I read an interesting comparison on Amthrax's blog about the cost of some of the top selling books on TEAM and the prices of the same books on Amazon and how they are available for free in Library.
Here is the link for those who are interested
http://amthrax.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/team-life-top-50-books-price-comparison-jan-2011/
Most of these books were/are also sold through BWW.
Funny thing is once we became inactive, I sold about 50 of my personal copies of some of these useless books on Amazon. I did not make any profit, but atleast got rid of some clutter (better than shipping my unused tools to my upline who did not pay me anything for that). The rest of the worthless books, I donated to a Goodwill store.
What surprised me the most was the speed at which I sold most of the books. Made me realize that that there is a huge market for PMA books and people were willing to pay for some of the titles that they would not normally find in a bookstore (I sold some of the books for a high price, inspite of the remarks like "book underlined in many places and notes are there on the sides and the backcover).
Also made me realize that people truly like to buy and dont like to be sold. Remember the line from your Amway/network marketing days. We had to sing and dance to make a new IBO get on standing order or purchase some tools. But people who are really looking for PMA titles, were willing to pay for it.(ZERO promotion needed on your part).
Some of the totally nonsensical titles that I can ended up donating, are WWW- stands for World Wide Whinners (yeah right), leadership secrets of Atila the Hun (I swear the author must have paid the system to move these books:-) and not the other way around)). The crappiest part was to sound excited about these idiotic books and promote them at the PASE meetings. Talking about a book you enjoyed is fine. But having to promote an idiotic book and the crowd has to also nod and look excited. Man..it was torture.
What was really upsetting was, the upline GURUS who are supposed to be high on many of the PMA books and can quote page numbers and passages from some books, sucked at people skills, HONESTY, INTEGRITY big time. When you told them about some issues/problems, instead of truly listening and understand your point of view (like how the books taught you to do), gave you tough talk and pushed you to get their point of view. My upline emerald's favorite quote from "Seven Habits of Highly Effective people" was how your map and destination did not match up, then you wont get there. Well this jerk had his destination in mind, but the means he used to get there...wonder if he could ever tell his kids about how he got to Emerald level (Many of us would have gone ooh and aah when upline emerald lady talks in her cd about how her dad did not get influenced by his colleagues and end up drinking, inspite of the teasing. Why, dear lady, you could never use the principles you learnt from your dad about doing things right).
We still do have the books that we really enjoyed, which are still relevant to our daily lives and not promote "vicious network marketing cycle (keep at it no matter what....why it makes sense to keep investing on ABC (association, books and cds) no matter what...u get the drift). Some of the books that we still have are Seven habits of highly effective people, some of John Maxwell's books. Though I still cant understand how a person like John Maxwell would promote WWDB and Ron Puryear and would speak at their functions.
Anyways for active IBOs who are out there if you really sit and think about the contradicting things that the upline and system recommends, there is a chance you might wake up. Why counsel you on delayed gratification, shopping at the cheapest possible places, no vacation, no classy stuff and then drill it to you that you are expected to be on standing order and extra tools and dont you dare return tools that your downline returned to you, why drill it that you have to do 300 + PV (way overpriced, stuff you need only when you are in Amway) on the first day of the month.
Anyways I remember a famous quote from the Amway days "Every IBO has a shelf life. You determine how long it is going it to be." We are sure glad we werent in for "long haul" and came to our senses in 5-6 years.
You can google Amway books and tools and you might find stuff for pennies on the dollar on ebay or craigslist. The stuff is basically worthless.
ReplyDeleteExeagle:
ReplyDeleteDitto to what you said. Some of the books they recommended especially Steve Price ones, the author of Prosumer Power! ( I don't want to remember the author..not worth remembering)..I can't believe anyone with the sane mind would recommend these crappy books. They say Executive committee picks these. Maybe they get a bigger cut for promoting the crap. I agree about Steven Covey, John Maxwell books. It still irritates the heck out of me all the promotion and guilt trips especially when they have the tools table. my upline diamond would say in a team meeting, "I have handpicked all these for you..When we were going direct, we would not let our upline carry any tools..we would pic all the tools..I used to believe all this crap, got the tapes, got the cds, got the extra ones, got the west coast ones, would wait in line to get suparna's blessings as to "what cds would help me to move on to the next level?"..(most of them I would have already had it..but hey..i want to platinum emerald...just have to follow what they say...Will have an hefty bill of 500+$ for all the lit packs..+ tools. Used to boost my ego when Suparna used to mention our names for paying the price to go to the next level. On the way home, will have a major fight about irresponsible spending of money for buying extra tools...Spent countless hours justifying spouse about this. Then just like exeagle said, will promote standing order as if they were qualified God sent people to attain the special recognition of being in Standing order. Once the downline decided to exit out standing order program. I told this to my upline..and it went all the way till upline diamond. Everybody called this downline and promoted this..Now when I think back, it makes me nuts. All these people are adults making their own decisions..why so much promotion..If it is good, why do they have to promote all this. When you are in the system, you are not allowed to think or ask questions.. Then they question you " You need to work on your attitude" All that BS. I cannot believe how much crap I have listened. We used to think about the crap from the prospects. How about the crap from the uplines. Anyway thank God it is over. When I look at my bank balance, I can proudly show it off (than lying about my income.. Just like Exeagle, I would rather be ExIBO than Ill-Egal
I agree that some of the self-help books are absolutely shocking. The rationale was that "everyone is in sync reading the same thing". I wish they'd have just said one can get any book from the book list automatically if they're on standing order or something. Some of those books were REALLY bad, and I'm not an amway critic--I read a lot of self-development. Not all self-help is good though. The Covey and Maxwell stuff are top quality. I once read a book that was later on standing order, and I was scolded, I was told, "normally we only read books that our upline diamond is reading, we don't read anything else". I challenge any Amway IBO to tell me that is not borderline-cultish.
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