If you have come to find yourself in a position to potentially become an employee of, contractor to, or conduct any type of business with measurabledifference.com aka Chrislie Formulations, aka Lashem, you owe it to yourself knowing the facts before pulling the trigger, something I should really have done a better job on.
As the owner of this company, Helga Arminak, is notoriously litigious, this account of my experience with this company will be strictly based on fact and public record.
First, see what employees have said about working with this company below in the link to Glassdoor Reviews of the parent company, Chrislie Formulations under the domain www.chrislie.com
Although these reviews are from a few years back, I spent a good amount of time actually in their offices in Asuza and personally witnessed what I would characterize as abusive and insulting conduct from the owner towards her employees. I am not a lawyer and am not in a position to advise anyone, but there are laws in place to prevent trauma from having to earn your living in a hostile work environment. If you are an employee and are reading this, perhaps you should think about that.
When I met Helga through an ad she posted seeking someone to help her with what turned out to be a very disjointed and poorly performing e-commerce infrastructure, I found her charming and vulnerable and ate up her stories about vendors and employees who had been installed to alleviate the problems and had failed her at great cost.
I personally have serious issues with contractors or agencies get into projects like this and perform poorly because they give people like me and the carefully chosen vendors I work with a bad name when we are really trying to get it right, so everything resonated deeply with me.
For this reason, I discounted my services and those of my search optimization vendor, and went out of my way to bring her a photo/video contractor I had worked with to come in and re do a bunch of her product shots the very next day.
As you will see if you continue to read through this (I know it is long but stick it out because my experience might prevent you from have a similar one) you will understand that the vendors are not the problem, and in fact it is exactly the opposite. In my personal opinion, this has been one of the most incredibly egregious professional experiences of my career, where the owner has basically committed contract fraud and really damageds relationship with people I brought in to work on her behalf.
We sat there and verbally hammered out a working agreement over about 3 hours with specific terms and pricing agreed to, and I told her I would go back and put everything into a document that we could both sign. I told her that some of the technical work and digital marketing would be farmed out to a vendor I work with and trust, and she was fine with it.
I got started that day because to my mind, her situation constituted an emergency and I wanted to help this woman. My vendor did some research and found some really basic mistakes and overlooked elements that would have pretty much immediately fixed quite a few problems and I was excited to get to work.
Fast forward about a week later. She had already cut the initial checks totalling over $5,000 to the name of my consulting company despite clear language in the paperwork spelling out that checks should be cut to me personally and that I would be working on a 1099 basis. This was the first red flag which told me she had not bothered to read the paperwork.
My vendor and I had put in a lot of work at this point, and we were rounding the corner to the holiday weekend (4th of July 2017) and I had not been able to get her to reissue the checks in my name or to sign the agreement. She is extremely busy (dealing with multiple lawsuits apparently) so it was hard to get time with her and I would meet her whereever she happened to be.
About two weeks into this whole thing, I finally went in specifically to talk to their accountant to get the checks reissued, but since it was the Monday before the 4th, he was off. I was very irritated at this point because I had promised my vendor his payment was coming the week prior.
I was diplomatic with Helga but insistent that paperwork be signed and checks be reissued. She said, "don't worry, we are good for it" and even offered to go to the bank with me that day to straighten it out. I did not want to put her out, so I declined and just decided to wait for the accountant to get back Wednesday.
BIG MISTAKE... That Monday when I was in her offices, I actually had her on the phone with my online search vendor who was explaining the very basic and detrimental mistakes that could be fixed in a few days when their team got underway with some of the technical aspects of the project, she seemed to be distracted and not listening. No surprise, this was becoming a pattern with her.
After that call and another between my vendor and her Magento platform contractor, things took a disastrous turn. My vendor called me to tell me that her contractor was someone he was going to have difficulty working with, for reasons I will not get into here. After this call took place, everything began to unravel.
She sent me a list of questions that had been put together at some point for vendors like me, most of which had been covered in my first meeting with Helga, and continually covered as I constantly had to justify my role and my value with her because as she kept putting it "I have been burned so many times".
She insisted that I have the questions answered before out call on the Wednesday after the 4th of July, which meant that I was supposed to get on the phone with my vendor ON THE 4th, when he was with his wife and kids and traveling to go over and answer these questions.
During this whole ordeal she kept threatening to pull out completely, with outrageous bully behavior and when I told her we needed to reschedule the call so that we could get the questions answered on the day the call would take place, the Wednesday after the holiday, that was it. After a few text messages on the 4th, she told me the deal was off and "not to come on to the premises" to get my checks reissued that Wednesday.
At that point, my vendor and I had decided to discontinue participation as we had both had the unfortunate experience of working with toxic and unreasonable clients in the past, people who are their own worst enemies. But as far as we (and the law) were concerned, we had already performed and produced plenty of work product for the initial payments.
I went to her bank, Wells Fargo, to verify that the checks were valid. According to them, they were but I could not deposit them without a business account in the name of the business she wrote the checks to. So after spending several hours at the county offices getting my fictitious business name paperwork for the bank, I returned to deposit the checks only to find that the checks had been cancelled.
These are the actions of an unscrupulous, unprincipled individual who likes to spout off about how many times she has been burned by others. Everything I have recounted here is 100% fact as I do not want to give her any ammunition for a libel or defamation suit.
Measurable Difference Reviews
If you have come to find yourself in a position to potentially become an employee of, contractor to, or conduct any type of business with measurabledifference.com aka Chrislie Formulations, aka Lashem, you owe it to yourself knowing the facts before pulling the trigger, something I should really have done a better job on.
As the owner of this company, Helga Arminak, is notoriously litigious, this account of my experience with this company will be strictly based on fact and public record.
First, see what employees have said about working with this company below in the link to Glassdoor Reviews of the parent company, Chrislie Formulations under the domain www.chrislie.com
glassdoor.com/Reviews/Chrislie-Formulations-Reviews-E674770.htm
Although these reviews are from a few years back, I spent a good amount of time actually in their offices in Asuza and personally witnessed what I would characterize as abusive and insulting conduct from the owner towards her employees. I am not a lawyer and am not in a position to advise anyone, but there are laws in place to prevent trauma from having to earn your living in a hostile work environment. If you are an employee and are reading this, perhaps you should think about that.
When I met Helga through an ad she posted seeking someone to help her with what turned out to be a very disjointed and poorly performing e-commerce infrastructure, I found her charming and vulnerable and ate up her stories about vendors and employees who had been installed to alleviate the problems and had failed her at great cost.
I personally have serious issues with contractors or agencies get into projects like this and perform poorly because they give people like me and the carefully chosen vendors I work with a bad name when we are really trying to get it right, so everything resonated deeply with me.
For this reason, I discounted my services and those of my search optimization vendor, and went out of my way to bring her a photo/video contractor I had worked with to come in and re do a bunch of her product shots the very next day.
As you will see if you continue to read through this (I know it is long but stick it out because my experience might prevent you from have a similar one) you will understand that the vendors are not the problem, and in fact it is exactly the opposite. In my personal opinion, this has been one of the most incredibly egregious professional experiences of my career, where the owner has basically committed contract fraud and really damageds relationship with people I brought in to work on her behalf.
We sat there and verbally hammered out a working agreement over about 3 hours with specific terms and pricing agreed to, and I told her I would go back and put everything into a document that we could both sign. I told her that some of the technical work and digital marketing would be farmed out to a vendor I work with and trust, and she was fine with it.
I got started that day because to my mind, her situation constituted an emergency and I wanted to help this woman. My vendor did some research and found some really basic mistakes and overlooked elements that would have pretty much immediately fixed quite a few problems and I was excited to get to work.
Fast forward about a week later. She had already cut the initial checks totalling over $5,000 to the name of my consulting company despite clear language in the paperwork spelling out that checks should be cut to me personally and that I would be working on a 1099 basis. This was the first red flag which told me she had not bothered to read the paperwork.
My vendor and I had put in a lot of work at this point, and we were rounding the corner to the holiday weekend (4th of July 2017) and I had not been able to get her to reissue the checks in my name or to sign the agreement. She is extremely busy (dealing with multiple lawsuits apparently) so it was hard to get time with her and I would meet her whereever she happened to be.
About two weeks into this whole thing, I finally went in specifically to talk to their accountant to get the checks reissued, but since it was the Monday before the 4th, he was off. I was very irritated at this point because I had promised my vendor his payment was coming the week prior.
I was diplomatic with Helga but insistent that paperwork be signed and checks be reissued. She said, "don't worry, we are good for it" and even offered to go to the bank with me that day to straighten it out. I did not want to put her out, so I declined and just decided to wait for the accountant to get back Wednesday.
BIG MISTAKE... That Monday when I was in her offices, I actually had her on the phone with my online search vendor who was explaining the very basic and detrimental mistakes that could be fixed in a few days when their team got underway with some of the technical aspects of the project, she seemed to be distracted and not listening. No surprise, this was becoming a pattern with her.
After that call and another between my vendor and her Magento platform contractor, things took a disastrous turn. My vendor called me to tell me that her contractor was someone he was going to have difficulty working with, for reasons I will not get into here. After this call took place, everything began to unravel.
She sent me a list of questions that had been put together at some point for vendors like me, most of which had been covered in my first meeting with Helga, and continually covered as I constantly had to justify my role and my value with her because as she kept putting it "I have been burned so many times".
She insisted that I have the questions answered before out call on the Wednesday after the 4th of July, which meant that I was supposed to get on the phone with my vendor ON THE 4th, when he was with his wife and kids and traveling to go over and answer these questions.
During this whole ordeal she kept threatening to pull out completely, with outrageous bully behavior and when I told her we needed to reschedule the call so that we could get the questions answered on the day the call would take place, the Wednesday after the holiday, that was it. After a few text messages on the 4th, she told me the deal was off and "not to come on to the premises" to get my checks reissued that Wednesday.
At that point, my vendor and I had decided to discontinue participation as we had both had the unfortunate experience of working with toxic and unreasonable clients in the past, people who are their own worst enemies. But as far as we (and the law) were concerned, we had already performed and produced plenty of work product for the initial payments.
I went to her bank, Wells Fargo, to verify that the checks were valid. According to them, they were but I could not deposit them without a business account in the name of the business she wrote the checks to. So after spending several hours at the county offices getting my fictitious business name paperwork for the bank, I returned to deposit the checks only to find that the checks had been cancelled.
These are the actions of an unscrupulous, unprincipled individual who likes to spout off about how many times she has been burned by others. Everything I have recounted here is 100% fact as I do not want to give her any ammunition for a libel or defamation suit.