What I Learned From The Worst Year Of My Life

March 26, 2025

Last year, I was on a losing streak. In February 2024, we stopped all feature development at Copilot CRM. We had tripled the member count. Spammers had gotten inside the system using our free subscription. Email and text integrations were getting delayed. Emails were getting delayed. Texts were getting throttled. We had over 200 documented bugs in the system. The following 12 months were intense. We had to rebuild the backend infrastructure of the software. Fighting bugs was a constant battle. We had to balance rebuilding and fixing the current faulty system.

The talent of the team required upgrading. The coding language required an overhaul from PHP to Node JS and React.

The mobile app needed to be rebuilt. We needed to establish the API endpoints. We needed to swap email providers, increase security, and redesign the UI from top to bottom.

I realized this was not a quick fix. This was going to be a long and expensive slog. I realized that to make the required changes and investments, I needed to buy out my co-founder. I needed full ownership of the business. At the lowest point of the company, I needed to make a massive bet.

Fast forward to March 2025. The darkest 12 month period of my career is in the rearview mirror. In the past two weeks, I had three big wins.

Last week, I got married to the love of my life. Honestly, I had given up on finding a life partner that could put up with me. She is everything I had dreamed of. She supports my goals and enjoys creating content with me.

Today, I crossed 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. It took 7+ years of making videos. Last year, the media team and content creation cost $1.5M.

The first major feature release came out this week for Copilot CRM. We revamped how the customer views estimates in the customer portal. We rebuilt the entire payments process and Stripe integration. It is a modern and simple checkout process. The deposit threshold and card-on-file requirements are rebuilt. The developers built everything on the new codebase. We are back on the path of innovation. Now, when customers decline an estimate, they must provide a reason why. They could decline for price, scheduling, or other reasons.  This allows members to reach out to the customer and try to close the deal a second time!

Some things I learned:

1.) Go slow, so you can go fast. We will start building at an exciting pace at Copilot. To do that, we had to go slow and rebuild the foundation of the codebase and team. Rushing the fixes would only delay the inevitable cycle of bugs.

2.) Wins come in bunches. Losses seem to drag out.

3.) Better talent can solve all problems. Be ready to pay up.

4.) Don't let the urgent distract from the important. Don't neglect changing the oil, brakes, and tires on a car.  Your business is similar. Throughout Bug Hell, I still had to make sure the businesses operated. I had to hire team members, run the franchise, plan conferences, create video content, write a book, and manage other tasks to keep things running.

Winning streaks come after long slumps. If you are in a long period of pain, I hope this gives you a light at the end of the tunnel.

PS - the Spring Rush Rally starts April 1. Win a free in-person consulting day with me at our headquarters. Join for free and get details at CopilotCRM.com/springrush

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