Carrine Low goes undercover at Singapore’s wealth coaching courses

Last week, 22-year-old undergraduate Carrine Low‘s video about her experience attending wealth coaching courses in Singapore went viral, thanks to her brutally honest reviews.

In her Instagram video, Carrine shared exclusive footage from the three sessions she attended – the ‘ACE Prosperity Convention 2020’, a 1-on-1 business coaching session with local entrepreneur Imran Md Ali, and the ‘Ultimate Internet Profits Seminar’.

Needless to say, the video quickly went viral among her 34.3k followers, generating more than 314k views and 4.5k shares. Most viewers left encouraging comments and thanked her for ‘curing their curiosity’ and ‘debunking’ the myths surrounding these events.

We asked Carrine to share more about her eye-opening experience with Youth.SG:

“I saw their ads pretty often on YouTube and I always thought that their claims sounded too good to be true. I got curious and wanted to find out what actually went on behind their seminars and ‘free business coaching sessions”. I figured most people around me would be interested to find out more.

I discovered all three seminars and coaching sessions via their YouTube ads. It was a pretty straightforward process to redeem the ‘free seat’ for the seminars, and I received many emails letting me know about other seminars.

In January 2020, I decided to attend the ACE Prosperity Convention on my own accord as I saw the ads too many times not to go!

If my memory serves me correctly, there were four speakers, including a feng shui master and a stock investment expert. I left after hearing the stock investment expert speak as I felt scared throughout the whole seminar.

I was surprised to see the number of middle aged Singaporean aunties and uncles, mostly 40 to 60-year-olds, present during the first seminar. They were watching and listening to countless testimonials like “How this person made ___ after attending my course!”. That further motivated me to attend subsequent sessions.

Interestingly, I was the only young Singaporean in the room. The youngest I’ve seen was probably in their 30s. Some of the ‘insightful advice’ I got was that leaving a seminar for the toilet halfway is rude, and that you have to buy their programme to find out more.

The 1-on-1 business coaching session was weird. The personal coach asked me about my goals briefly then proceeded to mainly sell the programme. He seemed like a puppet himself (to Imran), and wore a blazer to be professional.

The session was 40 minutes long and I also felt scared throughout the session. In case anyone’s wondering, I did not take up the “late bird” or “early bird” offers shared during the session.

What struck me the most after attending these wealth coaching courses and seminars was the fact that these seminars are modelled to take advantage of people’s lack of awareness. Vulnerable people are the most susceptible to these gurus because they are out here looking for answers.

My perceptions about these sessions didn’t change – I thought they were bogus before attending them, and I still feel the same after.

I was glad that my videos received an overwhelmingly positive response and went viral! I think I subconsciously did a service here because now a lot more people are aware of these predatory models. Save your grandparents!”