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] Introduction

• A friend shared a sales page, which prompted this episode
• The 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 does

• Earnings claims function as a shortcut to trust and credibility
• The numbers that appear on sales pages aren't accidental: big enough to be exciting, small enough to be believable
• That's the anchoring effect—once it happens, your psychology has already been changed

[00:05:38] Why sellers feel justified making earnings claims

• Confirmation bias: coaches naturally gravitate toward participants who validate their advice, and away from those who don't
• This doesn't require bad intent—a well-intentioned seller working from incomplete data is still presenting incomplete data
• The 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 out

• A former Fortune 100 executive generates several hundred thousand dollars in coaching fees after joining a program
• The 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 program
• Her 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 picture

• Earnings claims almost always report gross revenue—before expenses, before refunds
• I share an example from my bookkeeping days of a coach who reported cumulative lifetime revenue as if it were annual
• The 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 like

• Load in the costs, the background, the network, the timing
• The standard: support an earnings claim with enough context that it stops being exciting and starts being useful
• If 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 buyer

• Strip all earnings claims from the sales material and evaluate what's left
• Ask whether the program stands on its features, benefits, and the trust you have with the person offering it
• The 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 yours
• Ask 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 program
• This 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 psychology

• I don't think it's fair to call most of these programs get-rich-quick schemes
• But they do make use of get-rich-quick psychology—dressed up, made to seem more reasonable
• There 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 argument

• Earnings claims generate emotion, and emotion generates yes
• If you need to generate a lot of emotion to make the decision, it's probably not a good decision
• Set the claims aside; let the decision be a little bit boring
• If it can survive boring, unemotional analysis, go ahead—and if not, the doors aren't actually closing, and the offer will be back

Refund policies get their own episode—stay tuned.

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