Trust But Verify — What 6 Years of Partnerships Taught Me About People

Weeks after I cut him off, blocked his number, and swallowed a financial loss I couldn't afford — he emailed me asking for referrals.

"George, I remember you said you had other founders who were interested in my service. You said when we met you would refer them to me. Can you refer them to me now?"

I read it three times. Not because I didn't understand it. Because I was trying to figure out what kind of person sends that email after what he'd done.

I never replied. I blocked that too. Later, I found out he'd taken funds from other clients and never returned them. Got sued in superior court multiple times. Defaulted on a loan with a national bank. Defaulted on his mortgage. Defaulted on his office rental — creditors took everything.

That's the person I handed my team, my time, and money I couldn't afford to lose to.

Let me back up.

How I Got Here

Early 2022. I was 23. Cash flow was dying. I'd lie in bed running numbers in my head — how many months we had left, which expenses I could delay, whether this was the part where the whole thing falls apart.

A mutual friend introduced me to a guy. Said he ran a service business. Spent about $100,000 a month on Google Ads. Had budget. Wanted to modernize his tech stack and could use our engineering resources.

My gut said no. Something about how he talked — too confident, too many big numbers dropped too casually. But the bank account was making decisions my gut wasn't allowed to override. When you're not sure you can keep the lights on for another few months, you start telling yourself the risk is manageable. You start hearing what you need to hear.

So I said yes.

We never signed a contract. Because "I trusted him." Because a friend I respected made the introduction. Because at 23, I still believed that a handshake between people who shared a mutual friend meant something.

Three Months

The first few weeks were just annoying. He didn't understand software engineering but had opinions about everything. Wanted things done "today" that would take a week. Required two-hour stand-up meetings every single day — not to align, just to micromanage. My developers were miserable. I was spending half my time managing his emotions instead of managing the project.

I told myself it was temporary. Difficult client. We'd deliver, get paid, move on.

Then the money got weird.

He started inventing deductions. "This developer wasn't getting things done on time, so I want $X back." "This developer was sick on this day, so I want $Y back." Every invoice became a negotiation. Every payment came with conditions we'd never agreed to.

And when I pushed back, the guilt trips started.

"You were referred by A!" "I thought we are friends!" "Friends don't do this to friends!"

He'd say the word "friends" like it was a contract clause. Like the fact that someone introduced us meant I owed him free labor. Every time I asked for money he already owed me, I was the one betraying the relationship.

I remember one specific morning. I woke up, checked my phone, and there was a wall of messages from him. A new grievance. A new deduction he'd invented overnight. A paragraph about how disappointed he was in me — in me — for not delivering something we'd never agreed to deliver.

I put the phone face down and just sat there. I didn't want to get out of bed. Not because I was tired. Because I knew that whatever I replied, it would start another cycle.

Another negotiation about money he owed. Another guilt trip. Another two hours of my life burned on someone who was bleeding me dry while telling me I was the bad friend.

That's what the wrong person does to you. It's not just the money. It's the bandwidth. It's waking up every morning with a knot in your stomach before you've even opened your eyes.

It's the way the stress leaks into everything — the other projects you can't focus on, the people you're short with because your capacity is maxed out on someone who doesn't deserve it.

I eventually finished the service, took the loss, cut off his access, and blocked him everywhere.

Then the referral email came. And somehow that was the part that broke something in me — not the money, not the months of manipulation, but the fact that after all of it, he genuinely believed he could still extract from me. Like I was a resource that hadn't been fully depleted yet.

What It Did to Me

After that experience, something in my brain rewired. I stopped trusting anyone.

Not consciously. It wasn't a decision I made. It was more like a flinch that became permanent. When someone told me numbers — "I do $X in revenue," "I spend $Y on ads" — my brain would auto-reject before I'd finished processing the sentence. Everyone was guilty until proven innocent.

Every introduction had a motive I needed to find before it found me. Every time someone used the word "partnership," I'd feel my chest tighten.

For a while, that felt like self-preservation. And honestly, it probably was. The radar was on. The walls were up. Nothing was getting through without verification. I'm sure it saved me from a few situations that would have gone bad.

But suspicion doesn't have a precision setting. When it's on, it's on for everyone. And I started noticing the cost — good people, real people, who were saying what they meant and doing what they said, hitting the same wall I'd built for the bad ones.

Conversations that could have become friendships dying on arrival because I couldn't stop scanning for the angle. Partnerships that could have worked never getting off the ground because my first instinct was to look for the trap.

The guy from 2022 didn't just cost me money. He cost me a year of relationships I'll never get to rerun.

Recalibrating

I had to teach myself to trust again. Which sounds simple. It's not.

The phrase "trust but verify" gets thrown around like it's a bumper sticker. But the hard part was never the verify — anyone can Google someone. The hard part is being willing to trust at all after your entire system has been rewired to say don't.

Here's what I actually do now. When I meet someone and they tell me things — credentials, numbers, track record — I take them at their word in the room. I'm present.

I don't interrogate people over coffee. But when I get home, I check. LinkedIn. Court records. Mutual connections. Basic due diligence. Not because I think everyone is lying. Because the one time I didn't check, it nearly broke me.

It goes against social norms. Nobody tells you to go home and look up the person you just had dinner with. But when it matters — a partnership, money changing hands, a real commitment of time — I do it. Every single time. I've never once regretted it. I've regretted the times I didn't.

The other thing I had to learn was how to tell the difference between a real relationship and someone who just needs something from you. I had a situation recently — a customer didn't hear back from me for a single afternoon. One afternoon. They wrote back describing their "severe disappointment" and wanting to "re-evaluate the relationship."

I told them we're done and sent other providers they could work with.

Because that kind of reaction tells you everything. You're not a person to them. You're a vending machine. And the moment the vending machine is slow, they kick it. That's not a relationship. Calling it one is an insult to the word.

The relationships I actually value look nothing like that. The people I've built real ones with over the past six years — we show up for each other when it matters. I don't hold back on what I'm genuinely afraid about.

They don't either. Nobody's first instinct is leverage when things go wrong. Nobody's keeping score. When something breaks, the first question is "how do we fix this," not "what do you owe me."

Those are the relationships I'm building more of. The transactional ones, I'm cutting as close to zero as I can. Life is too short to spend it performing "partnership" with people who see you as a line item.

Six Years Later

I'm 27 now. The thing nobody prepared me for when I started wasn't the business stuff — the models, the strategies, the growth plans. That stuff I could learn. The thing that actually cost me — real money, real sleep, real damage — was misjudging people.

And the hardest part wasn't the initial mistake. It was what the mistake did to me afterward. How it rewired the way I saw everyone. How I had to fight — and I mean fight — to stay open enough that good people could still get through, while being careful enough that the bad ones couldn't do what that guy did to me in 2022.

I know the shape of the trap now. I know what it feels like when someone weaponizes the language of friendship to take your money. I know what it looks like when someone's story doesn't survive a basic search.

I know the difference between someone who's present because they value you and someone who's present because they haven't finished extracting yet.

And I know that the 23-year-old who said yes to that deal — no contract, no verification, cash running low, a friend's word as collateral — will never make that decision again.

That lesson cost more than money. But at least it only cost it once.