51Blocks Reviews

Having worked in marketing agency settings for many years (from small scrappy startups to extremely well run Inc 5000's), I've seen firsthand how they run from top to bottom....it's not my first rodeo. Here’s my main cons..... 1) The CEO: everything that is wrong with 51 Blocks stems directly from their CEO, Michael. He's a poor communicator & possesses zero qualities that you would normally look for in a leader. I've personally seen him belittle fellow employees while on the phone with clients (as well as internally). This is unfortunate. On my first week starting with the company, 3 current employees (who still work there...so I won't name them) warned me that the CEO was an absolute disaster to work with. I put their strong opinions aside & wanted to give the company a chance since A) I really liked working with the Operations & Marketing Manager who was great & B) I give everyone a chance. Not shortly thereafter, I came to the realization that they were 100% right. He’s depressing to work alongside. Future potential employee reading this....continue reading so you know whether this is a good company for you. 2) Poor/Cheap Website Development Work- having worked for some great digital & web development companies, I know a thing or two about good web dev. Everything from hiring front/back-end developers to having great designers work in unison with them to create flawless & fast websites. 51 Blocks commonly outsources their own clients website development work. They hire extremely cheap developers in India/Asia on sites like Upwork for $8-10/hour. 3) Few Employees VS many 1099 Freelancers (non-employees)- working as a freelancer can be great, but only if you are compensated well for the work you’re putting in (remember…as a 1099 freelancer, you need to pay health insurance, dental, & an additional portion of your paycheck towards taxes that you’ll pay later. This all comes out of your pocket). 4) Internal communication & hours of work expected- This a a BIG one. Since this company is 100% remote, you will be working from your laptop independently. Some people work 10 hours a week & others work a full 40. This arrangement makes it extremely tough for everyone to communicate with each other. Add onto this the fact that the majority of the staff are not employees (they are 1099’s). Even if you work 10 or 20 hours a week, you’ll be getting pinged at all hours of the day (Mon-Fri) on Slack & can be expected to respond back to clients immediately if they feel the need to get ahold of you. This is easy to do if you’re working full time, but if you’re working anywhere from 10-30+ hours per week, this makes it difficult to separate your work here & other work outside of 51 Blocks. The company doesn’t grasp this well. You’ll waste 30-40% of your day on Slack, which takes away from the already limited time you’re given per client (more on this in the next section). 5) They are a White Label Agency- 51B is a white label agency, meaning that they generally work on behalf of other digital marketing companies while earning a cut of what the white label's client pays. Since 51 Blocks is desperate for clients & their client turnover rate is high, they are forced to work with non-ideal clients that are a hassle to work with. This burden is placed on the remote team & it's your job to clean it up (unhappy clients, not enough time given to you to do great work, and so on). In the paragraph above on internal communication, I mentioned that you are given a limited amount of time to provide quality work on a per client basis. Since 51 Blocks doesn’t make a ton of money per month for many of their clients, they are forced to squeeze every penny they can from each one. Quick example: If a client pays them $150/mo for marketing, they will try to get you to get work done for the client for $30 & then will pocket the other $120. Not enough time is allocated to providing their clients with quality work. Their clients deserve better than this……and as a freelancer, you deserve to be given the opportunity to provide better quality work on behalf of these clients. Work that you’re actually proud of. 6) Client Communication- client on-boarding is extremely lacking. The communication structure & expectations set internally are years behind the times (with the exception of two people- the GM of Operations & their Head of Sales who are both rock stars and strong communicators). With all their digital marketing clients, they need to streamline & enforce a better process for on boarding clients as well as how they plan to handle them over time. 7) High Client Turnover (this correlates directly to point #6 above)- clients are constantly leaving because their is no loyalty & the quality of the work is lacking.