing to believe anything if they see $$$.

Oh my goodness… having flashbacks to my freshman year in college when I was gone for winter break and worked during break through a temp placement agency at a Xerox copy sales office. Two of the “cool” early 20-something salesman there invited me to an “exclusive event”… yeah, it was an AMWAY high pressure meeting. I ended up spending a good chunk of my hard-earned winter break earnings on my starter kit. After returning to college broke and feeling Uber pressured to sell and recruit on my campus, I snapped out of the cult-like pressure and BS after a few weeks and WAY TOO MANY PHONE CALLS to me pushing me to “do more”.

It was insane yet a great eye opener to MLM schemes and other crazy biz schemes.

As long as the desire to get rich exists by the majority of the people on the planet, especially the young and gullible, these types of schemes, or scams, will continue to enrich the BS artists pushing them.

Santo Gold!

where i can read the phil kerns book? it seems unavailable

Sounds like Evangelical Christianity

i grew up near ada, which hosts amway world headquarters, and i have fond memories of going to concerts at a local venue/bar in downtown grand rapids, which has everything else named after the devos and van andel families, that was called 'the pyramid scheme' as a direct slight on amway. if youre ever in grand rapids, check it out. they have pinball

In 1995 I was busting my behind as a low level manager at Target right after graduating from college (I’d paid my way through school working there). Some cute gal started flirting with asking if I was the guy she had hung out with on Spring Break in Daytona Beach some years prior (I wasn’t). Well, naturally I was curious and when she started to say that her company was looking for go getters I was intrigued about some kind of opportunity outside of Target. She gave me her card or I gave her my number I don’t remember which but we got in touch and she scheduled an “interview” with me at a McDonalds close to where I was living (McDonalds?). She was pretty cute so I figured what the heck and went there to meet with her. She was late and showed up with some guy who appeared to be her “handler” or something. He took over and was going on about aspirations and such stuff while she just sat there. He had a total con artist vibe and I was getting deflated. He then said the magic word, “Amway” and I almost slapped my hand to my forehead…even in 1995 Amway was a joke to people…utter silliness! I couldn’t hide my lack of enthusiasm so they shoved a cassette tape onto me and begged me to listen to it. I never did listen to it but the tape turned out to be a way to entrap me because she kept calling me demanding its return! One final time I showed up to that McDonalds and gave them back the cassette, then she fumbled around in her purse to give me a book or a new tape or whatever but she had misplaced it and I told them I wasn’t really interested anyway. Later she kept calling the house over and over and over but I would never answer finally I picked up and said to leave me alone and she screeched at me at the top of her lungs. I felt so stupid now but having seen some of the comments and other peoples stories here I have to give myself a little credit for having a functioning BS detector. Live and learn…

my two cents this is what I know for a fact, because I witnessed it the distributors were always trying to get people to work for them and the distributors in my circles were kind of high-level city type people teachers principles as the superintendent of schools, my pediatrician Cetera. the other thing that I heard from a distributor was that the rallies were in like an invite only and when they were advertised it didn’t say they were for Amway. They just talked about making a lot of money. The other thing that I was told by another distributor is that the whole rally idea really felt like a cult where the members were told not to associate with people who are not in the Amway circle because they were “poison” that did not want them to succeed in making a lot of money. I was a kid in the late 70s when this whole Amway thing started and even as an 11 year old, I knew the whole thing had a real bad stink to to it I didn’t understand the whole, MLM but the whole thing because of the people who were involved in it were such quote “high influential individuals that were trying to do things that really didn’t seem kosher to me. I do have to admit after trying the LOC product that it is a good product, but it was too expensive for what it was. I think I was about 11 when I tried it.

I had an aunt who was in it back in the mid 60s. I don't know if anyone ever bought her soap. Not even us.

Where I was from, Amway was an Effective way to Ship Methamphetamines and to Lie about Wealth and Income from Drugs.
I suspect that is much of what Amway, Mary Kay, and other 'Untold Business Practices' is really about... Mary Kay is likely about some Other, Darker Lifestyles....
Like Trump and His Steak Businesses or those Steak Businesses which Ship Large Styrofoam Containers across the World, including those Trucks with Freezers in the Back that Travel Door to Door... It is all a Cover for a Larger, More Corrupt but Lucrative Business Model..... I have Seen of or Heard of All of these Being Used for Illegal and Illicit Markets.
There was a Highschool Coach that Lived about 200ft from a Trafficking Front for Methamphetamines , which was a Big Time Amway Distributor, so He Claimed. I am almost Certain it
was just a Front for Meth, like much of what went on there...I do know that all the Other Coaches of that Era, that were Football Coaches, were always Speed Freaks and all of them, were into High School Girls...... The Football Team always sucked, but it had a Cool Staff...

Classic. Amway was not going to pull me in. Sure they sold n gave samples of a new kind of sugar free energy drink. But read the ingredients in that stuff. Laundry detergent stuff then up to foods. Always a meeting in Charlotte. But my mind was on third eye. Read n look pass all the so call marketing images and u can see what was a whole lot of wrong it.

I spent the last 35 years in technical sales/marketing (I’m an electrical engineer). The true litmus test if something is legit is “Do you and your product add value to your customer?” AMWAY focuses on recruiting people “below you” and you get a cut of what they (and their downstreams) sell. How is that “adding value”? I recall in$laws trying to recruit me into AMWAY right after I got my engineering degree and started work. It was easy to see through it. My believe is stuff like this appeals to people who are down & out or have no real prospects. Indeed my in-law that tried to recruit me into this was a loser.

I’m not sure why he calls Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale grifters. Because you don’t agree with his politics doesn’t make him a grifter.

Where do I sign? I want my own AMC Pacer!!!

Here's an ide: blow off the meeting and claim you had to make a quick trip to Costco and/or Sam's Club to pick up some stuff.