The power and peril of recommendations
I went through three therapists last year.
You’re probably thinking: well, Wudan’s the common denominator. She must be the problem!!
So. I guess I should explain.
I had to find a new one early in the year because my original therapist—let’s call her Amy— was about to go on family leave. She was happy to refer me to others. Sure, I said, thinking that it would reduce the time I would spend looking for a new one. Amy came back with three names. Folks, presumably, who she never sought mental health services from, but she knew from her line of work.
That’s how I ended up with my second therapist that year—let’s call her Sara. A few months into meeting with Sara, it was clear to me that we weren’t a good logistical fit. (She would routinely be 5-10 minutes late for our virtual meetings, and NOTHING gives me more anxiety than having my video on, staring at a blank screen, waiting for the other person to show up. I don’t even go to therapy for anxiety. Anyway, I digress.) Needless to say, I fired her.
I bemoaned having to find a new therapist – my third in a year – altogether. I started listening closely to my friends—people who I deeply trusted— gush about their therapists. And I started asking them for names.
This proved to be far more fruitful. Why? Because they were the clients of the therapists who I was trying to hire. They had first hand experience receiving therapy from these folks, and would be a much better judge of who would be a good therapist, rather than just handing me a list of names of therapists they knew in their life who they knew but could not truly vouch for their professional services.
I haven’t been very public about this on my own newsletter because, well, I’ve been busy. And now that I’m no longer on Twitter, I feel like I’ve reclaimed enough of my attention to build a new business.
That new business is Factual, a fact-checking agency that ‘matchmakes’ clients seeking fact-checking with a vetted pool of fact-checkers. Nieman Storyboard kindly featured us today and you can read that piece here. (Ironically, this piece was not fact-checked.)
As I worked on launching Factual this year, I talked with a bunch of people who told me that my business model—specifically the part involving having a vetted pool of fact-checkers— was “so smart.”
Because in freelance groups, I see people recommending others who they know, but have never been fact-checked by. I’ve, of course, benefited from this: folks who knew of my name in passing would recommend me for jobs. But, the converse has also been true. I’ve heard from nonfiction producers that a checker who was recommended to them ended up doing a shoddy job. And, after going through three therapists in a year, I’ve truly grown to understand who is qualified to make a genuinely good recommendation.
If you’re a nonfiction storyteller who wants to bulletproof your work for accuracy, Factual is here to take that guesswork out of whether or not a fact-checker is a great recommendation. You’re going to be matched with someone who’s at the top of their game, and independently vetted by us.
Factual won’t be open to solicit inbound client inquiries until the third week of October, but if you want to get on our waitlist, email: work.factual@gmail.com. To stay apprised of Factual’s ongoings, please subscribe to the newsletter here:
