The Gadfly’s Business Degree: How My B.B.A. Became the Playbook for Taking on Legacy Power
By The Michael K. Portney
When people hear “Bachelor of Business Administration,” they think about résumés, cubicles, and maybe some middle manager climbing the ladder at a bank. When I hear it, I hear artillery fire. Because for me, my B.B.A. wasn’t just a credential — it was a training camp for exactly the kind of war I’m fighting now.
I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I was doing what Zollie asked me to do — study business, get the degree, and be ready to inherit the family operation. I had no idea my mother would torch the promise and bury the legacy. But in burying it, she forced me into the fight. And when the fight came, it turned out I’d been trained for it all along.
This isn’t just nostalgia about college. This is me showing you how the classes I took — the ones on my official transcript, the ones I sweated through semester after semester — are the blueprint for how I’m dismantling lies, exposing fraud, and beating legal intimidation with receipts.
Business Law: My First Crash Course in Weapons
BLW 335, BLW 366, BLW 456. Three different law courses that cracked open my brain and dropped in the vocabulary of power.
Contracts, torts, fiduciary duties, promissory estoppel, International Shoe. The building blocks. If you don’t know what jurisdiction means, you get played. If you don’t know what a fiduciary owes you, you get fleeced. I learned those concepts before I even understood how badly I’d need them.
Real Estate Law. That one matters because estate fights always come down to dirt. Property titles, deeds, leases, transfers. When I watch family members shuffle real estate around like poker chips, I don’t just see houses — I see instruments of power.
Employment and Agency Law. Perfect for watching how attorneys and judges claim they’re “just doing their job” while enabling misconduct. That class taught me the agency problem: when the agent doesn’t act in the principal’s interest. Tell me that isn’t the story of Montana’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel.
Business Law wasn’t just theory. It was the first taste of how rules become weapons.
Accounting: Following the Money
ACC 231, ACC 232. Financial and managerial accounting. Boring to some, but not to me. These were the decoder rings for every suspicious transaction.
Debit, credit, asset, liability. Double-entry bookkeeping. Once you understand the mechanics, every bank statement becomes a confession.
When I read state filings and see renewal dates, I know what they mean on the books. When I look at transfers and “loans” buried in trusts, I see the fraud in motion. Without accounting, you’re just guessing. With accounting, you’re cross-examining the ledger.
Economics: Incentives and Games
ECO 231, ECO 232, ECO 339. Principles of micro, macro, and applied statistics.
Micro taught me incentives: people respond to payoffs, not promises. Zollie promised me the business, but Abby’s incentive was cashing out.
Macro taught me systems: the way institutions shift resources, how monetary policy and regulation ripple outward. If you want to understand how a state bar protects itself, think of it as a monopoly defending market share.
Statistics taught me how to slice through bullshit with numbers. You don’t just say “probate fraud happens.” You show patterns, you show probability, you show statistical outliers.
Economics gave me the lens: everyone’s a player in a game of incentives. My job is to spot the payoff structure.
Finance: Risk and Return
FIN 333. Introduction to financial management.
The concepts of time value of money, risk-adjusted return, portfolio strategy — they’re not just for Wall Street. They’re for understanding why people hide assets, why they transfer ownership, why they leverage debt.
Finance taught me to ask: what’s the risk/reward ratio for Abby lying about the business? High reward (she pockets assets). Moderate risk (she thinks I won’t find out). That’s finance logic.
Management: Strategy and Structure
MGT 370, MGT 371, MGT 373, MGT 463. Principles of management, operations, human resources, and business policy.
These classes gave me the X-ray vision for organizations. Who has formal authority? Who has real power? How do policies become excuses?
Operations: taught me process. That’s how I spot when courts or offices “lose” documents. If the process doesn’t line up, someone’s gaming the system.
Human Resources: taught me organizational behavior. Cold sociopaths in positions of power aren’t anomalies; they’re predictable features.
Business Policy (capstone): forced me to think strategically. Case studies of companies pivoting under pressure. It’s the same as my litigation strategy now: think long-term, use asymmetric moves, hit where they’re weakest.
Management wasn’t about being a boss. It was about reading systems, seeing the hidden levers.
Marketing: Spin and Counter-Spin
MKT 351. Principles of marketing.
This one couldn’t be more relevant. Marketing is storytelling with an agenda. It’s how corporations brand themselves. It’s how my parents tell the story that I’m unstable.
Once you learn the four P’s (product, price, place, promotion), you can spot spin everywhere. You can see when an attorney is selling a narrative instead of facts. You can see when “conspiracy theory” is just a marketing label slapped on inconvenient truth.
Marketing taught me not just how they spin — but how to counter-spin with receipts.
Communication: Words as Weapons
BCM 247, BCM 450, BCM 447. Business communication at every level — written, oral, executive.
Public speaking courses. Argument and research writing. This is where I learned structure. You can’t just rant. You have to lay out claims, evidence, warrants.
That’s why my letters hit the way they do. That’s why my website reads like an affidavit with punchlines. Business communication taught me to lace clarity with edge.
It’s not about being polite. It’s about being undeniable.
Ethics: The Obligation of the Educated
PHI 223. Introduction to ethics.
The one class I’ve called the most important of my life.
Deontology. Utilitarianism. Virtue ethics. It’s not just philosophy — it’s the question of what you do when you know better.
When I flag compliance risks at work, it’s not because I like paperwork. It’s because I know once you’re educated, you don’t get to play dumb. When I file writs against the ODC, it’s not because I like conflict. It’s because silence would be complicity.
That’s ethics: once you know the difference, you’re obligated to act.
Why This All Matters Now
When RM Warner’s “Beard Lawyer” sent me that cease and desist, he thought I’d be scared of legal jargon. But I’ve been trained in legal jargon since Business Law 101. He thought I’d be afraid of financial exposure. I’ve studied accounting and finance. He thought I’d collapse under pressure. I studied management policy and business strategy.
Everything on that transcript — every course title — is another brick in the wall of preparation Zollie laid for me. He didn’t know Abby would betray me. He just knew life was war, and he trained me for it the only way he could: by sending me to business school.
And here I am, 15 years later, turning every course into a weapon.
Conclusion: The Gadfly’s Degree
This isn’t about a GPA. It’s not about honors or dean’s lists. It’s about the education I fought for, the promise Zollie made, and the betrayal Abby carried out.
When I cite International Shoe or invoke Rule 408, I’m not playing lawyer cosplay. I’m drawing on the foundation I built class by class. When I dismantle a cease and desist in writing, I’m applying business communication. When I expose financial misconduct, I’m applying accounting. When I frame it in ethical terms, I’m applying philosophy.
My B.B.A. isn’t a piece of paper. It’s a loaded arsenal. And I’m using every round.
Because documentation beats intimidation. Because spin collapses under receipts. Because a promise kept is still a promise, even if Abby tried to bury it.
I have a business degree — and I know exactly how to use it.
