Let's Talk About Predatory Coaches Who Prey On Your Vulnerability for $$$
You are not Jesus; you cannot save.
First off, #notallcoaches, so breathe it out.
However, the reality is that coaching is an unregulated industry. While I rally against the actions of many marketing peers, at least their work is regulated by the FTC. There are consequences for unsubstantiated claims. There are rules one must abide by (though, in reality, they’re often bent and broken). Yet, who’s regulating claims made by coaches? Who’s monitoring their practices? For a multi-billion dollar industry in near maturation, it still operates in the wild. Coaches call themselves your therapist, shaman, and savior without accountability.
For the low, low price of $10,000, you can have all the clients and confidence your little heart desires. They’ll set up queries trolling for people who are vulnerable so they can swan in their Willy Loman suits, hocking their wares. They can shoulder you through your mental illness as they play therapist. They can help you score new clients because the world has become blinded by the promise of cash money riches.
While I’ve been creatively inspired, while the writing has flowed, I am tired. I haven’t slept in weeks. I’m living off the last of my savings and I struggle to book an apartment with the realization I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to pay my rent after three months. I am embarrassed and frightened and tired of people’s awkward responses and their pity. I’m tired of playing positive because people think I’m too sad for type.
I’ve spent my whole life hustling, my whole life trying and I am so, so tired. Some of this burden can be attributed to my anxiety and recently diagnosed adult autism, but some of it is me. Some of it is for the fact that I no longer want to compromise. I no longer want to cry myself to sleep because I’m working for bro assholes who use me as their token female. I’m tired of giving everything to companies to watch them fail and do nothing because it’s too hard to do the real work. It’s too hard to admit you’re wrong.
Part of me is adamant that I’d rather be homeless than work for garbage companies devoid of morals or people who are content to operate in the misery that is the status quo, the short-term dopamine hit of a viral TikTok campaign.
So, when I finally published several posts on LinkedIn looking for work, for help, I received a deluge of mass-blast emails from strangers penning Odyssean-level odes about how they can help me “get back on track.”
Oh, fuck all the way off.
As a marketer, I’m a disgusted by their emails riddled with scare tactics. The emails border on predatory because they’ve found people like me who are truly worried about their livelihood, people who don’t have a family or safety net to fall back on, and their hollow promises are both absurd and insulting.
Let me be clear—I have no issue with folks who cold-pitch. I take issue when people use your situation as a manipulation tool for their financial gain. I take issue with people who write as if they know you when they’re a complete stranger. I take issue with people who are not trained medical professionals claiming they can help me through my autism/anxiety/depression.
I mean, can I sue you if your claims don’t pan out? Can I sue you if your advice leads me down a more detrimental path because you are nowhere near qualified to speak on mental illness. Yet, go on the internet and watch hundreds of videos and dozens of articles and coaches act like mental illness is simply a practice of mind over matter. Mental illness is something than be cured when actual scientists still don’t completely understand how our brain works. When the mind is still the wild west, a plain navigated but not colonized or conquered.
As a coach, you can show me how to be a better leader. You can help me pitch better, organize my thoughts, etc., etc., but you cannot claim to help manage one of the major factors that’s gotten me to this place. I have a psychiatrist and we both put in the work in the mess that is me. And that work is work. And that work doesn’t have an expiration date. The work is ongoing, an illness is the thing you manage, care for, and live with—not something that can be solved with a sizzling slideshow presentation.
The problem is there are so many bad apples who ruin it for the people who know how to do the work. People who are qualified, who have the experience. How are you, at twenty-five, able to work with c-suite executives when you’ve barely navigated the terrain they’ve faced? There is competence and talent, but there also exists reality.
How can you proclaim to coach me when you believe a TikTok campaign is a brand strategy when it’s merely a tactic. When you’re someone who doesn’t understand the difference between strategy and tactics. When you’re someone who hasn’t weathered assailing storms.
I mean, how dare you?
But their sales pitches and funnels are designed to drawn you in. They capitalize (like deft and shady marketers) on your insecurities. They prey when you’re at your most vulnerable. They tell you they understand ageism and sexism or what it’s like being someone with a crippling illness where it takes a day to prepare for a thirty-minute call.
We are overwhelmed by shiny-object influencers and carefully-crafted pitches and that blinds us to the real help we need and the real experts who are qualified to help.
And there’s also the concept of human relationships and trust. If I had the money to hire a coach, best know I’m going to my vast network first. Best know I’ll ask people whom I trust before I speak to a stranger. We prioritize those whom have earned our trust—not the one of many characters spamming our inboxes.
I am vulnerable. I am exhausted and tired and unsure of what’s next and hoping after my glorious three-month holiday I can find work and a place to live. A place where my cat can race around, a place that delivers pure, unadulterated quiet. What I don’t want are predators posing as house pets. Telling me they’re the second coming, that they can save.
Baby, you’re a toddler. Not Jesus.
Lately, I’ve been reading so many delicious articles, I’ll likely send a missive later this week on everything I’ve been reading and loving. For my paid peeps, I’m sending an update soon (this or next week) on what I’m working on as well as a host of vetted writing resources.
And hey, if you know of a great gig or space, let me know. Or, feel free to shop my Poshmark and eBay shops because I have such joy saving clothes from landfills.
I always congratulate people when they receive a diagnosis rather than commiserate. So, congratulations and welcome to my world - or your world now too.
(Before I realized how Substack worked, I replied to the post I got via email & wanted to share it with you)
Ms. Sullivan,
I’m not sure if you’ll see this but I wanted to say thank you.
I’ve been writing and rewriting an article that I want to turn into a book someday. I’ve been writing it for nearly 10 years. It is exactly the email you sent, but the words are always so hard to find.
I was the avatar in your email, and even now some days I fit that description. I have anxiety and depression, albeit not as serious as some, and I strongly suspect I would be diagnosed as autistic if ever I pursued it.
Mental health isn’t mindset. People start to believe that, pay these gurus or influencers or “coaches” and when they don’t get “results” they’re told that it’s because they’re not working hard enough, sacrificing enough, etc. — all the while putting off the real work you mentioned in the forms or therapy and psychiatry.
It is something that should be talked about more but discussing the problems and their roots will never get the clicks that the “solutions” do, especially when you can “cure all of your woes by ‘investing in yourself’ the low, low amount of $2999”.
I don’t know you Felicia, but I would love to connect in one way or another. You seem like a person that wouldn’t mind discussing this or even creating a book on the subject one day. I am also curious about your adult diagnosis and what drove you to seeking that out.
At the very least, thank you again for taking the time to write this.
Best,
Jim