Some years ago I was partnered, briefly, with this Hollywood video editor. We introduced sleek branding videos to the industry and taught entrepreneurs how to create social media buzz with something more compelling than a boring blank wall behind them. We showed people how to think about video, funnels, and presence differently. We traveled, spoke at industry events, hosted our own, and pumped out a funnel with a few online marketing training products.
A few years after we'd parted ways, we caught up. His current venture was going downhill… I don’t remember exactly what it was, maybe a marketing agency. He was telling me what he was considering next, and it was still very money-focused. Where’s the money. Money money money.
At that point I was deep in a spiritual healing journey. Long sabbatical. Burned out from hustle culture. I’d basically run for the woods. I told him, why don’t you take a break. Give yourself a moment to get clear. Maybe find something driven by different values. Don’t jump straight into the next thing.
He told me that’s exactly what his mom had said too.
Fast forward about a year. I hear from another former partner that he’d been hanging out with him at a crypto conference in Silicon Valley. He was suddenly flush with money. Somehow found himself at the top of the pyramid of a crypto project. I’m talking millions a week. Hosting a party on a yacht. Buying Rolexes for his team.
Another wild synchronicity… he’d rented a venue in SF for a satellite event that belonged to a friend of mine. A man I was wildly crushing on at the time and briefly involved with.
I spoke with him after hearing about all this, and it genuinely sounded like he’d just stumbled into it. He’d tried two or three different projects. One was making him a few grand on autopilot. This one just took off. He went all in… pushing the funnels, his “teammates" pushing hard too. I sniffed around a bit and it was quite the turn off. But I end up poking around and giving it a go quietly for a few weeks since he'd given me a position.
And then that company went down. AG-type stuff. I start getting phone calls from WSJ reporters asking me about our past associations. My former partner is nowhere to be found. After a few solid years of no contact, I honestly wondered if he might be dead… or hiding out on a private island somewhere. I was definitely hoping for the second and half-jokingly praying he’d diversified his bags and would reappear as the solution to my financial woes 😂
Then one day I finally looked him up and realized he was in prison. He’d flown in to see his family and the rest is history. He pled guilty because he was genuinely scared. Everything confiscated by the government. A lot of coin. I believe he was scapegoated. When I eventually spoke to him, maybe a year ago, he was pretty much stripped off everything… left with nothing and barred from having a career in crypto moving forward.
Life humbled him hard.
And I remember thinking… man. That’s fucking tragic.
