Two interviews that changed my mind about business

Like, can we just cut the BS already?

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while.

Honestly, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to say it out loud. It’s the kind of thing that, once you put it out there, you can’t really walk back.

This might lose me future clients.

Some people will read it and disagree. Some will think I’m overstepping, or whistle-blowing, or being unfair. Or whatever.

But the most useful writing I’ve ever read came from people who said the thing they thought needed to be said — and didn’t waste time worrying about how the wrong people would take it.

So here it goes:

A lot of “success story” content is incredibly misleading. And I don’t want to not talk about it anymore.

When I first got into business, my partner and I consulted for a big social media company. We earned ~$10,000/month as Client Success Managers — helping clients get the results they’d paid for.

Except almost no one did.

In the 10ish months we worked with that company, I can’t tell you how many times I heard people screaming, demanding refunds, or straight-up threatening to sue the CEO.

And honestly…he deserved it.

He portrayed himself online as an uber-successful creator.
Posed in front of Lambos.
Got drone footage of himself walking through his Miami high-rise.
Name-dropped every famous person he’d ever worked with.

But when I saw behind the curtain, I realized it was all an illusion. He sold the illusion of success and delivered the bare minimum to keep the business going.

I’ll never forget this one call where he promised a solopreneur a bunch of shit, closed the five-figure deal, and the second the call ended turned to us and said, “Yeah, we’re not gonna do any of that.”

That was my first taste of business.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe most people out there are operating at the shadiness level that this guy was.

I believe that most of us aren’t intentionally trying to scam people like he was willing to.

But I see more subtle versions of deception in business every day.

I’ve seen people post about their business earning $250,000, but not mentioning that their expenses cost more than that.

I’ve worked with high-ticket coaches — I’m talking $30,000 upfront — who promised “one million views or you don’t pay.” Then, when we didn’t hit that guarantee, they immediately kicked my team out of the Slack channel and ghosted.

I’ve seen LinkedIn coaches post content about how all you need to do is…

• be authentic

• post 3-7x per week

• comment for 1 hour every day

But in reality, they were growing their accounts by…

• being in engagement groups

• paying bigger accounts to comment on their posts.

When I realized this, I didn’t feel mad about it.

It’s a strategy — one that I had to get behind the curtain to see.

Using hacks that work isn’t wrong. But telling people you got your results one way when you actually did it another way? That’s the part that bothers me.

Honestly, I get it. It’s 2026, and we’re all trying to stand out from each other online.

But doesn’t it feel almost impossible to know who’s actually worth investing in and learning from — when everyone’s becoming experts at only sharing the shiny stuff?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen some variation of…

“Here’s this incredible thing I did.

Here are some generic tips on how I did it (#believeinyourself).

If you want the real stuff, it’s $7,777 for my course — but I’ll really help you in my 1:1 mastermind.

Book a call and I’ll tell you at the very end how much that actually is.”

Look, I’m truly not against people making money. If you’ve found a way to monetize your knowledge and you provide a service you stand by with integrity, that’s fucking awesome and I’m proud of you.

The thing is, that integrity is rarer than it should be. A lot of business owners are running businesses they wouldn't be willing to be fully honest about.

Why do I believe that? Because I've seen behind a lot of curtains.

I’ve interviewed business owners across dozens of industries.

I’ve invested in trainings, webinars, courses, coaching programs.

And I see it in what people share online VS what they share behind the curtain.

People want to come across as admirable, desirable, successful.

Sell the dream, and all.

They want to give polished, professional answers.

They don’t want give away their success secrets, or — god forbid — talk about how they actually accomplished said thing.

They want you to look at their beautiful website and their professional photos, read the testimonial screenshots, and buy into their course / cohort / community / coaching program because you want that result too.

They sell you on the success they’ve had without giving you the full context.

Because marketing teaches us to dress it up, round the numbers up, and get people wanting what they think we have.

We share our surface-level tips, keep the real needle-moving stuff in our back pocket, and then we ask people to trust us enough to invest their time and money with us.

And across the internet, we’ve all just adopted this as normal.

And you might think what I did: It is what it is. People are selling their knowledge more than ever. They deserve to be paid for their time.

Yes, they do.

But why has it become the norm to hide prices until the very last moment?

Why is it normal for people to abundantly share their revenue, but never their profit margins?

I could keep listing examples. But the longer I do, the more this starts to sound like a takedown — which isn’t what I’m here for.

You might already be thinking, “Wow, this girl sounds jaded. Maybe she’s the problem.”

That’s fair.

Honestly, all of these experiences have planted a seed of skepticism in me.

But in the last year, I’ve interviewed a handful of people who’ve given me hope

Two people, specifically, made me realize that my skepticism isn’t fair — because not everyone operates this way.

They made me realize that there are people out there who want to share their authentic story because they actually want it to help people.

And they made me realize what I’m here to do with Inspired Idiots.

Their names are Taylin Simmonds and Finn McKenty.

I first interviewed Finn about how he grew his YouTube channel into a seven-figure business, and why he walked away from it.

The level of honesty he gave me in that interview was above and beyond anything I expected.

He didn’t love what his channel was about — he did it for the money, but then felt too scared to leave.

“Punk music is not necessarily the thing I would have preferred to talk about for seven years. It’s a product, same as anything else. You’re going to get sick of your product way way way way way before the audience ever is.

It’s really hard for me to turn down money because I want to build up this castle to be safe against bad shit happening.

And I built enough that like realistically if I never made another dollar, we could pay our family bills for like 20 years. And so there’s no reason to worry, but I didn’t feel safe yet.

I literally went to a therapist to say like ‘help me make this decision to quit cause, logically, I know that I can do this financially, but I don’t feel safe enough to do it yet.’”

I’d never heard someone be so openly honest about making money before.

So straight up.

Here’s what I did. Here’s how I made my money. Here’s what was really going on.

Then about six months later, I interviewed Taylin. He shared something on the show that I wish every entrepreneur could hear.

I asked Taylin how he grew his business so much faster than the average ghostwriter.

“I want to be as honest as possible about this and not set people’s expectations wrong of what they could expect if they get into ghostwriting.

I am an outlier. And I don’t mean it in an arrogant way — I mean it as my most honest assessment of what happened.

I became friends with Dakota Robertson. We lived in the same city. He offered to teach me. He was doing so well, and he had so much lead flow, that he just gave me almost every one of his extra leads.

I did not need to acquire my own customers for the first year and a half of my business.

So I got coached before anybody else. I got access to his lead flow when it was the highest. I had the most support from him.

If I didn’t have that lucky opportunity from Dakota, my success story wouldn’t be the same.

And most people starting ghostwriting will have to work a lot harder for the leads and the things I didn’t have to work as hard for.”

All I could say after he explained that was…thank you.

Both Finn and Taylin (hey, that rhymes) made me realize that there are business owners out there who want to share their real story.

They own their journey. They stand by what they do. And they want to be asked about it, because they want other people to stand on their shoulders.

This is what Inspired Idiots is meant to be

I don’t want to conduct politician-style interviews where every answer is rehearsed and the good stuff is gated behind paywalls. I’m not interested in spreading the same surface-level information most people on the internet are today.

And if you’re still reading this, I’m guessing you feel the same.

People are tired of being sold the dream and then being upsold.

We’re tired of hearing how “simple” it is to build a seven-figure business by someone who isn’t honest about theirs.

And hey, I know, some parts of life and business deserve to stay private. I’d never look for someone to tell me their home address or what’s in their bank account right now.

But here’s what I am looking for.

I’m looking for people who’ve built something that once felt unrealistic, and who want to share that authentic journey because they’re proud of it.

Not in a “look at my Lambo” way. Proud in the way you’re proud of something you built the long, hard way, with your own hands.

I want people who’ll talk about how they actually got there. The lucky breaks, the way Taylin did. The vulnerable reasons, the way Finn did. The stuff that doesn’t go on a sales page.

And I want people who share their story because they genuinely want to help — because they remember being on the other side of it, and they know what a real answer would have meant to them back then.

Not performers. People who’ve done the thing, who’ll tell you what it actually looked like, and who want the next person coming up to have a better shot than they did.

That is what Inspired Idiots is about. That’s who it’s for, and that’s who I’ll be focusing my interviews on going forward.

Ones where the guest leans in when I ask things like...

• What’s the unglamorous reason you actually started?

• What did you learn the hard way that you wish someone had told you?

• What were you charging when you started, and how did that evolve?

• What’s something you’ve had to sacrifice that you don’t talk about much?

• If someone is one year behind you on this path, what do you wish they knew?

That’s the platform I want to create. People who built something real, telling you what it actually took.

Because imagine what we’d actually learn from each other if everyone was honest about their success.

Let’s go behind the curtain.

---

If you’d like to hear Finn’s or Taylin’s interview, here they are.

Watch the full interview here on YouTube.

Or here on Spotify.

---

Your story could reach more people

If you watch one of our interviews and thought ‘I wish someone would do this for me’ — this is also what we offer our clients.

One 90-minute interview.
One full month of content that connects you to the people you’re trying to reach.

Here’s an 8-minute video that explains the whole thing:

---

Project Oehsis Update

The universe works in mysterious ways.

We connected this week with Trina at The Little Greenhouse That Could — a business dedicated to helping people build their own greenhouses.

Match made in heaven? Look for that interview next week!

If you’re new here, my husband and I are building a tropical greenhouse business in the middle of cold-ass Canada—an oasis where we can enjoy nature, even in -40°.

If you want to be part of the journey, come along with us!

---

Are you an Inspired Idiot?

If you’re committed to creating your “unrealistic” life…
and want real talk from people actually doing it…
welcome home!

Every “successful” person is just an inspired idiot who didn’t quit.

Joining our annual membership will get you:

• 1 hour interview-style clarity session on what you’re working on

• behind-the-scenes content of building our greenhouse business

• Founding Member exclusive events (virtual AND at the greenhouse!)

Join today!