Part of what led me to starting SEO National was the last company I worked for had their doors kicked down with guns drawn by the ATF, FTC, and local Sheriff’s office…
Straight out of a movie scene.
Fortunately, I worked remotely at home in another state.
Before Slack we communicated through AOL Instant Messenger. One morning I couldn’t get a hold of anybody. Even tried calling the office. Nothing.
Eventually, one of the other web designers that I was a lead over messaged me and said “Did you hear?”
A few hours after that first message I was finally able to get a hold of my manager, and he confirmed the rumor was true. The company was shut down.
However, the way the company was structured is they registered different arms as different companies. So the marketing division I was in was legally a separate entity than the product/fulfillment arm.
The manager said only the product division was shut down, and the other 4 of 5 groups would continue to operate as things were sorted out.
The guy who ran the company was always very kind. He was married to his high school sweetheart, and had kids that loved him. It was part of what attracted me to the opportunity, as the employer prior to him was toxically opposite.
This blotchy picture was taken nearly 20 years ago. It’s not a hotel or resort. It’s a lazy river in my former employer’s backyard.
- 10 acres
- 11 bedrooms
- 9 bathrooms
- live-in casita
- oasis + lazy river
- horse barn & stables
- 13,000 square feet
❌ He lost it all.
Come to find out he had a civil suit from a couple years prior, but no criminal suit. Well, the criminal suit eventually caught up. While the government was at it they lumped in the new business on any charges they could, too.
The attorney took him to Superior Court… and it was thrown out.
The attorney after him had a bone to pick. I can’t remember why, and guarantee I got some of this wrong, but there was some personal association that should have cause the whole thing to be thrown out the window to begin with.
So he was taken to a second Superior Court… also thrown out.
If I remember right, it was thrown out of FIVE Superior Courts… but it stuck on the sixth, and everything was done for.
At that moment I had three choices.
1️⃣ – Hold my breath and see if I truly still did have a job.
Would I get paid, or be going into debt with each passing day?
2️⃣ – Go find a new job.
I’d be starting over in a lot of ways, losing flexibility in working at home, and with no timeframe of when I get hired. But at least I’d be doing something other than holding my breath.
3️⃣ – Leverage the side client I had built up and take a leap of faith.
I had built up enough side clients that it made up about 40% of my income. The day job with the other 60% took up 80% of my time though.
If I truly didn’t have a job anymore I’d lose the majority of my income, but free up the majority of my time to focus on MY clients, MY opportunity.
I did the math. With my wife also working at the time, we could still pay our bills. We just wouldn’t have disposable income.
But with upsides of being self-employed, freedom of time, and who-knows-what income potential… it seemed like as calculated as a risk as I’d have an opportunity to take. So I chose option #3, took the leap of faith and bet on myself.
By freeing up that time I made the income back up in just a few months. By the 2nd year I had hit six figures, and it’s only gone up since then.
At the age of 32, my former employer was sent to 29.5 years in prison.
17 years later and I never saw a final paycheck or heard anything from anyone at the company. I found out what happened from the news. Pretty screwed up thinking about leaving your team out to dry like that.
Yet, I learned a lot from that company on what NOT to do in business. That perspective has contributed to me now having a thriving agency employing several dozen loyal, amazing people, and a track record for massive returns, and unheard of client retention. We still have clients from year one, still paying month after month, for 17 years of consistent, predictable, sustainable growth for them.
For those that believe in karma…
- There was one exception to someone reaching out years later. One of the managers, the owner’s sister, reached out to me and asked if I could donate to their kids baseball fund. Pretty ironic that I was left without a lifeline and they come asking for a handout.
- And in an odd twist, the owner ended up being pardoned about a decade later. But by then his wife had divorced him, married someone else, and had a kid.
