The side of entrepreneurship nobody celebrates: lawsuits, betrayal, sacrifice, and the decision to keep building anyway
This month, we’re opening the doors of our own storefront at 2304 Pioneer Avenue in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
My book, Prove It!, is available for pre-order, published by Forbes Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Thousands of entrepreneurs have come through our educational programs.
From the outside, it looks like the story of a business that made it.
What you don’t see is that in the same season I was preparing for all of that, I discovered someone who worked for me had taken more than $60,000 from my company.
It wasn’t the first time.
I’m writing this because somebody reading it is tired.
I don’t mean the kind of tired a night’s sleep fixes.
I mean the kind where you’ve put your money, your time, your reputation, and maybe your relationships into something that hasn’t paid you back yet, and you’ve started asking yourself one quiet question:
Is any of this worth it?
I’ve asked that question too.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
I Started With a Vision, Not the Answers
I founded MAC Enterprise Consulting in 2017.
I had ambition, ideas, and a willingness to work.
What I didn’t have was an understanding of what I was actually signing up for.
I started with an LLC and thought I understood business protection.
I thought my personal life and my company were separate.
I would learn otherwise, and the lessons were expensive.
They were about financing, personal guarantees, contracts, taxes, and compliance.
Most of all, they were about the difference between owning a business and building an enterprise.
Enthusiasm without education is one of the most expensive combinations in entrepreneurship.
That’s why I talk about education so much today.
I don’t think I know everything.
I just know what it feels like to pay for what I didn’t know.
Then the World Shut Down
If you ran a business through COVID-19, you remember it.
Customers disappeared and revenue became a guess, but the bills kept coming.
Rent, insurance, and payroll didn’t pause because the world did.
I remember the SBA loan process: the applications, the reconsideration requests, the stacks of documentation, and the frustration of trying to access help when the business needed it most.
Here’s what nobody prepares you for.
As an employee, you worry about your paycheck.
As the owner, you worry about your paycheck, your team’s paychecks, your vendors, your customers, and whether the company itself will be there next month.
And you can’t let anyone see it.
Your team wants answers, your family wants reassurance, and your customers want consistency.
Meanwhile, you’re sitting alone figuring out how to keep the lights on.
One of the loneliest seats in the world belongs to the business owner everyone expects to have the answers.
I kept going.
I wasn’t sure it would work out, but I knew quitting would guarantee it wouldn’t.
When the Business Came for My Personal Life
This is the part that’s hardest to write.
Decisions I made under structures I believed would protect me led to business disputes, lawsuits, judgments, and garnishments.
My bank accounts were frozen.
My personal investment accounts were affected, and so were my cryptocurrency holdings.
I started a business to build financial freedom, and I watched its obligations reach into the money I’d saved personally.
That changed how I see entrepreneurship.
It forced me to study contracts, guarantees, corporate structures, and documentation in a way no textbook ever made me.
I want to be clear, because this matters: forming a corporation doesn’t magically erase debt or protect you from personal guarantees you’ve signed.
Protection depends on the law, the facts, how your company actually operates, and the obligations you accept.
I learned that the hard way. So I made a decision.
If I had to pay for these lessons, I was going to make sure somebody else didn’t have to.
The Betrayal
Financial losses hurt.
Betrayal hurts differently.
Not every loss comes from a bad investment or a slow economy.
Sometimes it comes from the person sitting inside your business with access to your systems and your accounts, someone you hired and trusted.
More than $60,000.
The number is painful, but it isn’t what keeps you up at night.
What keeps you up is the replay: How did I miss it? Who else? Can I trust the next person I hire? Can I trust my own judgment?
Then you think about everything that money could have been: an expansion, a raise for someone loyal, a better system, time with your family.
Some losses show up in your bank account. Others show up in your ability to trust people.
I had to confront something uncomfortable.
I could tighten controls, require approvals, separate financial duties, and build real oversight, and I did.
What I couldn’t do was let someone else’s lack of integrity become my excuse to abandon my own.
Our values are Making a Difference, Accountability, Client Value, and Integrity & Transparency.
They aren’t supposed to matter only when business is good.
They’re supposed to matter most when it isn’t.
The Weight of Leading
At one point, about 25 people depended on decisions I made.
During that time, there were stretches when sales dropped by roughly 60%.
Customers fell behind on payment plans while their work sat in progress and our costs kept running.
There were service failures, communication breakdowns, unauthorized expenses, and financial discrepancies I had to sit down and confront personally.
As CEO, I don’t get to pretend those problems aren’t mine.
Entrepreneurship will eventually force you to choose between being liked and being accountable.
I learned that hiring people isn’t the same as building a team, and that good intentions don’t build a sustainable company.
You need processes, documentation, financial controls, and the courage to change what isn’t working, even when the change is unpopular.
You can care deeply about people and still hold them to a standard.
Both can be true.
They Made a Doll to Mock Me
I’m serious.
People publicly said the Legacy Builder wouldn’t work, that business-to-business funding strategies wouldn’t work, and that the corporate structures I taught wouldn’t deliver.
They made content about me.
Someone made a doll to ridicule me.
I won’t pretend it never bothered me. I’m human.
But I’ve also watched the conversation change. Some of the same concepts people once laughed at, like business structure, corporate funding, personal guarantees, and compliance, are now topics other creators teach.
I also learned that you don’t owe your life to defending your vision against people who have already decided not to believe it. You do owe people evidence.
That’s why I tell everyone to ask for receipts.
Don’t believe something because I said it, or because someone has a big following, or because they sound confident.
Ask questions, study the risks, and demand proof.
I’d rather have an audience that challenges me than one that believes me blindly.
While They Were Talking, We Were Building
Here’s what was happening during all of that.
Through my own business, I’ve received more than $1.4 million in Stripe Capital loans across multiple rounds.
Those weren’t gifts.
They came with fees and repayment obligations.
I share that because access to capital and financial success are not the same thing.
Funding is a tool, and what matters is what you build with it.
We’ve documented clients receiving multiple rounds of business financing:
- A trucking entrepreneur who received eight rounds totaling about $59,500
- A client who received more than $300,000
- Another who received more than $200,000
Those results aren’t promises.
Every business is different.
But consider what they mean to me: there was a time I couldn’t figure out how to get financing for my own company, and now I teach entrepreneurs how the process works.
Sometimes the problem that nearly defeats you becomes the thing you were meant to teach.
We built our Journey to Success framework around what business ownership actually requires: planning, identity, registration, branding, business credit, bookkeeping, contracts, protection, and maintenance.
We built the Masterclass, Momentum Membership, and Legacy Builder.
Thousands of entrepreneurs have joined our community, and hundreds have gone through Legacy Builder.
We established a registered agent operation in Wyoming. In 2025, we worked out of shared office space in Cheyenne. This month, we’re opening our own storefront.
People will see the grand opening.
They won’t see the early flights, the unfinished office, the vendor negotiations, the internet installation, the furniture, the signage decisions, or the unexpected expenses.
I see all of it, and I’m grateful for every piece.
Even the Win Came With a Fight
Becoming a Forbes Books author is one of the proudest milestones of my life.
Even that didn’t come easy.
The original pre-order listing didn’t properly reflect Forbes Books as the publisher.
Fixing it meant a new ISBN and updates across every distribution and retail channel, after we had already invested in promoting the launch. Then we had to wait.
Was it frustrating? Absolutely. But it taught me something again.
A delay is not a denial. Sometimes getting it right matters more than getting it done fast.
The Price I Can’t Get Back
Money can be earned again, a business can be rebuilt, and employees can be replaced.
Time can’t.
There have been countless 4:30 a.m. alarms, flights, late nights, and weekends.
There has been time away from my wife and my children, and moments when I wanted to be home but had responsibilities waiting somewhere else.
I won’t glorify that.
Being absent from your family is not a badge of honor.
Sacrifice may be necessary for a season, but so is balance.
My family is a major reason I work this hard. But building something for your family should never make you forget to be with them.
Your business may be part of your legacy. The people you love are part of it too.
Sometimes success means working harder.
Sometimes it means going home.
Winning and Losing at the Same Time
This is the biggest misunderstanding about entrepreneurship.
People think you struggle first, then succeed, and then it gets easier.
That isn’t how my journey has gone.
I’ve hit financial milestones while absorbing financial setbacks.
I’ve celebrated clients while dealing with internal problems.
I’ve received recognition while being publicly mocked.
I’ve helped entrepreneurs get funded while managing my own obligations.
I’ve prepared to launch a book while dealing with theft.
I’ve felt gratitude and frustration in the same afternoon.
You can be proud of how far you’ve come and exhausted by what you’re going through.
You can have a great month and a serious cash-flow problem.
You can be the person everyone calls for advice while privately solving your own crisis.
None of that means you’ve failed.
It means you’re building something real.
So stop comparing your private struggle to someone else’s highlight reel.
You see the office, the funding approval, and the book announcement.
You don’t see the legal bills, the sleepless nights, or the personal money that kept the doors open.
Revenue isn’t profit, funding isn’t income, a big team isn’t necessarily an effective one, and confidence isn’t the same as having all the answers.
What I’d Do Differently
If I could start over, I would:
- Invest in education earlier
- Ask more questions before signing anything
- Understand the differences between legal entities, tax elections, and personal liability
- Build financial controls before giving anyone access to sensitive systems
- Document everything
- Watch cash flow more closely
- Address performance issues sooner
- Stop confusing revenue growth with financial stability
- Spend less energy on people who weren’t part of my mission
- Protect time with my family
Most of all, I’d understand that being the founder doesn’t mean carrying everything forever.
You can’t scale a business that depends on you working harder.
The goal isn’t to never make mistakes. It’s to stop paying for the same one twice.
To the Business Owner Who’s About to Quit
Let me speak directly to you.
Maybe your revenue isn’t there.
Maybe you’re carrying more debt than you planned.
Maybe someone you trusted betrayed you, or your customers aren’t paying, or you made a decision that cost you thousands and you’re embarrassed.
Maybe your business looks successful on the outside and is barely holding on behind the scenes.
I won’t give you empty motivation.
Sometimes you need to cut expenses, restructure debt, drop a service that isn’t profitable, remove someone from your team, or get professional help.
Sometimes you need to close one chapter to build the next one responsibly.
That isn’t giving up. That’s making a business decision.
There’s a difference between giving up on your purpose and changing your strategy.
Don’t stay in a financially destructive situation just to prove you’re strong.
Strength also means knowing when to change direction.
You don’t need everything figured out today.
You need the next responsible step.
Take it, and then take the one after that.
What Carried Me
I can’t tell this story without my faith.
There were moments I didn’t understand why someone I trusted would betray me, or why the road got harder right when things seemed to be coming together.
I can’t control every person or every outcome.
I can control how I respond.
I can choose not to retaliate, not to let bitterness lead, to keep my word, and to keep learning.
Faith doesn’t replace planning or accountability, and it doesn’t erase the consequences of bad decisions. But it has been my strength when circumstances felt like too much.
I don’t need to understand every setback to believe my story is still being written.
One Last Thing Before You Walk Away
There are people who will only ever know your success.
They won’t know the nights you stayed awake, the money you lost, the people who betrayed you, or what your family sacrificed.
They won’t know how much courage it took to show up one more day.
You will.
So before you walk away from everything you’ve built, ask yourself honestly:
Am I finished, or am I exhausted?
Do I need to abandon the dream, or change the strategy?
Have I failed, or have I found something I need to learn?
Is my business supporting my life, or consuming it?
Whatever you decide, don’t let shame, fear, or someone else’s opinion decide for you.
You’re allowed to have a hard season without calling your whole journey a failure.
You’re allowed to make mistakes, rebuild, change direction, and rest.
And you’re allowed to succeed after setbacks that once seemed impossible.
I started MAC Enterprise Consulting in 2017.
I’ve had wins I’m proud of and losses I wish had never happened.
But I’m still here, still learning, still building, and still holding myself accountable.
You don’t have to come through adversity untouched to come through it stronger.
My story isn’t finished.
Neither is yours.
