The Accidental Entrepreneur: My Crazy Roller Coaster Ride As A Clueless First Time Founder
Finale: Betrayal Is A Savage Emotion & Walking Away
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
It’s been roughly 12 hours since I have given notice to my business partners that I have decided to leave the company. They have gone completely off the deep end, screaming and threatening me over the phone.
They have canceled my corporate card and I will be homeless in two days unless I figure something out.
I thought about just walking away from my current client engagement, but I was going to need the money since I had just volunteered myself at being unemployed.
I came up with a plan.
I would fly home that night (a week earlier than I had planned), take the money I need for the hotel and travel expenses in cash from the bank and fly back on Monday night.
Plus, it was probably a good idea if I went and got my stuff out of the office sooner rather than later.
I called the airline to change my flight home. “I’m sorry sir, but your return flight was canceled yesterday. Would you like to book another one?” I still have no idea how they had done it, but those pricks had canceled my flight home as well.
I booked a new flight on the red-eye, let the hotel know the plan, emailed my client and let them know that due to travel I wouldn’t be back in their office until Tuesday morning.
When I arrived back at the office on Sunday morning, I found that they had changed the locks. I couldn’t get in to get my stuff. I was fuming.
When I got to my apartment (which was across the street), I discovered a pile of my stuff in the middle of my living room. My office manager had a key to my apartment so she could check on things while I was traveling and apparently they had decided to do my move out for me. The problem was about half of my stuff wasn’t here.
When we had first started to grow the company, I had hired my two closest friends to work with me. One, my best friend, let’s call him Chris, became the top consultant working for me and the other, let’s call him Steve, became the top sales rep working for them. I tried to call Chris to tell him what had happened, but I was greeted by a loud notice that said my cellular service had been disconnected.
What a bunch of assholes!
I went to the AT&T store and bought a new phone and signed up for new service.
I got a hold of my two close friends and asked them to meet me for drinks. About an hour later we were sitting at a bar and I was sharing the events that had unfolded over the last 72 hours.
I was animated. I was incredulous. I must have said, “Can you fucking believe this shit?!” at least a hundred times in just my opening tirade. I was pleading with them that they needed to get the hell out of Dodge and leave the company before the same thing happened to them. If they could do this to me, their partner, what would happen when they set their sites on them. They were in danger and I wanted to protect them.
What happened next, I couldn’t have seen coming. You could have given me a million guesses and I would have come up short.
One of them started, “Ya know Todd, I think you need to look at this from their perspective…”
I sat there slack-jawed for the next several minutes as my two best friends in the world defended the actions of my two asshole business partners.
They told me how they understood what my business partners were going through and felt bad for them. I was putting them in a bad spot by leaving. How they both still believed that the company could become a real powerhouse and how they wanted to stick it out and see what happened.
My head was spinning. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My two best friends had been brainwashed. They had turned on me. They were choosing those lunatics over me. How is this happening right now?
Then Chris, my best friend for the last 7 years, let the truth slip out: As a result of my quitting he had been given a promotion, a hefty pay raise, and some equity in the company. “It’s just too big of an opportunity for me to pass up. You understand, right?”
I got off my barstool, put a $20 bill on the bar next to my mostly full beer and walked out the door without saying anything.
I was in shock. I had gotten both of these guys their jobs less than two years ago. In both cases, they had doubled the income they had been making before. I had done that for them. Given them this opportunity. And now they were willing to watch as I got absolutely royally screwed by these ass-hats.
Betrayal is a powerful emotion.
My business partners felt betrayed by me, but I didn’t see it that way. I was the one who was going to take a big hit financially. I was the one walking away from something that I had done so much to build. I was the one who was about to have no income. But yet they were the ones lashing out at me. And they had zero desire to take my point of view.
I’ve learned this lesson a few times in life that when people feel betrayed, they will often strike out with an enormous, disproportional amount of vengeance and hate. Especially when it comes to relationships and business partnerships. And though I’ve been through it a lot, I have yet to find a way to combat it or make it any easier. It is almost always a storm that you have to ride out and it’s almost always awful to go through.
I had felt betrayed by my friends for not standing up for me. Looking back, I’m not sure what I expected them to do. I know that neither one of them could have afforded to just up and quit based upon how I was being treated.
In hindsight, I should have been more understanding that they were just acting out of self-preservation and to some extent opportunity. It wasn’t fair of me to expect them to put their lives into upheaval because of what I was going through.
But in that moment, I felt betrayed.
I didn’t talk to either of them for a long time after that and it was ultimately the major crack that caused our relationships to end a few years later.
I walked around town for a couple of hours and eventually went home and laid in bed, staring at the ceiling for hours. I was not sure what to do next.
By Monday morning, I had decided to fight back.
If they were going to play dirty, then I was too.
I call my client in California and let him know that I am leaving ConServ. He is obviously upset at the news. However I assure him, that he wouldn’t be left in the lurch, I have lined up a different company that I also work with that will write a new contract that would allow me to finish the current engagement with them.
It would be nothing but a paperwork change on their end and the project would continue fine. In an effort to apologize for such an abrupt change, the new company will give them a slightly discounted rate. He said that as long as I could finish the project, he was okay with it. I tell him that I would send him over new paperwork later that day.
That phone call had taken $40,000 out of their pocket and put most of it in mine.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
Next, I call the man who was in charge of the consulting outsourcing at our major partner, let’s call him Bill. We had become good friends over the past few years. I let him know that I was leaving ConServ and that my business partners had gone off the deep end over the news. I tell him everything: the corporate card, the flight, the locks, and my cell phone. I ask him for advice on what my next move should be.
And while I truly did want his advice, the truth is I was just using it as an excuse to tattle on them. Looking back it seems so childish. I wanted to tell Dad that my brothers were being jerks and hoping that he would punish them. Bill was responsible for about $1 million a year in consulting revenue and I wanted to hit them where it hurt.
I wanted him to make the bad men pay.
“Look, you know I love you man. You’ve always been my guy.” he said in his Texas drawl. “But somewhere along the line, you learned what these two were about and who they were. There’s a saying: ‘It’s not that you can’t do businesses with snakes, it’s just that you better damn well know how to hold them.’ It can’t be a surprise to you that they are acting like this.”
He continued, “You know that I have never really trusted those guys. And between you and me there are a lot of other folks around the company that feel the same way. You were the reason we started working with them. Listen, I can absolutely keep you busy with some consulting, just not at the same rates we were getting back in the day. Don’t worry about that. You’ll be fine.”
It took a deep breath, glad to hear what he was saying and continued to listen, “But I also do really like your buddy Chris and I don’t want to take food out of his mouth either. As long as he takes over the relationship with us and I don’t have to work with those two yahoos, I’ll work with them. But I’ll tell you right now that with business that way it is and with you not being there, it’s going to be a lot, lot less than what it’s been.”
They had gotten to Bill first! That was the only way he could have known about Chris taking over for me. Fuck!
Plus, he wasn’t exactly enacting UN-level sanctions against them. Just a, “by the nature of our relationship changing it won’t be as good” kinda vibe. It wasn’t exactly the punishment that I was hoping he would impose.
I guess that’s what I get for tattling.
I made a few other phone calls to people that I would hope help me “stick it to ‘em”, but everyone had pretty much the same response: “I’m SO sorry. Please let me know if there is any way I can help you.” in a voice similar to one might use if a small child had just told you about a nightmare.
Turns out I’m not very good at fighting. It’s never really been my thing. And while swapping that contract was a bold move, the rest of it was pretty pathetic and sad as I think about it now. My brain just isn’t wired for dirty pool.
Self-defense is one thing, but all-out warfare is not really my style.
I make my way into the office around noon and the office manager looks very startled to see me. She quickly gets up from her desk and meets me at the door.
“I think you should wait out here. I’ll go get the guys.”
Eventually one of them makes their way to the hallway in front of the office. He can barely hide the contempt on his face. I calmly say that I would like to pack up the stuff in my office. He tells me that they did that for me. I explain that they had missed a bunch of stuff. He grumbles and says that he’ll join me while I do it and lets me know they have already changed my password on the network.
The clear implication is that he thinks I am going to steal something or somehow crash their systems.
We make our way up to my office. It looks like something out of a movie where thieves have ransacked a house in a hurry. At this point, I am not the least bit surprised. I pack up the remainder of my stuff in relative silence. He is sitting in the corner with his eyes trained on me, blurting out every few minutes, “Did we pay for that? Cuz if so, it’s staying.” I assure him whatever I’m holding at that moment was not company funded and pack it up.
As I’m finishing up and getting ready to leave, I take my shot, “I’m going to need the paperwork that shows my ownership interest in ConServ. I’m not sure you ever printed stock certificates, so the updated vesting contract will be fine.”
He darts up from his chair and gets really close, his face just a few inches from mine.
His hot breath smells like tuna salad.
“Listen to me you little piece of shit, “ he says seething, “unless you can produce a signed document that shows you have any ownership in MY company, you can go FUCK YOURSELF!” Spit flies off his lips as he crescendos at the end.
Based on the run-up of events, I thought this might be the case. We had asked the lawyers to draw up the paperwork but had never followed through on getting it signed. I had asked about it a few times in the months before, but there was always something more important to do. And while it upset me to know that I would not get to keep a portion of what I had worked so hard to build, I had a dreaded feeling that they were about to run the company into the ground anyways. It didn’t make sense for me to fight over something that wasn’t worth anything.
“Oh?”, I say, “Is that the way it’s gonna be?”
He glares at me, his eyes on fire, still standing toe to toe.
I turn and walk out of my office into the shared area with the sales reps and consultants. I say loudly, “I guess the only thing left to do is collect my last check. You owe me my base salary, last month commissions, and about $2,000 in travel expenses.”
Then I decide, fuck it, and go for it.
“Oh and since you seemed to have lost the paperwork on my ownership interest, I should call out that means you have underpaid my commissions for the past 6 months to the tune of $67,000. I’d be happy to produce our original contract if you can’t find your copy.”
The entire office has stopped what they are doing and is listening intently.
He yells out my office door, “I’M NOT PAYING YOU A FUCKING DIME! YOU THINK YOU’RE SO FUCKING SMART! YOU THINK I OWE YOU MONEY?! GOOD FUCKING LUCK WITH THAT! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND KICK YOUR MUTHERFUCKING ASS!”
I turn and walk through the bullpen. Shooting looks at the two people I once considered good friends, hoping that they would have a change of heart once they saw how nuts this guy was.
This is my Jerry Maguire moment, but no one will even look at me, never mind get up and walk out with me.
At this point, I’d like to remind the reader that all I have done is give my notice. That’s it. I had given a one-month notice with the intention of cleanly finishing up my projects and transitioning my duties. I had hoped for a graceful transition.
I wish I was making this up or even embellishing it for the purposes of telling a good story, but the truth is that is was much more and much worse than I am sharing. This is the PG-13 version of events.
My business partners and I had become close over the years in the trenches together. We worked hard and we played harder. We made a good team. We had made a ton of money together. I had made them a LOT of money. I had brought two of my best friends along for the ride. We had all built something meaningful.
Things shouldn’t be ending like this.
But here I was, walking down the street with two cardboard boxes of my stuff.
I learned more about partnerships in the last 72 hours of this venture that I had in the first 2 years. I carry these lessons forward for every new partnership that I consider.
Several future partners in new ventures have asked me why I focus so much on contract terms related to ownership and exiting and I tell them they come from lessons learned in blood. You have to plan for the bad times during the good times. You have to set expectations early. You have to get signed documents for major changes, no matter the hassle. I will typically share some of this story with them to help explain why.
I visited a lawyer a few months later and explained my case. His response was that my old partners had retained very expensive Boston attorneys to represent them. That even though I had a decent shot of getting a positive judgment, from what I had told him he believed that they would intentionally draw out the case to intentionally rack up legal fees to the point where I wouldn’t be able to continue. He suggested that I would need at least $100k to fight them and that should I win, we would likely get those fees back.
I didn’t have $100k to invest in fighting them. As I said, fights aren’t my thing.
I definitely didn’t like the words “should” and “likely” being used when talking about my chances for success either.
So I dropped it and walked away from about $75,000 that was rightfully owed to me.
Chalk that up to a very expensive lesson on business partnerships.
Six months later, I heard through a mutual friend that Steve had left the company as revenues had continued to fall and he was no longer making enough money.
A year later I was told that the company had folded up shop. Chris having stayed until the very end. He had then gone to work for one of ConServ’s biggest competitors and ended up working there for a long time. He might even still work there. I’m not sure.
Oh and the guy who screamed at me as I left the office that last day? I heard he later started a new company with the same sales rep who had once convinced me to go out on my own. In a matter of just a few years, they had managed to sell their company and each cash out for a large amount of money.
I’m told my old partner got an 8-figure payday.
My kids often say, “That’s not fair!” whenever one of them gets something the others don’t. Too which I always respond…
“You have no idea…”