I’m watching this happen to someone I know. Similar stories abound.
The way they rack up so much spending:
1) Cult-like sales tactics. I don’t mean that as a simple put down, I mean literally a lot of the same tactics cults use to gain recruits. “If it’s not working, you just haven’t committed hard enough, this is your fault” is universal, but far from the only example.
2) A pattern of coaches-coaching-coaches. Almost nobody makes money coaching normal people, in these systems. The actual market for that is tiny, and the number of people offering such services is enormous. Newbies drop out after muddling along for a year or two (paying coaches before and after starting their own thing) OR “graduate” to trying to coach coaches (for which they’ll need a coach, who will also try to refer them to their coach when they’ve gotten as much out of them as they can—it’s almost a self-organizing pyramid scheme). This intersects with #1 because they constantly demonize ways out of this cycle, especially getting a normal job (“ew, gross, yuck, don’t you want to be your own boss?”)
> In my experience, the majority of these type of uncertified coaches don't go out of their way to mislead people into thinking they have more training than they do.
Oh, and this part? Lying about their personal history, past entrepreneurial work, success at coaching, sometimes media coverage they’ve had or clients they’ve worked with, et c, is nearly universal. Many also hold bullshit credentials from other coaches who’ve reached the top of the pyramid. They also often have very misleading offers, especially for group-course sorts of things.
I’ve been going down a bit of a rabbit hole on this since discovering the whole thing exists, and have been surprised both at how huge it is, and how similar all the people doing it look, as far as the ways they exaggerate to “sell themselves” and the ways they scam with their offerings (but if there’s one thing these scam courses teach, it’s… how to scam. Like, really, that’s often the only material curriculum)
[edit edit] oh and you’re unlikely to “naturally” end up seeing this stuff if you’re a guy. The industry is overwhelmingly women, selling to other women. Many bill themselves as “helping women succeed and become entrepreneurs” and otherwise have a feminist coat of paint on their operation, which is incredibly gross because their business model is scamming women.
> 1) Cult-like sales tactics. I don’t mean that as a simple put down, I mean literally a lot of the same tactics cults use to gain recruits. “If it’s not working, you just haven’t committed hard enough, this is your fault” is universal, but far from the only example.
2) A pattern of coaches-coaching-coaches. Almost nobody makes money coaching normal people
My family got sucked into Amway back in the 90s, and that MLM scheme relies (or relied) on both of these. It started with the "motivational" tapes which sounded like cult indoctrination, and then once you're hooked you learn that the people that make the most money aren't the "leaf nodes" who sell a few products, but the people who have more suckers "under them" in the tree. So, they have a huge focus internally on coaching you to recruit others into the scheme, and coaching you on how to coach them to recruit. Nasty stuff.
Many of the courses offered by the folks a level or two “up the pyramid” include instruction on finding people who are a good fit for your coaching—which, I shit you not, includes not asking too many of the kinds of questions they absolutely should be asking. It’s all about finding someone who’ll fall for your pitch and then directing the rest of the sales conversation away from questions that would reveal you have no expertise or track record of success or wanting to pin down exactly what the intended beneficial outcome of the coaching might look like in concrete, specific terms, and quickly dropping anyone who is too resistant to staying within the lanes you want them to.
This can happen to anyone who accepts external authority on psychological matters. If you want to build a bridge, obviously you need an expert. But if you can't be a light to yourself and presume that you need a guru, therapist, coach, shaman or whatever to teach you things you couldn't possibly find out for yourself, well, there are no shortage of people (well intentioned and not) who will keep you in the role of the helpless by assuming the role of the helper.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with listening to other points of view, but ultimately one needs to be a light to themselves and observe deeply what rings true.
The way they rack up so much spending:
1) Cult-like sales tactics. I don’t mean that as a simple put down, I mean literally a lot of the same tactics cults use to gain recruits. “If it’s not working, you just haven’t committed hard enough, this is your fault” is universal, but far from the only example.
2) A pattern of coaches-coaching-coaches. Almost nobody makes money coaching normal people, in these systems. The actual market for that is tiny, and the number of people offering such services is enormous. Newbies drop out after muddling along for a year or two (paying coaches before and after starting their own thing) OR “graduate” to trying to coach coaches (for which they’ll need a coach, who will also try to refer them to their coach when they’ve gotten as much out of them as they can—it’s almost a self-organizing pyramid scheme). This intersects with #1 because they constantly demonize ways out of this cycle, especially getting a normal job (“ew, gross, yuck, don’t you want to be your own boss?”)
> In my experience, the majority of these type of uncertified coaches don't go out of their way to mislead people into thinking they have more training than they do.
Oh, and this part? Lying about their personal history, past entrepreneurial work, success at coaching, sometimes media coverage they’ve had or clients they’ve worked with, et c, is nearly universal. Many also hold bullshit credentials from other coaches who’ve reached the top of the pyramid. They also often have very misleading offers, especially for group-course sorts of things.
I’ve been going down a bit of a rabbit hole on this since discovering the whole thing exists, and have been surprised both at how huge it is, and how similar all the people doing it look, as far as the ways they exaggerate to “sell themselves” and the ways they scam with their offerings (but if there’s one thing these scam courses teach, it’s… how to scam. Like, really, that’s often the only material curriculum)
[edit edit] oh and you’re unlikely to “naturally” end up seeing this stuff if you’re a guy. The industry is overwhelmingly women, selling to other women. Many bill themselves as “helping women succeed and become entrepreneurs” and otherwise have a feminist coat of paint on their operation, which is incredibly gross because their business model is scamming women.