It’s with a heavy heart that I write this.

But also with a renewed sense of purpose, and a little dash of that enthusiasm the New Year always brings.

In early October 2010, I underwent an unexpected and incredibly invasive surgery. At nearly the same time, my main server went down.

You, as a customer, saw sites that were down and no sign of me to correct the problems. You couldn’t log into your Crowd Mountain membership. You also couldn’t go to the support desk to request help, as that site was on the same server and down as well.

Worst of all, you were still being billed via Infusionsoft for your Crowd Mountain membership.

Before I go any further, I want to say that I am so, so sorry for that.

I had support staff on hand who couldn’t offer help to you because the support desk was down. I had a webmaster who had been hired a month prior (to replace my previous webmaster, who died in a car accident in June), but he was new, still being trained and didn’t have access to all my logins yet.

What effected you most was that *I* was the only person who could fix the problems, and I was gone. Again, I apologize with such deep gravity and sincerity that it simply can’t be translated into words.

Some folks suspected intentional trickery; I understand that uncertainty and fear often bring out the worst in people.

Our industry does have a few bonafied scammers, quick-buck bizopp kinda people. But it’s full of an astounding majority of hardworking, honest and helpful folks too. I’ve always made a point to work to legitimize internet marketing – to bring truth where it’s missing, to take away some of the “smoke and mirrors.”

I deeply regret if these circumstances caused you to see the internet marketing industry as a whole as a set-up, a scam, or one big product launch after another with no follow-through. While I’ll do everything I can to earn back your trust, I understand if I can’t. But I ask that you not throw the baby out with the bathwater and condemn the many other incredible teachers and products out there.

I won’t be offering another in-house internet marketing product for sale until a “mini-me” (or equivelant team) has been hired and fully trained “just in case”.

I will *NEVER* allow this to happen again – for the sake of the industry as a whole and mostly for the sake of you, the customer.

You can log in to Crowd Mountain at:

http://www.crowdmountain.com/members/

I will keep the past content available for you to refer back to. All billing for Crowd Mountain has been stopped. It will not be reopened.

If you do need help with your account, the support desk is available at:

http://support.revolutiontilt.com

What will happen next? My staff and I will work around-the-clock at the support desk over the next several days to assist you.

After that, I plan on devoting my time to getting my hands dirty building sites, implementing new SEO strategies and, of course, sharing it all with you here on the blog.

Thank you to the overwhelming number of people who voiced their concern for me during my absence. You didn’t know what was wrong, but you knew me well enough through my blog posts, videos, tweets and products to know that *something* was wrong. I’m deeply touched by your support, thank you.

What happened with Crowd Mountain – with all my sites – proves in a backwards kinda way just how possible it is to succeed in internet marketing as a “lone ranger.”

But it also shows how the “one-man show” system of doing business will implode when the one (wo)man is down for the count. The show can’t go on.

Life happens, whether it’s as pleasant as an extended vacation or as disruptive as health problems or a server outage during a family death. Take a moment to think about how you can protect your own business from this situation. How can you build a team (which can even be as simple as another internet marketer you trust) to fix things when you can’t?