Here I am, I want to make things right - RE: Shitlist BST sales disputes

p0ck3taces

p0ck3taces

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Nov 3, 2009
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As seen in the shitlist etc. I haven’t been providing my side of the bargain the past little while for some customers. I’m not coming here with an ego or trying to prove “my side”, I’m in the wrong and I’m trying to find a solution.

This is probably too much information and no one really cares, but I just feel I need to write out the details of the situation so the situation is at least understood. Not that it justifies it at all, I’m still in the wrong, but just so the details are known. Here’s the situation, three months ago I was invited to compete in a high level tournament in a sport that I’m heavily involved in. It was being put on by my coach and was being packaged as a pilot for TV networks which is somewhat of a first for our sport (BJJ). Anyways I took this opportunity very seriously and over the past few months I have been late on orders, less responsive and really just let the business slide. I have no excuse for this, I either shouldn’t have taken the orders or followed through. Up until a month ago orders were just late, I still provided refunds when customers asked, I just was much less responsive and took longer on turnarounds.

A month ago I was just a week away from the tournament, I then became completely unresponsive in this final week. I competed pretty well, and got caught up in the afterglow, stayed unresponsive. Then in practice a few days after the tournament I broke my arm in practice. I had to fly home and schedule surgery on it. By the time I got online after surgery many of my customers had put in paypal disputes, understandably so, and my account was beyond negative. This plus all the costs for the surgeries has left me in a big hole. I never meant for it to get to this point. The unresponsiveness after breaking my arm really sent things over the edge to this hole I’m in now.

The past few weeks I have been trying to get together the money to pay customers back and provide the orders to customers still interested in having their orders delivered. I’ve managed to provide some orders and some refunds here and there any chance I get. But now I’m at a point where I just am stuck. Too many customers have put in disputes. I am too far in the hole and things have halted. I don’t have the money to market the service or pay my team to do the work even if I got more orders. At this point everything has come to a halt and with a negative paypal balance I have no way of getting out of the hole. I don’t have any equity, a car I could sell or anything. Though I’ve made decent money online at times, I’ve never been much for material accumulation, I’ve always lived minimally. I like the mobility of living out of a suitcase. I’ve moved back to my parents house while trying to fix this.

The last thing I want to do is walk away and not pay my team or refund the customers who haven’t been delivered.

So this is where I’ve gotten to and I feel my only option here is to come forward, lay the cards on the table and hopefully find a way I can work things out.

Continued with my offer for resolution....
 
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This is my idea for how I could possibly offer value at this point and earn my way out of this hole.

What I do have of value is my team. After being unresponsive and not providing refunds I can’t just come in here and ask for orders so I can make the money to pay this off. So instead, this is the option I believe I have that I think would provide a lot of value without people being on the line for me to deliver. I am willing to sell the contacts to my team. I didn’t want to, as it will pretty much cut me out of the business, but I feel at this point it’s the only option I have left.

It will provide my team with continuing work, which they’ve beyond earned and the money will be used to settle debts with customers.

Details on the team for those that are interested: (A ton more info can be provided to interested people, this is just a quick look):

I have been providing infographics on this and other forums as well as my website (down right now because my hosting fee bounced) for the past two years. For the past two years this is the only team I have used. I have trained them up from nothing (by nothing I mean they had no clue about what infographics were, they have always had a pool of talented designers). So they have been being trained for awhile now and really have come a long way. We are putting out pretty high quality work now and at unheard of dirt cheap costs for this market. My design manager, the guy you would be buying contacts to, handles everything on the design side. He has offices in India and runs the team himself on site. He is the best team manager I have ever ran into and I’ve done a ton of middle man service selling before. He has access to the talent pools he needs to scale to whatever your needs end up being. We have created over 600 infographics for customers the past two years. Selling them at $97 to up to $800 (higher end sales have come through my site when ranking for infographic terms). The average market price for an infographic is 2k. That’s just the design, often times with the client providing the content (90% of my higher end sales clients wanted to provide their own content). No distribution, just design.

The people this will most benefit are people who buy a high number of infographics/content for their own sites/clients and would like to cut their costs. And B people who sell related services and can benefit from marketing this service to their customers. Especially if you are a content marketing service, web dev service or other related business. This is a really hot market right now and there is both a lot of money on the design side as well as a lot of money after the sale in marketing outreach to the client. It’s also valuable to someone who doesn’t have a client base, but is good at SEO and willing to get into the service business. As I said, customers finding infographic sites through search engines etc. are used to paying market rates of 2k+ per infographic. Content marketing and outreach services are where marketing and seo is headed and infographics are one of the best tools for it.

I will be giving every detail of my business to buyers. How I manage orders, marketing, my current outreach program etc. I will be on hand for any questions you have after the order. I have a pretty slick process that allows my team to handle most of the work hands off.

I think there is a lot of value here. This is a hot market and you’re not going to get a better contact than this team who has had two years of training poured in and over 600 infographics created. Up until this point he has never marketed the infographic service, I have had exclusive rights to selling the service. So you can’t find him. Obviously you could find a million and two design firms in India, but none will be this well trained on infographic design, putting out this high of quality work at these prices, able to scale without problem and an extremely responsive reliable team manager. All problems in turnarounds have come from me and never my teams ability.

Hopefully this is something of interest to some members here and this will be a possible resolution.

I would ask $500 per sale. This is for the contacts, all my biz info and being on hand for questions afterward at any point. At two years of training and 600 infographics, this will be pretty turnkey for you. I would sell this just enough times to pay off the customer debt and my team. This is less than the price I have sold single infographics for. I believe I’m keeping the price very attractive and high value while also not giving it away for nothing. Realistically it pretty much is nothing for what I’ve built and the value you could pull out of it, but it’s my own fault and the only offer I can see that I can make to pay people back. I will show past infographic work (ones clients have already ok’d to be shown as examples) and more info to those who PM me interested in this (assuming this is even ok that I make this offer here).

MODS
I understand I just solicited on this shoot the shit thread. I would pay the price to open this in the BST section if I could. The first $130 I get overtop the negative dispute balance will go to paying the forum it’s cost for marketing. Hopefully that and this situation makes this ok and transparent that I’m not just trying to get around paying the forum money. Second, I get it, I have the reputation of a scammer as of late and then I come in here asking for more money.. I don’t know how to get around that, all I can say is I have provided infographics here for the last two years with many happy customers. I’m in the wrong and am just trying to come up with a way to make things right while not asking for a handout. This is the only option that has come to mind.
 
Ban for selling outside the BST.

Being broke isn't an excuse to break the rules and to advertise your "TURNKEY BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY" outside the bst, sob story or no.

Were you competing in the jungles of Brazil where there's no Internet access?

TLDR Op was selfish, unprofessional, and definitely wouldn't come crawling back if he didn't break his arm.
 
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tl;dr

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L1UbaWi1UM]WTF! Kid Jumps In Water And Breaks Ankle (WARNING: Graphic) - YouTube[/ame]
 
A great place to start here is simply to finish the orders that you already have. AKA mine. I haven't put in any disputes or anything, I simply want the finished products as ordered.

Edit: Hey mods if you are going to ban him please wait until he gets this shit sorted out a little more with the customers first. With a cherry on top. kthanks
 
evolutionvision said:
A great place to start here is simply to finish the orders that you already have. AKA mine. I haven't put in any disputes or anything, I simply want the finished products as ordered.

Edit: Hey mods if you are going to ban him please wait until he gets this shit sorted out a little more with the customers first. With a cherry on top. kthanks
Click to expand...

Ugh...I'm in the same boat.
 
So you are going to sell your team contacts to multiple people at $500 a pop? And then what? They are all supposed to use your turnkey business at the same time?

Are you a total fucktard? Wait, never mind!
 
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82057-thats-a-bold-strategy-cotton-g-0hV3.gif
 
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You finished my infographic, but never delivered on the distribution part of it. I don't care too much about the $50, but what really sucks is that I recommended your service to a few ppl back when you were still delivering. Hopefully they didn't take me up on it.

As others have pointed out, your turnkey business opportunity doesn't make any sense if you're just offering it up to anyone. I understand why you can't do the infographics yourself, but why wasn't the offer to out and hustle, get some authority placements for your existing clients, and only get paid upon delivery? That was the plan originally right?
 
You're expecting multiple people to buy the access to your failing business.... so they can all compete against each other for your former employees? That isn't worth $5 let alone $500. If you're serious about this, you need to find ONE good person, and work out a mutually beneficial transition, where they pay you a percentage or future lump sum in return for you giving them exclusive access to your team along with consulting services, advice and referrals to get them started.

Also, if your team is so good and you want them to do well, why are you charging a fee to act as a barrier to them finding new work. Seriously that's probably the shittiest thing you're doing here, especially if you're behind on paying them. The few times I've had a good employee who's gone above and beyond for me but I no longer have work for them, I've gone and given them referrals to all my colleagues simply because I want to look out for the contractor's best interest.
 
Even though I haven't ordered lately, I had ordered many times from Pocket Aces.

I think the issue here is two folded - communication and management.

Once you found out about your opportunity, (or anything else for that matter) you should communicate with your clients. You could send a mass email out to them explaining what's coming up and delays that are expected.

Management is also key. Once you found out that you would be gone, life still has to go on. You should have hired a friend or found someone else to manage the service for you. You should have let the clients know that someone else is taking over so that they could possibly expect lower quality (to be fixed when you return or when you have time). That way they still get their orders semi-on time and you can keep your business running.

I've been in the same situation as you have. Had something come up that took most of my time and made me lazy when it comes to other business. But the keyword is lazy. If you plan ahead, that won't be an issue.

Again, it's not my place to speak because i'm not you and i'm not your clients waiting, but the way you put this out is more of an excuse instead of a solution. You really didn't have to put it publicly, you should have contacted each client with the most issues and fix them. Now everyone knows that you're prone to go through tough times and not deliver...not good for business.

Good luck
 
:party-smiley-004:In before galacon comes in here to shit on and neg rep you to make himself feel more like a man since he lost half his balls. :party-smiley-004:

too much?
 
Pheasant said:
definitely wouldn't come crawling back if he didn't break his arm.
Click to expand...

I think this is the glaring elephant in the room. If you hadn't broken your arm, your customers would still not be able to reach you till this day. Now that your Blow Job Janitorial tournament opportunity to be on TV has faded in the wind, you've come to the reality that you've dug yourself a hole.

What really perplexes me is your customers still don't have their money back nor the service provided. And you then propose to take MORE MONEY from your customers in order to get out of the hole, in some scheme that is clearly setup to fail. The real question is, what would have happened if you did not break your arm? Would your customers still be waiting in the wind? Another question, what did you do with all the money? You would have had to be spending it, if your Paypal is negative, cause if you just left the money in the account, all would be fine with the disputes. So you were spending money that you hadn't earned on what?

As some one mentioned, selling your contacts, if done successfully on your part, would leave the outsourcing team overworked, and will most likely not be able to even deliver anything on time with the new 10 bosses they have to deal with. If you sold your contacts un-successfully, would you even have enough money to pay back your customers first? Anyone with a rational brain is going to assume you'll use that money to pay your medical bills first and THEN "maybe" you pay back some of the first wave customers, but you still have created an even worse scenario for this new class of customers.

This is the point where the ponzi scheme/scammer usually doubles down on stupidity. Clearly with this scenario you are ONCE AGAIN thinking of only yourself, your medical bills first then 'maybe' the first wave of customers, while creating a whole new set of bad press waiting for you down the road.

Doubling down, while kicking the can down the road... you're not fooling anyone.
 
Dude, I've bought from you. You are smart enough to get good work done.

So why are you burning your bridges like this?

Seriously, you are selling the contact info of people who worked for you and whom you owe money to? Do you not see how that is a low thing to do?

And you expect people to pay you $500 for a designer's contact info? Seriously? And on non-exclusive terms? For realz?

I mean, you could always, you know, get a job and pay the people you owe money to and complete your work? It sounds better than, what seems to be from the outside, a pretty sleaze ball last ditch attempt at making money online.

I've liked you, please don't go and commit reputational suicide; explain that this post was made while drunk and apologize fast before someone jumps on this opportunity to make you look like shit, not that you seem to need much help with that now.

I've seen ups and downs, we all have, but this is not a way to handle it.
 
1) You're only back because you need the money to fill the void in your Paypal account before Paypal fills your void with their cock. This also means you've already spent the money from the buyers that you didn't deliver to. Potato 101, class is in session. And you can't exactly flip burgers and drop fries with a broken arm. So here we are.

2) Even more important, would you care to explain why you disappeared from October until February? Because this is not the first time you've done this.

I repeat:

This is not the first time you've done this.
 
I'd like to share a few things I learned from:

  • being broke
  • running BST's
  • business in general

1. Live on less than you earn. If you had done this, giving refunds back would have been easy and so would have a lot of other things that went wrong in this thread.

2. Always use a % of your business income as a "refund pool". I expect about 10-15% refunds. Do I get that high of returns? NO, NOT EVER EVER HAVE I. However, I plan to always keep 10-15% in a separate account for refunds though. If no one ends up needing one after X time period, that's free money for me.

3. If a new opportunity comes up and what your doing now hampers it, cut your losses and either give out refunds, hire someone to take over for you and plan to break even or even slightly lose profit ( in order to save your rep ), or let the customers know what's up and see who is willing to wait.

4. Don't live paycheck to paycheck ( or BST to BST ). When I get income, i don't immediately spend it. I try to live off income generated from 2-6 months ago b/c you never know what is going to fuck you over. Having that buffer or cushion has helped a few times.

5. If your BST is closed, pay $122 and open a new one all about what is going on instead of leaving people high and dry for months.

6. Stop blaming other events in your life for the mess. Even when I was doing 5 projects/clients at once, I would still stay up until 3AM to get shit done for clients.. and then have to wake back up at 5AM ( 2 hours later ) to get shit started for the next day.
 
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