Got another cautionary tale for you:
Except this one isn't about an agency. Instead it’s about this absolute schmuck I hired months ago.
Some background:
After firing my lead gen agency for their piss poor results, I wanted to try a more unique approach. Especially because Money Twitter is flooded with agencies that use the same exact cold email messages—not to mention, they all use the same exact lists too—that worked in the past but no longer work.
And so, I went back to my “roots.”
When I first started my business, I used Jon Buchan’s templates and so I have a soft spot for Jon because he literally helped me get my business off the ground.
So I went to his Facebook Group to hire someone he trained to run my cold outreach approach.
But turns out, I hired an absolute schmuck.
Now, there were red flags all around that I ignored because of my bias towards Jon, his work, and his sphere.
First, we couldn’t figure out a way for me to pay him.
Then, he couldn't figure out a reliable software to send cold emails. He tried Instantly after I warned him that despite the low price, the cold email tool is absolute dogshit.
This took months.
When he finally settled on using his cold email software, he never updated the sender name. So, I’d be reaching out to potential clients but the “from name” would be his name, not mine.
And then worst of all:
Despite taking months to get everything set up to send cold emails—something that I could literally do in a weekend—we got zero replies.
I don’t know if it’s his messaging. The way he picked the lists. Or that he’s an absolute schmuck who can’t deliver on the simplest of promises.
And look, before I reveal the final blow for this guy, I will say this:
Cold email is tricky. There are a lot of factors that are outside of your control, both as a business owner sending cold emails and as a service provider offering cold email marketing. And so, I gave him the benefit of the doubt more times than I could count.
To be honest, I don’t need new clients. But I have a couple spots open on my client roster, so as long as he created a reliable outreach strategy, I would’ve been happy to pay him each month.
Except here’s the thing…
Besides being a schmuck, he’s a liar.
More:
Besides being a lying schmuck, he also requires to be micromanaged to literally do anything.
Yesterday, I had my final straw with this jabroni:
Y’see, it took me far too long to realize that I need to micromanage this dude incessantly if’n I wanted him to do what I paid him to do. But even when I did step in and micromanage him, he also lied to my face.
Over the past couple of months, guess how many times this dude has been “sick.”
Three times he came down with a random (and fake) sickness to avoid doing work. All in the span of a few months!
(For comparison, I’ve gotten sick zero times in this timespan. Especially if getting “sick” means being out for over a week. Hell, I got more done than this jabroni when I was on vacation—and I’ve taken almost as many vacations as this dude has fallen ill.)
First, he cried covid after promising to have cold emails for me “within the next couple of days.” This took two weeks, and only after asking where tf they were did he magically have them the following day.
Then, he got a fever which put him out of work for another week.
I recently reached out again to say we need to try something else because I still haven’t even gotten so much as a “f*ck off” reply from the cold emails he sent.
He said he had a few ideas and would get back to me in a day or so.
Eight days passed and I decided to reply with a ?
That’s when he said he’s been “unwell” again!
Apparently, this sickness was even worse than his fake covid because he was out for 8 days. When I had real covid—not only was I not faking, but it was the earlier, stronger version too—I was only out for 4 days max.
That’s when I started suspecting he was lying to me. And so, since I found him on Facebook, I decided to see if he was really sick during the 8 days he didn't bother replying to me or doing the job I hired him to do.
Finding his Facebook was easy enough.
“Well well well, would you look at that!,” I thought to myself. “Not only is he not sick, but he was posting daily videos, replying to comments, the full nine yards—the entire time he pretended to be sick!”
Freelancers like this make my blood boil.
They make the entire freelancing industry look bad. And this schmuck even makes Jon Buchan look guilty by association (even though I know Jon had nothing to do with this personally).
In fact, despite being opposed to asking for refunds on principle (because you have to be a good client to attract good clients), I’m even considering requesting a refund via Square because he lied.
Anyway, moral of the story?
Don’t hire a freelancer off Flakebook as Ben Settle so aptly named it so many years ago.
They’re flakes at best. And sociopathic liars at worst.
It just so happens that I got the worst of both worlds when I hired this mf.
But here’s the good news for you:
The one thing I pride myself on as a freelancer in an industry run by flakey sociopaths is that I’m not a flake, a liar, or a sociopath.
While I’ll always care slightly more about my business than yours (because it’s natural, and I expect you to care about your business more than mine too), I treat my clients like the lifeblood they are. Not only is it good humanity, but it’s good marketing too: Much easier to convince a customer to buy something else than it is to find a new customer—the fact that most freelance marketers don’t understand this is why the entire industry looks like shit.
And you know what?
Not only have I proven myself to be a profitable investment time and time again, but I also care about every client I have. That’s why I’ve been working with many of them for several years, with the longest being close to five years.
You don’t do that by failing to deliver results.
So, if you want to hire one of the few trustworthy and proven freelancers you can, hit reply, and let’s talk shop about increasing your email revenue.
John
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