Be all you can be (with Amway)

Africa 5

Puni Sechele, the 46-year-old woman who instructed her husband, Sechele Sechele, “to open (our) heart and our home” to me, is on a mission. She listens to inspirational Les Brown CDs on a player in a bag she carries around like a purse. She reads entrepreneurial books, one of which she handed me the other night for bedtime reading: “The Slight Edge: $ecret to a $uccessful Life” by Jeff Olson. Nearly every night after she knocks off from her job at Botswana’s Industrial Court, she goes out to make presentations to build her “network,” pursuing the American dream that is now a big-time African dream: her multi-legged organization of “home executives” who sell Amway products – a plan, she informs me, that can turn ordinary people “like truck drivers, clerks and house help,” such as a Mexican cleaning lady in the States, into millionaires.

Puni invited me to an Amway meeting on Monday night at the Gaborone Sun hotel’s conference center, and I leapt at the chance. As I expected, I entered the vast room as the lone white person among smartly-dressed doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, even lecturers from the University of Botswana. These were seriously happy people, optimistic, exceptionally welcoming and intent on networking. They were upbeat and fabulous. Zee – a former IT lecturer and computer professional, is now a home executive and mentor to Puni. Puni proudly noted when we drove over to Zee’s house one morning that Zee gets up “when her body clock tells her to.” Zee’s husband, Ericton (sp?), was the motivational speaker for the evening. He said he has had private-sector jobs, policy jobs at Parliament and now is in the Ministry of Education for the Republic of Botswana, but he and Zee have already reached a high Amway level that means extra income every month and it’s obvious they are working on reaching something called diamond level and beyond. I admit I didn’t follow all the numbers thrown around about when exactly ever-growing monthly checks come in until eventually, after hard work building enough connections and delivering quality, “biodegradable” products for home cleaning and personal grooming, a person can walk away from a salaried job for good and have two important things in life: “time and freedom.”

Ericton let it rip (without ever using the word Amway): He bounced across the stage, smiled broadly and spoke to people where they live: Some who have made it didn’t have a “thebe” in their pockets to begin with, meaning a penny in our lingo. He drew a circle and divided it into quadrants. On the left were the poor employees, who have to depend on 100 percent personal performance or luck of the workplace to keep the money coming in, plus they have to deal with bosses. The other quadrant in that half of the circle was the self-employed -- capable people, Ericton said, who can end up being slaves to their jobs. What do those people in both quadrants lack? Time and freedom. He drew a frowny face. Eighty percent of the world fits in that half of the circle.

On the other side of the circle are the investors and the “B.O.,” which stands for business owners. The B.O. crowd depends on the performance of lots of people and takes a percentage cut of their network members’ monetary success, so everyone wins! It worked for that retired colonel who started KFC, Ericton said. It can work for the rest of us -- once we know the secret! And it is simple! It really is ! And now we know it! He draws a happy face. That’s where the 20 percent lives, in those two quadrants. And when the B.O. crowd makes it, then they can dabble in being investors, using what amounts to “play money.” All of this means that anyone can go after his or her dreams with this formula; the dreams don’t have to be ground down as the years pass. (Newcomers see Ericton or the hosts who invited them to the meeting after the break…)

Puni is so fired up that she’s headed to an Amway conference in Johannesburg this weekend. She has already made a trip to Baltimore, where there was no time for sightseeing, what with all of the motivational speakers to meet in person. They came alive after all those CD lectures half a world away. And she wanted to investigate the program in more detail. Satisfied, she came back with her dreams intact: First on the list will be a vacation in Mauritius.

I have to admit I’m enjoying being on the B.O. side of the circle, at least with the time and freedom part of this journey. But, alas, I’m exhibiting faux B.O. By my choice of career, I rest on the wrong side of the circle – a mere employee, a sincerely grateful one, but an employee nonetheless, one lacking even a salary at the moment.

I made it only 5 minutes into “The Slight Edge” before falling asleep the other night, exhausted after my Gaborone treasure hunt for my residence permit. But I have to say those Amway products did a nice job of washing my clothes on Tuesday and cleaning the tub after my baths. And the “stylist” at the fancy hotel salon who gave me the bad bowl haircut even skipped all the Paul Mitchell products at arm’s reach and wielded an Amway bottle to spray a “brilliant sheen” on my hair. Let it be said there was nothing lacking in the sheen department—thanks, Amway -- only in the misshapen mop that passed for hair on my head.

Which leaves me thinking, my friends: What will you be today? What dreams do you have? How’s your hair?

Smiley face.