Lessons I learned from taking a startup from $36,000 to $6,000,000

[Philip J. Fry]

So, I got fired 2 weeks ago with only two weeks severance. One of my bosses, let's call him B1, both are the co-founders, cited that they expect to lose 60% of their product line soon and are laying off people in many areas, not just me. The other boss, B2, didn't say shit and was just listening in. I know B2 is cheap AF but he's from a rich family in Spain. He likes to keep costs low and margins high and runs the business like a small business and not a growing tech company. In December, I negotiated my compensation to be $300,000 a year with $50,000 fixed bonuses for the next 5 years. This fixed expense, that grows every year, was too much for B2 and, with the fear of losing 60% of sales, they fired me. I get it. They're hanging on to dear life, is what they're telling me.

At the same time, when I first was hired, B1 told me how he knows SEO is so important as it was so good for his hunting lodge. The odd thing was, he didn't hire the SEO guy for the hunting lodge at this new company -- which was odd. After talking to a few former employees, I found out that B1's thing was to churn employees. He'll hire cheap ones and, if they're good, he'll hire expensive ones but, once the expensive ones were no longer useful or he could replace them with the SOPs they wrote, he'll fire them. I had a feeling of that and had my team delete all SOPs. However, they hired a "content marketing manager" who was my "new boss" who kept on asking questions on how stuff was done. That guy was my replacement and he was learning how to do my role. Good for my need for revenge, as I found out the guy who was hired is lazy and stupid. B1 and B2 hired him and offered him a raise, that's why he accepted the role. He doesn't know what to do, as he's a glorified content writer. He only knows on-page SEO for content writing. They're screwing themselves over and are not even knowing it, from the decisions I hear them make from my friends still in the company. Great I don't have to do anything to screw them over. They are doing it to themselves.

Also, at the same time, I had a friend send me the analytics of the company. The sales are going up. They're not going down. The "fear" of losing 60% of the product line might be a lie. They might have just fired me to keep the expenses low, steal all my hard work, and keep the business to themselves. They're that short sighted. They learned during the pandemic, that they can justify firing people with an economic downturn or economic hardship. People will believe that. However, it might not be true. The company did make $6,000,000 in the last year and they hire the cheapest employees. They might just be that greedy.

When I was hired in 2016, they made $36,000 in annual SE revenue. When I left, the SE revenue for the past year to date was $3,000,000 and the non-SE revenue was $3,000,000 too. The thing is, I think most non-SE revenue was also due to search and it wasn't being tracked correctly by Google Analytics. The reason for this hunch is that non-SE revenue grew in correlation to SE revenue. I can't prove it but that's my hunch.

So, here's my lessons, good and bad, from taking a company of 20 to 120, in no specific order and from the top of my head as they come in:

1. Don't be cheap with key employees. B1 was soo cheap with employees and B2 was cheap AF too. They did some DUMB AF things like had an intern prepare their slide deck that they're going to use to find VC funding. I thought they'd hire a person with finance experience who raised funds before but, no, they hired someone who definitely did not know anything. They shot themselves in the foot left and right and lost many good human capital during the 6 years I was there. A lot of the new employees lack the knowledge and experience of some of the former employees and, with these management decisions, I doubt the company's financial solvency, I doubt the top two managers, and I doubted many of the newer managers. Besides the SOP, workers, capital, and assets, the company is the group of people making decisions for it. You don't want idiots working for you for this very reason. They hired a bunch of idiots.
2. At the same time, I found that I was pessimistic of a few items and could have been more open minded. We did launch a product line that I thought was stupid that ended up bringing in 60% of revenue. The product line is going away. I was wrong there.
3. Get an attorney to review every contract. I lost out on $30,000 or so because I didn't get an attorney to read over a settlement. I felt that I knew what I was doing and I was overly cocky, when in fact, I was being swept. I was stupid for not paying an attorney $400 to review the contract. My mistake. Lesson learned :'-(
4. Talk to other people in the company -- I thought they were OK but slimy at first and, only when I was on my way out did I talk to others who left already. Then I got a better picture of who they were. They people who use people until they're not useful anymore. They'd rather have their high social status in the hierarchy than anything else. They're spanish after all and that's what the Conquistadors did to the natives. They just took the gold and enslaved the populace. How nice. I put up with it as I was being paid a lot. That sucked.
5. Go for many, many low hanging fruits. The site has like 10,000 pages. half don't generate revenue but the other half does. It build upon itself over time.
6. Make sure you have a quality staff. We went with the cheapest writers available and the content went from an asset in 2018 or so to a liability today, as we have issues with Google Eat. Similar to #1, if you are running a website where your "house" is your content, you need good writers.
7. Hire good people. After the initial growth, all the owners did was hire talent, get them working, and have them grow more of the company. They hired an affiliate person, discussed with them how affiliate marketing works from the company's site and affiliate generates six figures in revenue a year as well as tons of backlinks. They hired a paid ads person and that generates six figures a year in revenue. They hired a CFO who advises them on financial decisions. After you have product-market-fit, hire people who are better than you in their areas of expertise and listen to them. Experts count. This goes back to #1.
8. Keep the savings rate high. This was something I was semi-good at but can improve on. The savings rate is from the income statement. It is (revenue-expenses)/revenue. It is how efficient the company is at turning income into capital. We are in the capitalist game after all. They were too cheap but they did a good job at keeping expenses low by hiring from LATAM and Philippines. The key employees were from the US or Europe. It's a standard playbook of many companies nowadays.
9. Don't be too risk adverse when you have something to lose. IMO their biggest flaw is that, now, with a 6 million dollar company, they're super risk adverse and won't take any risks as they have something to lose. They're like the monkey who places his hands in the cage with the opening just big enough for his wrist, to grab the nut. However, he can't take the nut out as the opening is not big enough for his fist. To take his hand out, he needs to let go of the nut. They are the monkey. They lost 20% of their backlinks this year so far because they are too risk adverse for link building now. They're going with a MOZ like strategy of content first. Sounds great but, knowing this niche, it's a joke. Maybe the new SEO agencies can do link building for them, but they might need a lot of backlinks to make up for the 20% loss. They don't know about the 20% loss. Only I do. I'm not telling them either. Fuck them. I had a feeling I was on my way out earlier this year and kept a few stuff quiet. I was right.
10. You have to have meetings and talk with your people. I hate meetings but it is a necessary evil. That's the only way critical things get done soon, if you are on someone's back to get it done. Otherwise, they won't get the sense of urgency. This is also how you monitor your quality. It's not just in paperwork and reports. It's also talking to the people doing the work.
11. You need to hire an HR team (to hire new talent), finance team (for bookkeeping, reporting, and financial analysis and decision making and paying payroll and vendors, also for charge backs too), product team (if you have a product to sell or develop), tech team (to manage the site, keep things up-to-date with tech changes, keep things secure, etc), customer service team, and fulfillment team (if you need a back office to fulfill the orders) and do cool company things like pizza parties or dinners or whatever. This forum is very much towards marketing and lacks the other area of business. After being exposed to these other areas of business, I know that my next endeavour will be much bigger than a simple SEO website that earns via display ads or affiliate links. Those other areas are not hard at all. I'm not doing them myself but I will definitely hire people to do those roles for me. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.

That's about all I can think of for now. Sucks that I lost such a good company that I felt I had ownership of. It wasn't my company though and they're heading down, if they know it or not. They're hiring a director of growth. If that guy's good, he might turn things around but I doubt it. The company was based upon gray hat SEO and I doubt someone who is "director of growth" from the business world would know gray hat SEO. They might just stagnate as a SME, which would be upsetting to me but, it is what it is. I'm just jealous and angry at losing my income stream, one that was apart of the huge income stream that I built for that company.

I earned over $1,000,000 in my whole six years there. Pretty good. I could have done better saving my money when I was making so much money. I felt like I was going to make money constantly like that and that downturns were not a thing. Nope. I was naive. It was my first time making bank and I learned I do have 4 rental properties to show for it though. Quite good

Also, me busting my ass was them exploiting me but it was also making myself and my human capital super valuable. I applied to 30 jobs so far and get a reply about 20% of the time asking for an interview. I got about 2-3 recruiters contact me too, and I only updated my LinkedIn 4 weeks ago. Being a solo entrepreneur, you know a lot of things and can be a "marketing director" since you handle all channels, but no one would hire you as that, as you don't have experience leading others and a team. In my six years, I specialised in SEO and can be a "director of SEO" or "senior SEO manager" and, to go up, I just need to learn the other channels, again, so that I can be "director of marketing" or "director of growth".

So, yeah, if you are going to grow an agency, startup, or whatever, make sure you have good human capital when it is necessary. I kinda see their point. I was paid $100,000 above the top 3% of the market and they weren't going to pay me $500,000 a year 5 years from now. I didn't feel like working cheaper than that, after all I did for them. It was time to part ways. I got my experience and salary and pay. They got a larger company. Now, I can make a larger company, from the mistakes they made as well as from what they did good. Thank you B1 and B2 I really did learn with their capital and they took the risks.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Hey do you create niche sites and stuff? Or was this your only thing you did outside of rentals which I don't assume make that much money?

Also how much were the business owners making do you know? Like how much do they take home? If you were them, how much would you say, you should take and put it into other investments like stocks and stuff VS putting it all in the company and taking bare minimum to survive/some what comfortable life?

Most of the money they make came from SEO btw? I am wondering after they were making good money why not just go all out with paid ads? After all, I am assuming paid ads generally would make more than SEO at scale right? I ask this because you said how you made them go from 36k to 6 mil but, weren't you just the SEO guy?

How did they lose 20% of their backlinks??

Also, an interesting thing I was thinking of, so idk if you guys know who Sam Ovens is, in one of his videos he mentioned he used to have 30 mil revenue per month but, now he makes WAY more profit than he did before. I think he said like 800k profit per month but, his revenue is much smaller.

This makes me think some business models are just WAY better than others despite revenue numbers. Like for example, a twitch streamer named "Amouranth" makes like 1.5mil per month yet she doesn't have this many employees. It's not just twitch stream alone that she makes this much, there's donations, onlyfans and some other stuff I forgot.

I also don't get why they'd pay 300k per year to an employee when they are only pulling in revenue of 6 million? The money has to go all other employees, and the money has to be split between 2 business owners on top of that. Also, you think had you gotten the 300k per year, you think the owners would have made more money or nah?

 

[eliquid]

I'm not trying to do, what I'm about to type looks like...

But I remember a long time ago, our several spats on this forum ( back and forth ) and I tried to point out in a general way several of the points you made above in the original post.

I hope it is a learning lesson ( not this letting go, but a revisit of our forum "chats" from before ), that sometimes others have been there and done that prior, and really do know what they are talking about and trying to share with you what they see that you didn't ( back then ), good or bad.

 

[mj22]

I read half the post bro, get the fuck out, dont look back because your not going that direction anyways. Learn from it and this time run and build your own game. you did it for them.... you can do it for yourself.

you have posted about it before, it bugs you so you vent about it, and rightfully so. get your ass moving forward on your own show, focus on that, let this other bullshit bounce off you, just distractions holding you back. I dont want to hear you whine about it again, lol.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

I'm not trying to do, what I'm about to type looks like...

But I remember a long time ago, our several spats on this forum ( back and forth ) and I tried to point out in a general way several of the points you made above in the original post.

I hope it is a learning lesson ( not this letting go, but a revisit of our forum "chats" from before ), that sometimes others have been there and done that prior, and really do know what they are talking about and trying to share with you what they see that you didn't ( back then ), good or bad.

You told me so! Yeah, good point my friend. Hurts to have been so naive but I learned!

I read half the post bro, get the fuck out, dont look back because your not going that direction anyways. Learn from it and this time run and build your own game. you did it for them.... you can do it for yourself.

you have posted about it before, it bugs you so you vent about it, and rightfully so. get your ass moving forward on your own show, focus on that, let this other bullshit bounce off you, just distractions holding you back. I dont want to hear you whine about it again, lol.

I'm crying about it lol but, in all honesty, it was still quite a ride. Back in 2016, I was some basement troll who made sites solo and who had no "big business" experience. A company of 120 people right at the middle of the definition of small-medium size enterprise. 251 employees or more is a large company. I also had to apply to several hundred jobs to get hired. The skills you learn on this forum, which are good, are hard to translate into the job market. I did a good job of transforming the skills I learned here, from you guys during this experience. From my experience at that awful company, I learned the rest of the business side of things, which is needed for even larger numbers. The lady who was a co-founder of Tinder, I read yesterday on LinkedIn, was forced to quit after she broke up with another co-founder. She was harassed and didn't show her face for 2 years. It wasn't from shame. It was from being utterly terrified of the online death threats lol Poor her. Guess what happened later? She made Bumble and it overtook Tinder on the App Store. I find that inspiring.

 

[Sutra]

Sorry to hear that man. That sucks. Sounds like you have a plan and the motivation to succeed though, so I'm sure that soon enough, you'll be kicking some ass and making more money than ever.

Some questions if you don't mind:

1. What is their website URL?
2. If you don't feel comfortable saying their URL, would you share which niche/market they are in? If it's more comfortable for you to pm the info, that's cool too.
3. You mentioned they hired an affiliate person, and also a paid ads person. Were they hired in regards to marketing a product? If not, what type of monetizations was it in regards to?

 

[harrytwatter]

I helped grow a SaaS massively early in my career. They were the definition of cheap fucks. Nepotism started to rot the company and I ultimately demanded more compensation, which they reacted negatively to. So I bounced and hit up everyone I'd secured industry links with and asked them to update them to a new project in the same niche I'd spun up. Felt good but they're still banking on content I produced. I've mostly let go but when I do think about it.. man it grinds my gears.

Really shitty story but god I keep hearing so many of these.. I think the admittedly already lopsided social contract between employers and employees has been completely torn up in today's ruthless world of IPO or die. Dedicate your life and give it your all and at the end of the day you'll still just be a line item on an expense report. So short-sighted..

Didn't know that about Bumble either, very inspiring.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

I helped grow a SaaS massively early in my career. They were the definition of cheap fucks. Nepotism started to rot the company and I ultimately demanded more compensation, which they reacted negatively to. So I bounced and hit up everyone I'd secured industry links with and asked them to update them to a new project in the same niche I'd spun up. Felt good but they're still banking on content I produced. I've mostly let go but when I do think about it.. man it grinds my gears.

Really shitty story but god I keep hearing so many of these.. I think the admittedly already lopsided social contract between employers and employees has been completely torn up in today's ruthless world of IPO or die. Dedicate your life and give it your all and at the end of the day you'll still just be a line item on an expense report. So short-sighted..

Didn't know that about Bumble either, very inspiring.

As an employee, you trade your life energy ("labor") for a wage or salary. In trying to make peace with this, I did get compensated well for my labor, but it was only after forcing them to pay me more. Them trying to pay me less was very demotivating and it made me not want to work for them. To me, it was clear that they didn't appreciate me or my labor. I felt that it was a toxic environment.

To know that the guy who has 70% equity only put in $100,000 makes me feel mad, that I put more work into the company and got more results than he put into it. It grinds my gears too. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has been in this position. Being used, burnt, and throw out sucks.

But, at the same time, during December 2021's negotiations, if I settled for $200,000 a year (what the recruiters told B1 and B2 was the top 3% salary for SEOs) and didn't ask for anymore and been a "good boy" and stayed with the company. I'd have a cushy job at a company I help built, but felt dissatisfied with and secretly hated myself and probably would regretted it and many other things many years later. Come on, I brought the company to $6,000,000 a year and my salary is only $200,000? It might be at the top of the market but fuck off. I deserve better than that. I'm not going to allow them to treat me like that, hence why I forced them into $300,000 a year with $50,000 pre-set raises every year for 5 years. I know my value. I wanted more and they weren't going to give me more; so, we part ways.

Also, the two owners took on a $2,000,000 EDIL loan and, if their fears are true, that they lose 60% of their product line in the next 6 months, and that they're unable to compete with the new competitors, one of which received $4.25 million in VC funding, and that they're unable to get past their Google EAT issue, then I don't want to be in their shoes. Thank God I never received equity, as it might be a sinking ship.

So, yeah, I'm glad I was forced out. I wish I left with even more money but it is what it is.

 

[ORMAgencyDude]

I helped grow a SaaS massively early in my career. They were the definition of cheap fucks. Nepotism started to rot the company and I ultimately demanded more compensation, which they reacted negatively to. So I bounced and hit up everyone I'd secured industry links with and asked them to update them to a new project in the same niche I'd spun up. Felt good but they're still banking on content I produced. I've mostly let go but when I do think about it.. man it grinds my gears.

Really shitty story but god I keep hearing so many of these.. I think the admittedly already lopsided social contract between employers and employees has been completely torn up in today's ruthless world of IPO or die. Dedicate your life and give it your all and at the end of the day you'll still just be a line item on an expense report. So short-sighted..

Didn't know that about Bumble either, very inspiring.

I think the more shitty story is this:

You accepted a deal wholly on your own where you get paid X rate to do Y job. After some time, you got jealous because "networking" brought in more people, maybe people you felt didn't deserve more than you, and asked for more pay based on that.

When rejected, you bounced and tried to screw over and fuck them over, even though you were paid for what you provided and you tried to take away the work you were paid for.

It wasn't your company. You accepted a worker bee role.

If I had started a company on my sweat and hired you in and you were fine with it, then brought in my son and wife and brother-in-law for more pay ( who prob do different and more important jobs than you ) and you bounced like that, trust me you'd be in deep shit for the next 10 years with me.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

I had a friend log into GA, as he still worked there. They're at $750,000/month in revenue for the past 2 months. This was their high water mark in 2019 before the pandemic. They're fully recovered. They're not downsizing. They're firing expensive employees and using the pandemic as an excuse, because they know no one is going to call them out for it.

Those bastards.

The guy with 70% equity said once in a meeting "What if we get rid of SEO? Would we still rank?" and he also has another business, where he said the SEO did great, but the odd thing is, why didn't he hire the earlier SEO for the new company? Well, I get it now. He burnt that guy just like he did to me.

FUCK THEM. I hope they go to hell.

If you have a travel site, PM me and I'll tell you about competitors that you can promote for 20% affiliate commission. I'll tell you how to promote in this niche too. LMK. Mods: I'm not outing anything I'm helping other members enter a low competition niche

 

[eliquid]

I had a friend log into GA, as he still worked there. They're at $750,000/month in revenue for the past 2 months. This was their high water mark in 2019 before the pandemic. They're fully recovered. They're not downsizing. They're firing expensive employees and using the pandemic as an excuse, because they know no one is going to call them out for it.

Those bastards.

The guy with 70% equity said once in a meeting "What if we get rid of SEO? Would we still rank?" and he also has another business, where he said the SEO did great, but the odd thing is, why didn't he hire the earlier SEO for the new company? Well, I get it now. He burnt that guy just like he did to me.

Church!

This is what companies have been doing ( that I have personally seen myself ) since 2008. It might have been going on longer, but this is when I personally started to notice it because.. well.. it happened to me.

When the downfall started in 2008-2009, I watched as companies used the recession as a reason to massively let go of people. It was so bad Obama was giving people 99 weeks of unemployment.

But these companies were healthy on their bottomline and profits. Some even did better. I was "one of the ones" let go in a similar situation and told it was instead "amalgamation" even though the company was letting go entire departments that just got them to their "record year" ever.

Then, I faced something similar many years later in a different job role.

First employee in the search department. Negotiated a high salary and remote work. Every one I hired below me was making less than me and I trained them too personally. We went from 1 client to over 100 clients in 3 years based solely on my work.

I get let go though.. the most expensive person on the team. It was later I found out from another employee that I was really let go because the marketing department was over budget due to payroll, and I was the best fix for it. A few months later a VC firm came in and bought the company.

So I learned that before the buyout, they were auditing their books and finding holes to plug and I just had a target on my back.

Oh so I forgot while I wanted to post in the first place... lol

It's common knowledge now ( I had to ask around and find out when it happened to me ) that companies like to hire "the best they can get", pay them to get them to X level, then let them go for whatever reason they can.

Payroll is typically any companies largest expense. And most employees are only good for X amount of time or Y amount of skill.

So an easy thing for them to do is hire in an expert, make them feel great and loved and wait for them to get them to X level and then let them go for Y reason, only to rinse and repeat it again and again to get to different levels or when they need the boost again. They might cycle through 10 experts like yourself doing this over the next 5-10 years. This way, they only ever pay 1 salary but extract the skills of 10-11 people.

Otherwise, to get the same they need to pay 10-11 salaries if everyone stays on.

 

[Ryuzaki]

So an easy thing for them to do is hire in an expert, make them feel great and loved and wait for them to get them to X level and then let them go for Y reason, only to rinse and repeat it again and again to get to different levels or when they need the boost again. They might cycle through 10 experts like yourself doing this over the next 5-10 years. This way, they only ever pay 1 salary but extract the skills of 10-11 people.

One of my final day jobs was for a place that would give an annual raise with a death sentence at the end. When you got too expensive, no matter how good you were, you were let go. It costed them in human error in material costs, but they were penny wise and dollar stupid. We had a guy that was running an entire department for 2X wages. They let him go and had to hire 4 people at X wages and train them and lose money on their mistakes. So it costed them 4X + mistakes instead of letting one guy work at 2X. So dumb.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Church!

This is what companies have been doing ( that I have personally seen myself ) since 2008. It might have been going on longer, but this is when I personally started to notice it because.. well.. it happened to me.

When the downfall started in 2008-2009, I watched as companies used the recession as a reason to massively let go of people. It was so bad Obama was giving people 99 weeks of unemployment.

But these companies were healthy on their bottomline and profits. Some even did better. I was "one of the ones" let go in a similar situation and told it was instead "amalgamation" even though the company was letting go entire departments that just got them to their "record year" ever.

Then, I faced something similar many years later in a different job role.

First employee in the search department. Negotiated a high salary and remote work. Every one I hired below me was making less than me and I trained them too personally. We went from 1 client to over 100 clients in 3 years based solely on my work.

I get let go though.. the most expensive person on the team. It was later I found out from another employee that I was really let go because the marketing department was over budget due to payroll, and I was the best fix for it. A few months later a VC firm came in and bought the company.

So I learned that before the buyout, they were auditing their books and finding holes to plug and I just had a target on my back.

Oh so I forgot while I wanted to post in the first place... lol

It's common knowledge now ( I had to ask around and find out when it happened to me ) that companies like to hire "the best they can get", pay them to get them to X level, then let them go for whatever reason they can.

Payroll is typically any companies largest expense. And most employees are only good for X amount of time or Y amount of skill.

So an easy thing for them to do is hire in an expert, make them feel great and loved and wait for them to get them to X level and then let them go for Y reason, only to rinse and repeat it again and again to get to different levels or when they need the boost again. They might cycle through 10 experts like yourself doing this over the next 5-10 years. This way, they only ever pay 1 salary but extract the skills of 10-11 people.

Otherwise, to get the same they need to pay 10-11 salaries if everyone stays on.

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one this happened to, my friend! sucks too! but it is what it is.

One of my final day jobs was for a place that would give an annual raise with a death sentence at the end. When you got too expensive, no matter how good you were, you were let go. It costed them in human error in material costs, but they were penny wise and dollar stupid. We had a guy that was running an entire department for 2X wages. They let him go and had to hire 4 people at X wages and train them and lose money on their mistakes. So it costed them 4X + mistakes instead of letting one guy work at 2X. So dumb.

That's why the people at OverEmployed have some truth. Let's say you're a good employee who makes $100,000 a year. You can get promoted to make $120,000 a year. Or, if you're a mediocre employee at $100,000 and don't get promoted, you can use the extra time during your workday to get a second job, that also pays $100,000 a year. Now you make $200,000 a year! You earn more as a mediocre employee in two jobs than you do as a great employee in one job. Also, they won't fire you because you're too expensive, since you're not!

 

[Philip J. Fry]

LOL the guy who replaced me is a content manager. He doesn't know SEO and only knows on-page SEO. He was unfamiliar with my link building and went straight MOZ style -- good content only and natural links via outreach. Guess what he's doing now? He's removing the backlinks that are "grayhat" or "unnatural". The thing is, there's 15,000 backlinks total and 14,000 are "grayhat" links, by his standards. The company's gonna have a downturn in a few months if he manages to remove these links. ROFL! Revenge is the best and it's hilarious when they do it for you!

I get why they're doing it too. They're trying to get investors and are trying to look squeeky clean. If the site goes down before investors are on-board, they're fucked. The owners took out $2,000,000 in EDIL loans too and are personally liable for it. If they get investors before the site goes down, then it'll be a shit show.

I might have been one of the lucky ones who rode this beast when it was riding high!

 

[Marko]

Yet to read everything, half into your first post and I must say sorry for this bs, there's tons of losers in these positions who decide talented people's fate. One thing though, this is what you get from not building your own business. Why are you wasting your time with losers deciding your fate, when you clearly have the brains, probably need more guts, to invest in building your own tech company, startup whatever it is.

From what I read, you could put aside a budget and invest in your own. Cut off losers out of your life.

Best wishes

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Yet to read everything, half into your first post and I must say sorry for this bs, there's tons of losers in these positions who decide talented people's fate. One thing though, this is what you get from not building your own business. Why are you wasting your time with losers deciding your fate, when you clearly have the brains, probably need more guts, to invest in building your own tech company, startup whatever it is.

From what I read, you could put aside a budget and invest in your own. Cut off losers out of your life.

Best wishes

You're right. I am being quite risk adverse now. That is one good point.

Also, 6 years ago, I had no idea about fulfillment, customer service, and these other aspects of business. I doubt the founders did too and it was good that we learned together. I learned some stuff like, for some business operations, you can just outsource it if you have the margins. Saves you the time of having to set up the operations yourself. Like, for PPC, they just hired a company to manage it for them.

So, yeah, it was a lot of BS and I did learn a lot. Oh, as for why I didn't leave sooner, it's simple. Their checks didn't bounce and I was getting about $200,000-$300,000 a year after the third or so year. So, yeah, it's money. I stayed in for the money. Other than that, I'd left a long time ago.