God Dammit, the Crying CEO Lives in Columbus
God Dammit, the Crying CEO Lives in Columbus
Everyone with a LinkedIn profile should report to the nearest gulag until we figure out what is going on with these freaks.
There is a plague in America of just any random asshole off the street being able to call themselves a “Chief Executive Officer.”
It’s fair if CEO is your job title at a Fortune 500 company. That should be the cutoff line. It should be considered fraud to call yourself the CEO of a company that isn’t on the Fortune 500 list.
Columbus resident Braden Wallake falls into that latter group. Until yesterday, I did not know this man. And what a blissful existence that was. My life is worse now.
Wallake is the self-anointed CEO of “HyperSocial.” I’ll allow his LinkedIn to explain what that means:
As the CEO and founder of HyperSocial, my goal is to make Business-to-Business marketing and sales campaigns fun AND effective. There’s a way to make connections and closing leads fun and that’s where we come in. Our services at HyperSocial help businesses, big and small, crush their goals and level up to bigger and better ones by providing done for you B2B marketing and sales campaigns that have amazing results, sell your services/products to ideal decision makers at targeted companies, position you/your company as the GO TO expert in your field.
Our B2B clients have seen $115,000+ revenue growth in as little as six months with our services, alongside better costs per lead and more brand awareness. And if that jargon isn’t what you’re after, my team at HyperSocial brings the most personality, fun, and value to work every day to deliver results that matter. Did I mention that our processes bring you more automation and work better than other marketing strategies, too?
If you need more leads/sales for your business, even if you don’t have a huge budget, let’s chat and see how we can help! Even if we don’t work together, I’d love to get you pointed in the right direction. Or even just chat about the best places to travel in the US because I am traveling full-time. Email me at Braden@gohypersocial.com or message me directly here on LinkedIn!
I’ll give him this much: He knows the proper usage of “everyday” and “every day,” which is the only grammar rule I care about.
The rest of it… Jesus. It is textbook “hobgoblin language” to steal a phrase from that Columbus crank who yelled at city council a couple of weeks ago.
I also enjoy that he makes sure to let you know he’s traveling “full-time.” That would make me feel great as an employee to know the CEO was galavanting around the country with my surplus labor.
There are enough red flags here to know that I wouldn’t enjoy this man’s companionship or worldview. Ok, that’s fine—he probably wouldn’t enjoy my company, either.
But then he had to post a video of himself crying after laying off two employees. Because that’s who this story should be about, the Crying CEO.
From Maxwell Strachan of vice.com:
Wallake told Motherboard over the phone on Wednesday morning that the company had laid off two employees on Tuesday evening. He performed one of the layoffs and his “girlfriend slash business partner” laid off the other employee while he watched.
Both of the laid-off employees, he said, were “over-the-top nice” about it and “assured” him and his business partner that they were “going to be okay.”
A few hours later, Wallake decided to make a post to LinkedIn in hopes of showing the emotional difficulties leadership faces when companies go through layoffs as well.
I’ll tell you this much: If you have your “girlfriend slash business partner” (in that order) lay me off while you sit in the corner watching like you’re in some cuckold porno, I’m not going to be “over-the-top nice” about it.
Especially when you posted this on your public Facebook (since locked) a day before you fired me:
Time to earn that house, baby! We gotta fire two people today.
Words of advice to business reptiles: Any time you are about to post something to show how “normal” executives are, please consider that you have already crossed the rubicon for what would be classified as “normal” by people who don’t worship Elon Musk.
Wallake is a case study of what can happen. The crocodile tears and centering himself after laying off two employees were already gauche… but to do it a day after he bragged on social media about “putting an offer” on a house?
It’d be hard to create such a parody in fiction, and that’s even before considering Wallake tried and failed to become a Columbus cop:
No idea why he was talking in third person, but 2011 was a wild year, so I’ll let it slide.
Wallake is normal, alright, just not in the way he thinks. He is what all fake CEOs are: Parasites who only care about stealing their employees’ surplus labor to finance a grustle mindset aesthetic on social media. (Most real CEOs do the theft, too, just without the social media.)
He got the attention he ordered. Now, whenever somebody googles his name and company, they will be flooded with thousands of references to “the Crying CEO,” and Columbus, Ohio, won’t be far behind.
HyperSocial employees should file for a union election by the lunch hour.
THOSE WMDs. As temperatures rise, industries fight heat safeguards for workers… Dear Writer: Advice on cultivating connection on the internet… Silicon Valley’s push into transportation has been a miserable failure… RTA buses are advertising for Spitzer KIA. Cool. No Yeah No. Sure… What’s it like in the most expensive Hotel 6? Actually, pretty nice.
To the author of this article--"damnit" isn't a word. It's dammit or damn it.
Great article otherwise.