Over the past few weeks I’ve had several conversations with brand owners who have used the exact same word to describe their experience with previous marketing agencies or coaches. That word is “burnt.”

And I don’t mean slightly disappointed or a bit let down. I mean properly burnt. As in, lost significant money, wasted months or even years of time, and worst of all, lost confidence in their ability to make good decisions for their business.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the digital marketing industry is absolutely full of providers who over-promise and under-deliver. It’s an industry where it’s relatively easy to set up shop, throw around some fancy terminology, show a few cherry-picked case studies, and convince business owners to hand over their hard-earned cash.

There’s also a very common practice that I see repeatedly – agencies that have fantastic sales people who paint these amazing pictures of what’s possible, but then once you sign on the dotted line, you get handed over to an inexperienced junior account manager and your actual marketing work gets done by cheap offshore staff who’ve never heard of your brand before that morning.

It often ends up being a complete “set and forget” scenario. The agency focuses all their energy on making their monthly reports look as glowing as possible, talking up metrics that don’t actually matter to your bottom line, and completely glossing over the poor results or the complete lack of results.

It’s almost like gaslighting, honestly. Meanwhile, the agency is dancing all the way to the bank with healthy profit margins and zero accountability for the actual outcomes.

So if you’ve been through this kind of experience, I want you to know that what you’re feeling is completely valid. The frustration, the sense of being taken advantage of, the worry about making the same mistake again – all of that is completely understandable.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to rebuild that confidence, how to develop a framework for making better decisions next time, and most importantly, how to spot the difference between genuine expertise and slick sales tactics.