You know how it starts. It's almost always the
same. You're just, I don't know, scrolling through
your phone looking at Instagram or something
and a message pops up. Uh -huh. And it's a name
you haven't seen in a while. Exactly. It's a
name you recognize, but not, you know, from your
day to day life. Maybe it's someone from high
school biology class 10 years ago or a distant
cousin you only see at weddings. The classic
blast from the past. Right. And the message,
it's so friendly. It's it's really enthusiastic.
There are always a ton of emojis, sparkles, rocket
ships, you know, the ones it starts with something
like. Hey, hon, or long time no see. And you
think, oh, that's nice of them to reach out.
Yeah, you think they want to catch up. But then
the pivot. There's always a pivot. There's always
a pivot. Yeah. The small talk is just the runway
for the actual pitch. And suddenly it's not about
your job or your family anymore. It's about a
business opportunity. They found this amazing
way to achieve financial independence. And they
want to share it with you. They want to help
you live the lifestyle you deserve. Yes, you
can be your own boss. You can retire in your
30s. It's this incredible script. It is a script.
And it's one that has been rehearsed and repeated
millions and millions of times all over the world.
It plays on these very deep, very universal desires.
I mean, who doesn't want financial freedom? Of
course. Who doesn't want to be their own boss?
Exactly. But what they're pitching, it's almost
never just the product. They are pitching a dream.
And so today we are going to look past that pitch.
We're going to look past the shiny Instagram
posts, the cars they supposedly bought, the motivational
quotes. We are doing a deep dive into the world
of multilevel marketing. You probably know it
as MLM. Right. MLM. Or maybe you've heard it
called network marketing or interactive distribution
or even referral marketing. They have a lot of
names. They do. And if you talk to the critics
and believe me, there is a very loud, very. data
driven community of critics, you'll hear it called
something else entirely, which is pyramid selling.
And that's really the big question we're trying
to tackle today, isn't it? Is this a legitimate
path to being an entrepreneur? Is it a misunderstood
business model that actually empowers people?
Or is it just a pyramid scheme with a much better
PR department? It feels like a complicated question,
but I think you're right. The answer has to be
in the data. It is. It's all in the data. We
have a huge stack of sources for this one. We're
going to be looking at rulings from the Federal
Trade Commission, the FTC, right here in the
U .S. We're going to look at some statistical
studies on income that are, frankly, shocking.
And we're going global, too. We're looking at
outright bans in China and even religious decrees
about it in Saudi Arabia. We are. We're covering
the mechanics, the math, the law, and the culture
that surrounds this entire industry. Okay, so.
Let's start at the beginning. Let's unpack this.
What exactly is multi -level marketing? How is
it different from just, you know, getting a normal
sales job? That's the perfect place to start.
To really get the controversy, you have to understand
the structure. At its very core, an MLM is a
strategy where a company uses a non -salaried
workforce to sell its products or services. Okay,
non -salaried workforce. That's a very polite
way of saying they don't get a regular paycheck.
They do not. They are not employees. That is
a critical point. They are independent contractors.
You'll hear them called all sorts of things.
Distributors, associates, independent business
owners, affiliates. But at the end of the day,
it means no guaranteed hourly wage, no benefits.
No benefits. You eat what you kill, so to speak.
Your income is entirely based on performance.
Which, to be fair, isn't that unusual for some
sales jobs, right? I mean, real estate agents
worked on commission. Car salespeople often work
on commission. That's absolutely true. But here
is the critical. fundamental distinction. In
a typical MLM, there are two separate ways to
make money, two revenue streams. And the way
these two streams interact, that's what makes
it multi -level. Okay, so what's the first stream?
The first stream is simple sales commissions.
This is the part everyone understands. So the
company makes, say, vitamins. I buy a box of
vitamins from them at a wholesale price. I turn
around and sell it to my neighbor for the retail
price. I keep the difference. Exactly. That's
the direct selling part of it. It's the, you
know, the classic Avon lady model from back in
the day. It's the Tupperware party from the 1950s.
If the business stopped right there, we wouldn't
be having this conversation. But it doesn't stop
there. It does not. Because then you have the
second revenue stream, recruitment. commissions
ah this is where the downline comes into play
this is where the downline comes in you are not
just incentivized to sell the product you are
incentivized and often heavily incentivized to
recruit other people to join the company as distributors
under you so i sign up my friend jane and when
you recruit jane she becomes part of your downline
now you earn a percentage of all of jane's sales
but it goes deeper when jane recruits her friend
bob Bob is now in your downline, too. Even though
I've never met Bob. You've never met him. But
you get a piece of his sales. And when Bob recruits
Steve and Steve recruits Mary, you get a small
piece of all of it. So you end up with this expanding
triangle of people underneath you. You end up
with a pyramid -shaped structure. Yes. The compensation
flows up. The person at the top earns a small
percentage of the total sales volume generated
by the entire organization below them. And this
creates something that researchers call an incentive
shift. An incentive shift. Okay, break that down
for me. What's shifting? Well, just think about
it logically. You only have so many hours in
a day, right? There are only so many boxes of
vitamins you can personally sell to your friends
and your family and your neighbors. Your personal
sales are finite. They're limited by your own
time and energy. Sure. I can only knock on so
many doors. But your recruitment potential, in
theory, that's exponential. If you can build
a massive team of hundreds or even thousands
of people, Well, then you can earn money while
you sleep. That's the passive income dream they're
always selling. Make money while you're on the
beach. That's the pitch, 100%. So while the company's
official line is that the business is about selling
great products, the compensation plan, the math
that actually determines how big your check is,
is telling you something different. It's telling
you to focus on recruiting. So you stop trying
to find customers for the shampoo. And you start
trying to find... Other sellers of the shampoo.
The incentive literally shifts from selling a
product to selling the business of selling a
product. Precisely. And that creates a really
fundamental and I think bizarre conflict of interest.
Think about it. If you own a successful coffee
shop on a street corner, the last thing you want
to do is open another coffee shop right next
door and teach the new owner your secret recipe.
You'd be creating your own direct competition.
Of course. But in an MLM. That is exactly what
you are incentivized to do. You are constantly
turning your potential customers into your direct
competitors. Wow, I never thought of it that
way. You are actively cannibalizing your own
local market. You are. And you're doing it in
the hopes that the small percentage you earn
from their sales volume will outweigh the sales
you've lost by turning them into a competitor.
That feels like a very risky bet. It's a huge
bet. And that brings us right to the next big
topic. The opportunity versus the cold, hard
math. Because when you get that hey hun message,
they almost never lead with the product. No,
you're right. They don't send you a brochure
about the ingredients in the protein shake. Not
at all. They lead with the opportunity. It's
always about the lifestyle. Financial freedom.
Time freedom. Retire your husband. There was
a former business professor, a guy named Roland
Witzel, who spent something like 40 years researching
this industry. He did. And he had a really powerful
insight. He said that in most MLMs, the products
themselves are often, and this is his word, peripheral.
They're just the vehicle. They're almost an afterthought.
An afterthought. The real product being sold
is the opportunity itself. And he argued that
the motivational force that drives this entire
multibillion -dollar industry is false hope.
False hope. That's a pretty damning phrase. It
is. But we have some numbers here that, well...
They seem to back it up. We have access to a
huge study that looked at over 350 different
MLM companies, mostly here in the United States.
And what did that study find? It's a stark finding.
The study concluded that at least 99 % of all
recruits lose money. I want to pause on that
for a second because that number is just... It's
hard to process. We're not saying 99 % don't
get rich. We're not saying 99 % just make minimum
wage. You're saying 99 % lose money. They end
up with less money in their bank account than
when they started. They operate at a net loss.
How is that even possible? How can a business
model survive if 99 % of its participants are
failing? That's the paradox, isn't it? The model
survives because they're failing. The failure
of the 99 % at the bottom is what funds the massive
success of the 1 % at the top. So it's a transfer
of wealth. It is a massive upward transfer of
wealth. In a pyramid -shaped compensation plan,
money has to flow up. For that person at the
very top to be posing with that giant oversized
check on Instagram Thousands and thousands of
people at the bottom have to be buying those
starter kits, paying for the training seminars,
and purchasing their monthly inventory quota.
The bottom of the pyramid is literally subsidizing
the top. That's a perfect way to put it. And
if we drill down into some of the specific studies,
the numbers get even more, well, more grim. There's
a very famous analysis by a researcher named
John Taylor. He's a huge figure in this field.
He spent years analyzing the compensation plans
and the official income disclosure statements
of hundreds of these companies. His calculation
was that the loss rate for people who invest
in these companies is 99 .7%. 99 .7%. I mean,
that's statistically everyone. If you just round
to the nearest whole number, you get a 100 %
failure rate. It is a shocking, shocking number.
And to try to put it in perspective, the skeptic
Brian Dunning made a comparison that I think
really helps it land. He compared joining an
MLM to gambling in Las Vegas. OK, I like a good
Vegas analogy. Well, we all know the casino has
an edge, right? The house always wins in the
long run. Sure. But if you go to Vegas and you
play slots or you play roulette, something like
97 percent of people lose money over time, which
means. You know, you have about a 3 % chance
of walking away a winner. Not great odds, but
it happens. You hear stories of people hitting
jackpots. It happens. But in MLM, based on Taylor's
data, it's a 99 .9 % loss rate. Which means,
statistically speaking, you have a significantly
better chance of financial success by taking
your life savings to Vegas, walking up to a roulette
table, and putting it all on a single number.
That is insane. Because when I go to Vegas, at
least I know I'm gambling. You know, I get a
free drink. I see a show. It's entertainment.
I don't take out a second mortgage on my house
because I think I'm investing in a business.
Exactly. The deception is the key difference.
A casino doesn't tell you that pulling the handle
on a slot machine is a legitimate career path
that's going to allow you to retire early. And
MLM does. Let's look at some of the specific
company data, because I don't want anyone to
think this is just theoretical. We've got some
numbers here from Amway over in the UK. We do.
And this is powerful because it wasn't an independent
researcher. The UK government itself investigated
Amway, and they found that only 10 percent, just
one in 10 of Amway's agents in Britain, made
any profit whatsoever. Any profit at all. Any
profit at all. But here's the statistic from
that report that really blew my mind. Less than
1 in 10 Asians had ever sold a single item to
an actual retail customer. Wait, hold on. Say
that again. If 90 % of the salespeople aren't
selling any products to customers, then who is
buying all the products? The salespeople are.
The distributors themselves. They are buying
the products to qualify for their commission
checks or because they're told they need to be
a product of the product. This just reinforces
that core idea. In an MLM, the distributor is
the real customer. So you're the end user. You
just don't realize it because they've sold you
on the idea that you're a business owner. Correct.
We also have some leaked data from a company
called Fortune High Tech Marketing. Now, this
one is interesting because they were eventually
shut down by regulators, which means we got a
real look at their internal books. The real numbers.
Real numbers. And they showed that 30 % of their
representatives made $0, nothing. And of the
70 % who made something, the majority, 54 % of
them, made an average of just $93 a month. $93
a month. And that's gross, right? That's before
you subtract any expenses. That is gross income.
Before you subtract the cost of the starter kit,
the marketing materials, the gas money to drive
to meetings, the fees for your personal sales
website, all of it. So if you're making $93 a
month but you're spending $100 a month on business
expenses, you are literally paying for the privilege
of working for them. A 2018 poll of over 1 ,000
MLM sellers confirmed this exact thing. It found
that the majority of them made less than $0 .70
per hour. $0 .70 an hour? You could make more
money looking for loose change in your couch
cushions. You absolutely could. And looking for
change in the couch cushions doesn't require
you to alienate all of your friends and family
in the process. So this is the question that
just keeps coming back to me. If the math is
so, so terrible, if the odds are literally worse
than a Vegas casino, how did this industry grow
into a multibillion dollar global juggernaut?
I mean, where did it even come from? It's a great
question. And to understand the present, we really
have to look back at the history. The roots of
this industry go way back to the 1920s and 30s.
You had these pioneering companies like the California
Vitamin Company. Which became Neutralite, right.
It later became Neutralite, which was eventually
bought by Amway. And you also had the California
Perfume Company, which everyone now knows as
Avon. Avon is such a classic brand. My grandmother
sold Avon. It always seems so, I don't know,
normal. Harmless. And for a very long time it
was. Companies like Avon and also Tupperware,
they were primarily what we would call direct
selling companies. And this is a really important
distinction to make. Why? In traditional direct
selling, the focus is almost entirely on the
product. I buy a lipstick at wholesale. I sell
it to my neighbor at retail. I keep the profit.
It's a single level transaction. Right. There's
no pyramid. There's no downline. It's just a
salesperson selling a thing. Exactly. But over
the last few decades, that model has shifted
dramatically. The Direct Selling Association,
or DSA, is the main trade group that represents
all these companies. In 1990, only about 25 %
of the DSA's member companies used a multi -level
compensation plan. Most were still just single
-level direct sellers. Okay, so as recently as
1990, the pyramid structure was still the minority
model. A small minority. But fast forward to
2009. By then, that number had completely flipped.
99 .6 % of all sellers represented by the DSA
were participating in a multi -level model. Wow.
So the entire industry transformed. It did. Even
the legacy companies, the ones you mentioned
like Avon and Tupperware, they eventually introduced
their own multi -level compensation plans to
compete. Why though? Was it just pure greed?
I'd say it was efficiency. From the corporation's
perspective, the recruitment model is incredibly
efficient and lucrative. In a normal business,
if I want to expand my sales force, I have to
go out and hire people. I have to interview them,
train them, pay them a salary, pay for their
benefits. It's really expensive. In an MLM, the
sales force recruits itself. It grows virally,
exponentially. And not only do I not have to
pay them a salary, they actually pay me for a
starter kit just for the right to start working.
It's genius in a really dark way. You're crowdsourcing
your labor costs and you're turning your entire
workforce into your biggest customer base. And
as this model took over, the industry realized
it had a branding problem. You know, people started
to catch on to the pyramid shape. They started
getting suspicious. So you see the rise of what
I call semantic games. Oh, right. They're constantly
changing the terminology. Constantly. To distance
themselves from the fraud accusations. So it's
not a pyramid scheme. No, it's interactive distribution.
Or relationship marketing. I've heard that one.
Social retail. Yeah. But it doesn't matter what
you call it. If the compensation plan pays you
more for recruiting people than it does for selling
a product to the public, the underlying mechanics
are still the same. Which brings us right to
the elephant in the room, the legal question.
I think a lot of our listeners are probably sitting
there thinking, OK, if this is such a scam. Why
is it legal? Why are these companies publicly
traded on the stock market? Why do they sponsor
sports stadiums? That is the billion dollar question.
And the answer is found in a very specific and
I would argue very, very gray area of the law.
Here in the United States, the Federal Trade
Commission, the FTC, is the main regulator. And
their official stance is, well. It's nuanced.
Nuanced is a very polite word for confusing.
It is confusing. But the core legal distinction
boils down to this. What is the primary source
of the company's revenue? If the money is made
primarily from recruiting new distributors, from
selling starter kits and training materials,
then it is likely an illegal pyramid scheme.
But if the money is made primarily from sales
to the public, to actual end users of the product,
then it's considered a legitimate multi -level
marketing business. OK, on the surface, that
seems pretty straightforward. Are you selling
products to real people or are you just shuffling
money around inside a closed loop of recruits?
Right. But here is the loophole. It's a massive
loophole and it's called internal consumption.
Internal consumption. OK, let's unpack that term.
The MLM companies make a very clever argument.
They say, hey, our distributors are the public.
They are our most passionate customers. They
love the product so much they buy it for themselves
and their families every single month. So when
a distributor is forced to buy, say, $500 worth
of vitamins just to qualify for their commission
check. The company counts that as a legitimate
retail sale. Even if they don't actually need
$500 worth of vitamins. Even if those bottles
just pile up in their garage. Exactly. This is
what creates the garage qualified phenomenon.
People buying huge amounts of inventory, they
have no hope of selling, just to maintain their
rank in the pyramid. The FTC actually issued
an advisory on this back in 2004. And what did
they say? They said that internal consumption
doesn't automatically make a plan illegal. However,
the revenue generated from it can't be incidental
to the right to participate in the business opportunity.
Meaning you have to be buying the product because
you genuinely want the product, not because you're
essentially buying your way up the pyramid. That's
the idea. But proving that intent in a court
of law, proving why someone bought a box of Shake
Mix, is incredibly difficult for prosecutors.
It's a very, very high legal bar to clear. But
they have cleared it sometimes, right? There
have been major cases. There have. The most pivotal
case in the history of this industry was the
FTC versus Amway back in 1979. It was a massive
legal battle. The FTC went after Amway, accusing
them of being an illegal pyramid scheme. And
what was the outcome? Who won? Well, it was a
mixed verdict, but ultimately it was a huge victory
for the MLM industry. The judge ruled that Amway
was not per se in the illegal pyramid scheme.
Wow. But they were found guilty of other things
like price fixing and, importantly, making exaggerated
and misleading income claims. The core business
model itself, though, survived that legal challenge.
So that 1979 ruling basically gave the entire
industry the green light. It gave them the blueprint
for how to operate legally. The judge pointed
to certain safeguards that Amway had its policies.
For example, the 70 percent rule, which theoretically
required distributors to sell 70 percent of their
inventory each month before ordering more. OK.
So the industry lawyers all said, OK, great.
If we just write these rules into our handbooks,
then we're legal. Even if nobody actually follows
or enforces the rules in practice. That is the
catch. The enforcement of these internal rules
is virtually non -existent. But the FTC does
still go after companies that they feel cross
the line too far. You had a company called Vemma.
Oh, the energy drink one. They were huge on college
campuses for a while. They were. And the FTC
shut them down precisely because their focus
was so clearly on recruiting broke college students,
not on selling energy drinks to the public. And
Fortune High Tech Marketing, the company with
those terrible numbers we mentioned earlier,
they were officially ruled to be a pyramid scheme.
The FTC shut them down, liquidated their assets,
and ended up mailing checks totaling $3 .7 million
to the victims of the scheme. So justice is possible.
It just seems like you have to be incredibly
blatant about it to finally get caught. You do.
And usually by the time the regulators catch
up, the damage has been done. The money has already
been transferred up the pyramid and the people
at the bottom are just left with debt and a garage
full of products. And it's not just financial
debt, is it? This brings us to the whole cultural
side of things. When you read accounts from people
who've left these organizations, you see the
word cult come up over and over again. You see
it a lot. And it's not just angry ex -members
using that word. Serious academic researchers
use it as well. There was a fascinating article
by a scholar named Walter J. Carl in the Western
Journal of Communication. He specifically discussed
how MLM organizations are often described as
cults. And what were his reasons? He pointed
to a pattern of deceptive behavior, the use of
what he called evangelical discourse, and the
exploitation of personal relationships for financial
gain evangelical discourse like they're preaching
a gospel of wealth that's a perfect way to put
it there's a very strong us versus them mentality
that's fostered if you're the group you're positive
you're a winner you're an entrepreneur if you
criticize the group or if you decide to quit
then you're a loser a quitter a quitter or And
this is my favorite term they use. You're a dream
stealer. A dream stealer. Wow. So if your spouse
comes to you and says, hey, honey, we've lost
$2 ,000 on this so far. Maybe we should stop.
The MLM training tells you that your own spouse
is stealing your dreams. Exactly. They instruct
you to distance yourself from negativity and
from anyone who doesn't support your journey.
It creates this intense social isolation. It
insulates the member from the very people, friends,
family who might be able to help them see the
reality of the. financial situation. It weaponizes
your most personal relationships. Which, I mean,
it brings us right back to that very first text
message we talked about. The entire business
model requires you to monetize your friends.
It absolutely does. You are taught to view every
single person you know, your mother, your best
friend from college, your dentist, as a potential
lead, a potential recruit. It fundamentally commodifies
human connection. And speaking of culture, we
have to talk about geography because there is
one specific place in the United States that
is widely known as the unofficial world capital
of MLMs. Utah. Utah. I've heard this over and
over. Why Utah? What is it about that state?
It's a true statistical anomaly. Utah has more
multilevel marketing companies per capita than
any other state in the country. It is home to
some of the absolute giants of the industry.
New skin, doTERRA, unique, young living. The
list goes on and on. But is there a reason for
it, a specific cultural driver? Researchers point
to the very high population of members of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints.
There are several cultural factors there that
seem to create a sort of perfect storm for MLM
businesses to drive. Okay, let's break those
down. What are they? Well, first you have the
return missionary demographic. You have thousands
of young men and women who have spent two years
of their lives knocking on doors, dealing with
constant rejection, and learning how to sell
a message, often in a foreign language. That
makes so much sense. They are quite literally
the most well -trained, resilient, cold -calling
sales force you could ever ask for. They don't
hear the word no in the same way that most people
do. Yeah. Second, there's a very strong cultural
philosophy of self -reliance and being industrious.
And third, you have more traditional gender roles.
So you have a large population of highly educated,
very capable mothers who want to stay at home
with their children but also want to contribute
to the family income. The MLM pitch of work from
your phone, part -time hours, and be your own
boss is just perfectly tailored to that demographic.
I have heard the satirical nickname they have
for it, Mormons losing money. Yes, that is the
joke, unfortunately. But it really highlights
how deeply ingrained this business model has
become in that specific community. It's a form
of affinity fraud where you're more likely to
trust someone and their business pitch simply
because they're part of your social or religious
group. So that's the U .S. perspective. But this
is a global industry. And when you look outside
of the U .S., the official reaction to MLMs can
be very, very different. Drastically different.
Let's start with China. China is not exactly
known for its light -touch approach to regulation.
Not at all. And back in 1998, China banned multi
-level marketing entirely. Outright ban. They
cited concerns about social and economic disruption.
They created a specific regulation called the
prohibition of twangxiao. Twangxiao. What does
that translate to? It basically means pyramid
selling. Under current Chinese law, direct sales
are still permitted. You can sell lipstick door
to door. But having downlines is completely illegal.
If you are earning money from the recruitment
of others, you are breaking the law. So they
surgically separated the legitimate selling from
the scheme part of the business? They did. The
Chinese government viewed these pyramid structures
as a serious threat to social order. And they
weren't wrong about the potential for real harm.
There have been numerous reports of physical
danger. Volunteers in China who try to rescue
people from these illegal schemes have actually
been physically attacked. Wow. That's a level
of intensity you don't really associate with,
you know, selling essential oils. It just shows
how desperate and trapped people can become when
they're caught in these high -pressure financial
groups that have all... the hallmarks of a cult.
What about other parts of the world? We've got
a note here about Saudi Arabia and Islamic law.
Yes, and this is fascinating. Many prominent
Islamic jurists have issued fatwas, which are
formal religious rulings, declaring that MLM
trade is haram. It's prohibited. And what are
the grounds for that ruling? There are two main
reasons. The first is a concept called gharar,
which means deception or uncertainty. The jurists
argue that the promise of easy wealth is fundamentally
deceptive because, as we've seen from the statistics,
almost no one actually achieves it. OK, that
tracks one to one with the data we looked at
earlier. And the second reason is a concept called
REBA, which is the prohibition of usury or interest.
They argue that the structure where you pay an
entry fee in the hopes of getting more money
back without engaging in real trade, it too closely
resembles gambling and interest. It violates
the core principles of fair exchange. That's
really interesting. So it's a moral and ethical
objection as much as it is a financial one. It
is. And then you have a country like Bangladesh,
which just banned all domestic and foreign MLM
trade, period, in 2015. So while the U .S. has
taken this regulate and monitor approach, many
other countries look at this model and just say,
no, this is fundamentally predatory and we're
not allowing it in our country. It really highlights
how the American approach seems to prioritize
the freedom to do business, even if that business
is... Well, extremely questionable. The philosophy
is caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. So if
we zoom out here, we've looked at the mechanics,
the math, the law, the global reaction. It feels
like the central tension, the core conflict is
between what the business says it is and what
the business actually is. That is the heart of
the paradox. The business says it's about selling
amazing products. But the math of the compensation
plan says it's about recruiting investors into
a pyramid. The business says it's about achieving
financial freedom. But the statistics say it's
a near -certain guarantee of financial loss.
And the business says it's about building a supportive
community. But the stories from people who've
left say it's about commodifying your friends
and isolating you from your family. I honestly
think that's the most damaging part. We could
talk about someone losing $500 on a starter kit,
and that hurts. That's real money. But losing
the trust of your entire community, that's a
much, much higher cost. When you start to look
at your best friend and all you can see is a
dollar sign, something is fundamentally broken.
As we wrap this up, what's the one final thought
we should leave people with? We've seen the damage
these structures can do. I think the most important
question you can ask yourself, or you can ask
anyone who approaches you with one of these opportunities,
is this. If a business model requires you to
turn your friends into your customers, and then
immediately turn those customers into your direct
competitors by recruiting them, what is that
business actually selling? Is it selling a product
or is it selling you? That is a heavy question.
If you are the one funding the commission checks
of all the people above you through your own
purchases, then you are the product. Exactly.
The money isn't coming from the magic of the
free market. It's coming from your bank account
and the bank accounts of all the other hopeful
recruits at the bottom. Well, that is a sobering
thought, but a really important one. We hope
this deep dive has given all of you the tools
to look at these opportunities with a much clearer,
more critical eye. Remember, knowledge really
is your best defense against a slick sales pitch.
Absolutely. And if it sounds too good to be true,
ask to see the official income disclosure statement.
And maybe, you know. Keep your day job. Relax.
Yes, definitely keep your day job. Thanks for
joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious and
stay skeptical.