My first job as an “assistant” was helping a colleague of my former high school teacher. He was a man in his fifties, recently kicked out of his desk job trying to start a company that teaches business administration courses. He styled himself as a “tech and business guru” despite not knowing much about either as far as I could tell. He didn’t even know how to use Office.
I was still wet behind the ears, so I put up with a lot of things that I shouldn’t have. Years later I would come to realize he was the worst client I’ve ever had.
Client: Can you enter all the data of my courses from in this Teachable account?
Huge red flag. All of the more than 150 “courses” were articles stolen from other sources. I refused, but he still got someone to do it for him. Another time he asked me to design all his course .ppt files.
Client: Everything you need is in the files.
It was fifty .pptx of about a hundred slides per file. Most of them just were blank slides with huge Calibri text boxes with “ADD PHOTOS FROM THIS SITE” or “DESIGN GRAPH FROM THIS WORD FILE.”
He never replied to my e-mails when I wanted to ask for more details about the design but when he needed some extra revisions he would write multiple e-mails with “hey buddy” until I called him.
Client: I love your design, but could you add more of “your magic” to it
Me: What kind of changes are you referring specifically to? What did not meet your expectations?
Client: I leave it to you to decide, you are the expert.
His “academy” flopped after a year. Turns out, he didn’t bother to prepare a marketing plan. Some expert.
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