The amazing geniuses
Michael Kohler – reviews and experience reports
Kohler is one of the best. I’ll open with this because nothing sets the tone of this site better than Michael’s videos.
Don’t bother watching the whole thing. From Mike’s opening “Hey guys, what’s going on?” to his promise at the end to show you how to do this “for real”…that’s a load of terrible garbage. You could be forgiven for thinking it was a parody.
But take 30 seconds between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m. to watch the film. Just half a minute guys, you know what I mean? The effort is worth it, I promise. Yo, it’s awesome.
Update 2021 February: Sorry guys, he realized how embarrassing this video was and took it offline! But Here is a discussion about it if you scroll halfway down this page.
Dan Pena – THE TRILLION DOLLAR MAN – reviews and testimonials
Old Dan always called himself the $50 Billion Man, but he decided that wasn’t bullshit enough and promoted himself to the Trillion Dollar Man.
Dan calls his seminar “Quantum Leap Advantage.” Here is Dan’s website But I can’t imagine why on earth you would want to go there.
Dan’s videos on YouTube and elsewhere are full of profanities that might make you think he’s a real lunatic. He’s not half as successful as he imagines. Or a tenth as successful. But as he claims in the video below, his left testicle produces more testosterone than anyone else in the room (3:05 to 3:15), seriously!
You will enjoy Mike Winnet’s Contrapreneur Bingo, Dan Pena edition:
Please don’t stop here. Check out Tom Nash’s review Here. “If God created Dan Pena, he must have been drunk at the time.”
Roland Frasier – reviews and testimonials
Roland is a lawyer in the USA and, how his side says he will give you “8 Proven Strategies for Acquiring a Business with Little or No Capital Investment.”
Roland’s program is called EPIC
Of course it is! EPIC apparently stands for Ethical Profits In Crisis. So join him and your journey will be EPIC. This is the message you need to take away.
And Roland brings you all of this for just $55 (it was previously $997. Don’t miss the big cross at $997 so you can see what a great deal you’re getting. The price is dropped from $997 to $55!).
The problem, however, is that it’s not actually $55. You pay $55 to participate in a pitch. By paying the $55, you show what kind of cup you are, so you’re ripe for the upsell and get sold the other product — the $2,000 package!
$2000? This is an investment, brother. That’s what serious entrepreneurs do — they invest in themselves! Are you a serious entrepreneur or not? You’ll make much, much more than $2,000. Finally, as the title suggests, you can Discover 5 no cash down offers within 5 days!
What Roland doesn’t tell you is that he was accused of fraud, settled with the SEC (the US financial regulator), and was banned from practicing law: more here.
A colorful character for sure, but so are all 1 pound Charlies!
Perry M Anderson – reviews and testimonials
Perry (LinkedIn profile) conducts what he also calls a “4‑week live M&A seminar”.
You can avoid reading his pitch by not clicking this link. He describes himself as a “private equity investor.” I don’t know if this genius is having trouble selling his courses, but here is an excerpt from his website:
£5,000 reduced to £950? Wow, that’s a discount! Or is it the typical fake guru tactic of trying to give you more value than you actually get? Who says it’s worth £5,000? I bet he picked a random number to make the £950 look good.
But Perry’s side is best summed up with this cliched image:
The subconscious message I want you to take away is that if you pay him £950 you will learn all his tips and become so rich that you can trade in your broken Nissan for a better car.
However, the photographer made a mistake here. The obligatory hot babe on the hood — seen in all Get Rich Quick promotional photos — is not in the picture!
Jeremy Harbor – reviews and testimonials
Where do I start with this?!
Jeremy from Harbor Club (LinkedIn profile) founded one of the first Buy A Business courses in the UK. To be fair, he doesn’t take a line that people like Jonathan Jay do. that for £1 you can buy a solid, established and profitable business. Showing a level of honesty not found in some others, he reveals that the £1 deal is best suited to a distressed business, a run-down case on which to spend oodles more money and time if you want to “turn it around”.
But like the others, Jeremy exaggerates, spouts half-truths and otherwise bluffs. Here it is an exchange with him in a forum thread That might give you an idea of how he operates. (Jeremy posts under the username @unitygroup.)
When the forum discussion wasn’t going well for him, a henchman stepped in, one of his employees, pretending to be a happy customer and giving him a glowing review…until she got caught!
Henchmen are quite common at £1 Charlie seminars. “Gurus” often cast characters who claim to have followed the guru’s advice extremely successfully.
Jeremy often claims to be runner-up for Coutts Entrepreneur of the Year three times in a row. I couldn’t find any information about this award. It’s probably a made up thing. He wouldn’t have thought up one to bestow on himself, would he? I don’t know.
A typical bullsh*t line from Jeremy (by The forum thread above): “I personally haven’t bought a loss-making or turnaround company in probably 5 years, they have all been profitable and are usually looking for a profit of 500k to 5 million, occasionally a little smaller or a little larger. Never with cash from me, everyone wins and wins. Deals that work for both sides and are designed to create value for everyone involved.”
If you feel like doing some digging, this thread on Reddit has some interesting links and backstories to what appears to be a checkered past.
Gordon Bizar – reviews and testimonials
Here’s good old Gordon’s page. First let yourself be impressed by the yacht in the video. Then let yourself be impressed by the stylish car. He doesn’t actually claim to own this stuff, but that doesn’t matter. Idiots will come away with the subliminal message that they too can have it all!
From Gordon’s site: “The Essentials Program teaches you how to buy and build a business without your own money using leveraged buyout techniques.”
Techniques that old Gordon supposedly invented himself. Of course he did. Like all the other people listed on this page.
And if you act today you can get 40% off the $500 price. Damn, that’s only $200 off! Didn’t he get the memo explaining how this was done? You have to claim it’s worth thousands — like $4,997 or $9,997 — and then discount it to the price you’re asking today.
Gordon, go RTFM.
Jonathan Jay – reviews and testimonials
Update from September 2024:
The following review of Jonathan Jay upset Jay so much that he sued me for libel in the London High Court in 2020, shortly after this article was published. Long story short, the case lasted almost two years and…he lost.
That’s why I’m now using the words I didn’t use before and saying directly that he is a fraud, one of the biggest frauds of our time. Learn more about the shady tactics he teaches in his courses here.
The original review
(Note: The link in the first sentence goes to a site that had a nice review about JJ, but it was removed from the internet — he probably sued the hosting company. He does that a lot.)
A more detailed review is Here. And the image below, showing just some of Jonathan’s piggies, is from this site:
Summary: A very skilled internet marketer (and former stage hypnotist!) who took Jeremy Harbor’s course — we know because he recorded a video testimonial for Jeremy — and later realized that selling courses like Jeremy’s was much more profitable than trying to buy companies for £1, so he reinvented himself as an M&A expert.
I remember my first meeting with Jonathan (LinkedIn profile) in May 2017, when he said he didn’t know much about buying companies and wanted to learn more. So I introduced him to a few people, including some well-known authors on the subject. Jonathan bought all of her books and emailed me to thank me for setting him on the right path.
Within a month, he started calling himself an “expert,” bought his domain, and started his company. the DealMaker’s Academy. 🙂 🙂
Because that’s where the real money is — in running these courses!
Jonathan is great at coming across as someone who has been buying companies for decades, but it would be foolish to take everything he says at face value. His history at Companies House shows almost nothing before 2017, then several acquisitions of companies that immediately went bust following his involvement.
It’s just after Early in his studies, he said that Jonathan had bought a few small businesses, but that these acquisitions may have only served to lend credibility to the main business — to convince people to give him large sums of money for his “expertise” and “mentorship.” to pay.
Jonathan’s material contains so much strange advice that I don’t know where to start. For example, the following video shows him negotiating with various small business owners (daycare centers). He apparently secretly recorded conversations with them and then published them online without their permission. Little indiscretions like this don’t bother Jonathan.
The video below starts at minute 6.00 and you only have to watch it for a minute and a half.
You may have noticed that he completely ignores the basic principles of buying a business. He constantly talks about “getting his investment back” and doesn’t seem to understand that you “get your investment back” when you resell the business, and not from the profit made in the first 2–3 years of running the business! Or maybe he does understand and is just duping the inexperienced salespeople.
Some of the worst “buyers” we see in the market today when it comes to trying shady tricks seem to have left this particular path behind.
Jonathan has published a book on Amazon. There are some reviews that people have left for his book. The one that has ever gotten the most likes is this:
But laugh and subscribe to his newsletter. He offers you access to a one-time program — a limited time offer — and then keeps pestering you with almost daily emails. None of the other marketers on this site send emails with the same desperate frequency.
And when this “limited” offer ends, another similar “one-time” program with a new name will launch a few weeks later. And it will also be a “limited time” offer.
He will continue to rinse and repeat. So never worry about missing out with Jonathan, he has many more opportunities to pursue!
As mentioned, there is another review of Jonathan Jay that is far more comprehensive than this one. You really should read it before you get tricked into paying £195 to upsell a £497 product and then resell it on a £4,997 program.
Ken Mack – reviews and testimonials
Ken describes himself as High-energy transactional investor entrepreneur specializing in buying and selling businesses with no down payment.
What more could you want? He put investor and transaction and entrepreneur and high energy (whatever that is!) and more all in one sentence. So why shouldn’t he be able to convert a million pound transaction into 1 pound?
Oh you of little faith! If you don’t believe he’s real, here’s a photo of him posing with the obligatory flash car to show you how rich he is:
With Ken About me, me, me Page, he says, he has not invested a single dollar in attending courses, mentoring or seminars
We recommend you not to do this either.
Zulfaqar Faraz – reviews and testimonials
Zulfaqar (LinkedIn profile) will teach you how to buy seven-figure businesses with little investment so you can build a world-changing business empire.
Don’t settle for becoming a millionaire, aim higher, change the world!
It used to be the case with the original sellers of these courses, like Jeremy Harbor and Co., that all you needed to buy a business was a roll of gaffa tape and two glasses of water. But now it gets easier, you don’t even need the gaffa tape.
And unlike the smooth talkers like Carl Allen, Jeremy Harbour, Guy Bartlett and Jonathan Jay who often seem to convince people of the credibility of their offering, you don’t have to pay £5,000 to £10,000!
Zulfaqar tells you all the secrets for just £178.80.
What are you still doing here?! Pay £178.80 today and receive “Status, Power and Generational Wealth”!
Carl Allen – reviews and testimonials
Carl (LinkedIn profile) is the founder of Ninja Acquisitions (no, I’m not making up the name!). He will also teach you how to buy a business without investing any money. And he can do this because he has experience buying companies worth £250 million. Or is it £250 billion? Something like that.
Here’s a good review from Ninja Acquisitions.
“His webinars are faked to look like large events with many participants. In reality, they are pre-recorded videos staged to be seen live. None of the other “participants” are present, they are just randomly generated names…”
Ninja Acquisitions is now called Dealmaker Wealth Society. But it’s the same kind of operation as Jonathan Jay and others: a small fee to get you to attend a seminar — that gets you into the funnel — and then they try to sell you more and more stuff — the insiders ‑Secrets etc REAL insider secrets, more insider secrets…
But people like Allen and Harbor had at least some experience on the coal front before they began their courses.
This Buy A Business For £1 world is an incestuous little world — people on these courses often interview each other, give each other awards, etc. Here is an interview Carl Allen is done for Jeremy Harbor and He did one with Zulfaqar Faraz .
There are a million other examples of people scratching each other’s backs in this seedy little industry.
THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT. PLEASE BE PATIENT
But below are a few quick links to some other names.
Jason Paul Rogers – reviews and testimonials
His side. More will follow later.
Moran Pober – reviews and testimonials
Moran Pober (LinkedIn profile) has a similar story to Jonathan Jay’s. He attended more Buy A Business For £1 courses, became an overnight guru and started his own course.
The course he attended was that of Jeremy Harbor (2016) And also Dan Penas. Before that, he worked as an internet marketer and then, bingo, he came into the world in 2016 and was reborn as an M&A guru. Praise the Lord.
He started his guruhood with a Dan Pena style thing. He sprinkles his videos with “F*cking this” and “F*ck that”. But he seems to have sobered up a bit lately. Maybe the limited supply of damn swear words has run out or something.
How full is it of brown stuff? Regard this review And remember, Moran is it Now he’s on track to own more companies than Richard Branson.
Shane Stamford (real name: Shane Turrell) – reviews and testimonials
Here is a link You might want to take a look.
Dan Lok – reviews and testimonials
Before you touch him with a barge pole, do some research. Maybe read this Reddit thread. Or check out the dozens of videos people have made to “expose” him and his fakes.
Dan Lok claims to teach you “how to buy a business with no money.”
“You don’t need money, you just need a strategy” according to this Dan Lok video.
But if you have enough money for this clown, he will tell you the strategy.
Coffezilla has a few good videos exposing Dan Lok that you could start with This one. Spencer Cornelia has Dan exposed here. There are many other videos and articles along these lines.
Dan was too charged with theft and that those lessons he got about how to buy a business without using his own money were actually stolen from other people who sell lessons about how to buy a business without using his own money (people , who probably stole it too). Related video: Dan Lok – A fraudster going to prison?
Guy Bartlett – reviews and testimonials
Here is an award Guy Bartlett claims he came from an “Elite Investors Club.” He was named Entrepreneur of the Year. As Guy claims on his website: “Typically humble, Guy was shocked but honored to be recognized for his efforts.”
What he doesn’t say is that the guy presenting him with the award is an old pal of his and that they probably came up with the idea for an award-winning PR stunt while having a few beers in the pub!
It does not appear that this award has ever been presented before. Or after! It was just a contrived PR ploy with a £10 trophy bought in Timpsons.
What did one of his reviewers describe this kind of award where buddies stroke each other’s egos? Ah yes, Circle jerk.
Guy’s original pitch in 2015/16 was all about the £1 deal. Never pay more than £1 for a company. He even wrote a book about it! But then along came better marketers like Jonathan Jay, who were more successful with the £1 story, which really upset people like Barlett and Harbour, so they moved into a slightly different area — still teaching how to buy companies, but without the focus on the “No Money Down” deal.
guy says on its website: “Just to be clear, this is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme. BUT if you put in the effort and invest your time wisely, you can generate more wealth in 1–2 years than most business owners will see in a decade”.
“If you work hard, you’ll get rich” is a standard line from people who say, “This is NOT a get-rich-quick plan.” And unfortunately there are enough idiots who fall for it and come to the conclusion: “Yes, I can work hard. So if I take this course, I will become a millionaire.”
For instant access, this course is just £2,997 today. Yes, it ends with the obligatory “7” used by all “This is NOT a get-rich-quick plan” Charlie.
