Day 82 of 100

“This was a big check.”

I had just left the office of the company that had acquired mine. It was a lot of money I had in my pocket.

Yes, I could have had it wired, but there was something about having it in check form that was kinda cool. Kinda stupid, but kinda cool.

I came to the decision to sell the company soon after I had gotten sober. The business, marketing automation and advertising led to a lot of my bad behavior.

At the time, most deals were done while partying. Advertising in the early 2000’s was party time.

I remember my cofounder, who was straight edge at the time asked one of our customers about why so much business was done in a bar/club, and his answer was “if I can trust you when you are drunk, I can trust you with my ad spend.”

Granted, not all advertising/marketing was like that at the time, but we did mostly performance marketing, and that was the world that we lived in.

What started out as one night a week of partying quickly became seven. My Tuesday was a prospect’s best night all year. As you might imagine, things spun out of control pretty quickly.

But the money flowed and the business grew. So we didn’t stop what we were doing.

When I was at the height of my addiction I was clearly no longer benefiting the company (which is a nice way to say I was a total mess and disaster.)

Finally, when I got sober, I didn’t want anything to do with the business any longer so moved quickly to sell it. Luckily the buyers were friends and good people, and it was nice to land the business in a place where it benefited the acquirer. A few years later, in part to the additional revenue we brought, the acquirer was able to sell for a very nice outcome.