The Email That Saved My Business

Nearly three years ago, I was looking at the end of Arcbound.

Cash flow was upside down. Payroll was too high. Clients were leaving. Our operations were a mess, and I’d been too far from the day-to-day to see it coming.

I had nothing left to lose. So I did the one thing every instinct told me not to do.

I made a list of a few hundred people I deeply respected. And I wrote each of them an email telling them the truth.

That email saved the business.

The Email

It wasn’t polished. It had four simple parts:

1. Where things stand. The real numbers, the real problems. No spin.

2. Where I own it. This was on me. I’d handed off the inside of the business and stopped looking in. I watched revenue instead of cash flow. I didn’t protect who we hired or which clients we took on.

3. What I’m changing. Better metrics, figure out how to rebuild processes, and get the right team on the bus. 

4. How you can help. Specific asks: introductions, clients, capital.

Then I hit send over 300 times.

What Happened Next

Help showed up. Introductions turned into hundreds of thousands of dollars in new business. A friend lent me the money to make payroll in those early months while I caught the business up.

It wasn’t a miracle fix. I took it one day at a time and fought for each one. For a long while, it felt like crawling through a dark tunnel, working through the mistakes of the early years. I didn’t know exactly where I was headed. But I believed that if I kept crawling, there would be light.

This year, we’re closing in on 60 new customers. We’ve rebuilt how we sell and how we onboard, and now we’re turning to delivery (our ongoing motion). Along the way we picked up an incredible partner building technology to help us scale – and work with me week in and week out – a partner who navigated a very similar experience two decades ago. 

What I needed from the start wasn’t more armor. It was a vision, a strong why, a purpose worth fighting for, and the willingness to own my part and learn.

The Lesson: Drop the Armor

For years, I wore armor that showed no cracks while everything inside was cracked.

Picture a house with a leaky roof. Buckets in every room. Everyone sees them. But the owner keeps insisting everything’s fine, so nobody can help fix it.

I was that owner. The day I admitted the roof was leaking, people showed up with ladders.

We’re all flawed. And we all want to help people we like. When you let people into your story, you give them a way to show up.

How to Lead With It

Whether it’s your team, your clients, or your network, the playbook is the same:

Name the bucket. Say the thing everyone can already see. Naming it lowers the temperature, because people stop spending energy pretending.

Share what you know, and what you don’t. You don’t need every answer to speak up. Uncertainty is easier to live with than silence.

Own your piece first. When the leader goes first, everyone else gets permission to be honest.

Make a real ask. Vulnerability without an invitation is just a confession. Tell people exactly where you need them.

Talk about the situation, not the person. Being honest about a problem is never a license to embarrass someone.

Close the loop. Come back when things change. Trust is a rhythm, not a moment.

Where We Are Now

If you know the hero’s journey, you know the hero goes into the abyss before coming out changed. We’re on the upswing now. Not where we need to be yet, but climbing, and clearer than ever about why.

My hope is to one day find five or ten people sitting where I was: in the tunnel, no light in sight, on the days when you’d rather pull the covers over your head and wish it was all a dream. And show them there’s a way out.

The first step isn’t a strategy. It’s being honest about where you are, and owning your part in how you got there.

If that’s you right now, reach out. I mean it.