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This is something I wanted to originally post on my business website, but decided not to as I felt it didn't really fit the blog there. However, I feel like this is an experience some of you have had in the past as well.
You see, back in March, shortly after we lost our jobs on the forum, we had a very nice opportunity to work for a small company that would've paid about 180k/year, which is about 80k/year more than we were making together at our last jobs. We would've worked as contractors for about 8 hours a week (yeah, a week), and this would've been the saving grace we needed for our finances.
It was a job similar to what we were doing before, but for a health company. We met the owner of the company a couple of years ago through a mutual friend, so we would've been pretty comfortable doing this job.
Unfortunately, we didn't get the positions for the worst possible reason, and it's something that's happened quite a lot to us over the years.
Curious to know what happened? Keep reading to find out.
She was very nice and decided to, in her own words, test us to see how patient we were. That's why the phone call was four hours long; she wanted to make sure we weren't the type to be rude to someone (never mind that time is precious for us, but you know...). We passed the "test" and she wanted to meet with us again to discuss things.
Four hours on the phone...
We had lunch with her on a Tuesday and she shared some stories with us and we shared our own stories with her. She told us more about her company, what it is, and how it works. She felt like we were genuine, so she set up a meeting between us, her, and a lady who she says basically runs the entire company named "Jennifer".
Before I go on, something important to mention is that during our lunch meeting with her, she told us that she talking to her "computer guy" (who she pays to come over and assist her with setting up her technology), and the computer guy said, "You don't need anyone for marketing". We were bothered to hear this because this is a very odd opinion for someone who just works on her computers, but more on that later.
We were also told during the lunch meeting that the person who works on the website is the same person who makes the stuff they sell. Apparently, and I quote, "he's very sensitive about his work", so if we got the jobs, any changes we made to the website would have to go through him. Again, this is very peculiar that the pill maker is also the web designer (and if I'm honest, not a very good one).
So, we did as much research on the company as we could, but whilst researching the company, we began seeing red flags. For example, during the lunch meeting, I was told that they have a "social media person" who operates their Instagram and Facebook pages. This person, from our understanding, is decently compensated for what they do (about maybe $5k/month). So what is it that they do? Apparently, this social media person posts about once a week on each of the company's social media profiles that have less than a dozen likes and 1 person engaging with them. Again, this was quite strange to us and we saw this as another red flag for reasons I'll cover at the end of this thread.
Going back to the meeting, so we waited until Thursday for the meeting, but once the meeting started, we immediately felt like something was wrong. We didn't really have much of a chance to explain who we are, what we do, or even what we can do to this "Jennifer" who runs the company and has complacently worked there for 30 years. During the meeting, Jennifer seemed disinterested from the get-go, but we continued explaining all the various aspects that could be improved. Whenever the owner of the company was talking, "Jennifer" would leave the room for a bit and then come back in. She seemed to understand some of what we were saying for the most part, but something felt very off about the atmosphere of the meeting and it was definitely one of the strangest meetings we've had.
Several times toward the end of the meeting, this Jennifer kept mentioning me sending over the document. In fact, the only time she seemed to perk up was when she mentioned me sending over this document. Her final comment on the document was pecuilar as well as she said, and I quote, "Hey, you can send those notes to us after the meeting. It is in good faith, right?". Who talks like this? I felt like I was sending the document over to Emperor Palpatine or something.
Throughout the week, we kept getting text messages from the company owner about the upcoming meeting she has. However, we became unnerved when the meeting seemed to start including the god damn computer guy, who in the week since had begun describing himself to her as being an "AI guy" now. I'm not kidding here.
Toward the end of the week, the company owner messaged us saying that the social media person said that she has notes of her own, and that they will be comparing them to ours. Now, that's very convenient considering I sent them so many notes they could just claim they already had! Again, a really bad feeling about this, but we were holding out hope because, honestly, we didn't have anything else at the time.
However, at this point, we can already tell what these people are going to do based on the information we already have, so we started losing any hope in landing this client.
After they had their group meeting, she was supposed to call us to discuss things further, but didn't. A bad sign given that she's been so prompt with us before. We text her after a couple of days and she gave us the unfortunate, yet expected news that their social media person, their "AI guy" and "Jennifer" decided that they could all do the stuff we listed in our notes, so we're not needed. From the message, it also seems like the AI guy is now suggesting he works on the website too, so maybe he got a promotion out of this. Prick.
However, it's clear that the three employees she currently has are not interested in growing the company, as evidenced by the red flags I went over.
I shared this experience with a few people who share the same theory as I do on what's going to happen to the company. We all believe that they're going to scramble around trying to make these changes, fail, an then damage the company and jeoparadise their positions. After all, the social media marketer and the "AI guy" all of the sudden started making notes on things they could improve that was very likely to be based off my work. The company owner did text us and said they seemed worried that this response of theirs was because they were worried she was going to replace them with us. I'm glad she was aware of this, but it doesn't help us in the slightest that she decided to keep some insecure people around.
Anyway, the reason I have this theory is simple: in the past, whenever I've sent over these documents over, there then becomes a sudden expectation for them to implement these changes or similar ones by the company owner. In some cases, these people then become confident in being able to implement these changes, most likely in order to get an undeserved pay raise. However, because they lack the knowledge on how to implement these changes, they usually end up making a very costly mistake that ruins the website, ruins the product, before finally ruining the company. In other cases, they choose to do nothing at all, which raises questions by the company owner. If this is lady is smart, she'll realise she's being taken advantage of and get rid of these people like she's had to do with so many others already.
You can actually see the evidence of this strategy in a certain other place right now where anything I revamped before is being revamped again or just completely ignored; they just don't understand what I wrote, so they can't keep up with it. Like I said, everyone gets the bright idea of replacing me with cheaper and dimmer labour sooner or later, and I like to make that as hard for them as possible
This was just such a big disappointment as that would've been a nice, easy position for us to have to get back on our feet financially. Then again, it was probably for the best that we didn't get these positions as working with the "AI guy", the pill maker/web designer, and their bargain bin human Hootsuite ( because they don't know about Hootsuite) would've been frustrating at a minimum.
By the way, it's been about a month since their team told us they could do it all themselves, and guess what? Nothing's changed on their website or their social media pages. They didn't even fix the broken menu bar links. I guess Jennifer and her friends couldn't do it after all, could they?
You see, back in March, shortly after we lost our jobs on the forum, we had a very nice opportunity to work for a small company that would've paid about 180k/year, which is about 80k/year more than we were making together at our last jobs. We would've worked as contractors for about 8 hours a week (yeah, a week), and this would've been the saving grace we needed for our finances.
It was a job similar to what we were doing before, but for a health company. We met the owner of the company a couple of years ago through a mutual friend, so we would've been pretty comfortable doing this job.
Unfortunately, we didn't get the positions for the worst possible reason, and it's something that's happened quite a lot to us over the years.
Curious to know what happened? Keep reading to find out.
How It Started
It started off with an unexpectedly long 4 hour phone call with the company owner, who was the lady we already knew from our mutual friend.She was very nice and decided to, in her own words, test us to see how patient we were. That's why the phone call was four hours long; she wanted to make sure we weren't the type to be rude to someone (never mind that time is precious for us, but you know...). We passed the "test" and she wanted to meet with us again to discuss things.
Four hours on the phone...
We had lunch with her on a Tuesday and she shared some stories with us and we shared our own stories with her. She told us more about her company, what it is, and how it works. She felt like we were genuine, so she set up a meeting between us, her, and a lady who she says basically runs the entire company named "Jennifer".
Before I go on, something important to mention is that during our lunch meeting with her, she told us that she talking to her "computer guy" (who she pays to come over and assist her with setting up her technology), and the computer guy said, "You don't need anyone for marketing". We were bothered to hear this because this is a very odd opinion for someone who just works on her computers, but more on that later.
We were also told during the lunch meeting that the person who works on the website is the same person who makes the stuff they sell. Apparently, and I quote, "he's very sensitive about his work", so if we got the jobs, any changes we made to the website would have to go through him. Again, this is very peculiar that the pill maker is also the web designer (and if I'm honest, not a very good one).
Preparing For The Meeting
In between that time, we spent about an hour to write up 17 pages worth of notes, which is very easy for us to do if you're familiar with my work on the other forum. I should mention that these notes were pretty rough in the sense that it only identified potential areas for improvements and why these need to be improved, but we did our best to refrain on exactly how to improve them. This because in the past, whenever I've demonstrated what I can do for a company, there always tended to be someone in the company who would claim they could do all of this, so they'd take my notes and use it to further their own career in the job. When this happens to you enough times, you start learning what to avoid when doing a presentation because these job parasites are really problematic. I suppose they always think the nugget I send them is a goldmine, without realising they cannot implement these ideas without the required knowledge.So, we did as much research on the company as we could, but whilst researching the company, we began seeing red flags. For example, during the lunch meeting, I was told that they have a "social media person" who operates their Instagram and Facebook pages. This person, from our understanding, is decently compensated for what they do (about maybe $5k/month). So what is it that they do? Apparently, this social media person posts about once a week on each of the company's social media profiles that have less than a dozen likes and 1 person engaging with them. Again, this was quite strange to us and we saw this as another red flag for reasons I'll cover at the end of this thread.
Going back to the meeting, so we waited until Thursday for the meeting, but once the meeting started, we immediately felt like something was wrong. We didn't really have much of a chance to explain who we are, what we do, or even what we can do to this "Jennifer" who runs the company and has complacently worked there for 30 years. During the meeting, Jennifer seemed disinterested from the get-go, but we continued explaining all the various aspects that could be improved. Whenever the owner of the company was talking, "Jennifer" would leave the room for a bit and then come back in. She seemed to understand some of what we were saying for the most part, but something felt very off about the atmosphere of the meeting and it was definitely one of the strangest meetings we've had.
Several times toward the end of the meeting, this Jennifer kept mentioning me sending over the document. In fact, the only time she seemed to perk up was when she mentioned me sending over this document. Her final comment on the document was pecuilar as well as she said, and I quote, "Hey, you can send those notes to us after the meeting. It is in good faith, right?". Who talks like this? I felt like I was sending the document over to Emperor Palpatine or something.
After The Meeting
After the meeting, the owner of the company contacted us and said that Jennifer haD scheduled a meeting with the social media person, herself, and the company owner to discuss what we could do for them. Immediately, I got a bad feeling that this company would not become a client because, in my experience, I've had many issues with social media marketers who are paid decently to do basically nothing substantial as these people do not actually want to do work, and someone coming in to improve things would make them look bad.Throughout the week, we kept getting text messages from the company owner about the upcoming meeting she has. However, we became unnerved when the meeting seemed to start including the god damn computer guy, who in the week since had begun describing himself to her as being an "AI guy" now. I'm not kidding here.
Toward the end of the week, the company owner messaged us saying that the social media person said that she has notes of her own, and that they will be comparing them to ours. Now, that's very convenient considering I sent them so many notes they could just claim they already had! Again, a really bad feeling about this, but we were holding out hope because, honestly, we didn't have anything else at the time.
However, at this point, we can already tell what these people are going to do based on the information we already have, so we started losing any hope in landing this client.
After they had their group meeting, she was supposed to call us to discuss things further, but didn't. A bad sign given that she's been so prompt with us before. We text her after a couple of days and she gave us the unfortunate, yet expected news that their social media person, their "AI guy" and "Jennifer" decided that they could all do the stuff we listed in our notes, so we're not needed. From the message, it also seems like the AI guy is now suggesting he works on the website too, so maybe he got a promotion out of this. Prick.
Red Flags
As I mentioned before, there were so many red flags present from the start.- Even though we knew the company owner before, talking on the phone for four hours like that to test us was pretty disrespectful. She felt like we were patient and polite, and we are quite patient and polite normally, but that's just something you don't do to other people.
- Jennifer seemed like she was complacent with where the company is at, and I took her having the exact same job for 30 years as evidence of this. Her disinterest from the start told us that we never really had a chance at getting these jobs, but we were being humoured because the company owner wanted to have the meeting, and later, because we could provide useful information that they can take credit for implementing themselves.
- As previously stated, the social media marketer, who I should mention is a friend of Jennifer's and thusly got the position because of her, is compensated for performing the most minimal work I have ever seen. The quality of this work is questionable, and in my experience, these people tend to enjoy their comfortable position and don't want that to change.
- The "AI guy" was already against bringing people on for marketing before we even had the lunch meeting, even though we kept saying that's only a part of what we do. From what the company owner has told me, it seems like he's taking advantage of her lack of technical knowledge, and this to me is quite obvious by the fact that he's now mispresenting himself as an "AI guy". Now, the company owner suggested that he was trying to teach her things, but I had the impression that he was doing the bare minimum in this regard to seem generous, but like the social media marketer, why would he actually do something to make her less reliant on him? Given the company's owners frequent technical issues as well (I mean, her e-mail barely works, and he's supposed to fix that), his work is also questionable.
- The pill maker also being the web designer left me speechless. I showed the website to many others who were baffled by the broken features and many other issues that we pointed out. One of these people even went as far describing the site as a gold infomercial website. Having to consult with a very sensitive pill maker and hobbyist web designer at best was going to be problematic if we had gotten this client.
- The meeting plans changing frequently suggested a lack of organisation in the company. This is something many of you in the industry are very familiar with me being able to fix (well, to an extent, at least), but this lack of organisation felt different. It felt like it was this way intentionally, if that makes sense.
What We Expect To Happen With This Company
Unfortunately, over our many years of experience, we've seen what happens to companies like this. The owner of the company, despite us not being happy about the four hour phone call, was fairly kind and clearly wants to grow the company. We have no issues with her and even quite like her still, so we found this situation to be very unfortunate as it would've been very easy to improve her company. We're also miffed because the last guy in the role got it just because he was her relative, and was fired after 6 months because she found out he wasn't doing anything at all. Thar easy for him, but we have to jump through hoops only to not get it...However, it's clear that the three employees she currently has are not interested in growing the company, as evidenced by the red flags I went over.
I shared this experience with a few people who share the same theory as I do on what's going to happen to the company. We all believe that they're going to scramble around trying to make these changes, fail, an then damage the company and jeoparadise their positions. After all, the social media marketer and the "AI guy" all of the sudden started making notes on things they could improve that was very likely to be based off my work. The company owner did text us and said they seemed worried that this response of theirs was because they were worried she was going to replace them with us. I'm glad she was aware of this, but it doesn't help us in the slightest that she decided to keep some insecure people around.
Anyway, the reason I have this theory is simple: in the past, whenever I've sent over these documents over, there then becomes a sudden expectation for them to implement these changes or similar ones by the company owner. In some cases, these people then become confident in being able to implement these changes, most likely in order to get an undeserved pay raise. However, because they lack the knowledge on how to implement these changes, they usually end up making a very costly mistake that ruins the website, ruins the product, before finally ruining the company. In other cases, they choose to do nothing at all, which raises questions by the company owner. If this is lady is smart, she'll realise she's being taken advantage of and get rid of these people like she's had to do with so many others already.
Final Thoughts
This may sound malicious to some, and I can assure you that it's not out of malice, but my documents are all written in a way that's confusing to understand by design. You see, I word them in a way that only I can really interpret, but also in a way that shows they have value. This is to ensure that should anyone try to replace me now that they have all these processes, procedures, and ideas I came up with; they'll completely fumble on the implementation in a way that's costly to them. I even go as far as to put not-so-obvious misleading information into some of my work that only someone with the same expertise would spot, just to safeguard my own position.You can actually see the evidence of this strategy in a certain other place right now where anything I revamped before is being revamped again or just completely ignored; they just don't understand what I wrote, so they can't keep up with it. Like I said, everyone gets the bright idea of replacing me with cheaper and dimmer labour sooner or later, and I like to make that as hard for them as possible
This was just such a big disappointment as that would've been a nice, easy position for us to have to get back on our feet financially. Then again, it was probably for the best that we didn't get these positions as working with the "AI guy", the pill maker/web designer, and their bargain bin human Hootsuite ( because they don't know about Hootsuite) would've been frustrating at a minimum.
By the way, it's been about a month since their team told us they could do it all themselves, and guess what? Nothing's changed on their website or their social media pages. They didn't even fix the broken menu bar links. I guess Jennifer and her friends couldn't do it after all, could they?
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.. you got my mind set.. 
, but I see why you didn't do it.
