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💸 Anti-Scammer Danielle Ryan Exposes Coaching Scams: Don't Get Fooled!❗
536 Plays7 months ago
Watch Episode on YouTube and Subscribe: https://youtu.be/eX296kAhFuk
⚠️ David Baughier sits down with Danielle Ryan, a YouTuber dedicated to exposing online coaching scams. 🕵️♀️
Danielle shares her journey from a modest YouTube channel to a thriving platform with 25,000 subscribers.
Discover her personal experience of being scammed and learn valuable tips on how to protect yourself from online scams.
🔑 Key Topics Discussed:
⇨ Danielle’s rise on YouTube and her mission against online scams
⇨ Her personal story of being scammed out of $4,500 by a coach
⇨ Identifying red flags in online coaching and courses
⇨ Practical advice on choosing trustworthy coaches and courses
⇨ The impact of generational perspectives on online work
🕒 Timestamps/Chapters:
0:00 - 🚀 Introduction to Danielle Ryan's Journey
2:20 - 👩💼 Life Before Starting YouTube Channel
6:55 - 😱 Danielle's Experience Being Scammed
8:18 - 📉 Coaching Experience Turned Unsuccessful
10:35 - ⚖️ Lack of Recourse in Coaching Scams
12:01 - 📈 Rise of Online Coaching Scams
15:33 - 🚩 Signs of Online Coaching Scams
17:16 - 😳 Extreme Experiences in Coaching Scams
21:25 - 🎓 Crafting a Genuine Coaching Course
24:05 - 🔍 Choosing a Trustworthy Coach
28:21 - 🌐 Researching Coaches Outside of Social Media
33:38 - 🎥 Starting a YouTube Channel Tips
36:49 - 🔮 Future Direction of Danielle's Content
37:52 - 💼 Danielle's Current Business Ventures
38:49 - 👵 Generational Perspective on Online Work
39:25 - 👋 Wrapping Up the Interview
🔗 Danielle’s Links:
🎥 Discovery Video: How Much Money YouTube Paid Me with 1500 Subscribers: https://youtu.be/HdlyA97mzeI?si=BhbI0qEU02B8dju0
📸 Danielle’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsdanielleryan
🎵 Danielle’s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsdanielleryan
💸 Lost Entire $100k 401(k): https://youtu.be/85re8qWgBdY
💬 Former Coach Exposes the Truth: https://youtu.be/0IeFOKWJCBU
📉 Debt Coaching Scam: https://youtu.be/OIbKXP7IPGI
🔗 David's Links:
💰 Free Money Course: https://www.fiology.com/free-money-course/
🍏 Forget About Money on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/forget-about-money/id1730601757
🎧 Forget About Money on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5BQTKUPL6IHtXCEJTY9jYo
📝 Episode Highlights:
🎥 Danielle's rise from 1,500 to 25,000 YouTube subscribers
🚨 Warning signs of online coaching scams
💡 Tips on selecting genuine online courses and coaches
🤔 Insight into the lack of recourse for scam victims
💬 Discussion on the role of intention and measurable outcomes in coaching
#️⃣ Hashtags:
#AntiScammer #DanielleRyan #OnlineScams #CoachingScams #YouTubeGrowth #OnlineCourseScams #ProtectYourself #OnlineSafety #YouTubeSuccess #ContentCreator #DigitalScams #InternetSafety #ScamAwareness #BusinessAdvice #OnlineCoaching
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Transcript
Introduction and Identifying Coaching Scams
00:00:00
Speaker
Ads for courses and coaching services promising riches and success plaster our social media feeds. Advocate Danielle Ryan tells us how to know which are scams and which are worth your time and money. Here we go. Welcome to the Forget About Money podcast where we encourage you to take action today so that you can focus on what matters most to you. Today our guest is Danielle Ryan. She is a YouTuber who helps people recognize online coaching scams.
00:00:28
Speaker
We're going to cover her journey as a YouTuber, identify some of the online coaching scams she has encountered, and how we may be able to spot these coaching scams before we naively lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars of our hard-earned money. Welcome, Danielle. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Danielle's Viral Success and YouTube Monetization
00:00:46
Speaker
Danielle, I discovered you by the Google YouTube algorithm taking me to your video titled
00:00:53
Speaker
how much money YouTube paid me with 1500 subscribers. It was a video you uploaded about a year ago and the views for that video are now right at one million views. Congratulations. Thank you. So crazy to think about the journey that has transpired since posting that video.
00:01:16
Speaker
So you've grown your subscriber base since you monetized your channel at roughly 1,500 subscribers. Correct me if I'm getting this a little bit wrong, but when that video came out, it must've been just after you hit 1,500 subscribers and you launched that video, got all the views, you were monetized at that time, I think, and now you're closing in on 25,000 subscribers. Again, congratulations, that's no small feat.
00:01:43
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, it's been pretty crazy. So I reached monetization in like March of last year. So that's a thousand subs for those of you that aren't familiar. And after that video that I posted, so I did like my 30 days, first 30 days, how much I made, how much money I made.
00:02:01
Speaker
And since that video took off, you know, obviously my whole channel has kind of grown exponentially. So it's been exciting for sure. But I mean, the like overachiever in me is never satisfied. So if we could continue that growth, that would be great. But yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to talk about it, too.
Pivoting Business Models During the Pandemic
00:02:21
Speaker
Can you describe what was going on in your life before you began your YouTube channel?
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So a little bit of context about me, I guess I started my journey sort of online back in 20. I mean, I've always been on the internet. But formally back in 2017, I launched my own podcast, actually, where I was I was working a nine to five job, I wanted this like creative outlet, I started, you know,
00:02:47
Speaker
Sorry, this podcast where I was sharing basically like life advice for other millennials who are kind of navigating the world of adulthood. I was about 25 at the time, I believe. Anyway, fast forward a year later, I decided, you know, the job that I had wasn't going to be my career forever. I kind of quit my job on a whim.
00:03:06
Speaker
Open my own business i started a mobile yoga service so basically people would hire me to come to their homes their cottages whatever and i do private yoga classes. Continue to grow that business eventually ended up you know purchasing my first home we converted a portion of the home into an actual studio space i was offering that like mobile service also had in person classes and then the pandemic it so.
00:03:33
Speaker
Obviously, everyone kind of remembers that time. Things shifted even further into the internet. And I started TikTok. So I started making TikToks about what it was like to be a business owner in Canada, specifically navigating the trials and tribulations of the pandemic.
00:03:53
Speaker
Just kind of the behind the scenes in that and so through that i started to garner a following on tiktok specifically speaking to Canadian small business owners and so. In twenty twenty two i ended up closing that yoga studio business and moving across the country so i'm now on the west coast of canada.
00:04:14
Speaker
and i was like you know i'm gonna give this like content creator thing a little bit of a go so i was doing freelance content creation for other brands i had this tiktok page i think at that time i was around maybe fifty thousand followers there and i was just you know again sharing small business advice and so i found myself often answering a lot of the same questions over and over again and
00:04:38
Speaker
TikTok at that time didn't have like the 10 minute videos, you could only talk for like 60 seconds. And so I thought like,
00:04:46
Speaker
I think there's a better way to deliver this information. Why don't I make YouTube videos where I can actually explain these concepts in depth with the nuance and the details necessary to make it make sense. So I actually started my YouTube channel as a means of sharing small business advice in a longer format. And so that was July of 2022 that I launched the YouTube channel.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I was posting one video a week, growing maybe one to two subscribers a
Exposing Scams Through Personal Experience
00:05:18
Speaker
day. I was posting on YouTube Shorts every day at that time. And basically, up until I think January of 2023, I had 400 subs. It was a very slow process. And my videos were getting maybe 100 views.
00:05:35
Speaker
It was kind of like a slog but i was committed i was like you know i've always wanted to be a youtuber since i was like twelve years old i used to make silly little videos in my mom's basement this is my chance and so. Not to like bore everyone with the whole story but some.
00:05:52
Speaker
Topics were trending in the online space i decided to kind of jump on those and share my thoughts i had had a coaching experience back when i first launched that original yoga business. That was not great and so i thought you know what i'm gonna share this and see if anyone else can relate to the story.
00:06:10
Speaker
And not video outperformed all of the other content that i've been posting for months and months and months and that was kind of the moment of like okay maybe i'm on to something here and so again i kinda jumped on the trends of certain topics that were. Other youtubers were talking about that time and that's really what pushed me over the four thousand watch time hours the one thousand subscribers and then things have just kind of. Grown from there so now i still have my channel on tiktok where i shut share like actual helpful business advice.
00:06:40
Speaker
But my YouTube channel now is basically primarily talking about online scams that are happening in the business sort of finance space. And yeah, that's like the Cliff Notes five minute version of a 50 hour story. Yeah. And you were scammed out of forty five hundred dollars from a coach. Can you describe that?
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah. So again, kind of back to the beginning of the story, I'm at this nine to five job. I'm spending a lot of time in these like free Facebook groups trying to, you know, see how other people my age are leaving their jobs and making this, you know, passive income, everything we see all over the internet these days.
00:07:17
Speaker
And I come across this woman who basically was in a very similar situation to me. She had had a job where she was feeling kind of unfulfilled. It wasn't really going anywhere. And she decided to quit her job and start this business. And she quit her job. She got a part-time job at a golf course and then grew this. She had a coaching business. So she grew this coaching business to the point where it was self-sustaining.
00:07:44
Speaker
And so my plan was like, okay, I'm also going to quit my job. I'm also getting a job at a golf course because that just the area that I lived in, that's what made sense. So I was like, serendipitous. The universe is sending this woman to me because we have the exact same story. And so I was like, maybe I'll become a coach too. So I'm like opening this yoga studio, but also offering coaching services. I'm like 26 at the time. I don't know anything.
00:08:09
Speaker
And so I like follow her lead, pay her $4,500 and then every week we get on a call. Half the time she's like late for the calls. If she shows up, she sounds distracted. I ask her for advice on like, I don't have an entrepreneurial background. No one in my business, my family is a business owner. I don't know anything. So I'm just looking for someone to tell me like, how do I find clients? How do I market myself? Like, what is it like to actually own a business? And she'd tell me stuff like,
00:08:39
Speaker
Well you just have to write in your journal what it would feel like to be successful and that's the success will come to you. And so I'm kind of. I'm like buying into this. I'm like oh okay like that's how I build a business. I just gotta believe in myself. Yeah you just have to manifest it. You don't have to do anything. You just gotta think that you that you're already a coach and then you're a coach.
00:08:59
Speaker
Exactly. And so again, I'm young at this time, I don't really know any betters and this woman appears successful. So I'm believing what she's telling me. And so I go along with it till the end of the program.
00:09:13
Speaker
So I think that was in June and the program ended in October. And I realize at this point, I haven't gotten a return on my investment. I don't even think any single yoga client I've had was either people I knew or people who came from word of mouth referrals. This program didn't do anything for me and it wasn't until months later that I started to realize the thing I was sold on wasn't actually what I was delivered on.
00:09:40
Speaker
I think I had a lot of shame around that, again, because it was $4,500, which
Understanding and Avoiding Online Coaching Scams
00:09:46
Speaker
depending who you are, that's not a small amount of money, especially when you're starting a business and you don't have any revenue, right? So it took me probably up until I posted that video in like November of 2022 to finally be comfortable with openly and publicly sharing that I had been scammed because like I consider myself to be a pretty intelligent person.
00:10:09
Speaker
And to think that someone was able to manipulate me in a way where I was just like, here's all my money, just teach me your secrets. It's a very difficult position to be in. And from the conversations I've had with people that I've interviewed on my YouTube channel, it seems like it's not a unique experience. There's often a lot of shame and a lot of stigma. And so that's kind of really the intention behind my channel is to break down some of those barriers and have people recognize that like smart people get scammed too.
00:10:36
Speaker
And there really was no recourse for you either, right? Because at the end of the course, did you at least complain? Did you say, how could you do this? You didn't really provide value.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah. And so that's a really interesting piece with my specific situation. The coach that I was working with at the time was actually pregnant. And so when the program ended was right before she went on her maternity leave. And so as a service provider myself now, when I work with clients at the end of our program, I always send them like an anonymous form where they can submit feedback to how they felt working with us.
00:11:08
Speaker
She never had any kind of format like that. There was no opportunity for me to say, Hey, this is what I liked. Hey, this is what I didn't like. There was none of that. And so that was always something even at the time initially that really didn't sit well with me was like, I feel like I have these thoughts and I don't have anywhere to share them. And so, um, again, from these conversations that I've had,
00:11:30
Speaker
with other people, it seems to be a pretty common theme that there isn't a lot of opportunity for that feedback to be given to many of these coaches. And I think that that might be like a product of design, like it's done intentionally. But again, that's just my opinion, allegedly, from what I've seen on the Internet. So.
00:11:48
Speaker
So your experience happened a number of years ago and social media, all of the different platforms, they've exploded with coaches and classes and courses and programs. And you know, it's all the funnel is the clickbait you get in and the next thing now you're paying for something. There's no shortage of people out there selling courses or coaching courses. What are some of the signs of online coaching scams?
00:12:16
Speaker
For sure. And I think before I answer this, it's important to note that like, I don't think there's a problem with coaching when it's done well. I don't think there's a problem with online courses. I sell an online course, so it would be really hypocritical of me to be like, online courses are stupid.
00:12:33
Speaker
I think that there's value in having skills or experience in a particular subject, packaging it up in a way that's accessible to people and then selling it to people, whether that's an online course, some kind of ebook, like masterclass, whatever you want to call it.
00:12:49
Speaker
The part that gets kind of iffy for me and what I think has become really popular, especially since like COVID, lots of people lost their jobs, they wanted to figure out how they could make money from home, that kind of thing, is many of the people that are selling you on the idea of like fast wealth generation. So take this online course and learn how to launch your own online course and make X amount of dollars in X amount of days.
00:13:18
Speaker
Sign up to work with me and I'm going to teach you how to 10x, 20x, 50x your business using my secret method. As someone who's owned a business now, multiple businesses, over the last six years, the one thing... I've also worked with over 100 Canadian business owners. The one thing that I know to be true
00:13:41
Speaker
is that no two businesses are the same. And so Dave, you could come to me and say, I'm gonna start a mobile yoga business. And I could tell you exactly every single thing that I did back in 2018 to launch my business. That doesn't mean you're gonna have the same level of success as me because it's a different market. Now it's six years later. You're not me. The way you deliver a yoga class is gonna look different than me. You know, like there's so many factors that go into what
00:14:10
Speaker
causes a business to be successful.
00:14:13
Speaker
that if we try to package it up into these five simple steps, copy my formula, it's not realistic. And this comes back to the common questions I get on that YouTube video you mentioned. Everyone's asking me, well, how'd you grow your YouTube channel from 1,000 to 25,000 subscribers in a year? Again, I could tell you exactly what I did, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna happen for you. Like luck, timing, the right place at the right time. There's so many things that go into it that these people wanna oversimplify into like, well, just pay me $1,000 and you can do it too.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, so it's almost, there's two sides to this. There's the consumer side and then there's the product side where the consumer, we're guilty or naively thinking that there's a good rich quick scheme out there and the product side or the draw is that there's, if that's the mindset you come into this with, there's no shortage of people gonna take your money and leave you with nothing or less than nothing because now you just spent money
00:15:09
Speaker
for zero in return. So you just lost money and time and effort and lost progress potentially. A hundred percent. And the number of people I've spoken with that have just as you've said, like ended up in a worse financial position than they would have been had they not invested in this coaching that was supposed to 10 X their wealth. It's, it's amazing the number of people that have fallen prey to these schemes.
00:15:34
Speaker
In your experience, what are some of the most egregious scams out there that we see every day on our feeds? I would say anyone who is promising passive income, like teaching you how to make passive income, I don't know how familiar you are with like the online space and selling digital products. I sell a few of my own digital products. I will make sales while I'm on my couch at the grocery store.
00:16:01
Speaker
I don't consider that passive income. You want to know why? Because I had to make eight kajillion TikToks that funnel into that thing. If I'm constantly pumping out content literally every day, pretty much I'm posting a TikTok, that's not passive income. It's like they want to sell you, anyone that's selling you on this idea that wealth can be made simply in a short period of time with no experience and no audience.
00:16:26
Speaker
is grossly misleading you. And I think that's the most common theme that I see. Again, whether they're selling you on passive income, starting your own business, investing, whatever it is, if they're making it sound like it's too good to be true, that's probably because it's too good to be true in 99% of cases. You might be the outlier that takes this course and all of a sudden becomes a millionaire. But the majority of people, I think, are not going to see those results.
00:16:55
Speaker
One of the valuable things that I've noticed looking at your YouTube channel is in your information section, you've got a form that your audience can submit their own experience out of those form submissions or anybody that's been in like a live chat and given their comments. What is the craziest thing you've heard as far as like either the amount lost or like just the biggest negative experience from somebody that you've personally like sort of believe is true?
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, so there's two experiences that come to mind and I can share the links with you to put in the description of this episode. There's one interview I did with a woman who invested her entire 401k and all of her savings into becoming a coach. She actually built like a quote unquote successful business, had clients paying her.
00:17:44
Speaker
But the thing about coaching is like once you become a coach you're basically coerced into continuously paying for mentorship so. Even if you are actively getting clients and having a successful business you're still told that you need to keep paying for mentorship so that woman in particular invested over a hundred thousand dollars.
00:18:03
Speaker
in coaches and coaches and coaches and trainings and that kind of thing. So that was quite incredible to see. And since then she's kind of realized or woken up to what was going on. She closed her coaching business and is now working to pay back that money that she basically took from herself.
00:18:21
Speaker
um the other individual that was really interesting was a coach so she was actively and in the interview actively admits to participating in a lot of these like false scarcity two spots left sign up now oh you can't afford it i'll put you on a payment plan oh you can't make the payment plan payments well you owe me all this money and
00:18:42
Speaker
It was really interesting to have that conversation from someone who's kind of come to terms with the fact that maybe their behavior in the past was less than favorable, but has sort of come to recognize how they ended up in that position where they had normalized so many of these things that to those of us on the outside are like, what are you doing? So I can share you the links for both of those if anyone's interested in hearing the specific details, but those two by far have been some of the most interesting conversations I've had.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, we'll put whatever episodes of videos that we mentioned here in the YouTube description or the podcast notes. Perfect. Well, that's pretty extreme. $100,000 of 401k money gone.
00:19:25
Speaker
Well, yeah. And in the video she talks about, you know, like that could have been a down payment on a house. That could have been a Tesla. Like I could have bought all of these things with this money retiring. Exactly. That's retiring years sooner than you otherwise would. It's time, not just a Tesla or a down payment to a house. Wow.
00:19:43
Speaker
But I think it's important too to note because like people will hear that and they'll be like, well, that's so dumb. Like, why would you do that? And a point that I really want to make when it comes to the coaching industry is the indoctrination that happens and the normalization of spending these outrageous numbers. You're basically coerced or brainwashed for lack of a better term into thinking that your success
00:20:09
Speaker
as a business owner or as a coach is entirely dependent on continuing to invest so if i don't invest you know this ten thousand dollars in this next program. My whole business is gonna go to zero and so it's it's really just you're in this environment where everyone around us yes man they're all doing the same thing and it's very hard to think independently when you're in an environment where everyone else is also participating in the same activity.
00:20:37
Speaker
It makes me think about the MLMs, multi-level marketing, the mentality, even if it may not be exactly framed that way as a pyramid scheme or whatnot, but it seems like it's got a lot of the same factors and the same mindsets and the same peer pressure. Exactly. The false belief that success is just around the corner.
00:20:59
Speaker
Lots of similarities or parallels between the two, particularly if you're not seeing that financial return. It's like, just hold on one more month, pay me, pay me 1000 more dollars and I'll keep telling you the secrets. And you're just like you mentioned, you're always on the cusp of thinking like, okay, the next investment is going to be the one that brings me the return. And so it's really hard to pull yourself out of that.
Creating Authentic Coaching Programs
00:21:26
Speaker
Because your experiences and your platforms grant you some level of credibility, and you already mentioned that you do provide some coaching and some resources yourself for pay, if you were going to design a coaching course for others, how would you craft it in such a way that it doesn't give off the scam vibe or ensure that it actually provides value worth paying for?
00:21:47
Speaker
For sure. So I think it's important to know that I myself am not a coach. I don't actively do any coaching. But I do have people that I am in regular contact with who are in the coaching space. And I think a lot of the times, especially in the sort of online landscape that we're navigating, the thing that sets apart the genuine coaches from the online scammers that I talk about,
00:22:15
Speaker
Honestly, it comes down to, first of all, intention. So what is the intention of the work that they're trying to do? I was in an interesting conversation on threads the other day where we were talking about how the coaching industry, and this is like a broad statement, the coaching industry in general has really started to navigate away from being client focused. What does the client need? What can I help the client with?
00:22:43
Speaker
to entirely being focused on the needs of the coach. How can I make the most money? How many clients do I need to work with in order to hit my income targets? And so I think when it comes to navigating what makes a good or a bad coaching program, it really comes down to what is the outcome that the coach is promising the clients, but more importantly, is that something that they're actually able to deliver on? Because more often than not, we see these
00:23:08
Speaker
either agree just claims unrealistic promises or things that really can't be measured like pay me five thousand dollars and i will teach you how to manifest a better mindset. Okay but what does that actually mean as the client right so if i'm paying you five thousand dollars what is a better mindset look like where is. Coaches that are operating within integrity in my opinion anyway.
00:23:34
Speaker
They aren't making those claims and the claims that they are making are measurable things. You know, I'm going to teach you how to improve your self confidence so that you can nail your next job interview or whatever it is. That's just like what comes to the top of my head. But it's like, what is the intention here? What can I actually deliver on and is the price that I'm charging worth the value of the thing that you're receiving?
00:23:59
Speaker
So it's very challenging. And as the consumer side of that, like say I'm a person that does need help with something, what are some ways that I could choose a coach that I can afford versus a coach that promises similar or better things at 10 times the amount? Are there ways out there to kind of compare and contrast before you pull the trigger?
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the answer is quite complicated. And this is bringing to mind a post I saw yesterday where this woman was saying, I used to charge my clients $800 and none of them were getting results. So I doubled my prices and now all my clients get results. And to me that signals like maybe the methods you're teaching aren't effective if none of your clients are getting results.
00:24:48
Speaker
And just because someone can afford a higher price tag doesn't necessarily mean that the product itself is worth the higher price tag. But anyway, I digress. That's a bit of an aside. I think this brings to mind an interesting thing that I've noticed. And I did a single video about this, but there is this sort of subsect of financial coaching specifically that focuses on
00:25:07
Speaker
Like debt coaching so people who are in a lot of debt by my coaching program I'll teach you how to get out of debt because I myself used to be in X amount of dollars of debt and now I have this you know magic system That's gonna help you get out of it
00:25:22
Speaker
And so the interesting piece to me that I've always found in that specific debt coaching piece is that from what I've gathered based on following these people quite closely for a number of years, the way they got out of debt was through convincing other people they had a secret to getting out of debt.
00:25:38
Speaker
And so I think that when it comes to deciphering, you know, who's going to actually be able to help me and give me advice again, ties back to my initial answer about like, what is the intention of the coach? Because if my target market is those people that make $30,000 a year,
00:25:55
Speaker
would it not make sense that I'm catering my prices to that specific audience? Whereas if I'm assuming, and maybe this is a wildly incorrect statement, many people who fall into that lower income bracket likely might have a tendency to rely more on things like credit cards, lines of credit, whatever, just because the cost of living is so absurd. And if your income isn't matching up with that, you don't have a choice.
00:26:22
Speaker
And so I just think like if those are the target people that I'm trying to help and I'm convincing them that the way to get out of that debt is to go into more debt and pay me to teach them how to get out of debt. There's just something that doesn't add up there in terms of like my personal moral compass and what my intention would be if I was someone trying to help those people.
00:26:44
Speaker
I mean, that's basically the intention behind my TikTok, for example. I give all of that information for free. I don't charge people money to learn how to start a business. Here's what you need to know because I want to make it accessible to as many people as possible because my target is the people who don't have money because they haven't started the business yet. It's very interesting to me when I see people target their demographics, but then their pricing doesn't align.
00:27:11
Speaker
With the people that they're allegedly trying to help and so as a consumer i think it's really important to again look at. What are the promises being made here what claims are they saying and then what is the price tag and does it align with. What they say because sometimes people will say one thing but then they act in the opposite right so.
00:27:30
Speaker
It takes a lot of discernment I guess as a consumer and that's why I have a lot of empathy for people that do fall into these traps because it can be hard to really recognize that something doesn't add up, especially when you're so desperate to find a solution for whatever your problem is.
00:27:46
Speaker
So let's look behind the scenes a little bit. I know as a content creator and I've got a website since 2018 and I've started this podcast and blogging and all those things. And there's a, there's a backside to all of this. There's a behind the scenes SEO funnels, step one, step two, step three on what generally works.
00:28:05
Speaker
And so when I'm doing all this stuff, I naturally get a lot of things in my feed as far as, you know, buy this ebook for funneling 10X, just like you mentioned earlier. If I'm a consumer and I'm not particularly like, if I don't have a brand, but I'm just looking for a coach, something, are there sites that I can go to instead of just relying on what's fed to me in social media? Because I know I'm probably gonna get scammed if I go through the social media route. But if there's a third party that like a,
00:28:34
Speaker
I know there's udemy courses and there's a lot of course out there that they have ratings or star ratings and that's one way that people can determine whether or not. What they're going to get is going to offer some kind of value in return for whatever they pay what do you recommend people go to.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah. My number one piece of advice for anyone, especially when you're like in the coaching space specifically, or like going to buy from a coach is to go on Google and search the coach's name and then the word Reddit or the word scam and see what comes up. So like if you were going to buy from me, you could search Daniel Ryan Reddit. And if anyone's had a bad experience, if I was an online coach and people thought I was a scammer,
00:29:15
Speaker
I can guarantee you that they've written about it on Reddit because that's where everyone goes when they have a bad experience back to like our initial conversation about recourse and feedback. These coaches don't give you the opportunity to share any feedback. So what am I going to do? I'm going to make an anonymous Reddit account where I can go and write about this experience without fear of having their minions sent after me or having my account shut down. And so that's like number one, especially if you're looking at like,
00:29:42
Speaker
Again, one of these larger players in the game, we'll call them, because a lot of the people who are more prominent in the space have been spoken about and their clients who have had negative experiences have shared them publicly. That would be the first one. Second one, absolutely like you already suggested, me personally, if I'm buying an online course, I buy it on Udemy. First of all, way cheaper. It's like $20 or less usually. Many of these online courses,
00:30:10
Speaker
upwards of $100, $200, $500 made by Jane Doe sitting in her apartment. I could put together an online course. Again, I have an online course. It's $25. I could sell it for $200 based on the way that the industry is. But to me, again, it doesn't align with the principles of making things accessible to people. I think that whether it's online courses, coaching, whatever, there's this
00:30:37
Speaker
A natural inflation that's taken place where people equate their value as an individual to how much money they're able to make in the online business and so when we're sold on this idea of quick well well a lot of that comes down to just build an online course and sell it for a thousand dollars so.
00:30:54
Speaker
Again, just my personal opinion, but I don't buy courses from individuals really that I just go to Udemy because, like you said, the reviews are there. The prices are listed. It's very clear what the outcomes are. But I think, again, it comes down to the individual consumer.
Content Creation with Integrity
00:31:11
Speaker
How has the YouTube journey been for you? In what sense?
00:31:14
Speaker
Well, it's not passive because it takes a lot of work to do what we're doing right now. You got to set a schedule, you got to make sure your technology works. And that's the easiest part of all of this. What we're doing right now is the easiest part of YouTube channel. All the work comes right after and getting it on, doing SEO, editing, hiring it out, make sure that they do quality work. Let's start with what was your original intention or your objective for starting your YouTube channel?
00:31:40
Speaker
Have you met it or has that changed over time? And just in general, do you enjoy it?
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think that originally my intention was to build again, this like business resource on YouTube. And then I was like, Oh, I'll get monetized. And then I can make money through AdSense sharing this information. And so obviously, as time has gone on, and as we've become, you know, slaves to the algorithm, following, you know, content that performs well,
00:32:11
Speaker
My intention with the channel specifically has obviously shifted more into like the advocacy space and. Talking more openly about these sorts of scams I think if I really wanted to blow up on youtube the easiest way I could do that is to make my youtube channel all about how to start a youtube channel.
00:32:30
Speaker
But to me there's something so circular about these channels, whether it's on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, social media channels that focus on how to grow on that social media channel. This is like a conversation for another day.
00:32:43
Speaker
But in my opinion, that's one of the easiest ways to build a platform is to talk about how to build the platform. So again, coming back to my principles of like operating in integrity, understanding what my intentions are, I still want to provide value in a realistic sense. And so for me, that's more of the advocacy piece. And so.
00:33:03
Speaker
I guess I forgot what the other half of the question was, but my focus going forward is really just like utilizing my channel or leveraging it as a means of like helping other people feel heard and seen in their experiences.
00:33:17
Speaker
for someone who's achieved a level of success via YouTube and other social media platforms, and who have also remained, as you've stated, and as you appear to be, close to your morals. You've set some kind of standard for yourself and the way you display yourself and the information that you share with others online, which I commend you on. What advice would you give to somebody who might be listening to this saying, I've always wanted to start a YouTube channel or a TikTok,
00:33:46
Speaker
How do I pick a niche and what kind of challenges can I expect to meet in my first year?
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. I guess the big piece is like you have to really enjoy it. So I know I think this is kind of what you originally asked was like the actual content creation piece. For me, it's like I used to make silly little videos back when I was 12, like I mentioned in my mom's basement. I used to write full musicals and then my mom would sit on the couch and I would perform them for her. Like I've always loved the creative aspect of
00:34:20
Speaker
Putting together some sort of you know storyline whatever and then presenting it so for me like youtube is just the glorified version of that i get to sit here i get to script out an entire video talk about whatever i want. And then maybe if i'm lucky someone somewhere in the world is gonna listen to it right so i think that if i was starting back at square one.
00:34:42
Speaker
I guess when i started my tech talk for example it kinda just happened but again i was a business owner and that was interesting to me so i was like i like creating content i'm already creating yoga content for my business. Why not share behind the scenes and so that was something that i went into without the expectation of like this is gonna be a big thing and i'm gonna get sixty thousand followers no.
00:35:05
Speaker
This is fun to me and I just want to share it with the world. I think that the more you can cultivate that, and I hate to use this word because it's so overused, but the authenticity piece of you as a person and the things that you're actually interested in, that's going to be the thing that keeps you going versus how can I get the most subscribers and how can I build this thing into whatever? Because realistically, for the majority of people,
00:35:32
Speaker
especially when you're first starting you're not gonna gain a ton of traction. Even if you're posting every single day. Yeah you'll see people that are like I started my youtube channel and grew it in 30 days like okay again that might happen for 1% of people but the 99% of us are gonna be grinding it out day in day out.
00:35:51
Speaker
For what? We're going to ask ourselves, like, why am I doing this? And so your why needs to be because you enjoy it, because it's something you're interested in, something that's going to keep you motivated when maybe the analytics and the numbers aren't reflecting that. Do you see yourself adjusting the types of information that you share or the direction of your content in the near future? Or are you going to stick with the business advice?
00:36:16
Speaker
Anytime soon, no. Again, I like to have some variety too, so it's nice that my TikTok focuses on one thing, my YouTube channel focuses on another, and then my Instagram account's kind of melding of the two.
00:36:33
Speaker
And so for me, it's just I do keep like very close track of the analytics on YouTube. I know what types of videos perform better or worse for me. And so paying mine to that and putting my attention towards the content that performs better for sure. But in terms of like the actual topics and stuff that I talk about, at least for the foreseeable future, I don't see changing too dramatically.
00:36:57
Speaker
You've mentioned a lot of the businesses that you've started and transitioned to something else over the past. And currently, based on what I heard you say today, you're advising.
00:37:11
Speaker
So I do, I'm a content marketer. So I work with small businesses and startups, teaching them how to leverage social media for their business. So in some aspects, it could look a little bit more like consulting, like you might come to me and I'll create the strategy for you and then you execute it.
00:37:28
Speaker
Whereas in other cases I'm like a freelance creator so you straight up just hire me to make all your content for you. So my main source of income comes from UGC and strategy consulting so teaching people either how to use social media or literally just making the content and then you do whatever you want with it.
00:37:48
Speaker
So you've really got to love it if you're going to be making it for other brands other than your own. Exactly. I'm literally like in this interview, once we're done here, I got to go film some videos for somebody else. Wow. Oh, you really do love it. Yeah. But I think that's the piece is like people think like, oh, it'd be so fun to like be an influencer or be a creator, but they don't realize that like, that's your life. You got to commit to the bit. That's what you want to do.
00:38:15
Speaker
So what is your mom thinking about this? She remembers you as that 12 year old who was making videos. Literally, it's actually really cute to watch because she thinks it's like so amazing. She was out here visiting me last week and we had some like family friends over for dinner and they were asking what I do for work. And she was just like, it is so cool. She makes videos on the internet and companies will pay her money. I'm just like listening to her explain it. It's so endearing.
00:38:45
Speaker
Oh, that's great. Yeah, because we look for our parents to be proud of us. And I think especially at this age to still have that kind of
00:38:55
Speaker
relationship with your parents and your parents to have that kind of relationship with you. It's got to feel good going about directions. Yeah, for sure. And I just cause like a lot of the times I think there is like a bit of a generational disconnect of like how and my mom will make comments of like, I don't understand how someone can just like sit on the internet talking and make money. But she also thinks it's like a pretty cool thing to be able to do. So it's really funny to kind of see the like generational disconnect there.
00:39:21
Speaker
Well, Danielle, I am very glad that the YouTube algorithm connected us. Yeah. And I enjoyed this conversation. Is there anything more that you'd like to add? I guess just like parting advice for anyone who's interested in dabbling in the online space, whether it's business, whether it's becoming a creator, that kind of thing is like really just know why you're getting into it and don't become disheartened if things don't take off as quickly as you had hoped.
00:39:49
Speaker
because a lot of the times it's like it's a long term game and you really got to be committed to the cause if you want it to work out. But I'm always happy to answer any questions. If people have them, you can connect with me anywhere on the Internet. I'm everywhere. Well, I think you're one of the good ones out there. So I appreciate you for doing what you're doing. And thank you for chatting with me today. And thank you all for watching and listening.