TRENDING: Spiritual Girl Boss lightworker Coach of Coaches.

​This post might be more of a rant, but something has been bothering me for a while (like years) and some recent podcasts I listened to spelled out my feelings on this more clearly. 
I’m just going to quote a Pod since she so eloquently stated things I am feeling.
“The big trend (right now) (is) being a coach of coaches… 

a common desire to be an influencer... a motivational speaker, a person that advises others on what to do with their lives, or their own boss babe businesses... (this is) super common in spiritual girl bosses to turn your life story into an advertisement .. to exploit your greatest struggles, to create a striking before and after picture, to sell yourself as your own first miraculous success story. Often time these branded life stories are exaggerated and or just exploited but being repeated over and over and milked for all their worth as a means to gain profit.” Also with the trend of “marketing yourself with flowery meaningless spiritual buzzwords”
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​Over the past 5 years, I saw friends and acquaintances go from offering a specific modality (like tarot card readings, astrology readings or intuitive readings) to very suddenly being a teacher for those who want to give others readings or offer those services. And from my perspective they did this “too soon”. They weren’t yet an expert themselves to teach. (of course, this is my own outside judgey perspective)

To be honest, I WANTED TO BE ALL THESE THINGS. A spiritual teacher/ mentor. I was so sucked into the spiritual woo world- pumped up with thoughts that “anyone can do it”- intuitives telling me I was meant for this! - that I thought I could manifest my dreams- I just wanted to feel like I was doing something good in the world- had a purpose - and working for a corporate company was soul sucking- and I too could teach and heal others as long as I believed in myself!

“Just start even if you don’t feel ready”

But after years of trying to master ANYTHING woo myself.. years of trying to convince myself “I CAN DO IT” and not to have “imposter syndrome” I was like wait.. I just can’t start a business like that without feeling like I am an actual expert in something, without feeling that something actually works and is legit. (although I did try with Reiki- see my blog here) I cannot teach others while still on my way to learning it! While other teachers tell you to “just start even if you don’t feel ready” my conscience couldn’t do it. (see my blogs on the Starseed class & Mediumship)

This is HARD for me to write. I am going to pick apart a particular woman’s classes and emails- I feel like a mean girl— but I have to get this off my chest. She is SUCH a good, nice, great intentioned person, but I honestly think she is stuck in a bubble of spiritual woo, and just doesn’t get it. She is EXACTLY.. to a T.. what the Pod was explaining.

Makings of a Boss Babe- Woo Girl – Coach of Coaches.

Let’s call her Sandra. She started out as a spiritual blogger, then seemed to go onto giving angel card readings and bringing groups of women together in multiple Facebook groups to then sending out emails that encompassed both “get a reading from me” and right after that (in the same email) take my course on how to give readings and make $$$$ “moonlighting”.

That put a bad taste in my mouth. It’s like you’re saying, ‘here is my scam buy it… and then let me teach you how to scam others” okay okay, scam is a little too harsh, but you get the gist- honestly... pick a lane.. .or at least have 2 different segments of clients, those who get readings, and those who are students of the craft, like WTF are you thinking? (she even has courses on how to run a digital business, but she is leaving out this simple segmentation “rule” for emailing?)

I have a second example of this- where I received an astrology reading from someone, lets call her Nicole, and thought it was amazing, but soon after I was receiving emails about how to ‘start your own business’ classes from her. And … I didn’t want or sign up for that content. What happened to the astrologer I loved? She overnight rebranded and used her same email list to blast out a topic that I didn’t want to learn from her. From what I saw she just started her astrology gig.. and now she was a master on how to start your own business while she was in midst of starting hers.. I was so confused.

Back to Sandra.. one of my biggest qualms is that she has a Social Media Masterclass. She claims to be “a digital branding expert” and says “We will be discussing: Instagram engagement, EFFECTIVE Facebook groups, and how to show up and sell on social media!” She has been offering things like this for years, and the first time I saw it, I checked out her IG page. For someone offering a masterclass, her engagement, following and overall page sucks. She has had 8k-ish followers for at least 4 years, with no growth, her secondary page with the title of her Facebook group has 200 followers. On her main page, the one with 8k followers, her engagement is awful, each post has 12-48 likes, and upon investigating more- looking at her followers- most look like bots. Why would I or anyone take her course upon a simple gaze at her actual page- she doesn’t “ look successful” in the social media game. She has a podcast, but each episode is 7-12 minutes, and I am pretty sure they are recordings made in her car. And look, that’s totally fine, do you what you need to, to get your podcast out, but don’t teach master courses about branding and media if you aren’t professionally set up and have low engagement.

BTW, what is an effective Facebook group? I was in her group for years, and other’s and I never really see the moderator doing anything, or the people within in it actually engaging with or speaking about her content. So what is really effective about any facebook group?

Spiritual buzzwords

It seems like she had a checklist for boss babe shit and she feels the need to do them all. If she goes through the motions, she can then at least say she is “all these things” because she has been brainwashed like I almost was about what female success looks like in the Spiritual Woo World.

Her emails always list out her accomplishments in a simple format- that honestly makes it seem like she is a bigger presence than she is in the New Age sphere.

She addresses us as Babe in emails and her courses… also says that her courses are “sexy” and juicy— “Goddess” is in every email, mostly after “Divine” and everything ends with Love and Light.  

I CRINGE.. doesn’t she know how fake it all feels? Is that what you’re going to teach me in your business courses? How to word emails like that?

And look, if you ACTUALLY talk like that in real life and we all know it, that’s fine.. but she doesn’t.

I feel like she got stuck in whatever seemed to be trending in content and buzzwords 5 years ago, and now it just feels really out of touch.

Exploit your greatest struggles, to create a striking before and after picture, to sell yourself as your own first miraculous success story

Her biggest struggle she always talks about is leaving the 9-5, she goes on about how’d she never thought she could do all these things- but now she is! She has won awards in contests she paid to enter, she left her 9-5, and she now lives on a tropical island. (and she is making $$$$$!) I am also pretty sure she has had this same message for the past few years.

What aren’t you telling us? & Turning your life story into an advertisement

The thing with ALL these people is… what aren’t you telling us? How about that you have dual income? And that you live on an island due to your hubby’s job? And in another case with another coach- her dad was a rich from his marketing business and bailed her out of her debt…but… To Sandra’s credit in a blog on “how to quit your day job to be a Spiritual entrepreneur” she does state that her hubby “taught her” how to get her finances in order before leaving her 9-5 (and suggested that you figure out your debt too).. but wait she did get “let go” from her job (that’s not exactly doing the ballzy thing and quitting like she makes it out to be) so I hope she was ready for that. Then she goes on to say to put sticky notes all over your house that say “Leader”… then that’s it.. that’s the end of the blog. You need to hire her for the rest. So I guess the blog wasn’t really a blog- it was an advertisement. I wanted to read award winning blogs like your email suggested, Sandra.. not an ad.

GET THAT MONEY.

She uses words like “create a side hustle” (by blogging), how you should “moonlight” and talks about how excited she was to make her first $100 from a client. It just felt she was exploiting self-care and spirituality to make money. Just SUCH a focus on MONEY- what happened to my spiritual blogging friend? I honestly don’t know her THAT well, but I have sneaking suspicion that her whole business is still in the moonlighting phase. I wonder if she actually does have other jobs/ a day job still- possibly from looking at her linkedin. (which that’s totally fine BUUUUT her courses and emails make it seems like she went from corporate slave- to leaving it on her own terms- to now being a spiritual mentor boss babe (as if her website and blog and courses are her ONLY job/income)- and it’s just not the case, so stop trying to sell me the shit you WISH happened!)

“You don’t see a lot of authenticity… you see a lot of fake and staged authenticity” “you see endless launches, workshops, courses…Theres a thing of constantly advertising and marketing while trying to seem like you’re not…”- Kumbaya Confessional Podcast
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Because for $1,111 you can learn how to launch your entire business. In 3 months you will learn from her how to package your business ( ok her site looks good, but then again she hired someone to create it..), how to’s on SEO (but gauging from her IG and social media I am wondering how much she knows about this), Social Media content (you read what I said about her IG so, no thanks), Legal stuff— ok that’s useful hopefully you at least learn something there, and lastly how to run online courses.

This all just bothers me because again... from the looks of it, she is not the “successful Social media guru” she maybe thinks she is?? And that’s where I almost feel bad for her.

Someone tried to “call her in” but it didn’t work.

“In the brief, hard-hitting message I was basically told by this friend that I am a self promoting egoist who is focusing on spiritual materialism.” – Maybe her friend could have used nicer words, I am not sure what exactly was said, but it seems like instead of sitting with that- she took the defensive of stance of ‘you’re SO wrong’ and went harder. She claimed her friend was triggered, but maybe she was the one who was then triggered (so tired of the word triggered).
And yea what people think of us shouldn’t matter, if we believe we are doing things with integrity ….but she went onto say “it made me realize, you know what? Maybe I need to talk louder and clearer then. Maybe my message is really needed, so much so that it is triggering people”. And she went on to promote her course on how to be blessed, not broke.

I just wanted to say to her.. Ummm you kind of come off like that.. emailing about your struggles, what you overcome and now for money, you can help others too. It feels scam-y.
 
Thoughts

As I write this, I honestly hope she doesn’t see it, because what she is doing isn’t extremely harmful. And I really like her as a person, I just wish she was more authentic. I know her IRL and she doesn’t call me “babe” when you watch her speeches, she doesn’t speak how her emails do.  
I just think she is misled. Like I almost was. I KNOW she won’t see this, though, because although she acts like someone who wants to bring together communities of spiritual women, and I personally know her, she has never once shown interest in my IG page, looked at my stories, read my blog or literally said ‘whats up, how's everything going with your journey-shit it looks like youre going through it’ – you know like stuff you do with your friends and online acquaintances. So not to come off as OMG look at MY stuff.. aren’t I great—Its just interesting that she spends a lot of time, especially in her FB groups and on a co-authored book she wrote wanting to support women but shows no interest in people she actually knows.  

One more story on the Astrologer Nicole- when she came to LA, she was trying to mix comedy and spirituality in one shot- I went to her small show and she was making us all get up and clap and dance and move (eye roll CHEESE LOUISE). And after I really noticed her obsession with her mentor- the woman she took all her classes from, Gaby Bernstein. I followed the rabbit hole of Gaby since I didn’t know much about her, and saw that Nicole was basically mimicking her. I was just so sad,.. this isn’t the way Nicole!! I wanted to scream.

So.. I just want to say..
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS.
The 2 women I have spent the most money with in spiritual coaches have very minimal online presence. They are not gimmicky, they don’t speak like this. They don’t send daily or weekly emails. They were truly authentic and I heard about them through word of mouth.

I hope Sandra really comes into her own authenticity one day.