How to Build Trust and a Better Model in a Broken Industry with Gordon Newton

JLD introduces Gordon Newton as a timeshare-exit expert, author of The Consumer’s Guide to Timeshare Exit, CEO of Newton Group, and non-attorney founder and majority owner of DC Capital Law. Asked to share a belief about success that many people disagree with, Newton gives a lesson he learned from his father: successful people must reserve the right to be wrong, but they do not have the right to stay wrong. He distinguishes confidence from stubbornness: confidence helps a leader make a decision, while extreme ownership requires admitting when that decision is not working. Newton says an entrepreneur’s first response to a problem should not be “Who did this?” or “Who is to blame?” but “What could I have done differently?” That may mean changing a process, making difficult personnel decisions, changing how the company sells, or rebuilding the entire business model. He would rather admit he is wrong today than spend five years losing money while defending a bad decision. Using his “peanut butter and jelly” formulation, he says entrepreneurs should identify the problem, take ownership, solve it, and leave things better than they found them. He compares entrepreneurs to firefighters: putting out fires is unavoidable, especially early on, but the real job is cleaning up afterward and understanding why the fire began. Systems should be built so the same fire does not recur. If a company keeps fighting the same fire, it is managing a symptom rather than solving the underlying problem.

Newton says the timeshare-exit industry was the “Wild West” when he entered it more than 20 years ago, and that it remains much the same today. Timeshare sales themselves face substantial regulation, but almost anyone can enter the exit space with a website and a money-back guarantee. There are few uniform licensing standards and little oversight, which creates a particularly dangerous moment for consumers: as soon as an owner decides to get out, competing companies begin calling and offering services or do-it-yourself guidance. He emphasizes that a timeshare is a legally binding contract, and that consumers often encounter people who previously sold timeshares now selling exit contracts. In Newton’s view, many exit companies do not clearly define the service they will provide. Instead, they sell hope and ask the owner to rely on blind trust. An owner who bought the original timeshare based on promises is then asked to buy another contract based on a new set of promises, often reassured by a money-back guarantee. Newton warns that the guarantee may not protect the customer if the company disappears. He says more than 40 exit companies have gone out of business in recent years, taking their guarantees with them. His conclusion is that consumers are buying a contract, not a promise, and must examine whether the advertised service matches what the company will actually deliver. Trust, he says, has to be earned through transparency, accountability, and a real service.

Newton explains that Newton Group conducted a timeshare-exit study examining more than 9,000 ownership experiences. The participants were people who had already decided they wanted out, so the study focused on what they encountered while trying to solve that problem. The results changed his understanding of the industry: 55% had failed at least once in an attempt to exit, and among those who failed, more than one in four—approximately 26.9%—had already hired an exit company that failed them before hiring Newton Group. Newton says those consumers were trying to solve one financial problem but had acquired a second problem that cost them additional time and money. This led him to conclude that the standard exit-company model itself was broken. In that model, a company collects a fee and relies on outside attorneys or in-house counsel and attorney “oversight.” Newton argues that the critical question is not whether an attorney is involved, but whom the attorney represents. If the attorney represents the exit company, Newton says the attorney has a legal duty to protect and prioritize the company’s best interests, not the timeshare owner’s. He therefore advises consumers to ask directly whether an attorney is involved, whether that attorney personally represents them, and whether they will receive a letter of representation. His proposed alternative was to give every client personal legal representation rather than asking them to trust a company’s marketing claims or money-back guarantee.

JLD asks why Newton changed the business structure instead of simply generating more leads or improving marketing. Newton answers that the structural change was the solution to a specific problem: how to provide personal legal representation to every client at a cost the consumer could afford. He says Newton Group was rebuilt from the ground up around a question he used to test decisions: if his mother owned a timeshare, what would he want her to understand and what would he do to protect her? His answer was that she should know the timeshare was legally binding, that non-attorneys should not be giving legal advice or performing legal reviews, and that she should have someone in her corner with a legal duty to protect and prioritize her interests. Newton says creating that model required finding a way for a non-attorney to have an ownership interest in a law firm, something he was told could not be done. His response was that entrepreneurs have to find a way to do the “impossible.” He says the resulting structure allowed the business to provide personal representation at scale and to beat what he calls the standard exit-company model by 20% or more. The competitive advantage therefore came from changing the service and legal relationship, not from adding another marketing message. The company’s central design principle became putting the timeshare owner first in an industry where owners often felt they came last.

Newton describes The Consumer’s Guide to Timeshare Exit and the company’s broader educational work as a response to confusion in the industry, not originally as a marketing tactic. He was frustrated by having to explain that many claims consumers heard were myths, mistruths, or half-truths. The owners in the study also reported feeling pressured or misled during their original timeshare sales presentations, so Newton did not want to subject them to another high-pressure sales presentation when they sought help exiting. The challenge was that consumers generally want a fast and easy solution, not an education. Newton nevertheless made education a central part of the model because customers needed to understand how the industry worked before spending another dollar. He says the company does not really sell timeshare services; it sells confidence. Giving a consumer enough information to make a confident decision—and understand why they were choosing Newton Group over another company—produced a stronger relationship, even though education was a slower and less “sexy” sales approach than promising an exit and a money-back guarantee. Newton connects this approach to the study’s finding that one in four owners had already been failed by an exit company. In a confused market, educating people before the sale helps prevent them from repeating the same mistake. He presents the longer educational path as a necessity that eventually led to invention and a different kind of growth strategy.

Newton says that 20 years in business produced many setbacks: hiring the wrong people, keeping processes too long, relying on decisions that worked at one stage but failed at another, outgrowing systems, and rebuilding teams. The largest pivot came when he recognized that merely improving the standard exit-company model was insufficient. The easier approach would have been to outsource legal work and add phrases such as “attorney-backed,” “attorney oversight,” or “attorney-led” to the marketing. He believed that would leave the fundamental problem unresolved because owners still needed an attorney whose legal duty ran directly to them. In 2017, Newton helped establish the Timeshare Consumer Rights Law Firm as a non-attorney partner. This enabled the business to build documented attorney-client relationships for each new Newton Group client. The change required new responsibilities and systems: attorneys had to exercise independent professional judgment, while non-attorneys handled education, administration, communication, customer service, and support. Newton describes this as a structural change to a long-running business, not an advertising campaign. He defines extreme ownership carefully: it does not mean that everything that happens is the leader’s fault; it means the leader is responsible for addressing what happens. A leader can defend an old decision or solve the problem, but usually cannot do both. Newton says his company now celebrates finding problems and rewards people for finding and fixing them. Asked for one final lesson, he says entrepreneurs must “find a way.” Even when people say something is impossible, they should keep solving, adapting, and refuse to quit. He directs listeners to newtongroup.com for free educational resources and a free download of The Consumer’s Guide to Timeshare Exit.