Helping a Meth Head Sell Toilet Parts So He Could Buy a New Set of Teeth

Why I ask a LOT of questions now before taking on new marketing clients.

I love working with startups. It’s a total trip to ask the question: “What if?” and imagine a new product or service that doesn’t exist now but could in the future. Starting an entire company based on the audacious assumption that you can just will something into existence is a thrilling existential experience.

When I first started my marketing company in 2008, I remember how surreal it was: I chose my company name, designed my logo, made my business cards, built my website, and I was off to the races. It was a lot of hard work, but it was also fun, so it didn’t really feel like it.

I was no longer an employee at someone else’s company; I had my own company now. I was a business owner. A founder. That was a good feeling.

I had a new title too: instead of being the “Director of Marketing” at a construction company, I was now the “Godfather, Don and Consigliere” at my very own digital agency. (I went a little overboard in picking my title: in my zeal at being able to call my own shots, I made up the most pretentious and silly title I could think of.)

Being a founder was awesome, and I’ve never forgotten just how exciting and terrifying it was. I think that’s why, even 16 years later, I still gravitate toward helping other very small companies start from the ground up.

Most of the clients I’ve had over the years are literally starting from nothing. They’re just one or two people with a dream and a few wild ideas about how to make it happen.

Over the years, I’ve worked with an unbelievable breadth of companies: plumbers, doctors, dentists, construction companies, auto mechanics, architects, dermatologists, florists, computer chip manufacturers, lawyers, landscapers, and more. I even had one client who made incubators for breeding fruit flies for genetic research.

Very few of these companies have been solid, established businesses with years of experience, a stable workforce with tenure, good credit history, and lots of cash flow. Most of them have very little money and are just starting out as a solo practice or hiring their first few employees.

They’re building it all from scratch: renting their first office, getting their first company vehicle, ordering their first sign, and figuring out how to price their products and services for the first time.

In the early days, when I worked with companies like this, they’d tell me what they wanted, and I’d basically just say “yes” to anything they asked for (whether I had done it before or not).

• Them: “Can you build us a website?”

• Me: “Sure thing.”

• Them: “Can you design us a trifold brochure?”

• Me: “I think so.”

• Them: “Can you take some headshots of our staff?”

• Me: “Yep. Let me grab my camera.”

• Them: “Can you help us make some direct mail postcards?”

• Me: “Uhh, okay, I’m sure I can figure that out.”

• Them: “Can you make some business cards for our new hire?”

• Me: “Sure, why not?”

My company was also a startup, so I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to offer exactly. I was mostly focused on web design, but if people asked for graphic design for print pieces, I usually provided that, too.

(Side note: this was a bad choice. Making things like business cards was a stupid idea: I eventually learned that I don’t like making print materials at all, and quibbling over minute changes for a small print run that would net me about $38 was a total waste of time.)

So, I eventually discovered that I shouldn’t always answer every question with a “Yes, I can do that!” In fact, a lot of times, I found that clients need to be told “No.”

Not just for my own sake but also for theirs. Startups don’t always know what they need. Sometimes, they ask for things they don’t need at all or that they aren’t ready for. And just because they have money (if they do, which isn’t always the case) doesn’t mean they should. That startup zeal can make even smart people misplace their priorities.

(“Merch” is a great example. I’ve seen lots of small businesses blow tens of thousands of dollars on useless tchotchkes they don’t need, like branded coffee mugs, tee-shirts, hats, etc. It’s ironic and embarrassing to waste money on advertising a company that won’t be around long because you were too busy spending money on celebrating the company that eventually failed!)

Sometimes, companies get tired of the work that’s been their bread and butter, and they get distracted by dreaming of starting a new company or a new division when they really shouldn’t.

I once had a client who was a home remodeler. For whatever reason, he decided that he wanted to start another company that did house cleaning. So we created a new logo and spent many weeks working together to design and build a new website, make new print materials, and plan out a detailed strategy for how to run this new business.

After a few weeks of marketing, the phone calls finally started coming in, and that’s when he realized (all of a sudden, it seemed): You know what? I actually don’t want to do home cleaning after all.

So after several months of work, all that creative effort of brainstorming, making new graphics, print materials, signs, blog posts, and web pages, he decided to pull the plug.

But he had also bought ad space (against my recommendation) that had to run for a minimum length of time (one year, or half a year, something like that), and that got really awkward.

People would call and ask for a home cleaning quote from a company that had gone out of business before it had even started. For weeks, I overheard phone calls coming in that sounded like this:

• “Hello, I’d like a cleaning quote for my house, please. I have five bedrooms.”

• “Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am, we’re not offering house cleaning.”

• “What? I’m looking at your coupon on the back of this grocery store receipt. It says: ‘$150 off your first month of cleaning.’ You’re saying you don’t clean houses anymore?”

• “That’s right, ma’am. I’m sorry about that.”

• “But… you…. did?”

• “Well, we were going to, but we decided not to after all.”

• “Then why do you have these ads saying “call us for a house cleaning quote?”

• “Uhh, it’s kind of complicated…”

That was really weird.

Looking back on that whole experience, it was an expensive waste of time for the client. But I did what he asked me to do. Because I could and because he was paying me.

Should I have pushed harder in the beginning and asked him: “Are you really sure you want to do this?”

I don’t know. Maybe?

It’s not really my job to tell people “no” — my job is to help people market their products and services when I feel like I can. There are definitely times when I feel like I can’t, usually because there’s a mismatch in pricing, or I feel a potential personality conflict, or, sometimes, I just don’t know anything about their industry, and it isn’t worth it to me to learn about it.

(Restaurants are a great example of this: I have never worked with restaurants or coffee shops and have no interest in doing so. They go out of business so fast that they drop like flies.)

But over time, as I’ve gotten more experienced as a marketer, I’ve come to learn that there is a time and place for me to push back and force a potential client to defend themselves and their ideas.

It’s in their best interest for me to do so. Not because I like being a jerk or want to kill peoples’ dreams, but because a lot of times, startup founders have serious blind spots when it comes to their own company’s viability.

People get so excited about what could be that they completely gloss over the questions that matter, like:

• How are you going to do that, exactly?

• How much money will this take?

• How long will this take?

• Do you have the right people on your team?

• Does the market even need your product or service?

• Have you looked into the competitive landscape and do you really feel like you can do a better job than the companies that already exist out there?

If you’ve ever seen TV shows like “Shark Tank,” you know that a lot of “founders” have a lot more passion than sense. They’re so excited about building a company that they haven’t stopped to ask even the most basic questions. Only when they start asking other people for money are they forced to face reality for the first time.

Another TV show where this is abundantly clear is “Kitchen Nightmares,” where celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey goes to existing (usually failing) restaurants and finds out what the heck is actually going on behind the scenes.

He usually ends up screaming at the owners because they’re doing such a pathetically awful job at running a kitchen that it makes him angry. Often, they’re so bad at the business of running a restaurant that it would be better for everyone if they just shut it down.

Watching Kitchen Nightmares is hard for me. When Ramsey asks (shouts), “Why do you have 83 bloody items on your menu?!” You can watch them die inside. Their faces wither as they realize they have no idea why there are so many items on the menu.

They have no idea what they’re doing at all.

Usually, restaurants like this are run by a married couple who just knew that they loved cooking, wine, and music, and one of them had the bright idea one day to say: “Hey, let’s start our own restaurant! I can cook, and you can serve food and wine, and we’ll play music in the dining room. It will be so much fun!”

It will be so much fun!

Famous last words.

The horror of Kitchen Nightmares is that the people running these restaurants are usually not having fun at all — their lives are absolutely miserable. But they’re stuck and don’t know what to do.

And, what’s worse, they’re not even making money! Why not? Because they forgot all about little things like making money during the process of living out their dream.

Funny enough: I took a course on entrepreneurship at a college right after I started my business, and one night we had a CPA talk to us about finances, funding, loans, etc. At the very end of her session, I asked her a question.

“What is the biggest mistake you see people make? Based on what you’ve seen over your whole career, what’s the number one thing you’d advise us not to do?”

I’ll never forget her answer because it was so unexpected.

“Of all the mistakes I’ve seen entrepreneurs make over the years, the biggest one is starting a restaurant. Please, I am begging all of you: whatever you do, don’t open a restaurant.”

She then went on to explain how people start restaurants because it sounds fun and glamorous, but it quickly turns into a nightmare and often results in bankruptcy, lawsuits, and foreclosure (plus divorce if it’s a married couple). Why do so many people make this mistake?

Because of the blood! The passion! The romance of it all!

If I may dare to use one more example from TV, Antiques Roadshow shows another classic case of disparity between what one person finds special and valuable versus what other people find special and valuable.

That cuckoo clock you inherited from your 5th-great grandfather? That precious family heirloom? It may be your most prized possession, but if you tried to sell it at auction today, it may only fetch $150 or so.

A lot of startups are just like that: founders feel they have something incredibly special on their hands, something that people will really want and is worth a lot of money… but it turns out that what they have is really only special to them, and other people don’t want it. Or, maybe they do want it, but at a fraction of the price the founder was hoping for.

That’s the cold, hard truth most startup founders really don’t want to hear. They want to be told their baby is beautiful. They want to hear that if they were to sell it today at auction, their family’s cuckoo clock would be worth a million dollars.

But it isn’t. And that’s difficult for me to share this with people, especially when they want to give me money to help them.

I hate seeing the look in their eyes when I tell aspiring entrepreneurs that they might fail. Or that they will probably fail. Or that they shouldn’t start that kind of business in the first place.

But I’ve gotten to a point now where I sometimes repeat to people what I once heard an older, wiser businessman say in this context.

“I can take your money if you want me to… but I don’t think this is a good idea. I think you would be better off NOT doing this.”

That feels as awful to say it as it does to hear it.

Of all the startups I ever took on as a client over the past decade and a half, one stands out as the startup that makes me feel saddest for taking their money. These aspiring entrepreneurs should have heard me say: “Don’t do it” more than anyone else, but they didn’t.

I was contacted by a friend who had a friend that was an enterprising young man who fancied himself an inventor. He had an idea for a special accessory for toilets that he wanted to manufacture and sell, and he needed a website for that.

Yes, toilet accessories. They wanted to call the product “The Pee Not.”

Okay… that… is… super weird… I thought.

But hey, I was just the man for the job! I was good at building websites, I was good at marketing, I could catch the vision, and I enthusiastically supported fellow founders.

Why not?

I talked to the client over email, picked up a few prototypes, created a proposal, and was hired. I connected them to a graphic designer who made them a logo and designed their product packaging, then I built them a small, good looking website.

I wrote the copy, created photo galleries, made landing pages, and helped create a strategy to sell their product online. I even hired a photographer to help create product photography of the product on a clean white background and also to show the product in use.

I spent a few days taking pictures of the bathroom toilet in my house with and without the product on it, then emailing them to the client and photographer to decide how to showcase the product.

I took “scouting shots” of the toilet bowl, the toilet lid (both when it was up and when it was down), I took measurements of the toilet bowl’s width, and toilet seat thickness, and lots of other weird, random pictures of toilets with my feet in the background.

I tried using the prototype, my wife tried using the prototype, and we gave the client feedback. Our emails back and forth were wild: should the toilet be super, sparkling clean? Should it be dirty so it looks more realistic? Should we try it in a public restroom? Would that be weird and creepy?

I overlaid a measuring tape on the toilet seat, both opened and closed, to give perspective on the size of the product. I had to make other measurements as well: could we even fit enough studio lighting in the bathroom to take the right picture?

Also, what color should the product be? White? Clear? Green? Could they glow in the dark?

Eventually, all the decisions were made (from my end), and we launched the website. I waited to hear back from them about our next steps for marketing.

I waited… and waited… and waited… and never heard back from them.

That’s weird, I thought. I wonder what happened.

This was an unusual job for me in that I had only met one of the people on the team, just one time, in the beginning, to pick up the prototype. I was really out of the loop when it came to anything else about who they were, what their motivation was, etc.

A few months later, I was talking to the person that initially referred me. I asked her: “So, whatever happened to those guys, anyway?” That’s when I got the full story.

My jaw dropped in astonishment, gaping ever wider the more she spoke.

“Well, they’re not sure what to do now. They ended up spending a lot more money than they wanted on the design of the prototype. And the two partners—they’re cousins—they can’t agree on exactly how to price it, and shipping is going to be a bigger challenge than they thought.

They’re looking for a facility to manufacture it, but that’s been hard, too, so they’re thinking of finding a company in China for that, but they don’t know how to do all that, and they might not be able to afford it.”

“Whoa, that’s weird,” I said.

“Are you saying they’re just now finding out the answers to those questions? Wouldn’t they have already thought that through before they started?”

Her explanation got even weirder.

“Well, this is the guy’s first business. Before that, he was unemployed. Actually, I think he was in prison before that, but I’m not sure. He was a meth addict. The whole reason he wanted to start this business in the first place was so he could make enough money to buy a new set of teeth.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. “Did you say prison?” I blinked in astonishment.

“And he was a meth addict?” I asked, unclear on how this never came up before. “Also, he has no teeth?!”

She just laughed and asked how I hadn’t noticed that when I met him. I thought he spoke kind of funny, but I didn’t notice that his teeth were actually missing.

“If all this is true,” I asked, “that he’s an inexperienced, unemployed, toothless meth head… where on earth did he get the money to pay me, the photographer, and the graphic designer?”

“His mom is funding everything. She took out a second mortgage on her house.”

It is hard for me to describe just how I felt when I heard this last line.

Was I feeling pain? Sickness? Sorrow? Sympathy?

I felt like vomiting as I realized what had been going on behind the scenes without my even knowing.

I had just taken money from a toothless former meth head who might have just gotten out of prison, who had no experience in business whatsoever, and was now starting a company to make a product called “The Pee Not” to put on toilets and was funding it all with money he got from his mother who may lose her house if they fail.

This was the worst founder story I had ever heard. And I had been a part of it.

I’m not trying to make fun of the guy, wherever he is. I fully support entrepreneurship and the rehabilitation of people who’ve served their time in prison. And I certainly want to help former drug addicts create a better life for themselves. I was absolutely rooting for his success and wished him nothing but the best.

BUT HAVING SAID ALL THAT…

If I had known ANY of that in the beginning, I would NEVER have taken their money. I wouldn’t have even talked about working together in any fashion. I would have done one of two things:

1. Tell them: “This is a bad idea. I can’t help you. Actually, you shouldn’t even do this in the first place.” -or-

2. Start out by asking a LOT of questions.

To this day, that single job is the main reason why I ask so many questions before even thinking about taking on a new potential startup as a client. I ask so many questions, in fact, that it’s often a way to disguise telling them it’s a bad idea cleverly.

I don’t have to come out and say people shouldn’t start the business they want… I just deluge them with important questions they’ve never thought of before, and they get so overwhelmed by what I’m asking and the fact that they don’t have good answers that they just give up on their own.

And, again, the cold, harsh truth is that this is a nice thing to do. It’s not rude. It’s kind.

To this day, I don’t know what happened to the meth head. And I’ve never seen a toilet with his product on it. I’ve also never seen it for sale in stores or on the internet, and their website died long ago. So, I’m going to say the whole thing turned out to be a flop.

That wasn’t my fault, but I still feel awful about it. I really hope the guy found a way to pay for his teeth and that his mom didn’t lose her house.

To console myself, I like to dream about how their toilet handle product failed, but it turned out okay in the end because they were so bad at business that they came up with the hare-brained idea of starting a family restaurant. …and somehow, despite all the odds, they actually succeeded.

I like to imagine that they’re still working there today, having wild success. He’s the chef, cooking in the kitchen, and she serves food and wine, and they play music in the dining room.

It’s called “The Gum Tree,” and all they serve is soup because their customer base is just former meth addicts who have no teeth. …and they all lived happily ever after.

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