I am not self-employed (earned income), but some say I could be easily (EBay, MLM, etc.).3.

However, I went to the first meeting and the main speaker was an out-of-town guy giving a super high-pressure sales job for some MLM program called "Financial Education Services Protection", which didn't actually have anything to do with real estate, other than he was pitching us to pressure credit challenged prospects into buying this (my opinion) predatory program.

Even if you can't buy direct I'm sure they could get you in touch with a distributor in your area.

Avoid coming off as a first-time flipper, it will cost you more $$ as well.Find yourself a local carpet distributor / sundries supplier (tack strip, glue, flooring tools, misc other little things).

IE wholesaling but that takes money and major sales skills.. and a market that has a lot of excess inventory and rental inventory.. it really depends on where your living and working.. all the guru training materials say just about the same thing there is nothing brand new .. just the same methods or schemes repackaged and regurgitated to enduce those who want it all now and are willing to pay for fast track.think MLM..

My second event i went on Craigslist to find an ad came across an ad saying Become a real estate investor earn while you learn, thought i give it a shot this guy was telling me about Renatus and great mentors they had he invited me to a meeting in south jersey on a Thursday night to watch a guy name scott rowe who has made millions of dollars off real estate education, before i went i had to research what renatus was and who these people the guy was telling me about needless to say i was skeptical about rowe and this guy name brian meara they said he does shortsales and i ask the guy who invited me what shortsale was and he said the host will tell me, sounded like he didnt know what it was either, for the most part all he said was that this was an opportunity of a life time, wasn't sold on that either so i sat there for about an hour and 20 minutes listening to scott say he was from Chicago show me picture of  his community a pie chart how to get into renatus how to pay for very expensive education how to get the money blah blah blah caught in quick that this was an mlm meetup.

Are they also a MLM?

I've looked online at foreign distributors but don't want the hassle.

Over the years there's been slight loss of population, loss of a major beer distributor. 

I have worked with a number of CRE-space competing businesses such as a wine/liquor distributor who have found it more difficult to find commercial space since the MJ community has aggressively snatched up most of the competing space.