3. Diamonds would never manipulate their volume:
With all due respect, this is nonsense. I am not referring to the kingpins who may no longer care about their qualification. I am referring to the average diamond that you look to for guidance. To assume that many of these people do not/or did not purchase volume to qualify at least once is silly. In other instances, many distributors miraculously went platinum thereby enabling an emerald to move on to diamond.

Why? Because it is how they have been taught to build the business. The language changes but the results are the same. When you are at 750 points many of distributors received a call from their upline encouraging them to buy 250 points. They say, “You will go 1000 and your group will see you and they will move on. Remember, leaders lead!” They call it “stretching.” The fact is that you just bought (manipulated) 25% of your business. What did this do to your upline? In many instances, it moved them along at your expense.

I discussed this in detail several years ago. I used my business as the example. I bought 2/3’s of my 6th leg in Honduras. I was there with a number of emeralds that qualified as diamonds alongside me. What was taking place was unspoken between us, as we all knew that the “language of it” was different than “stretching”. However, it was a practice that is taught to the newest person going after their first 1000 pin.

An interesting thing happens between the platinum and emerald levels; that is where the language changes. It is no longer “stretching”, it is “manipulating” or “buying volume.” The reason for the name change is simple; the upline does not want to share the tool money that now has to travel down to the new pin.

Important point: Whether you are at 750 going 1000 or an emerald going diamond, it is the same behavior, although the outcome is different. The 1000’s usually fall back to 800 points, but the new diamond gets a bigger piece of the tool money.

I do not know how many diamonds I spoke with that did the same thing. It is what they were taught as new distributors. Some bought vacuum cleaners, others bought vitamins, others sponsored family members that grew overnight, and others flew to foreign markets and came back with miracle stories. In groups where bonus checks and product pick-up was run through the upline and not the corporation the ability to transfer points was much easier.

As a disclaimer, I am not saying that this was true in every instance, but to assume it was uncommon is silly.

I believe that people need to understand that the loud voice booming through the microphone is not a wizard. In many instances it is quite the opposite. It is an individual that happened to work hard at the right time (I’ll discuss that in another commentary), get some lucky breaks along the way, and unfortunately, in many instances forgot the people that got them there.

Many diamonds I know are in denial, as they actually believe the publicity that precedes them. However, what many have forgotten is that the applause was taught by them to their teams. Many have a sense of entitlement to their position. While many are greedy, not all are. Many simply lack the courage to stand up to the kingpins.

The fact is however, that many of them are perpetuating something that they themselves did not do. Unfortunately, the army does not know this, so the army feels like they are losers and unable to accomplish something that is sold as “great.” The sad truth is, in my opinion, the average honorable distributor has not been told the truth in the first place.

This post is part of a new series of posts from Bo Short’s former blog, Former Diamond.