Purpose 

Despite your initial thoughts, this book is not an assault on Amway distributors. The purpose is, rather, to stop the incredibly, well-orchestrated harm that is being done to them. You see I, myself, was a high-level Amway distributor who devoted nearly a decade to building a global business.

Throughout this book, you will know me as John Jacob, not my real name. You see, entering Amway was the easy part. Leaving it, after achieving such a high level, has been an entirely different story. The secrets I discovered resulted in a threat on my life and unspeakable slanders being circulated about my family. But I cannot keep silent. I feel compelled to share what really happened to me, so that other innocent people will not be led to financial slaughter and personal destruction.

My wife and I were first introduced to "The Business," as Amway distributors are taught to refer to the corporation, on November 15, 1989, and we got off to a relatively fast start as new distributors. We moved quickly through the ranks and went "Silver Direct" in our first year. During the next ten years, we devoted all our energies and resources to The Business, resulting in our moving on to "Emerald," a level achieved by only a small fraction of one percent of distributors in any year in North America. We recruited and sponsored literally thousands into our Amway business. With this background, you can see that I am not a spectator, an outsider, or someone who just gave it a quick try and now has an axe to grind.

I am a former Federal Auditor who, upon first seeing this business, evaluated it on the basis of logic, not emotion. Based on what I was told, shown and observed, it looked very good; the great hopes and dreams my wife and I had for our family and future seemed about to be realized, as we began to work on building our business. We sponsored large numbers of people into The Business and went from being attendees at seminars to being the only speakers at some of these daylong functions. It was not easy for two relatively shy people; neither of us had done much of any public speaking before. Nevertheless, in a few years we were onstage speaking to thousands. Our "upline" (people above our level in The Business and ones who had directly recruited us) even flew us to Argentina to speak to an organization there. I traveled through Japan to the Philippines and worked in many cities there expanding our business. The Amway business that Kathy and I developed, our organization, also expanded into Europe and South America.

My wife and I went from listening to motivational tapes every day to having tapes of our own seminars marketed internationally. In a few years, under my upline "Diamond’s" guidance, I left my corporate career and had a "retirement" party at the age of thirty. The American dream seemed to be very much alive; not only for us but also for the friends we were going to lead into the Promised Land.

We continued to build our business and were given more and more responsibilities by our upline "Diamond." I attended the secretive, invitation-only, Yager Network Marketing Institute (YNMI) that provided specialized training for rising "top guns." I was also given the opportunity to run much of the backstage coordination of speakers and hosts at the many motivational "Dream Weekends" and "Family Reunions." These are two of the largest seminars a year in Amway with thousands in attendance. The Amway business Kathy and I developed grew so large that by the January 1999 Dream Weekend, our group alone represented almost exactly 10% of those in attendance.

Working the backstage is considered a dream assignment for anyone in The Business. What a thrill for a regular couple like us to meet motivational guest speakers and personalities, such as Oliver North, Dave Thomas, Robert Schuller, Zig Ziglar, Glenn Campbell, Roy Clark and others. Not only that, but the backstage job also afforded me the opportunity to meet many of our personal heroes, the Amway Diamonds. ("Diamond" is an award level given by Amway to signify a very high level of success in the Amway business.) We were captivated by the quality of life they described. Many referred to the "Diamond lifestyle" as affording them six Saturdays and a Sunday, unlimited family time, and residual income to help others. These rewards were a source of great motivation to Kathy and me, as our faith and our family have always been of primary importance to us.

We learned that there was a very specific pattern or system for success in the Amway business. As a matter of fact, within it, we were told there was a "100% success rate and outside of it a 0% success rate." My sponsor and the rest of my upline referred to this system for success continually. It involved the ongoing weekly purchase of cassette tapes, books for daily reading, videos, CD-ROMs, tickets for the monthly seminars and frequent training sessions. (What we didn’t realize until much later is that, in essence, this system of success was little more than a gradual and unrelenting indoctrination.) We heard a college professor, who also happened to be a direct distributor; declare that this was the greatest educational system he had ever found. Almost all of the millionaire and multi-millionaire distributors praised this all-inclusive system as the most important resource they used in becoming wealthy in their Amway business. It's hard to argue with results. There were hundreds who spoke of becoming wealthy in Amway by means of the same system.

Many prominent speakers outside of the Amway business would make similar representations. Respected author and lecturer Shad Helmstetter was brought in to speak to thousands of distributors. This is the endorsement he gave of both "the system and "the business":

He also took out advertisements in USA Today to promote his independent findings on the success of the Amway business and its distributors. The first letter of this nature read as follows:

"An American Victory - Letter #1

(Wednesday, May 29th, 1996)

Many, like Mr. Helmstetter, would come in and speak of the virtues of our upline leaders as well. Our new leaders seemed to be people of unquestioned principle, speaking often about faith, character, courage, and integrity. The many Diamonds that were brought to inspire us affirmed that the leaders we were working with (almost always a husband and wife team) set the standard in the area of values. These couples were bold in proclaiming their faith and patriotism and also in practicing what seemed then like unparalleled generosity. The reason they were so successful, we were told, was due to their having helped many, many others succeed financially. We were reminded that the same practice of helping others would become the measure of our success.

The Diamond-level distributors became real-life heroes not only to us, but to our children as well. I studied and emulated their every move and mannerism. What a fulfilling life we were going to lead by helping so many of the people we loved! Our group, indeed, was more like a family to us than friends or business partners. We had little time for any relationships outside of Amway; consequently, our children referred to members of our new Amway family as "aunt" or "uncle" so-and-so. This is an Amway pattern, such that there are distributors who have affectionately named their pets, and in some instances their children, after members of their upline.

After achieving the level of Emerald, we spent more and more time around many very wealthy distributors and even had some personal time with billionaire Amway founder Rich DeVos. It was this increased contact with high-level distributors, from Diamond through Crown Ambassador, that finally permitted a chance event of fate to lead us to some terribly disturbing discoveries. These inadvertent discoveries eventually led to an agonizing exodus from "our" business, my becoming a federal witness and the actual publication of this book. The carefully guarded secrets I discovered, and am about to share with you, became a nightmare that plagued our every waking moment, an evil monster that ate at the fabric of our carefully structured lives like a swiftly moving cancer.

I was horrified to discover and later document that the Amway business is used in a "bait and switch" fraud of global proportions. As much as 94% of some Diamonds’ income is derived not from Amway but from another, secretive, source altogether. As a result of this, nearly all of the thousands of people we brought into the Amway business lost money. Some lost tens of thousands of dollars. We were unknowingly used to extract millions of dollars of good people’s hard-earned money for our upline Diamonds’ covert business. Amway’s owners and management have known of this deception for twenty years and have failed to stop it. Looking the other way has made them wealthy beyond belief.

Before we entered The Business, I figured the only danger was that I might waste a few weekends and lose a couple hundred dollars of our savings trying to move product that wouldn’t sell. After ten years in The Business, I realized the danger had unbelievably escalated to not only the worst kind of slimy character assassination, but also having my life threatened.

I am going to share with you the reaction of our leaders, upline Double Diamond, and fellow Amway distributors as we revealed the truth. The people we had admired and loved worked insidiously to undermine our position in the community. Our horrifying escape from building "our" Amway business, its related "support" system, and our upline may literally keep you awake at night. The unnamed symbiotic relationship between Amway and its related Motivational Organizations has unimaginable psychological and financial control over many of its distributors. In fact, the enormous motivational organization, that I was a part of, is a cult (using the very definition of such provided to Amway distributors on tape and at a seminar). This cult exercises control and manipulation over distributors beyond your imagination. We got started in this venture to experience the freedom of owning our own business and setting our own income in, what was described to us as, the purest form of free enterprise.

You may be thinking, "Come on now, Amway is just a harmless soap business, right?" My friend, I wish this were true. However, it is not. We have been advised repeatedly that we could "sell our business." Included in that sale would most likely be a half-inch thick secrecy or confidentiality agreement. My silence is not for sale at any price. I was used as a dupe to swindle so many people that I cannot be silent and live with myself. Already, I have lost almost every friend I have ever had, been bankrupted, and forced to the brink of foreclosure since speaking, on a small scale, of what I know to be the truth. It is a strange irony that those I loved the most now see me as the enemy. Many of my closest friends have participated effectively in our character assassination. Some pray for us, believing that Satan is using us to do a great evil.

Publishing this book is against the advice of almost all who care about me, but it is one of several actions I am taking to stop the harm being done to so many families around the world who are unconsciously buying into a cult.

This book may also serve as a guide to help many families who do not understand the seemingly bizarre actions and motivations of loved ones in Amway/Quixtar. This is not written out of a spirit of anger or retribution. I pity the people who took great liberties with our trust and used us as unwitting dupes to extract millions from the people we love most. One day, these cult-like leaders will have to face themselves in the mirror.

If this book helps you or someone you love, I am one step closer to undoing the damage I did as a trusting Amway distributor. I am one step closer to being able to live in peace.