It was very hard to be gone so much. Josh once tackled me as I was leaving for a meeting. He was only about five years old, but he missed me very much. I had on my typical plan outfit, which consisted of a freshly pressed dark suit, white shirt and red tie. He knew I was leaving for a long time when he saw this. He had thrown a red tie around his neck and clutched my leg, begging me to take him with me. He was crying, and it was all I could to wrench him off and push him away as I left. There was no consoling him. I got in my car and cried as I left our driveway and drove off into the night. But times like this made me more determined. Family was the reason to persist.

One new Diamond spoke of the trip to Hawaii he had taken his mother on just before she died and the precious moments that they had shared, because he had earned his freedom. He could not only take care of her financially but had the time to be with her at the end of her illness. He praised God and Zack for this wonderful, blessed life. Another Diamond recounted how his elderly mother, on a luxury trip with him, had stated that she had tried to talk him out of the Amway business and thanked God he had not listened to her.

Seminars with recognition ceremonies and stories like these often ran late at night and involved bright, blasting strobe and laser lights that functioned in harmony with loud patriotic, religious, or motivational music. This was combined with these incredible, emotional testimonials and even the chanting of phrases like "Go Diamond, Go Diamond, Go Diamond!" or "No Excuses! Five and Six Nights a Week" (a reference to showing the plan). The crowds were revved into a peak, euphoric emotional and psychological state, and these feelings were then anchored with the phrases chanted, the music, and sometimes just the feeling of sheer exhaustion. As we would later be running the roads for our freedom, listening to a tape of that seminar, a certain song or a return to the exhausted state could trigger the euphoric feeling again.

Did you ever hear a sound or smell a fragrance that instantly transported you to a crystal clear memory, such as a sunny day in your childhood? All your senses were involved, especially if it was an exhilarating event or memory; your heart rate would actually increase. The seminars and the teaching and music tapes did that for us. As crazy as it sounds, the sensation of total exhaustion would trigger the feeling of euphoria. After the non-stop tapes, containing teachings we had absorbed, it felt great to be on the road at three in the morning with yet another tape playing, and have an hour until you reached home. Not many people would be willing to do that. I had begun to think only in slogans or clichés. The best fruit was out on the limb. We were not going to be in the 95% of people, who worked their whole lives only to be broke at retirement. We were living the principles of success and would be able to teach them to our children. We had to pay the price and learned to live in a near exhausted state.

Perhaps because of this, we developed an incredible love and bond with the people in our organization, who were going through the same struggles to achieve their own success. It was a deep, loyal bond that I had only felt once before. The Marine Corps Officer training that I had attended in Quantico, Virginia, molded a group of total strangers into a powerful, strong unit. In all our tests and challenges, if even a single member failed, the whole platoon failed. We each had to give 110% and help each other. The group was more important than the individual. We did exceptionally well as a team, graduating as the Honor Platoon after grueling tests. I understood the principle of unity and team effort immediately from this training. We came as strangers, and in a relatively short period of time, we were willing to lay down our lives for one another. This is the type of powerful relationship we built in The Business.

We had these friendships cemented when our daughter, Ashley, became very ill with pneumonia. She was only an infant and dehydrated to the point she had to be hospitalized. An intravenous tube was placed in her wrist, and she was fed fluids through a pediatric needle taped to a small board on her hand. She pulled it out again and again. She looked so weak and helpless. Her eyes were sunken in, and she was miserable, but she needed to get those fluids into her system. Kathy and I quickly became exhausted by an around-the-clock vigil at the hospital. Word got out and friends from our group came and sat with Ashley 24 hours a day. This allowed Kathy to get some sleep, and I went into their groups to do meetings. The vigil continued until Ashley recovered and came home. It was like God’s community looking out for one another. We were so fortunate to have friends that were there for us when we truly needed them. Thank God for Amway.

The corporation, itself, was growing at nearly a billion dollars a year. There was more and more talk of it becoming a trillion-dollar company. We had expanded into over seventy foreign countries and territories. We were going into China. After a little over a year in Japan, we were doing over a billion dollars a year. Success was everywhere. Going Diamond was going to be worth all the hard work. Some of the Diamonds had upgraded from $500,000 coaches to private jets. Zack bought an incredible ranch in Colorado with 3,000 acres of land. It was loaded with bear, elk, deer and turkey. He built an enormous log cabin-mansion on it, and his leaders all paid their own way there for multiple "leadership" visits. We then were required to chip in funds for gifts to properly thank Zack and Molly for taking time to teach us. There was no doubt that Amway was working and in a huge way.

We were invited to do a fairly large seminar for John and Sue Walters. John is Zack’s brother, and he was an Amway Emerald at the time. It was an honor to go there and speak, as he and Sue had been two of our heroes and teachers as we had come up through the ranks. We spoke at a large high school auditorium and had a great day. The group was alive and motivated and excited to be there and take notes. For dinner, John and Sue took us to a small restaurant away from the crowd, so we could talk. They were both a lot of fun, and we enjoyed each other’s company very much. During the course of conversation, John mentioned that as Emeralds, he and Sue got a break on the cost of each seminar ticket that their group purchased for these monthly meetings.

This seemed odd, as we had never heard of anything like this and had been working with Zack directly, since we started in The Business. The next week, at product pick up, I asked Kerry if he knew anything about this. He said "no" and quickly changed the subject. I let it drop, as I knew that I didn’t need to think about anything that did not affect me directly. I just needed to stay focused. A few days later, Kerry called with good news. Zack was free later that week and had some time to counsel us to help us move on to Diamond. I was beginning to feel a little more nervous than excited, but I still looked forward to getting together with Zack.

We spent over an hour going over the normal business of our numbers of books, tapes, Amway kits, and seminar tickets moved in the last few months. He was very warm and engaging. The conversation slowly moved into a realm of somber, quiet communication. Zack confronted me very directly that I was never again, under any circumstances, to discuss the tool break on tapes and books with anyone else. This was a small perk to cover our expenses as leaders and was not an income source. The group might not understand this. For us, it did not even cover the amount I was putting into my car’s gas tank and food on the road most months, so this was not an issue. We were also told never, ever to discuss anyone else’s tool break with them. He then mentioned the contents of the conversation I had had with his own brother, who, he said, "should have known better."

This began an hour-long talk about cross lining. Many, many examples were given of people who had destroyed their own businesses simply by discussing the details of it with someone other than their upline. He was interested in our success and had invested a lot of time, energy, and valuable teaching in Kathy and me. He informed me that it would be disloyal to risk an investment that he had made in our business for us by cross lining with anyone, including his own brother. This talk literally went on for an hour. He excused himself once to use the restroom, and I was glad for the break.

I thought it was over, but he came back and launched immediately into a tirade from where he had left off. He explained that good, well-intentioned people had destroyed big organizations by getting a little sloppy on this one point, and we needed to teach it and be on guard for it among our own leaders. We were a little overwhelmed but thankful for the direction. He really did seem to care and once again repeated how much he and Molly loved us and wanted us to go to Diamond Club in Hawaii with them. We were beginning to regard him with mixed emotions of warmth and total fear.

We were motivated and working hard. However, our finances began to spiral downward for a couple of reasons, which were hard to identify or comprehend. We had been counseled to sell our rental properties, as they were distractions. We had gotten totally debt free outside of our mortgage. But soon we started to accumulate small and then larger amounts of credit card debt. There were more and more mandatory leadership seminars and trips to attend. If Zack called a meeting at his Ranch in Colorado, you had to be there on the date you were told. It was a privilege to learn from the master. If he called a Directs’ trip to Florida, you went, and you brought all your leaders with you. If he called a meeting on his private island in Canada, you were there, no questions asked.

Leaders could not ever afford to miss a single upline event. They would look disloyal and not plugged in. (All of our groups were constantly told to follow their upline plugged-in leader.) A plugged-in leader, again, is someone who is completely loyal to the system and in line with his line of sponsorship’s leadership. A plugged-in leader would never break the cardinal rules by passing negative, de-edifying upline, implementing new ideas, or cross lining with another leader. To do any of these things could destroy the whole business you had worked for.

We received great news when Paul, the best man from our wedding, called and shared that he had met a beautiful, special lady. I could tell from every word he uttered that she was the one. He was the first person we had sponsored in The Business, and he had since moved to Louisiana. She happened to be in The Business in another leg of Dexter’s organization. What a small world! They knew how committed we were and needed to make plans.

All of their families were actually going to travel all the way from the upper East Coast clear to Baton Rouge for the wedding. They wanted to know if I would be the best man. They also needed to know what my seminar schedule was for the summer. They knew if it was on a seminar weekend that I would not be able to attend their wedding. They actually booked the wedding date around our seminar schedule. They understood how committed I was to our organization and my family’s future.

The bomb dropped a few weeks before the wedding. Zack called a special Directs’ meeting for my organization on his private island in Canada. I considered calling and telling Paul that I could not make it; in my heart, I knew he had time to find another best man. I think Kathy convinced me that I needed to go to the wedding. I nervously approached Zack backstage at a seminar. I knew I should not be asking this. Someone truly loyal and a real leader would not do this, but part of me knew I should be there at this important event in my friend’s life.

I asked permission to attend the wedding and explained that it had actually been planned around his seminar schedule. He looked at me as if in disbelief and then just told me to go. He seemed disgusted. I could tell that this decision was going to cost me. He had more than one family member plan their wedding around his schedule. He would rather serve his group, his family, and his God than be part of a crowd at someone’s wedding.

I went to the wedding, and it was spectacular. What an incredible couple Paul and Tammy made. They had a wonderful, loving church group and family with them. I felt so honored to be part of their special day. On another level, however, I was stricken with guilt for putting my personal pleasure in this moment before my loyalty to the group and my own family’s future. They were all with Zack on his island. Kathy went with them in my absence, but it was not the same. I was afraid, after nearly seven years of never missing anything that my upline would think that I was not plugged in. This was a terrible example to set for my leaders.

We were coached to book most major life events around The Business. Molly actually had a baby at a distant city, because she went into labor at a seminar where she and Zack were speaking. At another seminar, just before they were about to speak, they got a call and were told that Molly’s mother’s husband had just died. Zack counseled her and told her that she needed to speak on stage, because they had to keep their commitments. They both went on stage and spoke and then went home after the seminar.

That was commitment and servant hood to others. At another time, we had learned that Zack’s father was near death. He did not know that we knew of this. Here he was on his island, counseling a group of us, and asking if we had any problems that he could help with. What a selfless example! His own father was passing away, yet he was so committed to us that he spent a couple days encouraging and directing us. We viewed him with an oddly evolving mixture of admiration, respect, and love, but also with the more frequent emotion of fear. He was becoming more hardcore in his demands for total loyalty.

Not only were we in this new bizarre world, it had become a part of us! We scheduled everything around business events. We ordered our Amway products on Sunday night, and they would come by truck on Wednesday. We would open up the cases and sort the many hundreds of pounds of Amway products, and then our downline would come and pick them up from us. Every Wednesday, like clockwork, our distributors would show up at prescribed times to pick up their tapes, books, and Amway products. Because this day was so vital to our tool and product flow, we scheduled Kathy’s caesarian section for our daughter Ashley on a Thursday. Her birth date was actually chosen to avoid conflict with the distribution of Amway products.

One year, we called Ashley from Puerto Rico to sing happy birthday to her. We were there on an Emerald trip and had made arrangements for the family that was watching our kids to have a cake for her. We celebrated it a different time. We had been taught well. The Diamond ladies would always warn the women that their kids would try to make them feel guilty for being away so much. The women leaders needed to get it in their mind’s that being with their husbands, building their financial future, and serving others was the best example they could set for their children.

Personally, we had a hard time with this. Distributors were counseled to celebrate wedding anniversaries and birthdays around The Business schedule. Diamonds often talked of these as minor sacrifices early on in their business. The big payoff now was an annual trip to Diamond club in Hawaii! They pointed out that they now celebrated any time they wanted, because they were totally financially and time free. Kathy and I had to work harder, and we would get there too. Kathy deserved it. I was exhausted constantly but could do more.

Our finances continued to worsen, as the leadership meetings became more and more frequent and expensive. The Amway Corporate trips were all expense paid by the company – perks for all our hard work. The seminar meetings that Zack ran were another story. We were expected to be there without fail, but we had to pay our own way. The tape-of-the-week that we all religiously purchased went from $5.00 to $6.00 a week plus tax and shipping. The tape-of-the-week program then went from one to two tapes-of-the-week. The extra tape was only for the truly committed who wanted to learn more material faster. All of our plugged-in distributors, which included almost everyone on the system, began this tape-of-the-week-plus-one program. That raised the weekly cost to $13.20 with tax and shipping. Later, a book-of-the-month and a video-of-the-month started. This was in addition to the regular monthly seminars and other training sessions.

We were reminded that God’s own word said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). We were business owners and needed to invest in ourselves. This was far cheaper than most people spend on a year on college tuition, and we were learning from self-made millionaires and multi-millionaires. We effectively taught distributors to change their thinking pattern from that of employees to business owners. There was a 100% success rate within the system and a zero percent success rate outside of it. The Profiles of Success was living proof of it. Who would argue with Zack or Dexter? Their wealth documented that the system worked and worked well. You could discuss a new idea with the Diamonds, once you were making what they were making. We were routinely advised that we needed new people, not new ideas. This was like a franchise, so why waste time reinventing the wheel? Nevertheless, our credit cards started showing an increasing balance, as we had to foot the travel expenses.

Our finances also continued to plummet, due to the increased costs of the system and our inability to sponsor large numbers, retain them, and grow our organization. Our upline was becoming almost maniacal in their zealous approach to leadership. We had Artistry training sessions for the ladies in our organization. These were sessions that were scheduled for a weekend to give the ladies a background in our high-end line of cosmetics. The cosmetics and vitamins were astronomically expensive, in comparison to anything we had ever purchased prior to The Business. However, this was from our business and was going to pay for our kids’ college. We had to be 100% loyal to our product line if we expected our group to be loyal as well. Many distributors would quickly have well over $1,000 invested in a cookware set, a water treatment system, and a heavy vacuum cleaner that we marketed. All the loyal distributors had these items in their home. How could they promote a product to their group if they did not have one of their own?

I did not know the other advice that the ladies were given until years later. The women in our organization were told what they needed to do to become Diamond ladies was support their husband and be a good Proverbs woman. Each woman was told never to refuse her husband sex, for any reason. These women were even told to dress up and put on fresh make-up to greet their husbands when they would come home at one or two o’clock in the morning. At two different meetings, a member of our upline told the women that they were to always look good, as they were their husband’s "best ornament." This offended all those women who still had the capacity to think clearly–but what could they say?