Scam Warnings In Targeting Coaches Right Now

Most Recent Update October 13, 2024. 

Prior Update October 24, 2023

Prior Update September 20, 2019.

Dear Ethical Coach & Consultant,

This current updated scam warning is aimed to protect and to serve coaches and consultants who want to hire a coach or consultant and be sure they are in good hands, and also consumers who want to hire a coach or consultant so you can safely proceed with confidence.

Though thousands of researched profiles, our team uncovered that coaches and consultants you hire that follow these guidelines are usually honest. Not all coaches and consultants are scammers who don’t abide by these, but in all reviewed cases scammers were found in these categories.

Common scams to watch out for:

Hoax, Blackmail, Fake News Scams

Hoax scams are when a competitor (usually) or someone in a sub-niche (sub-competitor) makes up negative fake news, false accusations about you online, criticizes, condemns, or makes conspiracy theory’s about you online so they can try to bring awarness to their brand through attacking your good name. Typically, in private they try get money from you to go away.

It’s a duel form of blackmail and negative advertising (very ineffective marketing) at the same time. 

They try to hurt your business in order to gain business themselves and if that does work, they ask for a bribe to go away.

It happens when you build up a big name for a specific thing, they then create fake news about you online that might sound concerning to your audience, so they get ‘traffic’ or ‘awareness’ for their business. 

These competitors usually aren’t very successful in business, that’s why they resort to these time consuming, manual labore intensive, and time-wasting activities as a marketing strategy. 

They struggle to get clients but often sell these same methods to unsuspecting victims that they must do similar trade-hours-for-dollars practices to get any business. It’s a fraud of course. 

In private direct communication, they often say things to elude to paying them money for them to go away, and ask for money from their competitors who confront them about their hoax’s, lies, and deception but not without first trying to destroy your brand with extensive negative advertising strategies. 

The way to avoid this scam to be be wise to their tricks. They are adept at trying to seem like decent people as part of their facade. But behind the scene in private they are the opposite. When you see negativity and these tricks, you are informed to put them in this box of the troll scammer. Stay away from them. They are adept at manipulating prospects to think they are good people, but 100% chance they are this type of scammer. If you have a big name, they could come after you out of the blue using their negative advertising strategies of hoax’s, fake news, and condemnation all to try to gain clients from your good name whole trying to ruin your name and eventually alude to payment in private to go away. Yet, in their public facade they will say they never do this. If you don’t pay, they will double down, trying to get you to pay. They feel like it’s a win for them either way as they might get a unsuspecting client from attention they get using your good name, or a payment to go away. They use this often as part of their marketing strategy. When you see this sort of behavior, stay away from that individual. You’ll be well served.

No Money-Back Guarantee.

If any company doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee it’s because it’s a SCAM. Don’t think twice about it. Don’t do business with that scammer no matter how nice, credible, or honest they appear. It is one of the most common scam identifiers if any company doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee, look elsewhere.

Non-Specific Vague Testimonials.

Testimonials are non-specific in income results, and not from clients. Beware of scam testimonials that aren’t specific. If the testimonials are real, they will be very specific otherwise it’s just hype.

Any company should talk to the clients who gave testimonials to write it more specifically, even offering a revised ‘specific’ version for them to approve of based on their actual results so that the testimonial is clear, specific, and covers extra helpful truths of their experience with you. If clients don’t feel comfortable letting this truth be known, don’t use them then.

You want your testimonials to be in a specific format and reveal more intimate details and cover common theme details these clients are go through and share in common because it’s most helpful to the new client.

Any scam artist can make up vague, general, non-detail rich testimonials. This is the identifier. You should have specific results from any testimonial or reference you get. Because your clients aren’t professional writers, help them be most specific and make it convenient for them to do so because they are busy. Make sure all testimonials are 100% honest and their actual experiences. 

Ethical Standards.

Do they comply with a ethical standard that is clearly beneficial and puts the client first? If the answer is no, then don’t business with them. They don’t have a good heart and are acting like a scam. Simply make sure you avoid all such selfish-oriented businesses instead of client-happiness and high ethical standard oriented businesses.

The stamp of approval that has the highest ethical standards for the coaching and consulting industry is the Ethical Coaching WOW™ Stamp of Approval. It means your company has been verified and approved by this non-profit 3rd party ethical standard watchdog to ensure you are one of the highest ethical standard coaches and consultants around. If they don’t have the stamp of approval, then you should wonder why and should think why they didn’t apply for a free review to proudly display their ethical standards. It is free, and the non-profit board was created to ensure highest ethical standards for coaches and consultants. If they have this stamp of approval, you are on solid ground.

No SMART Goal.

Offering a vague non-specific promises only of riches, wealth, or multiplying income is a scam. It should always be spelled out in terms of specific, measurable, achievable, time-bound deliverable goals. This means, 500 sales, 200 sign ups, in 8-weeks, in 4-weeks etc… things need to be specific and clear or it is a scam. Avoid this and you’ll avoid being scammed.

Scammers like to keep the deliverable result vague because they don’t plan on you achieving anything. They just use hyperbole adjectives to entice you to buy something. If they are clear though, that is a sign it is legitimate and is not a scam. Even if it seems like a big promise, if it’s specific, they are being transparent and using a SMART formula which scammers don’t like to do. 

Google SEO (Google Search Engine Optimization) Scams

This very common scam is where usually a competitor or other business person uses your name as an SEO keyword in their content to rank #1-10 in Google for content they post using your name in forums, articles, websites, webpages, social media posts. 

These post typically ALWAYS use a negative advertising approach and associate your names with loaded negative words to discourage people from doing business with you and instead look to them. 

Words they might associate with your good name are scam, fraud, liar, con, scammer, and much more. 

This is very similar to the Hoax, Fake News, Blackmail scams. 

They often seek money in private communication to go away. They go so far as to attack your name, your family members and friends to get you to give them money. 

It’s a mixed strategy because if they don’t get their blackmail payment, they also try to get traffic or attention as it works as a dual strategy to get negative advertising too.

This is a method they use to get what’s called online ‘traffic’ or attention to their business through trying to damage your name and business. 

These people are always the real frauds, cons, and scammers and you’ll see it when they use this common SEO strategy when they use your name or someone else’s name and drum up controversy, critizism, and condemnation. 

They have never interacted or done any business with you either, but they don’t care about honesty. They care about their own survival and a way they try to stay alive and get some business is using this strategy. 

Unfortunately, Google and Social Media Platforms make it all to easy for their toxic, dishonest, leeching content to appear in the top rankings of Google Search Results. 

To deal with them, you can litigate which usually works very good. Or you can ignore it, realizing that it’s just the way the internet is today, and if you own a thriving membership continuity model coaching business with hundreds or thousands of monthly paying members, nothing they do matters. 

The only time you might need to litigate is if you didn’t have the monthly membership and your business relied only on Google or Social Media. 

You can bullet proof yourself from their scams by taking your business off these platforms for the most part and having a more successful coaching business with a membership model. 

Social Media Scam.

Beware of social media scams. Social media is proven to be one of the most ineffective marketing medias for acquiring new clients and growing your business at all major credible marketing associations in the USA, Europe, and Asia.

Beware of scam artist selling social media as the be all end all. It’s a lie.

The fact is, it’s highly ineffective platform for client/customer acquisition and you need a full campaign designed around a business goal that includes many medias to be successful. A real campaign that is SMART time-bound is the key concept.

Social media is designed to be an addictive platform that is proven to make people who use it more than 30 minutes per day in scientific studies more depressed. It wastes a lot of time and doesn’t make you financially free, nor grow your income to levels you need to be financially free. If someone is promoting any social media tactic or technique you can be sure they are a scam. A campaign isn’t ‘social-media’ and many of the highest earners, the most successful client-getting, membership building, proven campaigns for coaches and consultants are free from any social medias at all. In fact, in countless tests social media actually hurts overall campaign results and loses money.

Facebook Fake Group Scams.

Beware common closed Facebook group scams. In these scams the guru approves you and then posts content that you are to comment on positively or at most neutrally. If anyone comments negatively they will delete the comment and ban the person from the group without telling anyone.

In fact, they want everyone in the group to think it’s unedited, unfiltered, and there is freedom of speech. However, it’s just the opposite of an oppressive dictator. They commonly hire full time workers from India and Asia so that it’s monitored 24/7 so any negative comment will be instantly deleted and they’ll be banned, so they can control and manipulate the group members.

Then they have these full time $50 per month employees from Asia create 100’s of fake Facebook profiles and pretend like they are happy clients. They comment about how great their results were and even talk with the other group members who are sceptical and asking questions so it sells them. They are very good at making it feel and look real, but it’s completely all fake.

This is an extremely common scam going on right now, so much so, that if anyone has one of these Facebook groups, Scam Fighter’s knows it as a common duping scam.

Group Sessions And Big Piles Of Useless Training.

The way scammers like to keep you and extract more money from you is to not actually do it with you and for you, but host confusing group sessions that provide little to no real practical help that lets you get the results you need.

It’s ok if they are clear on the SMART goal for the deliverable, but these scammers often promise the moon and then don’t do what they need to do with you, actually help you do it with them. Instead they just host group sessions and tell you what you can easily read in a book or materials. It’s like reading a book or hearing a speech on heart surgery …

… Do you really think after the speech or book on heart surgery you can go out and perform heart surgery successfully? No way! You’ll just make a big mess and kill someone. The same is true for your coaching and consulting business. You need an expert to come along side of you and do with you or for you, so it’s a perfect, mistake-free, sure-fire operation. And there is no mess, and no one dies. If they don’t actually ensure your success and results in this way, run from them. They are a scam no matter how nice the wolf in sheep’s clothing appears on the surface. This shows their true colors.

These are the most common current scams in the market. Avoid them and you should be safe.

Approved By The Consumer Advocacy Report Team

Approved By The Chief of Consumer Advocacy And Scam Protection Advocacy Andrew Sonctranm