The Troubled Tale of "Toxic Thomas"

A few days ago, I had a [Rapid Lead Activation Assessment]() call with a potential private client named Thomas. He was a Canadian divorce lawyer who had been on my list for about 3 months... And he responded to one of my emails asking me if I could help him grow his list from 300 to 1000 subscribers. I said maybe... And after a few qualifying questions, we scheduled the call. All good. However... On the day of the call, I woke up with this strange feeling in my stomach. Like I had a visceral adverse reaction to this guy. ​ "I hope he doesn't show up to the call..." I remember thinking to myself. ​ Never a good sign LOL. Anyway... When the clock hit 2 pm sharp, I joined the Zoom room... And after about 3-4 minutes, he also joined. Now look... I'm a very precise person who shows up on time in 98% of cases... And I usually appreciate punctuality from others as well... But I DO realize sometimes life gets in the way, people need to do last-minute Zoom updates (everyone's favorite Zoom feature), or restart their computer at the last minute. Whatever, it happens. But what I saw when Thomas logged in, I could not believe... In fact, it shocked me! Why? Because -- instead of showing up like how lawyers (or PROs in general) usually show up... ​ He logged in through his phone... from his bed... in his pajamas! (with his video rotated 90 degrees) ​ Like... WTF, man?? I thought we were supposed to have a productive business meeting :)) But the kicker? Despite asking him to rotate his phone if possible because I'd like to see him properly... He said "I'm good this way, thanks" ... Oooooooookay... Whatever. Looking back, I should have ended the call right there... But hey, I'm a nice guy... And I usually try to give people as much "benefit of the doubt" as possible before ditching them. So that's what I did. I didn't let his major lack of unprofessionalism stop me from trying to put together a genuine game plan for him... And I tried ignoring it... But pretty soon... I realized Thomas was a lost cause. Why? Because no matter what I tried to ask him... (again, questions aimed at helping HIM) He simply couldn't give me a usable answer! Either he gave me some wishy-washy bullshyte... Or he simply said: ​ "I don't give a shit" ​ So, for example, when I asked him about his Facebook Ads KPIs to diagnose where his true lead gen problem were... He simply said: "I simply don't give a shit. I'm just a results guy. Don't care about anything else" To which I replied: "Ok, I get that... but then how are we supposed to figure out the bottlenecks in your funnel?" To which he said: "I simply don't give a shit... all I want is results" So in other words, he was stuck in this regressed child-like state. For a while, I genuinely wondered if he was maybe bipolar or if he was having some sort of mild psychotic episode... But pretty soon I HAD to realize... Thomas was simply a bitter, toxic, childish loser. A hypothesis that was reinforced when he started thrash-talking various marketing experts I knew. It went something like this: Thomas: "You know X from {Insert group}?" Csaba: "Yeah" Thomas: "Well, I've been to his event and it was terrible. The guy's full of shit and I hate him" Csaba: "Mmmm.... ooookay... what makes you feel that about him?" Thomas: "He's an asshole, plain and simple. And you know Y from {Insert Group}" Csaba: "Yes, we were both in the same mastermind years ago... great guy" Thomas: "Yeah... well I bought his course 2 years ago but then it stopped working... So I no longer consider the guy competent." (Suuuure, buddy... everyone's an asshole except you) At this point, I simply couldn't take it anymore... And I just HAD to stop Toxic Thomas. I'd had enough of his BS... and I had better things to do. So I basically said: "Look, Thomas... I appreciate the honesty... but I don't think I can help you. We're just so misaligned philosophically... and it seems like our values are vastly different" Now... To a normal person, this would sound reasonable... and we'd just end the call without any hard feelings. But not Toxic Thomas! 😀 It seems like my comment triggered him... Because he responded with a childish: ​ "Okay, I didn't think I'd see results from working with you anyway" ​ "So why did you book this call then?", I asked him. To which his response was... ...wait for it... .... ... .. . .. . . Can you guess? :D ... .. . . . . . . . . . . . C'mon... looking back, it's so obvious! ... .. . . . . . . . . . . . ​ "Because I just don't give a shit" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 ​ I swear to God, I'm not making this up! He actually said that 😂 So at this point, I was like: "Okay.... let's call it a day" And Toxic Thomas responded with a passive-aggressive "I wish you good luck" And that was it. WOW. What a bitter, toxic, loser-of-a-guy. After the call, I immediately banned him from my email list and unfriended him on Facebook. Under no circumstances do I want people like that in my life! He's for sure gonna turn out to be a stereotypical "grumpy old man" that everyone avoids... And whose #1 hobby will probably be yelling at the clouds (or happy children) Something like this: ​ (I can't even imagine how bitter Thomas is in his divorce lawyer career!) Anyway... Here's the moral of the story: Trust your gut feelings. Although they can often feel confusing in the moment... They're rarely wrong. In fact, the more intense... the more they're trying to tell you something. So LISTEN to them carefully... Because they're usually trying to protect you from something. Also: don't waste your time on people like Toxic Thomas. I've "done the work for you"... and it's NOT worth it 😂 And that's pretty much it. Hope you liked this story. If you did, hit reply and tell me about a time YOU had to deal with someone toxic. Looking forward to reading it! -Csaba ​ ALSO, Here are a few ways I can help you, whenever you're ready... 1. Get my "7-Day Rainmaker Email Sequence" template pack for just $7! This is a proven 7-day email campaign designed to quickly give you a surge of new sales from your email list. With these "fill-in-the-blanks" templates, you can start sending high-converting emails within minutes! And right now, you can grab it for just 7 bucks. [Get it here >>]()​ 2. 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