Words vs. Worlds: 3 Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Business Mentor

You know that feeling when the math doesn’t add up, but you keep trying to solve the equation anyway? The one where the "magnetic" coach's lifestyle looks like a dream, but your bank account and your business are stuck in a nightmare? That’s not a lack of effort. That’s a mismatch between words and worlds.

In this episode of Wild Growth for Women, Bridget gets raw about the $30,000 lesson she learned from a "seven-figure" promise that never materialized. This is the conversation the online coaching industry doesn't want you to have.

It’s about the embarrassment of being "smart" and still getting sold, and the moment you finally decide to trust your eyes over their highlight reel.

If you’ve ever felt like you were "co-signing" on a result that wasn't happening... If you’ve stayed in a partnership longer than you should because of the "sunk cost"... If you’re wondering if that "off" feeling in your gut is intuition or just "resistance"...

Stay.

Because your discernment isn't a liability—it's your greatest competitive advantage.

In this episode, Bridget shares:

• The $30,000 Coaching Red Flag: The specific moment the "7-figures in 90 days" promise fell apart.
• Words vs. Worlds: How to look past the "I don't give a f*ck" aesthetic to find actual business infrastructure.
• The Cost of Silence: Why we stay in bad business relationships out of shame and how to break free.
• Actions are Archives: Using pattern recognition to protect your time, money, and momentum.
• The 3 Critical Questions: Use these every time you are in an "in-between" space with a mentor or partner.
• Walking Away as a Boundary: Why leaving isn't giving up—it’s the moment real growth begins.

This episode is for the founder who is tired of the "fake it til you make it" culture. The woman who wants to build a business on integrity, not just an "aesthetic." The high-achiever who is ready to heal the shame of past mistakes and scale with clarity.

If something feels off... it probably is. Trust what you observe over what you’re told.

🔗 Ready to Build on a Foundation of Truth?

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Wild Growth for Women is where healing meets scale. Where discernment meets business strategy. Where ambitious women stop performing and start producing real results.

Share this episode with the woman who needs to hear that her "gut feeling" is actually her wisdom speaking.

Do it with discernment. Stay wild. Stay rooted.

Transcript

 You are listening to Wild Growth for Women, the podcast that helps high achieving women heal to scale. Each week, we bring you real stories, powerful conversations and strategies that blunt marketing mindset and movement, and. Meet your host, Bridget Brooks, founder of Wild Growth for Women. She scaled multiple businesses past seven figures, including three of her own brands.

She's a powerhouse strategist with over 20 years in advertising and media. Bridget's worked with global brands, coached hundreds of women entrepreneurs, and built a movement that proves you can scale without selling your soul. She's here to help you fully step into your power, grow with clarity, and expand wildly in business and in life.

This is wild growth for women.

 If you've spent any amount of time in the digital entrepreneur space, social media, online courses or coaching programs, you know it's a wild place. Everybody's promising the world. Everybody has a method, a framework, a secret system that will change your life. And here's what makes it tricky. A lot of these people are good at what they do.

They're good at presenting, they're good at selling. They're good at making you feel like this is the thing that's going to unlock. Everything for you. But here's the big difference between someone who's good at selling a result and someone who's actually produced the results for the people they serve.

And I want to talk about this today because I learned the lesson the hard way, and I know I'm not alone. The words tell you what someone wants you to believe, and their world tells you what's actually true. So I wanna say something and share something with you guys that I haven't talked about a lot publicly, because honestly there's still a lot of embarrassment wrapped in it, but I'm sharing it today because I know someone listening right now is either in this situation or headed towards it.

A few years back I connected with a coach in the online business space. She was magnetic. She was confident, she had an aesthetic that was I don't give a f aesthetic. The testimonials, the presence she made. It looked like it was easy, and she made me a promise. She told me she could get us to seven figures in 90 days.

Alls I needed to do was invest in her 10 KA month coaching program. Now, I wanna be honest with you, I knew it was a stretch. I knew that number was big, but I also believed in myself. I believed in the possibility and I believed in her because everything she put out to the world, she said she was the real deal.

So I paid, and to be honest, I'm still paying and she did not get me the seven figures in 90 days. She didn't even get me the six figures. She never delivered what she promised, but I watched. I watched the entire time. And I was her watching her continuing and I was watching her continuing to preach, post and present like she had, like she was the authority and like the results were happening.

Even while I was sitting on the calls wondering why nothing was working, she was performing a result she hadn't produced. And the painful truth is I missed all the signs, not because I wasn't smart. I am smart, but because I was watching her words, her content, and her energy, I wasn't watching her world.

So what do when I say watching her world? I don't mean becoming a detective and digging through someone's life looking for dirt. I mean paying attention to the evidence that exists in plain sight. When someone tells you that they get their client's amazing results, are their clients visible? Are they talking about their experience?

Do their testimonials have their names, faces, and specifics? When someone says they run a seven figure business, does their world reflect the infrastructure of that, their team, their systems, their communication, even their client roster? Do those things add up when someone presents themselves as an expert in a specific outcome, have they personally achieved that outcome themselves or are they teaching something that they're still trying to figure out?

Actions are archives. They show you who someone really is, not who they say they are. Okay, this applies in business. This applies in friendship. This applies in romantic relationship. It applies everywhere. Humans are making promises, and once I understood this, and once I started using this lens, I began to understand why boundaries at completely different level.

Because boundaries isn't just about protecting your time or your peace, it's about protecting your resources, your money, your belief system. In yourself and your momentum. So this is the question I get asked a lot, and I wanna give you a real answer, not a generic one. When you speak up, when the relationship has foundation and there's enough respect and enough safety for your words to land, when the gap between their words and their actions might be something they're not even fully aware of.

And calling it out could be the thing that creates the accountability and change. When you speak up, when staying silent, you mean you're co-signing on something that isn't true when your silence is being used as an agreement. When you walk away, when speaking up is already happened and nothing's changed, is when you.

When the gap between the words and the action is so wide and so consistent, it's so clear that it's not a gap at all. It's just who they are. You walk away with a cost of saying it's higher than the discomfort of leaving, and I wanna be real with you. Sometime that cost is financial, sometimes it's emotional.

For me it was emotional and sometimes it's your sense of self-worth and that's what I lost the most. Walking away is not giving up, but sometimes walking away is the boundary. I stayed in that coaching long relationship much longer than I should have because I was already in, had invested so much because I kept hoping it would turn around and because I felt ashamed to admit that I made a decision that wasn't working.

But the day I left was the day that I started rebuilding, and that was the day when the real growth began. So I wanna leave you with three questions that have helped me navigate this, whether it's a business relationship, a mentor, a friendship, or a partnership. Pull these out any time that you're in an in-between space of not knowing what to do.

Question one, does their word match their word? I'll say it again. Does their word match their world? Not their social media, not their pitch, their actual world, their track record, their relationships, the people around them who can speak to their character. Does it match? Question two, what have I already communicated and what happened?

If you've expressed your concerns and they were dismissed, minimized, or ignored? That's data and your answer in question three, is this pattern continue for another six months? Can I live with it or will I regret not leaving? Now that question cuts through the noise every single time you are allowed to protect yourself.

That's not a personality flaw, that's wisdom. So I shared this story today not to shame anyone and not to live in regret. I shared it because that's the experience that taught me something that I couldn't have learned any other way. It taught me to trust what I observe over what I'm told. It taught me that my discernment is a gift, not a liability, and it taught me that real growth, the kind we talk about here at Wild Growth for Women.

Sometimes it starts the moment that you decide you deserve better. So if you're in the situation right now and something feels off where the words and the world don't match, trust that feeling. It's not propaganda.

It's pattern recognition. And if you're wise enough to know the difference, you'll understand it all. Thanks for being here today. If this episode landed for you, share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear it.

And if you're ready to build a business on a foundation that actually drives, come have a seat at my table. We're waiting for you. Until next time, stay rooted and stay wild.

 You've been listening to Wild Growth for Women where high-achieving women come to heal, scale, and lead with confidence. If today's episode spoke to you, share it with a friend who's ready to grow wildly too. And don't forget to subscribe, follow, and leave a review. Stay connected with us on Instagram at Wild Underscore Growth.

That's Wild. With two is W-I-I-L-D underscore Growth, where the conversations continue and the community keeps expanding. Join our free Resource Hub, the Scale Society for Tools, trainings and breakthroughs that help you grow with strategy and soul. And if you are ready for your next level, whether that's one-on-one mentorship, a group cohort, or our upcoming retreats, you'll find everything waiting for you at Wild Growth for women.com.

Because this isn't just business growth, it's personal evolution. This is wild growth for women heal to scale. We'll catch you in the next episode.