Working with Ryan Eagle and seeing his day to day actions have taught me a lot about who and what he has become. I’ve known Ryan for over 10 years, and worked for him for almost 3 years. About a month before EWA’s demise, I was let go during one of the most stressful times of my life. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one left in the dark, not only as an employee, but as a friend as well. I don’t ever do things like this, but I’ve been put in a position where everybody needs to know what exactly went on at EWA.
Affiliate’s may have assumed that account managers knew what was really going on, but I was basically in the same boat. You feel like important information has been withheld from you, and you are being deceived. Well, that’s exactly what was happening to me.
I started out in April of 2010. From that day, my life had changed. I no longer was able to have a comfortable identity, outside of managing affiliates. I understand margins are pretty important too, and any account manager who doesn’t, isn’t cut out for the job. I was basically new to the industry, and all I really had were hustling skills from various sales positions. That didn’t really matter to Ryan, all he wanted was results. I was able to tell he was an impatient person. Did I know what I was getting into? To some extent yes, but what I didn’t expect was being violated as an employee. From being threatened, to being called retarded or stupid, the possibilities were endless. By no means possible was Ryan ever able to give constructive criticism. It was all about putting you down, and making your job feel threatened.
The negative comments slowed down as I pulled in the margins, but his work ethic was bothersome. I recall that summer of 2010, we had switched banks, where everything would be automated, resulting in better payments towards affiliates. Many believed that it was our main issue for not paying on time, before switching. This was the first of lies to his affiliates as well as the account managers. Realistically, he was not paying affiliates on time because we simply didn’t have the cash to support it. After that switch, margins happened to get better, so payments were more efficient.
Even with the switch, there were still some delay’s on payment, which again, done on purpose. Between November 2010 and June 2011, Everything was great. All the account managers were making money, there was little drama, but Ryan wasn’t happy. He found a reason to stress out his account managers. I don’t know what stresses the others went through, but for me, during that stretch of 8 months, Ryan would do things like finding a reason not to pay affiliates. Affiliates were given trouble, being awarded with traffic pauses and bans, without giving legitimate proof or reason. They were simply one sentence emails from Tom Eagle
We basically had two affiliates who really brought in the bread and butter for our network. One of them, who will remain unnamed, ran dating traffic. For that ex-account manager, his stresses were beyond belief. The countless optimizations he had to deal with, forced that affiliate to discontinue business with EWA. The second affiliate, who will also remain unnamed, primarily ran Credit Report traffic. He happened to be my affiliate, and I can say that Ryan did his fair share in aggravating that relationship. In February of 2011, I was told to ask him for promotional material and methods, due to possible fraud. This is never an easy task to accomplish, because the affiliate begins to question practices, especially when he’s found innocent of any fraud.
Little did Ryan know, I had a personal contact in EWA, whom Ryan shared too much information with. It was made clear to me that my affiliate had done nothing wrong, and they were doing this because cash flow was low. A couple of weeks later, the drama was over, and the affiliate was cleared to run traffic. Not even a month later, Tom Eagle directly emails that affilaite, requesting for the same information. I made a problem out of it, as it was detrimental to the relationship I had with that affiliate. Tom quickly retracted his statement to the affiliate and let him continue with his traffic. In the midst of that issue, I was told by my contact that it was because of cash flow issues. Fast forward to July of 2011, and that affiliate never ran any real traffic through us, as it was apparent that we were hard to do business with. Ryan told me I was greedy, and I couldn’t fight it in fear for my job, but I knew I had done everything to salvage that relationship. Ryan would just not let me be.
In about March of 2011, Ryan and his partner made an investment for some short code for a ringtone offer, or something of that nature. We made big bucks off it for about three months, and then lost the code. Apparently it had cost us over a million dollars. This is what started to cause the deterioration of EWA. In those successful months, Ryan had not even thought to put that money in better places, like EWA. Making pointless purchases, wasting everything he had made. So when the time came to pull the plug in his investment, we were left dry. Of course, I wasn’t in on any of this, and Ryan was pretty reluctant to share the information, so it’s all speculation. But I do know that we had an investment that went sour. From then on, things just went south. There was sort of a domino effect, where everything EWA did, hurt the health. Now that two of its biggest affiliates were out, there wasn’t cash flow coming in to support others. We turned great relationships into bad ones, and lost even more affiliates, causing us to lose even more cash flow. It got to a point where we had big affiliates on payment installments, which we never paid out on! It then got to a point where we would get prepaid payments from advertisers, and Ryan was just pocketing it because nobody was running traffic. So who was left to pay out? Nobody but the 30-40K commissions he had already owed to some.
People may not have noticed, but in the last 12 months, Ryan had been on so many vacations. It made me wonder why the money wasn’t going in better places? He could have paid out my affiliates, and may have still salvaged the company. In the summer of 2012, things seemed OK when he said we had an investor, giving us about $3 million. Signs of progress were great, because he made the information public to specific affiliates. When it came time to pay out, I questioned what the status on that investment was, and I was told it never went through. That the investor wanted a higher stake in the company. I was told that he got the $3 million, but ended up hiding it somewhere in the Bahamas. A couple of months after that investment flopped, we were told another investor was giving us $20 million, and testing the waters with an initial $2 million. This was also made public to account managers and some affiliates. We all waited 2 months, patiently, for this deal to go into fruition. Affiliates were waiting for payments, and never saw a dime of it.
What he did to me, was beyond unethical.
He made me feel like his friend, through all of this.
Upon my termination, I was sent a document to sign. The sole purpose of this was that I would get a severance payment, and in return, I wouldn’t disclose any of the information you read before you today, amongst other items.
Ryan has a property in Chicago and Miami, 3 cars, and numerous other assets. He couldn’t even pay me $6,000 for severance money, while he was on vacation. I was terminated 3 days before payday, and that hadn’t even come on time. I had to threaten a lawsuit against him, in order to get my earned paycheck. He told me to give him time for my severance, but it became apparent to me that I would never see it. I was able to see he was brushing me off like an affiliate. I wasn’t going to wait to see what happened. I was done protecting this fraudulent individual.
Ryan really did his number on me in those last 6 months, keeping the hope alive, thanking me for my hard work while still harassing me about numbers, when it was all a lie. So we come to this, who is Ryan Eagle? He is the type of individual who capitalizes on people’s weaknesses. I just so happened to be a passive type of person. In the beginning I wasn’t, I would defend myself, and end up getting slammed with assignments as my punishment. He is the type of person who makes people pay for their actions, when he knows he is wrong. He is the type of person who stays 10 steps ahead of the game, not to come out on top the right way, but in an act of cynicism.
You want to know who Ryan really is? Just read the 50 Laws of Power. He eats, breathes, and sleeps with that book. Anybody who couldn’t be trusted, was treated in that manner, despite not earning the title. People he trusted included Tom Eagle and Jared Levine. They knew the truth behind everything. And Ryan has taken them for a ride as well. If you are doing business with this character, he will do a number on you, just wait and see. He will wait for the correct opportunity to stab you in the back, and that is who Ryan Eagle is.
