Just read this on former Quixtar Executive Diamond and founder of the TEAM, Orrin Woodward’s blog:
My letter to Doug Devos clearly explains that over 600,000 people who speak English as a first language signed up into Quixtar in 1999 and 2000. Out of these 600,000 IBO’s (misnomer?) only six achieved Founders Emerald or above by the end of 2004. This is 4 to 5 years and only 1 out of 100,000 achieved $87,000 annual income from the plan with both the husband and wife working exhaustively. Out of those six who achieved Founders Emerald by 2005, five were on the Team – Tim Marks (Founders Diamond), Doug Stroh, Mike Foos, Matt Abraham, Kirk Birtles were all founders emerald or above by the end of 2004. (I believe this is the five.)
If this is not true, Amway’s legal team would be all over Woodward, leading me to believe that the statistics are true.
Your thoughts?
well, it's a little disingenous use of statistics. First of all he excludes all non-english speakers. Given he believes the "problem" is product pricing, why would you do that? What has whether the products are overpriced or not got to do with language? Same country, same products, same prices.
This is the first thing he's done to have the statistics say what he wants them to say.
Secondly, to be a Founder's Emerald by 2005 means you have to have qualified as an Emerald by at the very latest September 2003.
So while he makes it sound like 5 years, it means these folk actually went into Emerald qualification in 3-4 years at the most, which is actually quite fast.
So again, he's twisted the statistics to seem worse than they are.
Finally, and I've caught TEAM doing this type of thing before, he's picked the launch year for Quixtar, which by it's very nature means A LOT more people registered than in a normal year. I'd be willing to bet the renewal rate from 2000 was significantly lower than earlier years, as all the wanna be dotcom millionaires discovered it actually took work and went elsewhere.
So he –
(1)maximised his the sample size using a non-represenative year, he
(2)excluded folk that didn't fit his desired outcome, and
(3)he exaggerated the timeframe.
So it doesn't matter whether the statistics are actually correct or not, they've been so abused in their selection.
Which isn't to say things couldn't be better, but the very fact he continually feels he needs to exclude non-english speakers means his "overpriced" mantra simply isn't backed up by the full data.
I am sitting here laughing at the first commentors "analysis" which ends with…
"So it doesn't matter whether the statistics are actually correct or not, they've been so abused in their selection."
Yes, of course the facts NEVER count. Even with the caveats and slanting this is A HORRIBLE STATISTIC IN EVERY WAY.
The justifications the first poster is using to discredit these stats are downright delusional.
The commentor uses the following justification…AS A NEGATIVE!!!!!!
"Using the launch year, which means a lot more people signed up than in a normal year"….
So the fact that more people got in during the excitement of a launch, which maximizes momentum is a NEGATIVE? Oh man, I am howling:)
If ANY aspect of this statistic is correct this is a HORRIBLE RED FLAG.
And here's ANOTHER statistic – Quixtar started in 1999, hit a billion dollars in north america on transfer growth from the old Amway noth america and has, essentially, flatlined since then. They barely scrape $1.1 Billion after NINE YEARS.
Factor inflation in and clearly this business is going backwards.
A shame, it used to be a GREAT business until it was hijacked by the kingpins who put their personal non-Amway profit (via the tools) ahead of all other considerations.
This is the bitter harvest. Hopefully enough IBO's will wake up, and enough people in the corporation will wake up and make some desperately needed changes
JimZ, my justifications are delusional? On what basis can you judge Quixtar by excluding a large proportion of Quixtar IBOs, simply because they did better than another group? On what basis can you select one year to make a judgement about Quixtar, when you KNOW that year was highly unusual? And what's "delusional" about me pointing out what "founders emerald" by 2005 actually means?
You've apparently never heard the saying "lies, damn lies, and statistics". This is a classic example of twisting statistics to give you the answer you want.
So tell me JimZ, why exactly is it that the products are so overpriced that english speaking Americans they can't build a business, but they're not so overpriced for non-english speaking? Care to explain?
I can judge Quixtar on the basis of six in 600,000 – THAT is statistically an incredibly large “sample size” – with that large a sample you just can’t mathematically justify it as being “an outlier” . It also is significant because we are talking about North America. If we said it was based on people who speak French as a first language, if the country we are talking about is France, then that would be significant too.
The stats also aren’t based on one year – they are based on five years. Now I know, I know that you’ll point out that it takes some time to “go Emerald”, but I would argue that a LOT of Quixtar was transfer growth, and so it isn’t as though every person who started in Quixtar started with no people in their organizations already. I personally have friends who had organizations of 15 or more distrobutorships in Amway that, overnight were converted to Quixtar. So in some respects we’re really talking about a “rolling” five years. Six Founders Emeralds is an incredibly small number of new pins to qualify at that level for a 600,000 IBO base.
So now let’s come back to WHAT is failing. Why is it that the products are so overpriced that only non-english people can sell them? I reject the premise. I don’t think the product pricing is the sole driver. I think the real issue……OK I’m about to sound like Tex…..the heart of the issue are the motivational system practices, combined with the companies reputation (when a new prospect “googles” them) combined with product pricing. I think the world has changed and a LOT of the systems within the business are still using practices rooted in the 1980’s. I know that when I was in BWW both in Amway days and even, for a few years, in Quixtar, most of the practices were the same as the 1980’s.
BTW – I actually gave a SPEECH in high school about “lies damn lies and statistics”. Benjamin Disraeli (hope I didn’t misspell his name), the English statesman was the author of that quote.
I don't much for Quixtar. I do give them their props though for having sharp people, great products and being a success giant and such.
But on this IBO hit the nail on the head. He is right on this issue. This is straight propaganda and a twisting of some facts are at play here.
Joseph Lowe
I wrote an article called "White Men Can't Go Diamond" a while back. Seems to be basically proven true.
Jimz, it's not an outlier, it suffers from what's called biased sampling and the Texas Sharp Shooter analogy. If you have a biased sample it's totally irrelevant how big the sample is. Well, not totally irrelevant, you can just make more statistical significant claims that don't actually reflect reality. (oh, and BTW, while I'm sure I would have enjoined your speech, I spent several years employed doing statistical analysis at a major University, I'm no neophyte in this field)
So the question is, are you interested in statistical significance, or in actually knowing what's going on? For example (and this is extreme), what if, hypothetically, there were 600,000 non-english speakers who joined that year (and it was a cohort form one year, 1999/2000, being followed, not five) and all 600,000 of them qualifed Founders Emerald after the 5 years. All of a sudden that's an overall better than 50% "success" rate. You can't make a judgement on Quixtar by arbitrarily excluding parts you don't want to talk about.
But lets talk about *expectations*. How many folk would you *expect* to qualify at Emerald after only 3-4 years? Average time to Diamond is 9-10 years, so even if you took a simple "half the time to Emerald" (which it isn't, for Diamonds the time from Emerald to Diamond is generally shorter than from joining to Emerald) then you wouldn't even *expect* to be getting much in the way of Founders Emeralds until the 5-7 year mark. You might get some, as indeed did happen, but they are in fact outliers, the leading edge of the distribution curve. So what Woodward is complaining about is actually not far off what you would *expect*.
As for your analysis of what the "problem" is, well many of those non-english speakers that were excluded are part of BWW, so it wouldn't appear to be system practices per se. It can be prices, since the prices are the same. What's the difference? English. Google Amway or Quixtar in Spanish or Korean and while there's some negative, it's a whole different picture to what happens in english. That, IMO, is the heart of the problem.
I however agree that ultimately that is a result of the practices of at least some of the systems.
Never heard of either of them, though a quick google indicates Joe Marzouca is simply someone having fun on quixtarwiki. We have more than 90% of all A/Q diamonds on AmwayWiki now, and 100% of all Q* diamonds, and Marzouca has never been mentioned by the corp.
Joe Marzouca may be a very badly spelled evrsion of Joe Markewitz. He has been in Larry Winters group, and one of the Winter's teams biggest leaders for a very very long time. So if it's Joe Markewitz that just went Double, that would make a lot of sense (in fact I would have assumed he was already at Double).
IBOFIGHTBACK is right — this is the same kind of trick that politicians play with stats and, unfortunately, it fools even pretty smart people most of the time. Shame on Woodward for that kind of manipulation — of facts, and of people.
Why did Mark Slaughter quit? He was an emerald and his existence seems to disappear since he sold his distributorship.
Also who is this Joe Marzouca who hit double diamond out of nowhere in Larry's group? Was he a transfer group or did he actually go from 100pv to Double Diamond over night?
Joseph Lowe
JimZ
I thought so too until I found him on myspace and facebook. It looks like another IBO may be lying about his income. Awesome more deception.
Joseph Lowe
http://www.detoxandzeolite.com
Yes, Joe Markiewicz went Double Diamond not only 1-2 years ago, but he went Double Diamond BEFORE Winters did.
As for the 600,000… are they "new" IBO's? Because before 1999 there was no 'Quixtar', they'd ALL have to technically be 'new Quixtar IBOs, correct?'
So, the question is how many of the 600,000 were FORMER AMWAY distributors that just carried their business (or what was left of them) to Q?
If that is the case, and the 600,000 included the "transfer IBO's", then some people were already Emeralds in 1999 and they have 5 years to solidify it can go Founders Emerald… but you know what? They didn't.
Many Emerald businesses fell back to NOTHING. My upline emerald DID go Founders Emerald (1 of 3 that did go Founders around 2006 that were Amway Emeralds. One of the other three was Steve Fishman, and his wife).
Now, my upline is actually in Diamond qualification… In fact, he's the only darn person in BWW that is in Diamond Qualification. He's been in Amway/Quixtar almost 20 years..
I think the fact of the matter is, why are IBO's still showing a 2-5 year plan, when it clearly is NOT SO
And, sure, the products may be overpriced. Fine. But the corp isn't passing alot of that money back to the IBO's. Hence for the "tools system income"… If it took me 20 years to make $150-200K Quixtar income, I'd be pissed too… But add another $300-500K tool income on top of that, and NOW we're talking…
And now you know why Winters, Crowe/Dussault, and others have broken away from Britt.. they're saying "show me the money!"
I could go on and on on this topic forever..
Hey Adam,
Actually if it takes 20 years to make that 200K income and it's a real solid business, and then you retire and it say drops by half, that's 100,000K/yr income, indexed to inflation. It's roughly equivalent to having saved some $75000/yr over that 20 year period (while still getting to spend everything you made in each given year)
So there'd be no need to be pissed, it's still a pretty good deal 🙂
I think the discussion of presentation of statistics and sampling has pretty much been exhausted here, but one question remains that hasn't really been addressed:
Presentation and manipulation issues aside, let's assume for a minute the statistics stated are accurate. So what? Does that necessarily say that it doesn't work, or rather does it say that a certain segment of the population were the ones working it at the time?
Obviously, the operational parameters of the business don't change from one person to another person. The only real variable is what an IBO brings with them (or doesn't bring with them) when they start building their business. Theory: Perhaps because these folks didn't have the same exposure to the business' critics early on, as someone born in the US may have, they just took the opportunity and ran with it, while others carried along a bunch of baggage, slowing or inhibiting their success.
One would think that, in the US, not having english as a primary language wouldn't exactly be counted as an advantage in building a business largely driven by sales and conversation. So, I think a more interesting question is, what did these non-US natives do to make it work for them?
I don't get the blind loyalty. (I mean I get it because I did it for 10 years) but I didn't have all of this information at my fingertips.
I know, I have a grand idea…Let's figure out how to make one of the worst Network Marketing compensation plans work for us…
…rather than find a compensation plan that is actually working…today…for people of all colors.
>>
This is true.
However, in many hotels and seminars prospects are told, "you get in spend 10-15 hours of your free time and in TWO TO FIVE YEARS you are Diamond, and financially free". Wether Orin is wrong or right, it is a rather small statistic. And no, you can't just say 594,000 of that sample group are lazy or "not working it".
Mind you I think a Q12 income even if it takes ten years beats 99% of the deals out there. Why shoot ourselves in the foot with inflated promises?
Quixtar is a great opportunity, sweeping issues under the rug is a big reason why it has some of it's reputation problems, much of them warranted.
What makes Quixtar a great opportunity?