The Upside Geeks

$200K a month. Thirty people. $4K a month to me.

That is the whole business in three numbers, and I ran it for two years before I let myself read them in that order.

I started The Upside Geeks on April 20, 2021 as a full-service agency, and I took every kind of client — different niches, different models, work that shared nothing but me. Everyone told me a multi-niche full-service agency could not be systematized. They were right. I pushed anyway, mostly to prove them wrong, which is the most expensive reason to do anything.

Ninety-five percent of the revenue left as fast as it came in. Payroll, contractors, software, tools. On paper I ran a company doing millions a year. In practice I was the lowest-paid person in my own building.

One client was $75K a month on their own. The anchor. Then the anchor left.

A business with margin absorbs that and keeps moving. A business without one starts a countdown, and I heard mine start.

I made payroll on ten or eleven credit cards while letting people go one at a time. One conversation, then the next one, then the next. Those conversations are the part I would take back if I were allowed to take one thing back, because every one of them was a person who had bet a year of their life on my arithmetic.

My hair fell out. My heart palpitated at the desk. I finished around $30K in debt and wound the whole thing down in June 2023.

Here is what I will not do, which is call it a waste. That company was where I learned how to lead people and how to build systems, and I use both of those every single day now. You cannot read your way to either one. Somebody has to hand you thirty payrolls and no margin.

Revenue is vanity. Margin is sanity.

I paid $200K a month to learn one sentence, and it is the sentence every business I have built since is standing on.