[0:14] On this episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m probably going to get myself into trouble — potentially a lot of trouble, actually. I put a post on LinkedIn a while back, and we’ll put a link to that below this podcast. So, it’ll be in the description, or if you’re watching this on YouTube, it’ll be in the description there, or in the show notes on iTunes, Spotify, whatever you’re watching or listening to this on. We’ll put the link to the LinkedIn post where I talked about people in networking groups who don’t pay — people you end up working with who basically owe you money. They end up on your debtors list and decide they’re not going to pay you, they disappear, and you end up out of pocket.
[1:03] What happens there? Because in the UK — and I’ve got some listeners in the US and other countries as well — we tend to have this attitude where we don’t like to say bad things about people. We don’t like to make a fuss or air dirty laundry in public, as the saying goes. We like to keep things quiet, sweep them under the carpet, and not say bad things about people if we don’t have to. And I get that. It’s a UK mentality, and that’s fine.
[1:45] But what it means is, when people in networking groups or organisations either don’t pay, or they do a bad job — maybe you’ve hired a plasterer who’s completely messed up your house — you end up losing a load of money because you have to get it all redone by somebody else. Do you let other people know that’s happened? That the job was terrible, you had to get it redone, and you lost money? No — we typically don’t in the UK.
[2:24] The problem is, they’ll end up getting recommended to someone else, referred to someone else, and that person will have the same experience. They’ll say, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” And this happened to us earlier this year. We ended up working for somebody in a networking group, and I alluded to this on a previous podcast about things you shouldn’t do as a web designer — one of them being “don’t copy another website.”
[2:57] If a client comes to you and says, “This is our website — I want you to do exactly the same for this new one,” you should never do it. And it was because of this instance that we now have a rule that we don’t copy other sites. If a client asks us to, we just won’t do it.
[3:14] In this case, a client came to us and said, “I’ve got this website — I want you to copy it exactly for this new business.” I didn’t know that’s what had been asked, and one of our team did it. The client didn’t like it. One of the criticisms was that it showed no originality — and of course it didn’t! We’d done exactly what he’d asked us to do.
[3:43] What did he expect? We copied the site, as requested. This went on for some time, and as with some people who have this kind of attitude, he decided to just go quiet. He stopped replying to emails, calls, missed payments, and it snowballed. Eventually, we had to follow our debt-collection processes — processes originally created by the late David Harrington Wright, a lovely guy who specialised in debt recovery.
[4:28] We followed everything properly, but then got the classic excuses: “Oh, I didn’t get that paperwork — that’s not my address.” He moved around different addresses, then claimed he hadn’t seen the contract or terms and conditions. But we use a system called Better Proposals — and I recommend it to anyone in a service-based industry.
[4:59] With Better Proposals, we create the proposal online, send it to the potential client, and get notified as soon as they’ve logged in. We can see what device they used — iPhone, PC, tablet — and what pages they looked at, including the terms and conditions. So we knew he’d read them. That excuse was a lie. It went to court, it got nasty, and we ended up losing a load of money from it.
[5:48] I thought, “I never want to deal with this absolute scumbag again.” And then I found out he’d done this before. I didn’t want to tell people because you come off as the bad guy when you talk about someone who’s ripped you off. I know he’s been slagging me off to others — people have told me. He’s not as popular as he thinks he is.
[6:24] And notice I’ve not named him here, and I’m not going to. If you’re waiting for that, don’t — I’m not naming him. But he’s been telling people we weren’t creative, that we didn’t create a good website for him. But we did exactly what he asked for — it’s in the proposal. So, frankly, that’s on him.
[6:52] He didn’t pay, and I didn’t go announcing it around the networking group because it doesn’t reflect well on me. But then he wanted to visit my networking meeting. The absolute nerve. He owed money, lied in court, and now wanted to show up at my group? No chance.
[7:32] I had to explain why that would be a bad idea. Then someone else in our group said, “Oh yeah, he’s done that before.” What? He’s done it before — in another region, to several people, left owing them money. Why didn’t I know that? If I’d known, I’d never have worked with him in the first place.
[8:10] This is the whole point of my post — and this podcast. I’m not here to name anyone, but to ask: what would you do about it? Do you tell people if someone rips you off? Not to badmouth them, but to warn others? Because someone else in our group said, “Oh, he seems nice.” And I said, “If you work for him, make sure he pays you up front.”
[8:59] There are a lot of businesses that can’t afford to be ripped off. Some can be destroyed by not being paid. For example, an electrician working alone might spend two weeks on a house rewire — if he doesn’t get paid, that’s half a month’s income gone. That can ruin a small business.
[9:46] We’re lucky — we’ve got over a hundred web design clients, around two hundred in total. One person not paying us isn’t going to break us, but it’s the principle. If he does it to someone else, it could break them. I don’t want that to happen.
[10:20] So what’s your take on this? Let me know in the comments or below the YouTube video. Would you name them publicly? Would you tell your networking group in confidence so others don’t get caught out? Because as a society, we tend to hide this stuff — we stay quiet, which just lets it happen again.
[11:20] I think I’ve got away with this one — hopefully I haven’t landed myself in any legal trouble. I’ll have the editors check this just in case. And I’ll catch you on the next episode.
