433: How A Partnership Nightmare Destroyed A $10M Blog With Jeff Rose

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Critter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. The day I my good friend and mastermind buddy, Jeff Rose, back on the show after seven years and a lot has changed. His partners have changed, the content game has changed, and we’re going to discuss how to be successful in content creation today. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for the 2023 Seller Summit are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. It is the conference that I hold every year

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that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And you all probably know me well enough by now to know that my event has zero fluff. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business and not high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, and we all, and by all, we mean that everyone eats together and everyone parties together every single night. I love smaller events and tickets always sell out far in advance.

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Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over $250k or $1 million per year, we also offer a special mastermind experience where we break up into small groups, lock ourselves in a room, cater in food, and help each other with our businesses. The Sello Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 23rd to May 25th. I also want to thank Postscope for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. This is why I focus a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing.

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SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source in my ecommerce store and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript which is my text message provider. Now why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in ecommerce and ecommerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscript.io slash steve and try it for free.

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That’s P-O-S-T-S-U-R-I-P-T-I-O slash Steve. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

02:27
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit or Drop podcast. Today I’m really happy to have my buddy Jeff Rose back on the show. He was actually last on the podcast in episode 25. And he was actually one of my coveted first guests that I had when I actually launched my entire podcast. I think this was back in 2014, I want to say. He owns the popular blog, Good Financial Sense. He has a popular YouTube channel called Wealth Hacker that has 380,000 subscribers.

02:54
And he’s got all sorts of other projects going on that I can’t really keep track of. so Jeff is a good friend. He’s actually my mastermind group and we’re going to talk about how his businesses have evolved over the years. We’re going to talk about partnerships, uh, some of the successes and failures and learning lessons, Steve learning lessons, learning lessons, learning lessons, what it takes to make money with content today. So how’s it going, Jeff? Glad to have you back. man. Episode guess 25. I feel so special.

03:24
Yeah, first year. I mean, I didn’t have you back on since I don’t know if that says anything, but I think you asked me several times. I’m like, that’s what it was. That’s why I didn’t have you back. So it’s been holy crap. Seven years that long like the obviously I didn’t ruin your podcast. So that’s good. I feel I don’t feel guilty about that. So you’re doing something right. Awesome. So are you still running good financial sense?

03:52
Yeah. So good financial sense is my personal finance blog that I started back in 2008. Lord. the grandfather of blogging. OG, right? OG. Yeah. And for those that I’m sure I mentioned on that first podcast, but for those that don’t know the story, you really quickly that the blog was started as a marketing tool for my financial planning practice. was a practicing financial advisor for 16 years.

04:18
uh, went independent and like, man, get to market myself differently. So I didn’t know, I didn’t know what that meant. And then I discovered what a blog was. And this is before my space Facebook, all that fun stuff. And that’s what I did. And then, um, ended up meeting a fellow friend in this mastermind group you mentioned, uh, things Ryan Ganaugh, and he was actually the first online person that I talked in real life. And it was that conversation that we were both deployed to Iraq. He was in the air force. I was in the army national guard. So we had that common bond.

04:49
And he confided in me how much he was making from his websites. And it’s one of these stores I’ll never forget because I was driving. This is beforehand, free driving. And when he shared with me how much he was making, I about ran off the road because at that time I’d been blogging for about a year and had some success like getting some clients and stuff, but I didn’t even know. I didn’t know that making money from a website was a thing. And when he shared like how much he was making, I was then determined to figure it out.

05:16
And that led to my first Google assets check of like $152. And then it just grew from there. I didn’t know that Ryan, maybe I just wasn’t listening or paying attention back in episode 25. I didn’t know Ryan was the start of it all. Yeah, it was. And I mean, the funny thing, the cool thing about that whole story was like, this was going back to 2009.

05:38
And we talked on the phone and then we met at different conferences and at this point in time. So Ryan used to live, I think a suburbs of Chicago for a while. I used to live in the Southern part of Illinois. Well, now Ryan is actually my neighbor. He moved to Nashville area and literally lives down the road. Like I just walked by his house this morning when I took my puppies on a walk. that’s where so come full circle. It’s just kind of funny. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Hey, you know, I was going to ask you, since you’re on like practically every medium possible, if you were to start lower again, what would you do?

06:08
blog, YouTube, podcast, TikTok? I would, I would definitely do YouTube. Um, and I guess I would do TikTok even though I’m not on TikTok, but I think you to any sort of video, I believe, um, let’s just think YouTube you’re allow, it allows you to showcase yourself as an expert. You know, if you can talk about it also look confident as you’re talking about it. But, I would also have a blog, some sort of,

06:36
content to drive people back to. see a lot of podcasters, YouTubers that are had success in those platforms. And then now we’re like, well, how do I keep people engaged? Um, but yeah, I think YouTube, just whenever I made, I think like three different stints on YouTube, like the initial, like, Oh, I’m going to start YouTube channel. And then I know what I was doing. And then three years later, I did it again and had some success. Then I tried it again and completely bombed. And the fourth attempt is when I had.

07:04
I felt like really good growth up until like the COVID stretch. But man, like once, once you kind of get in YouTube’s good graces, man, all of sudden people, it was funny because like I’ve been blogging for gosh, like 15 years and all of a sudden like people on YouTube are like just discovering me for the first time and they’re like, oh wow, like you’re an expert. I’m like, yeah, I know I’ve been doing this for over a decade, you know, but it’s just because just another platform that allows people to discover you. And if you hit the algorithm right, I mean, you can reach a lot of people pretty quick.

07:34
I’m always a fan of any Google property because I feel like you just write something once or produce something once and then you get traffic for life, right? Compared to like Facebook and Instagram and to a certain extent TikTok, guess, where you produce one thing and you got to, it goes away after like a day and then you got to produce something again. It’s more like a hamster.

07:55
All right, so I want to talk about the good stuff now. So let’s let’s let’s catch us up on good financial sense since the last time we had talked. I know that you’ve had a couple of partnerships over the years, and I thought it’d be just interesting for the listeners to understand what happened with your businesses and what lessons you learned in the process of having different partnerships over the years. Yeah. Lesson learned. Let’s catch up. Like what happened? Like so I actually don’t even know the story.

08:24
So why did you even bother taking on a partner? You were going great by yourself for the longest time. Yeah. So basically what happened was I, you know, had the financial planning practice. Uh, that was, mean, that thing was growing. It was great. Then I had good financial sense. Also had like a companion life insurance site and going back, I’m going to say like 2015, 14, 15, I tried hiring a few different contractors to help with the affiliate side of things. Um, yeah.

08:53
A lot of hits and misses. And at that point in time, I grew both sites making around 16,000, I think 16,500 was kind of like where I reached that peak. I ended up discovering or getting introduced to a guy, SEO guy who like looked at the sites. He’s like, dude, you should be making at least, at least six figures a month based off of your domain authority, uh, all these things. Right. And I remember him telling me this. like, yeah, right. I didn’t believe it.

09:21
And, uh, he believed it so much that he made this, uh, this offer that basically said, listen, you know, this 16 five will be our base. Anything over and above that, like if you want to work together, like we’ll split it, uh, 50 50 and, and I’ll put in all the work. Like, so it’s like, okay, I get to keep everything that I’m making right now and anything over that, you know, we’re going to split. Like it was really one of those deals that how could I say no? Cause I knew at that point in time I’d reached.

09:50
My capacity on how to grow to a further point. Cause I, I liked writing. love content creation SEO. I like it to an extent, but as far as like affiliate management, all that crap, like I just, that just sucks the life out of me. So we started working together and we didn’t have any official partnership at that time. It was just a handshake agreement. Oh, really? I didn’t know that. Okay. Yeah, that was so everything was like in good faith and.

10:19
After it took around six months and we went from 16, five, like the 25,000 and then the 30,000. And I recall it was probably about a year, about a year and a half. We finally hit that $100,000 a month. And it was pretty quick looking back. mean, it happened really quick and all of sudden, bam, we’re there. And I think together we’d, uh, I think we were making.

10:47
140, 150 a month was like our peak. And that’s awesome. Right. Like, and I’m at this point, I am literally doing nothing with the site. Like I would come up with ideas every once in a while. Uh, he had an agency, so he was handling the SEO. He was handling the content as far as like content ideas. I think I was still doing the podcast at the time. Um, maybe a little bit of video, but it really like, I wasn’t doing much of anything.

11:17
move on with the story. Can you kind of tell me what he was doing? Yeah, so a lot of it was kind of site reorganization. So like I had all this content and just kind of basically restructuring the site so that Google could easily crawl the site and make sense of what it was. So there was a lot like that was a huge undertaking. Appropriate backlinks, you know, internal linking was a big thing. And just like identifying like, hey, so we are trying to rank for

11:46
Let’s say we used to run for best life insurance companies as an example. So you’d kind of have like that parent mother post. And then from there you’d have review posts of all the different insurance companies. And just the way that those were written, how they were linked, that that’s what his team was doing. They’re also all SEO, these games, all SEO. And also they started reaching out to different affiliate partners and getting bumps. And like there was one time, I think Lending Club and that used to be a,

12:16
One of our top affiliates, you know, I was making, if I remember it was like $40. And then he worked out a deal where we ended up getting like up to 75 bucks or a hundred dollars. Wow. You know, and these are just like simple phone calls, right? Like phone calls that I wouldn’t have made just because I, I wasn’t in it in the weeds enough to know like, man, we’re driving a lot of conversion. Let’s ask for more. And we did. So like all of sudden, you know, we start getting bumps and increases like that.

12:41
Uh, he worked out deal. were getting life insurance leads and, he was finding buyers for these leads, uh, and then talking to other insurance affiliates, you know, getting a, let’s go this route. Let’s do this route. And just kept trying to find different ways to increase. Um, and also did a lot of on page optimization. So I remember there was one, one post that like, I think we made like $500 a month from this one article and just by

13:08
tweaking the way the layout, adding the affiliate at a certain spot. You know, we went from making $500 on that article to the next month. made like $5,000. Okay. So, mean, there was, so it was a lot, you know, and he was, he was in the weeds, you know, on the site and just like, would just text me, you know, random hours of the day, like, Hey, I found this. And, uh, it was like a lot of fun. You know, we had a lot of fun growing it. And, um, so all this like,

13:37
You know, it went from like, gosh, we’ll never get to a hundred thousand to not only did we get there now, now we’re like, where, can we grow this thing? You how can we scale this? And so that’s, that is where, uh, I wasn’t the fun, the fun ended, but that’s when, uh, that’s when the shift started to happen. Let me ask you a couple of questions before you go on. Uh, I know you had a bunch of courses along the way.

14:04
Was that split as well or is that not even counted in his revenue? So if there was one, one of the things that I didn’t enjoy about the way that we were working together was he was all about SEO, a hundred percent SEO affiliates. And like he didn’t want, he didn’t care about growing an email list. Um, he didn’t even care about courses that much. And so anything that was to potentially promote like a course or

14:32
grow that email list. Like he was, I mean, his point of view was like, man, SEO is working. Let’s not do anything to rock the boat. Okay. And, so that whole, yeah, messaging, I was like, man, I don’t want to break anything. Everything is working. So the only course at that time I was doing a course for financial advisors and that was nothing was even on the blog about that. So that was the one that I was doing on the side, but once again, it had really nothing to do with.

15:02
GFC. Okay. All right. So things are going great. You’re making $140,000 a month. That’s a lot of money. lot of money. And like I said, I had a financial planning practice. I was grossing between about $400,000 a year. So I mean, between the two, like things are very good in the Rose household. And at some point, we got contacted by another outfit that wanted to initially buy us out.

15:30
And like the offer was like 10 million. I was like, no, like I’m, I’m good. You know, like I had no, no reason to sell. I still loved what I did and what we were doing. And once we declined that offer, they ended up wanting to fly in and meet with us. And this point in time, I had moved to the Nashville area, was living in Illinois, moved to Nashville. And after, um, actually at that point meeting with them, they, we had a.

15:57
auto insurance page that we were ranking, not number one, but like two or three. And that article I believe was making us around $5,000 a month. Um, so not too bad. So this, this outfit that was interested in buying us out initially, completely strategic move, which I totally love, like, I love how they did this. They offered to lease that page from us. So just that one URL and they were willing to pay $15,000 a month.

16:26
Uh, basically had take any leads, any traffic from that one page. So they put all their ads, all that stuff on there. So whenever they came to meet with us, um, because when we say, Hey, we’re not interested in selling, then they were interested in possibly buying like a minority stake. They should, they shared with us like that page that they were leasing out, uh, for 15 grand. They actually made 45,000 from that page. Wow. Okay. So it’s like.

16:56
We’re making five, they’re paid as 15, but they were making 45,000. And that’s when it was just that idea of like, Oh, okay. We only know what we know. Um, is there some sort of proprietary, you know, knowledge experience, uh, that they have connections that could potentially row the site that much more. And.

17:24
So whenever we started just like kind of doing the math and just thinking about what it would take to scale to the next level, I didn’t really care about selling, you know, minority state to get a check, although that was enticing at the time, but it was also, it was looked at, man, this is a potential very like a strategic partnership. And so there was like a nice slide deck that said that we could go from like we were 150.

17:52
We would be up to like 400 a month within six months and then 1.2 mil within a year of us starting to work together. A month. A month. Correct. Yeah. 1.2 mil a month. Crazy. We’ll have that slide deck. I don’t want to ruin the ending or anything, but the 1.2 mil a month never happened. Wait, you saved that to the end. People are going to stop listening right My My bad.

18:17
I promise you there’s other good stuff worth hanging onto for the, you’re interested in partnerships and whatnot to do. But, um, but I will say that. So yes. So slide deck, see these numbers, knowing that the page that they’re leasing from us is making nine, nine times more than what we’re making. That’s like, yeah. Um, let’s, let’s, let’s talk, you know, let’s talk about, you know, working together in some capacity and,

18:46
That’s when we started to do that. But in order, in order for them, and they only, they, they wanted to have obviously some skin in the game. So they wanted to buy a minority stake and there was a percentage that they were interested in. But at this point in time, re rewinding, we’re just as a reminder, I don’t have a formal partnership with my current partner. Everything is a handshake agreement. Um, so that at that point I have to make.

19:14
Uh, some very important decisions on how to handle this and what the choice I ended up making was I ended up giving my partner, uh, 45 % equity. And looking back, I don’t regret that. I still don’t. I feel like I grew it to where it was, uh, together we grew it to 150 a month and I felt like that he earned it. Right. But the, but the agreement also was.

19:44
I’m going to give you this, give you the equity, like then it’s on you to continue to do SEO. So it wasn’t like, Hey, you’re going to get this as like all the sweat equity you put into it. That’s part of it. But also, you know, you have to continue to maintain that ongoing until we ended up selling. So that was the other part of it. that on paper at that point or no? That was.

20:13
gosh, was that on paper? don’t By the way, real quick, I have to know. So this person that you worked with and you gave 45 % to, before you guys started working together, were you guys good friends? Like, did you know that you could trust this guy or was it some kind of random guy that you’d met? How we initially met was through another online contact of mine. And initially when he contacted me, he reached out to me because at that time he had three kids, he was working his butt off, like constantly stressed, and he reached out this-

20:42
mutual acquaintance of ours and say, man, like, I’m just stressed. Like, you know, just need some help. He’s like, Oh, you need to talk to Jeff Rose. Cause all I know is like, Jeff is a family guy and he’s always taking these free days. Um, you know, always taking time off and like, just need to talk to him. So initially when he reached out, it was kind of like this mentoring coaching thing. And then when I told him about the website, that’s when he SEO guy goes on Semrush or HREV and starts looking at it. And then it’s just like, Oh, wow. Yeah. So.

21:12
But over that time, like we didn’t like spend family time together, but like we talked often, you know, he came to Illinois, he drove to visit me a few times. Like I went to his place and Anderson met with his, his team. like we had a lot of interaction. Uh, over that five year period. Yeah. I mean, there was so many opportunities that looking back, like, I mean, he, yeah, I had no reason not to trust him. Got it. Okay.

21:40
So, so far, everything’s still going great. It sounds like, then you give him is, is, yeah, is going great. And, um, we go pretty quickly, 150 to 200, 200 to 400, uh, a month and everything is just awesome. And then I’ll call him the OG partner. That’s like the easiest way, not the, new, the new outfit, but the OG partner. He, and I’m like, we’re paying, you know, distribution into the business, all that good stuff. And then he starts asking me.

22:10
to contribute over and above what I was already committed to doing. And I’m thinking, man, we’re making a lot of money. Yeah. Like I’m, I’m okay reinvesting back into the business. Um, you know, I ran it by my wife and there was something about it that she didn’t feel comfortable with. Uh, man, for any men listening to this, like listen to your wives, like they, they do have some discernment. Yeah. They might not understand like basic business principles.

22:39
But man, like they get character and there was just something about it that she didn’t feel comfortable with. So she encouraged me to dig, push, um, and just remember like, this is your, this is your site. You know, like you gave him equity of your site. Um, you can ask some questions. So the question that I asked was where

23:06
What are we investing our money into right now? Or where are we spending our money right now? That was the question. And the response that I got was, it doesn’t matter. We’re making money. In a roundabout way, I don’t have time to share everything that’s going on.

23:27
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24:25
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24:38
So you didn’t know what your expenses were at this point? Like you were really hands off. I had no clue. Like I knew that he was growing his team. I knew that we had, uh, he had new hires like his, when we started working together, it was him, another partner and two employees. So there’s four of them at this point. If I’m trying remember exactly, there was probably around 10 to 15 people at his agency.

25:08
But the checks are keeping coming into your account, right? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Like that. I still can, all the checks would come through me first and then I would then pay out, you know, distributions on, top of that. So I was, I had controlled the checkbook. Like I said, we went from around 16, five to one 50. Now we’re like three to 400 a month. Okay. It’s, know, like it was hard to not question anything. Um, so like,

25:38
I was making so much that I’m like, obviously I don’t need all that money. So yeah, reinvesting back into the site. at this, around this time too, I still have the text message just saved. You know, he really, he was very ambitious that we were looking at a hundred, a hundred million dollar exit. Like that was the number that he felt that we could get. And there was like some other sites that sold, you know, that you could definitely, it wasn’t unrealistic, you know, to think that.

26:05
So when he’s asking me to reinvest, like I almost felt like in a weird way, I felt guilty by saying no, right? Because all this work that he’s doing. But then I didn’t say no. Initially, I just said, Hey, well, I would just like to know where are we spending our money? You know, is it on SEO? Is it on content? Like what’s the strategy? You know, if we’re going to grow this thing to a hundred million exit, like how do we know where to invest our money? Like what’s working, you know, like

26:35
I felt like very simple questions, you know, that a partner could ask his other partner of a business that I gave the equity to, but I got, I got the run around, you know, and then he finally, um, he finally gave me a spreadsheet of like the employees, their salaries. And then my wife started doing a little bit of digging and it was like,

27:02
He’s even on the actual salaries is like, just went on glass door to find like what the, the range of what a graphic designer makes. And it was just like, it was, he didn’t know that was a thing, man. Like he, he didn’t know how much he was, how much his team, how much he was spending on the site. Uh, also during this time he took on other sites in the space, which he did ask my permission on a few of them.

27:31
And say, Hey, are you okay if I’m working with so-and-so? And I’m like, yeah, I am. Like they’re a good friend. and like we were interesting, right? Like personal finance bloggers, like if we’re in this, like this mastermind, many of us have sites, they’re all competing against each other. But yet like we’ve all been willing to share like what’s working. So like that, wasn’t, uh, extraordinary for him to ask that. And for me to say, yeah, I would love, you know, if he’s ranking number one on number two, great. If I’m one, he’s too great. Like we’re all happy with that.

28:00
But then like, then there was another site that he took on that he didn’t tell me until after the fact. Um, and that was another red flag. But then when it came down to his unwillingness to share how much he was spending, um, I’ll never forget this man. Like I had, it was the first of a few very hard conversations I had to have with him. And basically letting him know that I would not be.

28:30
I would not be reinvesting anymore back into the site other than the amount that I agreed to. And I’m sure my heart rate was like a 160 having this conversation. And so I let him know, and that was like, I’m going to say in the fall of whatever year that was. Before you get the punchline, I just need to know some numbers here. So reinvest, you were making 400K a month. Were you talking about reinvesting most of that or just a small portion of that? Yeah. So like I,

28:58
I don’t remember exactly how much, but he was asking me to like throw in an extra like 25 to 50 K a month. Okay. So you were still making 150 K a month even after all that. Okay. Still plenty of money by, by any means. Okay. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And like, and it wasn’t that I couldn’t afford it. Like I was, I was more than willing to do it, but I was never presented with here is where that w here’s what that money is going to do. Right.

29:27
Got it. was no, there was zero strategy. Like there was zero transparency. It was a, I remember it was a, if I know if I’m going to invest X and I’m going to get X in return, does it really matter what I’m investing into? Like that it was like, yeah, it does. Cause I want to know, like I want to know what, where we’re spending our money. And if it works, it works. If not, then like, mean,

29:56
You’re not an independent contractor. You’re not a consultant. Like you’re a partner. This is what partners do. Yeah. So once again, things are great and

30:10
After I informed him that I would not be contributing any more than I’d already agreed to within three months, three to four months of that, he informed me that he wanted out.

30:26
And that’s when I was like, what? What, what do you mean you want out? Like I just gave you equity. You just got a big fat check for the equity. We’re making the most money we’ve ever made. Like you’re still making more money, even after selling the equity and getting a smaller payout. you’re, you’re still making more than you ever had. I have texts from you like a few months ago saying we’re going to exit for a hundred million. And you want to get out now? Like it.

30:54
It just, something just felt completely off. then, and I kept asking him, kept asking him, and I never actually didn’t get a straight answer. don’t think technically I’ve never got a straight answer. Um, and it, it, it, it sucked. And at that point I was just, I was, I was angry. I was hurt. But at that point I didn’t want to let him out because going back, so these new partners.

31:23
I didn’t really know them that well. Um, I just met them. Like I was more concerned about them, screwing me over then than him. So whenever it’s like, just, you’re the one that, you know, he helped kind of facilitate like them coming in and like he had at that point had a better relationship with them. Like I don’t only met them a few times. So it’s like, kind like he set us up and then he’s, he’s out and everything just felt so off to us.

31:50
So finally I got on a call with the new partner and talked to CEO and that, definitely helped. Um, but initially it was like, I wasn’t going to let him out. And that was because once again, I didn’t give you equity for the work you did up until then it was that, and that you’re going to continue to perform until this thing, until we sell. So it’s like, you’re getting, you just got your money. Now you’re out. Like, no, like you still got to do the SEO. Like that’s why, and then that, that part was in.

32:19
the contract. So that that was written in that he will continue to perform SEO services until a liquidation event. So I think I maybe answered you wrongly earlier, but that was written into the contract. What does it mean to be out? Like he wanted you to buy him out? He be buy him out. Anybody buy him out. He’s going to sell anybody. He just wanted out. Right. Are you going to tell us why? I honestly like I still don’t.

32:49
I still don’t know. Really? Okay. Wow. All I, all I know is, that when I decided that I was not going to pay him any more than I agreed to, he then lost another friend of mine, lost his business, like the contract that he was paying. Um, and all of a sudden that’s when it was like a house of cards. So I just, I can only speculate. I know that he was getting into real estate.

33:18
pretty heavily, like the building that he was in, it was like a coworking space that they had renovated. And I believe that he just overextended himself. So he was asking, this is my theory. He was asking money from me not to reinvest back into business. It was to make payments on all these different investments properties that he was in. whenever he lost that from me, it lost his other person.

33:48
He began to lose, basically lost his business. Like it went, it unraveled really quick. So what, uh, so what happened then? How did you deal with this? Um, it sucked, man, because like we had this relationship where, mean, we would text, we would call. Um, and then we ended up having a face to face where he flew in, we met Nashville, the CEO of the new partner flew in. And like, I had this complete vision of like,

34:17
I’m just asking you to do SEO, like what you enjoy doing, what you love doing. I’ll, we’ll handle the affiliate side. I’ll handle content direction. Like I had it all mapped out. Like here’s our strategy. And the response still was, I don’t get it. I don’t get it. Like what’s not to get? Like you’re doing SEO. Like that’s what you’ve been doing for the last five years. Like that’s all you have to do. Like, and I could just, he wasn’t, it wasn’t the same guy.

34:44
You know, it just felt like I was talking to a complete stranger and my wife was there too. And she’s like, Oh man, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. And even he had a, partner that also was. He was in the site too. Like they had worked together for a while. He was an older guy and then talking to him and he even shared, he’s like, honestly, he’s like, I don’t know what’s going on. Um, there’s obviously something, but I, I, I don’t know. Um, so at that point, the reality of, okay.

35:14
Do we really want him in because he’s, he’s not there and something’s going on. Uh, so it went from like not letting him out to, okay, now we’ll let you out. Uh, so we began this process and at this point in time, we all we’re dealing with attorneys. Like we’re not even talking anymore. And this went on for almost nine months, went from like January up until like August. And remember his whole tune at this point was like, he wants out, he wants out, doesn’t want to do anymore.

35:43
And then we have all the paperwork drawn up. All he has to do is sign. And then it becomes like, Oh no, I changed my mind. I want back in. I’m ready to grow this thing. Like, what do you mean? Like for the last nine months after paying, after telling us that you don’t want any, don’t want this at all. You want out, no interest. I’ve already paid an attorney a lot of money to have all this drawn up. Not to mention like all the calls and everything to get this set up. And, uh, like it doesn’t work that way, man.

36:13
Like doesn’t work. Like you want it out, like you’re out. And so then from like August up until January of the following year was when he finally signed everything. And the unfortunate outcome of all that is for that 13 months or so of us, like trying to keep them in, trying to get them out. the, the site wasn’t, didn’t have the same attention to detail like that. He was once giving.

36:42
Um, so we revenue after hitting a high in, uh, yeah, after hitting a high, I remember after hitting a high, like I’m almost like, it was just over $400,000 within three months. I don’t know this is the same year, but I know like COVID also had a, had a, had a bit of a play as well factor. We ended up having like the lowest month that we’d had in like the previous three years. So imagine like the emotional roller coaster of hitting a record high.

37:11
All-time high, three months, 90 days later, having the worst month in the last three years. Like would have lost it. Yeah, I almost did. I mean, it was almost this, what the, what just happened? Um, and I know what happened. It was like, it just wasn’t being cared for. Um, so that was, that was it, you know, and, um, he is, he was, he got bought out because he waited.

37:41
because he balked at that first time, uh, the amount that he ended up getting was a lot less than what he would have got because revenues continue to trend downward. Um, like I still don’t know what the play was. I don’t know what he was trying to do then. It completely backfired and, um, yeah. And last I’ve heard, um, I finally did hear from him and want to be sensitive. Like, let me just say this, man. Like I went through a phase where I, I mean, all the roller coasters, right? Like.

38:11
What I went from what the, know what, who are you? What are you doing? Uh, then I blamed him. I had so much resentment towards him and anger towards him. And then finally, just like having to truly forgive him, um, knowing that there’s something going on that he didn’t feel comfortable sharing. Uh, obviously he was, uh, not in a, in a good emotional spot. And I had to get to a point where I had to forgive him.

38:40
And I did, you know, I prayed for him and his family and he had three kids. And, um, and that just to get to peace, you know, for me, um, because I was like, I blame myself a lot. Like I blame myself for allowing it to happen. Um, but like, also had to forgive myself. Like looking back, like I didn’t have any reason to question five year track record. Yeah. All time, you know, hitting these record highs, no inkling like

39:09
meeting like his team and like his sister worked with him and, uh, he just had a lot of similar relationships with people that I knew that trusted him as well. I mean, it was one of those, like we were all shocked. Um, so he literally went from having this agency with like over 25 employees who completely losing the entire agency. Um, and just recently I learned that he is divorced. Uh, he lost his family, uh, lost everything.

39:38
Uh, and so getting out, like, just looked back and I thought, man, if I would have like forced him to stay in, like it could have brought me down too. So getting him out when we did, uh, truly was a blessing, but it took me a long while to get to that. See now that I heard the whole story, which I’d never heard before, uh, I don’t know how, what I would have done differently. I mean, it seems like, what did you learn from?

40:07
from all of this actually? Yeah, man, that’s a great question. I you would have done it all over again, right? I mean, everything was great. You went from 16.5 to 400K. Yeah. I guess if I would have done it differently, you know, like going back to, I went through this coaching program called Strategic Coach and I will say if there’s anything, I kind of had this persona of, look at me. You know, I am,

40:35
Outsourcing, I’m delegating, I’m operating my unique ability, passive income. Uh, but looking back, I could have been more involved with the team. Um, I could have at least had like monthly calls, weekly calls, uh, just to understand more, like, what are we doing? Um, so that I could ask just better questions, like, cause right now in the process of building out my own team, like, I don’t want to do all these things, right. But I want to have a.

41:05
decent enough understanding in the event that something’s not getting done the way that it should, that I feel confident. But like, I was so far removed that anytime that I would ask any question, like I almost feel like I didn’t have a voice to ask a question because I was like, oh no, we’re doing this. We got this. Like, don’t worry, blah, blah, blah. know, SEO, I know SEO obviously look at my track record. So I, and it was great.

41:34
Like when I, when I’m literally sitting back collecting checks, doing nothing, that, was the case. Um, but I definitely wish that I would have been a little bit more involved, just, um, have a better understanding. It’s probably the only thing that I would have changed. But, uh, because like I had, like had at one time, gosh, I think there was probably at least like five or six different people, maybe more that were working on the site. And, um, you know, just to have that, like to them, it was, I’ll say his side, but like it was my side, but he was the one that was like,

42:03
the voice, you know, that the point of contact. So we didn’t have a lot of contact. So I think. Yeah, I just would like to have been more involved in the process. You know, what’s funny about this about your story is. I actually get terrified. When I don’t know where the money is coming from. Like collecting checks would actually make me lose sleep at night for doing nothing. And maybe it’s just like because I’m paranoid.

42:29
But at this point you weren’t controlling your site, right? Which means he had full login and admin access to your site, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe just to give another, another piece of the, the, of the puzzle is, and like, I’ve shared this with you, our, youngest son, um, who has some behavioral things that we’ve been working through during this period, like, uh, moving to Nashville, like that was one of the reasons we moved. was other reasons, but one of the other reasons we moved was because

42:59
We needed to find him help that we were not getting in Illinois. We went through three different therapists, moved to Nashville, found somebody nine months going nowhere. And it, he needed help. Like our family was on the brink of destruction. So I also use that time of like, you know, looking back, him doing what he did allowed me that time to find the help that my son needed, um, which we ended up during this whole stretch we did.

43:28
You we ended up finding therapists for him and like, he’s made huge strides. So like, that’s the other part that I sometimes forget when I get angry at myself. It like, Oh yeah. Like it wasn’t like you were in this perfect spot. Like you were in this utopia. Everything was great. Like on the business side. Yeah. But man, like at home, like there was a lot of struggle getting him help. Um, which we did. And, you know, so I look back and like, gosh, like I could be angry at him, but also like,

43:57
during that stress that allowed me to be present with my son and my wife and my kids to get help my family needed. So anyway, that’s another piece that sometimes I forget and looking back like, gosh, like I’m so glad that I had that time. mean, I don’t know if I would have done anything differently. So let me ask you this for everyone who’s listening out there, there’s actually another partnership, which I presume was that new one that that didn’t go as well as you would have liked either. mean, it was that the same situation.

44:27
Cause it’s working. It’s almost like are all partnerships like destined to change at some point? Yeah. You know, it’s like, I’ve really tried to like compare this like to marriage, right? Cause like, know, you get married, no kids, you know, it’s like the honeymoon phase, like you’re having sex like every other day, you know, you’re, you’re going out to eat all the time. Uh, and then you have a kid and everything changes and you have another kid and maybe another kid.

44:55
And you know, your marriage, like it changes, you know, like the things that you do for fun, your interests, like all that changes. Um, so the thing that I’m with a partnership is like things evolve, things change. And, know, we had, I feel like I had everything for the most part in order in the contract, but I think one thing I would, I would.

45:19
takeaway is, you know, each year at least maybe every other year is like reviewing that contract and just asking those hard questions. Like what if, you know, what if something happens hard to do that when things are good. Yeah. But, that’s, you know, looking back, that’s if there’s anything that I would change with that. Um, but I think the biggest lesson that I’m learning now, because with the new partner, we’ve been together almost three years now, actually over three years now. And then I’m in the process of actually

45:49
buying them out. So all of this whole partnership thing of having partners, uh, now is actually, I’m taking it all back over to become the sole owner again. And, and I’m sure you’ve heard this time and time again, you know, no one, no one is ever going to love your baby as much as you do. And that’s basically what I have learned. Like initially I felt like that first partner did. Yeah. I feel like he did. And then all of sudden it’s like, you’re

46:18
You had a good looking kid, but like, want more, I want more kids like this one. So I’m going go out and find others. And now he, so he wanted that. So he didn’t have that same attraction, you know, that I did like for my baby. So now, and that’s, that’s what I’ve experienced with the current partner. It’s just, um, they don’t have the same love also too. They have other things that they have in their business that are growing exponentially and working out very well. So I get it. Like that’s where I would spend my time if I were them. So I can’t be angry for that.

46:47
Was it going back to like GFC is my thing. You know, I launched it back in 08. I still own it. I’m so passionate about it. And I get to reinvest my time and energy back into it. Um, and try to impact as many people as I can. Like that was the marketing tool was, was there, but also behind that was like this deep desire, um, having a financial background where my, my dad died, you he passed away, had a heart attack. Uh, when he died, he had a negative net worth.

47:15
Like he actually owed more than he was worth. And just like, when I think about that, like, gosh, like that’s what a sad way to go, you know, just knowing. Cause like I, I always tell people like he had a heart attack, but man, like if his death, his true cause of death was the stress that he had from all his credit card debt and having to manage trying to take a cash advance on this card to make the minimum payment on this one. mean, every single month he was stressed out about that. And.

47:44
I didn’t want that. I want to prevent other people from encountering that. want my kids to have to go through that. So it’s like going back to just the mission of wanting to help people. And if that means that, cause right now, mean, full transparencies. So the site is making about 50, about 50,000 a month right now. It’s a lot. Yeah. I mean, it’s like, I will, it’s, I say that and like, there’s this, like, I’m grateful for that, but there’s still that little.

48:13
hard means to think, yeah, but you remember when you’re making 400,000, remember when you’re making 150? Yeah. Yeah. I can, yeah, I can see that. the truth is, that, uh, you know, and like, still, I sold my punch plan practice. So I’m still getting like paid off from that each month. Like, you know, I have YouTube, I had like, that’s just one piece of it. It’s the bigger, the biggest piece, but it’s still a piece. I still do brand deals. So mean, like it’s, I, it’s, it’s one of those. Yeah. Like I’m grateful. It’s like,

48:42
Even though the revenues drop, like our lifestyle hasn’t changed. just stopped buying a Jordan one sneakers. like, I’m just not buying as many as I used to. Um, but as far as like family vacations, eating out, you know, we’re still living the exact same life that we were a couple of years ago, you know, and that hasn’t changed. You know, my wife doesn’t work. I’m not looking at getting my securities license to start.

49:10
you know, financial planning again, like everything is great. But obviously I have to, I do have to do some work now, so it’s not sitting back and doing nothing. But let me ask you this, since we’re on this topic, how much is enough for you? mean, anyone can live on $50,000 a month, especially in Nashville. It’s not like you’re in the Bay area California or anything like that. Real estate prices, man. Like, you know, they got, they

49:39
No, I mean, that’s that that is truly something. So this whole thing, and I mean, if you want to get really transparent, like I went through a I don’t know why it didn’t happen until recently, but I went through a stage of anxiety and depression. And these are words that are have never been in my vocabulary. Right. Because I just I just got shit done.

50:08
And, you know, military background, you just get shit done. And I think it was a culminate when, when I started to realize that the new partnership two and a half years into it, isn’t working out the way that I hope. And not that it was being mismanaged or I was being taken advantage of, wasn’t anything like that. just, it just wasn’t working out. It all of a sudden, like everything just started coming back of like the first partnership, the OG partner. And I got to the point where like, just.

50:37
I didn’t know what to do. Like I didn’t know the, the outcome because looking even up until recently, like I still haven’t been hands on, you know, with the site as far as like SEO and just, you know, some of the basics. So I, uh, had to do a lot of work, uh, working with the therapist and just getting through it. And what I was able to identify was I had so much fear.

51:05
that I was not allowing myself to feel. Um, which makes sense, right? Military background, like, know, I’m deployed to Iraq, you know, when, we ever got shot at or had like a roadside bomb go off, like you joke about it. Like it’s like, Oh, if you get shot at like, at least it wasn’t RPG, you know, like a rocket launcher, you just got a sniper like shoot at you. No big deal. Um, so here I am. Like I wasn’t able to process.

51:32
being afraid like, oh, I’m afraid that I might lose this business. I’m afraid that this partnership is going to work out. And have to hire my own team, which I’ve never done before, like this scale. So I was able to finally identify what that was. Like that was such a huge, huge release. And, and now in all that process as well, like to answer your question, like how much is enough to be honest, like what I’m making now is enough. Like it’s more than enough. And even if I,

52:02
If even that got cut in half, it would still be enough. I probably would have to really kind of budget a little bit maybe. think I don’t think so. Well, Mandy, he does like to shop. know, I mean, and we have four kids. That’s true. That’s true. Going to college. But no, I mean, honestly, like it would be more than enough. But there’s still like that part of me that it’s just that that excitement. feel like some some entrepreneurs are motivated by at least it’s that can I do it? You know, can we grow?

52:32
Sure. But also can I grow it without forgetting what the core mission is to help people? Because if I’m growing it just to grow it and actually something to kind of tie this all in, didn’t, my partner, the OG partner never told this to me. I learned this from one of his, uh, soon to be former employees and he, this is what he told them. He told him that he, his target, he was chasing, he wanted a $50 million net.

53:03
He never told me that. Um, that’s what he told him. And like, looking back, I’m like, I mean, I had asked this question and was like, why? You know, it is going back to like the a hundred million dollar exit. Like I got so attached to that number. Like, Oh, I want to get back there. I was like doing everything I could try to get back there and it just wasn’t working. And I finally realized like, what am I doing? Like, why, why do I need a hundred million dollar exit? Why do I need $400,000 a month? Like for what?

53:33
What is that going to do? Like I could buy every single Jordan one sneaker in the world, uh, even build another house, the store mall, but like, that’s not going to give me that fulfillment, the happiness. Like, so really just learning gratitude, contentment and just getting there. So it’s been like, look back, man, like I’m, it was a hard journey, but I, I’ve become such a better person for it. Uh, there’s a lot of growing spiritually, emotionally through this entire process and I’m

54:02
grateful that I get to work on my side again and truly impact hundreds, hundreds of thousands maybe. Hey, that’s like 50 times more than I’m impacting here. But yeah, it’s like, truly is a blessing to be where I’m at today. Yeah. I mean, I can’t wait for you to get all your channels back up at full strength again, because you’re like made for video. I said that earlier, but Jeff, dude, thanks for being so transparent on the show today. Really appreciate having you as a friend over the years.

54:31
And just for sharing everything, mean, this was quite a journey that you’ve been on. And I’m almost positive that everyone who’s listening here will be able to take something out of it.

54:44
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now Jeff’s story is a cautionary tale when it comes to partnerships and I sincerely hope that you enjoyed how candid Jeff was about his story. More information about this episode go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 433. And once again I want to thank Postscript which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for ecommerce merchants. With a few clicks of a button you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash dv.

55:14
That’s P-O-S-T-S-U-R-I-P-T.I-O slash Steve. Now I also want to hang out with you in person next year in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So grab a ticket to Seller Summit and let’s meet up. Go to Sellersummit.com and pick up your ticket. That’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuarterDob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and it’s sending the course right away.

55:44
Thanks for listening.