Amway and the Mormon Church
You Might Be Surprised At the Similarities
I was born and raised in the Mormon Church. But when I lived in Utah for a few years, I got involved with an Amway business. I’m sure that most people know what Amway is, but just in case, I’ll try to give you a brief rundown.
Amway is a Multi-level Marketing (MLM) business where you buy products from the Amway corporation rather than buying them from the grocery and department stores. You are set up as a distributor with them and basically buying from yourself. Things like toothpaste and toilet paper — any normal consumable items you use. And then you recruit other people to do the same thing for themselves.
It’s all set up like a pyramid. You recruite people below you and they get people below them and so on. Everybody is consuming products for themselves, and the whole pyramid starts making money. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Recruiting
When you’re in the MLM business, you’re always thinking about your next prospect, your next recruit, either for you or for one of your downline business partners. It’s on your mind constantly. You have meetings about it — how to improve your recruitment and how to do recruitment presentations. We even had a leadership meeting once where we discussed Neuro-Linguistic Programming and how it can help with the sales process.
I remember a time when I was in the business for about three years. Three years of running hard, late nights, driving all over the state, doing presentations, going to conferences, and making money, but spending it all on motivational materials and conferences, gas in my car, and meals on the road. The most recent expenditure was an out-of-state leadership training with several of my top team members and we were flying back to Utah.
We decided we were going to try and recruit someone on the flight home. As a leader, I got up and found an empty seat, sat down, and started chatting with the woman sitting there, planning to talk to her about the Amway business. But instead, I felt inspired to talk to her about Mormonism instead.
Drawing Circles vs Plan of Salvation
In Amway presentations, they call it, “Drawing Circles.” Here’s you. You draw a circle. You get 3 friends. You draw 3 circles. And they get 3 friends. You draw 9 circles. And so on.
In Mormonism, they have something called The Plan of Salvation, where they talk about 3 things.
- Where did we come from before this life? Draw a circle of the Pre-existence.
- Why are we here on the earth? Draw a circle of the earth.
- Where are we going after this life? Draw a circle of the afterlife.
For whatever reason, on that plane, I felt inspired to draw the circles of the Plan of Salvation rather than drawing circles of Amway with that woman. I don’t know why. I just did. It was a good conversation. She seemed interested. I still gave her a business card, as I would have in an Amway conversation, and we promised to get in touch.
When I told my guys what happened, they were not disappointed, but impressed. They were also from Utah and Mormon. It was an interesting experience for me as I thought about it. It was almost a little perplexing. After 3 years of running hard, I was starting to get a little burned out on Amway, and it was nice to share something different for a change.
Moving Out of State
A few months later, I changed jobs and ended up moving out of state. When I left Utah and all of my Amway people, I decided to take a break. Because I built my business in Utah, I was constantly surrounded by my team and had to be “up” all the time, going to all of the conferences, and leadership meetings, setting the best example, etc. It was exhausting. I wanted to just take it easy for a while.
Something else I decided I wanted to do was to be able to choose to share the Plan of Salvation with people I met rather than share the Amway Circles. I didn’t want to have to choose between the two for once. I just wanted to be able to share the Plan of Salvation, as a good Mormon should. So I took some time off of being an Amway guy.
Similarities
This is about the time I started realizing the similarities between the Mormon church and the Amway business. Every week in Priesthood Leadership meetings, we are drilled of how important it is for us to be good examples to our neighbors. We are also reminded to have a Book of Mormon experience every week, which means we are supposed to find an opportunity to share a Book of Mormon with someone — anyone — at least once a week. It could be a stranger, a friend, a neighbor, the mailman, the pool guy. It really didn’t matter.
It’s just really important in the Mormon church that you are missionary-minded, all the time. That’s one of their biggest mottos. Every Member a Missionary. You can understand why I would want to take a break from being an Amway guy and start being a “normal” Mormon guy again. Living in Utah and working on my Amway business I had really been neglecting my Mormon duties of being a missionary and sharing the gospel with other people.
“Every Member a Missionary,” a Mormon motto.
Of course, there tend to be fewer opportunities in Utah to do that sort of thing because there are so few non-Mormons actually living in Utah. Living out of Utah made that much easier to do. I started to realize, however, how similar the recruitment tactics are between Amway and the Mormon church. I started to see that everybody is a potential candidate, opportunity, recruit, or convert just like in the Amway business.
I never did go back and build my Amway business again. It eventually died off and I eventually lost everything that I built. I learned a lot from it. I read many books about business and relationships. I don’t regret any of that. And I think one of the most significant things I learned was how similar it was to the Mormon Church.
A Mormon’s Mandate
A Mormon’s mandate is to bring everybody into the “true” gospel of Jesus Christ, which to them means, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There is no other church on the face of the earth that has all of the truth nor the proper power or authority on earth to perform the ordinances of baptism and other ordinances required for salvation. The only way for you to get those is from the Mormon Church.
If you are unable or unwilling to convert to the Mormon Church in this life, don’t worry, they will convert you after you die through temple work. That’s what temples are all about. So even if a Mormon seems okay with you not converting to Mormonism while you’re alive, they’re not worried. They know they can always convert you after you’re dead.
Leaving The Mormon Church
I eventually left the Mormon Church. The reasons I left were many-fold. I was no longer happy there and I was struggling with several things. But definitely, one of the things that was nagging in the back of my mind was the fact that none of my friendships were genuine. Inside or outside of the church, actually. As soon as I left the Mormon church, every single one of my Mormon friends “disappeared” from my life. The town I lived in had 13,000 Mormons in it. Out of all of those people, only 1 person called to check on me after I left.
I wanted to meet people and just be friends with them, without any ulterior motives. I realized that as long as I was Mormon, every person I met, would always be someone I would have to consider as a potential convert, and I could never just consider them as a friend. I’m sure that you’ll run into Mormons who will deny this, who will say that this is bullshit. But you see it’s an impossibility. It’s logically impossible for Mormons to see you as anything other than a convert, either in this life or the next.
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