Those who can't do teach?

More and more we’re assisting a hyper flow of coaches, tutors (or should I say freelancers and entrepreneurs, because it’s just fancier) all over the internet. They promise to show you the way to success in as little as one webinar. Or so they claim. The internet is full of colourful, modern content offered by many people that don’t even have the experience to back it up. It’s really not about helping others succeed, it’s about achieving at their expense.

This is not to say there aren’t any experienced, successful and legitimate people, but it just seems like it’s a minority. In a world where everything seems to have already been written and invented, someone finds a way to passively profit from the engagement of others. It reminds me of the old pyramid scheme, when money was only achieved by consecutive multiple recruitments, to the point of exhaustion, until there was no more profit to make.

If on one hand, this is deceiving people about the guaranteed results (there is no one recipe fits all) but also misleading the population in a given industry that success is possible regardless of what experience/talent they’ve got. We, humans, love anything-conspiracy-theory, 3-in-one, easy fixes. We just cannot resist it. We like it easy and lazy. If anyone claims to have done the leg work for us, we take it. Easy money? Easy success? Bring it ON!

How do we tell if they are legitimate and worth our time and money? Research, research and more research. Questions to ask: who are these people? What have they achieved? Who recognises or recommends them (are they in turn legit?)? Do their recommendations have an invested interest? Check their reviews. They may look pretty, clever and their lives dreamy but are they? Personally, I’m very cautious about where I channel my money to. It’s amazing how we value money so little in a day and age of recession.

I understand desperation can drive people to make unreasonable decisions, but some social media predators prey on other people’s emotions. It is a little bit of deceptive advertising. Especially if by the end of the training you are not at least a successful coach yourself.