jeunesse-logoAlthough it was more of a pitch for Jeunesse by Luke Hessler, a former top earner in Vemma, Alex Morton did speak for a good fifteen minutes in an attempt to clear the air.

The platform of choice was a two-part Periscope video titled “The Truth Call” parts 1 and 2.

Hessler waffled on for the first part of the call and start of the second (he referred to it as the “decision call”), with Morton taking over about a quarter of the way through.

Like I said, it was mostly a pitch for Jeunesse (Hessler has ditched Vemma for Jeunesse following the FTC bust), but Morton did reveal some backstory to his own decision to leave Vemma.

truth-call-alex-morton-jeunesse-vemma-ftc-aug-2015According to Morton (right), he began to feel things weren’t quite right at Vemma after his father informed him his business was in decline.

About eighteen months ago my dad started tracking numbers, he’s a numbers guy, and every week he would basically tell me that, y’know, we weren’t really growing.

A lot of the weeks we were having negative autoships, like negative growth you would say. Decay, or whatever you want to call it.

Morton does not mention retail sales as a measure of his business declining, only affiliate autoships.

I was gung-ho the whole time. I mean I literally never stopped.

Some of my top leaders took breaks, some of my top leaders they did other endeavors, some of them did other things. They lost passion for it but I just kept beating the drum.

I kept going, I kept recruiting, I kept enrolling, I kept building. Y’know I sponsored a lot of phenomenal people but it just kept going down.

Again Morton doesn’t mention efforts to market Vemma products to retail customers. The business model inside the YPR movement within Vemma very much appeared to focus solely on affiliate recruitment.

With his business crumbling, Morton claims the “last straw” was Vemma’s most recent convention.

I was standing back stage, y’know, just kind of thinking to myself and going over what I wanted to talk about.

Somebody walks off stage and y’know I’m going up on stage … doing my thing and for the first time in my career, I walked off stage and I didn’t believe what I’d said.

I literally did not believe what I was saying on stage.

Morton claims his suggestion to source “better leadership training” was met with ridicule and hostility by other Vemma leaders.

That to me was kind of the beginning of the end.

Claiming to be “super emotional” after the event, Morton then set his parents off to go and scout out other MLM opportunities.

Morton maintains that while his parents evaluated potential MLM opportunities for him to join, that he continued to focus on “building Vemma”.

After a few weeks Morton’s parents got in contact with Jeunesse affiliates. Under a seal of secrecy, Morton met with Jeunesse affiliates in Vegas and Mexico, eventually opting to leave Vemma and sign up himself as a Jeunesse affiliate.

Morton insists his decision had nothing to do with the FTC investigating Vemma, which he claims he had no knowledge of.

As a leader, when you see your people’s checks crash, month after month and week after week… and your only qualified Presidential six-figure earner is your younger sister, as a leader who actually cares about their team – it doesn’t just eat you up inside.

I mean I was getting panic attacks, I was just not right. I was sick, I was crying myself to sleep.

Our intention was not to drop a bomb on this company. Our intention was not to cause a riot to this company, y’know.

We had no idea about this FTC thing. We had no idea that Vemma was going to shut its doors and get closed down.

Y’know I’m a firm believer that we had guardian angels watching over our family.

How else do you explain four weeks before the company that, y’know you were a bit part of, a big brand, a big face of the company, and four weeks later when you leave the doors get closed – and you have the “Plan B” ready for everybody else.

And there you have it, according to Morton, he had no idea the FTC were investigating Vemma, much the less about to shut them down.

Definitely one of the biggest coincidences I’ve seen in the MLM industry yet.

Meanwhile whilst acknowledging perception of his persona is that of a “loud mouth, arrogant, cocky dickhead who’s only concerned about money”, Morton acknowledged he “made mistakes” in Vemma.

According to Morton though, Vemma themselves should shoulder some of the responsibility for that perception and mistakes made.

I’ve always been kind of the “rah rah guy” for B.K. and his company.

Get everybody excited and jacked up, and screaming “I will win” and “We’re going to the moon, we’re going to a billion”… Y’know that was a the role that was given to me.

I fit it, y’know I think I’m a fairly decent speaker. I ran with that role.

And y’know what, at twenty-one or twenty-two, when you’re giving a kid thirty to fifty thousand dollars a month… what do you think is going to happen?

And the company is pumping you with everything you want. Y’know they took us on private jets, we had a care program, it was built around lifestyle and luxury – which fed into this entire persona.

I grew up in a midwest town called Bexley, Ohio and I had a hundred and six kids in my highschool graduating class.

Y’know I’m a normal kid and today I’m back to that normal kid. I’m not loud, I’m not obnoxious anymore.

I’m twenty-six in two months and this time I’m not gunna go into Jeunesse… this time we’re gunna do it the right way.

Morton doesn’t elaborate on what exactly “the right way” means to him, or how it differs from how he built his Vemma business.

Thus far all I’ve seen personally is the continuation of the autoship recruitment mess in Vemma, switched over to Jeunesse.

Are things really all that different this time around, or are we looking at Jeunesse being built up as Vemma 2.0?