#249: 10 Red Flags That Marketer Is About To Take Your Money

A coach friend called me about a friend of his. She'd written a book. A marketer emailed offering to make it more visible. Keywords. SEO. New pages. All of it with a price tag on the end.

He wanted to know if she was getting ripped off.

So I read the email. And I thought about you.

Most coaches don't know much about marketing. That's not a character flaw. Nobody taught you. But when somebody shows up using words you've never heard, you get that little feeling of "hmm, maybe this person is right." And that feeling is the product. That's what they're selling you.

A real marketer sells you a result. 

A rip-off sells you the feeling of doing something.

In this episode I walk through the 10 red flags I see all the time, and I give you 4 questions to send back to anyone before you hand over a dollar.

Ready to stop being the coach who can't tell the difference?

Come to Start Small, Start Right, my free three-part training. You don't have to become a marketer. You just need to know enough to check the work.

We kick off Tuesday, September 8th, and on the 12th we're live building page one of your business plan together.

Register free: https://mycoachingbizplan.com

About the host:

Michelle Kuei is a business and marketing coach for coaches. She helps coaches across all niches stop chasing clients and start attracting them using her Client Enrollment Method. She's the founder of Elevate LifeCoaching, the creator of the Coach With Clients Academy, and the host of the Make It Visible podcast and Office Hours with Michelle, live every Saturday on YouTube.

An ICF-accredited coach (iPEC), certified copywriter, and Top 15 Coach in Los Angeles, Michelle built her coaching business while working full-time as a pharmacist. Learn more at michellekuei.com.

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Transcript

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The Email That Sparked It

0:00

This one started with a real email. A coach friend of mine called me about a friend of his who wrote a book, and a marketer emailed her offering to make it more visible. Keywords, SEO, new pages, all of it. And of course, it came with a price tag at the end. So my friend reached out, and he wanted to know if she was getting spam or rip-off. So I read the email, and I thought of you because you're easy to find, you're early, and nobody ever taught you marketing. Here's what I saw in that email. 10 things Hey, coach. Welcome back to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quai, business and marketing coach for coaches. And if you're new here, I teach coaches how to build a coaching business and get their first and next paying clients. You became a coach because you are good at this, really good, and the world needs what you have. But being a great coach and knowing how to build a coaching business, well, those are two complete different skill sets. That's what we fix here on this podcast. Every week, I'm breaking down the what stops you from being visible in front of your audience, giving you simple marketing strategies that works, and showing you exactly how to show up so the right client feels like, well, you're already reading their mind. If you're ready to start building your coaching business that pays you back, grab a drink, and let's get into it.

Why Coaches Feel Easy To Sell

1:48

I want you to go open your email, open your inbox, and there it is. Maybe there are several. A stranger who noticed something interesting, quote unquote, about your business. They might have used a word that you didn't know, like words like discovery, position, funnel, SEO, marketing terms, or AI generated search optimization, and you're getting that little feeling of, "Hmm, maybe this person is right." You ever done that? You ever open an email and think that, "Well, maybe these people know something that I don't, that could potentially get me more paying clients"? And honestly, that feeling is exactly what they are selling you. That feeling of something that you're missing out, and because since you don't have enough knowledge behind marketing, you think that the number one's priority is to go for it. Most coaches don't know enough about marketing. It's not a character flaw. It's just because it's not something that you were equipped with when you first came out from coaching, coaching certification program, and it is not your background. A lot of my clients are, have no background in marketing, including myself. I did not have a marketing or MBA background. My background was in healthcare. Yes, I did some customer service, but it was more in retail experience, right? So when it comes to marketing, I have very little knowledge, just like where you are now, with very little knowledge to what is marketing and how do I go about doing it. So most coaches don't know much about marketing, and when, you first came out and starting your coaching business Someone show up with some fancy words, and since you can't tell the difference between a real marketer versus a good talker, and most of us, in our past experience, we have been exposed to good talker. I think of the first scenario, the thing, example that I can think of is when you go to a car sale, there's a lot of people who are great at talking you into, buying and making a purchase. So those are great talker. And so you start handling, that part of your business that you haven't been really, exposed to, or you never learned it in the past. It's very easy to get, trapped into some of the marketing tactic that they- it's out there, and they're not necessarily trying to spam you per se, but it's one of their tactic that gets you, sign up to the program. And at the end of the program, you found out that you have learned very little, and you have accomplished very little, and your return on revenue is almost zero. So it makes perfect sense why you would be a lot more cautious the next time when someone slide an email into your inbox and trying to sell you something, right? And, at the end of the day, that's how we, that's how, what it compound to what we know about marketing. A lot of these marketing experience or what we believe what marketing is came from years of trauma that we have learned from just bad marketer in, the first place.

Why Coaches Get Targeted Online

5:33

And a lot of coaches get ripped off because, they're, it's just so easy to look for you as a target. so for example, if you go to LinkedIn, if you type in the, search term or keyword coaches or coach, you're gonna have t- tons of coach that pops up on the same screen. And there are, marketer who scraped those lists where they target specific industry or specific title, and those information are public information. It's very easy to find. So then it makes perfect sense why coaches are easy to target because you're just out there, and because you're putting your business out there, it's very easy to come across your profile than anybody else's profile who does not have coaches listed as part of their title So, it's easy to... So it's very easy for coaches to get ripped off or spam because, y- it's easy, it's easy to find you. now, the reason why it's easy to have coaches sign up to these program, right, these quote unquote programs, and you end up, having very little return of investment, part of it is because you don't understand the marketing part yet. Well, nowadays, you can confirm it with ChatGPT, with AI, right? 'Cause you... There's not a short of information. So you can certainly take that information and then check it with GPT and just to make sure that what that person is saying is actually something legit. so that's one way to check it, but if you have very little knowledge, behind marketing, then whatever that person say, it goes. And so it's hard to, have that discernment of whether or not what this person is saying is legit. Is it something that's proven? Is it a le- a strategy that you can adapt and use in your, in your coaching business? So it's really hard to... When you don't know what you don't know, there's no way that you're going to be able to assess or discern whether or not that information is valuable or is something that you can use in your business. S- so in other word, you couldn't check their work, and which is also another danger because I hear... I hang out in coaches community a lot, and this is something that I hear all the time, is that coaches are looking for, "Oh, who can I outsource this? I'm not good with marketing. Who can I outsource this marketing to?" So they're l- going around looking at delegating a task that they don't even know how to supervise, or they don't even know how to check someone else's work, which to me is a very dangerous way of running your business, and that is not the kind of business that I would want for myself. So I always tell my client, "You don't have to be an expert in marketing. You don't have to do what I do, but you should have enough knowledge to understand and to know when to say no, and what is it that they're telling you which..." And it could be sketchy, or it could, you need to, maybe have a second opinion. you have a way of understanding and knowing what they're talking about in a more general sense. So even just understanding a little bit, it's going to, help you in a lot of different ways All right, so what are some of the things that, you wanted to look for?

Results Versus Vibes In Marketing

8:54

So here are the things that you wanted to look for whenever a marketer reach out to you. So the key thing to keep in mind is that real marketing is going to focus on selling you a result. What is the result that they're promising, right? What is the result that they're giving you? So a real marketer is going to focus on a claim. it could be like something that you can touch, something you can feel, something that you can measure, or it could be something that's more tangible as to, here's a, here's a belief that you're going to walk away with, or here's a, a concept that you're going to g- go away with. There's a, a very concrete, specific, result that, that we're talking about. And, and like, for example, this episode, I promise you that there's gonna be 10 flags. I'm going to, give you 10 flags. So here's, what the difference between a real marketer versus someone who's trying to spam you and someone to rip you... r- rip off. A rip-off is going to sound more like I'm selling you a feeling of doing something. for example, I'm going to help you to, update all your keywords. Well, why is keyword important? No, you don't know. so they're selling you a key- you're selling... They're selling you the feeling of, well, I have my website done, I have my keyword done on my website, I have my SEO optimized on my website, but there's no, what... There's nothing that they talk about that talks about that lead into, well, this is why you need keywords. So when you have keyword, it makes your website more searchable. Now, when you are someone who struggle with, getting paying client, then one of the, problem might be that your website is nowhere to be found, so having that update the keyword is going to get you more easily. People can find search for your website more easily with just through these keyword. So they go a lot more, explanation in terms of why they sell you this rather than sell you, that feeling of, well, you ne- you need to... If you're not getting clients, you sh- you need to work on your keyword. But why do you need to work on the keyword? There should be some explanation to that. So that would be something to look

Ten Red Flags To Watch

11:16

for. Now, I'm gonna give you 10 red flags, and so go through these anytime someone pop into your inbox and trying to sell you that feeling again. Okay. So the first one is if that person send you an email from a Gmail and not a company domain, and that person claim that he or she is running thousands of campaign for in other businesses, for other businesses, then you would think, right, that person would at least use a company domain and not the Gmail. Because nowadays, anybody can go onto Google and start a Gmail account. anybody can go to Google and start multiple Gmail account. So that's red flag number one. Red flag number two is they found you. You didn't go and look for, well, I need to work with a marketing coach, or I need to, hire a social media manager, or I need to delegate some of my tasks to a virtual assistant. Instead of you going out there and looking and doing research, they easily pop into your inbox or your DM. They found you. Okay? So same thing with, like, y- you'll notice that some of the coaches are asking me, especially when some of my clients are asking me this about podcasts. There's a lot of people, marketer, who's using or leveraging podcasts and use that as a bait As a bait in terms of, "I'm gonna get you to become a guest on my podcast, and then in return, I'm gonna tell you about how I can help you put your speaker together, speaker page together. Or I, help you book more podcast episode like what you did on our show." So instead of inviting you as a guest, what they're doing is they're using it as a bait, and they'll reach out to you and say, "Well, I love your work and we found you," blah, blah, blah. So those are also red flag, because if you think about where you're at, I know, I know you have great expertise in coaching. You learned this, you went through, and you have life-long journey of working on something, working through the, working through the trenches. But if you think about if your client is struggling to find you, then chances are you don't have a lot of publiciz- publicity yet, and how are those people able to find you, right? Of all the people, they wouldn't go and find O- Oprah Winfrey, they wouldn't go, and find you. So just think of it logically. Are you big enough? Is your name out there already that people are finding you? If that's not the case, then, mm, if they found you, that's another red flag. That's red flag number two. If they found you and you didn't go looking, chances are they probably scraped a public listing and wrote you a very flattering paragraph, led you to believe that you are amazing, which you are amazing. but the way that they, they do this is just so that they can start with the bait, with hanging, that hanging bait to get you onto their program. they'll get you a podcast episode for sure, but in, in return, you'll hear their sales, pitch at the end red flag number three is one specific detail, to prove that they have researched you. Now, I get this all the time. They go to my old website, they go to my old information, outdated, they're like, "Well, we found you. We noticed that, your website has z- missing information X, Y, and Z." And when I look at the, the data that they have re- researched, they, they came from, like, back when I was still doing life coaching. That's, like, almost a decade ago. So at the very least, update your information. So red flag number three is there's specific detail to prove that they have researched you. One detail, and then it goes straight to the pitch. So usually it sound and look like this: "Well, I... We found your website, and we thought that your, story was amazing, and here's, here's how we can, we can help you to make it better." So that, that just went straight to the pitch. But, they wanted to show you basically that, "Hey, I have done some research on you." but when you look at the day and how current their research is, a lot of them are outdated red flag number four is, "I noticed three things about your business." and usually that's the exact line. You know, they'll, they'll write something like, "I noticed there's three things about your business and I recorded a video for you." So the thing is, you'll get the first two for free, and then the third one is probably going to cost you either a call with them or it's going to cost you money if you want to hear more about it. Red flag number five is they'll do a free audit, free strategy call, or free review. Now the audit itself, and I do have this strategy call, so I'm just gonna be very transparent, right? That's a strategy call, but at the end of that strategy call, I'm also going to tell you about what, it like to work together, which include what goes into my program and what the investment will be if you do decide to move forward. And at the end of that call, I would ask you straight out, "Do you want to hear about the program?" If you say no, then there's no program, no harm done. You still walk away with things I told you to do, and that's the difference. A real one tells you on the call that the call has a pitch in it. A rip-off pretty much lets you find out towards the end, and yeah, so if you are not familiar with these terminology, you might think that, "Oh, free audit. I want a free audit." And you hop on the call, and it ends with a sales call. Now, some, some marketer will not have, like, these, tangible things that's listed, right? So I told you that at the end of the call, if you're interested, if you want help to implement it, I'm happy to share how my program work and what investment is. sometimes you won't see that information, and you will just perceive as, "Oh, it's a free audit, so I'm just gonna get a free audit," without thinking that at the end there was a going to be a price to it. so that's red flag number five. Red flag number six is testimonial without name. Now, I see this a lot, even, even with coaches sometimes. Now, a, a f- a sketchy testimonial usually looks like just initial. You ever seen those, testimonial where it's like, BB or CA, right? it doesn't give you, like, any specific... It doesn't even have a headshot or whatsoever, and what's even worse is sometime it'll just say, mystery, top-selling or best-selling mystery author. Anybody can be a top-selling mystery author. Like, who is this mystery author, right? So that's red flag... N- n- that's another red flag where you have testimonial, but there's no name, or testimonial with just the initial. So the value of that testimonial will, will decrease or depreciate if you don't have enough information to let your audience know that this is a real person. And how do you know this is a real person? That person has a first name, a last name initial, and maybe even a picture or video to go with it. That makes it a legitimate testimonial. So when you're collecting, you as a coach, when you're collecting testimonial, you want to make sure that you have, those elements in place so that it doesn't look fake. so that's red flag number six. They have testimonial with no name because they really don't have any testimonial, and that makes perfect sense All right. So red flag number seven is they round numbers up. So for example, I have worked with, 459, 459 clients. So instead of saying 459, they'll say, "I have worked with 500 plus client." Or, maybe they are, running Facebook, campaign or maybe they know how to run a social media campaign. Instead of saying 897 campaign, they'll round it up and say 1,000 campaign or 1,000 plus campaign. Well, how much is a plus? Plus or minus or, or, or 1,000 minus? Like, what is that number? So sometime on the website you'll see 500 plus client, 1,000 plus campaign, or 98% satisfaction, or maybe over serving over 30, different country. it's just so that I don't have to list every single country that I've served for you. Maybe it's 30 countries. I don't know. But it's easier on the design sense to do it on the website. But when you're getting an email or having a conversation when you ask them, "Well, how many clients have you served?" what is your, percent of client satisfaction? Or how many country have you served? Those should be a little more, detailed when you... especially when it's in email exchange or when you ask that person on a Zoom call. So, that's red flag number seven. Red flag number eight is deliverability. De- deliverable are all adjective, and they're no- nouns. Deliverable means that what they're promising you, right? What they're promising you are things like positioning. Positioning is very vague. I mean, a lot of coaches that I work with, you don't, you guys don't even know what that means, positioning. So positioning has to do with, you being the thought leader on a platform or you being the authority on a platform, and how you position yourself in terms of which area of expertise are you carving yourself in, in, that space. So positioning has a lot to do with how do you want your audience to perceive you. Now, if I didn't go into that explanation, you probably would have never heard of what does that mean, positioning, right? Because you don't have any marketing background or experience, so you wouldn't know what that mean, not until I explain it to you. discoverability, or another word would be visibility, right? Visibility is if you're getting seen. Discoverability is where are you being s- are you searchable? can people look for you on Google? Can people look for you and asking ChatGPT? all these are de- discoverability, and you re- what the spammer or people who are trying to, rip you off would be, they're using a lot of like adjectives to describe these deliverable. I can help you, position in front of 1,000, people So if you don't know positioning, that's a vague term. Or y- easier way to understand and, and to who that's not a red flag is they actually tell you, "So, we're going to position you-- we're going to, make sure that your expertise is being found in front of, the ideal 1,000, an audience of 5,000, or, or 1,000, or 500, people. We'll put you into the room." So you want to look for making sure that the deliverable are not just adjective, not just a lot of terms that you don't understand. So that's red flag number eight. We're getting there. Red flag number nine is they never ask you what you need to provide, okay? Now marketing is very personalized, and it changes from one business to another. Your business is going to look very different compared to someone else's business. And these spammer or, people who are trying to take advantage of your, your business and, and the fact that you don't have any knowledge in marketing, is that they don't ask you for the stuff that you need to provide. There's no questions about, "Hey, fill this out so that I can learn more about your business and how your business is going to fit in this scenario." So it doesn't center around, a strategy that gears towards your business. And so they don't... Simply because they never ask you for any information to provide. So that's red flag number nine. The last red flag is that there's, there's a lot of, going and email exchange before they actually, tell you a dollar amount. So initially, it was more like, "So we discovered there's three things that you can do for your business, and here are two. I recorded a Loom, and, you know, if you want, we can, we can hop on a call and we can..." So you start engaging with that email, and you keep asking them, right? The, the email, just keep going on and on, and there's multiple email exchange before that person actually tell you, what that dollar amount is. Now, if you get an email and you f- you found the value and this person looks legit, and you wanted to, figure out whether or not this is in your budget, and you notice that this person keep avoiding, there's things that just sound great and too good to be true, and every time you ask the, the price, that person just Go to a different direction or redirect, then you probably want to stop right there and then, and maybe, if you're really interested, then hop on a call with them to really meet that person and ga- gauge whether or not this is a good fit energy-wise before you invest, because the number usually high. You, you probably won't get a number until you really start having, interest. You show interest after multiple email. so just keep that in mind. All right. So we have gone through, 10 red flags of how do you tell, how do you tell whether or not you're getting a spam email or it is an email that's legit and that you feel ready to invest, you can go ahead and invest. Now, there's one more thing I promised you that I wanted to leave you with, is To ask better questions.

Four Questions That Expose The Truth

26:15

When you get spam emails or when you are about to invest in any type of stuff in your business, you want to make sure that there are questions, four questions that you wanted to ask and go through them. Okay? So here are the four questions that you can, you can write down, and in fact, actually, I want you to write it down. Write it down. These are the four questions you want to ask, or if you ever, want to reply that person and ask them about their, their program. The first question is: What exactly do I receive? Okay? In... Not in adjective, not that, you're going to, I'm going to help you to make your marketing much, easier and effortlessly. Effortlessly, it's an, it's an adjective. but that's not the tangible things that you want, right? What do you actually receive? How about an actual coaching business that you've been dreaming about? how about you actually start your coaching business, right? so those would be, what do you actually receive? You're going to learn the skills. You're going to have this. you're going to have, knowing you have an I help statement, for example. That would be something also tangible. what do you receive? And by what date? So by the end of today, or by the end of session one, or by the end of module one, this is what you're going to get So that's question number one. What exactly do I receive? In nouns, not adjective, by what date? And then number two is you want to ask, "Well, can you give me three past clients that I can contact? Their name, their contact email." I have had, coaches whom after our discovery call that I send them to speak to my past clients. They request, "Here, here's a number." Let me just get a permission from my past client, 'cause they're busy too. So I will shoot an email out to reach out to my past client and say, "Hey, you know, I'm having this call. Would you, would you talk to this coach for me?" And then, m- m- anyone who's interested in my program and they request, they will get an opportunity to speak to my past clients, and I will connect them. I'm like, "Here you go." And, and I tell my clients, I say, you know, "Feel free to share whatever that you feel, is important for that coach. I am... I take no part of this, and I don't want to know the discussion. I don't know... I don't want to know what you guys talked about. Just go and, and have a discussion with that, with that, with this, coach. Share whatever had been helpful for that person." So that's another thing that you wanted to ask is, "Can you give me three past clients that I can contact, I can reach out and I can contact?" the third question is, what does success look like in number? And what happen if we don't hit it? Okay? So that would be another important question to ask, what does success look like in number? Well, you're going to get, I don't know, five conversation in the next 90 days. You're going to start at least putting out one social media post per day or per week. And if we don't hit it, that's okay. That's probably because there's something that it's not working out. We'll go back, we'll review it, we'll make sure that you are clear so that you can hit that number, right? So what happen if we don't hit it? the fourth question is, what does this put me in front of, right? If someone is selling you discoverability or visibility, you want to make sure that you are in front of the right audience, the right, choices or the right, client. So who does this put me in front of, and what do they do next? So you want to get that clear picture of who am I going to be in front of? And this is especially important if you're getting a podcast, invitation that they found you and they're trying to get you on as a guest, and somehow you didn't look for them, they found you. And if you're just starting out, like I said, it's a little sketchy because your name is probably not that big yet. So if they found you, there's something, fishy behind what they're telling. So you wanted to make sure to ask, what does, who does this put me in front of? 'Cause they could say, "Well, I'm gonna put you in front of a global audience." Well, are you serving globally? You might be, but I'm going to guess that you're still trying to figure out who your ideal client is. Then being in front of globally, global audience, it really doesn't serve you any good. And you're probably still trying to figure out what your package looks like, so you probably don't have a package yet. So being in front of global doesn't make it any better. You want to be in front of the right audience, the right type of audience, or maybe the right group of people to get the most, return of investment. Then I think a return of investment, not just money, but also your time All right. So if anybody who have real answer in all these four questions in one email, then yes, that person might be real, might be legit. And if someone is just, selling you hope, then they're going to answer these paragraph very, sketchy. And you, you can spot them. I mean, you know, you have plenty of experience in life already, and yeah, I know, I trust that you can spot them. and you just wanted to kind of observe and watch how they're responding to you. Does it look like AI-generated? And I cannot tell you how many time I have, gotten AI-generated pitch, and you can tell, like, line by line. I teach this and I, I know, so, like, you would think that they would take, that other extra effort to, like, write in real person, right? But no. I... Some of the effort, you'll be shocking. All right. On my next episode, I'm gonna talk about how, you know, I... The most common phrases that I have heard is, "I, I hate marketing. I'm not good at it," or, "I, but business is a whole 'nother world for me." If you ever said any lines, that's related to that, then I'm going to do an episode that you need to, you need to just listen. But Marketing, I'm telling you, it's like so simple and easy. You do it on a daily basis. But when it comes to building, using that and building a business, there are some moving pieces, right? And they, th- this, which is why this is so confusing, marketing is so confusing, because there's so many different tactic, there's d- so many different strategy. But when you remove all these tactic and strategy, there's all coming down so- to some foundational things that you need to learn in order to know how to do it or how to supervise someone else to do this for you in the future.

Your Homework And Free Training Invite

33:29

so that being said, what I'm doing is I'm going to teach, this upcoming three-part training, and it's Start Small, Start Right. You don't have to become a marketer, you just need to know enough to check the work or to do a little bit for yourself so that you can get the income, so that you can get the revenue comes in, so that you can hire somebody else. That is something that I've been teaching for the last pretty much the decade. So here's what I want you to do this week. The next stranger who slide into your inbox, don't delete it. Send back those four question, what do I receive? By what date? Three past clients that I can call. What does success look like in numbers? And who does this put me in front of? And just, just for fun, watch what comes back, and you'll learn so much information about, like, the people who's sliding into your DM, and anyone with real answers to all four questions in one email, Um, and I want to hear what you found out Send me a message and tell me the worst pitch that have ever landed in your inbox this month. Um, I just take so much fun and enjoy reading those. And if you want to stop being a coach who can't tell the difference, come to the free training, mycoachingbizplan.com. We kick off on Tuesday, September 8th, and on the 12th, we're going to have a live building page one of your business plan together. The link is going to be in the show notes, and thanks for hanging out with me today. Everything I do lives at elevatelifecoaching.org, and I will see you next time.

Where To Get More Support

35:33

Thank you for listening to Make It Visible podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevatelifecoaching.org and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever without wasted time and money, filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to elevatelifecoaching.org and grab a free strategy audit today