Two Sides To Every Story

TL;DR: For three years, a Reddit thread filled with anonymous, single-use accounts has called me a con man, a criminal, and claimed I'm on the run. None of it is true. I have no criminal record, no tax obligations, and no investigations against me. The thread was created as part of a coordinated campaign by a former business partner who systematically destroyed my business from the inside. Every reply I posted was deleted by the moderator, and I was banned from defending myself. This is my full story - who I am, what I built, what happened, and what I'm going to do about it. If you only read one thing I've ever written, make it this.

Fact: the internet is a revolutionary resource that puts information at your fingertips in seconds.

Fact: not everything you find online is true.

Fact: it can be used as a tool to manipulate the way people think about someone they've never met.

Fact: there are two sides to every story.

This is mine.

I have been operating in the music business for almost 18 years.

For every single one of those years, I have dedicated myself to serving artists and helping them navigate an industry that does not care about them.

The music business is a machine that chews up artists, prioritises profit over people, and discards anyone who doesn't play by its rules.

I have spent my career fighting against that.

And yet, here I am, having to write an article defending myself - not against the machine, but against anonymous accounts on the internet.

There is something deeply wrong about the fact that someone who has spent nearly two decades serving artists has to pause what he's doing for a moment to address lies written by people who don't have the courage to use their real names.

But here I am.

Because I owe it to the people who believe in me to set the record straight.

There is currently some one-sided information about me on the internet that I want to address.

It is not something I want to spend a huge amount of my time on, but I feel it is necessary to give my side of the story, to provide context, and to defend my character and the person that I am.

But before I address what's been said, I want you to understand who I actually am, because the person you're about to get to know bears no resemblance to the character that's been created by anonymous accounts hiding behind keyboards.

When I was 11 years old, I built my first business.

It was a car washing business, and I remember the excitement I felt - not just because I knew I could make money, but because I could help my friends make money too.

I didn't grow up with money.

I came from a very poor neighbourhood, but I had a simple idea: go to the neighbourhoods where people had multiple cars and offer them something of value.

It worked.

And I brought my friends along with me, because even at 11, the thing that gave me the most satisfaction wasn't the cash in my own pocket - it was watching my friends earn alongside me.

By 13, I had a morning paper round, an evening paper round, a Thursday paper round, and a Sunday paper round running alongside the car washing on weekends and school during the week. I understood hard work at an early age.

I have always been someone who enjoys creating value, building things, and generating my own income.

It's one of the gifts I was given, and I've carried it with me through every chapter of my life.

Following on from school and college, when I stepped into my family's bakery business, I took it from six staff and one store to multiple stores, six sandwich vans, a wholesale operation, and 60 staff.

I grew that business from a couple of hundred thousand pounds to over 1.5 million in revenue in 18 months.

And when the family wasn't willing to give me the freedom to build beyond what they could see, I made the hardest decision of my life.

I walked away.

Not because I didn't love them, but because I had ideas that were bigger than bread.

I believed that if I could channel the same energy, the same work ethic, and the same ability to build things into an industry like music - an industry that touches every human being on earth - I could make an impact that mattered.

That was nearly 18 years ago.

In the time since, people have paid me significant amounts for a few months of strategic consulting because of the results I consistently deliver.

Last year I helped an artist go from $30,000 a year to $300,000.

The year before that I helped a DJ go from selling 1,500 tickets in London to 6,000 in less than nine months.

I could fill every hour of every day selling my time for money and live very comfortably doing it.

But that has never been my game.

My game is bigger than that, and it always has been.

Now let me tell you about the people who matter most.

My wife Georgina and I met at an indie night on New Year's Eve in 1996.

We were both 18 years old.

We've been together ever since - through the good times and the terrible times, through the wins and the devastation, through every single chapter of my story so far.

I could not have accomplished anything I've done, or anything I'm about to do, without her love, her support, and her unwavering belief in me.

We are 47 years old, and she is still the person standing beside me.

Our son Will is 19.

He's magnetic - always has been.

He has a huge heart, and he wants to help people in the same way I do.

He has my trust in others, which isn't always a good thing, as you'll come to understand.

Our daughter Ruby is 14.

She is one of the wisest people I know, with a head on her shoulders that defies her age.

She is loving, caring, and giving in ways that make me deeply proud.

Both of them are now part of the business.

You don't bring your children into something you don't believe in with every fiber of your being.

I am someone who is deeply thoughtful and considered in everything I do.

I don't make rash decisions.

I don't act in anger.

I plan meticulously, I think strategically, and I execute with precision - because the people who trust me deserve nothing less.

I have former team members from over seven years ago who are waiting to come back and work with me at the right moment.

I have people who have turned down significant roles at other companies because they want to be part of what I'm building.

Some of them have been waiting over four years.

People don't wait four years to work with a con man.

They wait four years to work with someone they believe in.

That's who I am.

And now that you know that, let me tell you what I built.

In 2008, I walked into the music business knowing nothing about it.

I had no connections, no experience, and no reputation.

What I had was a simple belief: music is one of the most powerful forms of communication on earth, and if I could make a positive impact in the music business, I could make a positive impact in the world.

What I found when I arrived was an industry that was broken.

A machine that chewed up artists, prioritised profit over people, and left a trail of crushed dreams behind it.

I decided I was going to build something different.

The first artist I developed was Coasts.

They were nobodies when I found them - nobody else was caring about them, nobody else was doing anything with them.

I developed them at every level and within a couple of years they were playing to over 3,000 people in London.

They toured the world.

I signed them to both Warner Music and Capital Records, at a time when bands were considered nearly impossible to break.

Then I took everything I'd learned and did it again, even better.

I built my own model - one that sat completely outside the traditional music business playbook - and I tested it with a band called The Hunna.

The results were unprecedented.

I took them from zero to 10,000 tickets in London in less than 18 months from their first show.

I sold 85,000 tickets across the UK.

I helped them generate over 300 million streams on Spotify alone.

The first two albums I worked on with them have now surpassed 1 billion streams across all platforms.

Both of these artists were unknown before I found them.

I invested my own money and my own time into developing them.

In the case of The Hunna, I spent over two years developing them from scratch - I even paid for the singer and the guitarist to be able to live while they wrote songs.

This wasn't a label deal where I took a cut of someone else's talent.

This was me putting everything on the line because I believed in what we were building together.

Since I stopped working with The Hunna, they have gone on a significant decline.

They now sell around 1,000 tickets in London.

The two records they've released since have generated less than 50 million streams combined.

I don't say this to take anything away from them - I say it because the numbers tell a story that words cannot.

The model I built worked, and the results speak for themselves.

Six weeks after receiving an email from The Hunna's lawyer telling me they no longer wanted to work with me - without any warning, without any conversation, without any consultation - I sat down and wrote a book.

Most people would have spent those six weeks in shock or in a lawyer's office.

I spent them writing 'Zero to Record Breaker'.

That book has now sold over 33,000 copies.

The emails and messages I receive from artists who have been moved by the story, inspired by the strategies, and motivated to take action on their own careers is one of the most overwhelmingly powerful things I've ever experienced.

I also made a commitment to understand artists at the deepest level possible.

Over the course of the following years, I personally connected with over 5,000 artists through one-on-one Zoom calls.

I didn't charge them for a single one of those calls.

Five thousand conversations, given freely, because I wanted to understand every want, every need, every frustration, and every dream that these artists carried with them.

Yet still, I have been labelled a 'Con Man' by an anonymous Reddit user.

A con man doesn't give away 5,000 hours of his time for free.

Someone who is obsessed with getting it right does.

Beyond the artists, I have built multiple businesses and created significant value across everything I've touched.

Every funnel I've ever created has generated well over a million dollars in a year or less.

People pay me between $3,000 and $5,000 a month on retainer because the strategies I develop consistently deliver transformational results.

Have some things gone wrong along the way?

Yes, and I'm going to talk about that next with complete transparency.

But here is what I have dedicated the last seven years of my life to.

To find the answers to these questions:

How do you build the biggest and fairest music company in the world without being connected to the existing system?

How do you do it in a way where you never have to succumb to the demands of that system?

Where you never have to compromise on the values that were the very reason for creating the company in the first place?

Where you never have to lower the ethical standards, the quality standards, or the commitment to artists to the level that the existing industry operates at?

And I have found the answers.

But before I share what's coming next, I’d like to talk about what happened in between - because the people who have tried to destroy my reputation are counting on you never hearing this part of the story.

I promised you complete transparency, and this is where I deliver on that promise.

In order for you to understand what happened, I’d like to talk about the circumstances that led to it.

After my time with The Hunna ended, I moved my family to Los Angeles.

My wife, our two children, and me - four suitcases and a dream.

I went from having a team of 22 people to having nobody.

No support, no infrastructure, no network in a city where we didn't know a single person.

I was rebuilding from scratch, and I was open to anyone who showed up with genuine belief in what I was trying to build.

That's when a former business partner entered my life.

It is not necessary to name this person publicly.

This person had purchased my book and reached out from South Africa, telling me she wanted to fly to Los Angeles, work alongside me, shadow me, and be part of the mission.

At a time when I had no resources and no team, that meant something.

I trusted her.

Over time, I brought her deeply into the business.

I was making her a partner.

I gave her complete trust at every level, and I connected her with the artists in my closest community.

She had access to all of them.

She also built a relationship with my family, including my children.

We genuinely cared about her.

And then, without warning, she used that access as a weapon against me.

To understand why, you need to understand what was happening in the world at that time.

We were in the middle of the pandemic.

Everyone was struggling mentally.

She had lost her father.

She had other personal challenges compounding on top of that.

The tipping point was that she wanted a level of income from the business, and I wasn't in a position to provide it at that point.

I don't say any of this to attack her.

I say it because the reader deserves to understand the full context of what led to a situation that destroyed years of work.

What she did was systematic.

She got on Zoom calls, one by one, with my biggest supporters and closest artists.

She told them I was a scammer, a con man, and a criminal.

She told them I was on the run from the government.

None of this was true, but they had built trust with her and believed it.

If those words sound familiar, it's because they are the exact same narrative that appears in the Reddit thread you may have already read.

The same accusations, the same language, the same story.

The reason I know what she said is because some of the people she spoke to came straight to me and told me what she was doing.

She managed to convince some of my clients, but not all of them.

She triggered enough of them to initiate chargebacks.

I was running two programmes at the time.

The first was an Elite Mastermind - a six-month, high-ticket programme at $15,000 per artist.

We had many artists enrolled, and we were four months in.

We had delivered extensively - logos, brand DNA plans, strategic frameworks - with a full audit trail of everything we'd provided.

Ten of these artists charged back. $150,000 gone.

The second was a playlist campaign I created to help artists to build real listeners on their music where I had already invested a substantial amount of the capital into advertising on behalf of the artists in the campaign.

Some of these artists charged back too.

Another $150,000.

Over $300,000 was pulled out from under me within a matter of days by people who had been turned against me by someone I trusted with everything.

What made this situation so much worse, was that the timing was catastrophic.

Apple's iOS 14 update had decimated Meta's advertising platform - a well-documented disruption that affected businesses worldwide for over two years.

It was also a US election year, which drove advertising costs through the roof.

On top of that, people still connected to the situation with The Hunna managed to get our playlist account disabled - an account with approaching 100,000 followers across multiple playlists that we could no longer access.

Any one of these factors on its own would have been a serious challenge.

All of them hitting simultaneously, while $300,000 in chargebacks drained the capital I'd already invested into delivery, made it impossible to continue operating.

The chargebacks triggered our bank accounts to be shut down.

I could not set up new banking.

I could not set up card processing.

The business had to be shut down, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Then came the visa.

Our visa to live in the United States was expiring, and because of the pandemic, renewals were extremely difficult.

I had one opportunity - an artist I could work with who could support a new visa.

But my former business partner had got to him too.

He told me that if I didn't comply with his demands, he would revoke the visa support.

I couldn't put my family in that position.

So we made the decision to leave California and do a road trip down to Mexico for a few months, while I figured out my next steps.

Not because I was running from anything.

Because my former business partner had systematically destroyed my ability to operate in the country I was living in, and I needed time to figure out what was next.

I live openly in Cabo San Lucas, and what was originally going to be a stay of 6 months or so has now been 4 years. It is a beautiful place to live. 

My location is public on my Facebook profile.

I post content on social media every single day.

I am not hiding from anyone or anything.

The narrative that I "fled to Mexico" is a lie, and the people who wrote it know exactly why I'm here.

There is one more thing the reader needs to understand.

There is an article online called "When Promises Become Lies" published by a website called All Things Loud.

This was a hit piece commissioned by the management company that turned the heads of The Hunna.

My lawyer successfully got it taken down.

It was then republished after, I was informed, the author was paid additional money to put it back up.

That article is referenced in the Reddit thread as though it is independent journalism.

It is not.

It is part of the same coordinated campaign to destroy my reputation - a campaign that spans anonymous Reddit accounts, a commissioned hit piece, and the systematic work of someone I trusted with my family.

If you search my name on Google right now, you will find a Reddit thread on the first page of results.

The title reads: "Carl Hitchborn Is A Con Man Warning!"

It was posted three years ago in a subreddit called r/unsigned_artists by an anonymous account called Lazy_Godbolt.

It has over 40 comments.

I have not been able to address this thread.

Not because I didn't want to, but because I tried - and was silenced.

I went into that thread and responded to every single comment.

The moderator of the subreddit deleted every one of my replies and banned me from the subreddit entirely.

I was not allowed to defend myself.

The people making accusations were allowed to say whatever they wanted from behind anonymous accounts, and the one person they were accusing was removed from the conversation.

Now let me walk you through exactly what's in this thread, who's behind it, and what the truth actually is.

The Original Post - Lazy_Godbolt

The post claims I sold a programme that "promised the earth," took "many thousands of dollars," and then made excuses about not having enough people to start.

It then states that I am "a criminal," that I am "on the run from HMRC in the UK," and that I was "last seen in Mexico."

Let me address each of these.

I am not a criminal.

I do not have a criminal record.

I am in the process of obtaining an official police certificate from the United Kingdom police service to prove this in writing and draw a line under this accusation.

I am not under investigation by HMRC.

I do not have any outstanding tax obligations in the UK.

I have been living outside of the United Kingdom for seven years.

I am not on the run from anyone.

I am not hiding behind anything.

The person who wrote this post anonymously is the person that is hiding.

As I mentioned, I went into that thread and responded to every single comment.

I challenged every account to have a live, public discussion with me on my social media channels.

Not a single one of them responded.

The moderator of the subreddit then deleted every one of my replies and banned me from the subreddit entirely.

I was not allowed to defend myself.

The people making accusations were allowed to say whatever they wanted from behind anonymous accounts, and the one person they were accusing was removed from the conversation.

Now let me tell you what's actually in this thread.

The account that created the post is called Lazy_Godbolt.

Throughout the comments, you will see this account replying to almost every single post, validating each claim, encouraging the pile-on.

If you read the thread carefully, you'll notice a pattern - and it's the same pattern across almost every account that participates.

One comment.

No other activity on Reddit.

Ever.

Account after account, created for the sole purpose of contributing to this one thread and never used again.

When you step back and look at this thread as a whole, the pattern is undeniable.

The majority of accounts that posted negative comments are single-use profiles with no other history on the platform.

The original poster actively validates every comment and encourages the narrative.

My responses - every single one of them - were deleted by the moderator, and I was banned from defending myself.

The language used in the thread mirrors exactly what my former business partner was telling my artists and supporters on private Zoom calls.

The most detailed comment references a hit piece that was commissioned, taken down by my lawyer, and then paid to be republished.

This is not organic criticism from genuine victims.

This is a coordinated campaign.

What the people reading this thread rarely notice is that there are real people in there defending me - people with real accounts and real histories on the platform.

One of them wrote: "the results he helped us achieve are in a different universe compared to anybody else we have ever worked with."

Another pointed out that "it is an army of anonymous accounts and his own replies that were on here have been deleted by the mods tells you everything about what is going on here."

And one person who initially came into the thread believing the accusations, after actually speaking to me on a call, came back and wrote that "this thread rubbed me the wrong way when I first came across it because it's not what I get from talking to you face-to-face."

That person is now a very good friend of mine.

That is what happens when people engage with me directly rather than reading anonymous posts from accounts that don't exist outside of this thread.

The anonymous Reddit account calls me a 'Con Man', but a con man disappears.

I am doing the opposite.

But I promised you complete transparency, and that means acknowledging something important.

In business, and in life generally, not everything goes to plan.

It is true that some people were let down through circumstances that were beyond my control.

Some people paid money for programmes that could not be delivered because of the chain of events I've described in this article.

The chargebacks that my former business partner triggered destroyed the capital that had already been invested on their behalf.

The people who didn't charge back - the ones who stayed - I worked with them one-to-one to give them value in exchange for what they'd paid.

I have spent 18 years on this journey.

I have been knocked down many times.

I have been betrayed by someone I trusted with my family.

Things often don’t go to plan in business, and there are countless stories of people who have successfully built businesses and lost it all, then built it all again. Resilience is a trait you have to learn pretty fast.

The only reason I am sharing so much of this story online is because I am responding to a public accusation and I feel it is right to give complete context to the situation for anyone that wants to understand it fully.

I am still building.

Because the mission has never changed.

I passionately believe that music is one of the most powerful forms of connection and communication on earth.

I believe that the artists who create it, and the incredible creative people who work alongside them at every level, have the capability to help solve the world's problems.

I believe that art - in all its forms - can connect with people, lift them, and elevate their lives in ways that nothing else can.

The tagline for B A K E R Y is 'Solving the World's Problems Through Art'.

This is more than just a tagline.

That is a conviction I have held since the day I walked into this industry, and it burns stronger in me today than it ever has.

I have spent the last seven years finding the answer to questions that most people told me was impossible.

How do you build the biggest and fairest music company in the world without being connected to the existing system?

I found the answer.

I have built ArtistOS - a pioneering software platform that is going to change the game for every artist who uses it.

Every artist on this platform is going to have a massive edge against those who are not.

This is not a promise.

This is a product that exists, that works, and that I have poured everything I have into creating for more than a year.

And it is just the beginning.

Over the last few years, I have read or listened to almost one book every single week.

My focus has been on studying the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet - their memoirs, their journeys, their darkest moments.

I wanted to understand what separates the people who build empires from the people who give up.

And what I found, without exception, is that every single one of them went through seasons that would have broken most people.

Phil Knight almost lost Nike multiple times.

In his memoir Shoe Dog, he describes years of being on the brink of bankruptcy, fighting lawsuits, navigating betrayals, and operating on the edge of collapse.

Today, Nike is one of the most recognised brands in human history.

Steve Jobs was fired from Apple - the company he built with his own hands.

He spent years in the wilderness before returning to create the most valuable company on earth.

Elon Musk, in 2008, watched Tesla and SpaceX nearly go bankrupt simultaneously.

He was borrowing money to pay rent.

Today, he has sent rockets into space and revolutionised the automobile industry.

Jay-Z built Roc-A-Fella Records because the existing music industry wouldn't let him in on his terms.

He refused to compromise his vision, created his own pathway, and became a billionaire.

These are stories in the public domain of some of the most successful people in history, but there are thousands more that are never shared.

However, the pattern is always the same.

A big vision.

A series of devastating setbacks.

People who try to stop you.

And a decision - in the face of all of it - to keep going.

I am not comparing myself to these people to be grandiose.

I am telling you that I have studied them obsessively because I recognise my own journey in theirs, just as anyone in business also understands the common threads.

The betrayals, the financial destruction, the public attacks, the moments where it would have been easier to walk away and do something else.

I didn't walk away.

I'm still here.

And what I'm about to build will speak for itself.

From this point forward, I want to be very clear about how I intend to operate.

I will pursue legal action against anyone who publishes false and defamatory statements about me.

I have consulted with lawyers.

I have the means, the evidence, and the conviction to follow through.

This is not a threat made in anger.

It is a boundary set with absolute clarity.

For too long, anonymous accounts and bad actors have been able to say whatever they want about me without consequence.

That era is over.

I will also be making videos on my social media platforms where I address these things directly, face to camera, so that anyone who wants to hear my side of the story can look me in the eye and decide for themselves.

I am not hiding behind a screen.

I never have.

I have spent almost 18 years searching for the answers.

I have found them.

And now I am ready to execute with a level of conviction that I have never operated with before.

I am dedicating myself to this cause for the next decade and beyond.

Not for me.

For you.

For the artists who have been chewed up and spat out by a system that was never built to serve them.

For the creators of this world who need a voice, who deserve a voice, and who deserve to be treated fairly.

For every person who has ever poured their heart into their art and been told that it wasn't enough, that they weren't enough, or that the only way forward was to hand over their freedom to a machine that doesn't care whether they survive or not.

I care.

I always have.

And from this day forward, I am going to prove it with my actions, not my words.

Now let me speak directly to the people who have stood by me.

You know who you are.

The artists who stayed when others left.

The people who bought my book and messaged me to say it changed their perspective.

The clients who have been on retainer for years because the results speak for themselves.

The team members who have waited - some of you for over four years - to come back and work with me.

The people I speak to on WhatsApp, on Messenger, in my DMs, who check in on me and my family because they genuinely care.

I owe it to you to go and make this vision a reality.

I owe it to you to do the things that are necessary.

I owe it to you to fight in my corner, to defend my character, and to build the thing I've been telling you I'm going to build.

And that is exactly what I'm going to do.

Not tomorrow.

Not next week.

Now.

If you believe in what I'm doing, I'm not asking you to go and attack anyone on my behalf.

I'm asking you to share your real experiences.

Share this article.

Leave a comment below.

Tell your story in your own words.

Because the truth doesn't need an army of anonymous accounts.

The truth just needs real people with real names who aren't afraid to stand behind it.

This is David versus Goliath.

It always has been.

And David wins this one.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Kind Regards

-The Baker

Solving The World's Problems Through Art | #thetimetodoisnow