Snake Oil

I can taste. Hello, and good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist, Money mindset coach. I'm coming to you live on the Facebooks, on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Twitter, and on Instagram. Hello, everyone. On Instagram. Oh, nuts. I just realized I'm going live to the wrong account. All right, well, we're gonna end that live, so I'm not going live to Instagram. That's not happening. Shoot. Why did I do that? That was dumb. Okay, well. Oh, well, anyway, I'm gonna get my phone out of the way, then. Hi. Talk about technology fun. Hi. So tonight's Live. I want to talk about a very, very important topic that touches a lot of my clients, a lot of people who are thinking about working with me, and just a lot of people in my world and people not in my world. You know, we're living in a. In a digital world right now, and even when we're only doing business in person, there are still people out there who take our money and don't deliver the value. But it is so much easier for people to take our money and not give us value when we're doing things virtually. And I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the different types of people that we can do business with that we regret doing business with. And I want to normalize this, because here's what I see happening a lot, and here's what I personally went through also. A new business owner is all excited about their business. They know that they need to get clients. They know that they need to market. They're like, there's something that they need to do that they don't know how to do. And so they get, you know, people out, reaching out to them, offering their services. And some of them seem incredible. Some of them seem so incredible, it's just too good to be true. But, you know, it's a service that's available, and so they sign up, and they sign up, and it goes badly. Like, let's just summarize it, you know, cleanly. There it goes badly. They don't get the results they want from that one person or from that service provider. And there are a few ways in which this happens. Okay, I broke down in the description for this live, you know, the different. The three different types of people who sell services that aren't great. And I really want to go through the three kinds. Okay, because here's what happens after the fact. After you realize you've made a bad hire, after you realize you've contracted with the Wrong person. You have to rebuild trust with yourself. The. It's the trust that's broken with them is one thing, but the trust that you've broken with yourself for making a bad decision is awful. Because here you are, you're starting a business, you are doing something brave. You're doing something you've never done before. And you, like, credit yourself for being a person who makes good choices, who's probably a good judge of other people, and who's smart and capable and can do things. And here you've done something that either wasted money, like wasted time and money, wasted time, energy, and money, all the things. And left a really sour taste in your mouth. And probably while you're going through this with this service provider, it was probably weighing on you and distracting you from generating income. Right? So it hits you in a bunch of different ways. How I see this with my clients is, you know, usually when a client has gone through something like this, maybe they hired a marketing company or a social media manager or a past business coach, you know, they. When I talk to them, their first words are, you know, I've hired the wrong people before. So I need this to go really slow. And I want to just point out to you, any service provider that you speak to who is not okay with that is not for you. Okay? This is one of the reasons I never pressure people into working with me when they say something like that. In general, I don't pressure anyone to work with me, but especially when they have obviously had some broken trust. Okay? Okay. Because that is something that they have to reestablish for themselves. And working with me is not going. Making the decision to work with me is not going to do that. Because they're always in the back of their mind going to be questioning, is this the right thing for me? Okay. Is this going to turn out like it did last time? Okay. So let's go through, like, the three different types of service providers who take your money and don't deliver value. Okay. Number one. And when I say take your money, don't deliver value, steps. Snake oil. They're selling you a bill of goods. They're selling you something that they cannot deliver on or they will not deliver on. Now, there are three different kinds that I've listed. I'm sure there are more, but these are the three that are most common in my world, and I will give some examples. I don't want to call anyone out specifically, but, you know, I want you to be able to recognize this when. When you see it. Okay. So number One is probably the most innocuous and they're usually the ones that charge the least. Right. Because they don't know what they're doing. They're the clueless ones. Okay. There's, there's this virtual assistant that someone in my world uses and they recommend to everyone in their world. And this virtual assistant promotes themselves as a, as a social media manager and as someone who is on social media a lot, who has worked with different social media managers, who helps design social media strategies for my clients, I can tell you they do not know what they are doing. Okay. The content that they create for their clients are just God awful. It's, it doesn't attract clients, it's not effective. It's a massive waste of time. Right. How, how do you really identify this? Well, especially let's, let's talk through the different kinds of businesses. So if you're looking at social media managers, what you want to look at is their other clients and you want to go to their other clients accounts and you want to see, okay, cool, do I know what this, what this person does? Do I know who they help? Do I know the problems that they solve? Do I know the outcomes that they're delivering to their clients? If there's a no on any one of those questions, run. That is not the person for you. You want to absolutely ask for references and you want to ask those references what kinds of results they have gotten from working with this person. Okay, it's, here's, I'm going to talk about this when we get to the con artist. Right? But it's so easy to get testimonials or little like snippets of people text to you. Oh my God, I'm so excited to work with you. But that is not a testimonial. That is not a testimonial. That is a sale. We can't mistake sales for testimonials. Someone can be absolutely super excited to work with you and get no results working with you. Okay? We need to see hard, cold facts. What did they accomplish with this person? If they can't give you that, you need to run. Okay? Social media is one aspect of this marketing. You know, if you are hiring someone who's going to go out and do marketing for you, you not only want to ask the references that you're connected with, what results they've gotten, you want to ask them what stage they were at in their business when they started. Okay, we're going to be talking about this more when I get to the careless service provider or Snake oil salesperson. But it's really important to know that you're. You're hiring someone who specializes in your stage of business. Okay. And as we're talking about different clueless people, I mean, it's. It's doable to go and buy Facebook ads. You can absolutely do that. It's also doable to go and buy TikTok ads. It's doable to go and buy Google Ads, but what do you have to show for it? Do you understand the numbers one of my clients had, you know, someone convinced them to hire them for marketing, and when we got on the phone with them or on a zoom with them, and I asked, you know, well, like, where's the email list in this dashboard that you've set up? They couldn't point out where the email list was. That is a basic thing. That is a basic thing. They were absolutely clueless. They just did not know what they were doing. And they were charging a lot of money for not knowing what they were doing for basically just like, twiddling their funds, their thumbs and doing absolutely nothing. So, let's see. So social media manager, marketing manager. Um, you know, hopefully you're not getting this little lawyer, but it can happen. Um, basically, you want to just make sure that this person knows what they're doing. And if SEO. Koshal. Yeah, that's a great point. Um, SEO. Yeah. Someone can absolutely say that they're an SEO maverick guru and have no idea what they're doing. Copywriting is another one. Thank you, Kushal. You got me thinking. Photographers. I'm sorry. Like, yeah, I have a phone. I have a camera on my phone. I'm crap at taking pictures. You don't want me taking pictures for your business website or app. Yeah, exactly. So you can get someone who's absolutely clueless, doesn't know what they are doing, who will charge you an arm and a leg to do this stuff badly. And they think it's great because for them, it's the best thing they've ever done, but for you, it's a waste of money. You could have spent that money on someone who is far better and far more confident and gotten some an asset that is far more valuable to your business, but they just don't know the difference. So a great thing that you can do also is reach out to other business owners and ask them who they use. You know, really, like, let them do the work for you. They've already vetted these people. They've already worked with them. They've already gotten results. Find Some business besties who are in similar spaces as you and ask them who they go to. Okay, so the clueless. The clueless. So the clueless are like beginners. They don't understand how beginner they are. Like they found out enough, just enough to make themselves dangerous. Right? Okay, so number two is the careless. And this is a very kind word for this. I was going with Cs. There's other C words I could use. No, just kidding. But the careless people, they are the ones who do their work, they are confident at it, and they have a specific client avatar that they are very successful with, right? They maybe work with like medium businesses, you know, businesses that have like 10 to 20 people or they may work in a specific industry, right. And they're very, very effective within the confines of that niche. However, they're careless in that they will do anything to close a deal. A deal is a deal is a deal to them. Money in your pocket, they want in their pocket. And it doesn't matter if you actually fit their ideal client avatar. It doesn't matter if they are actually qualified to help you where you are in your business. They will do whatever it takes. They will use pressure tactics, they will cut deals, they'll do all the things to try to get your business, and they will leave you high and dry. Now I see this so often with beginner coaching businesses, consulting businesses, especially when it comes to marketing, right? So usually when you're starting a coaching business or consulting business, I mean, the classic coach thing, and I went through this too, I'm not, I'm not pointing fingers here without pointing a finger back at myself, is you're really like, like not wanting to pick a niche when you first start. Like, because you can help everyone, right? You can help everyone who has like any kind of problem. You just don't want to limit yourself in that way. And a marketing company can't help you if you don't have a niche. Oh, hi Eric. Thank you so much. I love it too. Except the green kind of washes me out. So I'm trying to figure out like what my ring light situation can be to like balance it. But anyway, so you can't hire a marketing company if you don't have a niche. If it's basically just throwing money out the window. Okay. Because a marketing company has to know who they're targeting. They have to know what point problems those specific people have that you're solving. And they have to know what outcomes they want, right? I mean, you could absolutely put together a generic marketing Plan that's just like, hey, this is so and so. So and so does stuff. Do you want to do stuff with so and so? And you can absolutely pay $10,000 to do that, but you don't want to. So a marketing company, that's not careless. I want to give an example here. They will actually say no to working with you if you're not clear enough on who you work with. Okay? You want those people you want if you talk to a marketing company or social media manager, whatever, and they say, hey, listen, I don't think you're ready for me yet. I want you to, like, write down their name, write down their email, write down their phone number, write down all their contact information and put it in a vault. And when you have that checklist done, I want you to go back to them because they are gold, okay? They have integrity. You can trust them. Oh, thank you, Eric. You can trust them. And they know their zone of genius. They know where they are most effective. And they are only going to work with those kinds of clients, right? Oh, I've had so many potential clients. And here's the thing. Like, by the time clients have gone through some of these things, they have no trust in any service providers, right? So, like, genuinely, I've had so many potential clients that I've been on enrollment calls with, have absolutely adored, really wanted to work with, and they've just spent so much, much money on working with these kinds of careless snake oil salespeople that they just, like, they just can't stomach spending anymore. And sometimes they can't afford to spend anymore on actual help that will actually help them. Now, the careless ones are, I would say, the most dangerous, right? Because they do have real testimonials, right? They do have actual references that you can. They can send you. They know what they're doing, right? It's not like it's a clueless person who you can go through and be like, oh, you don't know what you're doing. I, you know, I have my friend who speaks your lingo, and they say this. No, they know what they're doing, and they know that they actually can't help you. They just want your money. All right? So not a lot of ethics here, okay? And so that's the careless third. The con artist. The con artist. I can't tell you how many fake testimonials there are on the interwebs, okay? I can't tell you how many events people host where they actually hire actors to be plants in the audience to stand up at some point and be like, oh my God, I signed up for your thing last year and it changed my life. They use really a high pressure sales tactics. They, they use every psychological trick in the book from having you have sugar before they make their offer. Because by the way, did you know that that is actually a psychological trigger that makes you more likely to buy? Fun fact, they will. Oh, my favorite thing for the con artist is when they try to convince you if you can't afford their program, they try to convince you that taking out a high interest loan to pay for their program, even if you can't afford their payment plan, is good debt. Now let's have a little moment where we're talking about good debt and bad debt. So good debt is defined as taking on debt that will up your net worth or help you make more money. So investing with a coach, investing with someone who is going to help you actually build this business. You know, the right social media manager, the right marketing team. Absolutely. You know, you have to some, you know, you have to spend money to make money. It can be good debt. However, it's not guaranteed. Right. And so anytime you're thinking about taking on debt to hire someone to work on your business, I want you to look at the interest rate. Okay. Because a high interest loan is never going to be good debt. It's never going to be good debt. Right. Often they will really push that, like, well, you don't have it now, but you will. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say that they signed up for one of these programs and be so disappointed that they did not make any money or they made a nominal amount of money and it really didn't help them. But then they just ended up with this big bucket of debt. Not cool. No, we don't do that. Run in the opposite direction if you see this. The, you know, the con artist thing is also those testimonials where it's I'm so excited to work with you. And all their testimonials are people who have just signed up. They don't have any actual testimonials. They could literally hire people to stand in front of like a white sheet and give testimonials to a camera. You really want to verify that people are who they say they are on the interwebs. And especially like this is one of the reasons why asking for referrals from your friends for good service providers is so valuable because, you know, usually they're only going to refer people who they know are Effective. And I want to just cop to having hired one of each of these in my business. It sucks. It absolutely sucks. And we haven't even talked about the online, like, digital courses that, like, are going to teach you how to run a business. And, like, it's just not the right fit for you. And it's also, it. It jumps over a whole bunch of stuff. We're not even getting there in this life. We're really just talking about these service providers who are taking your money and not giving anything. They're selling that big bill of goods. They're selling snake oil. Now, one of the things that I want you to remember after the fact, because, I mean, chances are you are going to hire someone like this, okay, in one of these categories, okay? You're going to hire someone who's clueless, you're going to hire someone who's careless, or you're going to hire a con artist in some capacity. I'm sorry to break it to you. I want you to know that there's a reason why these people exist. Because people make money this way. Because they're very convincing. Because they can read what your hopes and dreams are, and they're telling you, yeah, I can give that to you. I don't want you to hate on yourself for that, okay? You have hopes and dreams. You have this thing that you are building. You're doing something scary that you have never done before to make your life better, okay? You're gonna make the wrong choice along the way, okay? You're not gonna be perfect. You're not gonna be completely perfect with all your money all the time, right? You're gonna make bad choices. It's part of running a business, okay? Do not hate on yourself. Just learn from this experience, okay? It's. It's a trial by fire when you start a business. And the worst thing that you can do honestly after going through something like this is to vow to never work with anyone again, right? Because you've just cut off your nose to spite your face. At some point, hopefully, your business is going to be big enough that you're going to have to scale, you're going to have to outsource, you're going to have to hire a team, right? You need to get good at finding the right people so that when you get to that point, you can find the right people and you trust yourself, okay? We were never taught in school in any of our jobs, really, unless you work for, like, the FBI or something, how to identify someone like this, okay? We just weren't Taught, especially if you're starting a business. Like we weren't taught how to start a business. Stop expecting yourself to know something that you were never taught. Okay? I did not come out of the uterus knowing French, knowing chemistry, knowing advanced algebra. And actually, I still don't know advanced algebra. I have no interest in learning, so please don't offer to teach me. And yeah, those are things that I had to learn and thankfully, things that were taught to me in school. Richie. I'm sorry, Eric. Richie, honest word of mouth is the best testimonial ever. Networking. Yep, 100%. And testimonials from people who have actually worked with this person. Okay. Yeah. The best thing about testimonials is that they have names and faces. Right. And so if you're on someone's website and they have a testimonial from so and so and there's a picture, go to social media, go and look that person up. If it says that they're a Director, go to LinkedIn and search their name, search director and see if they pop up there. If, if it's linked. Even better. Even better, you can verify. You can message them saying, hey, you know, I saw that you gave a testimonial on X, Y and Z. Do you mind sharing what your experience was like? Another great way to verify that someone's like, you know, who they say they are is to ask them for a reference from someone who absolutely hated working with them. Like someone who is unhappy with, with what they got. This will tell you so much because if what they are upset with is like, unreasonable, that's going to tell you a lot about the customer. Right. If what they're upset with is that like this person took their money and didn't provide anything, that's also going to be valuable. Yeah. I mean, there are, there are so many ways you can verify. But above all, I just want you to know that this happens and it's not your fault. We can all make better choices on everything. I know I could have made better choices at dinner tonight. Right. I could have made better choices at the gym this morning. I could have made better choices with my email system. I hate my email system. System. Right. But I've sunk enough into it that I'm probably not changing at any point in the future. But it's just, it's life. It's life. And you're going to make better choices in the future. That's it. You're going to learn from this and you're going to move on and be gentle with yourself. And kind with yourself as always. Anyway, I think that's all I have to say on this topic. Eric and Koshal, thank you both so much for joining. If anyone else popped through and commented and I didn't see your comment, I apologize. Sometimes the connections and the interwebs do not work and I don't see all comments. But anyway, I hope you found this super helpful and I look forward to going live with you again tomorrow. Have a good night everyone.