I story I can finally tell

I believe the statute of limitations has finally expired on this one

Aug 31, 2024

Hello friends!

I have a few things to announce before jumping into the story…

Get The Great Team Turnaround for $5.55!

Ripples Media is running a campaign as we ramp up to the launch of my fifth book, The Purpose Playbook. This week they have The Great Team Turnaround (which is most people’s favorite) for $5.55 on Kindle.

Oh, I’m also excited to be giving a talk to launch my book on September 20th and I’d love for you to consider coming! It will be at the Inspire Brands conference center and Ken Bernhardt (my mentor, friend, and the greatest guy in Atlanta) will be introducing me. Plus, even though I know you’ll be buying a copy of The Purpose Playbook when it’s out (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), the first 75 attendees of this event will get a free copy of the book, so you’ll have one to share with a friend :) Sign up now as it’s already filling up!

Some news about my podcast

I shuttered it.

Well, that’s not exactly true. I…pivoted it. The Begin the Begin Podcast has transformed into a YouTube series called, Planting Seeds. You can learn more about why I made this change in the first episode, but the long and short of it is that I wanted to make it a little less serious, a little less difficult to produce, and a lot more shareable. I plan to have a wide-range of guests and topics — from the very silly to the very important — all with the goal of changing people’s hearts and minds, and providing a little insight into other people’s lives. This is how empathy starts, and empathy is how we solve the world’s problems.

Read, Listen, Watch

Read: South Downtown is about to become one of Atlanta’s tech hubs, and David Cummings explains the how and why around it.

Listen: Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold (yes, that Arnold). I love listening to motivational audio books while running, and this one, read by Arnold himself, is full of great stories from his life.

Watch: I’ll be selfish here and say that you should watch my conversation with Sanjay Parekh on the Planting Seeds series. I ask him the most absurd questions and we laugh for about 25 minutes straight.

And now, onto our story

Here's a story I think I can finally tell. The statute of limitations has passed, the people involved are no longer around (they're still "around," just not around ME), and the old wounds have healed.

Mostly.

This story takes place back in late 2005. My first company, Spunlogic, had won the client of all clients - the Georgia Aquarium. Everyone wanted this account as it was the highest-profile thing happening in Atlanta at the time.

I mean, how often does a city build the largest aquarium in the world? Hardly ever.

We won the business to build the aquarium's website, including the ticketing system.

For the most part, everything went swimmingly (ha) during the website production. The only concerning aspect was that the CTO of the aquarium, let's call him Burch, decided that they would handle hosting the website rather than have us manage that part of the project. That alone wasn't concerning - plenty of companies have their own hosting partners for their web properties.

The concerning part was that he was using one server, and even worse, it was a shared server. Like, lots of other websites were also going to be running on the server alongside the aquarium.

We expressed our concerns, suggesting that the traffic the site would receive on launch day (mostly due to a segment on Good Morning America) warranted upwards of five dedicated servers, not one shared one.

He said he appreciated our advice but reminded us that our job was to build the website, not host it, and that he knew what he was doing.

Feeling we had done our duty in expressing our concerns, we acquiesced and went back to the job of building the site, which was a massive effort, to be sure.

The website's launch date coincided with a family beach trip we had planned. I had been on the fence about going on the trip, or at least staying the entire time, but my team assured me that there was nothing I could do to help — it had been many years since I was involved in the production side of our business — and in fact, I'd probably only make everyone nervous pacing around the office.

And so, the Sunday before the Wednesday launch, we left for St. George Island for a week.

As soon as we crossed the bridge to St. George, and for the entirety of our week, the cellular on my phone stopped working. No worries, I should be able to check email on the house's WIFI. Nope. The WIFI was out for our entire trip as well. I know this sounds insane, but remember, this was 2005. (You remember 2005, right? Tom Cruise was going insane on Oprah's couch, the first ever video was uploaded to YouTube, and Lance Armstrong retired and none of us knew why 🤔.) So, needless to say, it really wasn't that odd not to be able to connect to the outside world.

What was odd was that I somehow saw this as a sign that I was meant to give up a little control and let the team do their thing. If something went wrong, not only did I almost definitely not have the skills to fix it, but I had three partners in the business who were more than capable of solving problems.

This would be my big moment of delegation. How was I to know that by the end of the week, one of the biggest consulting companies in the world would threaten me with a lawsuit?

I crossed the bridge, and all hell broke loose

The beach trip was terrific, probably because I literally couldn't work. We relaxed, read books, completed puzzles, took naps (puzzle building can do that to you), built sandcastles, and ate great food.

I'll never forget the moment, shortly after crossing the bridge back to the mainland, when my phone's cellular kicked back on. My phone started dinging with missed calls and texts, letting me know that a lot of people had been trying to get ahold of me. I pulled into a gas station and let my wife start driving so I could see what was going on. I first checked my texts from Raj and Danny, which went something like this:

Yo, I think we might have a problem, give me a ring.

Jeff, call me back.

Jeff, where are you? We need you to call us back as soon as you get this.

Dude...we're dying here, the team is freaking out...CALL BACK.

They're threatening to sue us - WHEREAREYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We've all been working through Thanksgiving, we let the team go home for a few hours. I hope you're having a GREAT TIME AT THE BEACH 😡

I also had dozens of voicemails and hundreds of emails, laying out probably the worst situation that's ever happened to any of my companies before or since.

It turned out, with all the traffic that hit the site the morning of the launch, the site crashed immediately. People were trying to buy tickets for opening day or season tickets for their family, and the site was crashing. Good Morning America was telling everyone to go to the website and get their tickets - AND THE SITE WAS CRASHING. Crashing so thoroughly that almost no one was able to purchase tickets.

I guess it turns out that when you send Super Bowl-level traffic to a website on a single, shared server, the thing is going to crash.

But, why was this such a problem for my team, you ask? You told us your team wasn't in charge of hosting the website, and you pointed out to the CTO that their current set up wasn't nearly good enough for the launch, right?

Yes, that's right. But guess who the CTO told about that? Nobody. Instead, as soon as the site started crashing, he started blaming our team. Our team then got involved doing everything they could to help him stand up new servers, and, unbeknownst to us, behind the scenes he was telling everyone and anyone that would listen that we had dropped the ball.

Our team, after working around the clock for several days trying to help, eventually told him that we would have to stop to allow our team to go home for Thanksgiving, gently reminding him that the website hosting wasn't in our scope of work, so really he should find someone else to do the heavy lifting at this point.

And that's when the world's largest consulting firm got involved, and began threatening us with lawsuits if we didn't keep working through the holiday to fix this problem.

Looking back, this is where I could have helped out. The team was shaken and exhausted and now, being threatened, and I probably could have helped guide them during this storm. Instead, I was kicked back at the beach reading a good book.

I received MANY voicemails from one of the top leaders at the consulting firm, threatening me in so many ways (and assuming that I was simply ignoring his calls.) The words, "you'll never work in this town again," were said, which is the second time someone has said that to me. (Actually, the other guy said, "you'll never work in this industry again," but potato potato.)

Eventually, after weeks of work, our team was able to work with the CTO to stabilize the website and people were able to buy their tickets to the aquarium with ease. We waited a few months for the dust to settle, then we promptly fired them as a client.

The point

After reading this story, you're probably thinking:

I'm surprised he's ever gone back to the aquarium (I have, many times, and I love it. I’m also big fans of the people at the aquarium, with a few of my companies working with them today.)
I'm sure he's never delegated anything important since (in fact, I consider myself a master delegator…delegating is my favorite, much like smiling is for Buddy the Elf)
I'm guessing you ran screaming from the agency business for ever (strike
three...in fact, since then I've started multiple agencies)

I’m actually not certain that there is any profound business or life lesson that came out of this. There were a lot of “firsts” for me, however. The first time I tried to vacation “unplugged.” The first time I was threatened with a lawsuit. The first time we fired a client.

But, it’s a story that I’ve wanted to share, if for nothing else than to re-live it a bit and laugh at how ridiculous it all was.

I hope you’re happy.

Recent podcasts

I used to produce a podcast called Begin the Begin and I co-host a podcast called Who has time to read?!, and I’ve started a new YouTube series called, Planting Seeds. I hope you'll consider subscribing. Here are some of the latest episodes:

Jeff Hilimire's Begin the Begin Newsletter

Discussion about this post