The time I almost lost everything...

Key Takeaways

dad what's going on i could go to jail for that this is the time that i almost lost it all but like so many life stories sometimes you gotta lose everything before you can see what really matters most it was 2008-2009 when the recession started hitting for most companies around us not only was the recession not hurting us it was actually doing really well for us and we were thriving and having so much success hey thanks for cc me on that patel email claire quick note if you don't spell out the urgency in your emails the reader won't take action it makes sense thanks russell uh russell any thoughts on my latest copy russell looking good vince but i think we should simplify the messaging on the sales page typically we had 40 or 50 maybe 60 guys who are on the phone all the time excuse me russell russell every credit card payment is failing all the merchant accounts have chosen and then literally overnight we got all of our merchant accounts shut down yeah just text samuel from empire their credit cards are frozen too everyone doing membership programs are shut down what should we do hi i'm calling about an account that shut down [Music] are you kidding no we're completely legit well i don't understand why did you shut us down no but what i i told you already that we are completely legitimate and no i'm not i'm not raising my voice i just please i need if you back up for a second what i'm trying to say is we do have the money and those accounts are i know well i told you we they are up i don't know what's going on and in that time obviously we have these sales guys who get paid 100 commission so when they make a sale but they can't run the credit card they start panicking and thinking they're not going to get paid so people just quitting not showing back up and so everything starts kind of like crumbling so i remember calling a meeting and bringing all of our employees in the room look here's the deal i know you guys have been working really hard the last two weeks and i owe you money and i'm gonna take care of everyone but right now we don't have enough money for next week's payroll so what you want us working for free russell i'll get the heck out of here i'm worth more than that guys during this time i remember each day was like there's more bad news and more problems it just gets heavier and heavier and i remember specifically one day laying in bed wishing that i had a boss so that they could fire me like i wanted out of it so bad i'm not going in today i can't face them again what do you mean you have to are you okay how do i sell my employees again here's the dream here's the vision here's what we're gonna do and then we crash and then i try to build them up again and we crash again how do i do that again how do i how do i do that again come here we need to pray remember she pulled me down and she said a prayer for me and for us blessing me to know what to do and what the next steps are and like to lighten the burden so i could actually handle it it was just like one of those moments was just powerful it was the first time i think i'd open up to her and let her understand it and i'm so grateful i did because we try to carry all the burden ourselves sometimes and it makes it heavy [Music] so there's a meet up with a bunch of marketers who had similar businesses ours was happening in vegas and he corrected me okay we were trying to have fun to take our mind off of our problems and i remember i pulled my phone out to check my emails and there's an email from my dad at the very top he basically said he said hey just you know i just got off the phone with lindsay we've been going through your books and she's like she finally broke down and she admitted that she hasn't been paying payroll taxes and asked her why she said it's because we didn't have the money for the check and finally she broke down and she had a whole drawer full of letters and iris she was hiding had penalties and fees and all sorts of stuff it was getting worse and worse and i said i think i think at the time it was like it was over 250 000 we owed in payroll taxes dad what's going on the severity of this not paying your payroll taxes means they'll find you if you're unable to pay your payroll taxes they'll throw you in jail i could go to jail for that okay and i was just like i remember like seeing this room like like everything was spinning and i remember the next day we were flying home it didn't feel real we walked into the call center where our sales team was and the entire sales floor was empty which perspective typically had 40 or 50 maybe 60 guys who were on the phone all the times and it's completely empty except for two people robbie and randy hey ross i want you to know i am so grateful for everything you've done for us over the last couple years and uh all the guys they're gone man and their desks are all cleared out i go look out for the guys i recruited and trained for you and there's another call center down the road clancy's and they offered us good positions i mean they've got great leads and they're paying the sales team really well i got to think about them and their families in my head i'm like i owe 250 000 debt to the irs or i'm going to jail and the thing that we have to generate cash just just just walked out on me i wanted to stop on the walk i wanted to give up but i couldn't because if i did now i knew i'd go to jail [Music] [Music] you