Amway: the invitation

After my brief introduction to Amway on Friday, I’ve decided to write some personal reflections on the experience. This doesn’t claim to be any kind of analysis of Amway, although, I’d like to do that if time allows. Feel free to share your own Amway stories.

So I got this call last week, from a guy I kind of remember meeting, but only because he told me that we met at this specific place (it was a supposedly highly academic discussion of theology, which become more and more shocking as the story proceed). Nice guy, really nice guy, I’ll give him that, I think we might be friends if not for this white elephant which then suddenly entered the room.

He started out by asking me whether my plans is to be in ministry full-time for the rest of my life. That question has only one answer: No. Since I’m 26, and no one knows what the future of full-time church work in South Africa is going to be, and since I’m not in a full-time position at a church at the moment.

Next he said that since he met me, he wanted to discuss this business idea with me. He and some friends has this network in which they group people together to created assets which can then create a steady flow of income for them.

Now, I’m a skeptic when it comes to the rich who build up any kind of asset which will then create money without them having to do anything. A good friend summarized my own discomfort a while ago (she might reappear later in the story) when she said: money don’t work for you, other people work for you. I’m also highly skeptical when anyone phone me with any kind of business proposal. You see, I really don’t have capital on hand. I don’t get a large salary (I try and find the balance between being able to buy books and having the time to read them, no sense in having money to buy books and no time to read them), and I’m really not into any kind of business thing.

But I was intrigued by the invitation. My main motivation was academic in nature. My interest in ethics, specifically ethics and economy, drove me to find time for this appointment, since every red flag I had was already warning me that this will be a really interesting experience.

To test my gutt feel, I asked the caller what the name of their business was (I am the google junky, so I like to do my research before meetings such as this one), his answer? Something along the line of: “We don’t really have a name, it’s not really a business, more like a network of friends bla bla bla”. Ok, last red flag was waving! I just had to attend this meeting. So I made an appointment for Friday…

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