Multi Level Marketing and Friends is a Bad Mixture?

Multi Level Marketing and the friends and colleagues you hold in high esteem seem to mix like oil and water. The question posed below is reminiscent of why Multilevel Marketing gets a bad name: I have this colleague at work who keeps trying to recruit me in his MLM team and I can't get him off my back. I know that in general these schemes are doomed to fail, that most of them are scams and the ones who make the money are the ones on top of the pyramid. I just don't want to get involved but he keeps showing me pamphlets and talking about all those "simple" people who got rich. The question I dread the most is "WHY" - "Why are you so sure it won't work?", "How can you be so prejudiced when you haven't even tried it?" and so on. And since "just a gut feeling" doesn't sound a reason enough to reject "such an opportunity" now I'm asking for an explanation exactly why MLM schemes are considered a failure. Thanks.Now suffice it to say I've been involved over my lifetime with a few Multilevel Marketing companies and the strategy for recruiting people into my down line was always the same old cookie cutter approach, go tell ALL your friends/family members and colleagues about the "gift" or wonderful opportunity you have been given! Its amazing really when to stop to think about it, a gift? Really do you truly think that hounding and badgering the people closest to you is a gift?Now back to reality. Here is the deal folks, Multilevel Marketing is a genuine opportunity to own and run your own business PERIOD. Its how you go about the daily activities of running and ultimately building your business that matters. Its true that the failure rate of people starting a MLM business is extremely high but so is any sales related occupation. Whenever I hear the statistics of this business it actually makes me a happy camper for this single reason, LESS competition! I can live with a 98% failure rate, its what separates the players from the wannabees.I firmly believe that if you are determined and set your mind to "success" mode there is no stopping you at succeeding in this industry, and if you do the rewards are better than in any other industry I've ever come across! That being said there are more productive ways to going about building a successful MLM business than trying it the old fashioned way as outlined in the above question.