UK blogger/influencer Sarah Akwisombe has been the focal point of a major 2020/2021 controversy involving unethical selling of courses to the female SME sector, failed service delivery, false claims around revenues and results, and refusal to refund over £200k to clients affected by non-delivery of service.
The considerable potential to negatively impact the reputation of organisations she was working with (and has worked with previously), resulted in almost all of them taking steps to distance themselves from her, some with public statements on social media and some quietly and unannounced.
A brief summary of key events is below, followed by links to the national and international media coverage of the fallout from the situation:
- Sarah Akwisombe she was going to make a million pounds in lockdown and show everyone how she did it
- At the same time, launched multiple new group coaching courses as well as 1-2-1 coaching services
- Service levels for both group coaching/courses and private clients fall short after 4 months. People are unhappy
- Late September saw Sarah share a video saying she had "made a million".
- Days later, Sarah posts a video saying she had let everyone down, the service was poor, remaining months on the courses were cancelled
- Transpired the million pounds included forward booked business, so approximate splits were £600k banked, £400k forward booked and not yet billable
- Sarah Akwisombe
Deleted multiple social posts and videos as clients started to demand refunds
- Sarah starts blocking anyone who questions her
- Some people have been able to reclaim refunds from their banks, which is good news, many others still fighting. Sarah claims £75k refunded. At least £200k of refund claims currently being fought for by clients.
Links to all Tattle threads:
https://tattle.life/tags/sarah-akwisombe/
Links to key media and assets:
Undelete - all deleted social content
https://uk.undelete.news/account/5834#/
Refinery29
https://www.refinery29.com/amp/en-gb/money-manifesting-life-coaching-instagram
Women on Top part 1
https://www.thewotpod.com/article/scams-dressed-female-empowerment
Women on Top part 2 https://www.thewotpod.com/article/scams-dressed-female-empowerment-part-2
Women on Top part 3 https://www.thewotpod.com/article/scams-dressed-female-empowerment-podcast
Metro
https://metro.co.uk/2020/12/04/why-...3696780/#metro-comments-container?ito=cbshare
The Independent
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/money-manifesting-courses-finance-covid-19-739366
Vice
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7agxa/does-manifesting-money-work
Medium
https://vivifriedgut.medium.com/the-money-manifestation-myth-2ca61ebd974b
Polit RU
https://m.polit.ru/article/2020/11/27/experimentmoney/
l'Atelier Magazine (BNP Paribas Financial Services)
https://atelier.net/insights/infinitely-evolving-exploitable-you-influencer-coaching
Novara Magazine
https://novaramedia.com/2022/03/23/self-help-culture-is-a-lie-but-its-opposite-is-just-as-bogus/
Video clip where Sarah Akwisombe says all that matters was getting money in, never mind about servicing the business
https://twitter.com/Moregeous/status/1336407522010423296?s=20
Akwisombe and her attempted use of Caroline Flack's anniversary, resultant fallout and revelations from victims
15/02/21 saw Sarah Akwisombe face a huge social media backlash, as well as massive outrage on multiple Tattle threads, after she attempted to leverage the anniversary of Caroline Flack's suicide to deflect attention from herself, likening the threads and social media communities of her victims (who were sharing knowledge and supporting each other in legal claims for refused refunds) to the tabloid press in the Flack case, before going on a second attack, calling users of Tattle "dutty human beings":
This resulted in a considerable outpouring from women who had been vulnerable during the Smashing It course, and now were suffering serious mental ill health effects as a result of being scammed. All these testimonials can be found on page 3 onwards on Tattle thread #10 about Sarah Akwisombe:
https://tattle.life/threads/sarah-a...a-grandmaster-or-just-a-conwoman.15484/page-3
January 2022 relaunch attempts and apparent financial problems
In January 2022, the first indications of Sarah Akwisombe urgently needing to generate revenue streams became apparent. In the space of just a couple of weeks, she changed all bios to say "formerly NBBS" and made multiple references to updating her CV and LinkedIn profile.
Subsequently, Akwisombe then started to market £650/mth group coaching for a maximum of 6, which had no syllabus and appears to have been thought up on a whim. When that went knowhere, she tried to set up a book club/discussion group about her own book, but again this seems to have fallen at the first hurdle.
It appears that every few days, Sarah Akwisombe is trying to find a revenue source, and the ill-considered product offering and frequency suggests jumping from one idea to the next with no strategy and no uptake.
Boss Magic has been rebranded to Not That Deep, but already looks set to follow it's previous incarnation into obscurity, having seen orders in the tens, despite Akwisombe trying to position the relaunch as a success.
