Wanted to let you know that I really appreciated the great report you wrote about Herbalife. The company had recently spoken with me about a fairly senior position (not a distributorship) at their Los Angeles headquarters, and afterwards I felt silly for even talking to them.

I had a weird feeling when I discovered that >70% of the product is not re-sold, but consumed by the distributors themselves. It also doesn't take a genius to do the Herbalife math... $2 billion in annual sales divided by 1 million 'independent distributors' is only on average $2,000 per year of revenue per distributor... no way anyone can seriously consider this to be a legitimate business. The biggest surprise was when several company managers admitted their products were over-priced and far inferior to anything you could purchase at retail. I saw some of the products myself (didn't personally try them) and completely agreed... they're pretty bad. Their packaging is poor even for 1980's standards, and their leading item (Shapeworks) is a powdered shake that requires a blender to mix it -- who wants to deal with the mess and inconvenience when there's so many better shake alternatives on the market. 

After my meeting I saw your article and everything completely made sense. I felt dirty. I immediately said I was no longer interested in the position, and they should look for someone else.

I only wasted a few hours of my time, and even then I was annoyed. I really feel bad for the people who got sucked into becoming distributors and lost a lot of their hard earned money. Good work on this report -- I hope it is able to help anyone even considering having some form of relationship with this company.