I'm continuing the story of how Meryl Johnston became my co-founder at TeamUp.
When we left off, I was in a desperate situation.
My wife had asked me the dreaded question: "When will you give this all up and go get a job?"
I didn't know how to answer her.
Worse, I was afraid that at 41 years old, I was becoming her uncle, the man who could never hold onto a steady job.
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Looking for answers, I booked a ticket to the annual Dynamite Circle conference in Bangkok.
I was hopeful of what I might find… but terrified that it might not be enough.
Our recruiting business is disrupting the outsourcing industry.
We're changing lives, the perception of global talent, and how teams are built.
I've never seen such a hungry client base, such thrilling traction and acceleration.
After all those years of hardship and failure, something is finally working. Beyond my wildest dreams, even.
My wife's gotten tired of hearing me say, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Sitting at our kitchen table, with annoyance in her eyes, she says for the hundredth time:
“Well, you know, it has been ten years. It was bound to work eventually.”
---
Thud!
I'm sitting at a desk now, and a stack of papers lands hard next to my keyboard.
I look up—Gregory. My old boss looms above me.
“I need these revisions by tomorrow morning.”
My stomach knots up again. I’d have to pull another all-nighter.
I won't get to see my daughter today. She's just a baby.
I'm back at my old job.
Wait, no. She's fifteen.
It's even worse: I never left.
---
"I dunno, it just didn't work out," I'm saying.
She's wearing the exhaustion of someone who’s carried the load alone for far too long.
I'm back at the kitchen table, but there are more pictures on the wall now.
Who's that woman with the children?
My wife looks much older.
We're grandparents.
I'm explaining why my latest business failed.
“I hoped you wouldn't be like him,” she says. A wave of panic runs through me.
I spent my life going from idea to idea and nothing ever worked. A failure.
I am the man I swore I wouldn't be. Her uncle.
The plane lurched and I awoke with a fearful gasp.
Out the window, the glowing city sprawled endlessly below as we made our descent.
Bangkok.
It was a living contradiction that made anything feel possible.
Gleaming towers pierced the humid night, their neon messages bleeding through the steamy air like promises written in light.
One building stood alone, its crown blazing red with words that encircled the peak:
“Long Live the King.”
This was a place where the ancient and hyper-modern crashed together without apology.
Where sky trains threaded between skyscrapers and over the chaos below.
You could visit 'sky city' - luxurious rooftop bars, elegant drinks and refined food, with patrons to match.
Or, you could wander the streets below the trains.
Aromatic food carts boiling with unknown contents, customers on plastic stools slurping noodles amidst the ambient noise.
It was beautiful and gritty, spiritual and hedonistic. Whatever you wanted was here.
If there was a place where personal transformation happened, for better or worse, this was it.
As the plane touched down, the dream still fresh in my mind, I worried:
What kind of transformation was waiting for me here?
I was born for adventure, but I was lost in the fog.
She had more to give, but she was still searching for her next mission.
Neither of us knew that the real journey was about to begin.
Meryl was recovering from surgery at home on the Gold Coast, near the end of a hellish year that was supposed to be a sabbatical.
Cancer had stripped away so much - her plans, her energy, her sense of control.
Who am I, if I'm not a CEO? she wondered.
Reflecting on her ruined year, the outsourcing nightmare still haunted her.
When the company demanded the staff return to the office after COVID, her manager said she'd quit if she were forced to go back.
After a legal battle that lasted nine months and a $12,000 "exit fee", the manager officially worked for Meryl. She winced at the memory, angry at herself for falling into the trap.
"Her team" had never been hers in the first place.
Why did that company need to be involved with her firm at all?
In the Bangkok conference room, getting ready to start, I was nervous. I'd never led a session before.
Then, the doors opened and people streamed in. Soon every seat was taken, and many were lining the walls in back.
Woah.
My co-presenter, Greg, and I looked at each other. We did not expect this.
Taking a breath, we started into our presentation. My message was simple, but it might be fresh for this audience.
Everyone here was used to hiring VAs and low-level staff in the Philippines, but I'd been hiring people at the top of the ladder—even a CFO.
Would our message resonate?
The more Meryl thought about it, the angrier she became.
That outsourcing company hadn't been adding any value. If anything, they'd made everything worse — getting in the way of decisions, slowing her down.
What exactly had she been paying those massive management fees for?
She'd searched for other solutions, but found nothing.
After canceling the remaining contracts with the outsourcing company, she slowly she rebuilt her team through referrals.
Why did it have to be this way?
When we were finished, a hand shot up. Then another. Question after question.
The room was humming!
There were even some accountants in the room, enthusiastic Aussies from the Gold Coast.
A room full of people was genuinely excited about what I had to say. After five failed businesses and eight years of trying different things, this was a first.
When the session ended, people came up to talk, the questions continuing to flow. They told me I had something special.
Walking out of that room, I couldn't believe what had just happened.
Later, some would even tell me that mine was their favorite talk of the conference.
How is this possible?
The next day, in a small mastermind group, I laid out what we were doing in recruiting and where I thought it could go.
Around the table, these sharp entrepreneurs were intrigued.
“The model's already proven in other industries," one said.
"So, you're really the first to bring it to accounting?" asked another.
"Yeah, but I don't even know how that's possible," I replied.
"Woah. Go for it!" they were unanimous.
The advice poured in: marketing angles, growth ideas
But what stuck with me wasn’t tactics.
It was their enthusiasm: they saw this model as fresh, inevitable, and unbelievably — mine to own.
Then something strange started happening.
Every talk I attended shared the same theme.
These weren't professional speakers - they were community members, successful entrepreneurs sharing what they'd learned.
“You have to focus.”
“Stop scattering your energy.”
“Choose one thing and go all in.”
They were telling personal stories of how they only broke through when they decided what was important and laser-focused on that.
Sitting in the audience, it felt like each speaker was talking directly to me.
I looked around.
What is happening here?
Between investor calls, Meryl was gradually getting back out there; a few industry meetings here and there, coffee catch-ups with friends who ran firms.
The staffing problem always came up.
She knew global talent was here to stay, and when it worked, it could be transformative.
Some had built their own offshore teams through networks and referrals, as she had, but that took time, connections, and luck—hardly a recommendable solution.
For most, the only real option was outsourcing companies, despite the high fees and miserable experiences they often delivered.
She asked around and scoured the internet for alternatives.Every company had their own pitch, but in the end they were all just variations on the same model.
Meryl kept asking: why?
The message at the conference was impossible to ignore.
How did they know what I was going through?
As I listened, electricity surged through my scalp and radiated through my arms and legs.
This was it, the answer I'd been searching for - why I'd come to Bangkok.
And it was so simple.
Later, I mentioned the theme to a couple friends. “Isn’t it weird how all the talks are about focus this year?”
They stared at me blankly. “What?" one said.
"I didn’t notice that at all,” said the other.
Then I realized: it wasn’t the speakers. It was me.
Something inside me was finally ready to receive the message we've all known.
The talks weren’t coordinated, but every room became a mirror. Every voice became the same.
And it kept saying:
"You must choose."
Between sessions, my partner and I ducked into a coffee shop to decompress.
I was running hot from the morning’s talks, words tumbling out faster than I could sort them.
“Maybe we should just cut the content marketing service,” I blurted. “Just focus on what’s working.”
His eyes grew wide, then narrowed. His expression said we'd talk about this later.
But I was already somewhere else.
Meryl watched her friends who owned firms walking into the same outsourcing trap she'd escaped.
She tried to warn them, but she didn't have another option to give them.
Why isn't there another solution?
The morning I left Bangkok, I had a couple of hours to kill, so I curled up in the coffee shop next door.
The buzz of the conference was replaced by the hiss of the espresso machine. Closing my eyes, I thought.
Breathe.
For the first time all week, my mind felt still enough to notice what was underneath the noise.
I had gotten such a powerful message and positive reinforcement from the conference.
It was a revelation.
But was it?
Who was I kidding? I'd been gravitating toward recruiting since the beginning.
Just months into the bookkeeping business, I got distracted and recorded a full recruiting course and started a coaching program.
Why did I do that?
Deep down, I already knew.
The 'revelation' in Bangkok wasn't new insight. It was finally admitting what I'd been afraid to face all along.
This was my calling, the adventure I was made for.
It was time to stop pretending.
Meryl couldn't stop thinking about it.
What would the ideal solution look like?
Why did there have to be expensive ongoing costs, forever?
Can't that company just get out of your way?
Wouldn't a simple recruiting service work?
Isn't there anyone working on it?
Focus.
Choose.
On the plane, riding the conference high, I opened my journal. The words poured out:
DCBKK 10/25/22
"This was a fantastic trip." I wrote.
"My mind melted. I have a feeling I'll look back on this as an inflection point."
Then I started working through what it would actually mean to choose:
"Recruiting. Go super hard on this. 100%. No involvement in the other side... Delete the content marketing service... Remove bloat... Keep offers ruthlessly clean."
Then I wrote:
"Maybe even buy out my partner's shares in the recruiting side and make it my own thing."
I stared at the page.
I had thought those words before, but until now I didn't have the courage to commit them to ink.
The words didn't feel like an idea, either. They felt like a plan.
But now the real question surfaced.
What if I failed again?
Eight years before, I'd made a promise to my wife — that I'd build a business that would free her to pursue her creative dreams.
Now I had a mediocre, but stable, business.
If I left to focus on recruiting, I'd lose everything.
I knew my partner wouldn't let me keep my income or ownership. I'd be walking away from four years of hard work. It wouldn't be fair, but it'd either be that or a long battle.
This would be business number eight.
And if it failed too...
How many times could I come home with another failed venture before my wife and I both stopped believing?
What if I became her uncle: jumping from one thing to another, never making any of them work?
In the past, that fear would have sent me back to safety.
This time, it felt like a door swinging open.
The only way to know what was on the other side was to walk through it.
Shuffling off the sleepless flight from Bangkok, squinting against the glaring lights, backpack slung over one shoulder...
I made that terrifying decision. I was going all in.
Even if it meant risking the income my family depended on, income I had fought so hard to stabilize after the wild swings of my earlier years.
Little did I know that I was about to receive a message that would make this timing perfect.
That's all for today.
Last week I said I'd share the message Meryl sent me, but it was just too much to fit in one email. Sorry!
Next week, I'll tell you what happened when I got home from Bangkok.
I’d made a terrifying decision — I was all in.
But how would I actually do it? And what would the consequences be?
We’ll find out next week.
And yes, finally, I'll share the message that arrived at the most perfect moment:
"Hey Isaac..."
Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
Cheers!
Isaac
Co-founder
TeamUp
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