You know what I’m seeing a lot of these days?

Hammers.

Marketing hammers, to be precise.

Let me explain.

It seems every coach, mentor, or “guru” has his or her One True Answer for what ails you. It seems no matter what your problem they have the solution.

In other words they have their own flavour of hammer, and no matter what flavour of challenge you have, they’ll do their best to convince you it’s a nail — and they’re the ones to hammer it flat.

And the most unsuitable hammers of all?

The ones with no substance to them. Not only are these people using the wrong tool for the job, but the tool itself is broken.

Here are some actual words I saw the other day on LinkedIn:

Now, I’m no vegetarian but even I can spot a word-salad when I see one.

A couple of things occur to me.

First, I wonder how wealthy this person is.

It’s not the case you have to be rich or successful at what you are mentoring and coaching others in (after all, it’s highly unlikely Roger Federer’s coach is a better tennis player than the man himself), but I think in things like this it’s reasonable to expect you to have made some inroads into it yourself — and, sadly, but almost never the case.

I remember having a call with one chap who on the one hand wanted to teach others how to be independently wealthy, but on the other told me he had no money to pay me for my advice.

You could not make this shit up.

And secondly, the whole topic of “limiting beliefs” is a bit of a minefield, and most people who bleat most glibly about them seem not to think things through.

It’s not a limiting belief to recognise it is impossible to have “unlimited abundance”. The universe is very big, but it is finite. Even if you owned the whole damn thing your abundance is still fucking limited to the amount of stuff it contains.

Don’t these people ever stop to think about what they’re saying and how fucking stupid they are?

Here’s a paraphrased conversation I had a little while ago:

“Is it possible your belief others are held back by limiting beliefs is itself a limiting belief?”

“Of course not.”

“That itself is a limiting belief of your own, right there. You have an assumption you are unwilling to question and believe implicitly to be true. Because you believe that, you will act contrary to the belief and thus limit the scope of your actions. That is the very definition of a limiting belief”.

“Fuck off, EBG”.

Case dismissed.

Although it’s not always the case, the claptrap spouted by these excruciatingly positive and enthusiastic pop-psychology zombies doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny.

Fortunately for you, you won’t get anything like that from me, Connor, or anyone else at The Operation.

We know our business, the advice we give, and the work we do are all grounded in sound, robust, and ethical practices and principles.

We have no truck with woo, sleaze, or disingenuous tactics.

And that’s why you’d do well to talk to us.

You might not like what we have to say, but you can be damn sure we thought it through, and it’s the best-guess at the truth we have.

Witheringly,

P.S. Some people call me cynical.

And maybe I am.

Just a little.

But whether I’m cynical or not doesn’t change the fact the claims a lot of people make are unsupported by evidence, and when you ask for it they wheel out the old “you’re just being negative” line.

Yeah, maybe that’s true, too.

But even if I’m being negative, you still haven’t provided evidence to support your claim, and no amount of diversion or ad hominem comments is going to change that.

Feh.

Enough with the bullshit already.

Show me the evidence, or go home.