Complaint Review: Action Coach OneCo LLC -

Buyer beware.

There have not been any reports of ActionCoach OneCo, LLC in a while, but it's certainly not because they have improved any of their business practices, morals, or ethics. I am a former employee of this organization who was responsible for providing support to franchise owners and I advise you to run as far as possible away from this "investment." There’s a reason this ML only sold two franchises in all of 2023.

In fact, last year the ML dissolved more franchises than they sold because it's almost impossible for the average coach to make any money in this business.

First, the cost of the franchise is $100,000 ($75,000 for a franchise fee and $25,000 for training.). If candidates do not have that money available, they are encouraged to finance their firm, to the point that people are told to take out loans against their homes. Then after only three months and long before they have ever signed their first client, minimum royalty payments of $1950/mo start.

Unless a candidate has a particular personality type (loves sales, is great at networking), they are unlikely to be successful, though they downplay the sales aspect dramatically during the sales process. Among my responsibilities was collecting the end of the month bankings from coaches. A handful of coaches do really well and they skew the averages that are reported. Many coaches do not gross more than about $5-8k per month and after royalty payments, 5% marketing fees on top of that, operating expenses, any loan payments that have to be made, etc. coaches couldnt be taking home more than about $1500-2500 a month. Those meager earnings are after you will invest 80 hour weeks hustling, because this is not a lifestyle business.

The organization talks a lot about marketing and lead generation for coaches. In the more than one year I was helping firm owners, not one coach had a client materialize from a lead provided by ActionCoach, if leads were provided at all.

One of the things Action Coach sells itself on are “systems'' that simply do not exist. The Global office is a chaotic mess and deplorable with communication. The so-called “coaching system” they have is a disorganized Sharepoint site with broken links..Marketing materials are developed in Canva and are the most rudimentary of desktop publishing.

They also sell themselves on their training. There is an initial ten-day training that seems designed to engulf coaches in the AC Culture rather than give them practical training running their business. These ten days will be 10-12 hour grueling days of information thrown at you like a fire hydrant, designed to overwhelm you. When coaches return from training, they are motivated, but still have no idea how to start or run this business. After ten-day training, what you get in the way of continuing education amounts to endless hours of video of Brad Sugars talking. Many of the training videos are outdated and clearly recorded in the late 90’s/early 2000’s and promote old, stale business ideas that are simply tone deaf in any modern business environment. Coaches who struggle (and most do) are then instructed to get and pay for a Master Coach through ActionCoach. This will be at least a few hundred a month.

This company does not operate like one that has been in business for 30 years, but more like a dysfunction startup that has not figured it out yet. After seeing what’s under the hood in this company, if you have $100k to invest in your own business,do not give it to Brad Sugars.