Leeches in business – and personal life – are everywhere – waiting to leech off your success and manipulate you into pausing your own life to fix theirs. Leeches feed off others’ successes by depleting the money, time and future successes of those who have drive and ambition that they are missing.
Some of these people don’t even know they’re leeching. They can come off as lacking in skills, knowledge or money to make their own success and want you to help them with the task.
Leeches can be highly manipulative when they think they’ve found a soft heart. If you let them in to your life, they’re liable to rob you of your own time and effort needed to go to your next success.
When you let a leech twist your arm and persuade you to help them in a way that takes time, money and effort away from you, you’re opening up a big can of worms you may not be able to close.
One way you can recognize a leech in your midst is to look at their past accomplishments. Chances are, they’ve never done anything that could be considered a true success and what they have done has nothing to do with what you’re trying to accomplish.
They may want to be paid for their non-efforts for their non-existent contributions and are excellent in making you believe you can’t do without their so-called expertise. They may offer client lists that they stole or promise other perks for your help.
Leeches are also very adept at demanding your time to teach them, communicate with them or whatever they think they can get from you. They’ll never pay – or promise pay that never comes.
To get your trust, leeches will sometimes name drop and make up successes they’ve never had. If you dig a little deeper than what they’ve told you, you may find they’ve been banned from communicating with those name-drop people and never completed the goals they told you about.
Sometimes you can be nice and give the leeches a little bit of time and energy and hope they go away, but most of the time, they won’t. Most of the time, you’ll have to be explicitly clear about what you will and won’t do.
Tell them about how they can learn to do what you do and encourage them to sign up for classes or follow certain websites that can teach them what you know. If that doesn’t work, you may have to treat them like the parasites they are and cut off all communication with them.
Before you offer or agree to anything in business, it’s best to get references, research the person thoroughly and ask for proof of what they’ve accomplished. It may seem harsh, but in these times, you have to be careful about your own future.
