Two messages landed this week that couldn’t have been more different, and both taught me something.
The first: a company got in touch on LinkedIn with genuinely serious IP. Grade one licences, the kind that gets buyers who usually take three weeks to reply to an email ringing you back the same afternoon. I was properly excited. Then we got round to how they wanted to work together.
Their ask: send over my full customer list, and they’d tell me which ones I was allowed to approach.
I read it twice, thinking I’d misunderstood. I hadn’t. Hand over relationships built one buyer, one market, one trade show, one terrible airport hotel breakfast at a time, so someone I’ve never sold a single unit with can go through my customer list like a buffet and leave me whatever’s left? She must have missed my post about turning 65 a couple of weeks ago, because nobody who’d read it would pitch me like I was born yesterday.
The second one stung more, because I actually deserved some of it. A company I’d agreed to bring to LA, a product I genuinely liked, went quiet for a while, then came back chasing answers on messages they’d sent recently. I saw the emails. I saw the texts. Between a bout of Covid, locking down LA appointments, being chased daily about my own booth space, and one of my existing ranges suddenly taking off, I let it slip. Didn’t reply in time. That one’s on me, fully.
What I got back wasn’t a chaser. It was a message telling me my “ignorance” reflects poorly on me and sits in “stark contrast” to the professional image I put out on LinkedIn.
Dropping a ball is fair criticism. I’ll own that every time, no excuses needed. But there’s a difference between someone holding you to account and someone using a bad week to tell you who you are as a person. One I can work with. The other tells me everything I need before we’ve even started.
Two messages, two different kinds of entitlement. Neither got what they wanted from me.
