I recently had a great opportunity…or so I thought.
At the end of 2013 I went out searching for BIG Vendor Shows. I mean Big, HUGE shows, like 50-200 vendors or more. You know the kinds of shows that they call EXPO’s??! Yeah, those ones!
Well, I was sending out requests and marking my Google calendar as pending for all the shows and then I say this one show late in the year. I sent the info and the lady got right back to me. We agreed on a price and then I invited my friends.As soon as she saw all the connections I had, she then offered me a barter agreement for my $450 booth which I thought “Hey great!” Right? (Hmm more on that…)
So for about 2 and half weeks I tried to help this person. I added a cover photo to her page, I added the event on FB, I emailed over 187 people to get more traffic and connections to her expo, I did more and more and the longer it went on, I started feeling VERY taken advantage of.
She wanted me to make business cards, and promotional material, and documents, etc. To be her graphic designer. To do a lot of work but I was getting no credit for it.
But then where it mattered she didn’t have my name on anything so how was I to get sale if my name was never a contact? The places I did NOT want my name, she had all over the place!
On top of it, as the time went on I felt like my business practices and hers did not align. She was posting crazy kittens and stories about Elvis. That is so unprofessional and the more and more it went on the less and less I felt safe working with her. I did not want people to associate the craziness of this person and her business practices as mine because they were not in any way, shape or form.
I was updating Facebook, Twitter, I was contacting people left and right, I was doing branding and marketing for her and going out of my way. All for a $450 booth. It was starting to feel very unworth it.
I told her how much worth she had acquired and then all hell broke loose. Some people don’t understand you can’t just use people over and over like that. People who barter for business generally have a value. The value we had placed was for $450 worth of work. I let her know I was tracking my time and that I had already racked up about $250 value of work towards the work given.
Then she got all crazy and freaked out stating I sent her a bill, which is did not, and was very rude to me about the system I had to calculate how much I had earned towards this goal. then she tells me she was giving me a sponsorship for $1200 which I was NEVER told I would be given.
Honestly, I think once I told her I was out, I feel like she started scrambling to keep me. She realized that she does NOT have the connections she thought here and being a transplant back from Oregon wasn’t going to cut it. She did not know the market like I and others did and she bit off more than she could chew.
She tried spouting about how she paid me for sales, but I earned those deposits and then she threw mea bone of an extra $25. I had earned a lot more than that and that is where I drew the line.
I would NOT be taken advantage of.
To top of her spinning comments back and forth to me, she then made the HUGE mistake of sending a text to someone she thought was someone else, but in her craze she sent a text about me, TO ME!! HA!
I had to inform her she did and that I did not appreciate the gossip or negative words she was saying to the person she was meaning to text. That just made things worse.
What did I come out of all this with?
- Don’t do businesses with people you don’t know
- Get to know them.
- Find out about them.
- Get to know how they handle their business
- Lay down CLEAR expectations of any people you DO choose to partner with
- Sign forms
- Do NOT do things on verbal agreements
- Be professional
- Be firm
- Be careful
Hope that helps you all out!
(Sorry this is late on Thursday not Tuesday. I will have another fun one for you then! Stay tuned!)
Xoxo Trisha Trixie
TrishaTrixie™ Sprinkler of Fabulousness 