S1, E11 of the Dream Doers Podcast – “The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship.”

🎧 Entrepreneurship looks glamorous from the outside—freedom, flexibility, success on your own terms. But what most people don’t see is the struggle behind the scenes. 

💬 Drop your own business horror stories in the comments. Misery loves company, but entrepreneurs love a good laugh… even if it’s #toosoon.

In today’s episode, we’re pulling back the curtain on the dark side of entrepreneurship: the burnout, the sacrifices, and the unexpected challenges that come with building a business. These are the stories every business owner has—the ones people are dying to know about, but no one really talks about out loud. So tune in, laugh with us, and then..

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🌐 Visit my website at www.thedreamdoers.com

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#DreamDoersPodcast #Inspiration #Manifestation #WomenEmpowerment #LiveYourDreams #Entrepreneurs #SmallBusiness #horrorstories #behindthescene`

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✨ Episode Highlights:

00:00 Introduction to the Journey of Podcasting

00:56 The Realities of Entrepreneurship

03:15 Behind the Scenes of Business Challenges

04:24 Navigating Business with Friends and Family

08:56 Lessons Learned from Personal Experience

09:09 Navigating Client Expectations and Feedback

22:20 Building Trust and Managing Relationships

30:36 Overcoming Betrayal and Loss

43:23 Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

47:46 Introduction to Rich Alliance

48:16 Legal Protection and Contract Essentials

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Show Notes:

[00:00] Intro

Jana Marler (00:01)

Hey everyone, it’s Jana. I am starting to do video podcasting, so we will see how this goes. I’ve done one interview so far, I’ve got another in the books, but today is episode 11, and I’m well underway here. I’m a new podcaster. I actually never listened to a podcast before I started my own, but that’s just kind of how I roll. Whenever God says move, I move. So here we are.

Welcome to Dream Doers podcast. I’m your host, Jana. I’m a photographer, educator, photo booth, company, entrepreneur. I’ve been an NCAA ref for 15 years, a high school and basketball ref for 25 this year. I am a single mom. I wear lots of hats. I renovated my home, my Airstream, an old Volkswagen bus, amongst so many other things. So I’m glad you’re here. Today I thought it would be funny.

to share a little bit of the not so awesome side of business. You know, we talk about entrepreneurship, the freedom, the excitement, the you can be your own boss, the you can make your own schedules. All of the good things that come with being an entrepreneur is money, right? But we don’t talk about the negative things. And it’s not that I want to focus on those negative things today. It’s that I want to bring to light

the realities of being a business owner, right? I have personally never had a job other than working for myself. I straight out of college started my business. Why? Because the economy tanked and I had nothing else to do. I was at the point where I was hiring an agency to try to find me a job and they said, you might want to go with option two. And so I knew I wanted to start a photography business one day. I said, why not go ahead and do it now?

We were at the age, everybody was getting married, everybody was starting families or they wanted pictures, so I started my photography business. I have loved so much of what the last two seasons, ⁓ two decades really of my life have been for me. College all the way through young adulthood and being a business owner. Now I’m a mom of two. There’s just so much that evolves, right?

We tend to look at small business owners, especially myself. A large part of my job was traveling for photography. I’m a destination wedding photographer. I’ve done brands all over the world. So I get to go. And I’ve heard so many people talk about how rich I am. And they forget that my clients are the very people who are paying for me to travel. It is not just me going and hanging out with people and having a good time. I am working and I’m having a good time. You see what I did there? I built a business where I could do both.

That’s my dream. I pursued it. Here we are. But so many people think that I am just traveling all the time with all this money.

That’s not true. In fact, one of the biggest brands that I worked for that I loved a lot, part of their compensation was to pay me and my family to come back for a week’s stay at one of their resorts as part of my payment to do my job. So again, it looks like me and my kids are there having a great time in our personal life, but it was all there because I worked really hard.

Back to what we were going to talk about the not so good things that maybe people aren’t sharing about because why do we want to post that on our business pages? Why are we wanting to talk about all the hardships? Why do we want to talk about all the nights we stayed up super late and didn’t sleep or all the times I worked on my bus and couldn’t find parts and had to ship things and it came late and they were the wrong things or all the people that I sent my airstream to that promised they could you know do XYZ and then it sat there for five and six months and I lost business and then they never got it done and then I lost money because

had to send it to somebody else. All the hard work we put in, behind the scenes, staying up all night.

building things, dreaming things, no one talks about that. So I’m gonna talk about that today. You guys okay with that? Like come listen in, give me all of your stories too in the comments below, wherever you’re watching, feel free to share anything that you guys have been through. But here we go, I’m gonna dive right into my timeline that started about 15 years ago in my business. So I’ve been in business since 2009. The first few years were pretty epic, but about…

15 years ago, this is when this started.

Jana Marler (04:25)

Okay, I’m just gonna get a little cozier here because we’re gonna get real for a minute. So we always talk about is it a smart move to go into business with your friends or your family? I believe that is possible and it can be done. However, they have to have the same work ethic, dreams.

time to do all of that and the same type of vibrations or energy that you’ve got to be able to match you so that one person isn’t dominating the other, etc. etc. I had one of my very best friends in the entire world. I still every day think about this person. I love this person deeply. I’ve never been soul sisters with somebody more than this person.

And they were in a time in their life when they really needed some support. You know, they were graduating college too, right behind me. And what happens is if any of you have been to college, you know that you’ll go to college, you’ll have all these friends and family just outside your door. open the door and there’s just people. And it feels like your family, right? You’re building this family. You have access to everyone in your class, in your dorm rooms, or in your apartment, wherever you may be. And then all of sudden you graduate college and…

nothing. Everyone goes to work.

Nobody’s around. Everybody’s hustling. You’re lonely. You’re at home by yourself. So there’s a period of time there after college where you kind of hit a little low valley and you feel lonely, maybe a little depressed. So we all kind of enter that season and then we come back out of it. But my friend was right behind me in that season. She needed some extra support. Some people at the job she was at was not being very encouraging. And I knew this person was epic. So I said, Hey, move back home.

back home I will prepay you to work I needed some extra help on one of my businesses I’ll prepay you to work these events you can move in with me it’ll be the best time we’re best friends Prepaid this person for all of the jobs and this person was struggling so

was out of character quite a bit through this process, but essentially didn’t end up coming to the jobs that I hired her for. I would have to start lying and say, okay, this event starts at six, when really it started at seven. That way I knew she would at least be there. And if she didn’t show up, I would have an hour to find somebody. I had to start…

asking second people to kind of be a backup in case that person didn’t come. I had to give them deadlines. They were helping me build some things for this business for said events. So I had to give them deadlines and then when I gave deadlines, they still didn’t show up. So it was this pattern of, my gosh, what am I going to do now? I’m out money from this person, but I have to hire somebody else.

So it got really tricky for me because I cared about this person and their well-being and what they were going through. I also had to keep running my business that paid my bills, you know, that supported everything we were doing. So you kind of get put in a pickle if you don’t have somebody that’s on the same page as you as far as their availability or their mental capacity and so on.

The long story short of that is that I lost that friend and that was really unfortunate. I tried my best with the tools that I had at the time and the support that I had.

to get that person support but what I’ve learned in the last decade and a half is nobody wants help until they want help and nobody wants to be told they’re doing something wrong, right? None of us do. So that was really unfortunate because I had to put them on a payment plan. I had to get them to sign a contract and you know whenever the tension is there, nobody wants to communicate very well. So that became a not good situation and honestly to this day, I just wish and dream for this friendship back. I mean, I wish I could take it back and

not do that. So I’m not saying don’t start a business with your friend. I’m just saying weigh the pros and cons. Make sure you communicate really good. Have good solid contracts and expectations and standards and make sure you know your roles and really prioritize your friendship before the business. So if something happens and you can reel it back and say hey this isn’t a good fit and I tried to do that it just didn’t work out the ideal way right but I still know that God is a God of redemption and restoration and

I pray for it every day, one of my top prayers. that was my first situation. Moving on from there. Let’s see, I had never had that experience with a client at

Jana Marler (09:09)

Okay, fast forward to 2020, 2021 ish. I had my very first bad experience with a client. Everybody always thought that people had a whole bunch of those and I like to remind them that luck followed me and I didn’t have a lot of those bad experiences.

However, I didn’t know this was a bad experience. I had an incredible couple that I photographed their engagement session. They were so much fun. They were so beautiful. She didn’t share anything about concerns with their what they saw themselves represented as. And then on their wedding day, the whole day was perfect. The vendor team was amazing. They were great. The day ran smoothly. Everything just worked out so perfect. The colors, their aesthetics,

the mood, the vibe, it was dreamy. In fact, it was one of my favorite weddings I had photographed in a long time. We nailed it with our style. We nailed it capturing them and their personalities. I had no idea that this couple was going to have an issue until I sent them their photos. And typically I’ll hear back from clients, my gosh, we’re so excited. Thank you so much. We love them. That sort of thing.

This couple didn’t respond for a while. And then all of sudden I get an email stating, Jana, where are the rest of them? That was all she said. I said, oh, maybe you had missed the couple links in there. Typically I put the blog post in and at the bottom there’s the gallery for all of them. You get about, you know, 800 to 1200,

depending on how many hours we are there. And so I resent that. And her response was, “These are unusable.” We can’t do anything with these.

and my heart sank. I had never had an experience or feedback and I was confused because I’m thinking this is one of my favorite weddings. This vendor team was bomb. Like we killed it, all of us. We had so much fun. The whole day was perfect. So I start messaging other vendors. I’m like, hey, to the videographer, ⁓ did you guys have any bad responses from this couple? They said, no. I’m thinking what in the world?

Okay, so I had been doing a whole lot of personal development and therapy at the time, learning how to do breath work, meditate, stay in my confident self, breathe through those yucky feelings that sit in them and be able to have conflict with people because that’s inevitable, right, in business and personal life. So I had been practicing these things through lots of therapy at the time and I thought, you know what, this is a professional thing to do. Call them. I’m not going to like set up.

I’m not going to text, not going to email, we’re not going to respond that way. I get them both on a call and the bride had spoke with me first.

And she essentially said, these are terrible. These are awful. I can’t use them. I’m so disappointed. And I’m thinking, okay, thank you for sharing that with me. Can you walk me through what it is that’s bothering you? Is it the way I capture the day? Is it the way that you see yourself in the image? Is it the way you both are interacting? And does that not reflect who you are? Is it, know, kind of give me some ideas. So we went ahead and pulled up her gallery.

and she had, they were both on the call, but she was speaking with me mostly. She had brought up a few photos and said, this one, this one’s totally unusable. I said, okay, well, what’s unusable about this particular photo? And she said, it was both of them walking away.

in the sunset at Liberty Memorial here in Kansas City. It was both of them walking away at sunset here at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, and they were just holding hands going back to the trolley. Nothing at all that I had staged. I’m a photographer that does a lot of documenting through the day, a lot of movement, a lot of those in-between moments. So they were walking away. The sun was hitting. I thought, this is perfect. I photographed it, right? They start complaining. No, I’m not.

exaggerating. This is public, you can go see. There’s a piece of lint right here on his jacket. And she said there’s that big piece of lint. And I said, okay. And I’m thinking, this is a joke, right? I mean, I have respect and I honor their feelings, but I’m thinking what does this lint have to do with anything? ⁓ She continued to say the picture was unusable because the lint was so distracting, it wasn’t going to be

like a photo that they framed or anything. Now with my clients, I send the 800 to 1200 photos. There’s no way possible for photographers to every small detail of every single one of those photos remove flyaways or remove acne or pieces of lint or hair that might be sticking off of your shoulder on your jacket.

enhance the images they’re all fully edited but we don’t retouch that’s a retouch would be an eye swap or removing the flyaways okay

So I said, is that piece of lint so bothersome that it ruins the whole photo for you? You can’t feel how you felt when you were walking with him, or is it really ruining it that much? And then he chimed in and said, a little frustrated, he chimed in and said, Janet, it might not be a big deal to you, but it is a big deal to us. And I said, I understand. I’m so proud of myself because this

conflict you know that feels personal because they’re saying they don’t like my work but it’s not so the more that I analyze the situation I’m thinking this is not anything

that I can help them with, right? I can help them with the piece of lint. So I did tell them, we went through a few other photos. I said, OK, I understand your concerns or that you paid a whole lot of money and maybe there was a misunderstanding, even though we reviewed their contract about what editing and retouching is. I walked them through that and then I said, you know what? It’s OK. I will do some of those edits for you if you want to send me some of those. I’ll do some of those for you.

It’s not a big deal. I can remove that piece of lint. If I was thinking they were minor things like that. I then get a…

Google doc of 250 retouches to do stating, ⁓ we don’t like our eyes in this one. Can you take the eyes from this photo and swap it into this photo? Can you remove the blister on my sister-in-law’s lip in our family photo of 40? Can you get the pit stain off of someone’s dress in a guest photo or a bridesmaids photo? And it was down to every little detail.

Even her lipstick she said was coming off on part of her lip and some of the portraits which to me it didn’t look like I even zoomed in and I’m thinking I don’t even know I don’t know how to add lipstick but at that rate that’s not something that photographers do. We are there to document the day and then we do our very best to create magic within the backgrounds we find with the lighting right? We want you all to break down those barriers of feeling

awkward in front of a camera, so we give you guys things to do so we can capture you two being essentially the way you are when we’re not around.

We cannot possibly look at every single hair and make sure your necklace is turned around. And now we have taken on a lot of that responsibility because we’re picky and we know you’re picky and we don’t want to have to do it later. So I know for me, I will pay attention, especially to the women. I’ll get these little hairs. will, you know, I don’t do it anymore post COVID, but you know, we’ll get those little flyaways down. We do a pretty good job at paying attention to everything. I’m not going to look at every zipper of every man and the things that

come from the makeup, you know, for me, I’m thinking, well, you could have hired a makeup artist to follow you around. Maybe they could have given you some lipstick and you put a bridesmaid in charge. So I’m trying to walk her through kind of what our role is and what others roles are, not blaming anybody by any means, but we’re all in this together.

And I took the grunt of a lot of this. I was so proud for staying calm. I talked just like this. He go ahead and send me that list. It was 250 things. And you know what I did? I got in the bathtub like I normally do because that’s my space when I’m just.

computer on the edge and I retouched every one of those photos she asked and him both. They were not happy and I didn’t want them to be unhappy with their wedding photos. That’s one day they don’t get. None of the creative artistry was off. We nailed everything even things

such as they wanted a photo in front of the Kansas City backdrop and the sun was directly in their face. He already had smaller eyes and I know as a professional and really anyone when the sun’s in your face you’re going to squint or you’re going to have to do this, right? And I know people don’t want that for photos. I try tricks like hey, close your eyes, relax your forehead, and the count of three, one, two, three, we’re going to open and try to do that but immediately it’s too bright. I check it anyway knowing it’s better to

have something and let them delete it right and not that’s typically how it works we photograph the cake two or three times as they’re putting it together just in case we can always delete these a sunset photo they wanted was Kansas City’s background in the west bottoms with the sun setting however there wasn’t really a sunset there there was but it wasn’t

impeccable and when we looked at the area that we had it was cars all along the side and street poles with lights everywhere not pretty string lights like rugged city streets and and we went ahead and photographed it the videographers filmed it and I said

You know, I shot it, but I said, hey, it’s actually a little prettier. That’s what you guys hire us for, right? When we see things, let the magic happen. If we turn this way, the sun’s I said this specifically, the sun is bouncing off of the skyscrapers, kind of making it colorful. You can see the clouds in the skyscrapers. You have the blue sky. We’ll kind of get this vibe. That way there’s no distractions in the background with wires. They said, OK, so we did both.

After I did all that work for them, they still left me my first and only bad Google review. Publicly. And you know, I’m not gonna…

call Google and say, take this down. did everything I could to make amends with the request they were asking, even though it was extremely out of the scope of what they paid for and they were unwilling to pay. So I did it for them and they still were unhappy. And then even when I did do some things like I swaps, they didn’t like them. They wanted me to revert back to the original way. So that was really unfortunate. That was probably the worst of my situation. So I didn’t have anything on the wedding day that was bad. We all had

great, you know, camaraderie. The vibe was awesome. So that was really unfortunate because I liked them a lot and I still do and I still think their pictures are beautiful. And I responded since they went ahead and left a negative review. I went ahead and responded and it was pretty lengthy. I could have just been like, hey, thanks for sharing. But I did want people to know that I tried to make them in. So I let them know, hey, you know, we discussed this on the phone, but since you made it public, I’m going to go ahead and reply to you just respectfully so we can see both of us. don’t, I never want

to a business that ignores a review. I want to make sure people know I’m tending to my clients. So I did put the link in. said if anybody wants to go review it, you know, so it was such a beautiful day and it really captured our brand and how we photograph and the couple so well. So

I told them as we parted ways, I really hope you grow to love these photos one day. was such a magical day. You guys are going to have an amazing relationship. know, and I hope that none of what you had to deal with with the retouching is what you carry through in your marriage. And when you look back at the pictures, I hope you don’t feel those. I hope you look at him and think, oh my gosh, I love this man. So that was that the very next thing. Now again, I don’t have a lot. Some people, if we sit down with entrepreneurs, we’ve got a lot of crazy stories. So I’m

might find some people to interview that have got some wild ones. know I’ve heard it and I’ve joked forever. I want to make one of those little urban outfitter coffee table books of all the funny things in the wedding industry. Like everybody write their stories, right? Maybe one day.

Maybe one day this year because I did say I’m gonna do that the next thing was a few years ago actually I Have been for a long time in need of somebody to help out with my photo booth business my photography business was my full-time career my photo booth business with a part-time job now It’s a full-time job, and I’ve been doing

full time. That is also the perks of being a small business owner. You do all of it, right? We wear lots of hats, but if we cap our businesses at us, then we can’t grow.

I really need some help so if anybody is in the industry and wanting to help the photo booths grow photography, I’ve got a lot of things, even working on my air streams and my old Volkswagen bus. It’s a challenge, let’s just say that there’s not a lot of people who work on either of those. A lot of over-promisers and under-deliverers. But I found somebody, finally. was like, thank God this person’s so fun, they can help me work on them, I love them being in my life.

I can trust them. I even started telling them those things. I can trust you. I’m gonna send you off to do some jobs in place of me. You can even drive my equipment, my bus, my trailers there. You can set up. I was setting up trailers here. That person was setting up trailers there. All of a sudden we’re at an event and this has never happened before. I am filling in as a wife.

business for another photo booth company in Kansas City. I have never done that before. I’ve always wanted to and I’ve never had anything go wrong with any of my clients. We show up at this event for three hours. They had started late into the reception. So the toast, the dance, the reception start, all of that was late. So everything was set up ready to go and I test things about every 10 minutes just to make sure things are running.

Thinking, okay, now we’re an hour and half in. That’s okay, we’ve got an hour and a half left. Right.

When the guests started coming over to get in the photo booth, it’s off. And I’m thinking, why is it off? The first guest says we need to turn it on. And I’m thinking, it probably fell asleep. No, the battery was dead in the tablet in my photo booth. And I’m thinking, that’s weird. I just must have come unplugged because all of my equipment stays plugged in in the photo booth. It’s all built in. I built it with a friend. I designed it. They built it and assembled it. Everything’s plugged and it doesn’t go anywhere.

Right? Just take it, put it back in the Pelican case, take it back out, we use it, turn it on. And I’m thinking, that’s odd, there’s not a charger in here. Hmm. Weird, maybe it fell out. I don’t know what could happen.

That’s okay. got a backup box of extra tablets and chargers and all the things go to that box. Those things are missing and I’m thinking what in the world like did somebody take them out? I don’t move these things. I take everything to my job. So I have backups and I’m like, this is so bizarre. We immediately panic right? We’re 45 minutes outside of the city where there’s no open Best Buy’s Walgreens Walmart CVS Target nothing. I’m calling everybody this

person took off driving that’s helping me and I’m thinking we just gotta find a charger that’s all it is nobody had a charger at the venue and I’m like my gosh I’m working for somebody else and finally we have an hour and a half left so I’m thinking we’ll just run down the street no nothing’s open I was so embarrassed I asked the photographer can you come over here and stand and take pictures in front of us while we’re figuring this out because someone has stolen my stuff and I thought it happened at that event

I’m thinking, where is my thing? The photographer does that, everyone starts asking me questions, and I’m just, I’m in the panic because I don’t want to upset anybody, definitely not the person I’m working for. This is the first and only incident. I’m like, my God. So I go sit and hide in the back room and I’m calling all these places, do you please have this charger, please? Nothing. I had to call a person that we were hired.

to do this white labeled event for and I said, my gosh, I promise this has never happened. I’m so sorry. It’s a horrible first situation to do this with you, but I can’t do this service. We only have an hour left now. They haven’t been in it this whole time. It died. I don’t have a charger. I don’t know what to do. We can’t find anything. We just turned it off.

I actually ended up paying out of the goodness of my heart because it made sense to me. The client was upset with me, not the company. That company had to reimburse them, so I paid for that. So not only did I not make money on that event, I paid them in full. So that was unfortunate, but what I realized from that, once I came home from another event about a week later and I was looking for my generator in the garage, where it typically is, was all my

equipment and my storage stuff it wasn’t there and I’m thinking okay that last person that was at that event with me did an event a couple days later I took the generator and I’m thinking where did all this stuff go and then it dawned on me

Did this person take it? I’m missing my generator. I’m missing the tablet that was brand new in a box, brand new tablet. I had opened it to turn it on so it could be a great backup. I had not done anything else with it. So I’m thinking, no, this person I’ve known for a long time, I really trust them. But the more things that kept going by, things kept disappearing. Money started disappearing.

Then I paid this person prepaid again like I didn’t learn my lesson Jana prepaid this person to work a couple other events that all of a sudden they couldn’t go to and I’m thinking, ⁓ no, this person knows what my best friend did. This person knows, you know, the few things I’ve been through in the last few years. I already had someone wipe out everything that I had financially and now I’m missing some brand new piece

of

equipment and a $2,000 generator. All of these things I’ve not talked about yet except for to my closest friends and I’m putting the pieces together and I’m like okay, this is missing, this is missing, this is missing. The common denominator, I’m like I don’t have proof of these things. It just makes sense so I’m gonna approach them about that. We’re gonna talk about it. I approach them about it, they get very defensive. That’s the first sign instead of just communicating, hey no, oh my gosh that’s weird, can I help you, what can we do?

Defense mode and then, and they didn’t come to some events, I could see that they were within the vicinity of the neighborhood and I’m at some of those events. They could never come. So then I am having, as a photographer, to photograph the event and work the photo booth. That happened two times and I’m thinking, something’s not right here. Then I realized.

I had had credit cards stolen, business credit cards. I had a plethora of things from multiple stores purchased, shipped to different addresses, invoices emailed to other emails so I never found out because I wasn’t being notified.

So many things have happened and I won’t get into too many of those details, even though I told you a great majority of them, but I’m just thinking you’ve got to be kidding this decade of hell. This decade of hell with my best friend, people in my life who are supposed to be trustworthy, loyal, honest, safe people that I found out were not multiple of my immediate people.

And then this new person I had put into these positions and I trusted and I’m thinking, you what is happening? God, come on. not not that it was God’s fault, right? I’ve never wavered in my faith God does not do these things. These are people’s choices. But I was suffering.

I had a lot of these people’s choices and it was not fun. And I can laugh now, I’ve done a lot of healing and a lot of growth and I’ve been through a lot to build some resilience and I can now face this with strength. But situation after situation after situation. And I’m just thinking, this is a life joke at this point, right?

⁓ Let’s just add in the two additional things. You know, we’re gonna go all the way there. I was robbed from this person. Not only those things, my home was robbed. They broke in. Amongst a bunch of other things. It was just not pretty. My identity was taken.

My credit score was shot because they tried to get 10 loans in my name, two of which I was on that conversation, not realizing what was happening. I thought I was being interviewed for ⁓ like a reference, I think. And then when I got the phone call, I said, what was that? And why are you putting my name on something that you’re trying to do? What is it? Okay, well, they were trying to get 10 loans on my name and that just ruined my credit.

which affects a lot of other things in your current life and your future. So when I’m trying to navigate some things…

Everything has just crumbled beneath me, but I’ve been surviving at survival mode for a long time with nothing. Everything that comes in goes right back out. Everything that comes in goes back to my resources and my support. Everything that comes back in and I’m thinking I can’t get ahead, but I’m smart. I’m wise. I can do this. Like work harder, work smarter. And then after all of that.

I still have so much trust for people. I’m learning about boundaries, right? Didn’t really know boundaries were a thing. I read the book Boundaries. It’s one of the best books I would ever suggest you all reading. gave me boundaries for my business and my personal life. I have a photo shoot mini session last fall, 2024.

And a lot of people that come to me are friends because they want to support me, right? And if I offer discounts, we’re doing mini sessions that is smaller, like a 30 minute time slot instead of instead of an hour and half. And then we offer discounts. So a lot of people I know come and do those at that time. And this person I was gaining a relationship with, I really respect and adore her. She’s wonderful. She’s fun. She’s funny. Our kids get along.

She said, hey, I’m kind of going through some financial stuff. Do you mind if I pay you in like a month or two when I get some? And I’m thinking, sure. Like, I trust people. I’ve learned. I’ve learned. This is what this podcast today is for, is to share with you what I’ve learned, right? I said, sure, go ahead and pay me later. OK, well, two or three, four months went by, and I’m getting back to my life, my business, and I have so many other things in my personal world going on that I’m

I forget that she hasn’t paid, so I send some messages. Hey, I know you’re busy. I know you’re building a family. There’s a lot happening. Do you mind if you go ahead and pay me for that session? Nothing. I send an email, send a private Facebook message, couple more through the next couple weeks. Nothing. Hey, hope you’re doing well. Like really miss seeing you.

You know, I love those photos are some of my favorites. You know, I don’t, I’m pretty sure you didn’t pay. Let me know if anything’s changed. But do you mind paying for that? Nothing. They just ghost me. And I’m thinking, Hey, I don’t know if are you, I don’t know if you’re getting these text messages. So I’m sending you some in messenger too. Like, let me know if you’re getting them. Nothing. And I’m thinking you gotta be kidding.

I’m not going through this again. I also did not mention the last person who robbed me. They not only robbed me, they were robbing their clients. I had three of their clients email me and start texting me, hey, so and so didn’t show up for this job that I paid them for. How can I get my money back? They told me to call you and I’m thinking.

What? How did you get my number? And why is my photo booth business tied in with this business? And I’m just, I’m over here laughing. I’m like, ⁓ this, this poor world to watch so many people struggle and people you care for and people that you’ve built rapport with and people that you want to trust and you want to step them into positions with you, whether personal or business, and you want to empower them as well. It’s just so sad to watch.

So many, mean everyone’s hurting. We’re all gonna have seasons. But by golly, this was a season for me. If you guys haven’t watched my first episode, go back to episode one. I’ll tell you a little nugget of these stories, right? But that person had their clients trying to collect money from me. Then all of a sudden I start hearing from two and three other people. People that one was a DJ that just happened to be in my industry. Had nothing to do with being in the industry. It just happened to be that he was a DJ.

Hey, I loan money to this person. They said they’re gonna pay me back a month later. It’s been six months. What do I do? And I’m like, why is this person wanting me to handle all their business? And their business flaws and their theft, essentially, they ghosted them. Then there was another person in the military, pretty high ranking ranger up there.

who loaned $5,000 to this person who sold them their sob story and someone like me and this person were trying to help them. Hey, let’s help you build your business back up, help you with your life. He also took the $5,000 and ran and ghosted that person, blocked everyone from everything so no one could get a hold of them. And I’m thinking, ⁓ my gosh, so I actually took it on myself when I had no…

extra finances at this time to pay off that DJ because it was low enough that at least that person can get this headache gone and get their money back and then I would carry the burden as if I knew any of these people but this is the kind of stuff

that happens to nice people that don’t have boundaries. And I’m building boundaries over these years, so I’m thinking, why is this still happening? Well, because we still have to be really firm as business owners with boundaries. That means clients don’t call after certain times. People get call in business hours from nine to five, whatever you want it to be, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. And then after that, you turn your phone off and you don’t take calls. You don’t take texts. You don’t check emails. You don’t send emails. You have to have boundaries. And if you don’t have contracts with

contract workers that are your friends or friends that you’re building businesses with, make sure they’re clear. You know what? I can tell you one more story. I started a business with a partner, a lifelong partner and some lifelong friends. And I trusted these people when we were building this business and we were building the brand and we were building contracts. I trusted that all of us

putting our names into such contracts because that’s what was happening and lo and behold I didn’t find out until a couple years later that my name was not in the contract therefore they have no legal

anything tethered to me as an owner of this company that I built, that I helped name, that I thought with my intellectual property about. I built with people, again, who are in my close circle of trust, family and friends that were supposed to be honest, honorable people with integrity. And none of that turned out to be the case. In fact, all the money personally that I put into this business

They kept, they rewrote contracts to say they now own the investments that I put in to be an owner. I had no idea, no consent was from me. So now I get to figure out what do I do with all of these people who’ve taken my money?

time and time again. And why do people think that I have spare money to help out when I loan out money to friends or family? It is with clear expectations that that money will be paid back and by certain dates. In fact, the person that robbed me of my equipment admitted to all of it. They admitted to my generator, my tablet, stealing money, stealing credit cards and getting loans in my name. This person signed a

legal document. So you all might think because of that phrase alone, Jana, you have proof you can take this person to court. You’re right.

that anyone ever been in court with anyone? anyone ever had to deal with the law? Because two plus two doesn’t equal four in court. It doesn’t. You have to come with a lot of evidence and even evidence that seems so clear that two apples and two apples now are four apples. It’s not how it works. It’s exhausting physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, financially, and you go broke. So is it worth

taking someone to court to get $15,000 back and some equipment? No, maybe not. I don’t know. I have a few years to decide that by law. Had an open investigation with detectives. You know, and people that I don’t want to know any of this business are going to have access to this podcast. They’re gonna watch it they’re gonna laugh and they’re gonna think, look, look, Jana, this is all you. All these things happened to you.

I actually had some people in my close, actually in my closest, which is really heartbreaking, support circle say, “Jana, all of this is your fault. All of these affairs, all of these things that are happening to you are your fault.”

And I was so calm again with all the therapy work that I’ve done to say, that’s not true. And I can tell that you’re still really hurting over the situation that you’re in. And so I’m going to leave and I’m going to take my kids and we’re going to set step way back and I’m going to set some boundaries and I’m not okay with this type of behavior, the blame. And let me tell you the people that I have let in my life and in my safe place.

my A safest place, A level people I’m giving D and D minus and F people access to. It took someone saying, Jana, these are not your people as much as you think they are. They’re not your people, even though they seem like they should have been by the titles and roles that they had in my life.

They weren’t my people. weren’t keeping me emotionally safe. They weren’t validating the things that they were doing to me when I was crying out to them. It became a “Jana can do no wrong,” “Janas self-righteous.” And that’s what happened way back with the best friend who didn’t show up for events. I’m constantly trying to protect my people. I don’t tell anyone what’s happening. I try to make amends even though I’m frustrated. I’m an imperfect human. I didn’t do that. I didn’t handle a lot of those things in the most

kind way sometimes but it it took me 99 times of kindness attempts before the hundredth I said okay now I’ve got to put my foot down and at that point I’m already labeled a bitch at that point I’m already self-righteous and I’m thinking I’ve done everything and I have such good mentors and such good support I would have people read emails before I sent them and messages I sat down with

pastors with some of these people and you know, it’s just time and time again. I was being taken advantage of I Even had a couple roommates. We won’t even get into the roommate stories. Those are personal I wanted to talk about business things that happen that we are not prepared for that we go through and How much it sucks?

With every business, so you have the good and the bad, the blessing, the curses, the trial, the errors, the rise aboves, the gotta let it go’s, and I would still say that I wouldn’t change a thing. I absolutely love having the freedom. I love being my own boss. I love knowing that I can build my own empire however I see fit. I can love and serve people well. I can do the very best I can with the situations I’m in.

and I can let that go. Bad review or not, it stays up on the public Google. Anyone can see it, you know, it’s there. And I never want to seem like someone who’s got it all together. I never want to look like a mom.

or a partner or a business owner that’s just got all our shit together because that’s not real. Everybody posts these highlight reels. Look at our life, look what we’re doing. But I really want to bring the authenticity of life and business. And so this is why I started this podcast. So I hope you really enjoyed today. It might get me in trouble and it’s a lot, but you know, God says I made you strong and I made you resilient.

And I gave you a voice and I gave you empowerment to stand up.

against evil and to speak truth, truth, love and light in horrible situations. And again, I didn’t do all that perfectly by any means. But even then I asked those people for grace. Like I have not gone through these things either. This is hard, but I love you and I care for you. Every single one of the situations ran because people don’t want to face accountability. And honestly, nobody wants to be told when they’re doing something wrong. And I get that. And I still have

love in my heart for these people because I saw the seasons they were in, I saw that they were hurting, I saw they were going through changes, I see the addictions, I see the struggles, and I’m not saying I didn’t have any of those, like this was a very hard season to navigate that on top of a whole lot of loss and grief in my personal life. I’ve tried to become more of a voice to speak up for those who…

struggle or don’t want to or don’t want to share with the world and don’t be a punching bag. There’s so much when you’re being vulnerable online.

So I pray for grace from the internet and I know that’s kind of a laughing matter because people don’t care. But I do want to share with the ones who care about building a business and listening to some of the goods and the bads. I hope you all took some nuggets away from today. I hope that you all understand how important it is to have a contract with anyone you do any kind of business with and have really clear outlines and expectations and what you’re going to do when conflict arises. Have all of it discussed.

beforehand, really evaluate how you’re gonna handle those conversations and then how you’re gonna make a way out so that the friendships or the relationships stay priority. Unless it’s somebody that you are strangers with and you don’t know and you’re okay just cutting ties. That’s fine, but for me I know I’m building a new business with a wonderful friend and we have a very strict rule that…

We come before anything. We’ve both been through the wringer with some crappy business partners and some bad exes who’ve done some things that kind of tether between the personal and business life. So discussing any of these things forward, have very clear conversations and very in-depth conversations and we get attorneys involved before. That way we know when something arises, we can handle it because we’re on the same wavelength. And second of all,

We put ourselves and our friendship before the business and that’s just it Anyway, I hope you guys had a lot of laughs and probably a lot of mind blown and minds blown through listening Through all those tragic stories. Thank God I only have some of those and I could tell you more about my personal life at all tethers and ties in with business, too But I’m not gonna go there today. That’s for another day

Anyway, for those of you chasing your dreams, keep going, you know, even when it’s hard, even when it seems tough, keep going. If you want, in the comments, leave some of the things you guys have been through as brief as you can. If anybody feels like you would be a great person to interview on this podcast or you have some stories of overcoming all the hardship in business and life and how you kept your business sustainable and your mindset and your health sustainable, please nominate yourself or nominate a friend. And I look forward to chatting with you guys

on the next video podcast. This is so much more fun. This is so much more me too. So you guys can see some of my personality and we’re right here in my home with my dogs and I’m right there in your ear in your home. So I hope you guys had a great time today. Until next time.

Jana Marler (47:48)

Hey everyone, it’s me again. I wanted to let you know since recording this just a couple days ago, I, as well as a friend, Stacey Rich, we have launched a passion project brand called Rich Alliance. And I want to let you know because this episode I talked a lot about how to protect yourself with contracts and legal situations that you may not know how to handle. Our very brand, our passion project is partnering with

over 90 attorneys that you have direct access to them with efficiency and support that you need for a very fraction of the price unlike the traditional way of seeking attorneys. So I’m going to put it in the show notes but I want to let you guys know to check out Rich

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Short Description / Social:

Your business horror story called. It wants some company.”
Because let’s be honest—entrepreneurship isn’t all freedom and highlight reels. Behind every “success story” are the late nights, messy clients, and the kind of moments you only laugh about later (usually).

🎧 Tune into The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship and hear the stories we all have—the ones no one really talks about out loud. Then share your own business horror story in the comments. Misery may love company, but entrepreneurs? We love a good laugh. #TooSoon 😉

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