Blog Posts Tagged with Franchises, Business Opportunities, and Investments

We’ve all heard the adage “Proper preparation prevents poor performance.” It’s been attributed to everyone from Vince Lombardi to Secretary of State James Baker. As we’ve discussed in the first four...

You think a franchise may be for you. You can’t wait to cut that ribbon and get your business up and running. But to avoid a false start, it makes sense to spend more time in the starting block. This...

Love at first sight may (or may not) be a real thing, but when it comes to investing your money, it’s unwise to fall for a franchise without first subjecting it to tough-minded scrutiny. The third in...

No one would try to run a marathon with just a few days of preparation. It takes months of rigorous training before you can step up to the starting line with confidence. Of course, the process of...

For many people, buying a franchise has proven to be a good choice, but like any other financial decision, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question “Is a franchise right for me ?” Buying a...

There are prime numbers, irrational numbers, and Fibonacci’s numbers – but from a consumer protection perspective, no number is quite as sobering as the dollar amount that people reported losing to...

Ask someone to picture the typical person who has experienced a scam and they may think of an older consumer taken in by a fast-talking fraudster. Regardless of the image they create, the results of...

Let’s call it The Recliner Interval – the time it takes for an obscure niche product to start running prime time TV commercials. It’s a made-up metric, of course, but a few hours in front of the TV...

Scammers often target job seekers and prospective entrepreneurs with bogus employment and money-making offers. We know that because the FTC has investigated and stopped many of them. But scammers are...

We’ll leave it to the economists to crunch the employment numbers. We’re just happy to see more Help Wanted signs in the windows of Main Street retailers. That’s good news for Americans affected by...

Thinking about adding cryptocurrency to your investment portfolio? The number of Americans investing in cryptocurrency has increased. But as a new FTC Consumer Protection Data Spotlight suggests, the...

There’s a standard movie trope of a group stranded in the desert. Parched and burned, their spirits soar when they see an oasis on the horizon. With their last ounce of energy, they crawl toward the...

Interested in what’s going on with the Franchise Rule? Reviewing the Franchise Rule: An FTC Virtual Workshop begins at 1:00 Eastern Time today – Tuesday, November 10, 2020. Minutes before the start of...

Buying a franchise is a major financial commitment for consumers. The Franchise Rule was put in place to ensure consumers have key information to weigh the risks and benefits of their potential...

In a lawsuit filed earlier this year, the FTC alleged that Online Trading Academy made unsubstantiated mega-bucks promises about their purported investment training programs. According to the...

Etymologists – the word origin people – trace “franchise” back to a mash-up of French terms meaning both “forthright expression” and “membership.” Five hundred years later and those two concepts...

Last year the FTC and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection sued Nudge, LLC, and related companies and individuals, alleging they used bogus money-making claims to lure people into buying real...

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, the FTC has released dozens of warning letters against people trying to make an illegal buck off the Coronavirus. More than a month in, it seems like a good...

The FTC is not the pen pal you want if you operate a multi-level marketing company but aren’t closely monitoring your distributors. In its latest round of warning letters, the FTC warns ten MLM...

Ads for health products often target Boomer Consumers, but those aren’t the only claims pitched to people looking toward retirement. An FTC action alleges a company called Online Trading Academy has...