Hard Lessons
What 25 years of trusting the wrong people taught me.
I can't believe I trusted people that close to me. The moment money gets involved, you find out who people really are. And here's something worth knowing: you probably shouldn't mess with someone who's good at internet marketing and search engine domination. It makes it pretty easy to air out dirty laundry.
But I'm not living in the past. I built better things after every one of these. You can too — if you learn from what happened to me before it happens to you.
The single most important lesson across all four stories: Get. A. Contract.
"Poor people have big TVs. Rich people have big libraries."
— Corey Rudl. First thing he made us write down. Page one of the notebook. He said if you don't understand that, nothing else he teaches will help you.The Stories
The Stolen Roadmap
I provided detailed SEO consulting for a firearms training company. They took my roadmap, handed it to their own team, and then threatened to sue me when I built a marketplace around their product. Cost: a thriving business idea and the money to fight it.
Read the full story → 02The $18,000 Handshake
Verbal 25% equity deal. I built a brand from scratch — website, photos, video, construction, multiple trips across Nevada and Utah. His wife said they couldn't have done it without me. Shortly after I helped him qualify for a home loan, he stopped paying.
Read the full story → 03I Built Their Market. They Gave It to Amazon.
I drove prototypes to a ski resort at 6,000 feet to test them. I convinced the manufacturer to add a feature that made the product worth buying. I built the online market. No contract, no equity. When Amazon came calling, they didn't need me anymore.
Read the full story → 04They Cloned My Work and Changed the Password
Built a complete banner ad system for an airgun forum — designed the ads, set up the server, sold the inventory. Six months later a new partner arrived. They copied everything I built, switched over, and cut me out. My Photoshop files. My ad server setup. My clients.
Read the full story → 05 Coming SoonThe Night My Entire Site Network Died
One security vulnerability. One night. Hundreds of hours of work — gone. Drupalgeddon taught me everything I now know about backups, hosting choices, and why I build static sites instead of betting everything on a CMS running on a SQL database.
Read the preview → 06 Coming SoonSometimes You Have to Let Go to Move On
I own hundreds of domain names. Some represent real businesses. Some are old ideas I've been renewing out of habit for fifteen years. Learning when to hold, when to sell, and when to walk away entirely is one of the most underrated skills in this business.
Read the preview →The Pattern
Every single one of these was a verbal percentage deal. 25% of this. 25% of that. Revenue share on the other thing. Four times. Different people, different industries, same result.
The percentage was never the problem. The missing piece of paper was.
Read: Always Get a Contract →