OP, I know exactly what you are talking about. Glad to see other people talking about this because my brother has been involved in a pryamid scheme, network marketing, multi-level marketing, whatever you want to call it for three years now. I have met a few doctors selling these sorts of products and always have good things to say about them.
He started out of college at Phillip Morris making near $100,000/year with benefits and they worked him for it. 12 hour shifts, 70 hour weeks, two weeks straight without a day off sort of thing. He had no time for life outside of work. He worked there for 3 years until they closed the plant down in 2009. He was pretty disillusioned with the corporate life after that experience and decided not to look for another corporate job.
My brother always had an interest in getting rich quick, and got tied up in schemes like selling encyclopedias door-to-door, buying worthless property in St. John, Arizona, and probably selling drugs in college. So being disgruntled with the corporate life, he clicked on an internet ad and decided to go full bore into a health products scheme. He tried to make network marketing and selling these products his full-time job because he met many other people that were very successful in the business.
And people can be successful in the business. If you get in early with these companies, or become a well-respected trainer of fellow network marketers, or just are really good at manipulating people into selling bullshit products under the guise of financial independence and escape from the grind, you can be very successful. But the failure rates for people in the business are very high, and they convince you that the failure is based on your attitude, personality, and lack of training. So it's always your fault if you fail, and your fault if you are successful.
In August of 2009, I finished up a summer job in New Mexico and decided to cruise up to Salt Lake City to meet my mom and brother there during the annual convention for the pyramid scheme company. I got roped into attending many of the events because I was the only person there with a car (I rather would have hiked around the mountains outside Salt Lake), and these folks were able to almost fill up the entire Utah Jazz basketball stadium. I sat through glorious and uplifting presentations about the revolutionary medical treatments, immigrant single mothers lifting themselves out of poverty, all-expenses-paid trips for top sellers, and worship-worthy speeches from the big wigs of the company. After all that, I knew what it felt like to be part of a cult.
Nobody in my family really know how much my brother makes or if his ventures are successful. But frequent moves to different cities, short, indirect answers to our questions, and a growing distance from the family told us enough. He tried to expand his reach beyond health products and into selling internet business training courses and keeping paid for advertisements. We do think he has tens of thousands of dollars credit card debts and student loans for his MBA (which Phillip Morris gave him money to pay for, but he instead used the money for his network marketing ventures rather than pay for the student loans).
The whole key to income streams with network marketing is convincing people to buy things they don't need, extracting a fee from them for each person, and selling people training with no guarantee your trainee will be successful. Of course, it's all done under the idea that you are improving somebody else's life, and putting yourself on a path towards multiple income streams, more financial freedom, and early retirement. If you work in a placid office environment, like most of us, greener pastures always sound good.
Somewhere along the way, I think in early 2011, he met a girl whose mother got in early with the health and wellness pyramid scheme. She handed much of her business over to her daughter (my brother's girlfriend) when she turned 18, and, truthfully, she does quite well for herself thanks to the wealth her mother built. Her mother got in early with the pyramid scheme, so they are a success story. And since then, my brother has latched on to his girlfriend as they traveled across the country while simutaneously running their internet-based businesses. We still don't know if he's doing that well financially, but based on the views of his videos and the comments section, not too many people are paying attention. Despite his financial situation, the girlfriend and he are happy. But he makes little effort to stay engaged with his blood family.
Anyhow, that's my personal experience with these pyramid schemes. Few people succeed big time, some people get a few extra dollars, some people don't succeed but continue to delude themselves, and most get out and do different things. MORAL OF THE STORY: make sure you have a steady stream of income before you dedicated all your resources to a pyramid scheme/network marketing venture. . In the meantime, keep your day job and don't start a family.