A few of you may have noticed a bit of silence around here the past few days, which I apologize for. There's a reason for that though. If you're not intimidated by this wall of text, I encourage you to read on.
A few days ago, I called Tim and Joseph. It was the first time I had spoken to them in about 5 months. The main reason I did was to apologize for what ultimately lead to their departing THAC, and to begin repairing a friendship that I foolishly mixed with business too much.
Before I get into this long story, I want to quickly mention that both Joseph and Tim have read it in its entirety, and have personally approved of its accuracy.
Alright. Let’s start wayyy back. When Joseph, Tim, and I formed THAC LLC as a legitimate company, legally speaking, I was the sole owner. This was originally meant to be temporary. The company had to be formed quickly because we were in the process of getting the Marble Hornets DVDs back from Kirill Baru, and wanted to be as legitimate as possible when we began to sell them ourselves. Forming an actual company that would sell the DVDs, as well as other merchandise, was the best way to do this.
After some negotiating, we got the DVDs. I set up the original storefront (which wasn’t very good), and we set out on our new and exciting business venture. Things were going pretty alright.
During this time, the fact that I was the sole owner was brought up on several occasions. We all agreed that we should look into getting them on the books, and that we needed to research how to do that and get it done. But for some reason or another, we’d forget to do it. This will be very important a bit later.
After a while of doing pretty well for ourselves (finishing Marble Hornets, having a hugely successful Kickstarter, launching the Season 3 DVDs), we started talking about possibly getting another person on board to help us make more content. It was shortly after that that we began speaking to Noah. Originally, we only wanted him to help us create Dogdog since he had an animation background. But after meeting a few times, and pitching different ideas, we decided to make him a full time member of THAC. Again, things were going pretty alright.
However, a bit after Noah had been hired, a sense of tension between all of us began to grow, for a multitude of reasons. Unsurprisingly, a lot of it had to do with money. I was starting to feel like I was underpaid for having to spend so much time editing things we shot. Tim and Joseph, on the other hand, were uncomfortable with the amount of power that I had still being the sole owner of the company.
Viewcounts for THAC and Marble Hornets soon began to drop. This made our paychecks begin to
shrink as well. Things got more stressful for all of us as we tried to figure out what we may be doing wrong. We had to rebalance our shares of profits to better be able to live off the money equally. This led to me having to take a pay cut, which didn’t help my feeling underpaid at all. I ended up agreeing to it though because I didn’t want to seem greedy.
But the tension was still there. After a few months, Joseph and Tim had expressed numerous times that they didn’t want Noah to work with us anymore. They believed very strongly that he did not mesh with what we wanted THAC to be. I saw where they were coming from, and thought it was a reasonable thing to consider, but that we hadn’t given him a fair chance.
A few weeks pass, and the tension exploded. We had just gotten back from a convention, and Joseph and Tim brought up again that we seriously consider letting Noah go.
During the con we had just gotten back from, I had hung out with Noah and developed a stronger friendship with him. Because of that, I didn’t want to entertain the idea of getting rid of him anymore, but the way we had agreed to tackle problems like this was together, and majority rules. I would be outnumbered if they wanted to put it to a vote.
I felt that letting Noah go was a mistake. This ended up confusing Joseph and Tim, since I had previously seemed open to the idea. So to keep him around, I employed a questionable tactic. I said “hypothetically” that if it came down to it and Tim and Joseph wouldn’t budge on the matter, I’m the owner of the company and I ultimately have the last say on things. As you might imagine, Joseph and Tim weren’t too thrilled about this.
Ultimately, after Joseph and I had a heated argued about it, we cooled off and explained it away as “tone not working through text” (we were chatting via skype at the time) and moved on. However, that was the beginning of the end for Joseph and Tim, as it and shook their faith in the company in a way that wouldn’t be able to be repaired.
As the viewcount and payments began to drop even more, things were starting to look grim. My wife, daughter, and I were in the process of moving from Alabama to Georgia in order to be closer to family. This is when I found out the downside to being the sole owner of the company. Maybe it was Karma for how I had used that power previously.
We were looking at apartments and had applied to quite a few, sure that we’d get one of them. Unfortunately, one by one, they all called me and told me that I didn’t meet the requirement for income. Because I was self employed, the accepted proof of income for all the apartments was my tax return (in lieu of a pay stub). When you’re the sole owner of a company, you file your taxes in the same forms as your personal income. Because of this, to make a long story short, my taxes showed that I made negative money over the course of a year, which caused my wife and I to be rejected by every apartment we applied for. Despite still being able to afford it, it couldn’t be proven on paper.
I was getting desperate. My wife and I had no choice but to sleep on couches at her sister’s house because we had to move out of our apartment in Alabama already. We continued to apply to apartments, all the while THAC was making less and less. I wasn’t able to look for part time employment at the time because I wasn’t sure where we would end up living. Things were no longer going alright.
After about a month, my wife and I finally found a place that would accept us as tenants. It was then that I realized that I would not be able to afford all of the deposit, as it was quite a bit higher due to the proof of income issue.
Up until this point, I had never once used company money on anything besides paying Joseph, Tim, and Noah, as well as small equipment purchases that we would agree on beforehand. Now, I felt like there would be no other chance to get a place to live, and I didn’t want our infant daughter not having a true home anymore, so I made the decision to use the business debit card to pay the deposit and treat it as a loan, with the full intention of paying it back as soon as I was back on my feet. I didn’t tell Joseph, Tim, or Noah about it before I did it because the offer was very short notice. I should have.
THAC was no longer making a livable amount of money for any of us.There was no money left over at the end of the month for me to pay back my company for the loan I had given myself out of desperation.
Shortly after, at one of the rare times all four of us were in the same room, Joseph told us all that he wanted to step back creatively from THAC in order to take on other, behind the scenes duties. One of these duties was overseeing the bank account. As soon as we all agreed we were fine with him taking on these things, I immediately came clean about what I had to do with the company money. Thankfully, Joseph, Tim, and Noah were understanding and all came to the same conclusion that as long as it didn’t happen again, and it was paid back, they were okay.
[continued in next post]
A few days ago, I called Tim and Joseph. It was the first time I had spoken to them in about 5 months. The main reason I did was to apologize for what ultimately lead to their departing THAC, and to begin repairing a friendship that I foolishly mixed with business too much.
Before I get into this long story, I want to quickly mention that both Joseph and Tim have read it in its entirety, and have personally approved of its accuracy.
Alright. Let’s start wayyy back. When Joseph, Tim, and I formed THAC LLC as a legitimate company, legally speaking, I was the sole owner. This was originally meant to be temporary. The company had to be formed quickly because we were in the process of getting the Marble Hornets DVDs back from Kirill Baru, and wanted to be as legitimate as possible when we began to sell them ourselves. Forming an actual company that would sell the DVDs, as well as other merchandise, was the best way to do this.
After some negotiating, we got the DVDs. I set up the original storefront (which wasn’t very good), and we set out on our new and exciting business venture. Things were going pretty alright.
During this time, the fact that I was the sole owner was brought up on several occasions. We all agreed that we should look into getting them on the books, and that we needed to research how to do that and get it done. But for some reason or another, we’d forget to do it. This will be very important a bit later.
After a while of doing pretty well for ourselves (finishing Marble Hornets, having a hugely successful Kickstarter, launching the Season 3 DVDs), we started talking about possibly getting another person on board to help us make more content. It was shortly after that that we began speaking to Noah. Originally, we only wanted him to help us create Dogdog since he had an animation background. But after meeting a few times, and pitching different ideas, we decided to make him a full time member of THAC. Again, things were going pretty alright.
However, a bit after Noah had been hired, a sense of tension between all of us began to grow, for a multitude of reasons. Unsurprisingly, a lot of it had to do with money. I was starting to feel like I was underpaid for having to spend so much time editing things we shot. Tim and Joseph, on the other hand, were uncomfortable with the amount of power that I had still being the sole owner of the company.
Viewcounts for THAC and Marble Hornets soon began to drop. This made our paychecks begin to
shrink as well. Things got more stressful for all of us as we tried to figure out what we may be doing wrong. We had to rebalance our shares of profits to better be able to live off the money equally. This led to me having to take a pay cut, which didn’t help my feeling underpaid at all. I ended up agreeing to it though because I didn’t want to seem greedy.
But the tension was still there. After a few months, Joseph and Tim had expressed numerous times that they didn’t want Noah to work with us anymore. They believed very strongly that he did not mesh with what we wanted THAC to be. I saw where they were coming from, and thought it was a reasonable thing to consider, but that we hadn’t given him a fair chance.
A few weeks pass, and the tension exploded. We had just gotten back from a convention, and Joseph and Tim brought up again that we seriously consider letting Noah go.
During the con we had just gotten back from, I had hung out with Noah and developed a stronger friendship with him. Because of that, I didn’t want to entertain the idea of getting rid of him anymore, but the way we had agreed to tackle problems like this was together, and majority rules. I would be outnumbered if they wanted to put it to a vote.
I felt that letting Noah go was a mistake. This ended up confusing Joseph and Tim, since I had previously seemed open to the idea. So to keep him around, I employed a questionable tactic. I said “hypothetically” that if it came down to it and Tim and Joseph wouldn’t budge on the matter, I’m the owner of the company and I ultimately have the last say on things. As you might imagine, Joseph and Tim weren’t too thrilled about this.
Ultimately, after Joseph and I had a heated argued about it, we cooled off and explained it away as “tone not working through text” (we were chatting via skype at the time) and moved on. However, that was the beginning of the end for Joseph and Tim, as it and shook their faith in the company in a way that wouldn’t be able to be repaired.
As the viewcount and payments began to drop even more, things were starting to look grim. My wife, daughter, and I were in the process of moving from Alabama to Georgia in order to be closer to family. This is when I found out the downside to being the sole owner of the company. Maybe it was Karma for how I had used that power previously.
We were looking at apartments and had applied to quite a few, sure that we’d get one of them. Unfortunately, one by one, they all called me and told me that I didn’t meet the requirement for income. Because I was self employed, the accepted proof of income for all the apartments was my tax return (in lieu of a pay stub). When you’re the sole owner of a company, you file your taxes in the same forms as your personal income. Because of this, to make a long story short, my taxes showed that I made negative money over the course of a year, which caused my wife and I to be rejected by every apartment we applied for. Despite still being able to afford it, it couldn’t be proven on paper.
I was getting desperate. My wife and I had no choice but to sleep on couches at her sister’s house because we had to move out of our apartment in Alabama already. We continued to apply to apartments, all the while THAC was making less and less. I wasn’t able to look for part time employment at the time because I wasn’t sure where we would end up living. Things were no longer going alright.
After about a month, my wife and I finally found a place that would accept us as tenants. It was then that I realized that I would not be able to afford all of the deposit, as it was quite a bit higher due to the proof of income issue.
Up until this point, I had never once used company money on anything besides paying Joseph, Tim, and Noah, as well as small equipment purchases that we would agree on beforehand. Now, I felt like there would be no other chance to get a place to live, and I didn’t want our infant daughter not having a true home anymore, so I made the decision to use the business debit card to pay the deposit and treat it as a loan, with the full intention of paying it back as soon as I was back on my feet. I didn’t tell Joseph, Tim, or Noah about it before I did it because the offer was very short notice. I should have.
THAC was no longer making a livable amount of money for any of us.There was no money left over at the end of the month for me to pay back my company for the loan I had given myself out of desperation.
Shortly after, at one of the rare times all four of us were in the same room, Joseph told us all that he wanted to step back creatively from THAC in order to take on other, behind the scenes duties. One of these duties was overseeing the bank account. As soon as we all agreed we were fine with him taking on these things, I immediately came clean about what I had to do with the company money. Thankfully, Joseph, Tim, and Noah were understanding and all came to the same conclusion that as long as it didn’t happen again, and it was paid back, they were okay.
[continued in next post]
Comment