Zero Enquiries for Eight Weeks: What a Dirty Website Taught Me About Trust | Episode Twenty Nine
Two to three inbound enquiries a day. Then overnight — nothing. For eight weeks. Rob tells the story of how a malware attack, a negligent web guy, and a GoDaddy runaround cost his business tens of thousands in potential revenue, and what he eventually did about it at half nine on a Tuesday night with half a bottle of champagne inside him.
From Two Enquiries a Day to Zero Paragon had spent years building a website that genuinely worked. Regular inbound calls, emails, consultation bookings — a consistent pipeline flowing in. Then the site got hit with malware. Not just taken offline, but blacklisted by Google entirely. Nobody could reach it. No traffic, no enquiries, nothing. Eight weeks of silence.
The Malware Problem The malware was nasty — it was pushing visitors to install malicious software, which is why Google blocked the site outright rather than just flagging it. GoDaddy removed it using their own software and told Rob they'd reported the fix to Google and he'd be back up and running soon. He heard that for three to four weeks. It wasn't happening.
The Cousin Rob had been paying a family member — a cousin he's known his whole life — to maintain the website. Not a big job. Update the plugins. Monitor uptime. Flag anything that goes wrong. Simple.
He wasn't doing it. GoDaddy confirmed that if the plugins had been kept current, the malware wouldn't have been able to get in. If the malware hadn't got in, the site wouldn't have gone down. If the site hadn't gone down, Rob wouldn't have lost weeks of pipeline. The cousin's response when confronted? A voice note — shouting, swearing, effing and jeffing. Brave from behind a screen.
Rob Fixed It Himself Fed up, slightly tipsy, and done waiting — Rob Googled the fix, submitted the request to Google himself at half nine in the evening, and had the site live by half one in the morning. Five or six hours. Done.
He's annoyed at himself for not doing it sooner.
The Three Lessons
Trust but verify. Rob's biggest weakness is trusting people to get on with things without checking in. That's fine in theory — but you have to build in some kind of check, especially when the work is invisible and the consequences of failure are this serious.
Don't assume things are above your pay grade. Rob talked himself out of fixing this earlier because it felt technical. It wasn't. A couple of hours of Googling sorted it. Don't let low confidence hand control to someone who isn't delivering.
Your website is your business. For many companies — Paragon included — the site is the main route to new customers. Neglect it, leave it unmonitored, and you're one attack away from a very quiet few months.
Trusting people is fine. But trust without accountability is how you hand someone the keys to your revenue and never notice when they lose them.
Massive thank you to my partners - make sure you give them some love:
Paragon Creative Studios - www.paragoncreativestudios.co.uk
monday.com - https://try.monday.com/9fu602qtcgca
Xero - https://referrals.xero.com/i5kqkglg3n3w-nx0cim
Apollo.io - https://get.apollo.io/b3kjbubqrsvl
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