00:07:52.560I mean, it's pure manipulation and, like, and lying to people that she otherwise cared about.
00:07:59.340She 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.
00:09:35.520And I would have been suspicious of her if she had because I went to her because my life was fucked up.0.69
00:09:40.620Like 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.0.98
00:09:50.100But I let people know I'm an idiot mostly or whatever and then we just have fun talking about gossy stuff.
00:09:59.040But I think it's that part of it of, like, sign up for this and now you can do it too.0.99
00:10:21.400So at the top of a pyramid scheme is the person who started it.
00:10:24.600And 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.
00:10:39.600Yeah. But it gets exponentially huger and huger. Yep. And if you're building a downline 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, NXIVM was an MLM. Yeah. Yeah. So and that's just that was just a straight up coaching cult. Yeah. But they were promised rewards.
00:11:08.220You amass more power within the organization.
00:11:11.580Sometimes it's money and sometimes that's just like stature.
00:11:38.220So, yeah, to answer the question, some are for sure.
00:11:41.600And that's the hard part is figuring it out.
00:11:43.780You 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.
00:11:50.020And 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.
00:12:00.100So 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.
00:12:12.640Like it just it goes down and it's not necessarily that the next generation of graduate students is paying you per se, but they make your existence possible.
00:12:24.820Or something like yoga teacher training, which it's like, okay, 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.
00:12:39.060Honoring sunk costs, the sunk cost fallacy, I think, which gets us in the most trouble here.
00:12:45.640You 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.
00:12:53.900But 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.
00:13:08.380when i'm only feeling like 40 suspicious yeah and that's that just keeps us all in every bad
00:13:15.840situation in all of our lives now here i am being a life coach but like get the divorce you know
00:13:20.020what i mean yeah 40 suspicious you know i think too it's kind of like when people start doing
00:13:26.280therapy which we're going to talk about the difference between therapy and life coaching
00:13:29.340later but like i have met so many people who like about six months in they're like i've been
00:13:35.220thinking about maybe going back to school to become a therapist no right like there's something
00:13:41.400about it that they're like this is great what if I could also do this kind of thing yeah again I
00:13:48.840I've talked about this with my therapist like I'm like can you imagine if at one of the end of one
00:13:54.780of our sessions I've been with her for like 10 years but yeah at the end of one of our sessions
00:13:58.060if you're like, Jane, you know what you need to consider?
00:17:16.900It allows you to, like, look at this entire industry not thinking, oh, I'm trying to figure out how and why this entire industry is bankrupt.
00:17:27.940Well, here's the problem with making my show is 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 want 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.0.98
00:17:56.980like that's not there's nothing yeah yeah that's so interesting right you have to be like you can't
00:18:04.760just be like oh it's nuanced right like you have to start out being kind of mad about it well you
00:18:09.940just have to know that they're you're going to find the thing that will be in opposition to
00:18:15.120rational thinking yeah and not just rational but like you need to find a nefarious player and I
00:18:22.380i guess there's probably a few wedding dress designers or wedding planners that like try to
00:18:28.580rip people off but it's not like a grand scale institutional no no the way these other things
00:18:36.480are just like patriarchy plus like consumerist feminism like you know what i think there's no
00:18:44.040there's no get mad at pinterest i guess i could be like pinterest this is all your fault if it
00:18:50.280was a movie you could have just like pinterest personified as like some character but yeah you
00:18:54.860can't do that all right let's let's transition we have a question from mary who's interested in
00:18:59.840what is behind what she perceives as like this current surge in popularity and melody's going
00:19:05.700to read this one for us is the current meteoric rise of the coaching industry driven by altruistic
00:19:11.620forces such as seeking meaning and impact in work or capitalistic forces such as seeking a side
00:19:18.220hustle due to economic insecurity. Fascinating. Oh, I have a lot of thoughts about this. Yeah.
00:19:23.720Because what we've done lately in this country, and by lately, I mean the last 100 years,
00:19:28.380is we've completely confused those two things on purpose. So we've made the pursuit of money
00:19:33.600altruistic. We tell ourselves about trickle-down economics, right? You making money, you earning
00:19:40.340more money, it's just going to affect the economy in a positive way. Job makers.
00:19:44.120So you're job makers. 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.
00:20:07.300I think, like, in people's hearts, most of us are altruistic.
00:20:13.980There's, like, pathologies where people can't be.
00:20:16.980But I think humans are naturally, for the most part, altruistic in order to keep themselves and their children alive.0.96
00:20:24.160And capitalism and American dreamism and that kind of shit skews some things that we all need.0.94
00:20:34.780like we all need money but it it the story is that um it's a virtuous thing that you're being0.97
00:20:40.880rewarded by god by your community so it's why we look at bill gates the way we do yeah you know i
00:20:47.260mean i think that there's things about him lately that have come out that like we don't but for the
00:20:51.520longest time it was like wow he has a non-profit you're like yeah if i had a billion dollars my
00:20:58.300my lawyers and my accountants would also make me have a non-profit like that it's just simple
00:21:03.900accounting this gets to the heart of I think a lot of personal coaching is like is it to make
00:21:09.180you a better person or is it to make you more successful like as a business no idea I could
00:21:15.320not figure that out for the life of me well because like I think the idea is like you if you become a
00:21:19.980better person you'll become a better business person if you become a better business person
00:21:23.760you'll become a better person like that they're intertwined in that way yes yes yes that's yeah
00:21:29.100it's really hard to suss that out like most of the measures of success that i saw on websites
00:21:34.960or in talking to people most of the measures of success in in terms of what the life coaches think
00:21:40.100are looks you know like your aesthetic yeah improving your job productivity performance
00:21:49.640um doing more in less time your income like i rarely see anything that's just like
00:21:58.000man she just got so chill she just was like whereas I do think like a therapist is oftentimes
00:22:06.940very good at like you need to figure out what's important to you and prioritize and let go of
00:22:11.880things that are holding you back in terms of like being the person that you want to be and quit
00:22:15.840telling yourself a story about like how horrible everything is and all of that yeah yeah I got a
00:22:21.040little bit of that through my life coaching because I was really specific in my ask yep
00:22:25.800about what I wanted. I wanted to move my body more. There were things I really needed help
00:22:30.720getting motivated to do. But even in that scenario, and I love Jessie to death, but even in that
00:22:37.560scenario, my weight was a measure of how successful she was. The way I looked, she would greet me at
00:22:44.920the door and be like, hey, because I lost a couple of pounds or whatever. And I'm just like, that's
00:22:50.720not the point to me yeah and also wrapped up in like all of these fat phobic ideas about like
00:22:56.780a good person is a skinny person um yep the other thing that i like that this question made me think
00:23:03.280of is that there's really interesting research productivity research about how during times of
00:23:08.940like economic crisis people turn to in like the 1970s and 1980s it was productivity books
00:23:16.300and then during the financial crisis it was productivity apps and so I like it makes sense
00:23:24.600to me that maybe in this moment that there's a surge and like trying to find essentially these
00:23:29.400coaches who are trying to optimize you as a person in some ways right oh totally yeah we have to
00:23:35.180ah I just want everyone to just fucking relax like we are obsessed with squeezing every ounce
00:23:43.860of energy and ambition and work and productivity like you're talking about out of every person0.93
00:23:52.020all the time like it makes me depressed i have a 10 year old and like the amount of homework that
00:23:57.460she has i'm just like yeah this is not leaving time for play or tv no which are very important
00:24:03.580things no honestly like for better or for worse like tv is a way that you learn about how story
00:24:11.420like the stories that we it's also so hypocritical that my friends who make tv here in la who make it
00:24:18.020and write it and love it and star in it and watch it at night and when the kids go to bed like the0.56
00:24:23.720screen time bullshit of like my kids can't watch tv because they're exceptional humans and like if1.00
00:24:28.820they were to watch a television screen they'd get stupid and it's like well they're gonna be stupid1.00
00:24:33.240for other reasons because you're acting stupid because you love tv but yeah but even like a 101.00
00:24:40.360year old is is being wrung dry right you know of like what are you capable of and did you0.99
00:24:46.280exert all the energy you could and not necessarily in good ways you know um no and i think exhausting
00:24:54.100there's another question that we're gonna like just fold into this that's specifically about
00:24:58.380like how much of this is about optimization of all things like i think if you have a friend or
00:25:04.460a peer or you see someone on linkedin who's like i love this like i've had an incredible experience
00:25:10.160with this coach anyone who's talking about it right and whether they're mlm oriented and thus
00:25:15.940talking about it publicly because they want to rope you in or just like talking about it
00:25:19.920it makes you feel like oh is that something that i'm not doing right like is that yet another thing
00:25:26.980that i should be doing but i'm not doing in my life to make me an optimized person i have to
00:25:33.580turn that stuff off 100 times a day like oh i didn't post a tiktok today or i didn't you know0.83
00:25:38.740like dumb shit like that like yeah i didn't respond to all my emails or you know i don't0.99
00:25:44.760have inbox zero like i have inbox 52 000 same but it smacks me in the face every morning1.00
00:25:50.700when i look at my phone like what a piece of shit i am because i have so many unread emails you know0.96
00:25:56.360then that's a construct we've totally made that up that's not a real thing i i don't feel guilty0.98
00:26:01.580about the amount of junk mail i get i get mad at the mailman like i've asked you to not leave
00:26:07.100these flyers for the grocery store here but i'm not like oh that reflects poorly on me you're like
00:26:14.140oh my gosh i have another ll bean catalog like that doesn't make me feel like a failure as a
00:26:19.280person but your email does when you're not an inbox zero because we've constructed this idea
00:26:23.320of inbox zero meaning you're an optimized person and then you're the most efficient and you're1.00
00:26:27.900really taking care of things yep it's all pretend are women more vulnerable to this1.00
00:26:33.940and to coaching just generally with mlms for sure but that's like by design because mlms1.00
00:26:41.860allow you to work from home and yeah they allow you work from home they kind of like play into1.00
00:26:46.660all of the women's traditional roles yeah as people who are not supposed to have like serious0.94
00:26:51.540careers outside of the house um life coaching no i think all are welcome yeah like anyone who1.00
00:27:01.720I don't think it's like a worldwide problem the way MLMs are.
00:27:04.600I 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.
00:29:03.260And Melody's going to read this one for us.
00:29:05.280I have a lot of questions about personal coaching, specifically life coaches.
00:29:09.080I should say I'm a psychologist, so I'm obviously biased in the direction of a need for specific expertise and credentialing.
00:29:17.960I think my questions would be, one, if you found life coaching and therapy useful, what is the difference between life coaching and therapy?
00:29:25.300When would you recommend life coaching and when therapy?
00:29:28.260Two, should life coaching be regulated? How?
00:29:31.540Three, 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.
00:29:40.920Like, I'll coach you to live the life I'm living because that's what grounds their experience.
00:29:46.080And it seems very unhealthy for the people trying to market themselves.
00:29:51.060So 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.
00:30:02.560So 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.
00:30:12.260Another difference is that mental health is still very, you know, mental illness is still really stigmatized.
00:30:19.220so you can get a life coach that will help you as much as a therapist but they're called a life
00:30:24.700coach and you're not in therapy so I think for people who aren't comfortable with the idea of
00:30:31.640going to therapy or self-identifying as someone with a mental illness or with a deficiency
00:30:36.320instead get to turn it into I'm just trying to be the best me that I can be and they don't have to
00:30:44.500feel the shame around that and like I said I don't think that's a good thing like I think
00:30:47.500that's a thing we need to fix in society but if it helps those people then good for them
00:30:54.420the other thing i would say in addition to that which i do think that like therapy is kind of
00:31:00.240like the the conversation around therapy with younger generations has shifted somewhat to
00:31:05.120i'm just trying to be a better me right like i just want to um but you know scheduling and
00:31:11.980finding a therapist is so freaking hard and they're so expensive you know we're not like
00:31:20.780in network out of network has room in their schedule accepting patients will even return
00:31:26.620your email like it is really really super bills all that stuff oh my gosh and you know i think what
00:31:34.000the contrast to me is almost similar to what i've seen happening in the physical therapy
00:31:40.560slash personal training realm where lots of physical therapists now they don't accept
00:31:45.900insurance like they'll give you a super bill that may or may not work with your insurance but like
00:31:49.540those people what they want to do is like one-on-one coaching with you and if you can pay
00:31:55.660that money right if you can pay the weekly or the monthly or the bi-weekly whatever you can get in
00:32:00.980pretty much when you want you don't have to go through a lengthy referral process and but i think
00:32:06.640that the therapists who are very very busy and not taking new patients would say that's because
00:32:10.160i'm good at my job right and there's no evidence that this life coach you're going to is you know
00:32:16.060if they're just like i'll be right there then like some people would say that shows you that like
00:32:22.660they're not slammed you know what i mean yes no that's totally true whereas i think maybe they
00:32:31.860might be like the reality might be more that if they are a person who takes insurance then they
00:32:39.100don't get paid very much per client right and so they have to take a ton of clients in order to
00:32:44.500pay their bills yeah whereas someone who is charging more and doesn't take insurance
00:32:51.980can have fewer clients and more time for them and like i i don't think either of these scenarios is
00:32:58.860a good scenario to be clear but i think that that is why part of why people turn to life coaches is
00:33:05.460it's easier like you just get in touch it is easier it's like the barrier to entry but then
00:33:12.760it gets me thinking about a couple other things which is multi-level marketing and wellness so
00:33:17.340multi-level marketing okay yeah no no barrier to entry there you know like if you need to get a
00:33:23.700get a quote get a job like you can get a job with amway tomorrow it's not a job but they'll tell
00:33:31.140you it is and you don't have to have a high school diploma you don't have to have a green card you
00:33:34.780You don't have to, you know, you can just go for 99 bucks, become a small business owner is what they're saying.
00:33:42.580Wellness, also, you don't have to, like, find the best oncologist for the specific cancer you have.
00:33:54.800And I think, like, the shortcut is, like, and I'm just talking from, like, the client's perspective or, like, the consumer's perspective.
00:34:01.520we we have to be careful about these you know shortcuts these cheat codes to to stuff
00:34:09.920and make sure we're vetting people yeah because it is a lot easier to just call up a life coach
00:34:16.660you found on yelp that's what i did um that's not how i found my life coach but i called a bunch of
00:34:21.120them and they were like yeah it's just a thousand dollars it's only a thousand dollars and i'm like
00:34:26.240if I was desperate you know I like I'd be like okay great you have time you have in your schedule
00:34:32.380you can just be here right now you know yeah when it feeds into this idea that if you just pay for
00:34:37.240something like if you pay for a one-month course right if you pay for this package you just buy
00:34:44.040something it will fix your problems and you can put that thing on your credit card because it will
00:34:48.500fix your problems yes and that's not how it works ever no but i think it is appealing just in terms
00:34:56.620of the way that we've like come to understand how problems can be solved or how much time we
00:35:02.100can allocate to solving a problem which is none none so you gotta throw money at it yeah and it
00:35:09.400doesn't matter if that money's not yours what about the part of this question that is dealing
00:35:14.480with like life coaches who are just trying to encourage people to live like them and the problem
00:35:21.360like the the weaknesses in that paradigm i think yeah so i'm thinking of a couple i have a few
00:35:31.280people in mind who have pretty sweet lives and are life coaches that i know but their lives aren't
00:35:37.420sweet because of anything having to do with like their manifestation journal or yeah like
00:35:44.680their mindset or neurolinguistic programming or it feels like a way of monetizing
00:35:52.760their life that kind of already exists like I don't really know of one like Teddy Mellencamp
00:35:59.520is somebody I talk about all the time yeah she's John Cougar Mellencamp's daughter and she's a life
00:36:05.320coach here in LA and she lives on you know the coast somewhere in Malibu and is like has a
00:36:12.160gorgeous family and um the best fillers she just got a new round of fillers too she looks so good0.96
00:36:17.940right now but now she's like doing reporting for extra which I think is kind of cheap but whatever
00:36:22.060um Teddy Mellencamp she will prop herself up as somebody like you could have everything I have
00:36:28.780and it's like no I'm not a Mellencamp I can't like and no amount of me wanting it is gonna make me
00:36:34.440your dad's daughter like right that just isn't or you can't be oprah like no no we have an oprah
00:36:42.220we're good we have an oprah we have a tony robbins i mean there's only so much room at the
00:36:47.480top right so i think it's i think it's this trend of again monetizing every single part of our lives
00:36:54.560because you have to squeeze all the juice out it's why there are influencers it's why you know
00:36:59.480why people make money on tiktok and you know with just showing their everyday life and like
00:37:05.160putting stuff on credit cards to make their houses look really nice um scary yeah i don't
00:37:10.980know if that answers your question yeah yeah do you think that there are situations that a life
00:37:15.420coach is particularly not equipped to handle like if someone needs if someone's marriage is falling
00:37:22.520apart does is can a life coach be helpful with that i think so yeah i think a good life you know
00:37:28.560Mike, I think someone well-intentioned who, again, there can be zero difference between a life coach and a therapist other than the license.
00:37:37.680There 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.
00:37:47.240I 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.
00:38:03.760Like taking the step to gain back some control can be really helpful.
00:38:08.540And 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.
00:38:17.240Areas where I think they aren't helpful, I guess I would just – again, if they're trying to recruit you, if they're selling a program for you to get a stamp on a piece of paper, I think that that's obviously a kind of scam.
00:38:33.460And they can't give you, like, they can't prescribe medicine, like, they can't, you know, anything where you were, like, dealing with clinical diagnoses in some capacity, mental diagnoses in some capacity.
00:38:47.480They can't, they can, you know, work with you the same way that a therapist who wasn't able to prescribe medicine.
00:38:52.700Well, but I mean, down to get into the minutiae, but, like, if that life coach is good, they tell you to go to a psychiatrist.
00:39:45.460Our next question is about how coaches and clients determine success and results.
00:39:50.320This is from Molly, and our producer Melody is going to read it for some obvious reasons.
00:39:55.220My boyfriend is a coach, a business coach, so not quite life coaching.
00:39:59.940Before I met him, I was very skeptical about the coaching industry.
00:40:03.880It has such a scammy connotation to me.
00:40:06.980I've hit him with the hard questions, and I respect his business model a lot, but I
00:40:11.380struggle with articulating what a quote-unquote good coach is versus a scammy, cult of personality-esque,
00:40:18.700abstract life coaching model. Many of his clients have very concrete results like more income,
00:40:26.240fewer hours of work, et cetera. But some of the results are just that they feel better or feel
00:40:32.640transformed. How do you assess the efficacy of an industry whose metric of success seems to
00:40:38.640amount to good vibes? She needs to leave him right now. That's my main thought is this relationship0.67
00:40:46.480is donezo get out of it you don't like him i mean you're into him because he's bad you know like
00:40:52.300he's got some bad vibes or whatever and you don't understand him but you have an icky feeling from
00:40:57.540the beginning don't be in that relationship okay back to the question right no that's so true if
00:41:02.380like the thing that your partner does gives you a little bit of an icky vibe and you're trying to
00:41:06.440talk yourself out of it and you're like this is the advice we're giving this entire episode though
00:41:10.900is like trust your gut like yeah the cost of being wrong you know and like leaving a good man
00:41:19.380or a good life coach because you get an icky vibe the cost of being wrong is always less
00:41:24.800than the cost of being right that you are getting scammed right that you are with the wrong person
00:41:30.760so I think it is about vibes in that it's a vibe check thing like if you're feeling safe
00:41:36.420If you're feeling cared for, if you're feeling like this is, you know, legitimate, then go ahead and keep doing it and feel happy with the quote unquote results.