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Hey, everyone. I wanted to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts, Vibe Check. Sam Sanders and his two best friends, Saiy Jones and journalist and Tony Award-winning producers, Zach Stafford, have a podcast where they make sense of what's going on in the news and culture from Elon Musk and foreign policy to how to deal with the breakup and says his new album. They check out the vibe of what's going on in the world.
And how it all feels. It's your favorite group chat just come to life. You can join every Wednesday and listen and follow Vibe Check wherever you get your podcasts. It's usually pretty clean. A coach's website. Very clean. There's one big picture at the top, like a banner that goes all the way across the page, like full bleed photo of them.
Yes. And it's like million filters on it. And they're like just looking so happy with life. I didn't see anywhere they were making a serious face, but they're just like thrilled to be here. I feel like sometimes depending on the type of coach, sometimes it's like very LinkedIn professional type photo. And then sometimes it's like, I'm living my best life. Like there are doors. It's like a cover of O magazine is what it always looks like to me.
Like a different cover of O magazine. All these people are like, what if I were Oprah? How would I feel about my life? No, that's literally what they're thinking. Because she's like the world's most famous life coach, right? Yeah, that's the key words too, right? Yeah, then there will be like a phrase like the What's Up Legend guy. He just had like lots of quotes like, you're fuck up your life in a good way.
Like that kind of thing. There's like aggro life coach that's like tough love. Like we're gonna swear at you to make you love yourself. Yes. And then there's like gentle. Yeah, gentle. Like hailing like, yes. Have you felt out of touch with your ambition? Like, yeah, are your femininity? Oh, there's always the like, get in touch with your femininity or masculinity. Right?
Or masculinity. Yeah. Like do you want to be the dad you've always wanted to be and the businessman you've always wanted to be? Just stop being a jerk. That is going to cost the listeners 99 dollars. Stop being a dick. Think about your family work harder. You're listening to the Culture Study Podcast and I am Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Jane Marie co-host of Culture Study for today. But I host the dream all the rest of the days.
Okay, so first this is season three of the dream. Can you quickly tell us the other two seasons? So the first season was about multi level marketing. So that's your avans and Lula Rose and Tupperwares. A little bit about history, a little bit about policy, mostly about why there are legal pyramid schemes operating all over the world.
Yeah, that was season one and then a lot of MLMs sell wellness products, which got us thinking about doing a season around wellness and the guinithy part of the world. And so we did a whole season about wellness and now naturally that led to life coaching. A lot of MLMs and wellness companies have some sort of coaching aspect to keep revenue flowing.
And you know, if people are selling an MLM or if they're a devotee of a wellness product, you kind of have them in your snares and can say, well, the next thing you need to do is change your mindset. And we can offer you that for the low, low price of all your money.
So I'll just make a pitch here for episode three of season three. And when you interview a woman and like an incredibly intelligent and perceptive woman who was involved deeply involved in that transition into being deeply involved in a personal coaching scheme. That episode is just like, she is amazing, but I would call Jennifer like gifted, you know, like she's really smart. She's really accomplished. She's crazy ambitious.
And somehow she got sucked first of all into an MLM. She was at a kind of depressing part of her point in her career. She was a social worker and she had to work on like an infant death case. And then she was pregnant.
And if you are even pregnant, it's not the coolest. I don't think it's not the most chill time. So going through that and then her job being really stressful, a friend kind of lured her into this MLM, but it didn't stop there. She did that for about eight years. And then she joined the coaching cult.
And my favorite part is like you went to go visit her and you guys got to sit down with like the documents, which are incredibly rich text like how they like bucket. I mean there she had like file like Marlago file amounts of documents.
And she had like a great awakening where like something like a switch flipped in her brain. And she was like, wow, now I can see all of this from like how manipulative it was like how they were really praying on these different like vulnerabilities and me and and other people.
But then just the way that they like encourage you to seek out and create connections with other people so that you can know what the dripless. Yes, the dripless was the thing that like sticks in my head. So thought she was joking. And I'm sitting across from her and she has it in her lap. It's like a spiral bound kind of notebook thing. But like a hardcover, you know, like a trapper keeper, whatever.
White plastic white plastic. I can like, yeah. And like maybe it said like believe on the cover or something. You know, yes. So it was one of those and it literally said dripless at the top of one of the pages after I asked her if that was really what like I thought it was not a joke, but like some shorthand that like nobody.
I felt the same way in season one when I heard about the husband unaware plan for Mary K. And I was like, you're making that up right. And my friend Katie was like, no, that's a thing. That's like a branded thing at Mary K is just spend money that your husband is not aware of on your Mary K business.
So yeah, those things kind of are everywhere. Like the quiet part set aloud. Set out loud. Yeah, just be proud. Be loud and proud about it. So the dripless was like people that she's supposed to drip attention on. Yeah, quietly and kind of surreptitiously like praise for. Yeah, before recruiting them. Like don't tell them.
I mean, it's pure manipulation and like and lying to people that she otherwise cared about. She said like, you know, there's people on this list that I would have actually wanted to be friends with, but I was only thinking about how to use them. Yeah, it's an incredibly like manipulative utilitarian capitalist understanding of like connection. And I think like there's other things in our lives that we could also take that perspective on.
But okay, we're going to get more into this. Usually we teach out even more about like these larger philosophical ideological questions. But I think we have a question that's going to let us get into that. And it's very succinct. So this is from Emily. And we're going to answer it first. I've noticed that a lot of women in their 30s are becoming some type of personal coach, a fitness coach, a life coach, a business coach, etc.
But they all seem to pursue a coaching career after completing some type of personal coaching for themselves. So my question is personal coaching and MLM scheme where coaches not only coach, but recruit new coaches. We don't know how old Emily is, but I'm guessing late 30s. Okay, I was going to say our age, which is not I'm not in my late 30s. I'm early 30s. So yeah, late 30s, early 40s, that larger.
I'm about to enter my late 40s. So are these MLM schemes? So, you know, the key to something being an MLM is the recruitment part. I will say my coach never once suggested that I would be good at this. Like she was never like, you know what you should do now. Join my coaching program. Right.
And I would have been suspicious of her if she had because I went to her because my life was fucked up. Like I wasn't going to her because I had anything figured out at all or like, although I do give advice online, you know, and like advice columns and stuff, but I let people know I'm an idiot mostly or whatever. And then we just have fun talking about gossip stuff, but I think it's that part of it of like sign up for this. And now you can do it too. That is what an MLM is.
Yeah. And if there's a reward for the person recruiting you. And the whole like they get the line thing. Yeah, basically. Yeah, you explain what a line is for people who aren't as familiar with the down line as we are. Yeah. So at the top of a pyramid scheme is the person who started it. And then they recruit, you know, five people to be like the next level. And then if those people also recruit five people, there's another level with 25 people in it. Right.
And then if those 25 people recruit five people, I'm losing my math already. Yeah. But it gets exponentially huge or in huge and if you're building a down line or a team. If they use the word like my team. Not to mean like my department at work, but like the team I built, like that's a sure sign that you're in an MLM or you're dealing with something like it. I mean, next year was an MLM. Yeah.
So and that's just that was just a straight up coaching cult. Yeah. But they were promised for words. You am asked more power within the organization. Sometimes it's money. And sometimes it's just like stature. Stats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that they did in NXM, for example, they did offer like kickbacks on more programs. Like, oh, right. Yeah.
Yeah. You can go to the next level for only $5,000 instead of 10. If you recruit 10 people. Yeah. So it felt like getting a discount on a thing that you probably shouldn't be spending your money on in the first place. So yeah, to answer the question, some are fursher. And that's the hard part is figuring it out.
You know, the thing that I think about with MLM schemes is there's some that are like so obvious that that's what's happening. And then there are others that use some of the like the structure in a way that makes it very hard to see outside of it. So like when I talk about academia as an MLM because once you get into academia, like you have to keep buying into the ideology and then like get more graduate students to then be, you know, provide the labor for you.
Like it just it goes down and it's not necessarily that the next generation of graduate students is paying you per say, but they make your existence possible. Right. Or something like yoga teacher training, which it's like, okay, I need I need to get my students to do a yoga teacher training with me because otherwise I won't make enough money to be a yoga teacher.
I'm honoring sunk costs, the sunk cost fallacy, I think, which gets us in the most trouble here. Yeah, you could with all great intentions and with somebody really nice recruiting you who doesn't have bad intentions either find yourself in one of these schemes. But pretty quickly you start to think, well, I could either keep doing it and see if the rewards are there. Right. And try to get my money and time out of this.
Or I can quit right now when I'm only feeling like 40% suspicious. Yeah. And that just keeps us all in every bad situation in all of our lives. Now here I am being a life coach, but like get the divorce, you know what I mean? Yeah, 40% suspicious. You know, I think too, it's kind of like when people start doing therapy, which we're going to talk about the difference between therapy and life coaching later.
But like I have met so many people who like about six months in there like, I've been thinking about maybe going back to school to become a therapist. No. Right. Like there's something about it that they're like, this is great. What if I could also do this kind of thing.
Yeah. Again, I talked about this with my therapist. Like, can you imagine if one at the end of one of our sessions, I've been with her for like 10 years, but at the end of one of our sessions, if you were like, Jane, you know what you need to consider? I'm podcasting. Is a therapist will never be like, you should go to the, no, you'd be better at this than me. Like, no. Whereas a personal coach might say that they may be like, they would definitely say that a lot of help a lot of people.
You're great at this. Yeah. You're very inspirational. You have, you're a badass. That's something that we forgot to mention in like the description of what a personal coach does. Okay. So another follow up question I have from that. Since we've talked a little bit about your personal coach, I'm wondering what? You know, I think it works really well in the podcast in terms of like offering a secondary lens through which all of this is filtered.
How do you think like in hindsight, how did it affect your view of personal coaching as an industry, having a personal coach experience yourself? You know, I believe it or not, I have the only reporting I went into with like decided suspicion was some of the well list stuff.
Mainly because I cannot stand Gwyneth Belldrow. And she's also been before we even started our reporting, she had lost a civil suit around the J-Deg that she was telling people would maybe cure their cervical cancer and stuff. Yeah. And just newsflash it won't. But she was like going on late night talk shows to sell it. And she had to pay something stupid like 150 grand, nothing to her.
But she did get a slap on the wrist for doing that. So going into that reporting, I felt like, look, you know, this reporting, I was encouraged by a lot of our listeners to look at this world. And because I'm in LA, I know one million life coaches and people I really like, like some of my friends do it, you know. So I wasn't like anti life coach. It was more as we got reporting that I was like, oh, there's some real CD sides to this.
So my coach is like a normal sweetheart who I'm still friends with. Like I don't, I can't afford her without the budget of the show to be honest. Yes. Newsflash I'm not rich. Okay. Podcasting doesn't make people rich. Well, made three people for people. It made like, yeah, like for there are like six people and they're all dudes. Yeah, they're all dudes. Yeah.
I can think of one woman. But anyways, yes. So I don't, I can't afford the hourly rate, which isn't bad. I mean, with 85 bucks an hour, which I think is like cheaper than most of the personal trainers around here. Yeah. Work out wise. Anyway, I adore her. I think she is a normal person. There are very real reasons why she can't become a therapist. Her immigration status is up in the air.
And you know, I think she probably would do something else for a living if she could. But she has kids and a family and dogs and you know, a life. And this is the way she's made it work. And I think she's really good at it. Yeah. It allows you to like look at this entire industry, not not thinking. I want to try to figure out how and why this entire industry is bankrupt.
Well, here's the problem with making my show. It kind of requires some sort of villain. Like it requires someone in opposition to my ideas about the world. And so there are things that I'm like, fuck that. Like, that's a scam. But then I like. So for like example, I wanted to do one about the wedding industrial complex. I'm going to do a season about weddings. And then I was like, I can't just like get mad about people being in love and throwing parties.
Like that's not. There's nothing. Yeah. Yeah, that's so interesting. Right. You have to be like, you can't just be like, oh, it's new ones. Right? Like you have to start out being kind of mad about it. Well, you just have to know that they're you're going to find the thing that will be in opposition to rational thinking. And not just rational, but like, you need to find a nefarious player.
And I guess there's probably a few wedding dress designers or wedding planners that like try to rip people off. But it's not like a grand scale institutional. No, no, the way these are the same. And it's just like patriarchy plus like consumerist feminism. Like, you know what I think there's no, there's no. Get me a interest. I guess I could be a interest. This is all your fault. If it was a movie, you can have just like Pinterest personified as like some character. But yeah, you can't do.
Let's let's transition. We have a question from Mary who's interested in what is behind what she perceives is like this current surge in popularity. And Melody's going to read this one for us. Is the current meteoric rise of the coaching industry driven by altruistic forces such as seeking meaning and impact in work or capitalistic forces such as seeking a side hustle due to economic insecurity.
Fascinating. I have a lot of thoughts about this. Yeah, because what we've done lately in this country and I'm by lately. I mean the last hundred years is we've completely confused those two things on purpose. So we've made the pursuit of money altruistic. Yeah, we tell ourselves about trickle down economics. Right. You making money. You earning more money. It's just going to affect the economy in a positive way.
Job makers. Your job makers. Yeah. Wealth hoarders are the fiction that we are all telling ourselves in order to keep us in our place. Is that wealth hoarders make everyone more wealthy. And the truth is not that at all. I mean, you can see that with the wealth gap. And the one percenters and stuff, but I believe we, you know, it's very blurry. I don't I think like in people's hearts. Most of us are altruistic.
There's like pathologies where people can't be. But I think humans are naturally for the most part altruistic in order to keep themselves and their children alive. And capitalism and American dreamism and that kind of shit skews some of some things that we all need. Like we all need money. But it the story is that it's a virtuous thing that you're being rewarded by God, by your community.
So it's why we look at Bill Gates the way we do. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think that there's things about him lately that have come out that like we don't. But for the longest time, it was like, wow, he has a nonprofit. You're like, yeah, I had a billion dollars. My lawyers and my accountants would also make me have a nonprofit. Like that. It's just simple accounting.
This gets to the heart of I think a lot of personal coaching is like, is it to make you a better person or is it to make you more successful? Like as a business person. No idea. I could not figure that out for the life of me. Because like I think the idea is like, if you become a better person, you'll become a better business person. If you become a better business person, you'll become a better person like that they're intertwined in that way.
Yes. Yes. Yes. That's yeah, it's really hard to toss that out. Like most of the measures of success that I saw on websites or in talking to people most of the measures of success in terms of what the life coaches think are looks. You know, like you're aesthetic, improving your job, productivity, performance, doing more in less time, your income. Like I rarely see anything that's just like, man, she just got so chill.
She just looks like a really happy like a therapist is oftentimes very good at like, you need to figure out what's important to you and prioritize. And let go of things that are holding you back in terms of like being the person that you want to be. And quit telling yourself a story about like how horrible everything is and all of that. Yeah. I got a little bit of that through my life coaching because I was really specific in my ask about what I wanted.
I wanted to move my body more. I wanted, you know, there were like things I really needed help getting motivated to do. But even in that scenario, and I love Jesse to death, but even in that scenario, like my weight was a measure. Of how successful she was. Yeah. Like the way I looked like she would greet me at the door and be like, hey, you know, because I lost a couple of pounds or whatever. And I'm just like, that's not the point to me.
Yeah. I also wrapped up in like all of these fat phobic ideas about like a good person is a skinny person. Yep. The other thing that I like that this question made me think of is that there's really interesting research productivity research that about how during times of like economic crisis. People turn to in like the 1970s and 1980s, it was productivity books. And then during the financial crisis, it was productivity apps.
And so I like it makes sense to me that maybe in this moment that there's a surge in like trying to find essentially these coaches who are trying to optimize you as a person in some ways, right? Oh, totally. Yeah. We have to. Yeah, I just want everyone to just fucking relax like we are obsessed with squeezing every ounce of energy and ambition and work and productivity. Like you're talking about out of every person all the time.
Like it makes me depressed. I have a 10 year old and like the amount of homework that she has. I'm just like, yeah, this is not leaving time for play or TV. Which are very important things. Honestly, like for better for worse, like TV is a way that you learn about half story, like the stories that we.
It's also so hypocritical that my friends who make TV here in LA, who make it and write it and love it and star in it and watch it at night and when the kids go to bed, like the screen time bullshit. Like my kids can't watch TV because they're exceptional humans and like if they were to watch a television screen, they'd get stupid and it's like, well, they're going to be stupid for other reasons because you're acting stupid. Because you love TV.
But yeah, but even like a 10 year old is being wronged, right? You know, of like what are you capable of and did you exert all of the energy you could and not necessarily in good ways, you know? No one I think there's another question that we're going to like just fold into this that's specifically about like how much of this is about optimization of all things like. I think if you have a friend or a peer or you see someone on LinkedIn who's like, I love this.
Like I've had an incredible experience with this coach. Anyone who's talking about it, right? And whether they're MLM oriented and thus talking about it publicly because they want to rope you in or just like talking about it. It makes you feel like, oh, is that something that I'm not doing? Like exactly. Yeah, another thing that I should be doing, but I'm not doing in my life to make me an optimized person. I have to turn that stuff off 100 times a day.
Like, oh, I didn't post a tick talk today or I didn't, you know, like dumb shit like that. Yeah, I didn't respond to all my emails or, you know, I don't have inbox zero. Like fuck. It's $52,000, but it's maxing in the face every morning when I look at my phone, like what a piece of shit I am because I have so many on red emails, you know. Then that's a construct. We've totally made that up. That's not a real thing. I don't feel guilty about the amount of junk mail I get.
I get mad at the mailman. Like I've asked you to not leave these flyers for the grocery store here, but I'm not like, oh, that reflects poorly on me. You're like, oh my gosh, I have another LLB catalog that doesn't make me feel like a failure as a person. But your email does when you're not an inbox zero because we've constructed this idea of inbox zero, meaning you're an optimized person, and then you're the most efficient and you're really taking care of things. Yep. It's all pretend.
Are women more vulnerable to this? And deco changes generally. With MLMs for sure, but that's like by design because MLMs are like a home and yeah. The LID work from home. They kind of like play into all of the women's traditional roles. Yep. As people who are not supposed to have like serious crews outside of the house. Um, life coaching. No, I think all are welcome. Yeah. Like anyone who lives here anyway, I don't think it's like a worldwide problem the way MLMs are.
I wonder if life coaching is like an outlet for let's say you're a dude and you're entering a career transition or a place where like historically men would have midlife crises. And now the very sanctioned place where you can seek advice and guidance during that period of figuring out who you are and where you want to be is through something like a life coach. Oh for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it used to be like going to the gym.
Yeah. I mean, that's still a thing like getting across but yeah, getting across. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And yeah, as long as there are people going through that stuff. Yeah. You need a little kick in the ass like life coaches will be employed. Okay, so this is a noble shit. This is like stuff that I actually support. Melissa and Jonathan Nightingale from Rossignal Group are my go to experts for all things management at work. And I actually really mean this.
You can see evidence of it in the fact that they are quoted extensively in the book that I wrote about the future of work. They're all over the culture study newsletter. And we had both of them on several times to work appropriate to talk about the future of work. They have helped thousands of bosses around the globe get more clarity, more confidence, more calm, less anxious, less chaos, less of that weird I twitching thing. Their next online program kicks off soon.
So if you are ready to get on top of your management practice, you can use the promo code culture study to take 10% off your registration to find out more, go to world's best management training. If you're interested in advertising with our podcast, you can just send us an email at culture study podcast at gmail.com. Alright, so we got several questions about the role coaches play and what their credentials are. Okay, and Melody's going to read this one for us.
I have a lot of questions about personal coaching, specifically life coaches. I should say I'm a psychologist, so I'm obviously biased in the direction of a need for specific expertise and credentialing. I think my questions would be one, if you found life coaching and therapy useful, what is the difference between life coaching and therapy? When would you recommend life coaching and when therapy? Two, should life coaching be regulated? How?
Three, one of my many concerns about life coaching is that it tends to pull for coaches I've been friends with to basically market their own lives as aspirational. Like, I'll coach you to live the life I'm living because that's what grounds their experience. And it seems very unhealthy for the people trying to market themselves. How can this be avoided?
So I know some life coaches who do not want, who actually have therapy, like have psychology degrees, but don't want to get licensed because they don't want to step into that part of the world. So I think that that's something to consider in the difference because I think people who have like all of the credentials but not the license can be really great life coaches. Yeah. Another difference is that mental health is still very, you know, mental illness is still really stigmatized.
So you can get a life coach that will help you as much as a therapist, but they're called a life coach. And you're not in therapy. So I think for people who aren't comfortable with the idea of going to therapy or self identifying as someone with a mental illness or with a deficiency, instead get to turn it into I'm just trying to be the best me that I can be.
And they don't have to feel the shame around that. And like I said, I don't think that's a good thing. Like I think that's a thing we need to fix in society. But if it helps those people, then good for them. The other thing I would say in addition to that, which I do think that like therapy is kind of like the conversation around therapy with younger generations has shifted somewhat to I'm just trying to be a better me. Right? Like I just wanted.
But you know, scheduling and finding a therapist is so freaking hard. And they're so expensive. And you know, we're not like in network out of network has room in their schedule, accepting patients will even return your email. Like it is really, really super bells. That's stuff. Oh my gosh. And you know, I think what the contrast to me is almost similar to what I've seen happening in the physical therapy slash personal training realm where lots of physical therapists.
Now they don't accept insurance like they'll give you a super bill that may or may not work here insurance, but like those people, what they want to do is like one on one coaching with you. You can pay that money, right? If you can pay the weekly or the monthly or the biweekly whatever you can get in pretty much when you want. You don't have to go to a lengthy referral process.
And but I think that the therapists who are very, very busy and not taking new patients would say that's because I'm good at my job. And there's no evidence that this life coach you're going to is, you know, if they're just like, bring out, I'll be right there. Then like some people would say that shows you that like they're not slammed.
Yes, that's totally true. Whereas I think maybe they might be like the reality might be more that if they are a person who takes insurance, then they don't get paid very much per client. Right. And so they have to take a ton of clients in order to pay their bills. Whereas someone who is charging more and doesn't take insurance can have fewer clients and more time. Right. I don't think either of these scenarios is a good scenario to be clear about.
No, I think that that is why part of why people turn to life coaches is it's easier. Like you just get in touch. It is easier. It's like the barrier to entry. But then it gets me thinking about a couple other things which is multi-level marketing and wellness. So multi level marketing. No barrier to entry there. You know, like if you need to get a get a quote get a job. Like you can get a job with amway tomorrow. It's not a job.
But they'll tell you it is and you have to have a high school diploma. You don't have to have a green card. You don't have to, you know, you can just go for $99 become a small business owner is what they're saying. Wellness also. You don't have to like find the best oncologist for the specific cancer you have. Just drink this juice. What are you doing? It's just that simple.
And I think like the shortcut that's like and I'm just talking from like the clients perspective or like the consumers perspective. We have to be careful about these, you know, shortcuts, these cheat codes to stuff and make sure we're vetting people. Yeah. Because it is a lot easier to just call up a life coach you found on Yelp. That's what I did. And I found my life coach, but I called a bunch of them. And they were like, yeah, it's just a thousand dollars. It's only a thousand dollars.
And I'm like, if I was desperate, you know, I like, I'd be like, okay, great. You have time. You have in your schedule. You can just be here right now. Yeah. Well, and it feeds into this idea that if you just pay for something, like if you pay for a one month course, right, if you pay for this package, you just buy something, it will fix your problems. And you can put that thing on your credit card because it will fix your problems. Yes. And that's not how it works ever.
But I think it is appealing just in terms of the way that we've like come to understand how problems can be solved or how much time we can allocate to solving a problem, which is none. None. So you have throw money at it. Yeah. And it doesn't matter if that money's not yours. What about the part of this question that is dealing with like life coaches who are just trying to encourage people to live like them. And the problem, like the weaknesses in that paradigm.
I think, yeah, so I'm thinking of a couple, I have a few people in mind who have pretty sweet lives and our life coaches that I know. But their lives aren't sweet because of anything having to do with like their manifestation journal or, yeah, like, their mindset or neuro linguistic programming or it feels like a way of monetizing their life that kind of already exists. Like I don't really know of one. Like Teddy Malin Camp is a plumbery I talk about all the time.
Yeah. She's John Cougar Malin Camp's daughter and she's a life coach here in LA. And she lives on, you know, the coast somewhere in Malibu and has like, has a gorgeous family and best fillers. She just got a new round of fillers to she looks so good right now, but now she's like doing reporting for extra, which I think is kind of cheap. But whatever. Teddy Malin Camp, she will proper self up as somebody like, you could have everything I have. And it's like, no, I'm not a Malin camp. I can't.
Like, and no amount of me wanting it is going to make me your dad's daughter. Like, right. That just isn't or you can't be Oprah. Like, no, no, we have an Oprah. We're good. We have an Oprah. We have a Tony Robbins. I mean, there's only so much room at the top, right? So I think it's, I think it's this trend of again, monetizing every single part of our lives because you have to squeeze all the juice out. It's why there are influencers.
It's why, you know, why people make money on TikTok and, you know, with just showing their everyday life and like putting stuff on credit cards to make their houses look really nice. Scary. Yeah. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah. Do you think that there are situations that a life coach is particularly not equipped to handle? Like, if someone needs, if someone's marriage is falling apart, does it, is a kind of life coach be helpful with that? I think so.
Yeah. I think a good life coach, you know, I think someone with well intentioned who, again, there, there can be zero difference between a life coach and a therapist other than the license. Like, that exists. There are people that for whatever reason don't have a license, but have all the training and have good references and, you know, have had a lot of experience and can really help.
I also think sometimes we get absorbed by our romantic relationships and having a life coach or just prioritizing your own time or, you know, like trying to do some self improvement can really help in a lot of areas where we feel like we're out of control of our lives. Like, taking the step to gain back some control can be really helpful.
And sometimes that's just getting a life coach and sitting down with a notebook once a week and brainstorming with them, how to, you know, make your life better. I think all of that is possible. And I think that areas where I think they aren't helpful, I guess I would just, you know, if they're, again, if they're trying to recruit you, if they're like selling a program for you to get a stamp on a piece of paper, I think that that's like, obviously, a kind of scam.
And they can't give you like, they can't prescribe medicine. You know, anything where you were like dealing with mental diagnoses and some capacity mental diagnoses and some capacity, they can't, they can, you know, work with you the same way that a therapist who wasn't able to prescribe. Well, but I mean, down to get into the minutia, but like if that life coach is good, they tell you to go to a psychiatrist.
Right. Right. You know, and so that's the, that's the like fine line, like, okay, yeah, if that's what gets your foot in the door to a psychiatrist, then great, that you got a good life coach, but there are plenty of good ones who are just going to be like, I'm my course. Just like Brian Jordan Alvarez, Marney character, you know that guy? Marney is like, son of a bitch. Yeah, if you get Marney vibes, if you always feel like this person is trying to make you sign up for something.
Yeah, that that is a good sign or that they are not, they don't necessarily have you becoming a better person as their primary goal. Okay, our next question is about how coaches and clients determine success and results. This is from Molly and our producer Melody is going to read it for some obvious reasons. My boyfriend is a coach, a business coach, so not quite life coaching before I met him, I was very skeptical about the coaching industry. It has such a scammy connotation to me.
I've hit him with the hard questions and I respect his business model a lot, but I struggle with articulating what a quote-unquote good coach is versus a scammy cult of personality, a bloody-esque abstract life coaching model. Many of his clients have very concrete results like more income, fewer hours of work, etc. But some of the results are just that they feel better or feel transformed. How do you assess the efficacy of an industry whose metric of success seems to amount to good vibes?
She needs to leave him right now. What I mean thought is this relationship is a done-zo, get out of it. You don't like him. I mean, you're into him because he's bad. You know, he's got some bad vibes or whatever and you don't understand him, but you have an icky feeling from the beginning. Don't be in that relationship. Okay, back to the question. Right, no, that's so true. If the thing that your partner does gives you a little bit of an icky vibe and you're trying to talk yourself out of it,
this is the advice we're giving this entire episode though, is like, trust your gut. The cost of being wrong and leaving a good man or a good life coach because you get an icky vibe, the cost of being wrong is always less than the cost of being right that you are getting scammed, right?
That you are with the wrong person. So I think it is about vibes in that it's a vibe check thing. If you're feeling safe, if you're feeling cared for, if you're feeling like this is legitimate, then go ahead and keep doing it and feel happy with the quote-unquote results. But I don't know. I think she needs to go.
So in season one, you could point to the MLMs, be like, okay, this is how much people are sinking into this, right? And how much money they are losing. There was very clear evidence, like a case to be made about this. With personal coaching, you can't be like, oh, this person who paid for a personal coach, they got some good vibes. How do we understand it?
I think that that's on the coaches, not on the client. So for example, I haven't heard of this happening a ton, but I do know of it happening, people getting fired by the therapist for just being unwilling to do the work, being unwilling to be honest, making it. So I do know of some specific examples, like just using the therapist as a kind of punching bag, you know, somebody to throw your anger at. Those can be kind of abusive relationships.
And it's really on the professional in that situation to say, I'm drawing the line here. This is not working for either of us. I don't want to keep taking your money. And you need to go somewhere else. And I think for her boyfriend, ex boyfriend, I would say if he's feeling like someone's just like pouring more money in, but the results are only that they like it. Like he needs to check with himself if he's okay with that.
Like I would charge people to hang out with me if I thought that was okay. I think this is how it's so hard to find like to ascertain like who's a good life coach because a really good life coach is constantly asking those questions. They're doing the life coaching on themselves. And or they're seeing a life coach who is asking them hard questions.
They're also therapists, right? Like yes, they are interrogating. And I think that, you know, so few people in life just generally do that. Yeah. And if you're just doing this because you're an encouraging positive person. And it's a paycheck. And it's a paycheck. You probably aren't also doing all of that other hard work that is protecting you from exploiting others.
Yeah. Be a bartender. I mean, you can be charming. You can impact people's lives. You can help people feel better. You can make great tips. You can get paid based on your personality, all that stuff. But don't be like a therapist adjacent. And again, I don't trust this guy. Like the fact that he's not thinking about this and talking to her in a way that satisfies her curiosity about his career is like.
The other flag for me and Molly, take, you know, we don't know your life. We know just to this question. But take that. So is the the way she articulates versus a scammy cult of personality, a abstract life coaching model. Like she knows what she's she's seen some part of that, right? Like she perceives it. She has language to describe that component. Yes.
And sometimes it's hard when someone you love is working in an industry where there are a lot of bad actors because they are made to date of rappers. I know. They are made to answer for the entire. And comedians. Wait, I'm an answer of comedian. I was an academic journalist. But sometimes they should be made to answer for the entire community because they are they are part of that they are doing that. So I think that's the question that she needs to take a look at.
The question was not should I make up my boyfriend, but we have we have giving you some advice there. Or at least some questions that you can ask him as follow up question. Like just if you know, he might not have the answer you want to hear. But yeah, don't ask us go ask him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he should be game to talk about this stuff. I don't go back to the rapper stuff, but I did one state someone who had some album art out that had a.
An objectifying photo of a woman on it. I wasn't the only one to say something, but I was like, do we really need to do this? And he changed his mind and he changed it. Yeah. And we talked about it and he was like, I just thought it was funny. And I was like, it was funny. And you have fans that are in their teens, you know, like that don't understand why it's funny.
Get rid of it. And he did. So if you can have those kind of conversations, maybe she can have a sort of life coachy conversation with her life coach boyfriend about like priorities and like and how he ascertains like success with his clients and that sort of thing. I just like I appreciate that she says I'm trying to hit him with the hard questions like. Yeah. Hit him with more.
Keep asking them until he answers in a way that's satisfying to you. And if it's not, then that's that's a signal right there. Then he's a WhatsApp legend. Awesome. And Jamie, this has been such an honor, such a pleasure. I have been a fan since what is it 2011? The year for that long, the good old days of the hairpin. You gave me pedicure advice once and every time I give myself a pedicure, I remember it. So where can people find you if they want more January on the internet?
So I'm old. So I actually have the same handle everywhere because I've been an early adopter of all the socials. It's see it's as in Sam EE Jane Marie like C Jane run on all the socials. My podcast is called the dream and I have the book selling the dream, which is coming out March 12th. I don't know if you've talked about this before on your various platforms, but it matters a lot that you get pre-orders. Yeah. Yeah.
Like the publishers are like, I'm out. It's like, it's like, we it's all that matters. It's all that matters. And it doesn't matter when the pre-orders happen. Like they're cumulative. So it's like, okay, between now and March 12th. Anyway, I really need people to preorder it or it's going to be a flop. And I've promised my daughter that we're going to see it at Hudson News.
So don't make me a liar. Go preorder my books, selling the dream by Jane Marie by me. It's about pyramid schemes. It's a romp and then it's really serious and then it's sad. And then it's a romp again. You'll enjoy it, hopefully. There's even an index. I wrote a book with an index. That's I know it's a serious shit. What? What was I thinking? Anyways, no, that's where people can find me.
Alright, thank you so much. I cannot recommend the dream highly enough. So please go preorder the book and go listen to all three seasons of the podcast and especially the new one. Okay, paid subscribers, stick around for asking anything. This question is a combo of two things that I know a lot about. Academia and the feeling that freelancing and like putting together money like that you just never have enough basically for charity. So stick with us. We're going to answer that question.
Thank you so much for listening to the Culture Study podcast. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We have so many great episodes in the works and I promise you don't want to miss any of them. If you want to suggest a topic, ask a question about the culture that surrounds you or submit a question for our subscriber only advice time segment.
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