The Rise of the Untrained Contractor: Why “Warm Bodies” Are Costing You Millions
Let’s have a no BS chitty chat about the state of today’s service-based hiring landscape—because the truth is, mediocrity is no longer just a nuisance in business. It’s a full-blown epidemic.
When I left corporate America to launch my first company, I was forged in a high-performance culture. I was trained. Mentored. Held accountable to excellence. Results weren’t optional. Work ethic, execution, and service delivery were the standard.
Today? That standard has collapsed.
We're now operating in a marketplace flooded with freelancers and small service vendors who appear to have skipped the foundational training and dove straight into selling. They’ve hired the coaches and mastered how to “pitch” themselves but haven’t a clue how to actually serve. They can talk the talk—but when it comes to delivering results, what they provide can often be subpar at best, and business-damaging at worst.
The Illusion of Expertise
These new-era contractors know the lingo. They know what to say to close the deal. They flash testimonials and curated Instagram grids like credentials. But underneath? No professional training. No mentorship. No real-world business acumen. And often… no integrity. (Ouch… I said what I said.)
What’s worse—they believe that putting in baseline hours equals payment without review, even when their output is sloppy, late, or downright unusable. They’ll miss deadlines, blow up campaigns, ghost your team, cost your company big money, time and energy…and still have the audacity to invoice you like the delivery was complete.
And CEOs are footing the bill. Over and over again.
I’ve seen it firsthand—my clients hire contractors at premium rates only to discover they’re babysitting unskilled talent masquerading as experts. They’re burning cash on “experts” who can’t execute, while they and their internal teams scramble to clean up the chaos. The CEO ends up overfunctioning just to keep the train on the tracks and now they are doing the work of the person they contracted to actually do it.
This isn’t a contractor relationship. It’s a trauma bond.
And I know it well—because I’ve lived it more times than I would prefer to admit. In my previous business, I spent tens of millions of dollars learning this lesson the hard way. So much so that my 10 year old called me out on it - if that wasn’t a humbling moment, I don’t know what would be. (You can watch the reel here.)
And let me be clear—this is not just happening in my business.
This is happening in almost every high-growth company I work with. It’s a regular conversation with my private clients, colleagues, and peers behind closed doors. I’m not citing their specific stories out of respect for confidentiality—but trust me, they’re dealing with the same contractor chaos. The same red flags. The same expensive cleanup jobs. This isn’t an isolated issue.
It’s becoming the new norm. And that should scare the hell out of us.
And it’s not because they are dumb or bad at business. It’s because they are busy doing their CEO job and these people are exceptional at covering up their dysfunction to avoid actually doing the work while they are out living the “laptop lifestyle.” And.. it’s not on their radar to scan for because for my clients (and myself even) they literally can’t imagine operating that way.
Because it doesn’t just cost the CEO.
It burns out your real team too—the high-caliber performers you can count on. The ones who are constantly picking up the slack. Cleaning up the messes. Rebuilding the broken systems. Covering for contractors who ghost, delay, or quietly disappear when it’s time to be accountable. Eventually, even your best people get fatigued. They become resentful. And you risk losing the talent you can’t afford to lose—all because you're trying to save time and achieve your result by outsourcing to someone who was never qualified to carry the load in the first place.
And here’s the part that will really make your blood boil…
We thought we’d done everything right. We hired the attorneys and created extremely specific contracts with clearly defined deliverables, timelines, payment structures, and policies. We included all of this in our contracts and welcome packets. And then - for good measure - we walked new contractors through it in onboarding meetings.
Still—these individuals signed the contract with clear collaboration and instruction but, we later learned, a lack of integrity. No follow-through. No ownership. Not even a flicker of concern for the legally binding agreements they were violating.
And this is where I’ve drawn a hard line.
I contractually and morally do not—under any circumstances—compensate contractors for incomplete, low-quality, or unusable work. Period. No different than if I were to walk into a restaurant, order a steak dinner, get served a raw piece of meat with no sides, and still pay the full tab out of guilt because they bought the food and threw it on the table in front of me. We are crystal clear about this up front. Verbally. Contractually. Energetically.
We tell every contractor: if this level of accountability makes you uncomfortable, we are not the company for you.
And yet—100% of the people who we’ve brought on have agreed to those terms, verbally, conceptually, and in writing… and that agreement doesn’t stop them from breaching contracts or throwing tantrums when they are not paid for the work they didn’t do.
Let that sink in: they are comfortable signing legally binding agreements they have no intention of honoring—and they still expect full compensation when they fail to deliver.
One contractor, hired to manage the development of a service organization, accepted every project and deadline—then simply chose not to do them. She cherry-picked tasks like it was a buffet. And as a CEO? You assume when you hire a contractor—especially in a management-level project—that they’ll manage themselves, let alone a team. But when we started digging, it became clear she’d built a house of cards, not the infrastructure she was contracted to build. She showed up to meetings and kept the facade polished—meanwhile, everything behind the scenes was a mess.
And here’s how this happens: as a CEO, you’re busy leading the business. You contract out because you need to delegate. Because you can’t be in the weeds. And because you assume people understand basic professionalism. And you trust their word at best and at very least the fact that they signed a legally binding contract.
But if you've never conceived of operating like this, you often don't see the red flags until it's too late. And by the time you’re uncovering their trail of destruction, they’ve either ghosted—or, worse, they’re trying to come after you. Even if you could easily sue them and win… that’s a huge expenditure of time, money and energy to get a judgement that they may not be able to pay. It’s often a better business strategy to chalk up your losses, learn your lesson and move on. And they are banking on you knowing that. Is it disgusting… yes. Is it more common now than ever… also yes.
This particular contractor cost my company hundreds of thousands of dollars… and then turned around and filed suit in small claims court.
Despite the airtight contract. Despite FOUR people testifying under oath for FOUR hours. Despite nearly 80 pages of clear cut documentation. The judge never even opened the file. He didn’t understand the case (he was a justice of the peace subbing for another judge) nor the law in this case. And despite ALL of that—he ruled in favor of the contractor.
Our jaws were on the floor. So was my lawyer’s. One of my team members cried at the injustice. Another started yelling out of frustration. It was so out of alignment with the law that we still suspect either a personal relationship or complete judicial incompetence.
And if you think that was an isolated instance… think again.
My legal team said lawsuits like this are on the rise and the court system is being flooded which means judges are just trying to clear their docket. So they have nothing to lose in suing you. It’s like placing a bet in Vegas. Whether you deserve it or not - you might win, you might lose.
I once hired a young, enthusiastic copywriter with charm and zero formal training. Ten months later, I realized I had basically run a one-woman mentorship program. She should have been paying me. A lovely human that really wanted to do well and pulled at my heart strings. Terrible hire. And despite all of the support, training, and help I gave her, she still billed me with an invoice for work she didn't do.
Another time, I brought on a social media contractor who seemed like a unicorn—until I held her accountable. Missed deadlines, no ownership, broken promises and almost six figures later… still no finalized, usable product. Mind you, I’d thought she was amazing and one of my best team members. But when she realized the gig was up and I started to dig into what was going on because I’d caught on, her behavior switched on a dime and she gave notice. I’d realized far too late it was an act to keep the monthly retainer coming in.
Then there was a “Go High Level expert” who my gut told me strongly not to contract - but my team felt he was exactly who we needed. This gem dismantled a campaign, ghosted halfway through the project, stirred up drama across my org and reached out to personal contacts of mine, and then demanded payment for all the work that he did not even remotely start, let alone finish in his contract.
Or the customer service rep contracted by my partner, who came bundled with personal chaos, childcare challenges, and a lawsuit with her previous employer. She dropped balls so frequently we needed a clean-up crew.
Unfortunately, I could keep going. And again…let me repeat this is not isolated to my business… I’m just one of the leaders who are honest enough to share my mistakes publicly so you can learn from them. Every single one of these people claimed they could do the tasks. Not one delivered. And all of them—every last one—refused accountability. “But I put in the time,” they’d argue, as if time spent was the metric for value.
It’s not.
Exceptional service = Alleviating the mental load + Driving measurable results.
That’s the contract. And if your contractors aren’t doing that? You're paying for dysfunction.
Let me say this clearly:
If you have to tell your contractor what to do, manage their output, or train them on how to do their project, you haven't hired a contractor. You've contracted an undertrained facade that you're paying premium contractor rates for.
If they miss a deadline and shrug it off with excuses instead of urgency, integrity is missing.
If they demand payment for work that harmed your business? That’s not service. That’s theft disguised as entitlement.
So hear this loud and clear: if you think your contracts alone will protect you, think again.
The legal system won’t always work in your favor—even when you have every piece of evidence. Your best line of defense isn’t the courtroom. It’s contracting the right people from the start.
Here’s how to hire like a high-performance CEO (not a hopeful romantic hiring for potential):
Ask about their training - not just skills. Where did they learn? Who mentored them? What are their standards for excellence?
Probe beyond their pitch. Ask how they handle client mistakes. What’s their recovery policy? How do they course correct? If they blink at accountability—run.
Look for mission-driven motivation. If their reason for starting a business is “freedom,” but they take no responsibility, you’re hiring a freelancer with an employee mindset.
Watch what happens when things go wrong. Missed deadlines? Poor results? Their reaction tells you everything. Do they take ownership, or weaponize their effort?
Hire slowly, fire quickly. Compassion is a beautiful trait—until it becomes a liability. You don’t owe repeat chances to someone who already violated the agreement.
The cold, hard truth? Warm bodies cost more than they’re worth.
If you’re tolerating underperformance because you’re afraid of taking their work back onto your plate, you’re holding your business hostage to your fear. That is not leadership. That is survival mode.
And survival mode doesn’t scale.
You deserve a team that lifts you higher—not one you have to drag to the finish line.
Let me be the example. I paid the price. Millions of dollars. Thousands of hours. Stalled launches. Broken systems. Burnout.
And yes—personal and team trauma.
You don’t have to repeat my mistakes.
Stop accepting mediocrity. Start requiring mastery.
Your legacy is too important to be built on half-finished deliverables, broken promises, and court rulings that make no damn sense.
It’s time to raise the bar.
Because when you do, the real experts rise to meet it—and the rest eliminate themselves.
DON'T FORGET TO SHARE
