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Sarah Akwisombe, an Instagrammer known for her No Bull Business School with a very engaged female following and what seemed like a decent online business with some history in music and interior design, started selling group coaching and individual coaching with herself marketed as way to empower women to develop their business ideas and existing businesses. She seemed to have quite a success with it given this coincided with lockdown and fear of economic downturn felt by many in Sarah's mainly female audience. She was also on the way to publishing a book called The Money is Coming based on her money manifesting method and business tips. All this success seemed quite inspiring for some especially as Sarah seemed to have been doing very well with it all. In June she introduced her mentor, Llewelyn 'Llewy D' Davies also known as tttofficialuk and by her own account he was the man pushing her to all this success through his amazing mentoring, having been a 7 figure earning man himself. She said that he has not appealed to her initially as she thought he was brash and loud about his success and naff but then decided to stop judging him and when she finally put those judgements aside she met him and liked him. Having introduced him as a successful coach and given him credibility as someone she approved of, she started selling group coaching with him, with up to 250 participants at the time called Smashing It. It was all heavily documented on social media and also aggressively marketed as one in a million chance to be coached and empowered to make money. Once one course was set up and sold and stories of apparently happy customers were shared constantly through Sarah's account, aggressive selling begun for follow up courses with Sarah and Llewy. Again, those courses were marketed as long-term propositions with ongoing support for 6-12 months to help people launch successful businesses. Sarah's book was published in August to apparently great acclaim and became a Sunday Times Bestseller. Other offshots of the group coaching were hosted by Sarah and Llewy such as exclusive events with a subset of the SI group in hotels. All the while, Sarah was doing a countdown to a million often talking about how much she was making - hundreds of thousands of pounds apparently, never stopping and posting pictures of daily workouts as motivation. This was a departutee from her usual manifesting method which is much more gentle. Designer shoe and bags were showcased as signs of success as well as a garden office being custom built for Sarah to run her business from. Sarah also told customers not to get in touch as she was getting a lot of standard logistics DMs from customers and said she was building her business quickly so people had to wait.
Mid September Sarah hit the million, announcing this with her mentor Llewy by her side. Weird vibes were felt as Sarah did not seem pleased at all with the achievement she apparently worked on so hard to get and there was no outward celebration of it.
Few days after, Sarah posted some cryptic stories saying that she needed to take a break having been going at an unsustainable speed for the last few months. She also did a tearful Live video where she explained that she lost her way but could not explain any details but acknowledged that she ignored her gut instinct and that she has not been delivering her usual value with work she recently sold but was at pains to point out that she was a willing participant in whatever she has done to date. She also called out Tattle and told us to duck ourselves or words to that effect.
In the meantime Tattle crew has done some digging on LLewelyn Davies and it turns out that despite him apparently living millionaire lifestyle as a successful business coach with a blonde wife in a Tudor mansion, his companies listed have minuscule turnover and that the mansion is rented and there is no evidence of his 1.7 mil of earmings Sarah gave in his CV.. Also that Sarah and Llewy have a company together the've set up in September called No Exit. It also seems that he is what is now termed a Contrepeneur using NLP techniques to sell coaching aggressivelywithout much substance and that him and his brother (also a coach) have been buying followers on Instagram in 20-30K while apparently coaching others how to grow successful online business.
From then onwards, disgruntled SI customers were waiting for refunds from the cancelled courses who have also reflected on the value they got from the courses as well as group coaching she sold prior to Lewy getting involved. When they read Tattle they've realised that the millionaire coach muscle man was anything but that and some decided they wanted to have refunds for the whole SI given they were misled into trusting a conman. Customers also gave accounts of poor customer service, radio silence from Sarah for days and learning about a potential fallout between Sarah and Llewy from them unfollowing each other. Accounts of bullying and silencing criticism by Sarah's acolytes in Facebook groups set up to support SI were given pushing customers to find support on Tattle given that Sarah signposted it a number of times. Interestingly, some people from group coaching sessions Sarah sold pre-Llewy gave accounts of those being rushed and ill prepared.
Many customers stated that FOMO was a major factor in them buying courses as the marketing tactics made them sound like the only place to be with limited number of places - even those who did not buy in the end admitted to having been very tempted. Whatever it was Sarah and Llewy were doing was working. Upselling was rife where people from one course were immediately marketed to to buy to another.
Sarah finally spoke to her customers via the SI Facebook group being surprised at the reactions of her customers and requests for full refunds, saying that she thought she delivered value and that she thought that her customers 'had her back'. Also said she needed to focus on saving familyt and business which was odd in finacial terms as for the last few months she kept sharing revenues that were going into 6 figures. Customers on Tattle told stories of waiting for refunds, wanting to have direct contact with her or at least have confirmation of what happened given the coaching made them open themselves vulnerably with their personal lives.
There was also some serious human cost to Sarah and Llewy's shabby tactics as some women on the course were given advice to cut dead wood and left relationships or alienated those close to them who tried to question what they were involved in which is a standard MLM tactic and were left in a lurch after course that was meant to last 12 months ending abruptly with no explanation. Others were simply upset by having been taken in and led to this by someone they trusted and could relate to ie. Sarah, as many put aside their reasonable doubts about Llewy thanks to her recommending him personally. None was given.
Llewy D did a ranty sweary igtv on his own Instagram complaining about online trolls (Tattle being onto him) where he displayed intimidating levels of aggression leaving some to ponder how it must have been for the women, Sarah included to be coached by a man like that. It was also evident that he was selling more courses on the fly, contacting the people in the Facebook group for 1-2-1 coaching without having any infrastructure to deliver, given the SI experience people had.
Until today the story was mostly contained on Tattle with a curious ring of silence around it on Instagram but as of yesterday a number of women from SI course started coming out speaking about Llewy D and a horrendous experience they had with him as 1-2-1 coach branding him a misogynistic bully but saying that it had nothing to do with Sarah. Hair raising account was given of Llewy talking about other clients and their financial situations and private lives as well as being agressive and intimidating.
Sarah promised to refund people who requested SI refunds. Some received those, some are still waiting and want this Tattle thread to continue to hold Sarah to account as all the sales seemed to have gone through her shop front.
Llewy D has food poisoning apparently which seemed to have coincided with stories about him breaking from women who felt defrauded by him. His brother Rhys is advertising for an event in a hotel promising yet another millionaire making event this weekend
This story is still developing.
Have I missed anything? ;-)
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Sooooo much for empowering women and lifting each other up.