Lara Schmoisman  0:22  

Hello there. Welcome to Coffee number five. And we have today another mini episode. Today. I want to tell you about that experience, something that happened to me this week. And I think it’s a good lesson that we all can learn about it.

And that’s why I will say 98% of 95 98%. Sometimes it’s hard to check off the people that come to me to the agency, they come with bad experiences, they’ve been burned out by bad experiences, they hire someone that he didn’t work for them, they hire freelance that they didn’t know what to do, or how to guide them. And I’m always not saying that everyone out there is trying to scam you, or trying to take advantage of you which also there is a lot of that out there. And you need to be very careful. But sometimes the problem is the communication. Or you don’t know how to communicate with your freelancer, and you don’t know what you need. So you expect that the Freelancer will do absolutely everything for you. And that’s not fair, because this is your business. And you should be knowing what you need is not that you hire an agency and agency is completely different. And agency will tell you will partner with you. And agency will be the experts because they have experts in different parts of the ecosystem. And you will be able to work with agency and the agency will tell you what you need or what’s more convenient or make recommendations. However, I just want to tell you a story that happened to me this last month, I contracted the service of something that I do not currently offer on the agency at the Darl. And it’s something that I needed. And I contacted another company, they had a very good sales pitch, they had a very unique service. And I was interested, I was interested and I signed a contract with them. And but it wasn’t there. I mean, they try first of all, to me they were taking maybe because I’m in marketing, and maybe because I know what I want. And I know the messaging and I know the target audience. And what they were given to me was in there. And I’m not faulting them for not knowing or making mistakes. My problem was that they weren’t listening, I was a client, and they weren’t respecting my brand or my branding. And I have a strong branding. And I need them as a company to respect me as a client, they were imposing or telling me that they knew what in this case, I’m super knowledgeable, like what has to be done, I shares do not offer those resources in my agency. So that’s something that for me is already a red flag, and is something that always concerns me. And I need to know that the company or the Freelancer that I’m hiring is someone that they are listening to me. And first of all, they took very long time something that they shouldn’t take long, long time to do the first delivery. And it was an accurate but also when I hire someone, I believe that that person or that company, they’re experts in what they hire, I hire them for. So first of all, it took a lot of time to deliver what they say they will deliver is something that if I would have done it in the agency, it would have taken me less than a third of that time. But okay, let’s give them that time. I wasn’t happy with what they deliver. But I again, when I hire an expert, I believe that that expert will know better than me. And I say I have these concerns, but you guys know better what works and what doesn’t. And they give it some time. And it wasn’t working. I put out there my concerns and they were using words that they didn’t check in with my brand. It wasn’t it was I was concerned about this because it really was affecting my brand and it was affecting my reputation as well. reputation for me is super important is reputation that for me is everything because it’s how I run my business, everyone comes to me because of my reputation, and how they were communicating my message wasn’t the right way to communicate it, to communicate it. So

I try to give feedback. I try them, too. I give them time. And but every time that I was giving feedback, and this is another red flag, they were super defensive. And by being defensive, and I was getting all these emails, very long emails that I want to say too long, I didn’t read and explaining. I’m a marketing expert. So I just was feeling that they were be wheeling me with bullshit. Basically, I had to say this, they were be wheeling me with bullshit. And every time that I was asking for explanations, and what was the strategy, you guys know how important for me is the strategy. I, I was feeling that they would write all these emails that they will take them probably a very long time. And it’s time that they could be performing their job. And believe me, if it would have worked, it would have been great. And I would recommend them so many people. But that wasn’t the case. And they weren’t listening. And then they will say in excuses like, oh, no, we need to wait 14 days, I know, this is not working. I’m not happy with this. And so the relationship was broken there, the trust was broken, because they weren’t listening. And I found that they every message that I was getting from them were excuses. Then I got, I managed to get out of that contract and managed to negotiate that contract because it was broken. And it wouldn’t never work. What they were doing, it is not what they were promising. So make sure that you in this case, I would have never know. But exactly, that’s why I create my coaching program. Because every time that you work with a freelancer, in this case, as I told you, they can’t give me BS because I know it very well what needs to be done. And I know exactly what at what will work or not. And what what I was getting, it wasn’t there. So here the moral is that if you’re going to be working with the company, or you’re going to be working with the freelancer, or you’re going to be working with whoever, you need to make sure that you have your resources in place, I always say this, I work in my coach with my coaches I work with my clients in the agency is that you need to know your resources. And your resources are for example, your time, your team, your tools, but also is of course your budget, but also is your knowledge, your knowledge is one of the biggest resources that you can own. So and that’s why I created my coaching program. So I can help with this knowledge resources. So when you’re ready to work with a freelancer, you can at least have that foundation and you know what you need, you know how to communicate because sometimes you are speaking mostly when it’s technically a completely different language than your Freelancer is speaking. So you need to make sure that you speak the same language and at the same time that you create that ecosystem, that that ecosystem connects one part to another. And that’s why I was so upset with these people. Because my brand that wasn’t there, there was it was completely disconnected from who I am, and who my brand connects with my target audience worse than they are. And also well met. What makes me really upset about the situation is because of the service that I was offered to me was supposed to be really tailor and catered for me and chess, that it’s gonna be unique. And I found out that the only thing that they were doing, were using technology that it was out there that anyone can use it and it wasn’t just scraping for details on for information. They weren’t they were using just the tools to connect the the tools or the word provider to them, and then blindly they were they were doing what they had to do.

So that was my experience. And even though I have all these experience and I have all this knowledge for me He is something that is a no, no. Whenever you hire someone here needs to know what you’re getting and have a clear scope of work. And you need to be able to speak up that something is not working for you. You should be able to ask questions and don’t have to Yes, never accept me. Yes, I prefer short answers, but on point that those long emails are never answering your question. So always in marketing ask what’s the strategy behind it. So what’s great talking to you this Wednesday, and I will see you next time. Bye Bye.