Use of Testimonials and Earnings Disclaimer

On December 1, 2009 the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) introduced new rules about the use of testimonials. The report, in its entirety is 81 pages long and if you care to read it you can do so at http://ftc.gov.   (As an aside I tried to provide a link directly to the document but the ftc site is experiencing difficulties as I write this!)

If you are OK with the Cliffs Notes version, what it all boils down to is this:

From now on you can't just quote the happiest and most successful testimonials, you have to disclose how "everybody" does and what "average" is.

The genesis of this is of course all of those "I lost 50lb in 5 day" weight loss scams but the reality is the Feds paint with a REALLY broad brush and that is why I've posted this page for you to read.

I'm guessing that some people without legitimate businesses are concerned about this, frankly I am not.

I freely confess that when I get emails or voicemails with glowing success stories I love them and I ask for permission to use them and post them on our site.

If we were to ever get complaints and demands for retribution we would not ask for permission to use those complaints and we would not post them on our website.

We have never taken a survey to find out what our clients' average increase in new business volume, lead generation or profits are.  We do not know what the "average result" is.

But I can give you a "gut" estimate, based on some 80/20 math.

In the interest of full disclosure, here is the entire spectrum of our customers' success and failure – from bottom to top:

The Bottom 20% of the people who we advise or coach do NOTHING with the knowledge they have paid for.  Sad, but that is human nature. I've had coaching sessions where I have flat out said to the group "You should really write this down, because it's a critical piece of information" only to see more than one person not write it down.

The Middle 50% of the people use a little of what they learn and probably get modest improvements in their business.

The Upper 20% are serious learners.  They devour what we teach them, implement some of it at least once, but not all of it either because of time constraints, money contraints or some other reason.  Still, they probably get a positive ROI that would make the stock market embarrassed. We get quite a few testimonials from this group.

The Top 10% get things done.  They learn it, put it into practice, refine it, test it and never look back while they forge ahead on the path of continuous improvement. They continue to invest in their relationship with us for years and I'm guessing that is because they are getting a mighty fine ROI, not because of our stellar good looks.  We get a lot of testimonials from this group.

Even More Disclosure

Even though you may be a top 10% or top 5% or top 2% or 1% implementor this does NOT guarantee success. Nothing is guaranteed and many markets, perhaps yours, are highly competitive and take deep pockets, know how and tremendous resources to get good results.

It is entirely possible that you could follow our advice and do everything right and still not be successful.  It could happen and if you are looking for a 100% sure thing then we might not be right for each other.  By the way... if you do find a 100% guaranteed way to be successful everytime please contact me so I can get some of it too!

I do not guarantee success. I simply promise that I'll deliver the best actionable know-how, and/or marketing campaign I can.  We'll have measurements in place and together we'll know what is working and what is not. The choice to work with us is always yours and we will never hold a gun to your head and make you work with us.

Scott Metcalfe

P.S. Regarding affiliate promotions – It is entirely possible that we are being compensated in some way, shape or form for recommending particular products or services that are endorsed on this website. If you're in doubt, and if this sort of thing concerns you, just go ahead and assume we are being compensated and that you are receiving biased information.

That said, it is our intent to only recommend products and services from others that we believe are in the best interest of our clients and would recommend for free anyway.  However, since the Web 2.0 - 4.0 world functions as an engine of commerce primarily through "affiliate" programs (Amazon.com being the largest affiliate program in the world) I am not above being paid to recommend something I believe in and my advice to you, should you find yourself in a similar position would be to adopt a similar viewpoint.