I debated adding to these comments with my own story, I have no desire or intent to destroy Adam, but I do want to protect people in the future from what I and apparently others had to go through. While reading this post there were a few things I was surprised at, but most of it I was not shocked to hear based on my own experience working with Adam for 8 months. Looking back on everything, I should have paid much more attention to all the red flags, and I was very naïve. His actions left me quite depressed and in a bad financial position for quite a while. He forced me to chase after him for several months after avoiding me, ignoring me, promising me over and over again to pay me what I was due and then disappearing again, however I WAS finally paid in full what he owed me this past week.
Anyway my hope more than anything, is that coming forward like this will help others to not be taken advantage of and I really hope Adam will change his ways now that all this is coming to light. I would love to see him make things right for everyone that he has hurt financially and otherwise, and conduct his business in the future completely honestly and ethically. The fact that he finally paid me after I had lost all confidence that it would ever happen gives me hope that he will make things right for others as well.
I first met Adam through the DNF college fb group in October of 2014. I like many others was very impressed that someone with such success in the domain industry seemed to offer so much of his time and guidance to others, especially newbies starting out. I wanted to learn from him and to benefit from his experience so I could start flipping domains, and build out my domains into profitable sites, which were two of the main things he promoted and toted himself as the expert at.
I googled him and found countless articles and videos and interviews, and thus he seemed reputable and legit. I figured that there would be no way someone of his status in the forefront of the industry could be a sham. He was the owner of DNF, he spoke at all the major conferences, he had earned several industry awards, and everyone seemed to generally like and admire him.
When he put out a call for partners in all his various businesses, I jumped at the chance and was quite excited to be considered as I thought the opportunity to work with Adam was going to be a once in a lifetime, and from the way he talked….a goldmine.
After candidates had been narrowed down, he conducted a group call introducing ourselves to each other and Adam made huge promises about how things would be structured, the potential of all of the projects (he was talking multimillions) and generally kept everyone buzzing and excited.
One day out of the blue I was invited to come on a group call with Adam, and two others, and was told I was selected to be one of 3 Vice Presidents of this new company that adam was forming. My responsibilities would be to manage all of the chosen project managers over each of the projects he wanted to launch. I didn’t even think twice, I agreed without question and was quite happy about it. I didn’t know why he chose me, he didn’t know me personally and I didn’t have as much experience as many of the other candidates but I didn’t want to question it. I’ll admit fully looking back that I was incredibly naïve.
From that point on, I jumped in with both feet. I wanted to prove my work ethic, my passion, my worthiness to be a part of the team. I began working 60-70 hour weeks for Adam.
The idea was that he wanted to launch a few dozen businesses, as well as grow his existing businesses in just a few months and that he would pay all expenses and costs and assured us of his knowledge, and that he had made many of these were currently successful or were a grand slam success before, but just needed the manpower to staff them, run, and grow them since he didn’t have the time. He told us he would be teaching us everything we needed to learn, and all we needed to do was put in the time and be loyal.
He DID take care of expenses and costs, but the promises of wealth and success never came. Now if this had been a simple case of business ventures not working out and going south, it would be different, that happens despite people’s best efforts sometimes. It would be one thing if he were honest from the beginning and told us the truth about the projects, the financials, and the fact that he had very little knowledge of how to run these businesses, but that was not the case. He lied and led all of us to believe in nonexistent income and in non-existent expertise that would lead to success.
It was also extremely difficult working with him, as he would constantly promise that he would get things done, and then they simply wouldn’t. Either extreme delays or never at all. After awhile I took to paying for business expenses out of my own pocket for my project managers because Adam could not be relied on to get things done for them. It was quite the struggle to get reimbursed, but eventually he did pay me back.
One project in particular, he told us it already cleared 100k a month easy and that we would be making a large percentage of that. We worked out a profit share percentage for everyone in the company that we felt was fair based on the numbers Adam was giving us. But Adam was very shifty about giving us REAL numbers and real financials, he was very vague and often avoided answering questions about those things or contradicted himself. After awhile he gave us more access and responsibilities it became evident that it was barely clearing a fraction of that, and not even that sometimes.
Another project he told us profited 2-3 million per year and that we would be making a percentage of that, however months and months later it was very evident that it was also only making a tiny fraction of that.
Once I had the courage to call him out on the numbers and he was so upset that he ignored me for 2 days, and I had to grovel and apologize to get back in his good graces and I felt bad that I had questioned his integrity. However in hindsight, he never actually responded to my calling him out on those numbers on those specific businesses, probably because he knew that the numbers he claimed were completely made up.
We had daily calls because there were SO many projects he wanted to take on, it was crazy the amount we all had to try and tackle. Adam was a major bottleneck because he was completely unreliable and rarely did any of the things we needed him to in a timely manner or often never got to them at all. Simple things that only he could do like pay for things or authorize things, he constantly promise to get it done “tonight” or “by tomorrow” but then it wouldn’t happen for days, weeks, even months and all of us were left waiting….and then were often blamed for the lack of progress. This was very stressful and difficult for all involved, most of us in the company I can vouch for were working extremely long and hard hours and needed the boss to do his part, to be invested, to give us the tools we needed to do our jobs, in short to do what he said he was going to do and be reliable. Not the case.
I tried to give my opinion that launching that many businesses all at once was an exercise in insanity, and that we needed to focus on ONE or TWO and make it profitable and then move on to the next, but I was brushed aside and so I buckled down even harder to try to make things work.
Almost all of these projects (including the ones he said were already profitable but were not) have failed miserably or never made it off the ground. And this is almost a year later. One of the only projects that I know of that still functions is his web design business, but that one has the most victims.
It was months of work trying to get the business structure set up and get the hang of things before it started to become obvious to me that many things were not as Adam claimed, but (and this is where my naivety comes in) I thought that they used to be great and Adam was overwhelmed and too busy, and that he was horrible with time management and execution, so that if he would just delegate more to us than we could fix all of these problems and turn things around.
As an example, Adam’s way of bringing in sales, is to promise them the world. He will tell them he can give them an amazing site, and do all the SEO, and rank their sites, and provide lead generation, or take over the customer service aspect of it….. all just to get the sale. Always over promising and under delivering….or not delivering at all. We thought that he actually knew how to do what he promised them. He assigned me to handle his web development business after awhile because he said he thought a woman with soft mannerisms and good customer service skills would be a great asset. I quickly found out that everything in the inside was a complete mess. There was no system for orders, there was no clear process to follow, there was very poor communication with the client to know what they wanted, there were customers that had ordered months and MONTHS ago that were furious and constantly messaging and emailing wanting status updates or refunds….. it was a crazy mess. Adam didn’t seem to really care, just brushed them all off or he would say “no worries it’ll be taken care of” but then it never was.
At first I believed that it was all just because Adam was so crazy busy that he had gotten overwhelmed, and that I could swoop in and save the day and clean things up. For awhile things got a bit better, I and other employees actually got on the phone with clients and on skype and tried to clean up the backlog and mess, including clients that had been waiting for their sites for weeks and months. I tried to systematize the process, I found out exactly what they wanted and tried to communicate their needs to the designer adam had used for years. But were so many problems, one of which was this outsourced person was not able to deliver quality sites to clients in any way shape or form. And working with him was an exercise in ultimate frustration, the back and forth took days trying to help him understand small details and changes, not to mention attempting to get Adam to give us things that we needed like plugins and themes.
Adam often refused to change the processes and make positive changes that would have helped things immensely, including hiring competent design staff. And it was the blind leading the blind. After awhile of me attempting to fix and make changes that Adam did not want to make, he got tired of me and took me off the project to give to someone else. Which I will be honest, was a complete relief. I was tired of making futile efforts and getting blamed for the mess that couldn’t be fixed.
In the article, there is a portion that is about Emmet being owed 75k – that part was surprising and does make me upset if it is true because Adam told us month after month that Emmet had not paid anything at all for the work we had done for him. He told us that Emmet was going to pay a five figure amount for the work on his sites and we were supposed to get a percentage of that (it would have been quite the decent amount for me) and for months when asked he kept brushing us off telling us that he had not paid but would pay by the end of the month, and again and again and again. It appears from Shane’s post that Emmet did in fact pay and Adam was keeping that from us?? I can only assume because he wanted to keep it all for himself… why else would he lie to us about that?
Anyway, around April things were getting worse and I was beginning to really see that everything was a mess, and some serious changes needed to be made. I had still been working 60-70 hour weeks working like crazy including nights and weekends and it was having a serious impact on my family life. I thought I was doing it for the ultimate betterment of my family, because all the promises of huge financial success were still being dangled like a carrot and I still clung to the belief that all my hard work and effort to turn adam’s businesses around and make them huge successes was on the horizon. However, I had been paying for daycare for my two youngest children (I have 4 total) in order to put in the time that Adam required and it was draining my account each month…. It cost about $7k total but there was no income to back it up, other than one payment in March of $1.5k that Adam did finally pay after promising and delaying for several weeks. This was putting huge stress on me and my family, as I had believed and relied on Adam’s promises of the amounts we would be making by that time, and they weren’t coming.
So we discussed and agreed upon a monthly salary rather than a profit share agreement for all the work we were doing, and we agreed on terms and a date each month to be paid. I was very naïve not to get it in a written contract, it was just a verbal agreement…. At that point I still trusted him enough to keep his word. Especially after I explained my family situation clearly. After that I continued to work as hard as ever but the payment he promised never came, until I finally told him I would no longer be able to work without payment. He agreed and then promptly began his long stretch of ignoring all my messages and avoiding me entirely. I went through a cycle of grief in a way, at first disbelief that after all those months of loyalty and insanely hard work and what I thought of as friendship, that he could so easily cast me aside, then anger that I had been duped and strung along, then I felt a deep sense of loss and sadness that the hopes and dreams I had for this company I had worked so hard to build were –poof- gone, then embarrassment that I had allowed myself to be taken advantage of and was so naïve… and on and on.
Basically I was quite devastated for awhile, as I had put 8 months of my life into this and I thought that I was sacrificing now so that my family could have a better life. He would throw out things like “This year you will be clearing $350k EASILY” and being naïve and trusting….I believed him. I thought I could turn things around, thought I could help Adam change for the better…..but it was all doomed to failure from the start. After I stopped working for him others starting coming to me and talking to me about their stories, former partners and clients and that made me feel even worse about the whole situation. I wont speak for them, it’s their choice whether they come forward or not but I can attest that there are MANY others.
I find it interesting that Adam on this thread asks people to just “reach out” if they have a problem, when I and apparently many others tried to do just that….for weeks and months on end but were given the run around again and again. If people try to resolve things in private but are ignored, what other choice do they have? I figured something like this would happen eventually but didn’t realize it would be so soon.
Now, is Adam a criminal? I don’t know about that. I don’t think so. At least he hasn’t done anything to me personally that is criminal. I have only experienced what I have written above.
Would I ever work for him or with him again, or be a client of his? Or recommend anyone else do the same? The answer to that is a resounding NO. I hope he can learn from all this backlash, it is a harsh lesson but if he has been doing this to people for years and getting away with it, then perhaps this is the only way to make it stop and for him to change his ways. I hope everyone who is still looking for restitution can get it.
