Hi @gbenga

Thanks for sharing your story. It must not be easy to bring back those memories.

If you don't mind me sharing my opinion. I think it is crutial experience to have to build some business and see it collapsing. That teaches us very important lesson.

So perhaps you were lucky that your first business was small. If you would initially be successful and then lose it all - then potential amount of debts could ruin your life even more.
That's my line of thinking

I believe if I had given them a more reason to see that the business was ours and any hurt it had would affect us, then they might have done better

Do you actually believe that? Is your level of trust towards other human beings still so high?
I think that you could not change who those people were. Regardless on what would you do.

Yours, Piotr