Influencers Can Leave You Broke, Redux

Back in 2022, I warned you that influencers can leave you broke if you listen to random idiots. And here we are again. 

I'm taking a short interlude from my experiences in The Artist's Way to repeat myself: listen to goofballs with bad advice at your own risk! The career you obliterate may be your own. 💥

Links:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/episodes/10689626

****

Decoding the Unicorn is live on Amazon! Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Influencers, financial risk, social media advice, ethical behavior, project management, job market, AI displacement, creative freedom, client relationships, risky advice, personal growth, surrender experiment, common sense, professional ethics, career challenges.

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com, and now here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to take a little break, a brief interlude, if you will, from the mini series I've been doing about Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, and what I'm learning as I go through the exercises, I still intend to finish that mini series, there was just something that came up, and I debated. I really wrestled with whether or not I should even record this episode, because I have been pretty hot under the collar for the past couple of days, and I just remembered what I say so often, if I'm going through something, somebody else is too and it may be that it resonates immediately, the same day that this episode is published, or it may be that somebody finds it in five years and it resonates for them. Deep breath, I just feel like a dragon, like at any point, the fire, or at least the smoke is going to come billowing out of my nostrils. So you may remember, if you've been a long time listener, you may remember that going all the way back to June 2 of 2022 I released the episode, influencers can leave you broke. Here's the write up for that episode, people like influencers, gurus and self helpers, can leave you broke, even though they may promise you that if you spend money, sometimes money you don't have on their programs, you will become rich and famous. Isn't always so key topics. What is the actual criteria of an influencer? Anyway, the barriers to entry seem pretty low. LinkedIn has become a hub of fake pathos, outright lies, self aggrandizement and humble brags. I would be leery of anyone who promises to make you millions of dollars solely by using LinkedIn. Psychopathic manipulators have zero issues with taking your last dollar and they will do it if you let them. Don't be blindsided by a no, excuse me, don't be blinded by a large number of likes or followers. These interactions can be bought, and they can also be bots, as in B, o, t, s, no pun intended. Here we are again. All right, three years down the road, which doesn't seem possible, I had to blink. I was like, I did that in 2022 it just seems like I put that episode out yesterday. Here we are again. I want to talk about the same topic. Influencers can leave you broke Redux, but I'm coming at it from a different angle this time, because something happened to me recently, and you know the drill, I have to be necessarily vague. There's plenty of tea I would like to spill, but I need to be careful here. I had a situation where a person allowed influencers and junk that they read on the internet to absolutely poison the working relationship that we had. This individual started out responsive, humble, eager, like I genuinely want to do this. And I thought, well, that's fabulous. And I also gave this person a very large sandbox to play in. I didn't micromanage. I didn't nitpick every last detail. It was like I'm going to really trust you to do the job. I'm here if you have questions. I'm here if you want my guidance, but otherwise I'm going to leave you alone, because I don't want to micromanage people. I know how I always felt when I perceived that somebody was standing over my shoulder, or somebody was nitpicking. And I'll give you an example. I remember back from my staffing days, there was a place that I worked for that had a satellite office in another state. These people called me from this satellite office and said, we are having difficulty filling a role, and we want your help. It's a contract position. We know that you do a lot of contract recruiting. Help us find somebody. We've got a client that's desperate, and they have said Money is no object. Submit with requirements. It doesn't matter if the person says they need 30 bucks an hour or 50 or 130 don't call anybody based on money they're getting desperate. I said, Okay. And I was like, Do you want me to tell the prospects that not necessarily the client is desperate, but do you want me to say I can submit with requirements? What would it take for you to do this job? And they said, Yes, you can disclose that, because we need people. This is getting to be desperate times call for desperate measures. Okay, no problem. So I started. Making phone calls to people in my rolodex, so to speak. And my boss overhears me talking to these people, and she's like, well, I don't I don't like the way that you're talking to to them. I'm like, What do you mean? Well, you're telling them things like, I can submit with requirements. They're not going to call anybody based on pay. But that's not true. There's always a ceiling. What's the ceiling? And I said, well, they told me at the satellite office, it doesn't matter if it's 3050, or 130 don't call anybody based on pay. And I am allowed to disclose that to the prospects, because they need somebody for this job that I was told Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just do it. Well, I don't like that. You should just tell them that they still need to be realistic. And I'm thinking, oh my god, lady, will you please just butt out? All you're doing is getting yourself in a situation that doesn't even concern you, and you're trying to micromanage and ride hurt on me for no reason. It really even now I think back on it, and I'm like, Just go away. Just go on get I don't want to be that kind of a manager. I don't want to be that kind of a client. I don't want to stand over somebody and be like, Well, why are you doing it that way? Why is it taking so long? Why are you working on this at midnight? I don't care. I don't care. As long as the job is done well, the deadlines are met and the specifications are met. I don't really care. It doesn't matter to me. If you're up like Nosferatu, up all night, sleep all day. I don't care. So I gave this individual a large sandbox to play in. Go do you do your thing? Have fun. And at first, things were going really well. We get to fourth and goal, you know, like, when they flash up fourth and inches, they go and get that primitive chain out the stick on a chain, and they're like, Oh, you're about two inches shy of the end zone. We were there. And then this person decided that they had read articles on Reddit, they had seen commentators on YouTube, and that they needed more money. That's really what it boiled down to, was, even though you've given me a lot of artistic freedom, I don't care about that anymore. I feel like you should be paying my bills. And I'm sitting here like, where is this coming from? Well, it's coming from Reddit and YouTube and these other people that are saying, know your power, know your worth, like you've got the client exactly where you want them, so you should be demanding more money. It was like ransom. My assistant referred to it as artistic terrorism, and that's what it felt like. It was like a hostage situation, like I am going to hold this project hostage until you pony up this money, until you agree to give me more than what we legally contractually agreed upon, and I thought, Oh, you got me some kind of messed up. I just, it was like, instantaneously, the switch flipped. Man, dad was the diplomat, not me, and I don't ever claim to be I'm hot blooded, and I got a temper, if you want to FA, you can FO. oh, yeah, we can do that. We can certainly do that. I'm in full. Joan Crawford at the Pepsi meeting. Don't with me, fellas, this ain't my first rodeo. If we want to be G rated about it, we can say, if you want to test your theory. You may do so at your earliest convenience, but you're not going to be exempted from the results of said experiment. Okay? And I just thought, I'll burn this whole project to the ground and start over, but you're not going to hold me hostage. You're not going to make me like a hostage victim. Do this, pay this ransom note, or you're never going to see this person again. No, no, no, you picked the wrong one for that. And I just thought like, okay, when I was autopsying the situation, and I was looking at how to prevent this from ever happening again, how to make contracts and scope of work even more airtight, how to pick people that seem to have a better ethical compass, that just don't behave that way. It's just not in their wiring. I came back to this episode influencers can leave you broke like influencers got in this person's head and convinced this person to do this awful thing, what I perceive to be an awful unethical thing, and I'm like, they have no idea whoever it was that she was listening to from social media. These people have no idea what they actually call. Lost this individual. How much additional work, how many feathers in this person's cap that were waiting in the wings? They just obliterated this person, basically. So, yeah, it meant something to me to get on here and say influencers can still leave you broke, and it's not always the way that we think. Like what I talked about in the first episode of this flavor. You've got these influencers that are saying FOMO and Yolo quit your job. It's whatever the job market is fine. You'll find something. No, it's not. The job market has not been fine in yours. That's one of the reasons why I felt confident I was able to screw up my courage to retire from staffing and HR work. It was like looking at a barren wasteland and saying, Who wants this dag lit this fire in my soul. He really it was almost like he held up a mirror and said, This is who you actually are. You're a writer, you're a poet, you're an artist, you're a creative Why are you shoving yourself into the box of staying in an industry that you don't even like? So I left, and it wasn't like leaving a big buffet. It wasn't like leaving a castle or some palace where it's like, well, yes, this is a cage, but it's a gilded cage. I have so many nice things in here. No, no, no, no, no, no. There are so many things about that profession that I do not miss. It's like, Oh, mine got I've been liberated. That doesn't mean that every day is easy. It certainly doesn't, because Hello, Exhibit A the exact situation I'm talking about, having a client, Freelancer relationship, and then having that person blow it to smithereens because they listen to the wrong people online. Somebody got in their head and told them bad advice, and I'm sitting back here like y'all gotta quit listening to these idiots on the internet. I don't ever sit here and say I'm a guru. I am God's gift to podcasters. I always tell you the same thing, it's just my opinion, and I could be wrong. I sit here and I opine for your entertainment only, and that's it. And I will say things like, if we were friends, if we were sitting at the pub having a pint, and you asked me, Well, what about this? I'd say I don't know. If somebody said, Hey, should I FOMO and Yolo and just yeet right out of my job in this economy? I'd be like, I mean, I don't know about doing something like that. That seems high risk behavior to me. I understand what it's like to be stuck. I understand what it's like to want to gnaw your own arm off like the proverbial coyote and the trap. But at the same time, I'm not going to tell anybody F it FOMO YOLO, throw a brick metaphorically through the window of your job and leave and you're guaranteed to find something else fast. No, you're not, not in this economy. Look at how many jobs are being displaced and replaced by AI. I really think in a lot of ways, it's happening quietly and discreetly, because the companies that have put it out on Front Street have been lambasted. They've been tried in the court of public opinion, and so people are just being more surreptitious about it, like all right, the public is not completely willing just yet to have fast food restaurants that are totally robotic. They're not willing to have self checkouts and robot cashiers everywhere. People were beating the system. They were stealing all the time. So we're going to have to dial back some of the public, overt uses of AI. But that doesn't mean that they aren't still going on. They're just happening sneakier, more privately, quieter. That's how it's happening. I've told you before about HR departments where maybe 20% of the personnel now are actual humans. The other 80% are bots or bits of AI programming. It's not even people anymore. You can laugh and say that that sounds alarmist. I don't care. I'm just telling you what I have observed, but it's being kept quiet. People are not advertising that. They're not saying, well, we're not hiring recruiters and HR personnel because we're getting these AI platforms to do that kind of work for us. They're not going to tell you that. They're not going to get out in the town square with a megaphone and yell it for everybody to hear and get mad about they'll just do it quietly, and then outside of the board of directors and people that are in the inner circle that are really paying attention, nobody's going to know anyway. That's reality. So no, I'm not going to tell anybody. Well, just eat yourself right out of that job. Yeah, and you might eat yourself into a bank account that's empty too. You. Just it boggles the mind. It boggles the mind that people will listen to the craziest crap on the internet and blow up their careers, blow up their relationships. I'm almost speechless, which is rare for me, so I guess in some ways, this is almost like a public service announcement to say that if you are listening to people online, they're giving you risky advice. Just as I said back in 2022 if an influencer gives you terrible advice and you take it, it's like the ultimate Caveat emptor, they're not going to do anything to help you. They're not going to say, Oh, you listen to risky advice. You did something really stupid because you listened to one of my YouTube videos. Well, let me buy your groceries for a year. Let me pay your rent. They're not going to do that. You are totally on your own. And you have to use good judgment. You have to use common sense. You have to think about things like, if I take this big risk and then, like a splat at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, which has happened to me, by the way, I know from whence I speak, how will I cope with it? How will I claw my way back up out of that pit? Will I regret this? If it doesn't go my way? Will I regret this later? I've recently started reading Michael singer's book the surrender experiment, because I was getting to this point where I'm like, I just kind of want to be a hermit. You know? I feel like Thoreau running off to Walden woods, like I just, I'm so tired of life interfering with me. And I realized that's not going to stop. I really can't be a turtle inside a turtle shell. I can't make myself a hermit because, like it or not, I have to have interactions with other people. I'm not saying all the time, 24 hours a day, with no solitude. Any introvert or HSP would go crazy without some amount of solitude, but you can't escape humanity. You're not going to be able to sit in a box. You're going to have to interact with the world, get out of the house, go and do things, have experiences. That's also, you know, tying it back in, actually, with what Julia Cameron talks about refilling the well as an artist or a creative that's part of how you do that is your interactions, listening to conversations, getting out in nature, walking around, doing things, seeing and being seen. And I thought this is a good time for me to read the surrender experiment, because it feels like that's exactly what I need to do, is surrender. David bear talks about this on his podcast. Sometimes we get ourselves so upset because we feel like life should be different than what it is. And he gave an example on one of his episodes about a man that he was coaching that got really aggravated with his teenage kids because they'd rather play video games than cleaning the house. And David is like, that's what teenagers do, like getting yourself all in a tizzy and having high blood pressure over your kids preferring video games over house cleaning chores? Yeah, you're kind of playing yourself there, dude. You need to shift your energy and show up differently because you're just getting yourself mad over a losing battle. I've been feeling that way more and more in my own life like, well, you might be a little bit like King Canute fighting the waves. You might be like Don Quixote trying to fight the windmills. You probably just need to put the sword down and quit fighting. And even in this situation where influencers influenced somebody to be really not cool, really supremely not cool towards me and the project that we were working on, I have a greater sense of trust that things will work out clearly it wasn't meant to be with that person. If it was meant to be, it would have happened. So it's time to just move on, find somebody else, not only with what I want to accomplish for the project, but also with a better moral compass, what I would call a better internal code of ethics, who just, they just don't behave that way. It's not in their nature. And then move on. Move on down the road and saying, You know what? Somehow, I don't necessarily have to know how, but I do know, I have faith that the project will come out even better on the other side of this, and I'll look back on it down the road and say, I was glad that we had this hiccup, because it actually made things better. I learned some important lessons, and the project was made better. That's what really counts. In the long run, you're going to have dust ups, you're going to have problems in any kind of business, in any kind of career, wishing for a life where you literally never have a problem to solve is, I would say, highly, highly unrealistic. How many lives do you know that literally. Have no problems, no pain, no issues ever. I'm guessing the number is zero. In the meantime, stay safe, stay sane, and just use good judgment. Use good common sense. Use some rationality in who you're listening to and for what reason, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.