I am obviously not considering
joining that sort of an enterprise, but I wonder if anyone had friends
or family get involved, and what happened.

The last time I looked into it, their cleaning products and
concentrates were almost a good buy, but made up a very small fraction
of the product line. To keep your numbers up enough to keep your
distributorship, you basically needed to buy all your household items
from them, but everything other than the cleaning products, and maybe
their vitamins was massively overpriced and bottom tier quality/
features (home electronics, etc.). It may not be strictly a pyramid,
but the playing field isn't level, either. Just smile, shake your
head, and walk away.