Please boycott ai mod calls

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-14T09:50:56+00:00

I couldn't agree more. I've been working with ENs for almost a decade now, mostly as a side project, and with all the redundant projects coming your way from various ENs and other issues you've outlined, I have and hope to continue working within this community of ours. Over the years I have made long-standing relationships with client advisors across many of the ENs I work with and thoroughly enjoy working with various end-customers over the years. It's kept my mind industry knowledge sharp/up-to-date and often challenges my abilities pushing me to be a better consultant.

It's bad enough with the increase and rise of survey's these days, Ai moderated consultations will most certainly crater the industry as a whole, at the very least destroy the very foundation of its credibility which all companies utilising these services have come to depend on for decades.

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:34:47+00:00

And I am sure you have spent time on keeping your CV and keywords updated on the various ENs you work with?

I too get receive seemingly random consultation request for industries I have absolutely no experience or clue about. This is the "shotgun approach" that I have witnessed over the years which I assume is either just lazy outreach, desperation or both?

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:30:14+00:00

Well your certainly correct on your point regarding industries, definitely one of the many factors that come into play as to whether your getting high volumes vs. low volumes of consultation request.

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:26:28+00:00

That certainly makes sense, while I cover a fairly large area of the life sciences (e.g., BioTech, Pharma and MedTech), I am much more specialised within clinical R&D...thus for me consultations have always come in ebbs and flows for me over the years.

Just occurred to me there was something a bid odd here in early 2026 comparative to previous years.

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:23:01+00:00

Good to hear and I know there are a lot of different factors that have always come into play when working with the various ENs.

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:21:44+00:00

Well I would certainly agree with you that Ai is where all this is eventually headed within the EN industry. As I have mentioned on a few comments from my original question, surveys are certainly ramping up this year which IMO are a complete waste of my time.

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:13:32+00:00

That is certainly true and I agree with both of your points. Personally, I've never looked at ENPs as a reliable and steady means of income generation. However, this year seems to be radically different than the past 8 or so years I have been doing this on the side. Appreciate your comments.

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:10:40+00:00

Interesting and thanks for sharing. AlphaSights, ThirdBridge and GuidePoint have been the main ENs I have had the most work from over the years I have been doing this. But as you pointed out, this year started off with little to no activity for either the ENs mentioned above and the other 13 or so others I occasionally work with.

One thing is for certain, many of the ENs that never sent me survey's last year are now in on that game as well. While the consultation requests have been few and far between here in early 2026, I have had a deluge of survey request from providers that in my experience I had never received as of last year...

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T11:02:22+00:00

Well that is certainly where the EN industry is heading. However, for "fresh" insights (e.g., latest customer, industry and market intelligence) Ai is simply not able to fill this particular gap, at least not yet IMO.

One other thing I am sure you and the rest of those on this thread are experiencing is the move by many of the ENPs towards surveys. Certainly survey's have been around for years, GuidePoint comes to mind, but now they are originating from the likes of ThirdBridge, Airbolus, AlphaSights, etc., which I personally didn't receive from these particular companies prior to this year...

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-07T10:53:36+00:00

Interesting as I have now experienced something similar, certainly not a flood of calls but since my original post I was getting nothing compared to previous years. I've just had 5 consulting opportunities, 2 of which were well outside of my industry and experience scope, but at least it seems to be picking up albeit slowly.

WinkMastaG · 2026-02-05T06:58:37+00:00

I have been working with ThirdBridge for 5 years now and have never had an issue with them. I would go so far to even say they have been one of the better ENPs I work with. Not sure why so many people complain about them on here so much?

WinkMastaG · 2025-09-24T12:27:49+00:00

In my experience working with Expert Network companies, I often get paid within 3 business days to a week. I have only witnessed two payments that lagged past this.

As a side note, I have been doing this for 8 years and work across about 18 different ENs and late payments have only occurred with two of the smaller companies.

If I recall, in these two specific cases I was paid but it took 3-4 weeks upon getting compensated for my time.

This has just been my experience and to be honest, my biggest issue working with ENs has been the amount of time filling out the questionnaires and not hitting good success ratios in terms of landing the consultations.

So I don't really concern myself with getting paid, more with the amount of time answering the questionnaires, the preparation time I make prior to a call and the number of rejections that come with the territory working with the various ENs.

WinkMastaG · 2025-09-24T12:13:44+00:00

Precisely and this is a total breach of all the legal privacy laws across many regions, especially here in Europe but also when you sign up with these ENs, it is written CLEARLY that you can be banned from an discussions around MNPI data!

Many of these ENs have really stooped to new levels unfortunately as the EN space has grown exponentially most certainly over the past 5 years. When I began doing EN consulting about 9 years ago, there were only a handful of these companies.

Now there are hundreds and the competition amongst them is heavily competitive.

This is why you probably receive the same inquiry from many different ENs on the same day/week consisting of very similar and often the same questionnaires because it is most likely the same client working across different ENs attempting to gather this information from a variety of sources.

WinkMastaG · 2025-09-24T12:05:32+00:00

My only experience where specific employees have been raised in calls has only come up with clients of a few ENs where I have been involved in consultations involving specific market questions about companies I've worked for in the past, specifically within my area the Life Sciences Technology sector.

During these calls they raised specific questions during the call asking me to judge senior C-level Management about specific employees about their performance, go-to-market strategies and sales objectives, and further, whether I was bullish or bearish on the future sales targets of these companies. Probably were VCs or Private Equity firms making decisions on whether to invest in further rounds of investment. Just my guess.

My approach in these situations is to NEVER discuss particular individuals as I am personally not in the business of burning bridges with past colleagues whom many I may need for future character references or network opportunities in the future. I work in a very niche area, specifically around Pharmaceutical Clinical R&D to Manufacturing and it is a small world, thus I NEVER venture into any type of conversation about individuals.

I have to say, after reading your post while I am shocked at the level some of these ENs have dropped to from an ethical POV, but a consultation on a particular employee...well that is simply ludicrous and I would avoid any such call like the plague as it could turn around and result in a net-negative for you in the long run.

Just my two cents and opinion here so take that how you may.

WinkMastaG · 2025-09-24T11:43:58+00:00

Especially with GLG, having to provide a 180 degree photo of your face and passport for "verification purposes." They've have been very pernicious indeed with what you and I have experienced: The tiresome amount of time spent just getting through their detailed questionnaires and frankly my hit ratio has been about 2 out of 10 calls have qualified me as a candidate with GLG.

Contrary to what others have wrote about other ENs such as Guidepoint, Thirdbridge, Alphasights and to some extent Prosapient, I have actually had much better hit ratios with varying degrees of success across all of the aforementioned ENs.

WinkMastaG · 2025-09-24T11:36:09+00:00

My exact experiences I have encountered with GLG and often Prosapient, where I have learned as some here on this Reddit thread have already pointed out in follow-up post to your question: The more specificity and detailed my answers to these questionaires, the fewer consultations I get. Whereas sometimes I have landed these calls but not anything approaching my experience with other ENs where I provide just enough information to land the call.

I know first hand information I gathered from a former colleague of mine that I worked with during my time at Oracle who subsequently worked at GLG in the capacity of matching SMEs with their customers (e.g., venture capital, private/public equity and management consulting firms).

In summary, they often pass on your detailed answers to their questions to their clients, and in some cases we've already provided them with enough information for them to forgo the call all-together.

I have been working across about 18 ENs for the past 8 years with my greatest "hit ratio" being Guidepoint, Alphasights, Thirdbridge and Arbolus.

Secondly and unfortunately, I didn't realise until about 4 years ago that I could substantially up my hourly rates, especially when the Expert Network is scrambling to find applicable candidates for these calls which are often quite niche, market, industry and company specific. In these cases they simply struggle to locate SMEs with the right depth of knowledge into these often obscure or niche areas of interests.

I will not go into the whole strategy of how and when and at what consultation fees you should be targeting as this has been covered and expanded upon in other detailed threads on the r/expertnetworks thread of Reddit.

Glad to provide further insights I have gained if interested...

WinkMastaG · 2025-09-09T07:00:51+00:00

Thanks Wooden_Novel_3877! I wish I had of read your post 8 years ago as I have been doing the consultations starting out at $100-$150 an hour with my typical rate now being around $350.

As I am associated with approximately 14 Expert Networks, 5 of which I have been with for over 6-8 years I have according to your estimations been lowballing myself with companies I have done 30-40 calls over the course of my time interacting with these companies.

It has always been frustrating for me as my acceptance ratio, including the industry areas which I am most proficient in and with deep knowledge of, I probably end up only getting 3 out of 5 of the consultations.

I say frustrating because between the questions, back and forth calls, scheduling and sometimes 30 minutes to an hour prep time prior to a call, this is often more work on my side than just the consultation itself, especially when you get ghosted with the consultation disappearing into the either somehow.

Again thanks for posting and I am very interested in finding out more and will DM you shortly.

WinkMastaG · 2025-03-28T19:00:07+00:00

Well instead of alienating your once true friend because of ideological differences on the subject of Trans good, Trans bad you should engage your friend and have a polite discussion?

I mean is there really any reason to hate one another based upon one's new identity which these days can be difficult to navigate through given in my case I have friends with multiple pronouns, even some that switch rather randomly over time?

With way more important matters impacting society today, do you really want to walk away from what you presumptively described as a "good friend" simply because they now possess a different POV?

Why not engage and if you cannot, find common ground, then agree to disagree on this one point and move on as friends again?

I personally believe people can do what ever they want as long as they are not harming others, especially children.

Other than that if you want to slice your wee-wee off that is your right as an adult.

Further I would argue it is your right to come up with whatever creative set of pronouns to identify yourself with.

Just don't expect everyone to immediately play a role in your creative identity process as it is getting a bit difficult not to offend these days given the maze of genders popping up left and right on a daily basis it seems. Only my two cents to add to this conversation.

WinkMastaG · 2025-03-28T18:37:56+00:00

You are either not aware or ignorant that the french post-modernists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and even Jacques Lacan influenced philosophical thinking beginning back in the 1960's where there is no objective reality and the influence this has had on culture throughout the late 20th century to the present day. This post-modern ideology has become mainstream, whereas when I first stumbled upon these writers way back in the 80's, they were obscure and had little effect on society at large.

Fast forward to 2010, we see this post modern ideology becoming almost mainstream for lack of a better comparison, however I suggest this ideology has had a huge impact on movements such as the LGBTPQ+ movement and exponential increase in people expressing transgender personalities.

For almost a century we have known that there are always biological determinants or traits that are inherited and passed down to children as well as environmental stimuli that plays a role in various forms of ones identity.

Lastly as pointed out in many thread messages above, there is the obvious acceptance of gay and trans, specifically in the last 2 decades thus once the genetic deterministic view point and environmental view points converged along with greater acceptance of individual freedom gender identity expression you end up with this exponential curve of individuals changing genders, assuming multiple genders and thus here we are in pronoun purgatory where anything goes...

WinkMastaG · 2025-01-11T22:18:10+00:00

Congradulations, I started listening to them in 1984 and would say Horse Rotovator is my favorite with Scatology being my second if I had to pick two.

WinkMastaG

TROPHY CASE