I got scammed. EP #339 - Den Lennie

G', day, guys. Today I want to talk about the fact that I got scammed and what the marketing lesson was in that process. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transform, transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

So here's the backstory and I'm sharing this and I'm. It's a bit embarrassing and I felt a bit violated, but there's context and I think an important lesson on two fronts. So it's turned a bit cold here in Queensland and where we live, we live in a valley and it's on the western side of the hill. So it takes a while for the sun to come up in the morning and it's gotten pretty chilly by Queensland standards, like 8, 9 degrees in the morning. But our house has no central heating, no air conditioning. It's. It's a wooden house on stilts and so it gets pretty cold. We have a wood burning fire. And the other day my wife said then your job today is to sort out firewood. We'd run out. So first lesson is in speed. When you do anything quickly, things can go wrong. And so in the spirit of complete honesty and not trying to bullshit you, I went onto Facebook marketpl saw a bunch of different offers where they'd come and deliver a ton of firewood.

I responded to an ad, it's called Jack's Firewood and delivery. And the messages were just so, like.

Amazing. Like there's an amazing marketing lesson in this, right? So.

I'll read it to you because it's like, hi, Den, please let us know how we can help you. And I said, how much this cost? And then he responded, hello, thanks for reaching out to us. We do have quality hardwood ready for barn. We offer both delivery and stacking for free. We sell in cubic meters and tons in which 1 cubic meter costs $150 and 1 ton is $350. What's your location and what quantity of wood do you need? I went, hey, mate, I'm based in where I'm based. Let's get a ton of. He responded or they responded, yes, that's within our delivery range. And we do delivery in cubes and tons, which is 150 and 350. I should have picked it up at that point. There was a repeat message, but all I was hearing was they could deliver it today. My feet Are cold and my wife's going to kill me if I don't get firewood today. And had a busy day. They then responded with a new message. We have Jarrah red gum and ironbark with low moisture content of less than 15% which gives a hot and slow burn with fine ashes. I said, nice. Do you take card? And then they said, we do receive payments via bank transfer. How soon do you want it delivered? So the really interesting thing here is they responded to my question and then immediately bait and switched me into a back to what you wanted. And I said, as soon as you can, mate. We ran out last night. We don't want to keep buying small bags. Okay, perfect. We do provide delivery once payment is made and confirmed by a cashier. That's if you make your payment now. We can get your order registered and scheduled for delays. Deliveries by 1:30. New message. Is that okay, question mark? And I'm like, yes, great. Ping me the bank details. I can do that straight away. Getting on a call now. Send it now. I can pay.

Give them instructions for where it was, the access road.

And now you could just stack under the house. We've got two minutes clearance. And they let you. Okay. And then they gave the name. This person's name is Robin Underdown. And bank details. It says, here's our bank details. Do proceed with payment. Let us know when it's done. So I make the bank transfer, send them a screenshot, and then I ask if you have an email, I can forward the payment receipt. And then he said, checking. And it just said waiting for a cashier to confirm your payment. What type of wood mixture should we deliver? And I said iron bar would be nice. Thumbs up. So what's really interesting about this is like I'm a business owner and think I'm pretty smart, like, and pretty astute. But I'm oftentimes making a lot of transactions in a day to do with all sorts of things with running the business, paying people, paying commissions, you know, you name it, what the whole sorts. So what went wrong here was I was in a rush and my feet were cold. And what's really interesting about the business lesson here is great. Copywriters say that all you want in any business with any offer is a starving crowd. So, you know, in context of that, with video production, there are a lot of options in the marketplace. You just need to google video production in your town and see 10 or 15 options for you. So as a customer, how do they know what's good and what's not? And the fact is they don't, because most websites look the same. But if they have an event that's on tomorrow.

And they're decided last minute to get a crew to film it, then their need is immediate and the person that responds the fastest is likely to get the job. That I think is what's interesting about this.

Scam that I've been part of. After the thumbs up, they said, oh, great. And oops, I forgot to mention you could get an extra ton for just $200 extra instead of paying 350. That's a discount when you buy more from us. Please let us know if you're interested. We can upgrade your order. So they came back with an upsell.

I'd already purchased. And I'm thinking, well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna need the firewood. I could have another ton. I'm gonna need that. At some point. I could save myself some money. So they were very, very clever, very sophisticated. Made it very conversational, made it feel very, like, real.

I said, I'll come back to you in 90 minutes. Gotta hit some work. They went, great. Then after I'd done my call.

They came back with a message and I started to get suspicious. Sir, please can you get back to us? And I'm like, no one in Queensland says sir. So there was an immediate.

Flag. And I was like, oh, bugger, I've gone and transferred that money. What an idiot. And then so at 10, 9, 50, sir, please can you get back to us at 10 13. They wrote, are you there at 10 30? I said, yes back. Now let's add the second ton for 200. Okay, great. Then I was like, huh? Hang on a second. Where are they based? So I just said, where are you based? They said, we're based in traveston. Next message is the two order still iron bark. So they've used this mechanism whereby they answer your question that you had, but then immediately ask you another question that has you sort of move forward from going, oh, well, the answer to my question, traveston. I looked traverston up. It's like 40 kilometers away. I'm like, well, that makes sense. That sort of thing, you know, it all made sense within the location of where I was.

Is the two orders still ironbark? And I said, can you flick me an email receipt First I started to get suspicious.

And I said, also, do you have a number? They then sent a phone number. It said, you can contact us on WhatsApp. Is the second order still iron bark? So they've come back to Try to hook me back in. And I said, we'll just stick with the one ton just now. Thanks. They'd gone, okay. Then I said, do you have a website? I have a friend who might need some wood too. So I was kind of playing them here a bit. It said, this is just a small family business and we are local. I was like, ah, okay. I said, can we come and collect in future? They said, sounds great. Then I said, could you email me a receipt please? What's your address? Nothing.

Then I.

Realized I think I'd been scammed. And I looked up this particular name and right enough, couldn't find a Facebook page. And the one review that was out there said, this is a scam. So at that point I realized I'd been scammed out of $350. Now $350 is $350, right? So I said at 11:39, what time will it be delivered? They came back 1:30pm Now I'd by this time spoken to my bank. They'd said, look, it's in pending and once it goes to fulfilled, you can report it. So I'd obviously reported the bank. I've got this woman's bank details, I've got her name, she's not showing up anywhere. It could be a completely fraudulent thing. But at 1:30pm Then obviously no delivery. And then 8:17 this morning I said, so no delivery yesterday. And guess what? No response. So there's a couple of things here. One is.

I should pay attention to my own advice, which is slow down. But I'm human and my feet were cold. It was like a starving crowd, right? I was hungry, my feet were cold, we'd run out of firewood and it was a cold day and I had a lot of things to do that day. So I thought I'll just get this done now. And I realized there and then that the speed at which I did that caused the problem. That that's what caused the problem. I was also. It's a very sophisticated scam because it was very conversational. And I think the things they did very well was they'd. They'd answer my question and then ask another question. And so there was just this sense of keeping the conversation going. Very sophisticated scam. Whether or not I'll see the money back, I doubt it. I'm not attached to it. I think there's a point at which you've got to just learn a lesson. But you know, the deeper part of this was me thinking and talking to my wife about this. And I said, what has to be going on in someone's life where they're literally going to scam people on Facebook for a few hundred dollars? Like, I just hope that that money is going to feed her kids.

Because it's a pretty, it's a pretty tragic way to run your life. And you know, it's, it's, you know, they say crime doesn't pay. This, this will get shut down. And I've reported to Facebook that the page is gone, the ads gone.

You know, but they'll just start it up again under guys. But you know, at least I can go into my community now and say, look guys, I got scam doing this. We can shut it down through community. And I suppose that's the lesson is, is something bad happened. But it's not like really bad. It was unfortunate. It's my fault. Take full ownership. I probably should have gone slowly. I probably should have done more due diligence, but you know, I didn't. And so I wanted to share that with you because I think vulnerability and honesty is important in a world where there's a lot of scam artists. And I, you know, I had a call yesterday with a guy who's just joined our program and he'd worked with a. Another coach who had been running a lot of ads.

And he didn't deliver. You know, he charged this guy 10 grand and he just didn't deliver. And when he had a question, it was like, oh, what's the training? And that's not how we operate. And so I think, you know, there are people who will always look for a quick buck.

And there's those who are more invested in a longer growth journey. And we've just come off our free call in the scale your. Sorry. Accelerate your video business group on school.

We've just renamed that video business accelerator actually. So if you go to school.com and search video business accelerator you can find that or go to our website and if you've not joined that group yet, we're just, we just cracked the 300 member mark. It is a free community where we support, we have a weekly call. There's some training in there. If you're looking to try and get through some procrastination. If you're looking for some tips on how to get more clients, if you're just looking for a bit of support on how to grow your business, that's what it exists for. But as I said to the guys this morning, you know, this is part of our marketing strategy. We are offering a free community and free Calls for you to come and see if you like us and you want to get to know us. And a number of people now have decided they want to go deeper and join one of our paid programs. But that's not a prerequisite for being in this group. This is a genuine space where people can be honest and vulnerable and share what's going on. And one of our members, Adam, just said, you know, he's in a lot of Facebook groups and a lot of Facebook groups with a lot of freelancers and a lot of videographers. And he said there's just this kind of sense of.

Sadness or a sense of, like, desperation or a sense of, like, negativity in some of these groups where, oh, there's no work, there's nothing going on. It's really hard out there. And if you're a freelancer right now, it will be hard because you're relying on someone else to hire you. But everyone I'm working with who runs a business, it's still hard. But they're in control. They're in control of how much effort they put into going and finding clients. They are in control of how many messages they send on LinkedIn. They're in control of how many outreach connections they have and how many people they follow up with. They're in control of all of that. And if you want to scale your business, and when I say scale, I mean grow and be in control of your business and not be at the mercy of someone else. This is a great place to start. It is completely free for the time being. It's a place where you can share, learn, collaborate, and grow your video business. And I want to encourage you to come and join this program. It's completely free. Go to my website@denleny.com, send me a message, I'll send you an invite. Or go to videobusinessaccelerator.com and click on that Join Free group. I'd love to see you in there. Please mention that you had this on the podcast. This is, I think, episode 330 something of the podcast. We've been doing this for a long time. We. We hope to be here in another 20 or 30 years. So my goal is always to play the long game and build lifelong relationships, demonstrate that we are trustworthy, demonstrate that we actually help people get results and, you know, we're human as well. I got scammed on some firewood. Big deal. I'm able to create a podcast episode about that. I'll create some videos about it. I'll turn that into an opportunity. And I think if nothing else, the fact that I can just say, hey, I got scammed. Maybe. Maybe makes you feel better about what's going on in your life. Because I'm not perfect and I'm not superhuman. I still am susceptible to these things like anyone else might be. So yeah, I just thought I'd share that story with you, and I felt like a bit of an idiot yesterday. Today I feel quite empowered because my life is not dependent on whether or not that person scams me or not. I'm not going to let it get me down. So yeah, thanks for listening guys, and I'll see you next week.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast with your host, Den Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessacacator.com to learn more about how the Accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes, and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.