THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER Copyright 1995, The Charlotte Observer DATE: Monday, March 20, 1995 By JIM MORRILL and NANCY STANCILL, Staff Writers YAGER MOTIVATIONAL TAPES REEL IN CASH INSPIRING AMWAY SALES IS GOAL; CRITICS QUESTION THE MESSAGE, PROFITS SECOND OF THREE PARTS The hub of Dexter Yager's worldwide empire is a bustling factory on South Boulevard. The factory doesn't produce Amway soaps or cleaners. It cranks out millions of motivational tapes each year for the Charlotte-based Amway magnate's network of distributors. Within its red-brick walls, Yager's positive-thinking message is captured in cassettes. Dream big. Be "persistent and consistent.'' Avoid "stinking thinking.'' The tapes are the linchpin in the Yager family's motivation-building enterprise called Internet Services Corp. The $35 million-a-year spin- off of Yager's Amway business generates consistent profits and persistent problems. Yager's network of 1 million distributors -- Amway's largest -- provides a ready-made market for the Yager motivation sideline. Yager says his "support system'' strengthens Amway sales, but ex- distributors argue that its central focus is selling to the sales force. Some Amway dropouts say the Yager system's psychological impact is more subtle. They say it promotes some practices that seem to conflict with official Amway policies. And the endless stream of motivation aids keeps marginal salespeople believing -- in the face of poor results -- that success is just around the bend. "The tapes and books kept me brainwashed,'' said Bruce Roeser of Stone Mountain, Ga., who spent 13 years in Yager's Amway network. "They get you in his frame of mind that you need to feed on the materials in order to survive.'' Roeser said the barrage of motivation aids put him "in a performance trap'' where he obsessed about achieving, but felt mired in failure. "It's like trying to put together a white picture puzzle,'' he said. "You're always missing the critical piece and it's always something else you have to buy.'' Roeser said he spent $30,000 on tapes, books and rallies before dropping out of Amway and filing bankruptcy in 1992. Roeser received weekly tapes from Charlotte. Each week, tens of thousands of Yager distributors pay $5 or more for the featured audiocassette. The tape-of-the-week is shipped to 50 states and 10 foreign countries. The Yager family's Internet has prospered through the sales of such motivational tools. Its tapes, videos, books, pamphlets, elaborately staged rallies and a fledgling satellite network comprise an integrated system that's unrivaled in other Amway networks called downlines. "We're very proactive in developing methods to grow the business,'' said Doyle Yager, 36, Dexter's son and chief executive officer of Internet. Leaders in Yager's Amway network say the motivation aids help new recruits build confidence. "Each of us are what we are because of what we think,'' said Henry Gilewicz of Lake Wylie. "Books and people will shape your life.'' Dexter Yager said his Amway and Internet businesses give him an income of "several million'' a year. He said he makes more from Amway sales than Internet profits, but stays too busy to track his income. Yager calls Internet "a very successful venture.'' But a Pennsylvania lawsuit by former Amway distributors calls it "a pyramid-type scheme'' that has "coerced'' thousands of Amway recruits into purchasing marginally useful materials. And the Yager sideline stirs questions among consumer advocates who monitor multilevel marketing businesses. Multilevel marketing involves layers of salespeople who recruit others and earn a commission on their recruits' sales. It's a legal business technique that can be abused. Linda Golodner, executive director of the National Consumers League, said people in direct sales usually can't afford many extra expenses. "There are certainly books on the market on how to be effective and they don't cost $5 a week,'' she said. "It sounds like Mr. Yager has made a lot and he's forgetting these people who are in need of extra money to make ends meet.'' EARNINGS MUST BE DISCLOSED David Kirkman, an assistant N.C. attorney general, said he's received no complaints about Internet and can't comment on its practices. But he said consumers should look closely at the costs before they involve themselves in multilevel marketing businesses. "It's a form of investment and all investments have risks,'' he said. "You need to evaluate them as best you can.'' N.C. law prohibits pyramid schemes, businesses that focus on recruiting large numbers of salespeople and coerce them into buying costly inventory and sales aids. If a company gouges its sales force with such practices as "inventory loading,'' said Kirkman, it may cross the line from a legal multilevel marketing business to a pyramid. The Federal Trade Commission ruled in 1979 that Amway is not a pyramid because it sells retail products. But a few years later, the FTC ordered the corporation to disclose earnings information to new recruits. The company's sales and marketing plan shows that the average active distributor -- about 46% are deemed active -- makes $65 a month. Five former distributors sued Yager, his companies, a key operative, and the Amway Corp. last year, contending that they were misled about the costs, profitability, and chances of succeeding in Amway. The class-action lawsuit could potentially involve thousands of former distributors, court papers say. The suit is pending in Philadelphia. The ex-distributors portray the Yager network as a maverick in the Amway world. They contend that its leaders promote consuming Amway products over selling them, that they place motivation above sales training and encourage the use of subterfuge to recruit people. Such tactics seem to go against the grain of some Amway Corp. policies, they say. Amway's policies say distributors should sell to 10 retail customers a month and should not use deception in recruiting. Ex-distributors in Yager's network say no one encouraged them to develop customers and that they were trained to invite people to meetings without telling them the meetings were Amway presentations. Internet President Jeff Yager said, "Everyone who signs up in Amway knows it's Amway.'' Two earlier lawsuits, filed in Ohio in 1984 and Washington in 1985, also accused Yager's network of badgering distributors to purchase motivational tools. The suits were settled under agreements that kept the terms secret. "I settled nothing with those people,'' said Yager. "I got out.'' Bill Britt, a mega-distributor in Yager's downline who produces his own motivation materials, was also sued. Britt, a former Chapel Hill resident, lives in Florida and declined comment through his lawyer. "Since I'm one of the largest distributors, I get sued,'' Yager said. "Most times, most people blame somebody else for their failure.'' OBJECTIONS RAISED TO TAPES John and Stacy Hanrahan of Springfield, Pa., filed the Pennsylvania suit after telling a television news show last year that selling Amway cost them financially and almost broke up their marriage. They contend that Yager and Britt have violated price-fixing laws by dividing up the huge motivational "tools'' market among themselves. They charge that virtually all of the 1 million distributors in Yager's downline buy motivational materials from either Yager or Britt. The couple said ex-Amway distributors who saw them on TV flooded them with calls and letters, saying they spent far more money on tapes, books and rallies than they made selling Amway. They cited intense pressure to buy from their "upline'' sponsors. Stacy Hanrahan said the ex-distributors seem particularly incensed about spending money on the tape-of-the-week, though it was just one of many costs they incurred in Amway. "Someone chooses the tape and you get it whether you want it or not,'' she said. "We're finding that they aren't wanted, that we're receiving many from former distributors that are still in wrappings.'' Hanrahan said the tapes offer little sales training and include some material she finds objectionable, including "condescending'' references to women and the non-Amway work world. She said ex-distributors believed that their sponsors would take their business, or refuse to help them expand it, if they didn't buy the "tools.'' "They'd say, If you don't support us, we won't support you,' '' she said. What made the threats so potent was the relationship that sponsors develop with their recruits, she explained. New distributors are encouraged to bring their marital and other personal problems to their Amway higher-up and defer to their "counseling.'' The "upline'' becomes the lifeline to success, she said. And the upline usually profits on the motivational materials. "The real money's being made with the tapes,'' John Hanrahan said. "To me, it's extortion.'' "I have never coerced anybody to buy anything that I made money on,'' said Dexter Yager. TAPES HELPED, YAGER SAYS The 55-year-old multimillionaire said he became interested in motivation because he needed a boost when he first began selling Amway 31 years ago. He said he experienced an initial flurry of business before he hit several years of uneven results. "My first three years in the business I never read a positive-thinking book. I never listened to a tape,'' he said. "I was dealing with big dreams one day and discouragement the next,'' he said. "And I didn't know how to get it together.'' Yager said it helped him to read positive-thinking books. In the 1970s, he began selling them to his network. Then he began writing his own books -- he's produced 12 -- and recording his speeches. In 1980, he and his family formed a corporation called Freedom Distributing. It became Internet Services Corp. in 1989 and by that time, three of Yager's seven children -- Doyle, Jeff and Steve -- were running it. Yager spends most of his time traveling and speaking to his network's distributors while his sons run the family's Charlotte businesses. Doyle's the CEO, Jeff's president and Steve vice president of Internet, which operates in a large complex on Steele Creek Road. But the real hive of activity is at Intercontinental Communication Corp. of America, the division of Internet that records speeches, duplicates tapes, and has begun developing satellite programming. Located at 4447 South Blvd., ICCA employs about 120 people and operates 24 hours a day, said Harrell Canning, vice president. Most of its work is Yager-related but it handles non-Amway contracts as well. On a recent workday, the 18,000-square-foot production floor was buzzing with workers checking tape reels, monitoring sound quality and packing boxes of finished cassettes. Snippets of speeches filled the air and a cassette titled "We Need a Burning Desire'' rolled off the production line. Most of the tapes are speeches by "Diamonds'' and other high-ranking Amway distributors. Canning said ICCA regularly records speeches at Yager sales meetings for cassette release. In turn, the rallies are a lucrative vehicle for selling the finished cassettes, videos, books and other Yager items. The Yagers stage several major rallies yearly -- including "Free Enterprise Day'' events in Atlanta and Salt Lake City that have drawn crowds of 80,000 or more in recent years -- as well as smaller sales meetings. Doyle said the company puts on about 18 events yearly. Tickets to the large weekend events can cost as much as $100. They usually showcase a politically conservative speaker -- George Bush and Ronald Reagan have appeared in recent years -- as well as Amway speakers and country music. Diana Lackey, a former Internet employee who helped staff some rallies, said certain books and tapes were heavily promoted during the shows, resulting in flurries of sales at merchandise tables. She said people would often buy $200 and $300 of tapes at a time. Sales were so brisk, she said, that the Monday after the rallies, key Internet employees would lock themselves in a conference room all day to count cash. Lackey said she worked at Internet more than four years, keeping records on audiocassette orders and sales. She said Internet paid ICCA 55 cents to duplicate each tape. The tapes were sold to "Diamonds'' for varying prices -- usually $1 to $2 apiece, she said. But by the time they got to the newest recruits, the price had jumped to $5. More than 200 new Internet tapes were released yearly and millions of tapes changed hands, she said. Lackey, 26, said she was fired from Internet last September after a supervisor accused her of disloyalty. "I don't know that much about it,'' said Doyle Yager of Lackey's firing. "I don't remember exactly what the reason was; I thought it was lack of performance.'' Jeff Yager said Internet's costs of producing tapes are higher than 55 cents a cassette because they include overhead as well as raw materials. "Sure you make money. You have to to stay in business,'' he said, adding that $5 a tape is a reasonable price. Tom Eggleston, chief operating officer of Amway Corp., said the corporation has no problem with the Yagers' motivation sideline. "We are satisfied that the retail selling price is competitive with similar training materials in the marketplace and delivers good value for distributors,'' he said. Eggleston said the corporation reviews many Internet training materials and cassette tapes "to assure that they fairly and accurately depict the earnings potential and other aspects of the business.'' He said Amway has emphasized that purchase of such materials is voluntary. But many former Yager network distributors told The Observer that they could not withstand unrelenting pressure to buy them. Some said they were urged to run up big credit-card bills if necessary to purchase materials and attend rallies. Roger Maynard, 39, of Dallas said he dropped out of Amway last year after three years as a distributor. He said he spent almost $5,000 on Amway products and motivational materials, but got little financial return. He said he asked his sponsor if he could listen to the sponsor's tapes, but the distributor instructed him to buy his own. "He said you don't have to buy the tapes and go to the meetings, but the people that were successful did,'' he said. "They said some people sold their TVs to go to rallies.'' Another former distributor, Arthur Bouchard of Pawtucket, R.I., said, "They tell you that the tapes, books and seminars are optional, but so is success.'' Bouchard, 43, said he built a network of 39 people, but still couldn't support himself with Amway. He said he piled up debts of $10,000 during his four years in the business and filed bankruptcy last year after dropping out. He said the tapes didn't help him build his business because they contained no information on selling. Mostly, he said, they were speeches recorded at rallies. "Dexter throws a good party, but there's nothing to learn there.'' Roeser, the former distributor from Georgia, said he recently threw out about 400 tapes and other motivational materials left from his Amway days, hauling away six filled garbage bags. "I think Dexter had the right idea with the communications system,'' he said. "It just started getting so profitable that it became a self- perpetuating animal.'' ---------------------------- LIFE WITHIN AMWAY: TWO VIEWS CHARLOTTE COUPLE SAY HARD WORK, CONSISTENT EFFORT ARE BEHIND THEIR SUCCESS. THEIR GOALS: RETIRING EARLY AND REACHING DIAMOND' DISTRIBUTOR STATUS. Amway's been good business for Rob and Janet Johnson. The Charlotte couple became distributors four years ago and they've made it to the first rung on the Amway achievement ladder. They're direct distributors, reaching a level achieved by only 1% of all Amway recruits. Direct distributor means that the Johnsons buy their products directly from Amway and their network sells at least $15,000 of Amway products monthly, making them eligible for leadership bonuses. They've sponsored 25 people, said Johnson. Their recruits have recruited others and the Johnson "downline'' is flourishing with several hundred people. If their sales volume and other performance indicators continue to rise, they'll earn bigger commissions and join Amway's gemstone distributors, the Rubies, Pearls, Emeralds and Diamonds. "Our goal in the next 12 to 18 months is to hit the diamond level,'' said Rob Johnson. Johnson, 41, hopes his Amway business will give him the option of retiring early. He's a Charlotte dentist who says he realized the importance of developing "residual income'' after he had a knee operation that kept him from working for six weeks. As the bills mounted, he began to explore other income sources and eventually decided to try Amway. "I was doing the American thing. I was in business for myself,'' he said. "But if I wasn't in there performing, I wasn't making money.'' The Johnsons are part of Bill Britt's network. Britt, a former Chapel Hill resident who lives in Florida, is part of Dexter Yager's downline of about 1 million distributors. The Johnsons declined to disclose their Amway earnings, but said it's a steady and substantial extra income. But they both emphasized that it doesn't come without hard work. Recently, Rob Johnson spoke at a crowd of about 150 people, explaining Amway's networking plan in a Monday night presentation at a hotel. The attentive crowd included Amway couples neatly attired in suits and dresses and recruits dressed more casually. Johnson described it as a "joint venture'' with 500 corporations, mentioning Amway as one. He drew circles on a white board to illustrate how sales of six recruits could translate into income and bonuses of $2,100 a month for their sponsor. "What would you do with an extra $2,100 a month? Drive a new car? Get out of debt?'' The crowd murmured its approval. "If I were paying for it, what kind of car would you like?'' Johnson asked. "We're going to our mountain home in about a week. What kind of house would you like? A beach home?'' Johnson's speech was polished and practiced, though he says he doesn't speak as often as other area distributors who've been in it longer. He said he puts in six to 14 hours a week into Amway and credits his success to consistent effort. "There are always going to be people who quit and complain,'' he said. "When you have an enterprise that's open to anybody, you get all types. You get the lazy and the get-rich-quick as well as those who really have a dream.'' CAPTION: Staff photo by MARK B. SLUDER:Success: Rob and Janet Johnson say their four-year stint as Amway distributors has paid off. Johnson is a Charlotte dentist who hopes to use income from his part-time business to retire early. THERE WERE MEETINGS FOUR NIGHTS A WEEK. HE WAS BUYING PRODUCT JUST TO BOOST HIS NUMBERS. THERE WAS LOTS OF PAPERWORK, LITTLE INCOME. HE QUIT. When John Frigon moved into a Raleigh apartment a few months ago, his neighbors came over with a plate of cookies and a sales pitch. It was Amway. Frigon recognized it instantly because he had used "the script'' dozens of times himself. When they started asking him if he needed more income, he assured them his job as a computer analyst gave him plenty of overtime opportunities. Frigon, 30, was not about to sign up for a second time as an Amway distributor. He said he put long hours and considerable energy into his part-time Amway business for a year before giving it up in 1993. Frigon joined Dexter Yager's Amway network in Rhode Island, after a former co-worker took him to a sales rally. Several thousand people attended and he was impressed with the crowd's enthusiasm. He said he's probably typical of many who are drawn to multilevel marketing. He said it sounds so easy -- recruit a few people and they'll recruit others and soon you'll have commissions from a large "downline'' of people buying products. "Everyone wants to make money and not work hard,'' he said. He said other distributors assured him that he didn't have to sell Amway products. His "upline'' sponsor just told him to use the products and recruit other distributors. "The Amway system is based on selling and the Yager system is based on recruiting,'' he said. He said his upline convinced him to purchase the tape-of-the-week and sometimes a second featured tape. "The tapes keep people in and the sales meetings get you pumped up,'' he said. Soon Frigon was going to Amway meetings four nights a week and trying to recruit his friends and relatives. He succeeded in bringing in three buddies from his National Guard unit, but their enthusiasm was short-lived and all dropped out fairly quickly. He said he tapped as many friends, co-workers and relatives as he could, but felt uncomfortable approaching people he didn't know, or barely knew, to entice them to an Amway meeting. And he dreaded hearing negative comments when he told people he was an Amway distributor. "I felt very defensive when I was in it,'' he said. His wife, Karen, rebelled at the night hours he was keeping while trying to work a full-time job during the days. "Literally he would go out to meetings and not be home until 3 a.m.,'' she said. "It was all meetings, all hype and keeping your spirits up.'' Karen Frigon, who was pregnant, told her husband that he could do the mounds of Amway paperwork she was handling to place product orders. "We were buying a lot of expensive products,'' John said. He said he found himself buying granola bars one month just to keep up his sales volume, though he didn't even like them. Soon after Karen dropped out, he said he became inactive because he got tired of the paperwork and said he wasn't making any money. "There was a lot of hard work and they glossed over that,'' he said. THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER Copyright 1995, The Charlotte Observer DATE: Tuesday, March 21, 1995 By JIM MORRILL and NANCY STANCILL, Staff Writers YAGER PUTS MONEY BEHIND HIS POLITICS Politics has become as much a part of Dexter Yager's Amway inventory as soap, cosmetics and motivational tapes. He and his organization back their beliefs with money. * Yager family members, employees and distributors gave Charlotte Republican Sue Myrick at least $200,000 for her 1994 U.S. House campaign, Yager's son Doyle acknowledges. He says they contributed the same to the Republican who challenged Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and lesser amounts to others. * Yager and his family gave a handful of 1994 GOP candidates $99,000. * Yager Enterprises paid George Bush $100,000 for a 1993 speech and has also paid Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle to speak. "If you believe in free enterprise, you want somebody that's gonna vote on free enterprise,'' says Yager, 55. "The more that the government does for everybody the more we become a slave to the government.'' His politics mirrors that of Amway Corp., which gave $2.5 million to the Republican National Committee last fall -- the largest contribution ever to a political party. Company co-founders Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel -- each among America's seven wealthiest people with net worths of $4.5 billion -- have been big donors to Republican candidates and the party. DeVos is a former national GOP finance chairman. For Yager, who has 1 million "downline'' distributors, political clout goes beyond contributions. He also exposes candidates such as Myrick to large rallies, and relays political messages to distributors through his network's extensive voice-mail system. It all illustrates Yager's growing yet often unseen influence. Not only is he one of Amway's top distributors, but he's quietly become one of Mecklenburg County's largest property owners and a key Myrick supporter. An Observer analysis shows that at least $177,000 -- about a third of all the money she raised in last year's campaign -- came from Yager family members, employees, or people identifying their business as "marketing,'' a standard term Amway distributors use to describe their business. Only $42,000 came from North Carolina. And of that, $32,000 came from the Yager family or employees. Another $28,000 came in small, mainly out-of-state contributions. Many were $10 donations from the sale of a patriotic music tape manufactured and sold to the campaign by a Yager-owned company. MONEY "BUNDLED" FOR IMPACT John Green, a University of Akron expert on campaign financing, calls Amway distributors "a potentially powerful new source of money.'' "Most money historically is raised through social networks of one kind or another,'' he says. "What you're really seeing here is that we're bringing a new group of people with various kinds of traditional values into the mainstream of the political process.'' Critics say the donations represent a form of "bundling'' contributions that give undue influence to those who raise it. "Bundling'' is when people representing a single interest give separate contributions not easily traceable to the donor's interest. Special interests, of course, give to both parties, directly through political action committees or indirectly by raising money or encouraging employees to give. "What we see there is a real good example of what's really wrong with our campaign finance system, and that's that we have people out there raising huge amounts of money for candidates and . . . relatively few ways of tracking that down,'' says Josh Goldstein of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, a group that studies campaign money. "People who have access to a network of donors such as (Myrick) are able to get elected, while most citizens . . . don't have access.'' Myrick disputes the notion that Amway distributors represent a single interest. "The only thing they have in common is they own their own small business,'' she says. "Anyone who has their own business is interested in free enterprise. It's encouraging free enterprise and taking care of your own business.'' Myrick says no one, including Yager, holds sway over her. "Nobody has ever asked for anything,'' she says. "Upfront I've always told everyone, `You don't own me,' `You don't buy my vote.' '' AN INTRODUCTION IN 1987 Myrick's Amway connection goes back to 1987. She met Yager during her first successful campaign for mayor of Charlotte. He then introduced her to distributors from around the country. When she ran for the U.S. Senate in 1992, they contributed to her campaign. She lost a primary to U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth, but she and her husband soon joined Yager's organization as distributors. "He's a very honorable man who has helped a tremendous number of people get their life together,'' Myrick says of Yager. "That's what attracted me to Amway, the good salt-of-the-earth people.'' Last year the Yagers rallied around her again. Doyle Yager, who runs his father's Amway business, says she spoke or had a booth at more than 10 rallies across the country before the 1994 primary. She sold distributors a $10 tape called "We the People'' made by Intercontinental Communication Corp. of America, a Yager company that produces motivational tapes at its South Boulevard plant. She also made valuable contacts. In April she met top distributors at the Charlotte Coliseum. Among them was Gerald Harteis of Pennsylvania. "Although we're not in her geographic district, we're very much in her mental district,'' says Harteis, 48, who with his family gave Myrick $3,000. Harvey Nash, 60, an Amway "Diamond'' level distributor from Fishers, Ind., heard Myrick speak at two or three events and liked her "because she's a free enterpriser.'' He says Yager didn't push the contribution. "What he did was let her present her program and it was up to the individual,'' said Nash, who contributed $1,000 last April. Ann Reynolds, a distributor from Watkinsville, Ga., heard Myrick speak at five or six Amway-related events. She and her husband gave $250 in March 1994 because "Sue's just definitely a first-class person. . . . "We didn't care what state she was from. We wanted people who believed what we did in Congress.'' * Secretary donates $1,000 Tammy Nyhoff, an 18-year-old secretary for Amway distributors in Ogden, Utah, gave $1,000. Was it hard to do that financially? "Well, sort of,'' Nyhoff says. " . . . We all got together and helped her.'' Much of Myrick's Amway money came when she needed it most, in the crucial weeks before her hotly contested May primary. "It played a big role,'' says Charlotte Republican Don Reid, who lost to Myrick in the five-way primary. "She had an opportunity to use that money for radio (and) TV. And she did a lot of both.'' Myrick wasn't the only candidate to benefit from Yager's generosity. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney, who lost to Kennedy in Massachusetts, got $12,000 from the Yager family and at least $34,000 more from Myrick contributors with Yager connections. Doyle Yager puts the total figure at closer to $200,000. The Yager family helped a half-dozen other federal candidates last year. Among them were Republican Senate winners Spencer Abraham in Michigan and Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania. Another was Ralph Hudgens, a Georgia Republican who lost a House bid. He got $17,000 from the Yagers. When he'd run in 1992, Hudgens says he was among those targeted by a group called U.S. Congressional Consultants. It included Yager and Amway President Rich DeVos. "They identified 10 pro-family, pro-business, pro-free enterprise candidates across the U.S. that they wanted to support,'' Hudgens says. "And I was one.'' Yager says the group recognized that "any senator or congressman that represents our beliefs is the one we want to support. It's not a matter of always the one in our area.'' SUPPORT VIA VOICE MAIL Yager introduced Myrick to Amway audiences at rallies. He also plugged favored candidates through the Amway voice mail system called Amvox. About 400,000 U.S. distributors are hooked up to the network, which top distributors use to relay short messages to thousands at a time. Henry Gilewicz of Lake Wylie, whom Yager sponsored into Amway 22 years ago, gets messages from Yager and other top-level distributors. He says he forwards them to his own network whenever they're "significant to our country.'' But several former distributors say they didn't appreciate the political content of some of Yager's Amvox messages. Roger Maynard, 39, of Dallas, Tex., says Yager has asked him to support initiatives or politicians because "they were good for God and country.'' "It was Dexter in his limousine saying, `Let's pray about this right now.' Amway's top leaders, he says, "spout their religion and politics very freely. At the big rallies, it comes out very blatantly. I just didn't want to hear it.'' Olene Reaves, 61, of Houston recalls many Amvox messages from Yager before becoming inactive in Amway in 1993. Most came from places such as Hawaii and "talked about the good life and how you can have it too.'' But some, she said, specifically asked for support of a politician or an initiative. "THERE'S NO GRAY WITH DEXTER" Another voice on Amvox belongs to Bob McEwen, a former member of Congress from Ohio. His "Bits from Bob,'' like his speeches at rallies or his regular column in the Yagers' "Dreambuilders'' magazine, offer conservative opinions on national issues. Recently, for example, he urged readers to "oppose vigorously those politicians who promise us more government help . . . like free health care.'' McEwen calls Yager "basically a person committed to America, very patriotic (with) a set of biblical, moral principles that are just rock solid. There's no gray with Dexter. He will not compromise on principle.'' So what do Yager and Amway get for their money? "Unfortunately the way the game works here in Washington is . . . campaign contributors get access while most people or ordinary citizens are left on the sidelines,'' says Goldstein of the Center for Responsive Politics. Tom Eggleston, Amway Corp.'s chief operating officer, says the company does not demand allegiance to the views of its leaders. "We guard against any implication that certain views are required for success in the Amway business,'' he says. " . . . Individual distributors are free to express their own viewpoints.'' Amway's legislative interests cover a variety of issues, such as the role of independent contractors. With Amway expanding its worldwide markets -- the company moves into China next month -- trade issues also are important. Amway was fined $20 million in 1982 in a dispute with the Canadian government over import duties. * `Voice of the Electorate' Before her election to Congress, Sue Myrick's Amway ties extended beyond contributions. A major distributor in Yager's organization paid her $10,000 in 1993 and early 1994 for contractual work on a short-lived project called "Voice of the Electorate.'' Ed, her husband, received an undisclosed sum. The program was designed to keep distributors aware of national issues and encourage them to voice their opinion through Amvox. "It was not something that a great deal of effort was put into,'' says Ed Myrick. The Myricks were paid by their Amway sponsor, Billy Florence of Georgia. He serves with Yager on the executive committee of the Amway Distributors Association. "It was not a big operation,'' says Florence. ". . . We really haven't used it much.'' While Sue Myrick is busy in Congress, her husband continues to build their Amway network. "Amway is to a great extent telephone,'' Ed Myrick says. "We're in constant touch with each other, plus the fact there are hundreds of people up there (in Washington). There are prospects everywhere.''