Not all that sparkles is gold!

Okay. All right. If you're watching on the Facebooks, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, I did this again. I do this sometimes, and it's so embarrassing because I go live on two different devices, and high on Instagram, I go live on two different devices. And so I have the music countdown for Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter. And I don't have it for Instagram because it has to operate on a different platform anyway. Sometimes, not always, thank God. But sometimes I'll start the music, I'll, like, get all ready. I'm, like, drinking my water. I'm putting lip. Lip gloss on. I'm, you know, closing the door, all the things. And I go live on one place. Hi, Rest and relax, Boston. And I forget to go live on the other place. And so I start, like, introing, and then it's like, oh, no, this isn't right. Anyway, a little housekeeping. I am going live on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and over here on Instagram. And. Hi, I'm Katie McManus. I help ADHD business owners make more money and less time with fewer distractions. I'm a business strategist and money mindset coach. And tonight I want to talk about something that is really dear to my heart, because I know a lot of people, and I've been one of those people who has hired someone based on what seemed like legitimate reviews and testimonials and all that stuff online and then very much regretted it. If you've done this, I. My heart goes out to you. There's a very specific kind of pain that happens when you hire someone who is not worthy of you hiring them. It undercuts your own trust that you have in yourself. You start wondering if, like, you can be trusted to make good decisions. You start wondering if you're really cut out for this. And I just want you to know I train on this shit, and I have made the wrong choice before. There are just some people out there, and some of them are legitimately, like, not honest. And some of them are just very naive to how bad they are, what they do. Like, they genuinely think that they're good, and they don't understand when their clients don't get review, don't get results with them, and they, like, don't know how to deal with that. They don't. They don't realize that they have to up their game. So I just want you to understand, like, regardless of what their intent is, they can be very convincing. And, you know, like, that's their job is to sign business. And, you know, unfortunately, they're good at it. And it's not necessarily on you to know that, you know either way. But tonight, I really want to share with you a couple things that you can look for so that you can avoid people like this in the future. Okay. I'm also going to do it while I open my Black Friday haul from J. Crew, because I'm really excited. And it just arrived just as I was about to do this. I think that's why I forgot to hit the live thing. So anyway, my, like, favorite way to identify one of these people who is not very good at what they do and is kind of scammy about it. This is cute. Is they're gonna brag about their own success. They're gonna go on and on about how good they are at what they do, and they're not gonna really have. Oh, that's really cute. Look at that. They're not going to have a whole lot of client reviews to speak for. You know, what this looks like is using how much money they made last year as proof that they're good at what they do, showing receipts of all the people that have bought their program, you know, only talking about their own rags to riches story and never sharing about, like, a case study of a client and what those results their client got. Sorry, my collar's bugging me. I'm having closed drama right now. Anyway, you know, those are all big red flags for me that they actually haven't gotten any results for clients, right? Because there's a difference between being good at making money for yourself and being good at helping other people make money for themselves, Right? There's a big difference there, right? You can be absolutely brilliant at marketing for yourself and completely suck at it for other people, right? You can be great at, like, a certain kind of landing page that, you know, does a finite amount of things for a very specific type of person. And when you go and try to sell it to other people, it can absolutely flop. And it's because you don't realize that you have to augment your template or the quality of your writing to fit other people, Right? And to fit, like, their audience, like, the sophistication and knowledge of their audience base, right? So one of the things that I always look for when I'm thinking about hiring someone or I'm vetting someone for a client is what testimonials do they have from clients and not just any clients. This is my second point. Verifiable clients. Because unfortunately, we live in a world where anyone can make three dozen different, you know, Facebook accounts or Yelp accounts or whatever and go on and write bogus testimonials. These are usually pretty easy to, to figure out because as you start like digging into the person who gave them, there's not going to be like a LinkedIn and Instagram and like a whole backlog of pictures. It's just going to be a few things. But you really do want to go down that rabbit hole. Okay. Because it can be so tempting. You know, if someone's saying that they're guaranteeing that they can bring in like $20,000 a month for you if you only pay them $10,000, that sounds like a no brainer. Right. And also, like, that's a pretty easy claim to make. And it's really hard if you hand over that money, it's really hard to get that money back. Okay. It's incredibly hard to get that money back. Depending on where they are, geographically, depending on is it just over 10,000, is it under? Depending on what their contract says. So you want to be really careful. You want to do all of your due diligence before you hand the money over. Okay. You know, another thing that I always like to look for is their testimonials that they do have. Like, if they are legit, are they all like, I just bought excitement testimonials. There was a social media manager that my former OBM convinced me to hire for a little bit and she was like, oh, she has great testimonials. And I'm thinking, okay, well this is my obm. She is, you know, vetting this person for me. But once we had started with the person and I was really, really unhappy with what they were doing and because they weren't doing a great job. Like, I'm not a picky, I'm not a difficult client by any means, if you ask anyone who works with me. But they were not doing a great job. And so I started digging into what their testimonials were. And all the testimonials were, oh my God, I'm so excited. I just signed up. Oh my God, I just got like X, Y and Z and it looks so beautiful. And I'm really excited to see where this goes. Oh, you know, I just got my welcome email and you know, super stoked to start with, so and so I won't name names. You know, that's not a testimonial. Like there's no results that have happened at that point. It's just like you're excited to sign up. That's not something that that counts. You know, this is something that I'm actually really bad at. So, like, when you're doing a launch, when you're launching a program or you're filling up a group, you're supposed to be sharing, like when people sign up with you because it creates momentum, it creates, like social proof. It's like restaurants that put most popular item on their. On their menu for something, it creates social proof. It's like, oh, well, other people like this. So I should get that. Because if other people like it, then I'm bound to like it too, right? I'm really bad at that with my launches because I don't really trust it in other people. When other people start bragging about, you know, so and so signed up and that's what they're going off of. I don't. That they kind of lose me, right? Oh, my God, this sweater is really cute. So soft. Oh, my gosh, that's really cute. That's my color. This is like my unboxing. So, yeah, so you just want to be careful of those kinds of situations. But again, like, people are very convincing, and even those of us who train on this, we've hired the wrong people, and it's unfortunate. And my best advice I can give you is that when you hire the wrong people, because it's gonna happen, is don't like, don't pour more money into them. Like, like hire fast, fire fast. If they're not. If they're not returning on investment pretty quickly, they're not the right person for you. Oh, that's so cute. I think that would be really cute under this sweater. I'm not very good at this unboxing thing. I know you're supposed to, like, go and try things on. I'm not doing that. So sorry, guys, anyway. But yeah, if you, if you've hired the wrong people, I just want to tell you my heart goes out to you. You know, take your time. You know, one thing that always freaks me out is when someone tries to pressure me to make a decision as soon as possible. It's like, whoa, I met you online. I don't. I don't know who you are. Like, I have to build up some trust. I got a message from someone tonight who listened to my podcast, started following me on LinkedIn, and he messaged me. He booked a sales call with me and he messaged me saying, hey, listen, like, I. It takes me a while to build trust, and I usually don't trust people online. But the way you show up, like, I. I think you're Pretty trustworthy. One of the things I think people pick up from me, and this is what I do consciously. Cause I never want to rush anyone into a decision of working with me. Um, I want it to be my client's decision. I want them to feel fully empowered in that decision. I don't want them to ever feel like I rushed them into it. Right. Because that's not going to be a generative relationship. You know, if they start feeling resentful of. Of me at any point because they felt rushed into it, they're going to stop doing the work. Right. And that's not going to be good for me because I'm not going to get a testimonial from them. Right. So it's in my best interest to let people go as slow as they want. If you're. So if you've ever done the disc assessments, if you're a buying type, like a D or an I, right? D. I. Yes. Yeah. D or an I. We like, I'm a high D. Like, high I. Those are my two. Like, we make decisions. Like, basically when I get on a sales call with someone, I've already decided to hire them. If they fuck it up, that's the only time I won't move forward. When I hired my podcast producer, Neil, you know, I remember being on the phone with him talking about, you know, the podcast that I wanted to start. And, like, we kind of teased out the name and the. And the subject matter and how we would determine the episode. Episode stuff. And. And he was like, well, okay, so take some time and think about it. And I was like, shut up and take my money. Like, stop talking. Stop telling me to go away. Like, I decided to hire you a year ago and I just wasn't ready to start the podcast then. I'm ready to start the podcast now. Let's go. So when someone like us, like the di, who's like, very determined, makes quick decisions, is very pushy about their decisions. When we come across someone who is a slower buyer, like, they're. They need to take their time. Maybe they need to see some, like, analytics. They need to really, like, you know, search inward. If this is the right choice for them, it can feel like it. You're being rejected. And one of the things that a lot of salespeople do and business owners do when they sense, like, a rejection coming is they cut it off. Right. I have a colleague who. I called him out on this once because, you know, he has this thing that, like, when someone messages him asking about his program, he tries to dive right into, like, doing the sale right then and there. And sometimes people buy. You know, he's. He's a really good service provider. I don't want to call him out. I won't name what he does. He's a really good service provider and excellent in what he does. Great results for his clients. But also, he doesn't have any patience. He makes decisions really fast. And so when someone gets in the DMs with him asking about his service and isn't ready to just buy, then he, like, disconnects from them. He'll just. He'll block them. Like, you're wasting my time. Um, I called him out on this because I. I mentioned, you know, like, you're very much a di. You're probably attracting some S's and C's who take a longer time to make decisions, and they will choose to buy with you if you give them the breathing room. Now, of course, like, his personality type is very high D. Very high. I. So, you know, they may not be the best fit for him, but ultimately, you know, it can be kind of like a I'll reject you before you can reject me kind of response. And you want to be very, very aware of that. You know, if someone's trying to pressure you into buying and they're not giving you space, you know, is it that. Is it that they're worried you're going to reject them first, or are they trying to put you on the offensive? Are they really trying to, like, dig in and, like, undercut your. Your belief in yourself? Every time I've signed up with someone for anything where they did some kind of tactic like this, I regretted it. And I never want anyone to do that with me. Yeah. Short and sweet tonight. I'm tired. My. I started using this. So this noise finder because it's cold now. And my air conditioner, my window air conditioner usually makes noise, and if it's not going, Luna wakes up really early. So I started using this noise maker on my phone. And it's like. It's an audible book from Audible, and it's really nice, like, rain sounds. But I realized I was setting it to, like, a sleep timer at first, so I wasn't getting all the way through, like, the full nine or ten hours that it does. But I didn't realize that, like, the last half of it is, like, fucking birds. It's birds that are just chirping and squawking and it's so loud. And I guess, like, I didn't realize that it was, like, fall asleep, wake up. It's just gonna be, like, sleep noises the whole time. Because, you know, I don't. I don't need help waking up. I have a dog. Like, I need help staying asleep long enough so the dog stays asleep long enough, so I'm very tired tonight. So we're gonna wrap it up here. Not my best live, but anyway, thank you for being here. If you were watching and. Yeah, I'm gonna go try on my clothes, everyone. Okay. Love you all. Have a great night. Bye.