Heard of Vemma? Vemma is a business specializing in nutritional wellness drinks.  If you’re like me, you or at least one of your friends has been confronted by a member of this business in hopes of recruiting them as a partner. In the past 6 months or so, I have heard a lot about this company and it’s caused me to question how much it would really be worth it to invest in such a business. It’s main income, however, actually seems to be coming from the investment it makes on how many people are recruited by its members rather than how many actual drinks the members are selling.

While signing up is free, in order to actually begin maintaining a profit in the business, one must first buy a “builder package.” This allows the new Vemma employees to start passing the products out to their peers in hopes of gaining more brand partners for the company. These builder packages, however, can cost up to $500, and if a member runs out of supply, they’re expected to buy more with their own money. I don’t know about you, but if I’m hoping to join a business in order to make good profit, I don’t want to be spending my income on more of what I just sold. The products that you’d be spending so much money on are also making outrageous claims, ranging from weight-loss propositions to immunity boosting miracles. However, none of these products have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. On top of all of this, if a member of Vemma decides that he or she no longer wishes to be a part of the company, it is an extremely long and tricky process to cancel their membership.

As well as their sketchy path to becoming a brand partner for the company, Vemma focuses on recruiting high school and college students. Of course, these groups of young people are broke and many of us are unsure how likely we are to find a job after graduation. Knowing that this feeling of financial insecurity is evident in many people of that age-range, Vemma has come out with a series of over-the-top promises that assure those who join Vemma that they will become wealthy, BMW-owning entrepreneurs in a matter of months. If you take the time to read between the lines, however, you’ll see in Vemma’s income disclosure statement that around 75 percent of its distributors make less than $1,400 a year and only 1 percent make it to $100,000.

From what I’ve seen, newly recruited members of Vemma are absolutely sold on the promises of the company. They’re assured by the company representatives that with enough effort and time put into their recruitment and advertising for the company’s product, they will be earning a substantial amount of money in a much shorter amount of time than an average college graduate would be able to make in their entire lifetime. Seeing the positivity and confidence this concept gives to these Vemma brand partners, I cannot justifiably say that there are no good outcomes of being a part of the business. Obviously it deeply affects the attitudes and motivational skills of the people involved. But what happens when all of their effort still isn’t able to make them the profit and success they thought it would? Surely it isn’t because these people aren’t dedicated to their work. I’ve seen the way Vemma transforms the thought-processes of their employees, and I’ve experienced first-hand how devoted these young, amateur entrepreneurs are to making it big through the company. Vemma is not built on a strong enough foundation to have its employees make the sort of income it assures them they will. If you want to actually make the amount of money Vemma promises, you’d have to advertise the product to almost every person you saw for the rest of your life.

So for those of you who are in Vemma or who are being confronted by members of Vemma, I’d like you to consider what you’re getting yourself into before risking the loss of thousands of dollars that could have been used to your advantage. While the optimism and motivational drive it’s granting young adults across the country is great, the negative effects it can have on our wallets and our overall confidence are too detrimental to make up for it.