Credence Clearwater Revival: "Door to Door"

This song reminds me of one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. Back in February of 1982, I became an Amway distributor. Lured by promises of wealth and self-employment, I decided to give it a try.

Listen to this song about a salesman here:

I soon found that selling products and gaining my own distributors was much harder than the glowing testimonials and motivational materials made Amway success out to be. As James 4:13 and 14 (Bible in Basic English) warns, "How foolish it is to say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into this town, and be there for a year and do business there and get wealth:' When you are not certain what will take place tomorrow. What is your life? It is a mist, which is seen for a little time and then is gone."

I also should have realized that Amway peddled covetousness with their talk of riches and getting people to sign up under me. As Paul reminds us in 1 Timothy 6:5 (BBE) about those who tempt us, their words  are, "Bitter talk of men who, being evil in mind and dead to what is true, take the faith to be a way of making profit."

Though Amway sold products, they were still a multi-level marketing business. Many folks joined to become wealthy without realizing what Christ said in Luke 9:25 (BBE). "For what profit will a man have if he gets all the world, but undergoes loss or destruction himself?"

Many verses in the Bible tell us that honest labour must be rewarded. But as Paul warned again in 1 Timothy 6:9 (BBE), "But those who have a desire for wealth are falling into danger, and are taken as in a net by a number of foolish and damaging desires, through which men are overtaken by death and destruction."

If our Master hasn't come by Monday, I hope to post about the correct self respect we must achieve.

THE FUNNY SIDE OF AMWAY

Though I experienced many frustrating situations and contradictory pieces of advice while I was an Amway distributor, some of the stories I heard at rallies and on cassette tapes were extremely funny. Jim Jans, pictured at a rally in Lethbridge, Alberta, told a few that I'll never forget.

One story was about the time when Jim and his wife were just starting in Amway. One of the important duties a distributor needed to fulfil is to hold meetings at their homes in order to show the multi-marketing plan to prospective new members. Jim saw a large, red couch in a second hand shop for only $5.00. He somehow managed to get the oversized piece of furniture home and proudly showed it to his wife.

"Watch this," he exclaimed as he stood in front of it. Then he sat down. Instead of being cushioned in comfortable padding, Jim sunk right down to the floor. Springs and dust erupted from the spaces where the cloth of the couch had been held in place with stick pins. He ended up with his knees almost underneath his chin, feeling sheepish at his prideful showing off.

Before Jim had built his network to the point where he could afford expensive cars, he owned a two-tone Ford. It was blue and rust. As he drove a few distributors down an alley way one day, he lost patience with a back-seat driver.

"You want to drive?" he asked as he pulled off the steering wheel and tossed it into the back seat. As the car was slowly moving down the alley, he wasn't worried about crashing it. His pesky friend handed back the steering wheel and stopped giving Jim directions after that.

Then there was the time Jim tried to get a business loan from a bank. As he sat in the manager's office, he showed him all his sales receipts. After a while, the names he read off started sounding familiar. The manager realized after the third time around that Jim kept putting the slips he read at the back of the pile which he held in his hand. I can't remember if he received the loan or not but we all burst out laughing as we realized his sneaky way of making it sound like he had more customers than he actually did.

The funniest tale of all was when Jim, his wife, and daughter were driving away from a distributor's house. "What an entrepreneur that man is," Jim remarked.

"Dad!" his daughter exploded as she sat in the back seat. "How can you say a thing like that. You told us never to say bad things about others and now you just did that."

"What do you think I said?" Jim asked, clearly puzzled by his daughter's outrage.

"You called that man a pile of manure."

I still chuckle about those stories today, thirty years later. Though I failed to build a network of distributors and lost a lot of money, I have fond memories of the rallies and seminars that i attended.

I wrote extensively about that house church in my newly-published memoir, How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm.

TAKING THE MAGIC OUT OF MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING.

What was your first exposure to multi-level marketing? Mine happened when Wayne, a blind friend from Jericho Hill School for the Deaf and Blind phoned me one afternoon in July of 1975.

After catching up on our post-Jericho experiences, Wayne piqued my interest with a question. "Would you like to make extra money?" When I said yes, he explained, "I represent a cosmetic company called Holiday Magic. We help people start their own businesses with products that customers need all the time."

After Wayne described how I could earn money from home and make as much as I wanted, he invited me to the Edmonton office of Holiday Magic where trained professionals would demonstrate their merchandise for free. Since Wayne was a friend and he assured me that the company sold products for men as well as women, I decided to accept his offer.

Outside the store front office, the Holiday Magic staff set up a few lawn chairs and outdoor tables. "Is Wayne here?" I addressed the woman who was applying a creamy lotion to another person's face.

"No, but you're welcome to sit down and try a free facial," she invited. Since I came all that way, taking two city busses and an hour of my time, I figured I had nothing to lose.

When my turn came, the sales representative tilted my head back and applied a cool refreshing cream on my face. "That smells like cucumbers," I remarked.

"It does have cucumbers in it since it's all organic. It's designed to open your pores and clean out dirt. That should help clear up this acne you have."

After the woman wiped my face with a damp cloth, she gave me a brochure. I started reading it at home but it failed to interest me.

While I listened to the news one day, a reporter exposed Holiday Magic as a pyramid scheme. I threw out the pamphlet, not wanting to have any connection with shady business deals.

I wrote about Wayne and other students in my Deliverance from Jericho: Six Years in a Blind School memoir. Though the institution we were kept in wasn't very kind to us, we did entertain ourselves and get into mischief like sighted children. Please visit the link on the left hand side of this page for details about this paperback.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND INFURIATE PEOPLE.

Why do some individuals fall for Ponzi schemes and multi-level-marketing hype? From my own experience of money-making rackets, I realize that my pride blinded me to the truth. These schemes are set up to generate substantial wealth for the folks at the top of the pyramid while the bottom level partners lose money.

My introduction to this supposed opportunity to earn an unlimited income came in 1982 when a member of my church introduced me to Amway. From my upcoming How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity memoir, here is the account of my first experience as a multi-level marketer.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Now that you're in Amway, Bruce, you're going to have to hold meetings," Sister Eileen informed me as she drove me home from church the following Sunday. "Invite everybody you know but don't tell them it's about Amway. Say that you've got a business plan or a way to supplement income, depending on who you're talking to. Some people get nervous if you call it a business."

"Why can't I just tell them it's Amway?"

"People have heard some nasty things about the company, but they're all untrue. It isn't a pyramid scheme because products are involved. In a pyramid scheme, people send money to the person higher up in the chain and so on and so forth. The Amway opportunity lets people sell products and build their business as big as they want to."

That made sense but I still felt qualms about withholding information from people who had legitimate concerns.

Sister Eileen taught me how to present the plan that afternoon. Filled with excitement, I sat by the phone after supper with my address book. I opened it and dialled each of my friends from A to Z. Instead of being eager to visit me and find out about the opportunity, each one became suspicious when I evaded their direct questions. Some friends remained cordial afterward but I lost most of them, including my CB buddies, that night.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

How I Was Razed is the testimony of how God showed me his true nature after charismatic house church elders misled me for more than fifteen years. You're welcome to contact me directly for more information about this upcoming paperback.