Predators in Cottage Industries: Protect Yourself!

Have you ever been tempted by an offer that seemed too good to be true? Maybe it was a promise to fast-track your success, help you find love, build your dream career, or solve your problems overnight . . . for a price. In this episode, I'm diving into the murky waters of cottage industries and exploring how predatory tactics are used to exploit vulnerable individuals, from indie authors and small business owners to creatives and entrepreneurs.

We’ll uncover:

• Common Predatory Tactics: From high-pressure sales pitches to vague promises of success.
• Universal Red Flags: How to spot scams across any industry, no matter the disguise.
• The Psychology of Scams: Why we’re drawn in and how predators prey on our emotions.
• Empowering Solutions: Practical tips to protect yourself, including what questions to ask and where to find trustworthy resources.

Whether you’re navigating the self-publishing world, running a small business, or simply trying to make informed decisions in your personal life, this episode will empower you to spot the red flags and safeguard your time, money, and energy.

Links:

David Bayer's podcast episode that I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI6eCcD09kk

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

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Decoding the Unicorn is live on Amazon! Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

For updates, please visit: https://decodingtheunicorn.com/.

You can also follow my author journey on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saracauseyauthor.

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Scammers, self-publishing, predators, vulnerable times, high-pressure sales, fear-based language, fake expertise, upfront fees, transparency, upsells, negative reviews, credential inflation, Amazon bestseller, marketing tactics, business consulting.

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com, and now here's your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I will be talking about predators in cottage industries. Now I'm going to put this against the backdrop of my own journey recently as an independent author and a self publisher, but I don't want you to think that if you're not publishing, if you don't plan on ever writing a book, that this is not applicable to you. Unfortunately, sadly, it is. I intend to get into some things that are across the board, relevant in business as well as your personal life. There are scammers and spammers and trolls and bots and pyramid schemes everywhere. So even though I'm using authors and self publishing just as an example, that's really all it is, is an example, and it's not the whole point of this episode. There are a lot of deals out there that seem too good to be true. And there are certain situations, certain places, that we get into over the course of our lives where we're a little bit more vulnerable than other times as a business owner, like when you very first start your business and you're really like, the hustle is on. You're trying to land that first real client, or that first big contract. Maybe you're trying to take a side hustle from part time side hustle to full time day job that pays all the bills. That's a really vulnerable time. And scammers and spammers know that. They realize that you're hustling. They realize that you're looking for those big deals, and they think I can take advantage of that. A similar thing happens when you self publish a book. There's a perception like, if you build it, they will come if you put a really awesome book out on the market, whether you're putting it on your website or you're going to a major vendor like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc, it will sell. If you put some item of great quality out there, whether it's a book or it's a widget, whatever, if you put it out there and it's bona fide awesome, it will sell. It will magically find its correct audience. Well, no, not necessarily. There's this whole other back end process that happens. I kind of think of it like a journey. I'm picturing a road map in my mind. There's the leg of the journey that you take when you're writing and you're editing and you're rewriting and you're polishing, and then you're getting BETA readers and you're getting their feedback, and you're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. There's this, like, massive push that happens to get the book out on the market, even if you're not in a hurry, let's say, when you're in those labor pains, you know that it's getting close, you know that the baby is about to arrive. It's like, oh, we just we need to birth this thing into the world, get it out of my womb and get it into the world, let other people see it. But a whole nother leg of the journey starts whenever that book is available for purchase. I've heard Marissa pier talk about this, and I'm so glad that she does, because she is telling the truth. Okay, you do the writing and the editing and the polishing, and you you get your book cover, and you get the formatting, and it's like, Oh, yay. All of this stuff is done, and I feel so good. The book goes on the market for sale, and it's like, Oh God, I'm tired. I just pushed this thing out of me, and now I have to take care of it. Now I'm gonna nurture it. I have to, like, do stuff. Oh, it's exhausting. But like, Okay, now you're on the next leg of this journey. You have to market it, and you have to figure out, how can I get the right eyes on this content? I'm not interested in people that have no interest in the book. I'm not interested in people that have no interest in dag hammered. I'm not interested in people that are so far on the opposite side of his politics that would make no sense for them to read this book, damn it. I want to find the right sets of eyes now. Yeah, you can get into the if you build it, they will come mentality, and you can hope and you can wish and you can pray. But that's like Realtors with the post and pray strategy. We'll take photographs of your house. We'll put it on MLS, and, you know, if somebody wants it, they'll request a showing. But I'm not gonna, like, actively market your house. That's so old school. We don't do that anymore. We count on the internet. Well, when you do that, you're probably gonna go broke. You know, I can't say it for certain. There. Exceptions to every rule. But more than likely, if you put a book on the market and you do nothing to promote it, and you're not doing podcast appearances or public speaking gigs or book signings, you're just going, well, somebody will find it. Probably they won't. The algorithms are really not set up to reward the well, somebody will find it one day. Mentality, you have to put a little elbow grease into it. That's another vulnerable point in life. Somebody's just had a literal new baby, that's a vulnerable point. Somebody's going through a divorce, that's a vulnerable point. So we have these places and spaces in life's journey where we have legitimate problems and we want legitimate solutions. Unfortunately, some of the solutions that present themselves are not legitimate. Years ago, when I was on the pirate broadcast with Russ Johns, I don't remember if this part made it to the air, or if this part was just the two of us, kibitzing, before he hit the record button and we went live. But we talked about how marketers ruined everything because we were talking about how, you know, back in the 90s, it was cool to get an email when email first came out and really became available to the public. It was cool to get an email when you hear that ding, yay, or you've got mail. Everybody's Yes, this is awesome. Somebody sent me an email. Now we log into our emails and it's like, oh god. I mean, right now, if I showed you my spam folder as a business owner, so much vomit, so much vomit. Tons of people trying to sell me stuff, and it's like, I'm never gonna interact with this stuff. You've got people that they don't even have the right business. Sometimes they're trying to reach a person with my same last name that has nothing to do with me. Sometimes it's people selling me stuff. Sometimes it's people offering to loan me money, and it's like, I'm I'm not ever gonna interact with this, like I it's not of interest to me. So now email has gone from the 90s, when it was cool, it was like, oh my god, somebody sent me an email you guys to Oh, have a spam folder with like, 15,000 things in it, and I just want to hurl predatory types. Know, these situations and these places we get into in life, when we are vulnerable, when we have a problem, we're seeking a solution, and they show up, but what they're proposing to do to help you is not actually helpful in most cases, they just want to part you from your money. So what are some of the things that we can look for? What are predatory tactics that you know are not just specific to self publishing and individuals that want to take advantage of indie authors, but things that we can use across the board. One would be high pressure sales tactics now that can be so called limited time offers that are meant to rush you into a decision. And I'll give you an example that doesn't involve self publishing when I was in business for myself, the first time I remember, there was this lady that I talked to, and I just was like, She's awfully pricey. I don't have the sense that she really would be able to help me as much as she claims that she can because she has no background in HR and staffing. So how's she really going to help me launch or grow a recruiting agency when she has zero expertise in this area? And so I told her, you know, just let me have some time to think this over. I want to do a little bit more research on your background. And so she said, Okay, I'll give you the time. Can I call you back in 30 minutes? That's not that's not enough time. Okay, that's not enough time to do research and make a coherent decision. I mean, for me personally, if you have to block that person, if you have to block their emails, if you have to block their phone number, even if you have to get very firm, if you're not the type of person that you know to you, it's like, well, I don't want to get hateful with somebody. You might have to maybe, like, don't call me again. 30 minutes is not enough time for me to make a decision. You're rushing me, which tells me how it would be if I worked with you. I don't think this is a good fit, and I don't want to hear from you again. You have the right to say that another one is fear based language trying to stoke up fear. Because when we're in these vulnerable places, we've just put a book out on the market, we've just had a baby, we've just gotten married, or we're filing for a divorce, our business is in a slump, and we really want to turn it around. It's not difficult for somebody to come along and stoke fear. There's already some underlying anxiety there, anyway. So these predatory marketers, they know that it's like throwing gasoline on a fire. They can take a few embers that have almost burned out. It, or that are just slowly simmering and accelerate it and make you terrified. You'll never succeed without this. This is the one secret everybody knows, and you're going to be left out. Be really careful of people that are trying to rush you and people that are using fear based language. They're trying to foment a sense of terror in you, you know, and that applies to politicians as well. I'm thinking back to 911, and all of the fear based language that we heard back then like the boogey man is around every corner, and if you don't give all of your rights and freedoms away, then we're all going to die. Well, we know how that turned out. That's more of a nighttime podcast topic, so I won't go too far down that rabbit hole, but my point is, fear based language can be very detrimental to your mental health. Another component is some type of upfront fee with nebulous promises or some kind of undefined result. So it could be charging an arm and a leg and then making vague promises, like, I will get you exposure, I will make connections, I will open doors, I will solve this problem. Well, how what exposure? What media outlets specifically are you promising? Or what press release wire do you use connections? Connections with who like this is a time when you want to name drop. Okay, you're gonna connect me with who, what genre or what specific people I need to know. This is my money. It's my time. It's my energy. You're going to connect me with, who you're going to open doors with? What doors? What doors are you going to knock on? And then who do you expect to open the doors? Don't be afraid to push that because these vagaries. It can be anything. It can totally be anything. I'll give you an example too. So I hired this freelancer who supposedly specialized in making connections with micro influencers, people that they don't have, like a huge platform, per se, but they do have a platform of people that are highly engaged in their content. So instead of having a million followers, and maybe half a percent bother to interact with the content. They might have 5000 followers, but they have maybe 10% of those people that are engaged with their content on a regular basis. And I was like, Okay, well before we go down this road too far. I get what you're saying and I get your argument. It's making sense to me. Give me some samples. You don't have to tell me all the special sauce of your process, but I just want to see some samples. Who are you talking about here? Here's what my book is about. Here's what I have in mind. Now, who would you reach out to if you don't want to give me specific people, at least, give me some genres and categories so that I know we're on the right page. No pun intended. And he was sending me people that like only review fiction, people that only review erotica, people that only review romance novels. And I'm like, Okay, no, there's nothing in my book that would speak to somebody that only reviews romance novels or that would only review erotica books about bondage or stuff like 50 shades. That's not what we're doing here. So you want to know where your money is going, because anybody can say, I'll open doors, I'll make these connections. Well, what the hell doors are you opening? Another thing we want to be careful of is fake expertise. There are some people who refer to this as credential inflation, and it gives a false sense of authority, right? I heard David bear do a podcast episode about this that I thought was so spot on. If I can find it again, I'll drop a link to it. And the write up for this podcast episode, if not, you can just look through just search David Bayer B, A, y, E, R on YouTube, and you may be able to find it for yourself. But he talks in this podcast episode about how many people are faking it, whether it's somebody who labels themselves the number one coach in such and so industry, or whether it's somebody that they write an article about themselves in Forbes, or they write an article about themselves in Success Magazine, and then they get to say, Oh, I was featured in Forbes, oh, I was featured in Success Magazine. The same thing can happen. I'm totally going to spill some tea for those of you who don't know, because I found this out recently, and I was just gobsmacked. There are ways to cheat the system, so to speak, with becoming an Amazon bestseller. I had no idea I was naive. I guess I was Pollyanna on this account, because I was like, Well, you know, you just would get a certain amount of sales that. What would happen, you would organically, naturally get a certain amount of sales, and that's how you would become an Amazon bestseller. And it's probably relegated to people like, I don't know, John Grisham or Michael Crichton or JK Rowling that are New York Times bestsellers. Like, that's that's probably how it happens. Lo and behold, there's this whole cottage industry of people that will quote, unquote, teach you how to become an Amazon bestseller. And one of the main tactics is to put your book in a bizarro obscuro category, and then have 10 or 20 of your friends and family or a group of freelancers that you're paying to buy the book. Buy the book because the algorithm updates like once an hour. So maybe for an hour you're an Amazon bestseller in a totally obscure category, but then for the rest of your life you get to say, I am an Amazon Best Selling Author. This book is an Amazon best selling book. And I was like, Oh, hey, I can't imagine doing that. So it was like, Okay, say that your book is about underwater basket weaving for grandfathers over the age of 95 and then you get 20 friends and family members to buy the book. And so in that one category for one hour, you become an Amazon Best Seller or list your book under ornithology in the Pacific Northwest for toddlers under the age of 14 months, and then have a book launch team of freelancers buy 25 copies of it that you've paid them to do. By the way, you're not even making a profit on it. You've paid them to do that, and then you'll become an Amazon Best Seller in that category for a few hours. But you get to say it forever. I was like, I just, I mean, I just had to sit with it for a few minutes, because I was like, what kind of world do we live in? It's like those memes where people are like, we live in a society, what is happening like, wow, that's not how I want to get there. I want to get there because people legitimately love the book and interacted with it, and I just know, like, Dag doesn't cheat to win. That's not who he is. That's just not No, no, no, no. Dag would not say, let's put the book in a weird category that's totally not even germane to what it is, and then flood the market so we can technically say we became Amazon best sellers like DAGs. Thing is, let's just do that, because we've done it and we've done it legitimately, and we know we can be proud of it, and we can sleep well at night, like I just so be careful. So many people are faking it, so be careful, and don't be afraid to ask real questions. Do some research. If somebody's got you on the phone and you feel like they're pressuring you. It's okay to say, I'm not prepared to make this decision right now. And if they get mad, they get mad. And you know what? You can brush them off, brush that dirt off your shoulders and keep moving. Another thing we want to watch out for, as always in any industry, is people who over promise and under deliver. They give you guarantees that aren't even possible in this time space dimension, or they just outright lie. I guarantee that I will get you 10,000 Facebook organic, 10,000 organic Facebook followers in the next one hour, and none of them will be bought and none of them will be fake and they'll last forever like be Be careful. Be careful. You also want to look for freelancers or companies that are just outright preying on your vulnerability. They're exploiting emotions like depression, desperation, fear, uncertainty, lack any kind of emotion of lack lacking love in your life, lacking money, lacking confidence in your parenting style, it's like sharks sensing blood in the water. Be careful of anybody that you feel has found a soft spot, like a little soft part of your underbelly, and now they just want to take total advantage of it. Obviously, I want to go over some very basic red flags now you might say, well, Sara, we already know all of these. It's not even worth saying yes, it is, because that one person, whether it's the same day this episode hits the airwaves, or whether it's 10 years down the road, somebody might hear this and say, I needed this. She did this for me because even though she's making a statement of the obvious, I needed to hear it. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably. Is when it comes to marketers and things that they promise you. Now, if you want to look at it from like more of a metaphysical neville goddard perspective, is anything too good to be true when we're setting our goals, whether maybe you're like, I want to be a millionaire. I want to have a multi million dollar a year business. I want to go from being a cubicle jockey, making 70k a year to owning my own business and making 700k a year. Those kinds of dreams are not too good to be true. People do that all the time. Hell, you can turn on an episode of Shark Tank and look at people that went from having a cuckoo idea to a million dollar business that that happens that's not too good to be true. When it comes to marketers who over promise and under deliver, they claim they're going to give you something for nothing. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. If it sounds too good to be true, if it sounds like it's perfect with little or no effort, it probably isn't real. Lack of transparency. If they're not giving you some kind of clear agreement, a clear refund policy, clear deliverables, there's no breakdown of cost, they're just giving you those vagaries about well, I'll make connections, I'll open doors, but there's no accountability on their part, be careful. Pressure to act immediately. Phrases like you must act now. Spots will be gone by tomorrow. You can only watch this video for the next 12 hours. Things like that are manipulation tools. They're meant to stir up FOMO. And believe me, there are times in life where you are better off missing out. It's like the the counterpart to FOMO now is Jomo the joy of missing out. My introverts and HSPs listening. Know that there are plenty of times, plenty of events, plenty of things, where I'm like, Oh God, I have so much Jomo right now. Didn't want to go, didn't go loving it. Obviously you want to look for things like negative reviews or complaints, a low rating with the Better Business Bureau, or if you get on trust pilot, and everything you see is a one star rating. People are saying they got scammed. They got ripped off. Tried to get a refund and couldn't these people kept charging my credit card, and I had to cancel my credit card and cry fraud to the Be careful. Be careful. Check out independent reviews forums, watch dog websites, trust pilot things like that. Caveat emptor, you need to beware. And then also, even though this might not be one of the more obvious ones, I would also say watch out for like constant upsells and over loaded sales funnels. So sometimes you get lured in with something that seems affordable. It might be do this for only $99 do this for 999, do this for 1299, but then there's like a sea there's like a freaking River, almost custom. This is a daytime but then there's like a sea of upsells and add ons and everything's automatic, and then you have to try and deduct it, and you're like, I just came here for a 999 widget, and now you're trying to upsell me to the tune of 100 bucks. F it. I don't want to do this anymore, so just be careful of services that just they just want you with tons of upsells and add ons that try to automatically go into your cart, almost like they're counting on you to not even look that's dangerous. There are industries where predators thrive. Now this is not, by any means, an exhaustive list. I want to be clear in that, like Russ and I were talking about, marketers ruin everything. So this is not an exhaustive list. Number one, obviously near and dear to my heart right now, self publishing and being an indie author, as well as any kind of creative field, whether you're an artist, you're a sculptor, you're a painter, there are people that will try to pitch you on things like vanity presses, fake Review Services, fake contests. Do your own due diligence, because not everything is fake, not all publicity is fake, not all reviews are fake, and not all contests are fake. I'm up for a couple of awards right now that are legitimate awards, but there are also a number of award service services. They're not they're not like through library systems or book associations or publishing houses. They're just like weird LLC businesses that are suddenly giving out Book Awards, and you can tell that anybody who enters probably wins online coaching and business consulting. You'll see things like, I guarantee that I'll give you a six or seven figure business, but there's no substance behind it. And you know the barriers to entry for things like. Coaching, business coaching, so called Law of Attraction coaching, are basically non existent. So in the same way that you want to be careful hiring somebody that doesn't seem to have any legitimate credentials, you want to make sure that if you are in that category, you have some kind of legitimate credentials. And you know what you're talking about, health and wellness. Look at all of the unregulated supplements and pills and potions and powders, so called miracle cures, fad diet plans, etc. That whole arena of like health wellness, fitness workouts is rife with predators, tech companies and online services, whether that's people claiming they're gonna increase your SEO or your Ahrefs score, email marketing schemes, website designers who ping you out of nowhere and they're like, I found typos or, oh god, I've gotten so much spam, you'll be Like you your website is not optimized for mobile. If you pay me $1,000 I'll do this and this and that, and it's like, I don't know you. I didn't solicit you. My website is optimized for mobile, so piss off. Like, I'm not interested in you. But be careful, because there are tons of people who are out there like that, and some of them, they won't even have a business email address. It'll be like, from Gmail from Hotmail, and you're like, Dude, you couldn't even get a domain name and a proper email super sketch real estate and investment opportunities. Oh, my God, tons of pyramid schemes, Bernie Madoff type crap. Invest in real estate or be a fractional investor and this and this and that. And look, not all real estate investment opportunities are scams, not at all. Unfortunately, there are scam opportunities that do fall into that category, and you need to let the buyer beware before you do anything. Investigate what you're getting into, and don't gamble with money you can't lose. So why do we fall for these kinds of scams? Well, we've got FOMO. In some cases we're vulnerable. We want it to work. We want to be a legitimate Amazon Best Seller. We want the business to take off. We want to parent our child correctly. What we feel is correctly, what is correctly anyway, but we want to do it the so called right way. We want to have a great marriage. We want to find love. We want to leave the cube farm and be free. And marketers know that we also tend to fall for social proof and authority so we can be suckered in by that person who says, Oh, I'm the number one coach in such and so space. Meanwhile, the only person who might be saying that is them. The scarcity factor. Here's another one. People will be convinced that they will lose out, they will miss out, and everything will just crumble if they don't act immediately. So how do we protect ourselves? Do your homework. A number one why I always say caveat emptor, let the buyer be weird. Do your homework, do your research, ask good questions, and if you have a freelancer or a company or a marketing rep who gets defensive and pissy with you when their question, huge red flag. Trust your gut if something feels off, as the young folks say, if the vibes are off, if you're catching some weird vibrations out of somebody, don't ignore the instinct. It's not worth it to say, Well, I really want this to be true. I don't feel like it is true, but I want it to be true, so I'll go ahead and cut this guy a check for five grand and see if it works. Girl, boy, you're probably not getting that five grand back, and you're probably not going to get anything for it either. Look for contracts. Look for written guarantees. What is their refund policy? And you want to definitely check that, because some of these predators, what they'll do is they'll say, this a money back guarantee if you try this, if you don't like it, if it doesn't work for you, refund. No questions asked. But then when it's time for you to get the refund, oh, they're ghost, they're nowhere, and you have to get the you're the refund you get has to come through your credit card company, because they're not going to do it. And some of them will have this fine print where it's like, we'll give you a refund, but only if you've done every single thing in our manual or on our website in a way that we believe you've been accurate, because they can always say you skipped a step you didn't really market the way that we told you to. We told you that you needed to spend at least $10,000 on Amazon ads. You didn't do it, so it's not our fault. Be careful and last but not least, don't be afraid to ask for a second opinion. If you got a scary health diagnosis, you'd probably seek a second opinion from another doctor to be sure it was real. Well, you don't have to spend 10. 2040, $50,000, with some agency, and do it all on your own. You can ask trusted friends, family members, mentors, peers, hey, what do you think about this if you were me, or if it was your money? How would you handle it? You're not alone out there. We've all been in these situations where we were at some vulnerable crossroads in our life, and somebody came along, over, promised, under, delivered, or just gave us a flat old truckload of bull, and then we were left to pick up the pieces after it was over with, and say, if nothing else, I learned a really good life lesson. But that's the thing. In order to say I learned a really good life lesson, you have to learn the lesson. You don't just go from scammer to scammer and liar to liar at some point. You have to draw the line in the sand and say, I only want to work with people who are actually legit and who will do what they say they will do, as I always say, stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode.

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