When coaches make earnings claims

A friend sent me a sales page full of earnings claims. That got me thinking about what earnings claims actually do—and why coaches who use them should take a harder look at what they're presenting and what they're leaving out.[00:00:00] IntroductionA friend shared a sales page, which prompted this episodeThe program being offered may be fine—what I want to examine is the earnings claims being used to sell it[00:01:08] What an earnings claim is and what it doesEarnings claims function as a shortcut to trust and credibilityThe numbers that appear on sales pages aren't accidental: big enough to be exciting, small enough to be believableThat's the anchoring effect—once it happens, your psychology has already been changed[00:05:38] Why sellers feel justified making earnings claimsConfirmation bias: coaches naturally gravitate toward participants who validate their advice, and away from those who don'tThis doesn't require bad intent—a well-intentioned seller working from incomplete data is still presenting incomplete dataThe seller also has a structural incentive not to look too closely, because transparency here tends to go against their financial interest[00:09:24] The Jane problem: what earnings claims leave outA former Fortune 100 executive generates several hundred thousand dollars in coaching fees after joining a programThe anchoring effect lands on the number—what gets glossed over is the 25 years of network, pedigree, and relationship capital Jane built before she ever found the programHer result may have almost nothing to do with you, but the anchoring has already happened[00:13:23] The numbers being presented aren't the whole pictureEarnings claims almost always report gross revenue—before expenses, before refundsI share an example from my bookkeeping days of a coach who reported cumulative lifetime revenue as if it were annualThe anchoring effect depends on presenting the most exciting version of the number, which means context gets left out by design[00:16:00] What a more honest earnings claim would look likeLoad in the costs, the background, the network, the timingThe standard: support an earnings claim with enough context that it stops being exciting and starts being usefulIf the context deflates the number, that's not a reason to leave it out—that's the whole point[00:18:00] How to evaluate an earnings claim as a buyerStrip all earnings claims from the sales material and evaluate what's leftAsk whether the program stands on its features, benefits, and the trust you have with the person offering itThe question isn't whether the program worked for someone—it almost certainly has; the question is whether you are similar enough to that person for their result to tell you anything about yoursAsk yourself: if this program had no impact on your income, would you still want to do it, and does the price still make sense?If the answer is no, the earnings claims were doing more work than the programThis test matters most if you're borrowing the money—and perhaps exponentially more if there's no refund policy[00:22:05] Get-rich-quick psychologyI don't think it's fair to call most of these programs get-rich-quick schemesBut they do make use of get-rich-quick psychology—dressed up, made to seem more reasonableThere is no shortcut to developing the skills and mindset that support earning at any level as a coach; the only way around is through[00:23:39] The closing argumentEarnings claims generate emotion, and emotion generates yesIf you need to generate a lot of emotion to make the decision, it's probably not a good decisionSet the claims aside; let the decision be a little bit boringIf it can survive boring, unemotional analysis, go ahead—and if not, the doors aren't actually closing, and the offer will be backRefund policies get their own episode—stay tuned.Continue the conversation atofficehourswithmark.comGet help with your bookkeeping atletsdobooks.com