Why Guru's Don't Work

And I wanted to, to talk today about a topic that kind of has been bugging me for a little bit. You know, the pandemic has been happening. A lot of people are online a lot more. And the one thing that I'm noticing, especially in my news feed, because I do follow a lot of different businesses and business leaders and, you know, professionals and things like that, I'm getting targeted by a lot of gurus, right? And a lot of these these young guys that have these courses, these $97 courses, $297, $997, right? You know that the pricing convention that's there, um, with a lot of claims that they're gonna help you grow your business if you buy their program. Now the program is valued at $1,497, but today if you make a, you know, a decision, you can get it for $27, right? So the only thing that I find these gurus are going to help you do is understand the value of money more, because there's not a lot that you can do with the information that you get that's going to really concretely help you grow your business. So I want to create this video and just talk about this, and I wanted to talk today about why I know that gurus don't work. And this is just over, you know, 20 years in business, but 10 years more concentrated in that digital marketing space. The reason that they don't work in helping you grow your business— now I'm gonna put a little disclaimer in here. I'm not saying that the content that they put in these courses are not valuable. These are a stepping stone. So if you look at, at getting one of these courses, whether it's in Facebook marketing, YouTube content writing or whatever, it is a very siloed approach, which means it's skill-based. Okay? Um, or strategy-based. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Buy a course from a guru on copywriting. You will learn a few things in there that you can use in your business. What I'm saying is that if you're looking for one of these quick buy a course, know everything you need to do in digital marketing, it's not going to help you because these are product-focused sales. By that I mean the content had to be created, and with digital marketing and the way that things are changing so fast It's impossible, and I'm gonna say this, it is impossible because I have tried it. I've tried it to create a course-based content to be able to sell, right? I, I'm guilty of doing that in the past. Uh, and what I found was, self-found this, is that very hard to provide that ongoing current relevant value to clients because things change so rapidly. So while it is product-focused, skill-based, or strategy-focused, which is not a bad thing, what you really need to do is you need to find somebody that's going to work with you on an ongoing basis. And depending on your budget, that can look differently. You know, I've got clients that I, I talk to for 1 hour once a month, right? And that's more of that entry level. I've got clients that I talk to weekly, and I've got other clients that I work with daily. It all depends on what they need, what what their budget allows. But the benefit behind this is you get current, relevant information. It is extremely hard to stay up to date on all the different trends that are out there, especially for ourselves who are in the marketing space. There's so many changes that are happening. So I don't, you know, I, I just don't know how a business owner that's not in that marketing space can stay on top of it without having somebody on their team, in their circle, whatever you want to call it, in their tribe, that is there to provide that insight and help them make decisions. Okay, so the other thing too that you want to look at that I kind of wonder is what type of business experience, what type of hardship have these gurus had? You know, I have a hard time believing that a, a 19 or 22-year-old person could tell me how to grow a business or a client's business if all they've ever done is create an online course, hawked it out there to try to sell it, and suddenly they're a business expert bringing in 6, 7 figures, right? The other thing to avoid is bragging. Okay, this is a red flag for me when the first thing out of their mouth is, hey, I'm so-and-so and I've been able to make 6 or 7 figures, and I'm going to help you do the same. How, how can you guarantee that, right? This is a big pet peeve of mine because guaranteeing somebody that you can help them achieve this is very much a malpractice in the digital marketing space, in my opinion, right? Again, this is all my opinion. This is from experience. But if I said to somebody, I'm going to help you grow your business from $5,000 a month to $20,000 a month, in 6 weeks. How? Right? It's impossible without ever knowing that business, without ever knowing the customer lifetime value, without ever knowing the average sale price, the product that they're selling. So avoid that, right? If they're talking about, hey, I'm gonna help you write better copy, I'm gonna help you understand how to produce better YouTube videos, I'm gonna help you understand how to leverage customer service, using digital tools. Those are the things, those are the experts that you need to look for, not people that are going to claim they're going to grow your business by X amount exponentially financially. Okay, so be aware of that initial bragging that's out there. And then one other thing that I want to talk about just before we close off this video is what you can do to safeguard yourself, right? Google them. Plus reviews. Okay, so, you know, let's say it's, uh, you know, Frank Kern. I mean, Frank Kern has, has a lot of great content out there. You know, he does disclaim in the beginning of any product that he has that the results he has are not typical. Um, you know, it's up to you, that kind of thing. He's basically giving you the tools and the framework to do it. Okay, now if you were to research Frank Kern because you maybe never heard of him, you would go to Google and you would put in 'Frank Kern Reviews,' and you will get people talking about him. You know, obviously not everything's going to be 100% positive, but the one thing you want to do is, do they have some street cred? Do they have some credibility out there to, you know, stand behind what that claim is, right? If you're seeing all 5-star reviews and nobody's had, you know, a negative experience, you might want to wonder what really is going on because it seems fabricated. In that regard. Okay, so Google them plus reviews. And then the other thing you want to do is just look at their content, right? Look at their website. I've been to many guru websites that I see show up in my Facebook feed, and you know, the copyright on the bottom says like 2017. I mean, you're a digital marketing expert. Why do you not update the date on the bottom of your website? Why is it still outdated? Make sure that the content and the way that they present themselves is the way that you would want to present themselves. So if you're going to hire a copywriter to teach you how to do copywriting more effectively, check out their copywriting. How are they portraying it? Is it, is it appealing? You know, if it's somebody that's going to teach you how to do a YouTube video, what's their YouTube channel look like, right? Make sure that you are doing that research that's out there. Again, I just wanted to put this out here because this has been sitting in the back of my brain for weeks, if not months now, that I wanted to do this video, uh, to put it out there and just give you as a business owner that insight to say, you know what, not all apples are apples that are out there. Figure out what it is that you want to do. Become a student of the marketing, right? Always want to improve, always want to learn, always want to do better. The clients that I have that are succeeding over time have been with me, you know what, for, you know, if not months, but years, right? And we're always in contact. We're always evolving. We're always learning what's happening. Not everything you do in marketing is going to be a win. In fact, most of the stuff that you're going to try and put out there is going to fail initially, but it's what you do with those failing experiments that is going to help you find the thing that works. You are doing business with other people. People are unpredictable. It's very hard to start out of the gate and say, if you do A, B, and C, you will get these huge results. It's just not going to be that way. You need to do small experiments step by step along the way. So take what I told you, think about it, and then look at what you want to do in your business. I really enjoy the fact that you are checking out my videos. Please like this video, subscribe to our YouTube channel. I'm gonna be creating more content along the way of helping you with your business. So go ahead, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell to get notifications of all new videos. And I monitor all the comments that come in on the video, and I reply to each and every one of them. So if you have a question about anything in this video or anything related to marketing and your business, write it in the comments below this video. I will respond to you and I will answer your question. So again, thank you very much for taking part in today, watching this video, whether you watch the live just now or you have watched the replay that is here on the channel. Again, thank you very much and have a