The Scribe Media Files, Volume IV: A Phoenix from the Flames

Throughout my short-enough time as an entrepreneur, I’ve gotten a wide and wild array of various messages. They’ve come from all around the globe, from all different types of people, mostly in the vein of trying to poorly sell me bad copywriting and even-worse leads. I expected this when going into this particular arena. Online business is a wild world filled with lots of wild people. You can’t expect this particular leopard to change these particular spots. 

However, the message that has shocked me the most, by far, since my time into whatever this thing is was an email that I received a month ago from Eric Jorgenson. Jorgenson, a two-time bestselling author whose seminal work, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, has become somewhat of a religious text to some, reached out to me on behalf of his newest venture- that of the head of my former publisher, Scribe Media. He was doing this with all of Scribe’s former clients, he told me. I was not special in this regard. I was simply one of the many things he had to tend to.

This shocked me for multiple reasons. First, out of the “things to tend to” on Jorgenson's to-do list, contacting Sam LaCrosse (or any author, for that matter) for an up-to-an-hour long Zoom call would be incredibly low on my list. Jorgenson, for reasons that, up until our call, bewildered me, had taken the helm of what most had considered to be a still-in-flames tire fire, that of the former biggest hybrid publishing company in the world that had apparently gone belly-up in an epic fashion. Customer success, particularly for a CEO trying to stamp out that tire fire, wasn’t on my radar of his potential priorities. 

Second, and perhaps even more consequential, Eric Jorgenson should, at this point, have hated Sam LaCrosse. When Scribe Media blew up last May after quickly-mounting financial troubles and a negligent leadership staff threw a stick of dynamite into a thought-to-be-great business, the person who documented every step in the process was none other than yours truly. I absolutely shredded the company, in public, twice. The only potential saving grace that would have saved me from Jorgenson’s wrath would have been Volume III of the Scribe Media Files, where I turned on the populist revolution I helped to start after they took things a bridge too far when going after (quite literally) former CEO, JeVon McCormick. 

Further, I called out Jorgenson as soon as he assumed the position of Scribe CEO. After being contacted by Sieva Kozinsky, the head of Scribe’s newest controlling investment firm, Enduring Ventures, Jorgenson, one of Scribe’s greatest success stories, took over the still-aflame publishing titan. Jorgenson, who owns an incredibly rare distinction of selling more than a million books, announced his presence with a glowing review of his experience with Scribe. He took a bold position- that Scribe could not only resume, but be better than, the place it once occupied when David Goggins had publicly endorsed the company on multiple occasions. 

My reasoning behind this was simple- complete and utter bewilderment. I, and many, were under the impression that things at Scribe were, at the minimum, not doing great. They had hardly any assets. They had several outstanding liabilities that had, and continued, to bleed the company dry. They had laid off nearly 100 people with no insurance or severance packages. Their former CEO was being targeted by countless lawsuits and several law enforcement agencies. His former number two, Meghan McCracken, had jumped ship to start, unbelievably, a new publishing firm after dozens of both on and off-record sources had called her out for corporate buffoonery and vicious personal harassment. 

Therefore, I, and many others, were astonished that Jorgenson and his allies were now telling people that Scribe Media was not only building things back up, but actively producing books once more. Initially leveraging a ragtag skeleton crew to scale operations, including engaging former sales and partner head Rikki Jump and looping exited founders Tucker Max and Zach Obront in for unaffiliated consulting work, Scribe was, once again, in business. 

No explanations were given at the time of Jorgenson’s appointment to the head of Scribe Media. This was not totally unexpected, given the circumstances. Whenever major financial fraud, including embezzlement and falsified documents by the former CEO, are involved, things need to be tight-lipped. However, for the people that still were holding the bag, Scribe’s backdoored customers and former employees, a sense of anger and resentment, which had just settled, once again spiked. 

Neither Jorgenson nor Kozinsky responded to my messages or posts. I don’t blame them. They were busy, and were most likely going to be for a long time. And, to be honest, I was as well. For a short time, I had thought about writing a book on Scribe Media’s implosion and selling the idea to a trade publisher, who I thought could use it to dunk on Scribe further to solidify their market position. Due to multiple factors, including someone else running with the idea and my aspiring plans to exit the corporate world, I decided against it. Scribe Media had had enough, in my eyes. Grudge is a hell of a drug. I didn’t want to indulge myself anymore. 

So, when Jorgenson reached out to me personally over email nearly a year later, I thought I was getting my probably-deserved comeuppance from the universe. This was God telling me, essentially, “ya done fucked up”. I wouldn’t have protested. I was an asshole, a jerk, a dick even. I made a lot of people’s lives way harder than they needed to be. I half-expected Jorgenson to hand me a lawsuit for defamation through my Mac.

The irony about all of this was, after my year of marinating in my post-Scribe fallout, a new spirit of emotion had descended on me- forgiveness. It was not Eric Jorgenson, or Sieva Kozinsky, or Rikki Jump’s fault that Scribe had ruined countless people’s finances and futures. They were merely there to clean up the mess, committed to furthering a very inefficient economic business model (book publishing) so that people could achieve their dreams of being an author. And I had slammed them for it. I would sue me too. Served me right, I thought. 

When Jorgenson hopped on the Zoom, however, he was something very different than what I imagined- happy. He told me that he had been looking forward to speaking to me for a long time, and that he was sorry it couldn’t have happened sooner. And I believed him. My guard instantly down, I asked him how he was doing. He answered the way every entrepreneur typically does- very busy, but a better busy than he would be if he wasn’t in his current state. 

I immediately went into an act of contrition, apologizing for making his life more difficult than it already was by bootstrapping Scribe from a hollowed-out husk and injecting life into a tarnished brand. Remarkably, he said that he was ok with it, and got why people were upset. Most of his days, he told me, were about reaching out to people like me and seeing how we were doing. I was relieved to hear this. It was long overdue.

We then segued into the current state of Scribe’s business. Jorgenson stated that, while things were not yet at levels that were reached at their peak, they were arriving to that point, and were forecasting for beyond it. They had brought on a formal CFO, the one thing that may have prevented the company from going up into flames the first time. They had almost a full-time staff that were actively working on projects, and were churning books out at a very fast clip. I was immediately impressed, taken aback by how quickly such a horrendous situation had rebounded. 

Additionally, Jorgenson was also very forthcoming about the troubles surrounding McCormick and his running of the company into the ground. He shared several legal documents that were public record, which openly showed what everyone already knew- he was a charlatan, and had abused his power to rob his employees while virtue signaling how much he was better than them to the rest of the world. The last time I had heard, he and his family were either in hiding, or on the run, their lives ruined by the sins of a seemingly-unrepentant father. I didn’t bother to ask Jorgenson. It was a waste of time to talk about someone like JeVon McCormick. 

Jorgenson and I then turned to perhaps the greatest thing we have in common- our love of writing. He asked me about the projects I have going on (I have two), what they are, and what my plans were for them. I told him, and he was very receptive to my ideas. We riffed for 20 minutes on what comprised my ideas, and how he and Scribe could potentially help get them to market. I wasn’t ready to make a move, which he respected, but told him I was happy he had asked. 

As our time closed out, I asked Jorgenson the one question I had been begging to ask him for a year- why? Why did he take this job? Why would he put such a risk on his reputation, on his legacy, by tying it to a company that had just so immeasurably disgraced its own name? Jorgenson had no incentive, at all, to do this. I myself don’t think I would have taken the risk. But I was curious to hear from him, and more curious than that to see if the answer he gave matched my own, the one thing I was hoping that he would say.

Fortunately, it did. Jorgenson acknowledged that taking the wheel of the company was a risky move, but said that he did it for one reason- Scribe Media needs to exist. In a world where institutional gatekeepers have seemingly gone ary in almost every conceivable fashion, there needs to be a militia of people who build alternatives. Scribe, for the longest time, was the best-known and most effective beachhead in that fight in the publishing space. I agree wholeheartedly with Jorgenson. Scribe Media, and others like it, needs to exist. But they cannot without people to lead them, which is what compelled Jorgenson to jump into the fray. 

As we closed our time together, Jorgenson lets me know that, if I have any questions, to let him know. I test that proposition almost a week after we talk, and am proven right. I leave the meeting encouraged in a way that I never thought I would be about Scribe Media, particularly post-blowup. I attend a group discussion with former authors two weeks later to make sure the consistency of the feeling stays intact. I just observe. It does, and is echoed throughout the entire leadership team. I say nothing. I only smile. 

The reason that I smiled then, and am smiling as I write this, was because Eric Jorgenson was correct- Scribe Media needs to exist. The tragedy of Scribe Media’s fallout in 2023 was not just the fact that people lost jobs and authors got their dreams shattered. That would be bad enough. But what made everything worse, and dare I say almost unforgivable, was that it broke the trust of all who had believed in the Scribe mission before. What was once thought of as a bastion of hope against the seemingly-uncrackable field of book publishing had been polluted and tarnished. It was negligence that was the Old Scribe’s former sin, not simply failure. Failure is acceptable. Negligence, particularly in the realm of hope, is not. 

It is my hope as I close the Scribe Media Files for good that this is true. I emailed Jorgenson after the group call to tell him as much, and to let him know that if any help is needed, to let me know first. He said that he would, and I trust that he will. Scribe Media is in very good hands with him, as it is with the rest of his team. He, and they, are good people, and honest people. It is goodness and honesty that was devoid of the Old Scribe leadership team. It is goodness and honesty that will right the ship. 

To all who participated in these Files, I issue you both a challenge and a truism- forgiveness is the essential virtue for a flourishing culture. It is the loss of this virtue as to why our culture has gone to Hell, and gone there fast. You don’t have to forget what Scribe has done. I would encourage you not to. The sin of negligence, as mentioned, is what gets us into the most trouble the most often. 

But forgiveness is done for yourself. Move on. Move forward. Wish those that harmed you well, if nothing else to encourage them to not repeat those same sins upon others in their own hedonism and selfishness that still might persist. When we have a world that forgives each other, instead of condemning one another, we push one another to the sky, and not into the ground. It is this hope that I believe will get Scribe Media back to its rightful place as the home for the best authors, books, and creative talent in the world.

And it should be for us all, if we truly want the best for us all.

Own the Day,

Sam