My Friend Stole From Me
When it comes to money, sometimes you can’t even trust your friends
The betrayal that wounds the most is the one you don’t see coming.
This year, I took on a project that changed everything. My revenue catapulted. I was paying my bills on time. I was worshipping at the cruciferous altar. I was doing the best work of my career and I was vibing. Every project takes a piece of me and I’m okay with that because it feels as if my DNA is out there into the world, thriving, making things happen.
An old friend brought me on for the project. A friend I’ve known for a decade. This is someone who once reported to me. We managed to make that rare transition from a boss/employee relationship to two women trading stories over Skype while sipping wine. We had podcast plans. We partnered on projects. She saved me financially when I needed it most, and I’m grateful for that kindness. This is someone I trusted, and trust doesn’t come easily to me.
And then she stole from me.
The challenge with this engagement was my subcontractor status. It’s a rookie move I’ll never make again, and I’m embarrassed to say I made it because I trusted my friend implicitly. I should’ve listened to an old friend who always said, “Trust no one, get everything in writing.”
So I spent three months on the project, investing my own resources and connections to make this segmentation study more than a fancy PowerPoint — it was an actionable strategy to forge real connections with intended customers. I was proud of my work. And I was even more excited to get the remaining 50% payment.
For the first time in years, I felt as if I could breathe. I decided to reduce my client load to two small retainer clients so I can take two months off to make some major life moves.
But that all came crashing to a halt when the money I was promised never came. It was coming on Monday, Tuesday, possibly next week, and I’d sit in my home, seized with anxiety. The payment was later than I had budgeted for.
I told all of this to my friend’s partner — that my health and financial wellbeing were in jeopardy while they had my payment all along. How callous do you have to be? After a series of emails, my friend’s partner told me he’d make a partial payment, and the rest I’d see within the next 10 days. He told me that this was business, that this wasn’t personal, to which I responded that I’d been a consummate professional for over 21 years and when you deliberately put my livelihood at risk, it becomes personal.
He reminded me that threats of lawsuits wouldn’t work and I’d probably get sued if I named the client publicly. I didn’t want to face all that, did I? Little did I know that I was listening to silencing tactics. It would be my reputation on the line because I asked for what I earned. I’ve done the work they asked me to do, and now I have the audacity to ask for payment?
Why is it my reputation that’s at stake when I’ve done nothing wrong?
Something felt off about this exchange, and I told my friend’s partner that I had no problem reaching out to the client directly, which I did. Confused, the client relayed that the wire payment was made weeks ago. So my friend and her partner have been using my money to flush the company’s cash flow instead of paying me for the work the client contracted. This is akin to your boss rolling up to your desk and saying they’re going to take your check this week because they’re having payroll or drywall issues.
I forwarded this information to my counterpart and was met with silence. I emailed and asked if he still planned to honor paying me. Silence. He made another installment payment, but I’m still owed $18,300 as of writing this. I hope they’ll do the right thing and pay me next week because I don’t deserve this.
I shared all the communication I sent to a group of peers and two mentors. I was being professional, right? I wasn’t being too demanding, right? All of them were shocked by what I’ve experienced, that I was made to feel ashamed for asking for the money I deserve.
I’m not hurt by the shadiness or the real fear that they will never pay me (I plan to sue them and out them publicly if they don’t). But I’m hurt that my friend of a decade knew this, but she “doesn’t want to get involved.” The money stuff isn’t any of her business. Her texts were cold and scripted. Funny how it becomes her business when she directly benefits from money stolen from me.
I sent her a text: Do the right thing.
She’ll likely say I’m being overly dramatic. She might even pass this to a few friends to get a little confirmation bias going. She’ll say that I’ve gotten it all wrong. Have I really? Gotten it wrong? Or did she forget about what’s right?
Betrayal is that tape you’ve affixed on your mouth. It’s the ties you willingly wrap around your wrists. I’m not involved. It’s not my business.
Yet, she got paid for her minor contribution to the project. Yet, the company she partly owns is her business.
What happened to standing up for what’s right? What happened to doing the right thing? What’s wrong with getting involved when you know someone is really hurting? My other grave mistake is not realizing that when it comes to business — even with people you consider friends — all knives are on the table and all friendships and semblance of ethics and decency are buried below the floor.
All I want is the money I rightfully earned. I don’t want to see Instagrams of my money buying cocktails beachside.
Business is brutal. I’ve been in this for over two decades and it’s exhausting. I've got a lot of faults — I can rattle off pages of them, but I’m honest. I have integrity. I always do the right thing, even if it costs me. Even if it alienates people. Even if it’s not the political or business savvy thing to do. Because what happens when your word is comprised? What do you have left? How do you sleep at night?
If you can’t trust your friends, who can you trust?
I love marketing. I make my living off translating data and experience into strategies and stories, but the duplicity and greed are ubiquitous and overwhelming. Everyone’s blinded by ambition, money, and status. Everyone wants to be funded, taken public, named on Ad Age lists. The good eggs are getting harder to find. And I feel like I’m falling behind because I don’t want all of those things. I don’t claw and cleave to ambition. I don’t steal from people. I don’t tell clients lies to get the business. I’m not political. I’m not driven by greed and a padded bank account.
Maybe I need to get out of this marketing game. Move to a quiet town and work in a cheese shop. I do love cheese.
I used to want all the wrong things, but there comes a point where you shift from success to significance. When you start to think about your purpose and evaluate your character. When you realize there’s nobility in living an honest, good life. I’m realizing this path is harder. Fewer people are on it. But in the end, I have to believe it’s the path worth taking.
Even when the people you trust the most break your heart.
Sometimes you have to write yourself back to yourself. Sometimes you need to say, this horrible thing happened to me, but I’ll get through it. Even though a friend of ten years and her partner stole from me, there are still people who deserve my trust. Sometimes you have to keep writing your story until it comes into being.
People cleave to your after story. Your present tense sadness, your during bears a best-by date — they want to know you made through it. The newsletter that had my highest unsubscribe rate was one where I told this story.
No one lingers for the details. They want to know that you made it out of the dark country whole and intact — that you’re not the kind of person who forever dresses their wounds. Patched up, fixed, healed, returned to manufacturer settings. All smiles, the show must go on and like that.
Honestly, fuck what people think. They’re not living your life. Let them have their perfectly imperfect Instagram feed and endless positivity mantras. What matters is the moment when you say, this nonsense needs to stop. And you try to devise ways to make it stop. I may never get over the fact that someone I mentored blindsided me, but I’ll get past it. If I don’t get my money back, I’ll sue and publicly shame them into decency.
I will get my money back. I will keep it moving. I will trust again.
Your endurance is measured by how you can scrape yourself off the pavement. How you can have the hard conversations with yourself about avoiding the kind of hurt you never saw coming. What about that terrible event can inform and shape your comeback story? What have you learned? Can you write your way to the places you want to go?
Business is brutal. Our culture suffers from conspicuous consumption where possessions are given the weight, attention, and devotion of people. You ask yourself how you can keep clawing your way up and over, how you can accumulate more without realizing that more is often less. You’ve got to feed the feed. You’ve got to keep churning out the happy!
But the measure of your worth, the value in your purpose is not tethered to what you own or produce. You are not your output. You are not your VP of Marketing title. You are not your fast car and fanciful footwear.
I’m realizing that defining the weight of my worth is a constant invitation to return inward. That the new chapter I write for myself starts with my character. It’s how I come back from this loss of friendship, trust, this hurt. It’s how I stitch myself up and move forward. It’s how I trust and love, and keep living even when the people I care about most wound me in ways I could’ve never imagined.
How I react and recover from this loss is the only thing in my control. I can’t make my friend ethical and empathetic. I can’t make her partner an honest and decent person. I have to believe that crooks will undo themselves. Always.
And maybe it’s time to write a story taking me a new, unexpected place. And that’s what keeps me going. The curiosity, the recovery, the writing my way back. The wonder.
