Lessons from a relationship gone bad

Doing business with a partner can be a lot of fun – but what if things go out of control?

A crazy case is playing out in public right now – with Kelsey Upson from Architectureblog.org, and what appears to be her ex Logan Douglas at NZ Cloud Hosting.

First hint was a tweet I saw from Kelsey – who has near to 3000 followers. Her tweet stream looks like this. Read from the bottom up.

Before these tweets were ones promoting updates to her blog, which apparently has been disconnected. Following one of those links gets us to this:

The About page says the Police Corruption site is owned by Logan Douglas, who has a beef with the NZ Police it seems, and no doubt they also have a beef with him. A quick Google turns up discussion of an alleged scam and Logan’s Linked In page. A longer Google reveals more of the same. Scary.

The NZCloudHosting Twitter account, which has 13 followers, has this to say – with the 16 July tweet particularly ironic given that it appears Douglas has removed Upson’s website from the internet.

So who is in the right?  and Who is winning?

Well from my persepective the behaviour of Logan appears to be particularly problematic. He has redirected Kelsey’s Architecture blog home page to this below, which would appear to present Kelsey with a pretty good case for libel. Certainly this isn’t going to make any police officer or judge sympathetic to his cause.

It’s also showing up on Google:

But neither party are winning here. They both need to settle this, and quickly, and it seems to have moved to the stage where only legal and perhaps police involvement will solve things.

Meanwhile Kelsey should head across to WordPress.com and start a free blog (it’s simple), then rescue as much as she can from the Google cache of her website and repost it.

Five Lessons from this episode

It’s an awful story, but we can take some lessons from it.

1: As you enter into a professional or social relationship then Google the people that you will be involved with. If you find nothing, or if you find any hint of a scam or psychopathic behavior  then run away, and quickly.

2: Meet and check that their colleagues, business partners, friends and, for personal relationships, family are solid and as described. Make your own decisions and be sure you have no qualms no matter how attractive the opportunity or person is.

3: Make sure your business affairs with your friends and lovers are on just as strong grounds as those with others. An email trail showing the agreement is better than nothing, and a legal agreement is best when larger amounts are involved.

4: Don’t be afraid of calling for professional help – that’s what lawyers are there for, and great advise is a cheap way to avoid years of trouble.

5: Maintain consistent ethical standards. If you find yourself doing business or in a relationship with with a company or person without your standards then either assert control or get out of that relationship. NZ is a small place and each industry is even smaller, and our personal reputation is ultimately all that matters.

and a bonus

6: Everything we do in electronic form is capable of ending up in the public domain. Direct messages, texts, emails, voicemail, or files and our browsing history are all discoverable. So we should not write anything that we would not be able to stand behind when it appears for all to see. That does not mean that we cannot have private conversations online, but it does mean that those conversations should be similar to those you’d have in a restaurant or on a bus.