Help Salem Overcome Business Debt

Hey there everyone! My name is Salem; I'm raising funds to try to get myself out of some heavy debt I'm in that's having an extremely negative effect on my life, as well as my family's lives. This debt was accumulated by covering Jade/Bluefolf's half of expenses for 9 months of Fursodas, as well as the debt taken on to attempt to get out of the situation I was put in.

This is a fairly long story, so i'll try to summarize as best I can! I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read about the events written about here!

I'm really not expecting any sort of big development with this GoFundMe and I certainly dont expect people to handle all of my debt for me. I appreciate everyone who wants to help SO much, and it means the absolute world to me! Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to set this up. I was incredibly hesitant doing so, and I hope this doesnt upset anyone in the long run.

I put the amount at $12, 600 due to it being how much in debt the company is from the following factors:

If by any chance, I happen to get more than what i'm asking, any excess will go towards my medical debt that has built up at the same time!

There is a small TW/CW for the following; Mental health, Medical talk, Dog injury/amputation + death BUT you can find a sort of vent/explanation of how the last almost 2 years of my life has gone and how it's gotten to this point!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vJWIDIHIre_rEmGYv7IFG2P3_-9VGhJS9k_tP19VfgA/edit?usp=sharing

To explain the events with Blue + Fursodas in more clarity and detail, i'll just start in December 2022.

Coincidentally at the same time, Blue + I had very similar ideas of custom craft sodas themed to peoples fursonas. I only had about 1200 followers at the time, and she had about 50k and the idea of doing something like that in "competition" with an account nearly 10x my following was very intimidating.

I had a good plan for something like that, and from owning IceFoxWorks for roughly 11 years at that time, I had a pretty good handle on how to run something like that. However, Blue approached me about 2 weeks after I theorized my idea, and invited me to join her 'task force' and due to having experience and due to having this idea individually, she suggested we co-own the business and enter into a partnership.

She didn't have an age in her bio, and I had never even heard of her before. I assumed(stupidly) that due to starting up this task force + making so much initiative she had at least a little experience, and due to her following, I assumed she had some sort of ability to finance her side of things. At the time, I was doing fairly well financially and could follow my own expense plans to start up a business of this nature; I figured it would be a bit easier if someone was taking over half of the expenses + work alongside me.

Very quickly upon joining the 'task force' I realized it wasn't quite a 'task force' so much as it was a bunch of people who volunteered to do things for the company (coding, artwork, etc;). They had all been added into a telegram group chat, and were drawn into the group by a tweet Blue had made essentially asking if anyone wanted to be in the 'task force' and letting anyone who commented join.

After speaking to the 4 folks that were in there, I learned they were primarily all minors. I was extremely uncomfortable with this, and expressed that very adamantly. It took quite a bit of time and consistent arguing to figure out how to approach that and the final agreement was that due to Blue letting them join and giving them a sort of false hope, I would write up a contract for their parents to sign saying when they turned 18, they would be able to re-join if Fursodas was still going strong.

After that, it started to get fairly difficult to get Blue to answer. I had to consistently send messages over and over. Finally , we agreed to meet in January to write up a partnership agreement, and go over some details of the business that needed to be solidified; such as ownership percentage, whether that entailed 50% profit share, what would happen in the case one of us wanted to leave the business and how much our half would be valued at, decisions on how to plan the companies development, etc;

The meeting was ultimately cut short due to extreme weather(that left me and my husband stranded in Atlanta), me getting food poisoning, and there was some sort of roommate situation going on with Blue as well as some sort of altercation with BuildaFur who was upset with her for recording a lot of mistreatment of one of her plushies.

We never were able to finish fleshing out the agreement. It was THEN that I figured out Blue was 19 and in college. It was when I was trying to fill out partnership documents and needed her ID, and thats when I figured it out. At this point, we were so publicized and followed that there wasn't really a huge option to back out.

My plan was to do a 3 year start up that would end with a physical location, preferably a food truck. The expenses were going to be extremely affordable at only about $140 each per month to get into it and start the process. I had 0 intention of making sales, profits, patreon/kofi, raffles, etc; until past that 3 year mark. (For comparison, I now pay $700 a month just in Fursoda debt)

However, despite mentioning this during that meeting, Blue sorda surged forward in the development of the company. She started up give aways, and started advertising it very quickly and getting a ton of eyes on the project that I ultimately wasn't ready to proceed forward with. She promised an opening by Spring 2023, which was completely unrealistic, and then she promised an opening by the end of 2023, which again, wasn't possible. I tried to gently/politely talk her out of these things, or suggest other things, but most of the time she had already done these things before I had even seen them.

I was rushed into setting up some way to get income to start working to keep all of these promises; and so I started small. Just trying to get a patreon going for small things like stickers, or to see updates as we were developing. Eventually, I had to get approved for doing samples, and trying to get some sort of income rolling to start trying to hasten the development to keep up with everything.

While a lot of this was going on; Blue made posts looking for artists, or the raffle itself, teasing updates or trailers to keep people interested. She would answer dms or randomly start doing tasks that didn't quite need to be done or things i'd already done myself which created more work for me in the long run. She only did these things every 2-3 months or so, and wouldn't really do anything else.

During this time, I was constantly running things by her for approval. Mascot WIPS, website WIPS, art WIPS, incoming + outgoing funds, supplies we needed, etc;

She would ask how things were doing roughly once a month, and she would ask about things like taxes + what not that Id already handled. But over all, she wasn't involved in anything I was doing.

I had asked her multiple times a month , every month, to at the bare minimum retweet our patreon announcements and things to try and get supporters to fund the growth she'd put in motion.

From January 2023, to October/November 2023, I constantly asked Blue for help with the funds. February I told her we were already in debt because i'd asked her numerous times already to help pay her portion and kept her up to date with how much she had. I was growing frustrated at this point, and sent her a message after some thought to express how frustrated I was during that time. I told her we were in debt, I was frustrated at doing everything, that I really needed her to pay her share, buy materials or at the very least do something as basic as retweet the posts or something.

I gave her plenty of opportunity to tell me if Fursodas wasn't something she could afford to follow through with, and all I really got were constant assurances that she would do it.

Throughout the rest of the year, I frequently expressed my frustrations with her. With very little communication with me, I would find out she was going to random conventions and events and was buying things like a new fursuit while I was actively asking her to help me. She would constantly say someone else was footing the bill; and a few times I pointed out that regardless, she still had to pay for things and those things could be going towards the business debt.

The most notable cons I remember her going to were TFF 2023, FWA 2023, Denfur 2023, MFF 2022, AC 2023, and I think a few more (I could be wrong about the specific cons listed, these are just the big ones I recall)

At one point I told her that I wished I could go to cons, but I was left to handle this business and didn't have the luxury to do so, and neither should she.

Every single time, she would promise to pay things, or apologize and agree with me about the delegation of funds + cons and everything I pointed out that I was frustrated over.

Nothing ever really came from it.

She DID pay about $300 once to try and cover her portion of monthly expenses, but she still owed $180 and was never able to pay the rest. Another time she paid $262, but was never able to pay anything else. At one point she bought around 4 bottles of syrup for the company, and she retweeted the posts maybe 2-3 times the entire duration she was with Fursodas.

Most of the time, she would wait RIGHT up to the literal day a payment was due to tell me she wasn't able to get the funds together and i'd have to put it on the business card; and id only know she couldnt due to reaching out myself for an update.

By the time October 2023 rolled around; I told her that the business card was completely maxed, and everything else had to come out of whatever sales I was able to make; I told her I was really struggling. At this time; I started charging things to my personal card in an attempt to keep up with everything, somewhat accepting that I had to figure this out.

Into the month, I was sympathetic to the ValidLs situation, but still frustrated over the fact that I was the only one doing anything with the business. It didn't take long for people associated with ValidLs to start targeting me due to Blue having "CEO of Fursodas" in her bio.

People constantly put my face, phone number, home address, pictures of my home and my full name and everything online on websites, sent threatening texts and calls, created a fake email to send a fake threat to a local school pretending to be me so they could file a false police report against me; their goal was to get me swatted but it ultimately failed.

After that, sometime in November, I expressed frustration with Blue again and told her I needed to be the one taking over due to negligence. Since the partnership agreement was never completed, i didn't need to pay for her portion of the company. It was just a smooth transition.

For the next few months, I had to handle the situation with our service dog prospect, and wasn't really able to bother with pestering for the portion she had yet to pay me back for. I tried to take out a paypal loan to alleviate some of that immediate debt, and paid $2,500 of the loan towards Fursodas, but it was quickly built back up.

Around April, I finally told her we needed to talk about how to manage this debt; my grandmother was having increasingly concerned heart capacity issues, and I was spread so thin trying to pay all of my medical debt + the fursoda debt, that I needed at least one thing handled.

And that is finally where we are today. Blue has promised to pay me back $6,500 of the debt, which was the half we agreed upon originally. She has sent me $430 that has gone towards debt, and assured the other $6070 will be given by the end of the week(5-10/12)! Im not sure if she will feasibly be able to, but if something happens; good or bad; I will keep this updated!

The picture below is proof of the three debts I currently owe on Fursodas in general!