I first got involved with Amway in 1994. My level of involvement surged and faded periodically between then and sometime around 1999, when I completely ceased all activity. In 2002 I briefly entertained the notion of getting back into the business, but I talked myself out of it; and now I can finally say with full certainty that my affiliation with Amway, now rebranded as Quixtar, is dead for all time. During the time following my last days of active support for the business, if the topic of Amway, Quixtar, or any other MLM² was raised in conversation, I would express moderately sympathetic opinions: "I used to do that; I didn't do well, but then again, I was pretty lazy." "The business model is solid, if a little overblown by its proponents." "Although I didn't make money, I gained valuable experience developing people skills, and learning about the importance of an entrepreneurial mindset."

It begins, as I mentioned, in 1994 – early September, to be exact. Summer was over, and my fourth year of college was about to begin. I had just moved into a room in the basement of an apartment complex. Women rented the single bedroom apartments on the main floors, and the basement was reserved for male tenants. We shared a communal kitchen and bathroom. The phone rang. I answered, and was surprised to hear Paul, an old High School friend, on the other end of the line.  I hadn't seen Paul for over three years. He asked what I was doing on Thursday. I told him that I had a party to attend at my fraternity house.  He asked if he could stop by in the afternoon to discuss a business proposition. I asked what it entailed. His answer was vague; I remember him mentioning how he had access to all sorts of product lines, from toothpaste to Captain Crunch cereal. I might not have been impressed by his words alone, but something about the excitement in his voice convinced me to have him come over on Thursday afternoon. After all, as an old friend, he was welcome for any purpose. He asked if he could bring an associate, and I said that wouldn't be a problem.

As a music major, I had no idea what a business meeting was, let alone how one is expected to prepare. For example, about a year prior to Paul's visit, I met with an area business owner over the matter of a commercial jingle. I must have looked ridiculous enough in my wrinkled shirt and tie and cheap shoes; the tattered briefcase in my hand no doubt helped very little. Kudos to Mr. Dick Watermolen of Lakeside Pontiac/Buick/GMC for so successfully restraining an impulse to laugh me out of his office. When Paul and his friend, Ron, appeared at my door wearing collared shirts and slacks, Ron himself sporting a tie, I greeted them in cutoff sweat shorts, a white T-shirt, and a baseball cap bearing fraternity letters. I don't remember being the least bit self-conscious as I led them to the communal kitchen.

Ron invited me to an important event that was scheduled in Milwaukee later that evening, and I passed, explaining that I had a frat party to attend. Silly how we assign priorities at that young age, isn't it? As they left, Ron and Paul left me with a book called Profiles of Success and a couple of audio tapes to review. During the hours between the close of our meeting and the party, I listened to one of the tapes, on which Executive Diamonds Jerry and Cherry Meadows told a very uplifting story about their transition from a middle-class Midwestern existence (he was a chemical plant manager) to a life of obscene affluence. I laughed with them as they put the naysayers in their place. Cherry's skeptic father, for example, was an outspoken opponent of their choice to build a Network Marketing business, but when his daughter and son-in-law proved the effectiveness of the business, he became a distributor himself.

Before the end of our meeting that afternoon, Ron urged me to refrain from bringing up the business to others until we had a chance to meet again. He told me that I could only trust the opinions of those who knew what they were talking about. I understood his point, but by the time I left the basement of my apartment building for the basement of my frat house, I was too excited to exercise any restraint. I told my closest friends that night, one at a time, that I had just looked at an opportunity to become an Amway distributor. My friend Brian showed visual signs of distress at the prospect. He energetically advised that I stay clear, but couldn't offer a good reason why. Brian was always critical of me, so I took this  evening's criticism as a personal challenge. Another good friend, Kevin, actually gave me a reason why it might be a bad idea: "My brother tried that once, and he had to stock up on a bunch of inventory; and when he couldn't sell it, he was stuck having to pay for a garage full of crap." That evening, I didn't yet know that the next thing Ron would tell me to do was to make a list of prospects – people to whom I would extend an invitation to join me in my new business venture. I had already burned through my closest friends before I could even put them on the list.

The next time I talked to Ron, he assured me that no one is required to front-load inventory, that all orders are processed on a per-case basis. With that concern dispatched, I was ready to begin setting up my own meetings and building a network. I got a loan for the $140 starting costs and began telling my girlfriend, JoLynne, how great our lives would be. She could have that pool she always wanted when we eventually got married, and I'd have all the time in the world to compose.

Hardly anyone ever got into Amway, Quixtar, Shaklee, Herbalife, Excel, or any other MLM business because they found the business itself appealing. Why would an artist like myself, or for that matter, an athlete, a chemist, a housewife, a teacher, or a plumber get excited about selling laundry detergent and window cleaner? It's not the product that sells the business, it's The Dream. That's what they told us as we were taught recruiting techniques. Get prospects talking about their dreams, and they'll get excited. For me, anything that would relieve me of my debt and allow me to focus solely on creative pursuits sounded like a great idea. For someone else, the dream might be a trip around the world, or a horse ranch.  After some time, however, I fell so hard in love with the business itself that it consumed by thoughts, ambition, and imagination.

What I first perceived as a means to support for a musician's lifestyle became an end in itself. I lost focus on my dream to be heard by vast audiences, to have scholarly articles published in professional journals, to hear my works performed on stages in University concert halls across the nation. My attention was strongly fixed on matters pertaining to business-building. When I wasn't scheduled to present the business plan to a prospective partner, or to attend a meeting, I would do things that didn't have an immediate impact on the business, but were designed to inspire future action. One such activity was "dream-building." If there was a house under construction, I would let myself in after hours to inspect it and imagine myself living within. Sometimes I'd visit an auto dealer and visualize myself in the most expensive cars. Once, my girlfriend, Andrea (for whom I had left JoLynne) and I test drove a Jaguar Vanden Plas. With the help of my upline,⁴ I was continually reminding myself that I wanted these things very, very much. If ever a doubt entered my mind, I told myself that a desire to attain things not yet within one's reach, unnecessary or extravagant though they may be, is not necessarily purely materialistic. Rather, trappings of an affluent lifestyle – cars, boats, mansions – could be regarded as an outward measure of inward   determination. Fine possessions are an expression of the degree to which one deserves to have them. In fact, to want them is a virtue. Failure to aspire to great fortune is symptomatic of a losing mental attitude and should be pitied. 

Not only had my dreams of success in music been supplanted by dreams of fantastic wealth; likewise, my respect for the college system was undermined by an intense faith in entrepreneurialism. I was exposed to alarming statistics: Sixty percent of college graduates don't find work in their field. The average person switches careers ten times before retirement.  On my tapes of the week, Diamonds told us to question why professors in business schools were not themselves millionaires. I became determined only to finish school through a bare minimum of effort, because college, was for chumps who mistakenly thought that what worked for their parents would work for them. I knew better. I was aware of the futility of so-called "higher education." Many of the most successful people I knew of during this time were merely High School graduates, sometimes worse.

I also lost faith in the concept of employment. My upline taught me that employees are suckers, selling their time at wholesale to their superiors. I learned to value my time, so much so that I'd be damned if I'd let a boss tell me how to manage it. In the summer of 1997 I was fired from my job, a retail sales position at a large music store, because of chronic tardiness. It was the first time I had ever been fired in my life. During the next four years, I was terminated from four more jobs.

My upline, had they been around for support during this most tragic moment of my life to date, would have undoubtedly told me that I could expect little else after abandoning the "System."

Here's the story of the System, as it was told to me: In the 1960's, a beer truck driver from Rome, New York named Dexter Yager and his wife, Birdie, became Amway distributors. Dexter never even made it to High School (now he boasts honorary degrees, and his seminars sell out stadiums), but his ambition was boundless. Apparently his ambition was limited to things outside of academics, but I digress. Dexter enjoyed a limited degree of success, but discovered that he could grow his system to epic proportions by instituting a system of training. By "teaching the teachers how to teach," he ensured that his business expertise would be passed through his downline, solidifying his network while motivating those at the lowest tiers to expand quickly.

The System served two purposes: education and self-promotion. The educational components consisted of products, sold to one's downline, designed to train and motivate. There was a Book of the Month club, a Standing Order Tape program (one cassette per week, 20 dollars per month), voice mail (somewhere around 18 dollars per month), and seminar tickets (twelve dollars per month). Monthly Seminars were hosted locally at a school auditorium. At least once every quarter there would be a major function at a large venue, like a college stadium or convention center. It would cost hundreds for a single person to attend one of these events.

More importantly, the System existed to promote itself. The promotional component consisted of nonstop reminders from upline and crossline of how crucial the System is to one's success. All the educational components (we called them "tools") I mentioned were optional. They had to be, because they weren't actually produced by Amway, but instead by Internet Services, a firm owned by Dexter Yager. Although optional, they were deemed necessary if one really wanted to succeed. Some promotion of the tools was incorporated into the tools themselves. I heard several Diamonds on the Standing Order Tapes explaining the importance of Standing Order Tapes.

To the most loyal distributors, the System was a network of comradely and mutual moral support. When Matt, a man I had personally sponsored, got married, I was asked to be an usher. The best man was my Direct, Bill Sargent⁵. I thought it no coincidence that, although Matt and I had spent a lot of time together on campus as friends, Bill was selected as best man. At the time, Bill was more active in the business. I was spending more time studying and practicing. If I was more in touch with my upline, their loving guidance might have steered me clear of the poor decisions that separated me and Andrea. Of course, she might instead have left me because of all the time and money I was allocating to tools and functions.

In August of 1998, I graduated without ceremony. My diploma would arrive in the mail years later, after I settled a small outstanding debt to the University. I developed a series of crippling panic attacks. Once I even called Andrea for the sole purpose of inducing a depression to distract me from my queasiness. Kelly and I began dating. She legitimately cared for me, but I merely tolerated her company. Somehow we decided together to take another look at the Amway business. At this time, a campaign called "9-1-99" was underway. Amway was planning to shed its corporate image and rename itself Quixtar. Distributors were now called IBO's (Independent Business Owners), and would begin placing their orders through the internet instead of over the phone. What an exciting time to get re-involved! Kelly and I drove to Bill Sargent's house for a briefing.

Bill's wife, Darlene, greeted us at the door. The woman I once knew as cute and cheery now seemed to be under a cloud of perturbation. A familiar feeling washed over me as I descended into Bill's basement office. The sensation was like that one experiences when, having abandoned a bad habit like overeating, cheating, or gambling, he falls back off the wagon. Bill's countenance was less than reassuring.

As Bill invited us to sit down in front of his desk, I noticed that he was much skinnier than when I last saw him. His eyes had always been wide with excitement, but now they were downright buggy. A large vein protruded from his right temple. He spoke with manic energy. He stopped to play us one of the new tapes. The speaker on the tape predicted economic growth of unprecedented velocity for those who would become part of the e-commerce revolution. After listening to the tape in its entirety, Bill resumed his pep talk, which was laced with venom. While pacing frantically behind his desk, he mocked my on again, off again approach to the business. He demanded total commitment from both of us.

Ultimately, he wouldn't take me seriously as a business partner if I didn't leave with a stack of the new materials released by Dexter's publishing company. Kelly wrote a check for 130 dollars, and on the way home she insisted that she get her money's worth.

Together, we scheduled meetings with prospects. We attended functions. Building our business was the only activity we shared. We had no respect for each other's tastes in music. I couldn't relate to her love of soap operas and FM radio. She disliked my preferences in films and literature. We shared no friends in common. Tensions grew as I began relying on her generosity in covering my bills. She tried pressuring me into sharing an apartment with her in Waukesha.  My refusal to commit to an apartment was a veiled confession of my lack of attraction to her, as well as a subtle admission of my own lack of faith in my ability to generate a decent income; and she eventually got the hint. Inevitably, we split up. I would never again present the business plan, attend a meeting, or order a product from Quixtar.

About three years later, while working at a cellular phone kiosk in Madison's East Towne Mall, a stranger approached me with a business opportunity. I knew exactly what he was pitching even though he didn't mention Quixtar by name (IBO's never do upon first contact with a prospect). My new significant other was Michele, a woman with a tough attitude and an appreciation for fine things. She deserved to be treated like a queen, and I knew I wouldn't be up to the task unless I could dramatically expand my income. I accepted the stranger's offer to show me his plan. I was now more confident in my ambition; the college slacker who wasted the better part of the 90's kicking the business around had grown hungrier than ever. This time, however, I wanted to check his promises against the opinions of other distributors, both active and retired. The World Wide Web, not as pervasive when I first saw the plan in 1994, would now prove a valuable resource.

Where might I be if I had stayed my original course, and not diverted my life's energy into Amway?

For one, I would have had more time to spend on my studies. Although I wasn't the best student to begin with, I may have become a better student had I not been so thoroughly sold on the idea that college is essentially worthless. My credibility with my friends would have been greater, and I wouldn't have been passed up on nominations for positions of authority in my fraternity and other campus organizations. I would have certainly graduated earlier, with a better grade point average; and with the money I saved, I might have transitioned immediately into graduate school. By now, I could have earned my PhD and begun teaching in college, earning at least three times what I currently earn in retail sales.

Once, just before I met Michele, I threw away a box of Standing Order Tapes that I accumulated during my more active years in the business. I realized that I had more SOT's than music CD's. Countless hours I could have spent listening to great music that might have inspired my own work were instead spent listening to motivational seminars. Countless hours I could have spent practicing my instrument I spent instead going to meetings, seminars, rallies, functions, and appointments with members of my upline and downline. The money I spent on tools, travel expenses, and other indirectly related expenses, like speeding tickets and dinners, would have been better spent paying down debt. By now, I could have restored my credit rating and built a respectable investment profile.

In 2004, I gave Michele a one karat diamond engagement ring. Just a couple of months ago, Michele gave it back.  She told me that she didn't believe there was any future for us. In the six years she has known me, I haven't improved my station in life one bit. To be fair, our six years began after my involvement with the business ceased; but it is clear to me that the effects of my bad habits and poor decisions would have already been overcome before Michele and I met, had I not wasted those prior years on an unattainable dream.

A dream is something you have or something someone gives you. I already had a dream. I was born to be an artist. My innate musical talent, once nurtured, might have blossomed into something phenomenal. I was on my way to realizing this dream, when my friend Paul took me for someone who needed his dream handed to him. I abandoned my path to certain fulfillment to pursue someone else's dream, and I'm still paying for it.

My goal as an Amway distributor was to retire by 35. Now I am a year short of the deadline, and I'm still searching for a decent job. My outstanding student loans prohibit me for pursuing further education. My credit score prevents me from obtaining a car loan or mortgage, or even renting an apartment in a nice complex. The knowledge I accumulated as an undergraduate fades more with every passing year. Over the last couple years, I've begun to establish a modest presence in the local Jazz scene, but had I begun promoting my performing skills several years earlier, there's no telling how different my life would be now. I may have established the contacts necessary to make a living in Chicago or New York.