When I was checking out an opportunity called Personal Business Advisors (PBA) that found me, during my research I was unable to find any information at all other than one law suit that had been filed and presumably settled. I did speak with references who gave great reports, so in the absence of a negative report, I took the bait. However I very quickly came to understand that although the business is legitimate by legal standards, and the business model is legal, the rest of it basically is smoke and mirrors. I felt from the very start that I had been scammed so I could not just sit by and continue to allow this to happen to other unsuspecting folks like myself. So that is what has prompted me to write this complaint, which will be the first of many I will share on the internet.

The PBA opportunity is one that suggests you can make a 6 figure salary easily if you work their system. Well that is the first misleading piece as there is no "system". PBA does have a an entirely manual process, that consist entirely of 7-10 emails that are sent out basically as SPAM, and call it an e-mail campaign. I, and many, many others who have unfortunately been sucked into the web, have long since found that you can indeed make some money but the level of effort required is much, much more significant than what Corporate suggested and the actual income potential is grossly overstated by 10 to 100 fold.

What you get for your significant investment is a small percentage of the total income per deal (50% max at the highest level of investment), ALL of the work, and virtually no support from the main organization, if you can even call it that. They claim to close 100's of deals a month yet when challenged they will not produce anything to back their claims. One gal brought 21 very solid franchise opportunities into the portfolio and has yet to get paid on a single deal. So either there are no deals getting done or they simply are not paying her. Either way, not good news. They claim to be a $200M operation, which I will speak to a bit later...but there is no evidence that reality is anything close to that. They suggest that there are 500 Senior Executives working this business world wide, and anywhere from 100-250 doing it full time, depending on who you talk to. Yet every single weekly call that I have been on has NEVER had any more than 28 attendees on it. In the time that I have been involved with PBA I have seen roughly 15 people come into the program at a gross income to PBA something close to $500, 000 for the licensing fee, and all but ONE of these investors is now out of the business. And he is just hanging on refusing to give up, but has done only one deal worth less then $1000. That is a failure rate of near 100%. Yet PBA will tell you that no one has left the program in 8 years except for one that Uwe asked to leave...and I suppose by the letter of the law that is true. However there is no way to "leave" the organization, you just walk away with your license still in place> There is no way to LEAVE the program. Several of us have tried to get refunds but have been rebuffed. Keep in mind, PBA Sr. Advisors are generally very bright people who have been Executives or senior level managers at times in their lives, although you'd obviously wonder how such smart people could get sucked in so badly. That's a fair question. The answer is easy...we are all people who were a bit desperate, we heard what we wanted to hear, we didn't substantiate it rather we believed the salesman, and we bit because we wanted it to be true, and we hoped that it would be. But one needs to ask the question, if the opportunity and the "system" were legit, would nearly everyone that has entered the "opportunity" in the past 6 months have exited this quickly if the opportunity was really what they claimed it was?? If you really could make $100k and you believed that you could, would you just walk away from that and your substantial investment? I THINK NOT!! And please, don't just believe me, look these PBA people up on Linked IN. There are at least 25 PBA Senior Advisors on Linked In that will tell you an identical story. Reach out to one or all of them to confirm.

The opportunity, which I will go into in much greater detail below, has multiple levels of cost to to the licensee at the outset, which comes with greater and greater "take" that you would get. That is basically all you get for your money is the opportunity to get a greater percentage of the $0 you will make with this opportunity. The only other asset you will receive is a primitive and in my experience largely untested and most certainly unsophisticated email marketing campaign that really is nothing more than an email SPAM campaign, that is called an E-mail campaign. And you will get a version of ACT that is minimally a year out dated, and currently 2 years outdated as I write this. Although ACT does have a minimal amount of automation capability, none of it like you would see in a legitimate system, is set up or configured for you ahead of time. So you will spend the first several weeks just figuring out how to do everything manually, which is highly inefficient. And if you purchase at what they call the Master Office level, the ACT software you get is woefully inadequate for that business model, assuming it was a legitimate business model. That literally is the extent of the sophistication - ACT 2009 and 7 emails. There is no system like you would get from a franchise, nor is there any level of accountability to the corporate organization back to you. They will supply leads at a cost but I found the leads to be no better then just OK, often times just down right poor. When you pay your money you literally get a set of 7 (although today it is 10) emails that you can SPAM your paid for leads (from PBA corporate) with over a 7 -10 week period. If by chance you get a few responses, which they claim by email 5 you should have a response rate of 30-40%, you then embark upon a series of calls. That's the "system", only a very manual and totally unsophisticated process to follow that will require 25+% of your time just taking or making notes, etc.

The CEO is Uwe Brettman. He will tell you with great passion, how he is such a believer in the business model, and I believe to some degree it is sincere. But what you need to understand going in is the business model he really believes in is the business of selling licenses, not building a sustainable business that provides a legitimate service. The corporate office is very unwilling to listen to suggestions or ways to improve, literally taking offense to suggestions. You'll be dismissed without consideration. The leadership is pompous and arrogant and frankly entirely fixed on selling licenses and what they think works even though the process is antiquated by any standard and entirely manual. Certainly not something one could build a sustainable business on. So understand up front that Uwe is in the business of selling licenses. Period. And by my math he is making a handsome living selling licenses that he knows going in will more than likely, lead no where to nothing. Simply put, it's a SCAM and not even a very sophisticated one, but one that is successfully executed every single month.

You will be referred to as "partners" but it is in name only, just to keep you on the hook a little longer. There is absolutely no sense of team work or comradeship, and in my experience there is an obvious tension/sense of distrust of the leadership. Transparency - no. Honesty - questionable at best. If you ask questions about the business, which I'd encourage you to do, insist on them being substantiated. Insist on seeing something more than smoke and mirrors. You won't get it but insist on it. What you will find is nothing can be substantiated. Although when asked they will tell you that they are into total transparency, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact they discourage PBA Senior Advisors from talking. Obviously they can't stop us but they do not like it. Why is that? If the success is real, why not brag about it in a manner that is more than just talk? Or do something positive for someone.

I do believe the need that they claim they are servicing is a legitimate need. But the tools they provide and their understanding of how to reach these people is so elementary and unsophisticated that its one step away from looking people up in the phone book and sending them a letter. And maybe worst of all is there is little to no effort to improve the process or to automate it. The investment back into the business is left to the licensee to work out and then pass back to corporate, which I personally refused to do.

In fairness, I do know of one gentleman who has been involved with PBA for 5 years and claims that the numbers they pro-port are real. He appears to be the exception rather then the rule. I've spoken to him several times and he basically reiterates the PBA process by which he claims his success but I have yet to see the results he claims, or anything close, nor have any of the 20 some PBA Sr. Advisors that I have spoken with.

Do yourself a favor, put your money back in your pocket and move on. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have done that very thing. I'd have been glad to read an honest report like this. IF you read this and do not believe me, trust me, eventually you will. I have nothing to gain at this juncture, I've lost my money. Now I'm just trying to help you keep from losing yours too. I, like most of us who have gotten involved with Personal Business Advisors, could ill afford to lose $30-55K yet they have no trouble taking it from us knowing there is little we can do once the check is cashed. Several of us have asked for refunds citing the above referenced info, to no avail. So all I can do it warn you. Stay clear.