For many founders, business owners, and decision makers these days, the process of ghosting freelancers and the self-employed after they’ve listened to your brief and then taken the time to put together a proposal for you is something of a popular pastime.

As a freelancer who still to this day – after many years in business – finds herself prone to a ghosting or two, I feel that simply shirking off into the sunset (after receiving specifically what you asked for from your freelancer) is a wasted opportunity. Quite frankly, it serves as such a vanilla way of showing you don’t give a shite about people’s time, talents, or trust.

Do better, I say.

And so, in case you ever give me the opportunity to not work with you, I want to make sure you’re the ghost with the most, and for you to go all-in when it comes to this element of ghastly (sorry, ghostly) personal branding as you position yourself as a founder of few morals.

Here’s how you can make the most of your radio silence, to really make this ghostly process worth everyone’s while…

1. Before you go AWOL, make sure you impress upon your freelancer just how urgent this work is to your business. If you can use phrases like “time critical” whilst all the while peppering your conversations and emails with reminders of how “time really is of the essence”, or some such patronising platitude, then that’s even better. Lighting this fire under your freelancer’s arse to ensure they move heaven and earth to accommodate your poor time-management with a swift turnaround just means you get your proposal delivered sooner and can therefore start being unresponsive to it sooner, too. Win win, hey?
2. Given that your freelancer will likely blame themselves for your ghost-like behaviour and then feel bad for expecting a response when you’re clearly dead or dying, you should really go all-out-there and rub their faces in the fact that you are, indeed, very much alive. Post on social media, reply to comments on other people’s content, and generally rock up to the opening of public envelopes to ensure maximum silliness is felt when your freelancer realises you haven’t, in fact, lost your life/ your family dog of 20 years/ your ability to reply to a fucking email.
3. Remember that when you’re a ghost, you can’t expire! Take full advantage of the fact that you can continue to play the ghoul long after your initial no-show. Wait a good few months – or even years – after the proposal was first submitted, and then go back to your freelancer with the “good news” that you’re ready to proceed – at the same original rate and with the same time-pressing urgency, no less! Oh the joy your freelancer will feel that they finally get the opportunity to wait months for you to pay their invoice.

So there we have it. Go all in with the ghosting, people. Make the most of the ghost. Go on, make a complete ghoul of yourself.

It gives us lowly self-employed folk a tremendous opportunity to rip the piss out of you on social media, if nothing else.