I recently wasted three months getting to know an investor relations contact as it takes a few months before you’re ready to give up equity in someone else’s company to a stranger for services to be rendered in the future. The process is to first talk on the phone to the IR consultant and make nice talk. At this time you want to just let them talk because 90% of what they say is complete BS and 10% of it is what they wish they could do but up until now have never been able to.

I spent hours talking to this guy. He sounded so convincing, sure he’d dodge the questions about process and ‘how to’ but I figured we’d eventually get to that. We eventually met in New York, at our first meeting he picked the restaurant, he ordered lunch, I bought.

He was so smooth with his tactics and his con was so polished. He was an older gentleman with a very specific and well manicured professional pedigree, pure fiction of course but I found myself wanting to believe that this guy was telling the truth.

He told me how much he loved the company I was taking public and how he believed in what we were doing and how the company’s expansion was going to make such a great story post public to attract investors and create the market on and on. This banter went on for about two months and then as we were getting closer to our opening dated I started to press him for a process to bring together everything that he had been telling me.

I wanted him to show me a track record with trading symbols, only the ones that he mentioned to me that went from .10 cents to $1+ (I should have bailed at that point but I was still curious). I wanted him to break down how he was going to create the market for this company, I just wanted details. A few days had passed and obviously up to that point there had been no exchange of contracts since there was no process to agree to or anything professional from him to solidify the deal only words.

Then our S1 went up and he got an Edgar link. He was furious that he wasn’t on that S1. I got an email from his partner who I didn’t even know existed giving me the digital version of a tongue lashing, all caps, exclamation marks, bold print, you get the idea.

This was when I realized that no matter how objective I was and no matter how many angles I looked at this guy and his company and no matter how badly I wanted to believe that this was the one legit guy in a sea of razor blades and shark infestation that we call Investor Relations it was all just smoke and mirrors. He was a con artist, a confidence man.

I am by no means a new comer. I’ve been submerged in every aspect of this industry for over 12 years and I assist global corporations on the intricacies of going public, staying public and globalizing their strategies but sometimes we believe that we can meet someone that will shatter the prototypical mold of the realities we face every day. Investor relations is the one aspect of the industry that demands you to watch your back.

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If you are in need of investor relations solutions and have been surfing the web for an IR firm approach with absolute caution as pump and dump vampires lurk around every corner and crevice of cyberspace. They’ll suck the life out of your new or struggling public company so fast your head will spin.

The first sign of a pump and dump artist is their forceful sales approach. They will act like your best friend offering all kinds of advice. You’ll start to feel that this rapport is genuine and you’ll ask them for their opinion on a competing IR firm. They’ll act like their doing you a favor when they take out their phone and make a call to their contacts guy to do some quick research to help you out.

Whether they got through to they’re guy or not they’ll come back with an answer like, “he just said to be careful with that one”. You’re relieved because your new buddy just kept you from making a big mistake but he sees it as assuming the sale.

Pump and dump vampires will expect to be placed on the S1 with their free trading shares in tact even before you’ve closed the deal with a contract and in most cases they’ve never actually revealed their IR strategy that is supposed to create the market for your new public company or turnaround the public perception of your struggling public entity.

You’ll ask them for specifics and they’ll beat around the bush, never giving a straight answer. The contract will be a boilerplate template that does nothing but secure their shares in your company.

Keep in mind, the P & D Vampire will be personable. They will be that breath of fresh air that seems to bring order to the otherwise chaotic process of the public process. You’ll be soothed to sleep at night as you recollect the days conversation with your new buddy and how his process is going to miraculously take your .05 cent share price to $1.85 in 30 days.

But after the contracts are signed, the equity is legally distributed and the process is supposed to begin, your new friend will be hard to reach on the phone and when you get them on the phone they’ll say things like, “I never agreed to this…” or “it’s going to take time” or “just be patient” and then when they are just about to lower the hammer they’ll begin to put the failure of the campaign on you by saying things like, “your company needs to announce an acquisition” (even though your company is only 30 days into its public existence) or “you need to restructure your management and we’ll put out press releases about it” on and on.

Be careful out there. Your best bet for real and absolute Investor Relations strategies is to go back to the consultant that helped you facilitate the structuring and going public process. If you didn’t have a consultant take you through the process, most likely, that is your problem right there.

You can’t possibly navigate your way through this turbulent industry of con artists and legal red tape on your own. Find a professional that can bring in his contact base and strategic relationships so that you don’t lose time, money and eventually your company.

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