Smashed my first 10k month!

[MJ DeMarco]

Why don't you like the business model of self improvement coaching?

Because people with zero experience and questionable credibility have no business coaching, let alone selling their strategies to others. This trend leads eager, unsuspecting people down a path that’s more about smoke and mirrors than actual skill development.

A legitimate coach doesn't just have a resume; they have a track record of real-world successes and failures, lessons learned in the trenches, not just from behind a screen. Now, it seems anyone with a laptop and a TikTok account sees themselves a coach. But slick videos and above average knowledge of marketing don’t equate to expertise.

Real coaching demands depth, experience, and a proven record – something most of these 20 year old gurus who sell coaching programs on how to be coaches to other 20 year olds don't have.

 

[Kak]

There's a LOT of very solid free info out there. I can't get in the headspace of people paying $1000+ for coaching programs from inexperienced 20-year-olds when there are 12 dollar books written by billionaires on Amazon.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

This is why culture is in a serious state of decay...

• Obese people are dispensing fitness advice...
• Trainers with no training experience are trying to train...
• Coaches with no on-the-field experience are coaching...
• Broke people are teaching you how to get rich...
• Unhealthy people are convincing healthy people its OK to be unhealthy as long as you convince yourself to be OK with what you see in the mirror...

Instead of teaching from a strong position of earned wisdom, people teach from the weak position of inexperience and unearned knowledge, borrowed stolen from those who already put in the work.

The short-cuts never end.

But some ancient emperor from the 3rd century conquered the world at age 30.

OK.

 

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[Zain Miah]

What can I say.

Not long ago maybe a few months I made a post saying I finally was able to quit my job as my coaching business scaled me to $3-4k a month which was helping people quit porn.

Upon doing so I eventually had people on my social media ask me how I started my business and ended up paying me to teach them how to do the same (not from here just to clear that up lol)

Anyway eventually I started realising it could be very profitable to teach people how they can start their own coaching business from scratch.

So 3 weeks ago I launched a program to my audience for $1k on how to start ur own coaching business and quit your job.

Boom - about 5 sales for $1k.
Then increased my price and made 2 sales of $3k

All for a simple 4 week cohort.

I made about 1-2k as well from selling workshops etc.

So all in all - 12k up in the last 3 weeks from an idea that sprung out of nowhere.

It’s like MJ said in unscripted I believe. Don’t make a restaurant. Sell food supplies to restaurants.

It’s beautiful how an opportunity came.

Now I am creating a mastermind and aim to scale that to 100k/mo within the next 1-2 years.

Thank you MJ you changed my life.

If it wasn’t for you books I would’ve still been working in a warehouse.

$12k in a month at age 20 is crazy for me. 100k/mo here I come.

 

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[Antifragile]

I honestly don’t get why people are giving you such a hard time. Expertise is developed through multiple methods. Yes, experience is one method. But not the only one. People who see experience as the only way to get expertise have a very limited mindset.

Other methods:
• learning from others
• critical reflection
• research and theoretical study
• teaching others (yes, this develops your knowledge and understanding)

It’s the same bias that leads people to think that to be a good soccer coach you first need to be an amazing soccer player. That’s complete bullshit — most often the best players don’t make the best coaches, because they’re very different jobs.

Also, do all the people who speak negatively here have any idea how HARD it is to sell coaching? Probably one of the hardest things to sell, and believe me, people aren’t dumb. To sell coaching your marketing needs to be your product.

So your marketing must provide excellent coaching — demonstrate your service.

How do you guys think Tony Robbins became a coach? Is it by getting rich first, and then coaching? Nah… it’s by coaching that he got rich. This doesn’t invalidate his teaching though. It seems that people who argue otherwise just want less competition.

I think you pivoted to suit your argument.

TR, like other self-help folks created products that help people in everyday life. If this thread was about someone who build systems that helps fight addiction and he made $100 or $100,000 or $1MM a month from it, whatever the amount I'd be giving him/her GOLD. Yet that's not the case... quite the opposite, minuscule little success of "I quit my job because I became a coach and quickly realized there are suckers out there who can't wait for me to charge them to give them permission to quit their jobs and dream of becoming coaches! Boom, my scam complete and for now I've just hit my first $10k/mo for a total of... 1 month."

Where should we all sign up for this brilliance? Clown world.

@MJ DeMarco nailed it 100% with his tweet, just bulls eye nailed it:

https://twitter.com/MJDeMarco/status/1732838752995692816?s=20

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1732838752995692816

 

[Lex DeVille]

 

[Subsonic]

If you're asking me from a moral point of view, then I have no problem with it. You'll probably struggle to sell anywhere near close as much as I do, but that's a different story, it's just because you have less credibility, because you're newer on the market. That's totally normal. But don't tell me you haven't learned something in 1 month of making $5K, when most marketing companies make $0 in the first few MONTHS lol.

And in fact, in industries like coaching, if you lack credibility, and your content (ie, what you teach people) sucks, then you'll have a hell of a time getting even 1 sale, because these industries are hypercompetitive

Most "scammers" who compete against me, that's the bucket they find themselves in. No case studies, no proof, 20-year old kid, it's damn hard for them, no matter what they do, simply because they're new. Even if they're not scammers and they're actually really good, it's still really tough. That's what being new is like, where credibility matters to making sales, ie in B2B.

And don't even get me started, coaching is a HARD sell. I 10xed this year because I stopped selling coaching. People hate coaching, because they want easy, guaranteed results, with no work if possible. Done-for-you over coaching. The people who are truly coachable are few and far between.

In addition, it's not just about credibility – it's the fact that I've had years to develop assets that you simply can't have as a beginner. Can you have a 40-hour video training platform, 55+ downloadable resources, 2 proprietary methodologies developed from scratch by yourself, and so on? NO – you can't. So like it or not, you'll struggle to compete against me.

Maybe you're more used to B2C through eCommerce – B2C is different, credibility matters a lot less. There I can create the "appearance" of a good product through nice pictures, fake reviews, and what not, and then sell the suckers a trinket off AliExpress.

But in B2B it's not like that. In B2B, people don't trust written reviews. They're like written review = FAKE. They want to see real people speaking over video. They want to see company names. They want to understand your process. They want to know how you're different.

It's very similar when it comes to coaching. If you want to sell coaching, then your marketing becomes your service. In your marketing, you will teach people how to quit porn. You'll talk about things to do when you feel the urge, how to change your mindset, how to develop discipline, and all those topics that you address in a more organised fashion in your coaching.

That's how you get people to trust you, in addition to video testimonials. Now if your content is good and it helps people, how is it possible that your coaching sucks?! That's right, it's not possible. Because the marketing is just a demonstration of the product.


Well, how do you know that what the expert with 30+ years of experience is teaching you is correct?

The truth is you can never know for sure. It's like when I ate turbot and developed diarrhea, bloody stools, severe pain (I couldn't sleep), and fever, and through a friend went to the top gastroenterologist at the local hospital. And she took my blood tests and after she was insisting that I get an IV because I'm "so dehydrated", which I vehemently refused (when my blood tests came, it turns out she was wrong, I wasn't dehydrated at all...). She then recommended that I go home and drink some Coke to stop the diarrhea . Ofc, I actually googled that, and found out it's actually a medical myth, not based in fact, and it can actually irritate the stomach even more. So I didn't drink the coke.

So if even 30+ years of experience experts make mistakes, how can you blindly trust anyone?

I'll tell you how I'd behave in your soccer example. I'd see if his advice is helping me improve or not. It's hard to say, but if you try to teach me to kick the ball using form that is totally off track (with no correct elements), then my kicks will not be better than they were before. Not immediately, nor after some time of practice.

I've trained in tennis for a long time. I had played at a semi-professional level for maybe 4 years already. At that point I met a coach who taught me some things about "form" that no on else had taught me before. For example, when hitting a forehand, your hand should be kept at 45 deg angle to your wrist, which will give you more power, and it should be kept locked in that position. None of my coaches before taught me that. At the beginning I thought the guy was crazy and I argued with him, but I played a few days like that, and lo and behold my hits became much stronger once I got used to it. Probably increased by 20%. So were the coaches who taught me before unhelpful, because they didn't teach me the correct form?

No – the "correct" form has many different elements and levels of mastery. Not all of them have to be correct for you to improve your game. If even a few elements of your form improved or correct, you start doing much better.

The same thing is true for everything. Even the financial advisor situation. Yes, that 24-year old guy can only advise about stocks & mutual funds. Mutual funds over keeping your money in the bank though could be an improvement. Many people can be helped by that 24-year old guy. And over time, he will learn how to play the other instruments and integrate them into the financial symphony. But, like all things, that takes time. He has to start somewhere.

"He who is secure in the value he is providing does not post thousands of words heavy responses on a forum thread to defend a sketchy 20 year old." -Sun Tsu 2378 bc.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

I don't have a problem with coaching. Coaches play an important role in many aspects of life. For me, it's a frustration with the mindset behind the choice to call yourself a coach when the intent is anything but coaching.

A coach can build a nice coaching business actually coaching, even as a beginner. The numbers are there, even as a solo coach. At $200/50min x 5 clients a day x 5 days per week you earn almost a quarter of a million per year. Bump it up to 8 clients per day and you're closing in on $400k/yr. That's a one man/woman operation.

Once you book up your client base, maybe you create a training program. Now you train some coaches in your coaching methods. You bring them on under you. You bring more clients in. You help your coaches make money. You take a cut of everything they earn.

As you grow and gain more clients and more experience and more feedback and reviews, maybe you turn your in-house training into a course and offer some kind of certification in your unique approaches to automate more sales. Or, maybe you expand into more locations and refine your systems first then franchise the business.

At this point, you have serious coaching and entrepreneurial chops, even if you started from scratch. More importantly, you have a real business that gets people really good results.

But that's not what this thread is about.

This thread is about 20-year-olds who skip all of the above because some marketer (coach) told them if they just sell 10 people per month into a group mastermind at $10,000 following their 5-step-system, then they'll be a millionaire this year. The best part is, it doesn't matter if their customers get good results or not because the burden is on the customer to get those results. Also, since they need to build up confidence, they should start by offering their "coaching program" to those closest to them. Mom and dad, brother and sister (often the same people they were asked by the marketer to borrow money from to pay for the expensive "coaching" mastermind they joined).

Anyway, my frustration is with the money-chasing shortcut mindset. Not with coaching itself.

 

[Spenny]

I know it's okay... because of the way I do it.
But the comments are smashing info marketing.
The question is, am I missing something about the niche? In the sense that I am not "qualified" to share out info..
Do I really need to be "qualified with experience?"
And also does learning in depth and going far to get the info make it any different?
And isn't that what most/all content creators, preachers, writers and students do?
I don't coach, I read, learn from others implementation then I give it out..

Spenny, love your posts by the way

Okay, I see. Thanks for the kind comment, too

This thread is targeting people who put the cart before the horse. The problem a lot of fastlaners have is that you have:

A) People are running around, giving advice, and selling Kool-Aid for exorbitant prices (please do not give me the argument that value is relative & people can pay what they want).
B) These people may give advice which may be solid, but there is no track record to show that it will work. At best, It'll help them; at worst, it'll wreak havoc on their lives. Who's to hold you accountable? Your industry? No. You've got fifteen suckers lined up.


The result? People looking for a solution to their desperation get fleeced. What is crazier is that the majority of information you'd pay for one of these "consultations" is:

A) Things you know you need to fix.
B) That you're not being honest with yourself.
C) You're too lazy. You haven't done some reading & found ways to pull yourself together to get discipline.

$1000 to outsource my discipline & decision-making? Please - I'm okay. Many pay for these fees because they think there is a secret sauce. No - there isn't. Read ten self-help books, and they'll likely rhyme.

The exception is when the person has done it, AND there are results alongside it—more sales, better relationships, etc. Then I'd be inclined to pay you. "Don't take advice from someone you wouldn't want to be."

And what is needed for people to have done it? Experience & expertise. It's not a load of pitching.

Personal anecdote. I started a YouTube channel when I was eighteen, when I was getting involved in self-improvement. Why did I stop? Because I was a stupid 18-year-old handing out advice that I had no business handing out. I had the theory; I read the books, but I had no track record & no experience. It felt wrong what I was doing. Would I do it now? No. I still need to learn. When I'm 30-35? Only then do I consider it.


MJ summarised it the best.

Because people with zero experience and questionable credibility have no business coaching, let alone selling their strategies to others. This trend leads eager, unsuspecting people down a path that’s more about smoke and mirrors than actual skill development.

A legitimate coach doesn't just have a resume; they have a track record of real-world successes and failures, lessons learned in the trenches, not just from behind a screen. Now, it seems anyone with a laptop and a TikTok account sees themselves a coach. But slick videos and above average knowledge of marketing don’t equate to expertise.

Real coaching demands depth, experience, and a proven record – something most of these 20 year old gurus who sell coaching programs on how to be coaches to other 20 year olds don't have.

Edit: My perfectionism.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

In my line of work I’ve met many agency owners who did $10K/mo and even as high as $50K/mo and then back to $0. Having one big month doesn’t mean you have a sustainable business model. The problem with most of those businesses is that they have no systems, so they get a big result, then come brag about it on the forum or reddit or a testimonial, and then they’re back to $0. I’ve seen this happen 20+ times.

This is generally what I've seen. It's why the mindset frustrates me. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I believe this is what we see in the OP as well.

So to me, it has nothing to do with morality at this point and everything to do with smart business sense.

I'm no defender of morality (and if I defend it, it's probably because it benefits me or I've fallen into groupthink).

If your clients don’t get any results, and moreover, it’s obvious that all you care about is their money and not helping them out, then you always return to square 1 — getting new clients. You have no sustainability, and no capacity for growth, because you’re still limited to acquiring the same number of new clients every month.

Keeping clients is how you grow: if you get 5 new clients / mo every month, and you keep 3 clients, 5 months down the line you have 20 clients. Your business is growing.

If you get 5 new clients / mo, and you lose all of them, then you’re always at 5 clients/mo and you never grow.

So sooner or later, no matter how daft you are, you’ll realize that retaining customers is the missing key to building a real, sustainable business. And it’s what you have to do to chase what you want most, the money.

What I've seen is by the time a coach realizes they need repeat clients, they've run out of money, put themselves into a bunch of debt buying coaching solutions, damaged relationships with close friends and family, and now they can't afford to play pretend coach anymore because they've got nothing left to work with.

So the market corrects itself, and forces you to improve the business if you want to keep growing and developing. At the same time, it’s worth remembering that the problems you’re trying to solve as a coach are HARD problems. Like really hard. That’s why there is so much demand and scammy providers, because those problems aren’t easy to solve. From this POV, the knowledge that you’ve obtained success before with the methods you’re teaching can keep you going, whereas someone who doesn’t have your experience may get discouraged and give up..

The market corrects itself, but most coaches do not improve. Improvement requires resources, whether those are financial, relational, or even internal. The people being sold into these programs are not thinkers or entrepreneurs. They're usually women or hyped up 20-year-olds with big dreams, and no history of success who aren't aware of the psychological tricks used by marketers.

These coaches did not obtain success before with their methods. Many had never considered coaching until they saw an ad on Facebook. They didn't have methods. They didn't even know methods were a thing. They are not coaches and they are not entrepreneurs. They're just people who fell for a scam.

I think we're basically saying the same thing. Again, I'm not on about the morality of scams. It's only frustrating to see people bring that mindset to this forum where shortcuts and money-chasing behaviors are not considered the norm.

If your clients get results and re-order your stuff, then it isn't scrappy.
You can keep on selling to them, so far there is results.
It depends on how you do it.

Everyone gets results no matter what they do in life. Good results are what matters. Someone ordering again based on an internal belief that making another purchase holds the secret key to their success does not mean the product isn't crap.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

The big part most of you here is leaving out is the feel of connection with the coach himself. As a 25 year old, I’d feel much more connected to someone coaching me who I know has had similar circumstances to me than someone who may be more experienced but is twice my age and our lives have been very different from one another. Connection and being relatable is a big and important part of the sales process, and I believe this is how @Zain Miah gets most of his clients!

Good point. I think there are different kind of coaches anyway with different functions. Three come to mind…

• Inspirational — they sell you the dream
• Functional — they give you the know-how
• Relatable — they help you emotionally

So take someone in my industry like Iman Ghadzi. Iman is, by the thinking of most people in this thread, a fake guru. He sells people the dream of starting an smma, and making millions. But most people, at least those that I know, struggle to get there with his material. He’s an inspirational coach.

Then there’s someone like me — I help (mostly) established agencies grow and scale. Very often people buy Iman’s products, and they don’t get results, and they realize their biggest issue is acquiring customers. So they come to someone like me. I could be considered a functional coach.

And then there’s people like Zain who might not have the motivational ability of an inspirational coach nor the know-how and prowess of a functional coach, but boy, they can relate to you and understand you on a deep level which can help you overcome certain emotional roadblocks that you have.

They are all useful in one way or another. If there was no Iman, there wouldn’t be as many digital agencies started. Why would that be a better world?

Most people on fastlane introduce moral claims into business which I think is overdone and problematic. Yes, I never said you should knowingly scam people — meaning go out there with the intention of not providing anything useful and just convincing them to give you money. Nor sell drugs to them or do anything illegal.

But there’s a big difference between doing that, and trying to teach people how to quit their jobs and start a coaching business because you’ve quit your job and just started a coaching business.

The latter is a worthy, respectable occupation, trying to solve a real problem. Yes, when you start doing that, you’ll probably be solving the problem badly. So what?! If you find buyers, you’ll gain experience, gain money, and reinvest to start solving the problem better over time. All businesses have to be financed somehow. It’s better to be financed by customers than by investors.

And all businesses start out sucky, before they get better. It can’t be any other way. When I started my first business it was sucky. When I started my second business it was sucky. Sucky is how you start. You can’t start by delivering spectacular results, that’s nuts. The first clients I ever wrote copy for 12 years ago, probably didn’t get any results from it. So what?! Nothing starts out perfect in nature. Everything goes through a process of evolution, of getting better, adapting to its environment and function.

A business is no different — discouraging people from starting because it’s “immoral” to solve a problem badly is perhaps one of the reasons why so many struggle to get started in the first place. They don’t want to suck, they don’t want to disappoint customers, but they don’t realize that you can’t make customers happy if you don’t disappoint customers first. Everything starts sucky, yes, even your business.

And yeah, I know there are exceptions. If you’ve worked for years in an industry, like @Antifragile and you’re starting your business based around that, then you’ll have an easier time, you probably won’t start out sucky. But start a business in a new industry, esp. as a newbie entrepreneur, I guarantee that it will start out as sucky. And imo, that’s okay as long as you’re putting in effort to identify problems and improve things

 

[Kevin88660]

What can I say.

Not long ago maybe a few months I made a post saying I finally was able to quit my job as my coaching business scaled me to $3-4k a month which was helping people quit porn.

Upon doing so I eventually had people on my social media ask me how I started my business and ended up paying me to teach them how to do the same (not from here just to clear that up lol)

Anyway eventually I started realising it could be very profitable to teach people how they can start their own coaching business from scratch.

So 3 weeks ago I launched a program to my audience for $1k on how to start ur own coaching business and quit your job.

Boom - about 5 sales for $1k.
Then increased my price and made 2 sales of $3k

All for a simple 4 week cohort.

I made about 1-2k as well from selling workshops etc.

So all in all - 12k up in the last 3 weeks from an idea that sprung out of nowhere.

It’s like MJ said in unscripted I believe. Don’t make a restaurant. Sell food supplies to restaurants.

It’s beautiful how an opportunity came.

Now I am creating a mastermind and aim to scale that to 100k/mo within the next 1-2 years.

Thank you MJ you changed my life.

If it wasn’t for you books I would’ve still been working in a warehouse.

$12k in a month at age 20 is crazy for me. 100k/mo here I come.

The people who are rather qualified to judge you are your customers.

If you make money and your customers are happy imo you have a good business.

The market is a weighing machine. If you are doing a bad job you wont get repeat customers.

 

[biophase]

I honestly don’t get why people are giving you such a hard time. Expertise is developed through multiple methods. Yes, experience is one method. But not the only one. People who see experience as the only way to get expertise have a very limited mindset.

Other methods:
• learning from others
• critical reflection
• research and theoretical study
• teaching others (yes, this develops your knowledge and understanding)

It’s the same bias that leads people to think that to be a good soccer coach you first need to be an amazing soccer player. That’s complete bullshit — most often the best players don’t make the best coaches, because they’re very different jobs.

Would you hire a soccer coach that had 3 months of experience?

He made money coaching people how to quit porn, not on how to start a coaching business.

It’s like me making $$ selling dog toys, then people asking me how to start an online store.

So I coach them on how to start a business coaching others to start an online store, instead of coaching them how to sell dog toys online.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

There's a LOT of very solid free info out there. I can't get in the headspace of people paying $1000+ for coaching programs from inexperienced 20-year-olds when there are 12 dollar books written by billionaires on Amazon.

I’d say that the $12 book written by a billionaire will often be ghostwritten, and even if it’s not, his advice won’t be at all applicable to you as a small business owner. That billionaire has long ago forgotten what it’s like to not have financial resources. His world and life is completely different. He can pick up the phone and have a direct line to the President of the country. Can you?

So his world is a completely different world. What skills he needs to be successful at that level are very different from the skills you need to be successful when you’re getting started with limited resources.

Being the nerd that I am, I read a few books written by billionaires. The only two I found valuable — How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis, and Billionaire Secrets to Success by Bill Bartmann who was a real hustler. This also happens to be one of the first wealth books that I’ve read and I remember it got me out of depression, I must’ve been like 15 or so. I still haven’t found a story as good as Bartmann — the guy shot up to 25th wealthiest man in America like a rocket, in a traditional industry (debt collection). Even software guys would be jealous.

The other books, including your favorites by Charles Koch, I found utterly useless. I read them and I was like, now what do I do with this?! It’s not applicable to me… i’m not managing hundreads or thousands of people, I don’t have big production facilities, the environmental protection agency or whatever isn’t coming after me, all this stuff is useless!

I have similar feelings about Nike’s Shoe Dog. Utterly useless, the only thing I learned is be a ruthless SOB and do whatever it takes to succeed. But practical strategies? Nothing!

If I was a coach, I’d much rather, for example, listen to a video by Taki Moore, then be lectured by these billionaires. At least Taki has good ideas and strategies for growing coaching businesses. These billionaires don’t.

Would you hire a soccer coach that had 3 months of experience?

No, probably I wouldn’t. But someone has to hire them, otherwise they’d never develop and learn. It’s like when you start with any other skill, say copywriting. Would you hire a copywriter with a 3-month experience? I doubt it. But some brands will, usually sucky brands. You don’t get hired by Agora immediately, you work up to it by improving your skills.

It’s very similar with coaching. You don’t start by coaching Bill Gates. You start by coaching Joe Schmo down the street how to quit porn, get ripped, and hopefully make some cash. As your skills and understanding grow, you move to solving more complex/challenging problems.

He didn't one day turn 20 and say "I am a coach now everyone hire me".

I think that that’s sort of how it happened lol. He started working for Jim Rohn at 17, mostly as a salesperson. By 24 he was already working for himself and made his first million, without any books published.

So Tony was the 24-yr old with “no life experience” teaching others how to make money, how to be successful, and so on. According to some people here, that’s a$$ backwards. He should’ve first become a millionaire himself, build his own business THEN teach others how to do it.

I want you all to imagine going from $40k to $1M in a single year without the help of the internet, books, or TV. How would you do it?

I imagine he must’ve used his connections he developed from working with Jim Rohn to promote his seminars and get attendees. I imagine JVs were the big deal back then in this seminar biz, I doubt direct mail to a cold audience could work as well. Am I wrong?

But my overall point is that if what you REALLY want to do is teach people, then you should be teaching people. If you want to build a business teaching people how to get rich, then do that. Why would you spend years first getting rich, and then doing what you actually want to do which is teach people? That’s so convoluted.

Just cut the Gordian knot and teach people directly. Ramit Sethi — I Will Teach You to Be Rich, right? Started as a blog written by a 22-year old broke student. Now he’s mega successful, gigachad, millionaire.

Imagine if this forum had existed in 2002, and Ramit came here, you guys would’ve been horrified that a 22-year old broke student will teach you to be rich!

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Anyway, my frustration is with the money-chasing shortcut mindset. Not with coaching itself

That makes sense, thank you for clarifying that.

I guess what I’d ask is if you think that doing what you wrote about above is sustainable — just sell 5 people a month at $10,000 and don’t care at all about their results?

In my line of work I’ve met many agency owners who did $10K/mo and even as high as $50K/mo and then back to $0. Having one big month doesn’t mean you have a sustainable business model. The problem with most of those businesses is that they have no systems, so they get a big result, then come brag about it on the forum or reddit or a testimonial, and then they’re back to $0. I’ve seen this happen 20+ times.

So to me, it has nothing to do with morality at this point and everything to do with smart business sense.

If your clients don’t get any results, and moreover, it’s obvious that all you care about is their money and not helping them out, then you always return to square 1 — getting new clients. You have no sustainability, and no capacity for growth, because you’re still limited to acquiring the same number of new clients every month.

Keeping clients is how you grow: if you get 5 new clients / mo every month, and you keep 3 clients, 5 months down the line you have 20 clients. Your business is growing.

If you get 5 new clients / mo, and you lose all of them, then you’re always at 5 clients/mo and you never grow.

So sooner or later, no matter how daft you are, you’ll realize that retaining customers is the missing key to building a real, sustainable business. And it’s what you have to do to chase what you want most, the money.

So the market corrects itself, and forces you to improve the business if you want to keep growing and developing. At the same time, it’s worth remembering that the problems you’re trying to solve as a coach are HARD problems. Like really hard. That’s why there is so much demand and scammy providers, because those problems aren’t easy to solve. From this POV, the knowledge that you’ve obtained success before with the methods you’re teaching can keep you going, whereas someone who doesn’t have your experience may get discouraged and give up.

 

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[Andy Black]

I'm just going to braindump...

the problems you’re trying to solve as a coach are HARD problems

I've done a bit of paid coaching every now and then. With the right clients it's fun and they move forward fast as they were action takers in the first place. But with some people its a nightmare. The problems being solved are mindset and that's above my paygrade.

I decided to do the work rather than coach others on how to do the work. It's why I have free videos on YouTube and a paid newsletter and courses. I can direct people to those rather than get pulled into coaching.

Coaching is a very different business than doing the work for clients, or selling courses. DFY clients want to delegate/outsource the work. Coaching and course clients want to DIY it.

In my case I get businesses as clients for my DFY Google Ads consulting/service, and those who want coaching/courses typically want to sell Google Ads as a service (i.e. be me).

Those are *completely* different avatars and markets. In my case I decided to focus on one rather than be split between two. (And that "one" market of business owners who want DFY help is made up of thousands of markets anyway).

Coaching is big business, and an honorable one too. After all, we tell people it's better to teach a man to fish than give him a fish, and that's what coaching and courses try to do.

I'm with Lex. It's the intent that matters. Are you serving people or "making money"?

And I agree with Black Dragon. I'd hope the smart businesses realise, as MJ said, that "Money is proof we helped our fellow man."

 

[Andy Black]

They will pay a lot more for the result, and you can actually control the outcome a lot more this way too.

This x 1000.

By the time I've been paid less and spent more hours trying to coach someone on how to build their Google Ads campaigns I'd have done it, better, faster, and been paid more.

 

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[MaxKhalus]

 

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[biophase]

I don’t get it?

You started a coaching business teaching others how to be in the coaching business with virtually no experience or track record. What are you even coaching them on? And now… mastermind to $100k/mo?

 

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[pmb1]

The people who are rather qualified to judge you are your customers.

If you make money and your customers are happy imo you have a good business.

The market is a weighing machine. If you are doing a bad job you wont get repeat customers.

Agreed. Experienced or not, if he is making money it's because his customers are happy to pay.
It's not like he's forcing them to do so.

You can't be mad at the price tag of the sneakers. You either buy them or not.

And to me it seems this thread is jealous of how rapid his success was compared to the average starting entrepreneur.

Congrats Zain on the 10k, keep doing your thing.

 

[Devilery]

There was a guy making a decent amount of money with AI porn, and he was mostly hated, although I supported him. Same thing here, value is subjective. If someone pays for it and doesn't ask for a refund or asks for a refund but gets it, you're good. Some of the best sports coaches in the world would get absolutely destroyed on a field with sub-average pro athletes.

While I do agree that you likely have little to no track record, someone might still benefit from it, even if it's something generic that you teach and easily available, it could be just what someone needs to pick something to act on and succeed (although that's again their effort not yours).

It would be foolish for you to scrap it if it works. Keep going, keep learning, and keep providing more value and you'll build the track record needed to develop an actually useful product. Coaches will always have 90% haters and 10% who changed their life partly thanks to them. Focus on that 10% (might be a lot less than 10% but no, you won't ever run out of "greater fools to sell to".

 

[biophase]

No, probably I wouldn’t. But someone has to hire them, otherwise they’d never develop and learn. It’s like when you start with any other skill, say copywriting. Would you hire a copywriter with a 3-month experience? I doubt it. But some brands will, usually sucky brands. You don’t get hired by Agora immediately, you work up to it by improving your skills.

If I started a marketing company last month and it made $5k, would you feel ok with me running an ad right below yours on this forum to teach people how to start a marketing company?

That sits ok with you?

But my overall point is that if what you REALLY want to do is teach people, then you should be teaching people. If you want to build a business teaching people how to get rich, then do that. Why would you spend years first getting rich, and then doing what you actually want to do which is teach people? That’s so convoluted.

In my soccer example it’s not that he doesn’t have experience teaching soccer. It’s because he doesn’t have experience playing soccer. So how do you know that what he is teaching you is correct?

You are being taught by an amateur the wrong kicking form that will have to be untaught later on.

You should go into a Schwab office and sit down with their newly hired 24 year old financial planner. They have one play, buy stocks and mutual funds.

Ask them about business, real estate, estate planning, annuities or taxes… they don’t even know these exist and hence will never bring them up. You as a client will grow old with a big hole in your finances and never know.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

"He who is secure in the value he is providing does not post thousands of words heavy responses on a forum thread to defend a sketchy 20 year old." -Sun Tsu 2378 bc.

Like the peacock’s tail. It’s an evolutionary disadvantage, but only the strong can afford the luxury of a disadvantage

 

[Andy Black]

That's today's LinkedIn and Facebook post sorted...

 

[Lex DeVille]

I don’t get it?

Me either...

This is you, right? Or is it a different Zain Miah offering porn addiction get rich horseshit?

 

[Black_Dragon43]

I honestly don’t get why people are giving you such a hard time. Expertise is developed through multiple methods. Yes, experience is one method. But not the only one. People who see experience as the only way to get expertise have a very limited mindset.

Other methods:
• learning from others
• critical reflection
• research and theoretical study
• teaching others (yes, this develops your knowledge and understanding)

It’s the same bias that leads people to think that to be a good soccer coach you first need to be an amazing soccer player. That’s complete bullshit — most often the best players don’t make the best coaches, because they’re very different jobs.

Also, do all the people who speak negatively here have any idea how HARD it is to sell coaching? Probably one of the hardest things to sell, and believe me, people aren’t dumb. To sell coaching your marketing needs to be your product.

So your marketing must provide excellent coaching — demonstrate your service.

How do you guys think Tony Robbins became a coach? Is it by getting rich first, and then coaching? Nah… it’s by coaching that he got rich. This doesn’t invalidate his teaching though. It seems that people who argue otherwise just want less competition.

 

[Aidan04]

I think you pivoted to suit your argument.

TR, like other self-help folks created products that help people in everyday life. If this thread was about someone who build systems that helps fight addiction and he made $100 or $100,000 or $1MM a month from it, whatever the amount I'd be giving him/her GOLD. Yet that's not the case... quite the opposite, minuscule little success of "I quit my job because I became a coach and quickly realized there are suckers out there who can't wait for me to charge them to give them permission to quit their jobs and dream of becoming coaches! Boom, my scam complete and for now I've just hit my first $10k/mo for a total of... 1 month."

Where should we all sign up for this brilliance? Clown world.

@MJ DeMarco nailed it 100% with his tweet, just bulls eye nailed it:

https://x.com/MJDeMarco/status/1732838752995692816?s=20

Precisely.

There is a huge difference between someone who builds an app or SaaS that mitigates time spent on porn sites/helps users navigate through mindful activities to reduce porn addiction for a subscription fee, and this guy who is just scamming people.

(There's an idea for anyone great with code!)

 

[Haya_Verbena]

Reading this thread reminds me of how in my country we have people who's entire business model is basically "I will coach you on how to be a successfull entrepreneur" when they themselves have negligible business experience, a number of em have fake pHD certificates too so they can put Doctor as a title cause if they're a doctor they must be smart amirite? Their modus operandi usually goes something like:-

1.Public seminar classes,charge upwards of 700-1k for a single day business seminar which is just an overglorified motivation camp, here they will upsell their their next tier
2."Master" level classes,charge tens of thousands a month to join a support group of sorts where they will give you the business secrets and blueprint to success. Here there is another upsell
3.UltraMegaDiamondSapphire tier coaching(charges upward on 100k a month typically), one on one personal coaching with the big man himself .

And the best part is if you attend and you say you're not getting results they simply say "You're not following what I teach you properly", and that's the end of that.

All fluff and no substance. Now this isn't to say that emotional and motivational coaching isn't helpful, but there's a threshold that needs to be observed before coaching turns into a scammy grift operation.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

I was highlighting the very large divide in value available. I'm positive there are also 12 dollar books that would be applicable and helpful to your little business as well.

You’re right, I found my next read on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324015667/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

 

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[BizyDad]

I think that that’s sort of how it happened lol. He started working for Jim Rohn at 17, mostly as a salesperson. By 24 he was already working for himself and made his first million, without any books published.

So Tony was the 24-yr old with “no life experience” teaching others how to make money, how to be successful, and so on. According to some people here, that’s a$$ backwards. He should’ve first become a millionaire himself, build his own business THEN teach others how to do it.

To anyone who reads this, can do math, and isn't blind, clearly that is 7 years of experience in a sales and coaching organization.

That is a very different story than what the original poster did or what Black Dragon is even asserting about Tony. You can learn a lot working for/with two different people in your field before going completely out on your own like Tony did.

Also, Tony made $40k at 24. Chew on that. 7 years of experience and he was "only" making $40k. Most posters here would quit with those kinds of results.

He was 25 when he hit his first million, 26 when he published his first book, 28 when he started doing the infomercials.

This is a Google search away folks, but don't let facts ruin Black Dragon's point.

I hope someday he starts the FakeItBeforeYouMakeItForum.com so he can post this kind of advice there instead of here. He clearly doesn't understand the point of the forum or the message it sends.

 

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