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<\/a>A chart marking weight-loss progress hangs at Angel Perez’s nutrition club. | Daina Beth Solomon<\/p><\/div>\n
Angel Perez never planned to join the family business of selling Herbalife health products. But as a restaurant manager, she soon grew tired of the long hours keeping her away from family.<\/p>\n
Perez began cultivating a client base four years ago and now makes between $3,000 and $4,000 a month running a Herbalife nutrition club in Inglewood.<\/p>\n
The career switch provided Perez a \u201cdecent, honest living\u201d on a flexible work schedule. And it put to use her 2008 business degree from California State University at Dominguez Hills.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to make a living off of it, you have to take it seriously,\u201d she said of selling Herbalife products. \u201cYou have to treat it like a business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez is among 3.7 million people in 90 countries who sell Herbalife\u2019s shakes, teas and supplements. According to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, these vendors are pawns enabling a pyramid scheme that scams the poor while generating income for the company\u2019s top players. Vendors need to buy the pricey products in bulk yet aren’t\u00a0necessarily\u00a0able to sell all of them,\u00a0Ackman has argued.<\/p>\n
However, about 10 people I spoke with recently said they are happy with the money they make, although most don\u2019t plan to get rich.<\/p>\n
Some make as little as $80 a day, which comes out to roughly $1,600 a month. Others have leapt into the \u201cPresident\u2019s Club\u201d tier, considered the top one percent of sellers. One such vendor declined to share his income, but said he has cultivated a Facebook following of 16,000 people who buy from him or his “downline” distributors.<\/p>\n
Many insisted that the\u00a0Herbalife\u00a0profits are commensurate with the hours of effort\u00a0given to sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t work, you don\u2019t get paid,\u201d said Delmy Ruiz, a Herbalife vendor whose son ditched\u00a0his own business efforts because his “heart wasn’t in it.”<\/p>\n
To climb up the Herbalife income\u00a0scale, vendors ultimately must recruit other distributors. Ackman has argued that Herbalife\u2019s profits will soon flatten out just for this reason — because its model is based on recruiting new distributors to pay existing distributors. As the market gets saturated, new distributors will be hard to come by.<\/p>\n