Business coaches advise and guide business owners in the operating and growing of their businesses They 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. The FTC has recently announced that it is refunding money it received following a settlement of fraud charges against Internet Teaching and Training Specialists, a company which operated a phony business coaching scam. If you were a victim of this scam, you may be eligible for a refund. For more information about this refund program, click on the FTC Scam Refunds tab at the top of the first page of http://www.scamicide.com. There are no fees involved with receiving a refund through this program. Anyone contacting you about this refund program who demands a fee or payment of any kind is a scammer.
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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