Ruth Lopez used to wake up early each morning, put on her nice clothes and makeup and walk around the neighborhood handing strangers little photocopied invitations to a “free, healthy breakfast.”

She says she and her sister-in-law Cecilia Lopez, who worked in security, ran an Herbalife nutrition club in their home. Cecilia kept her day job, using that income to stock up on Herbalife inventory and reach purchasing levels that qualified them for additional points and discounts.

A former teacher, Lopez is a people person. “Selling for me wasn’t difficult, because I’m a good speaker and I talk too much,” she jokes, an easy laugh accompanying the swing of her long braids and clink of gold rings and necklaces — the cheap stuff, mind you. She had to pawn all her 18k gold jewelry from Colombia to pay down her Herbalife debt, she says. Lopez believed she had it in her to convince people to join her nutrition club. But it didn’t work.

While a busy day brought eight or so customers, Lopez says, “the problem is the people that were coming today, they were not coming tomorrow. We never had a client that went to our place to drink the shake every day. Never.”

This despite following Herbalife’s instructions to keep a list with each visitor’s name and phone number so Lopez could invite them back the next day. But people were busy, she says. I don’t have the time, they’d tell her. Maybe next week.

Meanwhile, in order to maintain their Herbalife discounts, Lopez and her sister-in-law had to keep buying more inventory — as much as $2,500 a month. (According to an Herbalife spokesperson, since 2013 all members have a money-back guarantee for unsold, unopened goods purchased in the past year. Lopez, however, would not have been able to avail of the policy.) To expand the club operation, Cecilia withdrew a few thousand dollars from her joint account with her husband, who became furious.

“Because he was telling us all the time that it was not working, it was a shitty business,” Lopez recalls. “And we were telling him, ‘No, no, no. You will see. Maybe the next month. Just wait.’”

And Lopez’s story is hardly unique. According to Herbalife’s 2014 pitch book, 88 percent of Herbalife’s nearly half a million U.S. members didn’t receive any payments from the company in 2012. Of those who reached supervisor level, with the prospect of monthly commissions, fewer than 1 percent (0.7) made $100,000 or more. Nearly 80 percent of those who did receive payments earned less than $1,000 for the year. Among the 47 members who made it to President’s Team level in 2012, where you can earn $10,000 per month or more, it took an average of nine years with the company.