ActionCOACH Business CoachingActionCOACH Business Coaching And Brad Sugars Like to take people's money, seem to not mind selling franchises to those who are not good candidates just to make money Las Vegas Nevada

As a former franchisee, I agree with many of the comments of the previous poster. I don't know about Brad Sugars running a "ripoff" - but on the other hand, I wouldn't go out of my way to do business with him again.

There are some great people in the Action organization, some very successful franchisees and some great work done with clients. But, like any big outfit, there are some aspects of the organization that are dysfunctional. And there is also a number of franchisees who never should have got involved with Action in the first place.

I estimate that about 2/3 to 3/4 of the coaches I went through initial training with had abandoned their coaching and given up their franchises within 2-3 years. I don't think they left because they were making too much money and having too much fun. (Be aware that there are ways for franchisors to deal with these failed franchisees so that these don't show up as unfavorable stats in the UFOC).

So, if you are looking at an Action Coaching franchise, or any franchise for that matter, I would say caveat emptor - accept no statement at face value, don't buy any sales hype and do take the time and get the help to carry out a thorough and complete due diligence BEFORE you invest.

I worked for a while with an ActionCoach M.L (Master Licensee responsible for developing the franchise in each state). I left when I realized what was going on.
Being an Action ML means you're in a pretty hard spot – between Action, or more accurately Brad Sugars, basically trying to milk *his* franchise for all its worth, and the franchisees who have invested a lost of money and a lot of faith in the Action system. Action HQ provides the initial training 11+3 days and a follow-up self learning course over 12 weeks called Team Success Academy with a 1-HR call each week. Other than that, pretty well all the ongoing training and support is provided by the MLs.
In the US, an ML usually provides such training and support by phone, mostly due to the great geographical distance between his office and his coaches. This means that most franchisees don't get to see much of their MLs. Since the initial training covers a lot of ground very quickly, most new coaches come back from the training both confused and not really knowing much. This is why the MLs are required to provide a lot of ongoing support. But, as I already said, because of the distances involved, this does not always happen as it should. In my opinion, this is already one major reason why so many people fail to make it as a successful coach.
As I am familiar with the coaching industry I really think anyone looking at this sort of career should look at going to a proper school and take the time to acquire real skills rather than the very superficial stuff handed out by Action. It would probably also cost a lot less!

Another major reason I believe so many people fail is candidate selection. The MLs have not only invested a lot of their own cash in buying their territory, they also have minimum performance targets to meet in terms of monthly royalties to Action, IE, the MLs have to pay a minimum monthly royalty figure whether they have the required number of coaches on their books or not. As a result, many (most?) MLs are pushed to sign on pretty well any candidate with cash who looks like he or she might make the grade. The MLs also have to do all the cleaning up once things go bad, which seems to happen pretty often.
If you're considering buying an Action ML territory, you should be aware that price per territory, minimum performance objectives and all other financial conditions are based on what Action thinks it can get away with. You might believe you're getting the same conditions as everyone else in the system, but you'll find out sooner or later that this isn't the case. Moreover, Action goes as far as warning the MLs in the system that they'll be breached if they disclose any of this type of information to ML candidates. My boss received the following e-mail last year:

Dear All,
It has recently come to our attention that prospects for our Master License opportunity (particularly throughout Europe) are engaging some of you on discussions regarding the confidential terms of your Master License Agreement. We take this opportunity to remind you that the terms including, but not limited to, Master License Fee, Royalty Splits, Marketing Fund contributions, Renewal periods, vendor finance terms (if any), Performance Requirement, Renewal fee, or any other economic or non-economic terms (“Terms”) of your Master license Agreements are confidential. That is, the Terms, are strictly between ActionCOACH and you. We do not consent to Master Licensees discussing the Terms of their Master License Agreement with third parties (other than your lawyers and financial/ business advisors).

Please be mindful that the Terms of your Master License Agreement are commercially sensitive. If we discover any breaches of the confidentiality provisions related to unauthorized disclosure of the Terms (including between Master Licensees) we will have no other alternative than to seek the appropriate remedies for the breach. We suggest that if a prospect or another Master Licensee (regardless of which country the Master Licensee or prospect resides) requests you to disclose confidential information related to your agreement that you simply inform them that such Terms are confidential and that you would be required to obtain written consent from the Franchisor to disclose that information and let us know that a request has been made for you to disclose confidential and commercially sensitive information.

If you have any questions in relation to the above, please call me to discuss.

NB. Also posted in this week's ML Update on Members.

Jason M. Cooksey
General Counsel-Global
ActionCOACH
The World's #1 Business Coaching Firm
5781 S. Fort Apache Rd.
Las Vegas, NV 89148
Phone: (702) 795-3188
Fax: (702) 795-3183
Cell: 702-374 4554

Another thing you find out is that all costs for franchisees (license fee, training fee, monthly royalties, annual conference, etc) in countries like Australia and New Zealand are far lower than anywhere else. Maybe this is because Brad Sugars comes from Australia but in any case they charge more or less the same nominal amount, forgetting US$1 = 1.4 Australian Dollars. These countries are always held up as examples to everyone else, but in fact they're playing the game in a totally different ball park. I personally think the cost structure in these countries is far more realistic and gives the franchisees a far better chance of making a success out it. I don't understand why a franchise has such different policies from one country to another as this can totally distort any comparisons you'd try to make.
I thought this post was necessary when I saw the other reports here and hope it helps people looking at this franchise to know what they are getting themselves into.

Nobody has encouraged or told me to add this update (or knows who I am even).

When I wrote the above statements I was very wrong in what I said and I had no right to make those comments. I wish i could delete the entire post. This is the first time I have learned my lesson of how things on the internet stay around. I apologize to Brad and to anyone who may have read the above post as it really is hear-say and unfair and I've since come to understand that most everything written is untrue. I was VERY frustrated (and afraid for my family financially) at the time of writing it and I was (unknowingly) blaming all of my shortcomings on Brad and Action. I've since learned the biggest lesson of my life: how damaging living "below the line" (i.e. not taking Responsiblity for my own shortcomings) is to myself and also to others. While at the time of writing them I thought they were true, I have unwittingly wronged Brad and Action in the above comments. ActionCOACH is a great company full of GREAT people, and I do believe that I targeted Brad just because he is the leader of it and because I resented the fact that he has lots of money. In the 7 months since posting that I've realized that I was living in a manner that was very damaging to myself and others and I hope that I will never return to that attitude and that I will never again engage in mud-slinging like i did in the above post. I encourage all of you reading this to consider that most people posting like this have chips on their shoulders and post these things anonymously out of frustration and to not place too much validity on anything that is said anonymously on the internet.

To address what I said about coaching and the franchise: it's BS. How well anyone does in this company is COMPLETELY up to us at every moment of every day. The ones who fail in this franchise fail because THEY failed, not ActionCOACH. Selling is tough. In this business you have to sell. I do believe that those who fail in this business fail usually because they're unwilling to do what it takes to be successful in selling themselves. At the time I wrote the above post I was NOT doing what I needed to do to be successful and I was blaming it on others. I'm very ashamed of myself and of that post. If you're considering buying an ActionCOACH franchise, know that it is just like anything else in life: if you're going to be successful at it, you have to DO what it takes to be successful at it. Period. If you do the right things, this business is great. If you're not willing to, it's hard and you probably won't do well at it. BUT, it's also a blast when you do what you should be doing. It's a GREAT way to make a lot of money and the rewards of helping other people achieve their goals are worth all the labors. It's a GREAT business for the right person.

Have just hit on this and believe you probably got it right in your first post. If you have done well with ActionCoach that's fantastic. You are part of the very small minority that does.

ActionCoach does everything in it's power to make sure that it is very difficult for anyone to get an accurate picture of how well it's franchisees do. Denying the facts, Brad Sugars claims that it is illegal to publish average earnings figures for franchisees but there is nothing illegal whatsoever about doing this as long as it is done in compliance with the rules covering item 19 of the FDD. Maybe the real problem is that the figures don't look too good.

On the 15th September 2009, on a blog called http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/248750/Brad-Action-Coach ,someone published a screen copy from the ActionCoach website www.actionmembers.com  showing average earnings for franchisees in the U.S.

The image was published on Imageshack and ActionCoach quickly had it removed but not before quite a few people downloaded the data, from June 2009, and this is what it showed.

Total Coachs:295

Bronze Level (grossing less than 6k/month):62.37%

Silver Level (grossing 6 - 12k/month): 20.68%

Gold and above (Grossing more than 12k/month): 16.95

This screen copy is attached to this report.

From these gross earnings franchisees need to deduct a monthly royalty of 1.8k, a monthly marketing fee of 5% plus their business expenses. Not too difficult to conclude that most franchisees are making very little money which makes it easy to understand why Brad Sugars is not a big fan of item 19 of the FDD.  

The number of Coaches, 295, is also an interesting figure because at the time, on Entrepreneur.com, ActionCoach was claiming to have 496 franchisees in the U.S. Even allowing for about 30 M.L.'s, it looks like the figure on Entrepreneur.com was overstated by at least 150.

In December 2009 ActionCoach revised the figure on entrepreneur.com down to 445 but counting the number of franchisees listed on the website www.actioncoach.com it is impossible to find more than 300 people.

It also appears that from a starting total of 310 people listed in the June 2008 FDD, 113 had left the ActionCoach franchise by September 2009.

All of that adds up to a lot of very big questions about what ActionCoach is up to and basically supports the conclusions in your first post.

Finally, the sites where third party information about ActionCoach can be found, such as Soulcast, have come under constant attack from spammers and hackers. In early September 09,  one of the most active and informative sites, unhappyfranchisee.com,  was taken out completely by hackers. No proof who did it of course but, given the facts, who do you think might be responsible?

 

 

In order to counter growing criticism through social media on the internet, May 2009 Brad Sugars created a whole bunch of new websites using his name including  one called www.askbradsugars.com 

On this site people ask questions and Brad provides his answers on a forum he can control. Among other things, this means you never get to see questions he might not have liked.

Nevertheless a couple of awkward questions have been published along with Brad’s answer. In light of the reality that emerges from the previous post the following question/answer sort of stands out.

“Hello Brad, In your marketing literature you state that a performing coach can expect to have yearly revenues of around 150k by the end of their second year. What percentage of coaches reach this performance level? Thank you, Mary Decker”

Revenues and earnings can only be discussed in a regulated environment. Contact your nearest ActionCOACH office for the relevant documents and disclosures that will help answer your question.

All the best.

Brad Sugars

 

By the looks of the previous post, the answer is very simple, about 16%. Really strange that Brad didn't feel comfortable saying that, isn't it?   

 

For a lot more very interesting info about ActionCOACH a good place to look is http://www.bluemaumau.org/brad_sugars_come_down_0

 

There are downloadable files on this site which provide a far more realistic picture of the ActionCoach franchise than anything you are likely to get from your nearest ActionCOACH office.

 

 

If you have found this thread  you have done very well because, since May 2009, ActionCoach has engaged in a massive campaign to remove all independent information about its business practices and track record from the web.

A year ago you would have found a blog called

www.soulcast.com/post/show/71156/Brad-Sugars-Action-Coach  

and another one called

www.unhappyfranchisee.com/category/franchisor/actioncoach/

which between them contained hundreds of posts alerting people to the dangers of dealing with this franchise. They also ranked very high on Google searches about ActionCoach & Brad Sugars so they were easy to find.

Since then both of these sites have come under massive attack from spammers and hackers and, while you might still find the content in other places if you try hard enough, today these sites no longer operate.  After a first series of attacks early last summer the Soulcast blog was renamed

http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/248750/Brad-Action-Coach

but even this site, which was already far more difficult to find than the original, has now been taken out.

Who benefits from this? Well, hardly those who are trying to find independent information about ActionCoach.  If however you thought that ActionCoach had some interest in preventing people from doing this then you might just think that this organization was involved in the sabotage.

Fortunately you can still find some interesting material about ActionCoach (formerly Action-International) on this site and with luck you can still find a lot of great material on http://www.bluemaumau.org/brad_sugars_come_down_0 mentioned in the previous post. The downloadable files include a list of the hundreds and hundreds of people who have quit the ActionCoach franchise since mid 2006.  There is also a post called Who Declared the War?  containing a note written by Brad Sugars in May 2009 with full details of his plans to eliminate all independent info from the web. He did not mention taking out “unfriendly” sites but the overall intent is pretty clear.

So, if you are thinking about joining ActionCoach and can no longer access even this last site then my advice to you is run far and fast.  You should already feel worried that there is so little independent info about ActionCoach on the web and now that you know that this is no accident but the direct consequence of ActionCoach corporate policy, you have even more reason to be suspicious.

BTW, if the allegations published here were untrue it would be very simple for ActionCoach to publish a rebuttal.

This is pulled from soulcast before the thread was made inaccessible by spam. A prospect shared his experience of Actioncoach's franchisee selection process. A former coach from Asia Pacific seemed to confirm prospect's experience in a later post :

I was an interested prospect once but my due diligence experience was so shady that I decided to back out. After reading this thread, I have no regrets.

I first met the ML in a “Ultimate White Collar Franchise” preview. She came across okay then. She had a coach with her during the seminar who gave very positive feedback about the business. She positioned the coach in the room as one of many who took turns to give back by helping out because they have all gained so much from the business. It was very impressive. However, during tea break, I found out that the coach was fresh out of their franchise training and he has not actually gone out to the market to do business yet. At this point, I was yet to get suspicious and brushed it off as coincidence and thought to myself, at least the franchise training works.

I continued the process to the point where I was asked to pay a 20K refundable deposit to get access to their franchise disclosure documents.

The first thing that hit me as not too professional was the ML tried to convince me to engage her lawyer. In fact her lawyer called me to offer her service too. One of the first thing her lawyer suggested was in order for her to protect my interest I should consider signing over ‘power of attorney’ to her asap. She said this in her initial call. She also inferred the ML negotiated a very good deal for us and that she knew the agreement inside out as compared to other lawyers. I was non-committal and immediately on the same day I received another call, this time from the ML. In this call, she claimed all her previous coaches have used her lawyer and further implied that by using a different lawyer, I might hinder the process resulting in delaying the opportunity to attend the franchise training by 3 months. She also insinuated I came across as not very genuine, this despite the fact I have already paid a 20K deposit!

At this stage, I started to have doubts as the series of calls seem like a well-rehearsed ML-Lawyer, but there was more to come.

After depositing 20K, I was also entitled to start my due diligence calls. I was urged to call a particular coach who was supposed to be doing very well and owned a firm of 4-5 coaches. This seems odd to me as this coach was the furthest away from me geographically; he was in fact from another state. All the other coaches were in the same state as I was. I called him nonetheless. He received my call eagerly and was even willing to reveal his finances to me if I were willing to make the trip. I contacted other coaches in the territory and none were as accommodating as this particular coach. Most told me they were not notified by the ML hence they were not obliged to speak to me. Those who did speak were inscrutable … giving hazy responses such as “I need to be very self-sufficient” and “It is a great business for someone who is willing to work very hard and expect very little local support”

Nevertheless I did obtain two very specific answers: none used the ML’s lawyer and none participated in the franchise previews as claimed (Except for a few who did it their first month back from franchise training.)

Upon further investigation, I managed to unearth a bit more about the coach the ML insisted I spoke to first. According to the industry grapevine, they were partners in a huge training contract. This raise interesting questions regarding the partiality of the coach.

This 'unholy trinity' of ML-Lawyer-Coach put me off. I immediately demanded a refund, which luckily for me they obliged. The peculiar thing was the ML seems oblivious of the fact that they were unprofessional throughout the entire process.

The former coach post to confirm the above:

If prospect is from Asia Pacific, then I can vouch for what he wrote. I am a former coach from that region, left a couple of years ago and lost 150K. I DID pay a deposit to get access to disclosure documents and I WAS pressured to engage the ML's lawyer. I took the ML’s lawyer’s word that deposit was normal and no-termination clause is also normal for franchises. It never occurred to me to ask the questions that prospect asked. I only found out she used the same routine on everyone after I get to know the other coaches.

IF prospect is not from the same region, then the conclusion is they use the same tactic in other regions.

I am glad I found this site. With this new knowledge, I will get a lawyer to revisit my agreement and our franchise act. Hopefully there is a way to salvage some of my investment.

The most disgusting part of the entire experience was not the money; it was the utter hypocrisy of the ML. Wife and husband portrayed themselves as spiritual people to convince me of their passion for others. I know some ex-coaches will not hesitate to spit on their faces if they ever bump into them.

I want to end my post with a question for Brad Sugars:

Brad, I believe you or someone from your organization should be monitoring this thread. I want to ask you a question. No, I am not going to ask you about coaches’ earnings or dropout rates or any of the other misrepresentation. You will not answer them anyway and the answers are not important to someone who already gave you 150K of his savings.

I have only met you once during my 12 months in Action, which was during the 10 day franchise training in Australia. You did the first and last day. You said then, I was joining a very different organization, different from everything I have ever experienced. You said the culture is not only preached but practised by all. You said if we can’t agree to that, we might as well leave then. It was impressive and I believe you meant it then.

So here is my question: EVERY coach that didn’t make it in the system, you and your MLs blamed it on not ‘following the system’ or not ‘doing the numbers’. Have it ever occurred to you that when a coach return from training, more often than not, he get an immediate BFO – my ML LIED to me about a LOT of things?

Brad, do you expect a person with value and integrity to just swallow it, ‘follow the system’ and be supported by the very hypocrite who sold him the license? Imagine being lectured on morality, integrity and consistency by the hypocrite who displays NONE of these values.

Brad, would YOU want to be coached and lead by the person who screwed you over before you even get started?

Sorry, that was three questions but I never got to ask you directly while I was in Action, your ML saw to that.

You can find old information - e..g hacked and delete pages re ActionCoaches as referenced - via various search sites such as www.archive.org which provides this one: http://waybackmachine.org.

Just enter the old url into the waybackmachine search box and it will find the old pages - thus restoring the deleted prior posts. Lets hope the hackers dont attack this source too.

Just wanted to update this as I stumbled upon it years later.  For those of you thinking about buying an ActionCOACH or action coach franchise, just know that I wrote that second post "I was wrong!" right after Brad Sugars warned us franchisees about going after people on the internet who were writing negative things about Action.  I was afraid they would find out who I was and do something to me (there's nothing they could do- I realize now- but I was seriously afraid back then about it).  The facts are as I stated in the original post- Action rips people off pretty regularly and I still advise anyone looking at buying one to be VERY careful and only do it if you are or know you can be an incredible sales person.  That and try look at what lots of people say on different sites about Brad and the MLs selling hype.  If you get emotional in the decision, you very likely will get screwed.  Take your time and be very objective.  

P.s. Nobody ever "wins" a franchise as they like to say.  You buy it.  Don't let them fool you into thinking you've got to qualify for it.  Their qualification process (the real one) is like this: can you pay the $75,000?  Yes? You're in.  OR- No? Can you borrow it?  NO?  See ya."  That's it. You win at horseshoes, not at buying a franchise.