Kicked Out of My Own Company

GoalLaunch was going to be the one. A Teespring competitor, built by me and Steve and a third partner. We did $200K in the first thirty days. I bought a Ninja 600 off my barber to celebrate. Not a smart purchase. A twenty-year-old with real money for the first time, buying a motorcycle from the man who cuts his hair. I loved that bike.

Then the third partner read the corporate documents more carefully than I had. Everything was in his name. He used the paperwork to push me out of the company. I did not see it coming. That is the part I still sit with.

I had $100 left to my name. Not $100 in one account. $100 total, at twenty years old, a few weeks after a company I built did $200K in a month. I checked the balance more than once. The number did not change.

I did not tell my parents. I did not tell anybody. There is a specific quiet that comes with losing something in public and having to keep a normal face about it. I got very good at that face in 2014.

I trusted the wrong person and I did not read the documents. Both of those are on me. Steve had nothing to do with it, and I have said so every time the story comes up. The partner who did it went bankrupt inside a year, and I did not feel much of anything when I heard it. What it cost me was not the money. The money came back. What it cost me was the version of me that assumed the people in the room were on my side, and I have never gotten him back.