The older I get the less tolerant I am of pretenders, poseurs and masters of hype. Having been in this business for two decades, I’ve seen a lot of it.
Because the truth isn’t impressive or sexy enough, people claim…
- Best seller status (Which can be orchestrated through a scheduled buying push or bought outright)
- Zero availability for months (A busy person is a valuable person?)
- Thousands of subscribers or followers (Also, these can be purchased.)
- Glowing reviews of service the reviewer never experienced or for a book they never read.
- #1 anything (According to whom?)
- Unprecedented results with little effort (Marketing hype will never go away and there’s a sucker born every minute.)
- Already knowing pretty much anything someone else shares (Um, that’s insecurity rearing it’s fearful head.)
- “Helping people” is their sole motivation (It’s suspect if there’s a big promotion machine behind all of that “helping.”)
I get it. It’s normal to want to not only be successful but be seen as successful. Since some subscribe to the “fake it ‘til you make it” method, pretending is just part of the deal.
Not for me.
I have a good deal of success and plenty of failures, too. I serve a fair number of clients but room in my schedule for more. My book, while full of solid insights and ideas, enjoys sales figures that can accurately be described as unimpressive. People willingly sign up for my tips, but some go on to unsubscribe.
Here’s why I’m ok with “losing.”
- I want you to buy my book if you’ll read it and do the stuff in it. Not to increase my sales and make me look like a sought-after author.
- If you don’t find my weekly tip helpful, unsubscribing is the right thing to do. Nobody needs any more useless email. Plus, having a list that only includes people who want my tips improves my open rates.
- If a person is choosing an executive coach based on price or hype, I’m going to make certain they don’t choose me. (Same if they don’t have a sense of humor – but that’s another post.)
- It’s a very cool thing if I can learn something from you. It doesn’t make me stupid. And if you tell me something I already know, it’s not important to me to let you know that.
- Someone else’s success has absolutely zero to do with mine. There’s enough success for everyone.
Why did I write this post?
Needed to get this off of my chest. It’s my blog. I can do what I want. 😉
But you may have gotten this far because you’re considering hiring a coach – and now you have a clearer idea of what you’re getting with me.
And if you read this because you’re like-minded about all the pretending, know that you’re not a club of one. I’m in there with you.