Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 22, 1994 TAG: 9412220110
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RINER LENGTH: Medium
"It's six Saturdays and a Sunday," is how Lyons, 36, describes a typical "work week," which might occupy 15 hours of his time.
Since the day last February when his Amway colleagues celebrated his retirement from the workaday world with a huge parade and demonstration, Lyons said he has seen his nearly 5-year-old business increase substantially. "The thing I miss least is working swing shift," he said of his old occupation as a quality-control operator. Lyons worked at the arsenal more than 13 years before he resigned.
To hear him talk today, it has been one fabulous ride ever since. "I could quote an income here that would blow peoples' minds," he said - but didn't. Except for his half-paid-off mortgage, he maintains he's debt free.
He says he's doing well enough to sleep in and spend leisurely weekdays with his wife and three children. During the summer, he says, he often had Claytor Lake pretty much to himself while everyone else worked.
"I love to sleep late, and that's one of the reasons I got in the business," he said.
Amway did $5.3billion in business this past year, he said, and has moved from multilevel marketing to what he calls "network marketing" and joint ventures with hundreds of well-known companies.
Just back from an all-expenses-paid trip to Palm Springs, Calif., where he and other Amway distributors were "treated like kings," Lyons said he "had no idea this thing would get as big as it has."
The trip, plus a $6,500 bonus, was his reward for maintaining a certain business volume for 12 months, he said. Lyons said he does business in 30 states and several foreign countries.
Each month, Amway sends him a check representing 4 percent of the entire sales volume within the network of people he has directly or indirectly recruited to the company. Lyons gets a cut every time someone he recruited or someone those people recruited sells anything through the Amway marketing network.
Amway provides just about any product or service customers could want, from toothpaste to televisions, even automobiles, Lyons said. "Our best customer is ourselves," he said of his network, which includes professionals - even doctors and lawyers he declined to name - as well as folks such as himself and his wife, Polly, who's also involved "big time."
by CNB