After a while, Tina becomes suspicious. It’s not clear how much work is being done, what exactly IS being done, and when she can expect some leads to come through. She’s been told that these things take time and to wait another month or so for the leads to start coming in. She’s now paid 3 invoices and has had a few leads come through. None of which were valuable but she’s hoping this will change soon.
Another month goes by and still the same. Now Tina can’t get a hold of her digital marketing expert and she hasn’t returned Tina’s calls. She also gets an out-of-office response to say that the contractor is on leave for another 2 weeks and will respond then.
$5,000 has now been paid with little if any return. Tina is enormously frustrated and is starting to lose sleep over it. Her entire marketing budget is wrapped up with this contractor.
She’s also embarrassed and feels stupid that she trusted this person to do the right thing and deliver what she promised. She’s been in business for a while and thinks her instincts are good.
Not on this occasion.
She sees no way of getting the money back. Therefore she puts it down to a learning experience – an expensive one at that. Now she can’t afford to pay for the marketing, financials and legals which she would otherwise have had. It’s not going to destroy her business but $5K is a large amount of money for Tina that she can ill afford to waste.