Updated September 2026

When a partner stood up a new shared operating stack for the whole company, I ran my own migration onto it first, before my other two partners touched theirs.

Instead of just telling them to go migrate, I wrote up my own migration as a step-by-step playbook, naming the specific mistakes I'd already made and paid for, so they wouldn't repeat them.

Mid-migration I found out some of my own live tools and data rooms had no real backup at all, and I hit a permissions wall that stopped my build cold until a partner granted me higher access. Passing that experience forward directly was faster and safer than letting two more people independently discover the same problems.

The playbook told one partner to route his migration through the company's marketing agent, and told the other to keep his capital and deals work in a walled off, compliance isolated space. It opened with a mandatory back up everything first step, directly because of what almost went wrong in my own migration.

When you find a landmine, don't just quietly step around it. Mark it for the next person.

Sharing hard-won knowledge with two partners instead of letting each of them learn it the hard way.

About this story

When2026
Kind of storyTeaching moment
Told byJesse Fowler, in his own voice
Full recordThe story in Jesse Fowler's own record
CreditCreated by Common Ground