Imagine being your own bubbly self and getting so much hate from someone who projected their insecurities on you. This is what happened to the author and creator of Confused Girl in the City, Giovanna Silvestre.

At 25, fresh out of college, Giovanna had the opportunity to become the second assistant to a big-time director of a big-time movie at a big-time studio. As someone fresh in the industry, she assumed she worked directly under the director. Anyhow, that was cleared up as the first assistant clearly hated her guts and gave her a lot of random tasks which backfired.

When Giovanna was asked to help the director’s wife in arranging his birthday, she formed a deep relationship with the wife and immediately became everybody’s favorite—she even ended up dating their friend! The first assistant was so pissed and thought to sabotage everything by making up stories about her and eventually firing her.

There’s so much more to learn, so listen in and join the adventure!

Morgan Friedman

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There’s something quite profound about doing honest work for 23 years and losing it to an uncontrollable housing bust. Today, we are pleased to speak with Matthew (Matt) Stafford, CEO of Build Grow Scale, who is tasked to share his client's horror story for our 59th episode.

Straight out of college, Matt established a brick-and-mortar commercial concrete business which exponentially grew over the years. They’ve managed to build many Lowe’s, Costcos, and other buildings for big-name companies all over the country, traveling 200 days per year to complete every order and work on every demand for their capabilities.

Between 2007 and 2010, America was faced with a multinational financial mortgage crisis, which led to a severe economic recession, with millions losing their jobs and many businesses going bankrupt. Sadly, in 2009, what once was a bustling business turned into a blazing horror show for Matt. Large contractors came into big developments, and Matt and his company were never paid for their work. To top it all off, they got sued by their subcontractor who did their curb work.

Things immediately started to pile up, and despite a long 10-year battle of settling all of their accounts, Matt ended up losing half a million dollars as well as his love for the job. Horror upon horror, this story is going to teach you a lot of lessons, so tune in and get ready for an episode full of knowledge and guidance.

Morgan Friedman

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Are you ready for another client horror story? Today might just be your lucky day! We’re going into an in-depth and hair-raising conversation with Matthew Fornaro, a respected business lawyer.

Over four years ago, Matthew made a decision to take on a real estate litigation with a family consisting of two elders and a daughter who had authoritarian control over her parents. They rented a home in a beautiful gated community in Naples, Florida, and made a deal with the neighbor across the street. What was the deal? Well, they asked him to take over his house, perform the upkeep, and eventually purchase the home for a lower market value upon the end of their lease term on their house across the street. First red flag? There wasn’t any written contract but a term sheet which contained under 20 words scribbled all over the page.

The homeowner’s son visited him and learned about the deal and was obviously unhappy about it. There was a lot of hullabaloo and in the end, the renting family went to a title agent and got all the work done to get ready for the sale and said the homeowner agreed to it. The son then steps in and everyone sues everybody.

Fast forward, everyone is now in court, where a jury trial was demanded by the daughter. They came to an agreement and settled on a good deal, but little did everyone know that the roller coaster was about to happen.  

If you’d like to know how the story ended, watch the episode now! Trust me, you won’t regret it!

Morgan Friedman

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In today’s episode with Mickie Kennedy, President of eReleases, we will hear about a harrowing client horror story that happened when he was just 4 meager years into his business.

Mickie has a press release distribution business he has been running for more than 25 years now. At such an early start, he was approached by a client from a music conservatory for a press release. After negotiations and a lot of discussion, the project was initiated. Eventually, he received a check from FedEx for the client’s payment. He cashed it in and was then informed by the bank that the checks were—surprise, surprise—fakes!

He then went to file a report to the police, who only told him they weren’t going to do much to help since the amount was only less than a thousand dollars. Mickie was advised to take the matter to small claims court. His client was also informed and got a bit scared and asked him if he could pay via credit card. He trusted his client and 2 months later, he received a charge-back on his account.

What a roller coaster! The PR world is full of these stories, so dive right into the episode to learn more about it.

Morgan Friedman

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In the latest episode of Client Horror Stories, David Bates, an Executive Coach at Paravelle, LLC, shares a harrowing experience from his days as a consultant. David recalls being assigned to check on a major pharmaceutical project in town, a task given to him simply because he was the only team member residing in the area. What seemed like a routine check quickly spiraled into a nightmare.

Upon arriving at the training session, David faced an unexpected crisis. The project sponsor abruptly canceled the training during the first break, declaring the content unnecessary. Determined to salvage the situation, David tried to work things out with a particular team member. However, the situation deteriorated further when the big pharma stakeholders invited him to lunch. What started as a seemingly cordial meeting turned into a coordinated attack, with the stakeholders confronting him about the project's shortcomings and ultimate failure.

David's story is a gripping reminder of the unpredictable challenges consultants can face, even in seemingly straightforward situations.

If you'd like to hear more about how David navigated this complex situation and the lessons he learned, be sure to check out the full episode of Client Horror Stories.

Morgan Friedman

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In this episode, we are joined by John C. Morley, Serial Entrepreneur Engineer, Marketing Specialist, Talk Show Host, and First Responder, for our exciting new episode of Client Horror Stories. John doesn’t only talk about a single client horror story, but three! However, we’re here to give you a quick look into the conversation.

We’re going to start with John’s two-decade-long client who decided to let him go after telling him that John was just squeezing him out for money. After so much back and forth, their relationship ended and the lawyer hired a different person. What sucked is that the new hire pretended to be John while calling a firewall manufacturer just to get through.

If you think that’s a nut case, wait until you hear the rest of what John has to say. Today’s episode is not just a recall; it’s an episode filled with new learnings and realizations to give you a new perspective on how things should be handled.

Morgan Friedman

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In today’s episode of Client Horror Stories, we welcome Mark Michael, CEO and co-Founder of DevHub. While Michael has had a lot of ups and downs in the customer side of things, one experience always stands out.

We all know the NFL, and luckily enough, Mark was given an opportunity to work with a high-profile player. The idea was to create a custom CRM built for all NFL players to make their daily lives manageable. All went well until the client refused to provide a card on file to pay for subscriptions and hostings, and it all stretched out until he wouldn’t even pay for anything else despite 50% of the work being finished.

Just like everyone else, Mark reached his tipping point and put the client in his right place. If you want to know what happens next, check out this episode!

Morgan Friedman

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Have you ever been yelled at by a client before or threatened to be sued? Today, we are joined by the Founder & CEO of Blue Goat Cyber, Christian Espinosa, to share more about his client horror story with a healthcare facility in Louisiana.

Christian is an expert in ethical hacking and wishes only to expose company vulnerabilities in order to find avenues for improvement, but when they infected most of the hospital with the secret file they planted, the CEO went nuts. It even went as far as a security guard pulling a gun on one of Christian’s employees!

Dive into this episode to learn more about the story and open your mind to new business tactics and strategies.
Morgan Friedman

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Have you ever committed a white lie to save yourself? Well, Jason Roberts’ client horror story revolves around that, but they took lying to a whole new different level.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Jason Roberts, Peak Performance Coach and 9-Figure Entrepreneur, who will be sharing his worst nightmare to date. During his early entrepreneur years, he owned a mortgage company and one day came face to face with a paraplegic client looking to apply for a construction loan. He was a nice guy, and Jason felt there was nothing to worry about, so he went ahead and helped the client to make a difference.

A month after the client moved into his new home, he unfortunately passes and the outstanding loan is left to rot, with no one willing to take responsibility for it. Jason had no idea about this. He thought all was well and good and paid no mind when a family member called to ask if there were options to cancel the loan. To his surprise, a week later the County Sheriff showed up to his office and he got served with a lawsuit for alleged fraud, stating that the borrower was taken advantage of during the whole process as he was mentally incapacitated.

Lies upon lies were put on top of the other just so the family could get millions out of him, but Jason refused to lose. Six months in, he had an epiphany that turned the tables around.

Wanna know what happened? Oh, I’m not at liberty to break the excitement. Watch the whole episode to know how Jason outmaneuvered the real fraudsters and learn a key point or two to avoid these problems in the future!

Morgan Friedman

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Setbacks are pretty normal, but have you ever experienced losing so much money just because someone didn’t want their work checked? Oops! I didn’t mean to give too much away, but we’re here with another episode of Client Horror Story with our host, Morgan Friedman. 

Today, we’re graced by Gee Ranasinha of KEXINO. KEXINO is a small marketing agency based in Europe, serving startups and small businesses mostly in the USA. A few years ago, they closed a deal with a well-funded organization in the crypto space—this was the time when crypto boomed and everyone wanted to get in on the latest trend.

Anyhow, deal’s closed and the project has been undertaken with Gee insisting on a proper QA before anything was launched. Guess what? Client said no and everything went poof! It turns out, there was a typo in the bitcoin address and they ended up losing a five-digits figure worth of earnings.

Get ready for this rollercoaster of a story as you tune in to our latest episode!

Morgan Friedman

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