stay away from this scamming lying cheating Dennis Yu
Okay. I don't know how any of this can be helpful. But this was my experience. And it really sucked. Dennis Yu was building the Conquer Local community through Vendasta back in 2019-2020. I'm not certain if he was hired by them or what the arrangement was — all I know is he was "in charge" and leading the effort.
Originally, we were getting certified through the Conquer Local Academy. Somewhere along the way, we ended up doing Dennis Yu's work as well. I don't even recall which was which at this point.
What started as community-building quickly transformed into Dennis creating an "apprenticeship program" — designed to support his influx of clients from a chiropractic conference where he'd spoken. He had complete newbies with zero paid ads experience working on client accounts. He promised over 100 attendees that if they passed his apprenticeship program, he would give them clients and paid work after completing his training. I went through every single "test," which was actually his clients' work. I knew that's what it was and willingly did it for the reward promised at the end. Why wouldn't he be telling the truth? He was backed by Vendasta (who no longer wants anything to do with him).
Dennis eventually pulled a small group into his paid "office hours" where he taught digital ads weekly. I joined that too.
After months of work, I submitted my application and waited. Then it happened. My friend — who didn't even apply — was suddenly accepted to help with paid ads. She didn't know how to use the software, didn't know how to run ads, didn't even own a laptop, and wasn't tech-savvy. A month later, she called saying Dennis had "verbally thrown her under the bus to save his own skin" by telling clients it was her fault they weren't getting results from the money he'd taken from them. She was used as a pawn. Another friend attended Dennis's apprenticeship meetup on the West Coast. He left early because it was so bad. Dennis had been on the phone with a client who'd paid tens of thousands, and Dennis's assistant said, "Dennis hasn't even opened this guy's file yet. And he's been a client for three months."
My friend also learned Dennis wasn't paying his employees. He warned me not to participate in the apprenticeship program — that morally and ethically, I'd be getting into something I wouldn't want to be part of. Virtual assistants working with Dennis were asking others in the program for work because Dennis wasn't paying them. Dennis had promised apprentices doing the actual work that they'd receive funds from the accounts they managed. Dennis never paid those people anything either.
Dennis would say, "Some people just can't cut it. I only work with clients paying me $50K+, and everyone else is too small, so you can have the work because I don't want it." And I believed him. Unfortunately, a lot of people did. Seemingly random people would jump on calls just to say, "Don't work with Dennis — you'll regret it." I thought, why would they go out of their way to slander someone? Over time, I realized the magnitude of what Dennis was doing: hopping from one person to the next who had influence, collecting money from their trusted community, then moving along to the next group.
Dennis had a young protégé named Tristan on the calls. Tristan left his state, moved to Vegas with Dennis, started a company with him, and invested thousands. Then suddenly, he moved back and wanted nothing to do with Dennis. Come to find out, Dennis was transferring (stealing) money from Tristan. Tristan filed a lawsuit against him. Apparently, Dennis has a pattern of finding ambitious young people, leveraging them, then taking what's "his" from them — without asking.
And me? I'm nobody important. I invested $30K — all I had left after COVID tanked my other business. I took every last dollar and invested it into the software he told me to, took his classes to "shorten" my learning curve.
I stretched those funds for nine months, believing I'd have a job supporting a man with too many clients to handle. I made a lot of bad decisions with my time and finances listening to and believing Dennis Yu.
Was I naive? Yes. Did I learn anything? Yes. Trust who and where you get your information from. I still don't know shit about ads despite being on his calls. The only thing he "mentored" on was content and social influence — which is how he keeps getting into bigger rooms: leveraging other people's authority to gain influence within their community, then setting up a "plan" to pool everyone's money together. He takes it all, doesn't deliver results, and moves onto the next group.
He's been kicked out of many popular groups, fortunately. But many good businesses have fallen victim to his promises.
It's unfortunate for the companies who trusted Dennis.
20 November 2025
Unprompted review