Don’t be the reason someone has to put their guard up

a juicy little freelance nightmare that spans 3+ years

Welcome to Freelance Fridays, a new little series where on Fridays (maybe all, maybe one, maybe some-we’ll see!) I’ll dig into a freelance/self-employeed/business owner topic. Normally these will be essays or tactical things I’ve learned but today there is a little bit of drama because drama of other people is always better than our own right? Please enjoy (and hopefully there are some good lessons in here you can bring into client work too).

I’ve always been a pretty trusting and optimistic person. I normally see/expect the best in people and it takes a lot for me to get actually angry (as my friend’s say: cartoon clenched fists angry). I went back and forth on if I should share this story but now that the rage has subsided (mostly) I think there are some good lessons to be learned here. If this can help another freelancer protect themselves and remind people that being upfront and honest is always the right answer (aka don’t be a sh*tty human).

A couple years ago I had someone reach out about hiring me for PR services for her brand, a consumer product. Let’s call her “N” for the sake of ease here. It wasn’t a food brand and not really a fit for me but we had some mutual connections so I asked if she would want to hop on a call. Lesson number one it’s okay to say no thank you from the jump! N replied that she didn’t want to waste my time if I wasn’t in their budget and asked I could just send her my pricing and services (at the time I thought “how considerate”). I sent over some information on my pricing and scope options. Normally I would share those details on a call after asking some questions, maybe give a starting point over email but use the call as a way to gauge scope since things can vary so much based on goals. N said that retainer was out of her budget but would I be able to “just write pitches” for her instead. The answer was no (for many reasons too long for this note) but I told her I could do a paid consulting session with her if she wanted to get my eyes on the pitches she was sending as she attempted DIY’d her media efforts. I hadn’t done many of these so I wasn’t entirely set in how I priced and structured them. For $250 she got a one hour Zoom call with me to answer all her questions, it seemed like a fair deal at the time. She said that was perfect and we scheduled the call-easy.

N paid her invoice, woo, and we had a really productive session. I felt great about it and was excited to offer that service more so I could have a way to work with people/brands that weren’t quite ready for a retainer. She asked a ton of questions and took notes like how to find the right media contacts, we brainstormed angles, workshopped her pitches and I gave her a quick run through of PR 101, best practices, the current landscape and the value of press etc... In addition to her product-based business, N was a marketing & sales consultant, I knew that but her niche was definitely more on the sales side, she didn’t have any comms experience so we were really starting from the ground floor. After the session, I wanted to be helpful so I followed up with a recap of our call, some additional ideas, as well as some spreadsheet templates to help her out. N’s product was not one I would work with and not competitive with my clients so it just seemed like the nice and helpful thing to do and I love being a helper!

Not even a week after our session, I see some eerily familiar language on my Instagram feed, wouldn’t you know it, N is starting to offer PR services as someone with no PR experience other than a one hour call with me! Who knew I was such a great teacher ;) I scrolled through her Instagram stories, reading her talk about the value of PR, why brands should invest in it and more. All items regurgitated almost (if not completely) word for word from our session-it was beyond shocking. While a lot of what I said was not necessarily groundbreaking in the PR space, the timing felt spooky to say the least.

I let it sit for a few days and then saw more and more posts on her feed about this new offering and positioning herself as a “PR expert”. I really could not believe it. After stewing on it I decided to try to get ahead of it and email her. I reminded her of the terms of our contract and pointed out that I was surprised to see she was now offering PR services (I just re-read the email and was way too nice-like I included a smiley face nice-my PR friends now would scold me, current me would scold me!) She replied that launching PR services had always been the plan and wasn’t taking anything from our sessions…sure.

Lesson here: Your expertise is valuable, clients pay a lot for it, you worked hard for it, don’t let people take advantage of you to obtain it.

I wish I had done more due diligence and I wish I had called her out in a bigger way 1:1 at the time. People shouldn’t be able to get away with bad behavior and taking advantage of other women growing their business? Major yuck. Don’t be the reason someone has to put their guard up.

The truth is, if she had been upfront and told me she was thinking about offering PR services and wanted to connect I probably would have said yes. At least then I would have been armored with the knowledge that once I share, I can’t take it back so to only share what I was comfortable with. This has happened multiple times with me thinking people want to connect as friends or to network and then halfway through the convo I learn their motive is different. It’s about intention. Is your intention to connect, become friends, learn, glean or take everything you can for free and run out the door without as much as a “thanks for your help!” It always stings when you feel taken advantage of but I don’t think it means we stop trusting and sharing, it just means maybe we ask a few more questions, trust our gut and honor our boundaries.

For those who just wanted some lessons on what not to do, you can stop reading here. For those who want to feel just a little bit cranky with me and get filled in on the twisted way the world works sometimes, buckle up.

Fast forward a few years, it’s 2024 and I have not seen or heard anything from N since I got her reply to that email. I unfollowed her on all platforms pretty quickly so I wouldn’t fall into rage scrolling etc… Unless someone was dealing with a similar situation, I almost forgot that it ever happened…

Until I was sitting on a PR friend’s patio co-working and saw that someone had viewed my LinkedIn and sent me a connection request. I didn’t recognize the name so I asked my friend. She didn’t either. The industry is small so normally I have some kind of mutual so I always look. I went to her LinkedIn activity to figure out how we may be connected and saw she was working with the brand that got away, aka a brand I LOVED that 2 months earlier after many conversations and hitting it off told me they were going with another team (that one was a heartbreaker-maybe a story for another time). My initial thought was ugh why is this person trying to connect with me? Does she know I also talked to that brand? Is she trying to poach my other clients? Gah-overthinking overload. My friend pulled up the agency the woman worked at on her computer, “It’s weird, I’ve never heard of them,” she said as she scrolled through this PR agency’s website.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a familiar face, “wait stop,” she stopped scrolling on the team page and as luck/misfortune would have it, the founder was no other than N herself. I didn’t recognize the agency name or website because in the 2 years and some change that had passed, it had transitioned to only PR services from the sales/marketing consulting and education services she offered previously. I don’t think my poor PR pal had seen me spiral like that. Fists were clenched, had to pace around and could not believe that this brand was working with this for lack of a better word, fraud (probably a bit extreme but I’m getting crankier as I type so give me this one ha).

I felt protective over them because I loved the brand long before I talked to them about PR and was a true brand evangelist. I considered writing them a long email about N’s shadiness and what happened but I didn’t. It wasn’t worth my relationship with them and I knew it would not come across the way I wanted. They’d likely see it as an effort to regain their business, I meant it as feeling angry that someone who took advantage of me, might be taking advantage of them.

There’s no real end to this story other than a reminder to stand up for yourself, take a breather and learn to do better next time. I’m not going to let this experience make me jaded or closed off to new connections or sharing my expertise when appropriate, but it can be a reminder that not everyone has good intentions. If you feel like something is off, it’s okay to say no, no more or not again. Everyone has their self-employed nightmares, this is far from my worst-should I share more?

xx,

Delaney