Hey All,
Been a while. Hope everyone is doing well and totally killing it on their fastlane road to financial freedom!
Had a situation that came up over the last couple of days that has changed my life for the worse (temporarily) and I wanted to share it, in the hopes that someone else might benefit from my mistake.
So about 2 years ago, I got a job with a marketing agency taking care of their social media accounts (among various other things). I figured this was the easiest way to get around marketing masters and learn the profession for my future fastlane endeavors.
I was fairly decent at it and showed more than a bit of love for the company that had decided to take me in, so around this time last year I was promoted to a management position. I've had about 10 different people work under me since then, and each one has been pretty cool even though I've had a few unpleasant situations arise along the way.
My company's most recent hire though, turned out to be ripping off the company hard, and I'm now on the hook for the damage he's done.
So this employee - I'll call him “Johan,” - had been recommended as a hire by a close personal friend of our agency's CEO.
On our phone interview with him, this close personal friend (who was also on the interview with Johan) stopped short of fellating Johan – talking up every possible positive point you could imagine. Johan turned out to be quite the charismatic fellow – extremely so, charming everyone who met him.
Really, I've met very few people who were as outright charming and likeable as this guy.
My manager and I decided to hire him into the company as a social media account manager under my direct supervision. Johan was already trained up dealing with social media accounts, so he knew most of what I would've taught him. All I had to do was keep track of his progress and make sure all of our company's social media accounts were being updated every day.
Everything was fine for the first two months – Johan was doing quite well and seemed to be everything that the CEO's bestie described him as. And of course, he was ever so charming – charismatic as hell, this guy. After about 2 months of him working for us, I stopped regularly personally reviewing his work. I'd have daily standups with him to check on the progress of our social media accounts, but I took Johan at his word for the work he said he was doing each day. I foolishly decided that I was too busy to make a simple check on the status of the social media accounts he was in charge of.
Fast forward to a few days ago. I received a message from my manager randomly asking me to check on the status of a couple of our social media accounts. He informed me that the ones he was looking at had last been warmed up 2 months ago, in JUNE.
“What the HELL?” I could only confusedly reply. “June?! There MUST be some mistake!” because Johan was coming in every morning, going to work, and updating me on the status of the accounts that he was in charge of. Johan seemed to be diligently working, PAST normal hours and into overtime too, to make sure every account was taken care of with extra TLC. There MUST have been some sort of mistake...
I checked in on the accounts mentioned personally. It seemed that my manager was right...they were completely neglected. There were NO updates on ANY of them since early June. My heart sank. I immediately went to check up on the rest of Johan's accounts. NONE OF THEM HAD BEEN UPDATED SINCE EARLY JUNE!
Not. A. Single. One.
I sat aghast at this new information. I literally couldn't believe it. Johan had been coming in every day, telling me that he was working, when actually he had done NOTHING. And I was under the gun for it. I was his direct manager – and I was responsible for everything that he was or wasn't getting done.
Two FULL months of neglect lay on every account he was responsible for. I'm still in a bit of disbelief about it. All because I didn't make the simple act of checking on his work every day.
As you can imagine, my superiors in the company were about as far from pleased as you could picture.
They spoke to the CEO's close personal friend whom recommended and gave the glowing review to Johan, and guess what he had to say?
CEO's Bestie: "Wow that sucks, yeah he did the same thing to me while he was working on a similar project."
I absolutely shit you not.
Talk of terminating my contract was had. Luckily (I guess), they decided that they weren't going to fire me over the issue. Unluckily, they decided to demote me back to the same position that Johan had previously filled.
Whereas previously, I'd been a month away from being taken on full time as a social media marketer (which was my ultimate goal so I could learn from the masters how to advertise my fastlane projects), I'm now (according to my managers), at least 6 more months away from being considered for that position again, if they even want to.
It has not been my favorite couple of days…
So I hope that you, fellow up-and-coming fastlane brethren out there, are able to take some sort of lesson from my carelessness.
Always… Always! ALWAYS!!! CHECK ON YOUR EMPLOYEE/CONTRACTOR/ETC.'S WORK!!!
No matter how much you like them.
No matter how charismatic they are.
No matter how trustworthy they've been in the past.
ALWAYS check to see that they've been doing everything they've been saying that they are. You will avoid much pain and delays in your millionaire progress this way.
Now, if you'll excuse me...I'm off to rebuild my express lane.
Been a while. Hope everyone is doing well and totally killing it on their fastlane road to financial freedom!
Had a situation that came up over the last couple of days that has changed my life for the worse (temporarily) and I wanted to share it, in the hopes that someone else might benefit from my mistake.
So about 2 years ago, I got a job with a marketing agency taking care of their social media accounts (among various other things). I figured this was the easiest way to get around marketing masters and learn the profession for my future fastlane endeavors.
I was fairly decent at it and showed more than a bit of love for the company that had decided to take me in, so around this time last year I was promoted to a management position. I've had about 10 different people work under me since then, and each one has been pretty cool even though I've had a few unpleasant situations arise along the way.
My company's most recent hire though, turned out to be ripping off the company hard, and I'm now on the hook for the damage he's done.
So this employee - I'll call him “Johan,” - had been recommended as a hire by a close personal friend of our agency's CEO.
On our phone interview with him, this close personal friend (who was also on the interview with Johan) stopped short of fellating Johan – talking up every possible positive point you could imagine. Johan turned out to be quite the charismatic fellow – extremely so, charming everyone who met him.
Really, I've met very few people who were as outright charming and likeable as this guy.
My manager and I decided to hire him into the company as a social media account manager under my direct supervision. Johan was already trained up dealing with social media accounts, so he knew most of what I would've taught him. All I had to do was keep track of his progress and make sure all of our company's social media accounts were being updated every day.
Everything was fine for the first two months – Johan was doing quite well and seemed to be everything that the CEO's bestie described him as. And of course, he was ever so charming – charismatic as hell, this guy. After about 2 months of him working for us, I stopped regularly personally reviewing his work. I'd have daily standups with him to check on the progress of our social media accounts, but I took Johan at his word for the work he said he was doing each day. I foolishly decided that I was too busy to make a simple check on the status of the social media accounts he was in charge of.
Fast forward to a few days ago. I received a message from my manager randomly asking me to check on the status of a couple of our social media accounts. He informed me that the ones he was looking at had last been warmed up 2 months ago, in JUNE.
“What the HELL?” I could only confusedly reply. “June?! There MUST be some mistake!” because Johan was coming in every morning, going to work, and updating me on the status of the accounts that he was in charge of. Johan seemed to be diligently working, PAST normal hours and into overtime too, to make sure every account was taken care of with extra TLC. There MUST have been some sort of mistake...
I checked in on the accounts mentioned personally. It seemed that my manager was right...they were completely neglected. There were NO updates on ANY of them since early June. My heart sank. I immediately went to check up on the rest of Johan's accounts. NONE OF THEM HAD BEEN UPDATED SINCE EARLY JUNE!
Not. A. Single. One.
I sat aghast at this new information. I literally couldn't believe it. Johan had been coming in every day, telling me that he was working, when actually he had done NOTHING. And I was under the gun for it. I was his direct manager – and I was responsible for everything that he was or wasn't getting done.
Two FULL months of neglect lay on every account he was responsible for. I'm still in a bit of disbelief about it. All because I didn't make the simple act of checking on his work every day.
As you can imagine, my superiors in the company were about as far from pleased as you could picture.
They spoke to the CEO's close personal friend whom recommended and gave the glowing review to Johan, and guess what he had to say?
CEO's Bestie: "Wow that sucks, yeah he did the same thing to me while he was working on a similar project."
I absolutely shit you not.
Talk of terminating my contract was had. Luckily (I guess), they decided that they weren't going to fire me over the issue. Unluckily, they decided to demote me back to the same position that Johan had previously filled.
Whereas previously, I'd been a month away from being taken on full time as a social media marketer (which was my ultimate goal so I could learn from the masters how to advertise my fastlane projects), I'm now (according to my managers), at least 6 more months away from being considered for that position again, if they even want to.
It has not been my favorite couple of days…
So I hope that you, fellow up-and-coming fastlane brethren out there, are able to take some sort of lesson from my carelessness.
Always… Always! ALWAYS!!! CHECK ON YOUR EMPLOYEE/CONTRACTOR/ETC.'S WORK!!!
No matter how much you like them.
No matter how charismatic they are.
No matter how trustworthy they've been in the past.
ALWAYS check to see that they've been doing everything they've been saying that they are. You will avoid much pain and delays in your millionaire progress this way.
Now, if you'll excuse me...I'm off to rebuild my express lane.
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