The Day I Almost Poisoned 100+ People (My Worst Business Disaster)

Ten years ago in college, I almost poisoned 100+ students with laundry detergent cookies.

This is my "shit, I'm f*cked" story.

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I ran a Greek life delivery business at USC called Delivery Dash - it was an old tradition where guys could send sorority girls "deliveries" every Monday. Typically a goodie bag with a nice handwritten card and some candies. Honestly an epic opportunity to keep the conversion going with a girl you met at a party that weekend, or ask someone out, it was super popular.

The thing is, most guys were too lazy or too busy to put the deliveries together on Mondays, so I created a service that did it for them.

Our hero product was a $12 goodie bag that included a handwritten note and freshly-baked cookies from my fraternity chef.

I had made a deal with our chef that he would bake tons of fresh cookies every Monday morning (for $0.10 a piece), and I would wrap them up before placing them in the delivery bags. A fairly efficient process with huge profit margins.

One Monday after class, I walked into the kitchen and took a bite out of one of the cookies. It had a funny, fake vanilla-like taste…

That's when I discovered our genius chef ran out of room in our little fraternity kitchen and had been storing chocolate chips in the laundry room next door, inside a drawer with the detergent sheets…

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SHIT. I'M F*CKED.

I had detergent-flavored cookies out for delivery across campus. I rushed to all the sorority houses to collect them back, but most had already been picked up by their recipients 😭

That day, a lot of guys received nasty texts from their dates asking if they were trying to poison them.

I probably could have gotten sued. I was running the whole thing on Venmo with no LLC. Actually got a lifetime ban from Venmo because of this (turns out you're not supposed to run an entire business through Venmo payments). Around the $15K sales mark my account got disabled 😬

But here's the thing - I survived it. The business survived it. And now it's one of my favorite stories to tell.

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We've All Been There

Every freelancer has had their "shit, I'm f*cked" moment.

Maybe you accidentally sent the wrong campaign live and spent your client's entire monthly budget in 2 hours.

Maybe you missed a critical deadline because you mixed up time zones.

Maybe you accidentally CC'd a client on an email where you were complaining about them to a friend.

Maybe you quoted a project at $2,000 when you meant $20,000 and the client already said yes.

These moments feel like the end of the world when they happen. Your stomach drops. Your palms get sweaty. You start mentally preparing your "sorry, I'm not cut out for this" resignation speech.

But here's what I've learned: these moments don't define you. How you handle them does.

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Why I'm Sharing This

There's no particular lesson here. No actionable framework. No "3 steps to avoid disasters" guide.

Sometimes shit just happens. And when you're a freelancer, you don't have a boss to escalate to or a team to share the blame with. It's just you, staring at your laptop, thinking "well, this is it."

But it never is.

You figure it out. You make it right. You learn from it. And eventually, it becomes a story you laugh about.

➡️ Sure, I got banned from Venmo.

➡️ Sure, I had some angry sorority girls and confused fraternity guys.

➡️ Sure, I probably violated about 47 health codes.

But nobody died. The business kept running. And I learned to always taste-test the cookies before sending them out.

Your "shit, I'm f*cked" moment probably felt catastrophic at the time. But you're still here. You're still freelancing. You survived it.

And that's worth celebrating.

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Your Turn

I want to hear your "shit, I'm f*cked" story.

Email me and tell me about your biggest freelance disaster. The moment when you thought it was game over. The mistake that made you question everything.

I promise I’ll read every single one.

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