Business coaches, who are people that advise and guide business owners in the operating and growing of their businesses, can be quite helpful, particularly to entrepreneurs.  However, scammers posing as business coaches have been taking advantage of trusting business owners by selling worthless services to their unwary victims. I have reported on this scam numerous times in the past, but it is timely again with the recent filing of a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Jared Rodabaugh, Justin Larsen and their telemarketing companies who deceptively claimed that their business coaching services would help consumers form work-at-home businesses that would earn thousands of dollars each month when the reality was that their customers, who paid as much as $13,995 got little in return and ended up in heavy debt.
TIPS
Before hiring the services of a business coach, you may want to find out what helpful advice you can get for free through government agencies such as the Small Business Administration.   http://www.sba.gov/starting-managing-business
If you do decide to hire a business coach, you should find out if there are any complaints filed against him or her.  An easy way to do this is to just do a search engine search in which you look up the person’s name with the words “scam” or “complaint” and see what comes up. Also, be wary of paying up front for the services of business coaches before they provide any services.
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