All right, today's question comes from Ryan in Virginia.

Ryan writes, I have some friends that are trying to achieve financial freedom through retailing

MLM products online and networking with other MLM multi-level marketing retailers. They are a very sweet, very sincere, but seemingly very innocent couple.

I think you mean innocent as in naive.

Naive.

The wife does take on occasional outside work currently, but I wonder how much of her income

is absorbed back into trying to make their MLM business work.

I haven't yet asked them what their net annual

income is from the MLM. They've been added for two years or if they keep track of actual hours,

put into their business, what's an hourly wage, etc. But before I do, I want to ask if MLMs are

still the shady, barely legal, pyramid schemish companies they used to be or what your views on

MLMs are. I haven't found much good said about

them online. What do you think about them and what might you suggest in a way of having a

conversation with my friends about it? Federal Trade Commission says that 99% of the people

that join an MLM lose money.

That's a staggering statistic.

It's hard to actually believe.

I'm not sure I do believe it.

The AARP did a different study that came with different numbers,

came with different results.

So I haven't looked into the methodologies on the studies to tell you, but they say that 27% of the people that join an MLM actually make a profit, and that 70, you know, whatever the balance is, 73% lose money. Not quite as harsh as the FTC number.

But I think if you've just got good walking around since and you've got a few decades under your belt, we can all agree that the vast majority of people that start in an MLM do not make money.

...