This is giving me the existential, midlife crisis I was hoping to avoid. Have I been scammed my whole life as an elder millennial into thinking that life was supposed to be going to college, getting a degree, entering the job market during the early 2000s recession, and making garbage money while still paying off student loans? Maybe I need to sell sales! (This is half sarcastic, half serious)
Honestly, unless you went into entrepreneurialism, then yes. The only way to "get ahead" and take your financial future into your own hands is to carve out your own path. We kid ourselves when we think a corporate job has "stability". Working for someone else will always mean instability at the whims of their choices, layoffs, value placed on you. Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone but those of us who can hack a little risk and find savvy ways to be your own boss (not even saying start a big business focused on growth, just a 1-2 person endeavor), miiiiiiight come out on top. The top being, paying bills and saving a little for a reasonable future, not lavishness.
I STARTED to think about entering the work force again because my energy level to build something from the ground up at 40 again feels daunting, but then I was looking at jobs with ridiculous specifics (meaning, we're looking to promote from within) and SO much responsibility and probably working off hours for $65-80k a year. This coming from someone who has a graduate degree, 10+ years of residential construction and real estate experience and multiple acronyms after my signature line. You can't support a family of 4 on anything less than $100k anymore. Double income homes are necessary unless you're an entrepreneur these days unfortunately. I've decided the only way forward is to put the work in to grow a business again consisting of just me and my Husband. It's a tough one for us elder millennials!
I think about this all the time. Were we scammed, or simply deluded into thinking things would never change? It's impossible to predict the future, of course, but I can't help but wonder what life would have been like now had my parents raised me with a bit more caution rooted in reality?
The conman on the streets of NYC is an interesting comparison. I found myself imagining, what if this glammed up pilates-bodded 24 year old came up to passerby on the street and rattled off her same pitch. I have a feeling it would not convince many people.
What is it about short-form video content that makes absurd cons like this more effective? Is it because the video medium has previously been mostly professionally produced, and that lends it a subconscious level of credibility?
lololol I have watched this lady before and was very close to getting involved. I freaking love the phrase oppositional curiosity and the way you poetically write about the existence of this seller of selling. I do love getting lost in the idea of all I have to do is watch this, follow the plan and I too can be a glamorous unbothered queen with millions. I think it is partly because in real time I see many friends and people around me who seem to always float through life in some sort of way financially. However, when I pull back the veil, there is way more financial support than I could have ever imagined. I have only ever wanted to work for myself and somehow stumbled into the corporate world in my mid 30s. I still haven't figured out what it is I will be selling or exchanging for the dream (or at least how I imagine the dream) of time and money autonomy where I get to make the choices of how I want to spend it.
I think you’re really onto something with the thesis of “it’s nice to believe”. I feel like with the margins getting tighter around surviving as an “average” person these days, you have to constantly be on-guard for what is a ripoff and high alert for when there’s “a good deal” on something. This constant vigilance is exhausting, whether it’s clothes shopping in person, online shopping for anything, finding a good service provider (internet, phone, electricity, any household technician, etc) or even shopping at the grocery store. Let alone the constant awareness that those without generational wealth have no safety net in the event of making one or too many risky financial decisions, and dwindling concepts of community erode this even further.
So, with all that in mind, yeah you’re spot on that it’s a cathartic break from all that in order to voyeur on a life where you’re above and immune to those stressors, or you’re the party in power doing the scamming of others. Getting to be the fisher instead of the fish, sort of? And i want to assume that she (and other influencers like her) are smart enough to know that they’re selling that just as much as they’re selling their courses.
A fool and their money are soon parted has never been more true. Take the amazing dollars you get from this and buy crypto. Hurry! Don't be left behind
The sad reality is that even if no one purchased her course, she would still be able to post from her G-Wagon draped in ALO and Van Cleef and Arpels because that lifestyle was funded before she started this “business venture”. It is the illusion of success that created the emotional opportunity for the desperation of the W-2 worker to be monetized.
Hannah Alonzo did a fantastic deep dive into Shelby and She Sells Academy on her YouTube channel a few months ago—selling courses online has truly become one of the most unexpected grifts to me. If you can sell the allusion of a lifestyle that others want, you can sell them a course that promises them that lifestyle. The catch? YOU are paying for their lifestyle, not the skills they're "teaching" you.
She's definitely the more fun part of capitalism as well as the interesting part of the meta-ness on it all. Sales on sales on sales. Fake on fake on fake. Spectacle on top of spectacle on top of spectacle. Amazing.
We really have degraded into "Coaches Coaching Coaches." My algorithm has started feeding me these people too, and I genuinely can't tell if they're performance art or real life anymore...
The tell I learned in thirty years of reading contracts: the louder the "sale," the quieter the terms. I once had a client buy a "today only" coaching program — the discount was real. So was the clause three screens down that auto-billed her $2,000 a quarter until she canceled in writing, by certified mail, 60 days before renewal. She found it fourteen months later. The influencer sells you the yes; the contract decides what that yes actually costs. When urgency and fine print show up in the same room, the urgency is there to keep you from reading the fine print.
The image of coaches coaching coaches selling sales from a pink Rolls Royce is funny until it sits beside the people doing the most materially real work for the least money. I loved the phrase oppositional curiosity, because it explains the humiliating magnetism of a world you distrust but keep observing for clues. The product is not really sales advice, it is temporary relief from an economy whose rules feel both rigged and needlessly complicated.
This is giving me the existential, midlife crisis I was hoping to avoid. Have I been scammed my whole life as an elder millennial into thinking that life was supposed to be going to college, getting a degree, entering the job market during the early 2000s recession, and making garbage money while still paying off student loans? Maybe I need to sell sales! (This is half sarcastic, half serious)
Honestly, unless you went into entrepreneurialism, then yes. The only way to "get ahead" and take your financial future into your own hands is to carve out your own path. We kid ourselves when we think a corporate job has "stability". Working for someone else will always mean instability at the whims of their choices, layoffs, value placed on you. Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone but those of us who can hack a little risk and find savvy ways to be your own boss (not even saying start a big business focused on growth, just a 1-2 person endeavor), miiiiiiight come out on top. The top being, paying bills and saving a little for a reasonable future, not lavishness.
I STARTED to think about entering the work force again because my energy level to build something from the ground up at 40 again feels daunting, but then I was looking at jobs with ridiculous specifics (meaning, we're looking to promote from within) and SO much responsibility and probably working off hours for $65-80k a year. This coming from someone who has a graduate degree, 10+ years of residential construction and real estate experience and multiple acronyms after my signature line. You can't support a family of 4 on anything less than $100k anymore. Double income homes are necessary unless you're an entrepreneur these days unfortunately. I've decided the only way forward is to put the work in to grow a business again consisting of just me and my Husband. It's a tough one for us elder millennials!
I think about this all the time. Were we scammed, or simply deluded into thinking things would never change? It's impossible to predict the future, of course, but I can't help but wonder what life would have been like now had my parents raised me with a bit more caution rooted in reality?
Hahaha this post needs to come with a midlife crisis trigger warning
“Ouroboros of grift” is genius phrase and such an apt description of so much of what we (I?) see on social media these days
The conman on the streets of NYC is an interesting comparison. I found myself imagining, what if this glammed up pilates-bodded 24 year old came up to passerby on the street and rattled off her same pitch. I have a feeling it would not convince many people.
What is it about short-form video content that makes absurd cons like this more effective? Is it because the video medium has previously been mostly professionally produced, and that lends it a subconscious level of credibility?
lololol I have watched this lady before and was very close to getting involved. I freaking love the phrase oppositional curiosity and the way you poetically write about the existence of this seller of selling. I do love getting lost in the idea of all I have to do is watch this, follow the plan and I too can be a glamorous unbothered queen with millions. I think it is partly because in real time I see many friends and people around me who seem to always float through life in some sort of way financially. However, when I pull back the veil, there is way more financial support than I could have ever imagined. I have only ever wanted to work for myself and somehow stumbled into the corporate world in my mid 30s. I still haven't figured out what it is I will be selling or exchanging for the dream (or at least how I imagine the dream) of time and money autonomy where I get to make the choices of how I want to spend it.
I think you’re really onto something with the thesis of “it’s nice to believe”. I feel like with the margins getting tighter around surviving as an “average” person these days, you have to constantly be on-guard for what is a ripoff and high alert for when there’s “a good deal” on something. This constant vigilance is exhausting, whether it’s clothes shopping in person, online shopping for anything, finding a good service provider (internet, phone, electricity, any household technician, etc) or even shopping at the grocery store. Let alone the constant awareness that those without generational wealth have no safety net in the event of making one or too many risky financial decisions, and dwindling concepts of community erode this even further.
So, with all that in mind, yeah you’re spot on that it’s a cathartic break from all that in order to voyeur on a life where you’re above and immune to those stressors, or you’re the party in power doing the scamming of others. Getting to be the fisher instead of the fish, sort of? And i want to assume that she (and other influencers like her) are smart enough to know that they’re selling that just as much as they’re selling their courses.
Fantastic writing as always Katie!
A fool and their money are soon parted has never been more true. Take the amazing dollars you get from this and buy crypto. Hurry! Don't be left behind
The sad reality is that even if no one purchased her course, she would still be able to post from her G-Wagon draped in ALO and Van Cleef and Arpels because that lifestyle was funded before she started this “business venture”. It is the illusion of success that created the emotional opportunity for the desperation of the W-2 worker to be monetized.
Hannah Alonzo did a fantastic deep dive into Shelby and She Sells Academy on her YouTube channel a few months ago—selling courses online has truly become one of the most unexpected grifts to me. If you can sell the allusion of a lifestyle that others want, you can sell them a course that promises them that lifestyle. The catch? YOU are paying for their lifestyle, not the skills they're "teaching" you.
Hannah's vid here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4TYryhb43Q
Loved this essay.
Love the Kate Kennedy call out. Have you read LONDON FALLING by Patrick Radden Keefe? Lots of overlap in the Venn Diagram and my current Roman Empire.
I devoured that book. It’s my favorite read this year, easy. I definitely see the overlap - good call.
I haven’t read yet, but I’ve been *waiting* for a Katie piece about this specific influencer and I am THRILLED
Lost me at Miami...
She's definitely the more fun part of capitalism as well as the interesting part of the meta-ness on it all. Sales on sales on sales. Fake on fake on fake. Spectacle on top of spectacle on top of spectacle. Amazing.
We really have degraded into "Coaches Coaching Coaches." My algorithm has started feeding me these people too, and I genuinely can't tell if they're performance art or real life anymore...
The tell I learned in thirty years of reading contracts: the louder the "sale," the quieter the terms. I once had a client buy a "today only" coaching program — the discount was real. So was the clause three screens down that auto-billed her $2,000 a quarter until she canceled in writing, by certified mail, 60 days before renewal. She found it fourteen months later. The influencer sells you the yes; the contract decides what that yes actually costs. When urgency and fine print show up in the same room, the urgency is there to keep you from reading the fine print.
The image of coaches coaching coaches selling sales from a pink Rolls Royce is funny until it sits beside the people doing the most materially real work for the least money. I loved the phrase oppositional curiosity, because it explains the humiliating magnetism of a world you distrust but keep observing for clues. The product is not really sales advice, it is temporary relief from an economy whose rules feel both rigged and needlessly complicated.
This was wonderful to read, Katie, you are so talented.