Waiting

I heard from Lester A. In KY yesterday.  His name was at the very top of my upline list, about 8 levels up there, and he told me I am so new I'm not showing up on his downline report.  So I need to get back to him on who my immediate upline is, which I will do.  He said he's been with AMC for over ten years and has over 600 people in his downline, so he can't help everybody... Wow! Sounds like a great-great grandfather with a family of 600. Of course not everybody gets a birthday present.  I feel fortunate I got a letter!

In the meantime, I wait for the others to respond.

And wait.

Who Are These People Anyway?

So who are Bob and Jayne Guzzetti? If you google their names some of the first things that come up are sites that reveal scams.  Ripoffreport.com has one entry from 2005 that someone spent over $1000 and got only one personally sponsored member.  Then there are three rebuttals from consumers, two from people wanting more information and one from a member that sings AMC's praises.  Hmm.

Scam.com has an entry from 2010 that is an inquiry alonf the lines of, "Hey has anyone ever heard of this company?" The first answer, quite long, states that the BBB has given them an "F" rating and they are over a month late filing their annual information with the state. The post also states that the address used on the promotional material is a UPS store (I assume a UPS store with mailboxes). The member of scam.com that posted this response has been banned from the website, I noticed. Hmm again.

Whydowork.com, a forum for home-based businesses, has some posts that are pretty frightening. A few people were members and mailed postcards (now the program uses letters) for several months and didn't break even. One person had checks that the bank refused to cash.  There are also two posts from people that are involved with AMC (or were at the time of writing their posts) and had great things to say. One of them claims to have $5,000/month in income.  Still more hmmm!

Someone named Mark Whitely made a blog, whoisadvancedmarketingconceptsinc.blogspot.com that pretty much just copies the two page sales letter and has a link to the informational booklet. (It was created in 2010 and hasn't been updated since -so if you are interested in the booklet, please use the address amc-usa.com/info and enter my member number - 223271- so you know an active member will get the credit, should you decide to join!) Well, that one isn't even worth a "hmmm..."

Whitepages.com lists 8 people in GA named Guzzetti, Bob and Jayne among them.  Bob is 65+ and Jayne is 60-64, which sounds right since the photo of them that they use in their sales letter is obviously over 20 years old and they seem forty-ish in that.  Their home address (which would be their real work address since they work out of their home) is 4000 Bellingrath Blvd in Roswell, GA. Their home phone number is listed too, but if you really want to call them at home you can look up the number yourself.  Plug the address into google maps and you find the house is quite large (3,963 square feet according to tax records), on a cul-de-sac, and backs up to a pond fed by Hog Wallow Creek. 

So after quite a bit of time I haven't found out much.  In fact, when I try google images there isn't even the picture used in their sales material.  I find that rather disconcerting.  The lack of information about these two is worrisome and it would be interesting to know their philosophy behind said lack. I'll let you know if I find out more!

amc-usa.com/info

ID#223271

Sudden Lottery-type Wealth vs. Slow Compound Growth

On any given Wednesday or Saturday, there is always at least a mention, sometimes a long conversation, regarding the big lottery drawing being held that evening.  I love these moments of collective daydream as well as anyone else: first we all mentally split it up, take out a chunk (I always take out 50% ) for taxes, and then we're off to the races! How much to give to our now frail in-laws?  Offspring and their future offspring? Siblings? Siblings we like? The Church and other causes near and dear to us? Then we can really wring our hands and figure out how to invest the remainder.  Let's see... That addition of a studio workspace for my sculptor husband, or maybe rent this house and buy something a bit larger that lends itself to a home studio and office.  Definitely a few newer vehicles-probably not brand new (too much pressure to keep it looking new). And not worth the money!  Perhaps a romantic excursion to lands unknown (to me, that is) and a pair of custom cowboy boots and then... Life goes back to normal, with the remainder invested in a little of this, some of that, and the rest parked in a safe zone.

Ah, what a fun excercise that is! I get to smell the leather of my boots and hear the name of the bootmaker.  I can see the light dancing around the high ceiling of the studio. I get to help my family. The reality is I usually forget to buy a ticket.

Then there is the conversation almost never held: what to do with the dull but realistic results of a lifetime, or portion of a lifetime, of saving a small amount and watching the interest compound and grow ever so slowly, but gradually building up and gaining some momentum.  By the time you get to the part of the story where the interest payments are exciting, your whole audience has moved on through the worlds of fashion and celebrities and are finishing up with sports. It is just not EXCITING to get rich slowly! But unfortunately, most of us aren't going to win the lottery so we should remain open to other possibilities.

One interesting possibility is AMC, with the MLM concept combined with the MOST low-key approach ever seen in the industry. There are no parties! No videos or tapes to pretend you listened to.  No evening recruitment meetings! No meetings EVER which means goodbye ties and high heels.  In fact, if a prospect has questions then they ask the folks at the AMC office! Not only do they know what they're talking about, they know HOW to talk about it! The results are -well, I don't know yet what the results will be - but feel free to come along for the ride and find out.  With a lot of perserverance and just a little luck, the results can help me get out of debt - bit by tiny bit - and have a little extra for retirement days.  I figured out recently that if I stay in my current job with current pay (quite believable, given that I work in the public sector) and retire at the first opportunity, I will receive a monthly payment of around $385. Ouch. That doesn't go very far! Even with Social Security there won't be much to budget, let alone spend.  So I am daydreaming about AMC providing enough so I will have... Enough.

What's your lottery daydream? What's your Plan B?

amc-usa.com/info
ID#223271

A Little Math and a Lot of Help

Earlier I mentioned that the AMC system includes helping your downline members pay for extra mailings. Why would some stranger want to give me financial help?

Why would I want to do extra mailings anyway? I already have 50 or 100 letters sent out each month to fresh leads of people considering a business... Isn't that enough?  The answer is yes... Sort of. Building a downline full enough to make a big difference monetarily takes time. In order to fill those downline slots faster, more "advertising" - in the form of the simple two page sales letter - needs to be distributed to interested people. The way to do that is to mail more letters than the monthly minimum (while staying within your monthly budget of course).

An extra 500 letters costs $275 to send out. Someone who has a sizeable downline may not need to sponsor anyone else directly, but his or her downline people, the ones who are just starting out, may not have many people or anyone at all under them. So the upline person helps out the "newbies" by pitching in a little for the extra mailing. Let's say this newbie asks six people in their upline for help with a 500 piece mailing and gets four pledges totaling $175. That leaves $100 for the newbie to pay. Yay! A bargain! But the bargain is also enjoyed by the contributors because  the mailing will directly help their downline which will make THEM more money. It makes sense to pitch in toward your downline's mailings - it directly grows your business too! A gift of $50 for a 500 piece mailing could bring new members in and that directly benefits the contributor even though the new members aren't personally sponsored by them. Doesn't matter - you can still get commission and bonuses on them. And it makes more sense to pay $50 rather than $275 for a mailing, right? In fact a person could help FIVE "newbies" with $50 contributions and have 2500 pieces of advertising mailed out for their business, rather than paying all of the $275 cost for an extra 500 piece mailing. The first scenario: $.10 per piece; the second scenario, $.55 per piece. That's a BIG difference!

Bottom line: if you help your downline, it helps YOUR bottom line. 

Something interesting happened yesterday. Part of the AMC "system" is that the members' uplines help with extra mailings, and in return that member helps their downline do extra mailings. There is math involved in the reasoning, and I won't go into it right now, but it DOES make sense. Well I did what AMC says to do... I wrote to my upline and asked for help with a 100 piece extra mailing (in addition to the 50 from my regular $49 monthly membership). And yesterday I heard back that not only will someone about 6 levels up help me out, but AMC will match it! So a mailing that would normally cost $55 now will cost me $35.  If I get just one more person to pitch in $10 I can do the extra mailing, get 150 letters/advertisements/sales pitches sent out within my monthly budget of $100.  I hope it works... Keep you posted.

Amc-usa.com/info
ID #223271

The Booklet IT'S YOUR TURN!

If you'd like some or rather THE information on Advanced Marketing Concepts and their philosophy and business model, go to amc-usa.com/info and enter some basic contact information (no phone number or credit card, don't worry!). Use my member number: 223271. Then you can download the book and if you decide to join, you'll be in my downline!

I should warn you that the informational booklet was written ages ago and contains no photos, graphics or interactives. Also, Bob and Jayne are very VERY excited about AMC and there are a JILLION exclamation marks!! But it must be effective or else they would have rewritten it by now.

One thing - in fact THE thing - that struck me most was the emphasis on a monthly budget that you can afford.  I don't think any other so-called "opportunity" I have looked at mentions a budget anywhere.  Most people/sites want your credit card number NOW.  Not Bob and Jayne. Only after you've made a decision to join do you need your credit card.

Total expenditures so far: $49 monthly fee; $32 one-time registration fee; $26.95 postage (55 stamps @ .49) =$107.95

Income: $0

5/24/14 Vitamins!

5/24/2014

I got an email from Bob yesterday. Actually, I got two! When you receive your monthly mailing labels (or the receipt, if you have AMC do the mailings for you), there will be a coupon for $10.00 or $20.00 off of the vitamins available on the website (amc-vitamins.com). I decided to try some chocolate protein tablets. So my emails from Bob consisted of a receipt and some more vitamin information.  The prices seem very reasonable, but shipping is $9.95 so if you are a $49.00 member, your coupon for ten bucks pretty much just covers that. But each coupon is good for a few months, so you can use two or three on one order and pay next to nothing.

I know the perceived lack of communication I am experiencing is mainly due to my upline, and the fact that I didn't enter a number when I filled out the online application, and good old Ed in CT doesn't know I am here yet... I assume he'll know next month if he has asked AMC to provide him with his downline information. Yes, you have to request this information and pay $1 for it. It seems that AMC could simply up their monthly fee by one dollar and automatically send the downline report to everyone, every month... But they don't. My guess is that either it is a pain in the rear for them, OR that they want to keep tabs on which members are active enough to want the information.  Maybe it's both.  In any event, I emailed them on Thursday requesting mine when the time comes, and haven't heard back yet.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!

5/22/14

May 22, 2014

I joined AMC in early May and was immediately underwhelmed by the response.  I joined on the website (you can join too, here:  www.amc-usa.com/join and use my ID Code 223271) but for some reason I wasn't pressed to supply a code and I didn't.  I have a feeling my immediate upline person, Ed in CT, has no idea I am in his downline.  He doesn't even have email.  So the expected and routine immediate response confirming my existence didn't happen. That didn't sit well with me, but has been the M.O. so far.  Everything Is done by snail mail.  EVERYTHING.  The people in the office do return phone calls and emails, but mostly on Fridays. 

Bottom line:  If this is a scam or a scheme, it isn't a get-rich-QUICK scheme.  And as the material states over and over, they have been around over 20 years.  So I guess this is more of a tortoise program.  Slow and steady.  Go live your life while the post office crawls along doing their thing!

5/21/14 Brand New!

5/21/2014
Brand new blog... An attempt to share my adventures with Advanced Marketing Concepts, Inc. out of Roswell, GA.  You can find testimonials for every sort of business/scheme/scam. This will be a dollar-by-dollar record of how it goes for me, and I intend to be very honest, open and transparent. I am obviously quite an optimist. I don't want to publicly humiliate myself - but if that's what happens, at least we'll all know the result!