My $20,000 ghostwriting mistake...

Last summer, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my business career.

I had just gotten off a call with a well known business in the Twitter space. They were friends and were inquiring about my ghostwriting service.

At the time, I had many clients and wasn’t looking to add another. So I just gave them a step-by-step game plan on how to grow their account.

Regardless, they asked how much I charged for my normal offer.

“$35,000 to get you to 60,000 followers in 90 days.” I told them, thinking it would defer them to doing it themselves.

I figured that price was high enough for them to just do it themselves.

But, to my surprise, they agreed.

And even though I was swamped with clients…

I like money.

So I reacted accordingly:

One small detail though…

They asked to pay $15K to cover my costs and then pay the rest later.

They were friends of mine, so I agreed.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m rather informal.

I swear, I joke around, and up until that point, I didn’t use a contract.

And boy oh boy did this come around to bite me in the ass.

Since there was no contract, only a gentleman’s agreement, there was nothing binding us.

So halfway through the 90 days when I grew them by around 30,000 followers, they asked to focus on getting leads for their business instead of followers.

I told them that shifting the content strategy wouldn’t likely get them to 60,000 followers, but I could shift the strategy if they were okay with that.

They agreed and everything was fine and dandy…

Until they fired me 3 days before we were finished working together. Which they thought justified not paying me the rest of what they agreed to.

So there I was, 87 days worth of work $20,000 worth of expenses ($15K of their money and $5K of what I put in) and no contract.

To put it lightly, I was pissed.

Imagine paying $5K to work for someone for 87 days and reviving their dead Twitter account from 20,000 followers to 70,000 followers, only to have them fire you.

With no contract, I knew I was SOL. So the only strategy I had was to hop on calls with their team and convince them this shit wasn’t going to fly.

And if they didn’t, I had a whole Twitter post ready to launch at the press of a button ready to expose all the agreements they made in Telegram chats, videos of our calls we recorded + them threatening me, and the results we gotten for them.

There would have been some drama on the timeline.

Thankfully, after 3 calls, they agreed to pay me an amount I deemed fair and we avoided the whole situation.

But, this all would have been avoided if I simply had a contract in place.

And that’s the lesson I wanna pass on to you, my friend.

No matter what work you’re doing, you need to have a contract in place whenever you work with someone, regardless if they’re a friend.

So whenever someone tries to make you do work that’s not within your scope, you can point to the agreement and say “Hey, this was the agreement and what you’re asking is not within it.”

Basically it covers your ass and will save you a lot of headaches and money.

Now when I teach people how to become ghostwriters, I give them a templated contract to use so they don’t have to go through the same trouble I went through.

And because I appreciate you, you can have it here for free:

https://ethereal-roadrunner-d32.notion.site/Ghostwriting-Contract-Template-64cf0ae504d34d249bb032af625817d8

Rework it for your offer and scope of work, but this is a decent guideline you can follow for your own

You can also use Chat GPT to write you up a good one.

But, that’s my lil lesson for today.

Hope it helps.

Your Canadian friend,

Dakota “Practice Safe Business, Use a Contract” Robertson

P.S.

I’m opening up applications for my next ghostwriting cohort on June 5th.

It’ll include:

• Roadmap of how I grew my social media following to 470,000+ followers in 2 years

• How I charged $3,000-$12,000 a month, per client as a social media ghostwriter

• Plug and play sales scripts, operating systems, and writing frameworks

• Live lessons, live Q&A calls, and live ghostwriting sessions

• A community of people to grow and network with

• Guest masterclasses from people like Dan Koe, Cold Email Wizard, JK Molina, and many others

• A lot more I can’t fit on here lol

There will only be 100 spots open. And since you’re on my email list, you’ll get first access before I open applications to my 470,000+ person audience.

If you wanna see what people had to say about working with me, you can check out some video testimonials here:

https://socialjuice.io/p/growth-ghost/wall