Have
you ever been scammed? If so, how did
you feel after you discovered it? We
think this happens to other people that are just plain stupid.
It would never happen to me…….…right?
Well,
it recently happened to me. This is a
first and you can guess the slew of emotions that went thru my body when I
discovered it. I felt like someone
punched me in the gut, then I went to disbelief. Sitting in silence, I suddenly went thru a very
brief time period where I called myself stupid,
naïve, dumb, and all those uplifting words we hit ourselves with in these
moments. Of course then came a little anger.
This really happened to me. ME!!! Yes, me!
I
have a tendency to be very hard on myself and must allow the slew of emotions
to go thru my body. In the early years,
this went on for days. The good news is
that today, I go thru this over a much shorter period of time. I will usually work my way to laughing at the
situation and then get down to what I learned.
After all, we are all humans and things like this are not the end of the
world. Just frustrating.
You
are now probably wondering what happened, so here we go:
A woman (we will call her “Lois”) contacted me last week via
email and listed some great opportunities for speakers. I was skeptical since I receive these types
of emails fairly often, but I was intrigued.
The email was written beautifully with Lois supplying her name,
company name, company website link, and telephone number. I checked out her website and even found her
on Linkedin. It all looked fine to me,
so I emailed her to state that I was a good fit for the leadership opportunity
with the media company. She quickly
emailed back and we set up a meeting to talk over the phone.
We talked the following day and the conversation went great. Lois thought I would be a great fit for the
media company and she had a few other career coaching opportunities working
with retired military personnel that would be perfect for me. Lois also said she’d been doing this for many
years, had a huge client database, would market my offerings, and I would have
a plethora of clients to help fulfill my life’s mission.
Since I needed some assistance with marketing my relatively new
business, this was perfect. All I had to
do was pay a relatively small one-time fee and Lois would take a % of anything
that she booked for me. All I needed to
do was pay and she would send me a questionnaire to complete. Once the questionnaire was received, we would
have an initial “discovery” meeting to discuss everything. Afterward our initial meeting, Lois promised
to submit me to all of these potential clients.
The actual events that took place were that I paid, Lois sent
the questionnaire, I completed the questionnaire, and then there was silence. Nothing.
Nada. After a few emails and a
phone call, still nothing. I became
suspicious and did a Google search on Lois and the company. The results were horrible. Lois and her company appeared on various sites stating to stay away from her and the company. Based upon these sites, Lois has a checkered
past and other folks were also convinced to purchase seats on her “scam train”.
I started the process of requesting my money back from Lois
since she had gone silent. I also
contacted my credit card company to put the charge in a dispute state with follow-up
tasks of gathering all the correspondence to send to them.
Each
one of us has to take responsibility for our actions and learn from our
mistakes. Do I blame Lois for this? Not at all.
I love great conversation and connection with people, so I fell for
it. I discovered that Lois has a great
skill for both and it is a shame that she is unable to put these skills to better
use.
Will
I fall for it again? Yes, when it comes
to great conversation and connection.
When it comes to my money, I will be doing more research before I spend
again.
I
would love to know some of your recent learning. Post or drop me an email. You already know I am sucker for a great
connection.
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