The Instagram Coaching Pyramid Scheme, and Action Faking
Morning!
Bear with me because this article will sprawl in a few different directions - but it'll hopefully make sense as a whole.
You might or might not know I have an Instagram account - technically. I rarely use it and decided to make it private this year. This, in turn, meant I had to switch it from a "Business" one to a "personal" one (business accounts can't be made private, apparently).
So, why the switch? Well, Instagram had been a failed experiment. I tried several times to make it work as an alternate source of clients (after LinkedIn wiped the floor with my soul - and that's AFTER taking a giant, steaming dump on it), to no avail. All the posting and "engaging" did squat - over months and months of efforts I managed to grow from something like 30 followers to about 50. Whoopie.
So, once I decided to stop trying to make fetch happen with it, private it was. Now here's the more annoying thing: while I was on "public", I kept getting added to "coaching" DM groups by random people. I also kept getting emailed by random people trying to make me "a successful coach" - even though I don't call myself a "coach", and even explicitly talk about how much I dislike that industry and don't want to be associated with it.
A little cursory research showed me this was the exact same sh-t I'd been seeing on LinkedIn for three years: most of these "coaches" didn't seem to have accomplished anything other than coaching other coaches on how to coach more coaches. AKA: the Coaching Pyramid Scheme.
Now here's where I started noticing parallels between the LinkedIn "coaches", the Instagram "coaches", and the Youtube "professional content creators". There's many sides to a pyramid, apparently (well, technically there's three, but you know what I mean).
Have you come across those obnoxious Youtube videos where some "guru" is telling you how they found a side-hustle you can do from home, that will make you thousands of dollars? Usually with a thumbnail of them looking shocked and opening their mouth so wide a whole Boeing 747 could fit in there, and a caption along the lines of "I used ChatGPT to make $9,307 dollars in a week!!1?!?!eleven1!"?
Of course you have. You've probably even watched some of them and regretted it, because 99% of their "side hustles" and tips don't work - either at all, or (more commonly) will pay you peanuts and you'd better be off flipping burgers at McDonald's for a side-gig. At least there you'd get some exercise. There are even reaction videos of creators following the "gurus'" instructions and generally concluding it's a load of crap.
AND OF COURSE IT IS. Why wouldn't it be?
Because here's where the dots connect: just like the "coaches coaching coaches to coach even more coaches", and then the "influencers influencing influencers to influence even more influencers" crap...this type of content is ALSO just a different version of the same success pyramid scheme.
News flash: if the "side-hustle" they bulge their eyes and gape their mouths 50 meters wide for, were THAT lucrative...they'd be doing them - not creating content about them. Why spend precious time educating the unwashed masses for free, when you could be USING CHAT GPT TO MAKE 900 MILLION DOLLAZ A MUNTH NO EXPERIENCE NEEDAD? Exactly.
The only people who benefit from those videos, as a rule...are the content creators (/ "gurus").
Just like the only people who benefit from the $5k "coaching packages"...are the "coaches" themselves.
Just like the only people who benefit from advice (paid or free) on "how to grow on Instagram / LinkedIn / Pinterest", are the influencers selling it.
Does an offer like that appeal to you? Did it hit a nerve? Take a moment to check out the facts:
- how many accounts has this influencer grown to 10k/30k/100k followers, that were NOT about growing accounts to 10k/30k/100k followers?
- how many 10k/month businesses has this "coach" built, that were NOT about selling expensive "coaching" on how to get to $10k months?
- how many "clients" has this "coach" helped get to $10k/month, without turning them into expensive "how to get to $10k/month" coaching-peddlers?
Exactly. There are exceptions, but the rule isn't looking good.
Action Faking
Here's where another way in which social media is the perfect breeding ground for this new type of "coach": it allows for excellent action-faking. Action-faking is when you get the illusion of progress - for example, by gathering "likes" and followers! It feels like you're making progress because, well...something is happening.
Just not the thing you actually really need to happen: making more money.
Take my little experiment: within a few months, I'd grown my LinkedIn following 4x: from about 200 followers to about 800.
Instagram, over the same period, had less than doubled.
On paper it seemed that LI was the more 'productive' path - I got more followers, more views and interaction per post, more people telling me "OMG, I love what u postin about, so valuable x". It felt good, like I was making progress - like those elusive dream clients were juuuust another post or two away.
Except it was about as effective as Instagram at the important thing: putting money into my bank account.
I got zero paid work off IG, and very little off LI - despite the enormous amount of effort and even money I'd sunk into the latter.
See? Action-faking. LI seemed more productive on the surface, but in reality it was only marginally more so than IG. At multiple times the effort and cost.
And many of these success-peddlers are aware of how our little monkey brains can be distracted by those pointless tasks and "wins" - and take full advantage of it. Social media is excellent for that: they keep you post post posting 17 times a day, sharing "personal stories", gathering likes and followers, guest appearing on everybody-and-their-sister's-dog's podcast, journalling, realigning your values with outer space, designing VIP packages nobody asked for.
You're kept very busy...which gives you the illusion of being productive. But you're not actually getting closer to putting money in the bank. Chances are, even, that by the time you realized this was all one big action-faking hullabaloo, they've already finished "coaching" you and you can't break the agreement or get your money back.
I went through several of these "coachings" myself, and often didn't realize I was just being kept busy with pointless chores like designing £1k+ packages nobody asked for (and therefore nobody bought, because duh - that's not how business works). I gave several of those people giddy testimonials where I praised their ability to "make me see things more clearly" and gushed over how much more "confident" I felt about my business now. But fast forward months later, and all their pretty theories and snazzy blueprints hadn't put any money in my bank account.
What had always put money there, was actually doing the work: getting myself out there and teaching people. Not endlessly posting on social media, not self-aggrandizing, not sharing whack testimonials a la "ermagerd, Nick iz sooo great an funni xx" hoping someone will eventually be swayed into buying from me from something that braindead, not oversharing personal stories, not going to the digital opening of an envelope. Just doing good work when I got the opportunity to do some work, and then trusting that the right people could tell they more than got their money's worth - and they usually did. And they'd remember me next time a project came around, or they met someone who could use my services.
All the action faking distracted me from doing the stuff that really matters - ie. customer care and making sure my skills stay sharp. If you spend 80% of your time self-promoting...I don't know how sharp your skills will be. My guess? Not very. So when you do actually get the opportunity to deliver some work, you'll struggle 'cause
A. you've gotten rusty from neglecting the real work in favor of ballistically tooting your own horn, and
B. you might well have exaggerated what you can actually do for your clients, in an attempt to cut through the noise of all those other people ballistically tooting *their* own horns
See? Vicious circle.
I can't tell you what to do, but for my part I'll say a big fat "no" to action faking. I'd rather build my business, slow and steady, with people who are happy with their results and will advocate for me, than with the conveyor-belt-method the "coaches" usually teach (where you get as many people in as possible, as aggressively as possible, 'cause you're always bleeding clients, 'cause your services are actually shit because you spend more time promoting them than honing them).