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.
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.