Jessica Harper Uncanceled

Note: This post is not intended to be of interest to the general reader. It is written mainly for current or, more likely, former Amway distributors. As one myself, I enjoy reading such posts and take comfort from the fact that my own perceived failings as a distributor are shared by many others. This is not an Amway horror story. I am not writing it because it’s full of jaw-dropping moments. It isn’t. Nothing bad happened to me except for wasted time and money. It’s a typical tale of what happens to most people when they sign up and then eventually leave Amway, and, I am sure, other MLMs. But it might offer a few clues for people who are considering getting involved but thinking that it sounds like a big commitment: is Amway worth it?

Apart from Dexter and Birdie Yager, Elwyn and Dottie Owen and Tim and Sherri Bryan, all other names (and locations) have been changed.

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“I’ve got that book,” said my friend Deanna. “It was recommended to me by a business associate. It’s great.”

Business associate? Deanna was nineteen, why was she talking like she was in The Godfather?

I was in a classroom at college, reading The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwarz. It’s a bit of a positive thinking classic but it definitely marked me out from my peers, who were mostly reading cult or feminist fiction. I’ve never exactly run with the herd and at this time I had a strong feeling that I wanted to be in business. I’d seen Working Girl and loved it and I’d seen Wall Street and loved Gordon Gekko (doesn’t everyone?).

“What business is that?” I said.

She gave me the usual vague Amway answers about how she worked with successful entrepreneurs and they all had their own independent businesses, with access to some of the biggest brands in the world but she couldn’t say any more until we could sit down and she could explain it in full. 

I didn’t have to wait long for my curiosity to be sated because at lunchtime we went to the canteen and she showed me the “plan”. Oh, the plan. The plan is the spiel about how the Amway business works. It has a lot of circles and a lot of money on it. I’m not great with numbers but my eyes lit up with dollar signs.

Already I was hooked and I followed Deanna round everywhere, asking questions about the business and the successful people she talked about, the “Diamonds”. My other college friends thought I was a bit strange for being interested in the uncool world of business. Plus not many of them liked Deanna much – she was supercilious and pompous, for sure. Why did I like her? Well, “like” is a bit strong of a strong word but we had some things in common and I kind of felt sorry for her. But her superior attitude could definitely rub people up the wrong way, including me.

Deanna invited me to hear the plan again, the following week, at her “upline’s” house. All MLMs are the same: someone sponsors you and someone in turn sponsored them and so it goes on, right up the chain. All of the people above you are your upline and will in theory help you, although often Bob, for example, will go on to become much more successful than his sponsors, Jenny and Dave, or indeed anyone else in his upline, eg the people who sponsored Jenny and Dave.

I was hugely excited on the night, despite my parents being understandably concerned about what this was all about. Deanna picked me up as I couldn’t drive yet, and she took me to Perry and Anita’s house on a sultry spring evening. The couple were extremely friendly and welcoming, as were the other distributors there, who were also in Perry and Anita’s “downline” and many of whom had brought along their own prospects.

Perry gave the presentation and he was very convincing and trustworthy and he built on the “dream”, talking about financial independence and the lifestyles of the top Amway dogs, the Diamonds (and levels even higher, such as Double Diamond and Crown Ambassador). His upline were Elwyn and Dottie Owen and above them, the Diamonds (!) Tim and Sherri Bryan, who called their organisation Downeast. Above them all were Crown Ambassadors Dexter and Birdie Yager, who are legends in the Amway business.

Amway distributors, referred to as “independent business owners” (IBOs), may market products directly to potential customers and may also sponsor and mentor other people to become IBOs. IBOs may earn income both from the retail markup on any products they sell personally, plus a performance bonus based on the sales volume they and their downline (IBOs they have sponsored) have generated. There was talk of millionaires and early retirement and endless exotic holidays: “walking the beaches of the world”. 

I reminded myself that it could be a scam or at the very least exaggerated, but I lapped it all up and was already very disappointed that at 17 I was too young to start an Amway distributorship – you had to be 18. I wanted to be rich, baby (this was before I had even started in the world of work!). Perry and Anita continued turning on the charm and building the dream after the plan and by the time we left I was flying.

That night I stayed at Deanna’s house, which was always a strange place. They were the only really religious people I knew and her mother always sat in the same chair, politely making conversation, barely audible above the ticking clock. It was hard to believe she had ever cracked a smile in her life, never mind a joke. Her dad was a little livelier but not much. Awkward conversations with him in the kitchen were the norm. Deanna’s parents were nothing like the fun, booze-swilling parents of my best friends. Deanna was straitlaced, didn’t drink, didn’t have a boyfriend. I tell you all this for a reason, an unrelated postscript to the Amway story.

The next morning I woke up in my room and couldn’t wait to look at the materials I’d been given the night before: a CD on which Dexter Yager hyped up the business some more, plus  a short motivational book (can’t remember which one, maybe it was Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell).

From that moment on, I thought about Amway and Dexter Yager and all the glamorous Diamonds all the time. I devoured the Amway rally tapes that Deanna lent and then sold me, even though I wasn’t a distributor and still had a year to wait before I was eligible. Quickly, my obsession threatened to harm my college work.

Before long, it was time to go to a “function”. These are one of the many types of events that your upline is obliged to tell you are optional but as any distributor in the Yager organisation will tell you, are anything but. You categorically would not be helped by your upline if you refused to buy the “tools” (motivational books and rally tapes) and tickets. It would be like going in to a restaurant and saying you just want to sit there.

In the Yager organisation at the time (and I think probably still now) there were (racks brains to remember, this was a long time ago):

* Training sessions. Held in the week, often in hotel conference rooms.

* Open plans. Same venue as above. Someone at direct level or above would show the plan. It was cool if you could actually get a real live prospect there as the direct distributor would definitely do a more competent, more inspiring presentation than you could.

* Functions. Held on Sundays in conference centres and arenas.

* Weekend events, either Family Reunion or Dream Weekend. I don’t think there was any difference between the two. They probably had to make them sound different to sell more tickets.

My first ever event was a Sunday rally / function in Atlanta on a hideously hot summer afternoon. I was already excited – what the hell was this thing going to look like? – but when we got out of the car nothing had prepared me for the chanting I could hear on the breeze. Not one unified chant but many competing chants; it was the maddest thing I’d ever heard.

Inside the conference hall, a couple of thousand men and women in business attire were chanting the names of their mini organisations, with many of them standing on chairs as they did so. Insane, and perhaps a violation of health and safety. You had things like Yummies (Young Urban Millionaires), Go Diamond, Gemstone Dreamers and ours, Downeast.

Perry and Anita and their downline were already there, chanting along with others in their downline. I felt a bit sheepish but started joining in (with the clapping and chanting, I wasn’t ready for the chair bit yet).

I then experienced the first of many, many Amway functions, which kicked off with an introduction by whoever the hosts were (I can’t remember which upline it was), followed by the first speakers, usually a couple, who told of their struggle on the way to direct level or wherever they were at. They usually had interesting stories to tell.

There was a very strong religious agenda, including prayers, and a right-wing agenda about a woman’s place being in the home, and vote Republican. Obviously I’m no radical but even I found it pretty jawdropping.

There was then a break, during which, tons of books and tapes were sold in the lobby (if you’re curious about what a Yager Amway rally tape sounds like, here’s one on youtube, by Kenny and Donna Stewart, which by coincidence was one of my absolute favourites) and then came the “pin” ceremony, which took forever and got longer each month. You could be standing up for twenty minutes, clapping and hooting, while dozens of people came up on stage and collected their pins for advancing a level, eg they’d moved up from Direct to Ruby.

Then came the main speakers, Tim and Sherri Bryan, our diamonds! Tim had been a high school teacher and so it was highly impressive that he’s achieved such wealth. Eventually the function ended and we began the long drive home.

Tim and Sherri Bryan

Before long I was encouraged to splash out on a weekend function. This was more of the same but over two days. The Saturday night speakers went on forever and everyone in the audience was having a hard time staying awake.

Afterwards, the tools went flying off the tables. Talk about “kerching” (when I start my own MLM, it will be called Kerching).

I turned 18 just before I went off to do my journalism degree. I was signed up, Perry came over and I felt very special. Now the real work would begin.

Except it didn’t. Not really. A more accurate way of putting it is that a long period of intense frustration followed.

Knowing who I am now, a committed introvert (unlike the Jessica Harper in the books I write), I admire my sheer moxie. I was barely 18 and I was asking friends and relatives round to see the plan. I got a good attendance, too – there must have been at least a dozen people there.

The only fly in the ointment was my cousin Phil, who (as Perry later confided in me) had what the Amway people call “status”. Phil was the pilot of a passenger jet and had come along as a courtesy to me. He picked various holes in the plan, which were based more on suspicion, the notion that Perry might be trying to rip me off, which wasn’t true. I mean, I did get ripped off but not by the business model itself. More later. 

A couple of people agreed to have “follow-ups” and it was a buzzy, successful event. Not bad for an introverted 17-year-old. But also thanks to my parents for agreeing to let me use the house and being there in the background, helping with drinks etc. But they still had serious reservations about whether this whole Amway thing was worth it, “it” being my time and money.

When I turned 18 I signed up and got my “starter pack” (a folder of corporate bumpf) and some free products. People in Dexter Yager organisation’s were always quite dismissive about any information originating from Amway corporation, unless it was specifically about products, bonuses etc. I think it was that they didn’t like it distracting from the Yager message, and the money that distributors’ slavish adhesion to the “Yager system” would bring in terms of tool sales.

I learned to “draw circles”, as it’s known, the plan, so that I could show people the plan myself, which didn’t happen very often. I did, however, make some minor inroads into the retail side, which, ironically, is the only thing that ever brought in any money.

There used to be a lot of criticism back in my day (early noughties) and further back, regarding whether Amway products were good value. The selling point was meant to be this: that Amway’s products were more expensive than regular products because they didn’t use fillers, additives, call them what you will. So, the SA8, the Amway washing powder (not to be confused with the SA80, the standard issue service rifle of the British Army) was pricy because it wasn’t padded out with all the other stuff that goes into regular powder that the shops sell. 

I am not scientist enough to verify or disprove these claims I gained about four customers who’d had Amway products before and were pleased to find a new distributor. Personally I always loved the air freshener, Green Meadows, and some of the perfumes weren’t bad either. The washing up liquid was a total dud. It simply did not make any foam! You don’t need suds, we were told, that’s not the bit that does the cleaning. Yeah, right.

Deanna was a couple of years older than me and she graduated from college to go to university. I kept going dutifully to the functions, rarely missing one, which meant I would sometimes drive all the way to Charleston see one of the directs give the plan. 

I watched my upline going places, with Perry and Anita going direct and then ruby and then pearl, and people in their organisation climbing the percentage ladders, which went 3%, 6%, 9%, 12%, 15%. Beyond that you became a direct distributor, which meant your retail business was now so big that you placed your product orders with Amway itself, not your upline.

I sat there in my chair at functions, feeling increasingly useless and excluded. A lot of the distributors were in couples and I did feel like it would be easier if I had someone to do this with. Looking back on it though, I mainly wish someone had come up to me and tapped me on the shoulder and said hey, don’t worry about it, you’re a introvert, a writer in waiting, this isn’t your bag, baby. Go and do something else.

But we’d had it drummed into us over and over and over again about quitters and how quitters never win and winners never quit. It was tantamount to being a criminal to leave the organisation.

But still the money flowed out of my poor little student bank account. A weekly rally cassette, a monthly book, plus tickets to the functions and of course the money I spent on Amway products (because you absolutely had to replace all your household consumables with Amway products, on pain of death). I got an overdraft for the first time. I just had to stick at it, that was what we were told over and over. It was psychological torture, really. People say it’s a cult, well, I can see the similarities in terms of not feeling you can leave. 

My biggest obstacle was that I am not pushy person. I am the most unpushy person I have ever met. I hate asking people for favors. I could be trapped down a well and if I heard someone walking past I’d think twice about shouting for help. I’m a total wimp.

So I hated asking people to do stuff they didn’t want to do, eg kind of kidding them along and doing all that salesman schtick (“how many do you want, Bob?”). 

Plus, how the hell did I meet potential prospects? The big pins did all this aw schucks stuff on stage about how they stroll around their supermarkets, going hey how ya doing, what’s your name? All very entertaining but not something most people are comfortable with doing (I wrote a blog post on it here). But you need to keep finding hot bodies to show the plan to.

Keep working on your “list”, we were told. This is the list of prospects. I’d shown the plan to all the obvious people on mine. The remainders were vague people I’d spoken to at the store a couple of times or were distant relatives I hardly knew.

And then I tried one of the ideas suggested by the speakers on stage. I began going to look at cars for sale, pretending to be a buyer. An easy way to get chatting to someone, and someone who had a vested interest in being friendly to you and not immediately dismissive of any conversational tangent I might make. 

And that is what happened. I went to look at cars. A lot of them. Bought the local newspaper once a week, called a lot of folks up and went to look at their automobiles. Kicked a lot of tires. I was finally doing something constructive. I was still very shy but I managed to push it and push it and actually managed to drum up some interest and show some plans. And that is how I met Seb and Karen. I went to look at their car one Saturday morning in Savannah. Seb was instantly likeable and was immediately receptive to my overtures about a business opportunity (sometimes I had to remind myself that I was ostensibly there to look at a car, and to remember to say at the end that I was or wasn’t interested in buying it!). 

I showed him and Karen the plan and they came to a function the next week. I had brought some people to a function and I was proud of them. These were not some no-hopers in a Megadeth T-shirt (there were a lot of no hopers brought along) but a good-looking young professional couple. Steve worked for an airplane manufacturer and Karen was a radiographer). Perry and Anita showed the plan for them at their house and they sponsored Sean, who worked at the same hospital as Karen. My downline was now two deep! I was excited.

Sadly, it didn’t last long. My enthusiasm was seriously ebbing. I’d been associated with the business for three years now. Seb and Karen were very enthusiastic and I was happy and lucky that they now began looking to to Perry and Anita, rather than me, for guidance, perhaps sensing my disconnectedness. I wanted out. My distributorship was now in the zombie phase, not dead but definitely not alive. I even began buying tickets to the functions and then showing up – sometimes driving a couple of hours to get there – saying hi to a few people, including Perry and Anita, doing some clapping / chanting and then slipping out of the auditorium and driving home. Madness.

I knew it was time to quit. I was starting university and I wanted a clean sheet. Plus I had my first serious boyfriend and he was baffled by it all, too. And his parents knew about Amway and like a lot of people had suspicions.

The Jessica Harper of 2023 would not have hesitated to call up Perry and say sorry, this isn’t for me. But we’d had it drilled into us about quitters and I didn’t want to become one of those lepers. But in reality, I was just feeding the tools machine with my hard-earned dollars, which I earned from my very low-paid trainee journalist job.

One Friday evening, when I always drove to Perry and Anita’s to collect my products and tools, I said to Perry sorry but that’s it. He was nice about it and it was easy. I mean, I’d been doing this for five years and not got past three per cent, the lowest level. I just wasn’t any good at it. 

I drove away and that was the last time I saw them again.

I felt like the proverbial weight had been lifted from my shoulders. No more evasions, no more lies, no more making excuses about why I couldn’t attend functions. Just straight old put-the-work-in-and-get-paid. Plus I had my writing career to look forward to.

That was the last I heard of any of those people until about 2008 when I was at work. I was in the office one day and who did I bump into? Deanna.

“Do you work here?” I said.

“God, no, I wouldn’t work here,” she said. Charming. Thanks, Deanna.

She told me her life story. She’d gone from being a teetotal, religious, no-sex-before-marriage girl to someone who’d had a raging drink problem, become an atheist and got pregnant by some random guy (who also defrauded her) she was now separated from. She was as supercilious and obnoxious as ever. That was the last I saw of her.

Occasionally I google Amway and see what the diamonds are up to. Many of them have had their distributorships terminated – Amway has always been understandably very touchy about the tools business, which gives the business a bad name and is nothing to do with them. It’s just something the Yager people manufacture and sell to their own people. This is where the real money is made. This is why Yager and his diamonds were so rich: the tools business. Spend a few months in one of their orgs and compare how much you splash out on tools with how much you buy or sell Amway products. And so Amway booted them out. Lost their whole businesses. Talk about a sickener. Others fought each other, or began lawsuits as whistleblowers because they thought the tools business was morally wrong.

Most of those people are findable on LinkedIn now, seemingly running normal, successful businesses.

Is Amway worth it?

Every MLM that I have read about involves a lot of outlay and commitment (of time and pledged loyalty) with little profit. And for most people, loss. My advice is that nowadays there are many ways to find a so-called side hustle. I would pick one of these and just sell direct rather than get tied up with a hierarchy that is geared towards getting your money for their support system. My best guess is that I spent around $4,000 in the early noughties on Amway “tools” and tickets. On a student’s part-time income from working weekends in a restaurant. Ouch.

With the internet, side hustles, YouTube, ebay, you name it, there are a lot of easier ways to make money. If you knitted one pair of socks, and sold them on Etsy for $5, you’d have instantly eclipsed my profit from five years in Amway, because what I made was a big, fat loss.