It’s the $64,000-dollar question: how do you achieve success?

I would say, precisely on your own terms.

But that is not the way the world is turning. As COVID clowning forces more and more people into relative isolation, online technology has snagged a wider window of opportunity. And hot on the heels of any online tech subscription or ‘trial’, you’ll dreamily float onto the radar of a Customer Success Manager.

These cockwombles have been out there a while in the Wild West of technology, but now seems to be their 15 minutes of fame.

You’ll get calls, texts, and emails couched in that awesome/amazeballs argot that will heat up your body temperature like afternoon tea at the Café Vesuvius, and informing every move is their ubiquitous insight of their product.

Every click you make; they’ll be watching you.

Sting doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The side-hustle of these shysters is to push the ‘free-trials‘ for which you enter your financial details but are not charged for the first month. These are usually positioned to reward your effective activity as a user of their platform – yes, you’ve guessed it: it’s recognition of your success. Of course, the name of the game is to hope that you forget about the £7.99 and just let it roll. Over a year, that reward flips into a gift of £96 to them. For nothing. Nice work if you can get it. And the prevalence of such offers is rocketing in this COVID age.

It’s all about your success on their terms. Yep, they’re selling you stuff you don’t need on the back of a convincing narrative that it will make you successful, or in recognition of your (purported) earlier success.

Regrettably, most of the products they bang out have been knocked up on an Blackberry Playbook in some geek’s man-cave and are as stable as a caffeine-deprived psychotic. But businesses and individuals are jumping in head-first out of desperation because they are gagging to re-mould operational processes, and success has never been more critical.

25 years ago, we were awash with faith healers and psychics who could pick out your deceased relative from the 101 billion people who are believed to have died on Earth. That statistic alone should have prompted any potential ‘mark’ to cross the mystic’s palm with nothing more appealing than a Bowie knife.

But people still bought it, and many still do.

Fast-buck, skid-marked charlatans are no new phenomenon. 20-odd years ago, businesses started to ditch ‘Sales‘ titles in favour of those hitched to the concept of ‘Business Development’. Still the same old sociopaths who would merrily bankrupt you for their next BMW upgrade.

‘New Business Development‘ was sales lube applied to the endeavour of commercial rape, so the pointy-shoed, thin-tied, dirtbag turning you over would be providing ‘guidance’ rather than hopping on and pumping like there’s none tomorrow.

Now we’re more remote, it’s ever more about your success, with even a charitable feel to boot. They are here to save you. Would you also like a leaflet about Jesus, Sir?

In arguably the most precarious economic climate in living memory, business morals won’t be stooping too much lower. Unless some upstanding citizen starts selling lottery scratchcards outside the DWP.

Times might be desperate, but if screwing others is a version of honourable survival, I’d rather go under with my extended middle finger the last extremity to submerge.

Take care out there, or you might just suck cess.