Experts v Bullsh*tters

Hello, and welcome back to Sniffing Out The Bullshit. This week, we are going to be talking about all those experts out there, and more importantly, how to sniff out one of the bullshitters versus a real expert. I feel like entrepreneurship has hit an all-time high, and everyone wants to be their own boss and run their own business, which is fantastic. I love that stuff. But not everyone's going to be good at it, and most people are just chatting shit half the time. And unfortunately, it's conning a lot of people. It's causing a lot of upset. It's ripping people off, and it's just quite demoralizing when you get scammed by one of these people who claim to be an expert at something, but actually they're just trying to have it on and trying to have a shortcut, and trying to see how long they can get away with it before getting found out. Now, I'm not talking about, you know, companies. No, for example, a typical one is a car dealership. I feel like, or mechanics, you know, I feel like as a woman, when I take my car in to get repaired or I go, you know, to buy a new one, I feel like I'm always going to get ripped off because they see a woman come in, they're like, hmm, how much money can I milk her for? Can I say all these, like, things have been broken and, you know, they need to be fixed and all this sort of stuff and see if I can rip her off? And these guys generally probably know what they're doing and they probably are good at their job. They're just trying to milk it and take the piss a little bit. I'm not even talking about these guys. I'm talking about basically the world of freelancers or, you know, anyone that you're trying to hire online and you just land on a website or you get approached on social media, usually to do digital services of some kind, but it could be to do lots of different things. Now, how do you know who to trust? Because everyone claims to be an expert these days and they all seem to have tons of views and, you know, this portfolio of stuff that they've done and guaranteed results. Oh my gosh, that word, guaranteed. I mean, that should really be rule number one. Anyone who says that they're going to guarantee anything should probably be a little bit dubious. I mean, especially in the world of digital marketing, which is, you know, where I sit a lot of the time and I just hear the word guarantee all the time and how many things in life are guaranteed? It's very rare. So that's rule number one, really.

But think about it, when you hire someone, do you actually research that person or that company? Like, do you really research them? I mean, I know that when I speak to most people about it, they say they go on gut or someone said something or they have a quick look on their website and they seem reasonably legit and they just go with it. I guess everyone is in such a rush these days that they just don't feel they have the time to put in the research. But I know that when you're often hiring people, you always seem to be in a rush and you always got a lot of other things on your plate at the time. And you just kind of just go with, I guess, the first people that respond to you often, that's affordable. And that quick decision can cause a whole host of pain later on. So, I mean, even just Googling them quickly is a good way to start, but most people don't even do that. Now, the problem is with Google these days, you can fake a lot of stuff. There are still hundreds of companies out there that you can pay to have fake Google reviews or fake Facebook reviews and anything like that. There's even TrustPilot reviews, all of these legit platforms that offer reviews. There are companies out there offering fake ones, and you can pay them a bit of money and they will just leave five-star reviews on your profile. So you can just build this up. And this is how a lot of Amazon businesses build up. Now, you think that shopping at Amazon's gonna protect you because Amazon's a very trustworthy company and they often do refund the buyers and all that sort of stuff, but it's just hassle. You're still gonna end up with problems as well. And you can see that, again, looking out for all those reviews that have been left at the same date and all that sort of stuff, these are very telltale signs. So just watch out for this sort of stuff. But let's talk about the bigger ticket stuff when you're hiring someone and you may not have this stuff to look at. And it may not be in your realm and you just have no idea what to think. Now, there's a lot of people out there now trying their luck at freelancing, whether it be a bit of graphic design, a bit of copywriting, social media management. These are the sort of typical things that you see all the way from like building a website, you know, even doing research or data entry. And there's tons of freelance websites out there now. You've got like Upwork and Fiverr, and all these people have got profiles on there.

And, you know, it starts off as a small amount of money first, but then they just go up and up, and it only takes a few legitimate customers to buy from them, for them to build up their portfolio. And what I've noticed is that people just steal portfolios. I learned this several years ago, because when I was first starting out with my agency, and I'd only had a couple of employees at the time, and I needed help with stuff. So I remember specifically writing a job description, looking for someone who had experience with this particular piece of software's integration with the website. And because it was so niche, there obviously wasn't, you know, there weren't many people out there who did this. And I had several people apply, all with my own work in their portfolio. Because when I asked for specific examples of this particular product integration, they obviously Googled stuff, found my work, and put it in their portfolio, which was absolutely nuts. So, you know, I don't even trust portfolios anymore because you can just lie and say, oh, I designed that website or, you know, actually all that content on this big high profile site, I wrote all that. How do you get proof? Now, unless you're the type of person to be like, oh, okay, great, can I get a reference for that, which you totally should, by the way, then you're not gonna get your proof. Like, you're just gonna have to take them at word value. So it's like, I think that it's so easy to fake an entire portfolio, entire load of experience, you know, and it's so scary out there. And you see even now, like, I think that when you first meet someone, you just find out how legitimate they are, absolutely a bare minimum Google search, and just find out what stuff there is about people, you know, but legit people also just don't have much internet presence sometimes. So you should be able to find something, but even if they don't, then you should find them on LinkedIn. Most people are on LinkedIn, who are professional. The problem is these days, a LinkedIn profile can also be fake, and I've seen a lot of them. I've seen people who have worked for me previously, claiming to have worked for us for like years, and it was only like there for a few months. So, you know, they just fudge their profile. They claim to have X, Y, Z experience. They were apparently amazing at this and that, and they built all sorts of things while they were working with us.

And I know none of that is true. So just think how many people are lying on their LinkedIn. And so it's difficult again to prove, unless you follow up, unless you do a bit of research. So I thought I'd talk about how we can also spot some of those fake experts out there and compare them to the legitimate experts. Because these days, we are living in a world of fake. As I said, you could have fake reviews. There's now paid endorsements. You see all these celebrities or micro influencers advertising products, but they've never even used it. They've just been sent them for free or they're getting paid to do it. So how do you even know what's real anymore? Now, what scares me is that the level of fake is getting more and more sophisticated, especially with AI. I've had agencies, I say agencies, I should be in inverted commas, new people come to me offering their new copyrighting services. But when I asked for examples of their work, they literally still have the word regenerate response in their blog posts, because they've copied it straight from ChatBeat GPT, and they haven't even tried to proofread it. It's so bad. So there are agencies now who have created, again, I hate saying that agencies are not, there's one guy who's created an entire website and his entire offering is using AI. Now, I'm not saying using AI is cheating, it's absolutely not. You can totally use AI. It should be a tool to improve your services or make you more efficient. But it's quite scary now what AI can do. And you can even see things like romance scams getting really popular now. I mean, there were always a common thing before, but now it's even scarier and they're targeting even younger people, not just the widows and things like that. Because things like Mid Journey can create really, really good looking fake people. And so now they're creating dating profiles and always really gorgeous people and targeting people and scamming them. So it's really, really scary. Now, I wanted to, again, we go back to how we can probably spot the fakers versus real experts. And I'm going to focus on the kind of professional industry because a lot of people have been complaining to me recently that they just see so many expert posts on things like LinkedIn. And they don't know who to trust because these people then will drop into their DMs and they'll say, oh, I'm XYZ. I help people exactly like you do this and grow their business. And I get that a lot.

And I actually follow up because I'm curious. And I think that's one thing you can see is that when someone is an expert, they don't mind being questioned. They can prove their worth. And they don't come back saying, I know my worth, because that's a classic, is that they don't want to prove anything. So they just say, I know my worth, I don't need this. And act like you're offending them and you're not respecting them. But I think that everyone should be able to prove what they've done. And we will say, we help people just like you. And I say, what do you mean just like me? Which part of me? And then they don't know what to say because it's a script, it's quite funny. But I feel like I've found a few things that I believe experts do and fakers don't. So for example, experts, I believe, focus on their field and not themselves. Now, when I look at some of the great creators on social media, they are talking about what's going on in their field of expertise. They are consistently spreading the knowledge and they're going, you know, they're providing so much value in their posts to other people because they want to inspire other people and want to motivate them and educate them in their world of expertise. Now, the fakers are usually talking about themselves. If you go back through their posts, it's all me, me, me. It's like, oh my God, look at what I've done today and look where I am talking or look what award I've won, X, Y, Z. And, you know, it might be sort of disguised as a humble brag. Maybe it's not even remotely humble, but, you know, they could be quite good at it and they sort of go, oh my God, I'm so humble to be doing this or actually I'm really nervous to be talking at this talk, et cetera. And they try to act like they're not just self-indulgent, arrogant jerks, which usually they are. But every post is about them and showing off how amazing they are. Usually the boss or a leader and you know how well they treat people and how good they are at their job. And actually they're not offering any value at all. That's because they are full of shit. They don't have any value to give because they don't know anything and they're just trying to portray themselves as a super successful business person in order to sell more of their fake services. Okay, maybe fake services is a little bit harsh. They probably do offer some services, but they would then just outsource it to other people and they're not gonna do it themselves and they're just put on this persona to try and suck you into a sale.

And I also think that again, another key difference is that real experts show what I like to call intellectual honesty and curiosity. So what I mean by that is that intellectual honesty is that experts are always happy to say, actually, I don't know that, or respect someone who doesn't agree with them and can actually see it from the other side of the coin. And actually, it's like, well, actually, I never thought of it from that point of view. Yeah, I can see that. Or actually, what you told me today, I learned from that. That's interesting. And sometimes you're just never gonna agree, but you can respectfully disagree. But again, it's all like, he respect. Whereas I've noticed that the fake experts can't do that. They get very offended. Anyone that doesn't agree with them, they lash out. They get personal, and they get very defensive. And like, well, experts have said this, or the science are back on what I'm saying. And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I feel like I've gone into ridiculous conversations with people about a morning routine, for example. Like, there is no ideal morning routine, like for everyone. That's absolutely ridiculous. And someone wrote, and they had the perfect morning routine, or that there was the most toxic morning routine. I read it, and I thought, that's my morning routine. And I was very happy, and I've been productive. And so I think that when I challenged it, she basically just said I was wrong, and I was disrespectful. So I just think that most people who are real experts, they kind of show this intellectual honesty. And when I say intellectual curiosity, I mean, they're always learning. They're always happy to learn new things, and understand that things may not always be the way that they look at it, but that's okay. And that's what I notice. And I think that, you know, another point is that real experts go in depth about things. They're not afraid to kind of talk about their area of expertise in detail, and they could talk for a long time. If you look at the fakers, they're so generalized. Everything is really top level. Like everything you hear from them, you can read in a book, or you can find online in a basic blog post, or you can bloody find it in ChatGPT these days. They are so generic with their advice and their experience because that's all they've got to offer, is what they've read elsewhere. Whereas the experts will consistently call upon personal experiences that will actually, this happened or very specific cases where like actually, I've been doing this for several years, and I've tried this and actually didn't work, but this worked,

and very, very different, and actually look out for that when you listen to it. And so I also say listen out for how they communicate because the fakers often try to talk about other people, you know, in group situations or like, you know, I've been at like round table discussions and they stand out very sorely because they often don't have anything of value to give. As soon as they hear something that's remotely you know, kind of something they can chip into, they use that as an opportunity to brag about something they've done. And again, they're not offering real insight or questioned anything or coming up with any interesting discussions or seeing things on different sides of the coins. They're just there to try to show off. So generally, that's what I've noticed. It's the showing off and talking over above others and trying to sound smart, but actually not offering any value. So definitely look out for some of these key things. But I guess my question is, what can we really do to stay safe? Because it's all well and good, you know, being like, oh, you guys, you're a bullshitter, you're a faker, and actually, this person's legit. But, you know, I want people to stay safe out there because, you know, I'm not, I don't want to just call people fake, but actually, they are hurting people, and that's the problem. And I know lots of people have had horror stories that have partnered with money, and, you know, projects have died from it, and they've lost months of their time, they've stressed, they've caused problems with their family, and it's not right. So I would say there are a few solutions to this. And first one is obviously do your research, whether that's LinkedIn, whether that's Google, ask Google, and really, really do check what they have to say. So, you know, look at some of the qualifications, because I've seen this recently, and I've had plenty of people applying for jobs, and they supposedly have a master's degree in the subjects that they are applying for. And as I speak to them, they actually have no clue about the subjects at all. It makes me think, how on earth do you have a master's degree in this? I mean, because to do a master's, you also have to have an undergrad. And you must have some sort of foundational knowledge, and it really, really baffles me. And anyone can upload a qualification, but they don't actually have it. So really, really do your due diligence and ask some questions about it, ask some fundamentals and how they approach situations, really practical things that only someone with experience would actually be able to answer. Talk to their peers.

I'd say that, you know, look at who they're connected to, who they're always communicating with, and I think that real experts are surrounded by other experts. You know, you are the company you keep, and bakers will be surrounded by other fakers, or, you know, you can see that they'll be trying to associate themselves with the real deal. But generally, they're not doing events with them, or they're not, like, you know, doing panel discussions with them, or joint co-labs, whatever it is. But I'd say that generally, you know, you are the company you keep, so definitely look at who their peers are, and ask around. Like, you know, if you're in a similar community, or, you know, there's other people who you know, that know them, ask them for what their opinions are of them, and be honest, be respectful, and just say, look, oh, you know, someone's reached out to me, they've offered to do work, and I just wanted to know if anyone's got an experience with it. And what you'll certainly get is a tone. Now, obviously, not everyone is going to be liked. I'm sure that if you ask around about me, you're not going to get loads of glowing reviews. But I think there's a general consensus of what you'll feel. Now, if most people come back with a positive tone and say, oh, actually, you know, this person's excellent at what they do, might have, you know, a bit of, a bit of, you know, feistiness to them, might be difficult to work with, then, you know, you've got some red flags, but actually, maybe they know what they're talking about. There's different things like that. But if you generally keep hearing bad stories and you think, okay, I heard that from someone else, heard that from someone else, this is a common theme. And even if they come across really, really together, professional and knowledgeable, but you hear a string of bad stories, there's usually something there that can't be ignored. And that's a problem. And you will find that out later down the line. So it's better to know this early on so you can address whether you still want to work with them. But I think that, you know, you can get a general consensus on people's peers. And I'd say, don't be afraid to ask for references. We've had plenty of clients ask us for references. And it's a little bit annoying to have to go to clients and say, would you be happy to be a reference, etc, etc. But most people are happy to do that.

And, you know, the fact that people give references as well, are willing to actually let you speak to former clients, shows like that they have nothing to hide. I think that what I've noticed is when I spoke to people, I said, oh, can I get references? They just disappear. They actually don't even try to follow up because they have no references. So really follow up on references and don't just get an email. Ask to speak to them. Because again, an email can be spoofed. Unfortunately, I've had I've learned this the hard way, even with full time employees, which is a lot more costly. I've had people apply. And I'm ashamed to say I've had multiple people who have duped me. They've faked their CV. They've added all this fake references and experience on there. And then when I've contacted references, they're only able to give an email. And even it's not like it's just a Gmail, which is too blatant. They've given a domain email, but they've managed to spoof it or it's a domain that they then owned and he done the contact details from, or it's a friend's domain. It's all like, you know, there's a lot of things there. So better speak to someone's you're getting someone legitimate and then check up who they are. Like again, on LinkedIn and backward stuff. So I think in general, just ask for proof. Anything that people claim should be able to be proved. So stats of improvement or ROI's from ad spend and all that sort of stuff. Just ask to see it. And again, people can Photoshop things now and there's AI that can generate anything. But if people are willing to be honest, they will show you something that you can prove. So for example, when we've shown performance marketing statistics, we have even logged into an account and hidden the company's name, but shown everything else around directly to the client so that they can see exactly all the stats that we're not lying about it, but just who that client was for data protection, but they can see the actual results from it. So it's not Photoshop, so we've shown them in person to prove it. So there are ways around it, but it's also most of the time, you won't need to show them. Like we've gone to show people and they're like, it's fine, we believe you. But it's the fact that if you're willing to show, you obviously are more legitimate because you have that data. So, you know, most of the time, you don't even need to do that. But I would just follow up because there is so much crap out there.

Everyone claims to be an expert. And the problem is in a lot of these things now, all the things I mentioned, whether it's copywriting, graphic design or website design, all these things in my areas, there are so many people who just watch a Udemy course or a few things on YouTube, and they claim to be experts. Because most of the time, you don't go get official qualifications for a lot of these things. Some of them don't even exist. Some obviously are out there, but people don't really look at it, and no one really chases it up. So you can fake a lot of these things, and you can make a name for yourself, really, just by shouting the loudest. And so I wanted to create this episode to protect a lot of people out there who feel like they're being scammed a little bit, who feel like every time they log on to something like LinkedIn, they're being lied to a little bit, and it's painful. So first of all, I just wanted to say, you're not the only one. And most people are sick of the fact that everyone claims to be an expert at everything, but you can do your research. There were so many ways of doing it. And I think that, you know, even I've seen YouTube have got this hit pause campaign at the moment, where they're trying to, you know, bring awareness to misinformation. And it says that sometimes, you know, everyone claims to be an expert, but hit pause and go do some research. And I'm going to echo what they have to say, because that's what this should be about. And don't be afraid to do research. You know, however you do it, or if you don't have the time to do it, get someone on your team to spend a couple of hours, because those couple of hours could save days, weeks, months of stress if they turn out to be the wrong person for the job. So that's today's episode on, you know, how to tell the experts from the bullshitters. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I will see you guys next week for another episode of Sniffing Out the Bullshit.