“He’s coming to your Airbnb right now to kill you. And this isn’t America, there is no judge and jury, there is just an executioner.”
That is a text I received last Monday from a girl I met, about her traficante friend from the favela. Most of me didn’t believe her, but part of me did. I threw some clothes in my backpack, rented a hotel and left my Airbnb. I haven’t been back since, not even to pick up my stuff.
I’m still deciding whether or not I want to go pick them up.
Do you want to know how it happened? Well… let’s start from the beginning, and then end with some lessons we can apply to our own sales cycles.
Two months ago, I began a trip around the world.
I’d like to say it was to look at old Churches, or try new foods, but I’d be lying. I’d spent a few years before then living like a monk - pursuing various ventures - and I had just started to make enough money from freelance consulting that I could really travel. I also had gotten to the point where my monk-like existence was inhibiting my motivation. Say what you will about drugs and sex, but they’re a great reason to get up every morning and work.
Anyway, I got to Rio two weeks ago and instantly started swiping on girls. I had just come from Colombia, where I had met a lot of women, and was honestly pretty excited to see what Brasil had to offer. I matched with this woman named Maira. Soooooo fine. I was really excited to meet up with her.
We made plans for the next night that fell through for reasons that will just bog down the story, but we then met up on Sunday at a Middle Eastern restaurant. I don’t know what it is, but they love Middle Eastern food in Rio.
There were two other people there: a girl and a guy, who I later learned were her twin sister and best friend named Alik (from Russia). I figured: hey, she brought chaperones. Not the first time this is happened. I’m well versed in how to get rid of them.
Five minutes into the dinner, they pulled out the MDMA. Now, I’ve been accused of many things in my life (most of them negative), but I’ve never been accused of saying no to MDMA. Especially when a hot Brasilian offers it to me.
Thirty minutes after that, we’re on the beach, at this bar called… something. I don’t really remember, and I’m sure you don’t care. Maira is laying against me, I’m giving her a massage. Her sister and Alik are talking.
By the way, I don’t speak Portuguese. She doesn’t speak English, so we’re communicating through Google Translate. I highly recommend doing this. Anything you say seems WAAAY cuter over Google Translate.
I ask her if she wants to go back to my place. That’s when she springs it on me: she’s a prostitute. And it’s going to cost $200.
This is a common practice in Colombia and Brasil. Prostitutes pretend they’re going on a date with you, then tell you they’re a prostitute and hope that the sunk cost fallacy will get you to pay. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, usually I try to turn the tables and use the sunk cost fallacy on them to get a discount.
With her, I told her I’m not paying at all, so I should probably leave. She said she wanted me to stay and hang out. So I did. Why not? Even if I wasn’t going to get laid, there were hot girls and free drugs.
At midnight, I had to go. It was a Sunday night and I had to work the next day. I asked her if she wanted to come back to my place, but I told her I wasn’t going to pay. She said yes. We came back to my place, started making out and had sex. It was great. I mean… what more do you want to know?
I was busy that week, so I didn’t hit her up. I got a text from her again on Friday asking me if I wanted to get lunch. I did, so we got a (fairly expensive by Rio standards) lunch by the beach.
Now, this is where the first 🚩 red flag 🚩 comes up. Afterwards, I ask her if she wants to come back to my place. She says she has an appointment she has to go to. She didn’t mention this appointment at all during the lunch, didn’t seem like she had to go anywhere… and it wasn’t like there was a hard stop. We could have easily ended the lunch thirty minutes later.
Oh well, I thought, she wanted a free lunch and didn’t want to do anything after. Maybe there was an element of, “I’m a prostitute, and we had sex for free, so I should at least get some free food out of him.” I don’t knock it. There was a time in my life when I got mad when I get played, now I just respect the craft. Plus, I was still pretty stoked about this whole situation, so didn’t think anything about it.
But… a liar is a liar.
One last thing to note: this is where she started bringing up the favellas. She said most of her friends lived there. Her best friend was a drug dealer. She showed me pictures of them holding guns. She even tried to convince me to go with her to meet them. I said no. This wasn’t the first time someone asked me to go to a favela, and I’m not going to do it. Even if their friends are cool, there are a lot of other people with guns who would love to kidnap an American and hold him for ransom.
During lunch, we had made plans to meet up later that night. But, again, I had work I had to do and wanted to stay in that weekend, so I told her I couldn’t make it. We had made plans to go to Sugarloaf Mountain on Sunday, so I told her that I would see her then.
On Sunday, I saw that she had blocked me on Instagram. I went on WhatsApp, and saw that she blocked me there too. I was pretty confused - was she that angry that I skipped dinner on Friday? - so, I logged into a burner Instagram account I had and messaged her. I told her sorry about whatever I did, I enjoyed our time together and said she could hit me up if she wanted to hang out again.
The next day she unblocks me and messages me. She says she blocked me because I made her miss her appointment. Apparently the two minutes we were talking on the street about going back to my place were enough to make her miss her non-existent appointment. I didn’t believe it for a moment, and I hope you don’t either. But, I didn’t really care - this situation was still a net positive for me.
This, though is a second 🚩 red flag 🚩 . I’ve blocked a lot of people - and, I’m not proud to say, have been blocked too. It’s part of life. Never, not once, have I or the other person resumed communication after. Blocking is a nail in a coffin of a relationship. But not here. Why? My guess, based on what happened later, is that she wanted to take the power back, wanted to assert her control - and wanted me to feel the despair of losing her. Those are pretty aggressive games to play. I also suspect she was trying to play a long game on me: make me fall for her so she could extract more money out of me than the $200 she wanted me to pay for sex. But… we’ll get to that later.
Anyway, we made plans to meet up that day. We talked about getting cocaine too. I said I would pay for it. She told me her twin sister was coming over.
In my younger years, I did cocaine just for fun. And I still do. But, I also have terrible ADHD. I’ve been prescribed adderall in the past, but for some reason let my prescription lapse. So, in South America, when I’ve used cocaine, it was mainly as substitute for adderall. While I still party in my 30’s, I’m getting more boring and I had a few giant projects I had to get out the door and was hoping to use (whatever would be left) of the coke for that purpose.
In South America, there are regular prices and “Gringo prices.” She definitely quoted me a gringo price for the cocaine. A price that would even be expensive in America. But… I didn’t care. A threesome with hot Brasilian twins is something that I’ll think about till the day I die: and the coke would make me enough money to offset its cost.
I just want to say, for the record, that cocaine is decriminalized in Brasil (and is legal in Colombia up to a gram), so I wasn’t really breaking any laws here.
Anyway, her and her sister come over. We start doing cocaine. We start making out a little too.
Then she tells me that we should pay. The backstory to this is long and complicated, but they brought a card reader from the drug dealer. Everyone has a card reader in Brasil. Even prostitutes bring card readers.
The amount that I agreed to pay was somewhere around $120. She then started adding all this bullshit fees (she told me that it was a $60 processing fee… yeah, right). But, again, I was horny and I didn’t care. So, I ended up paying $240. A HUGE HUGE overpay. But… two Brasilian twins.
Then she gets a call. It’s from the drug dealer.
He tells us that he didn’t get the payment. I look at my phone: it went through. He says that I need to pay him again. He wants a video of me paying so that he can prove that I paid.
Well, I’ll pay him again, but we’re going to have to void the first purchase.
She tells me that we can’t do that (she’s the intermediary because I don’t speak Portuguese. We’re speaking over Google Translate).
Why not?
She doesn’t give me answer. She just keeps on telling me that I need to pay him. He’s a dangerous murderer and will kill me if I don’t.
I say that I’m more than happy to send another payment, but we need to void the first one.
So I do that.
Then she starts to freak out and says that he now wants double.
Double? Why would I pay him double?
Because I voided the first payment.
But… he never got the first payment?
Okay, now I need to pay him $500. He wants a video of me sending it to him so he can verify that I sent it.
She shows me a video of him (she’s on videochat) holding a gun and pointing it at us. This was a regular refrain throughout the conversation.
So, I send him the $240 again.
She says that he wants $500 now.
I tell her that the deal was for $240 (really, it was for $120). I told her that he said he needed another payment because the first one didn’t go through. This one just went through. We can take a video of it and send it to him.
She said he wants another $240 and that she had sent him my address and phone number as collateral. If I don’t pay, he’s going to come over and kill me.
I tell her that I don’t have another $240.
Now, this is a lie. I obviously have it. So, she calls my bluff and asks to see my bank account. A little too eagerly. Like it’s her that I’m stiffing, not him.
I already knew that she lied about the appointment (and some other stuff, the whole story is A LOT longer, but I’m condensing it) so my bullshit detector is going off. I realize (and I’m sorry that this is kind of rude): she’s a prostitute from Brasil with a drug problem… she probably doesn’t really understand how banking works. She probably doesn’t know that most Americans have multiple bank accounts.
So, I show her a bank account with $300 in it.
She starts to flip out. She goes for the hard sell. She just yells at me (into the Google Translator transcribe function) about how he’s a murderer, how he’s going to kill us all. He has my address - she gave it to him - he will come here and kill me if I don’t give him the money.
“How can you buy drugs without money?!?!?!” She screams at me.
I try to explain to her as calmly as I can that I had the money to buy the drugs, but this isn’t a drug deal anymore. If you keep on raising the price and threaten to murder me if I don’t pay it… you’re not selling anything, you’re just robbing me.
I inform her that I’m more than happy to be robbed by her friend, but I’m not going to be robbed virtually. He wants to rob me, he has to come down here and point a gun in my face.
That… probably wasn’t the best idea.
She starts yelling at me. For like five minutes straight. But this part is crucial. While she’s yelling at me, she doesn’t realize that I took the card reader again and voided the most recent $240 transaction.
So, at this point, she has $0 from me.
She thinks she has $240.
And, I’m sure this is what was going through her head, she decides to cash in her chips. She screams and cries some more, and she and her sister storm out of my apartment.
A lot of angry texting happens afterwards.
I also talk to her friend Alik, who tries to act like the reasonable person here. I tell him that I think his two friends are con artists. He tells me that his word is his bond and he’s an honorable person. Well… okay. If your two best friends are con artists - and I’ve only met you once - I’m going to assume you’re part of the con.
He gets very angry about this and says I insulted his honor. He keeps on asking for “proof” that this whole show was BS. As if I needed to prove to him that it was BS, and if I didn’t, I would have to pay him.
“Facts, you’re telling me opinions, tell me facts.”
Fuck you, that’s a fact.
I was pretty calm, cool and collected about the whole thing. I actually almost laughed in Maira’s face when she was crying at me on the couch about how I was going to be killed. I knew this whole thing was BS, and I wasn’t going to fall for it. She was playing a “long con” of trying to build my trust, make me care for her (I may have made her believe that) - so she could use that to extort money out of me.
But, it didn’t work.
Then… she found out that I had voided that payment. She got nothing out of the whole situation.
And that’s when she texted me and told me that her friend was on his way to my house.
To kill me.
90% of me didn’t believe her. But the 10% of me that did… was also the 10% that wanted to live. So I got out of there, and have been laying low in Rio since. I’m not going to give you the details of that whole escape, just in case it’s a real threat, but I used every lesson I learned from spy movies to cover my tracks as effectively as possible.
As I said: my stuff is still in my apartment.
So, now that we went through this whole story (that was hopefully interesting and engaging) what are the lessons?
I think the big one is this:
You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin it once.
The original price that I was going to pay for the cocaine was an insane markup. By my estimations, I could have bought it for $10. I was paying $120. That’s all profit going into their pockets. The second price (which I had already paid) was $240. That’s a 2500% profit. And I did it without even blinking an eye.
I was going to be in Rio for three more weeks. They could have made thousands of dollars of profit off of me - and I would have been more than happy to overpay. I’m here for stories and experiences, and sleeping with two Brasilian twins is definitely both.
But they got greedy.
They wanted to double their money that night, and because of that, they lost all their money. Don’t do this.
When you’re dealing with a client, have an eye to the longer relationship. Make sure that you’re building trust and value so that you’re able to profit for the long haul. And don’t stick by an insane price. Sometimes it’s good to do that - filter out the cheapskates - but sometimes, you end up just not closing a lot of deals.
The Unknown Unknowns
I hate that Donald Rumsfeld came up with this quote, but I’m going to paste the whole thing:
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones
There are so many things that happen in a sales cycle that we don’t know that we don’t know. Interactions, conversations, considerations, information…
Maira approached this situation with a whole lot of hubris. I was the stupid Gringo who was head over heels with her (again, lying about that to try to get into her pants for free), and as long as she put the pressure on me, I would give her what she wanted.
But when you approach these situations with that arrogance, you miss out on the unknown unknowns.
For example, she didn’t know that people in America have multiple bank accounts. I was showing her an account with $300 in it and telling her that I couldn’t pay. It never occurred to her to ask about another account.
She also assumed that I was scared enough that there is no way that I would void the transaction (even though I had voided the previous one). She thought she had the money in the bag and was just playing with an upsell. Then she lost the whole deal. I’m sure that’s never happened to you…
When approaching a buying cycle, we are often guilty of this same arrogance. We assume we know what the prospect needs, what their problems are, what the decision process looks like, etc.
Then what happens? We get blindsided by something. Then something else comes up. And six months later, we haven’t made the sale and the prospect is no longer returning our calls.
Always realize that there are a hundred different things that can screw up your deal that you aren’t aware of, and approach the situation mindful of those and try to mitigate those problems before they come up.
Finally, get the signature on the contract and payment in your account. I had a former VP of Sales who wouldn’t even mention her deals until they were paid. She had gone through enough cycles to know that it was all bullshit until the check clears.
Too many times we assume we have the “land” and start “expanding” before there’s even ink on the contract? Then what happens? You lose the whole deal. This has happened to me many times. Don’t get greedy. Close, then upsell later.
Don’t Paint Seagulls In Your Prospect’s Picture
This is a Sandler rule. I love Sandler sales and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to grow as a salesperson.
This is a little bit of a modification on the rule, but I think it still applies.
During the “negotiation” she kept telling me how dangerous the person was and how he was going to kill me. She just kept hammering that point home.
What she didn’t realize is: I didn’t give a shit about that because I thought she was lying to me. She can keep repeating it all she wants - or keep upping the threat - but it’s not going to work.
What she should have done is realized that I was looking for a practical solution to the problem and try to work with me to get a solution that the traficante would “agree to” that would maximize the amount of money in her bank account.
This happens a lot in sales cycles. We keep selling an element of our product or service to our customers without realizing that they don’t care about it. We talk about X without realizing that the real sticking point is Y.
Instead, find out what matters to your prospect and talk to them about that.
If Maira had learned these lessons, she would be $240 richer.
Thanks for reading my post. If you want to supercharge your cold email campaigns, feel free to reach me at emailicahn@gmail.com.