Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur recognized for his success with the Dallas Mavericks and his time on Shark Tank, as soon as confronted a second that almost destroyed his younger firm. In a candid dialog, Cuban shared the story of how a trusted worker virtually left his enterprise utterly bankrupt — taking $82,000 out of the $84,000 that they had within the financial institution.
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All of it occurred within the early days of Cuban’s first firm, MicroSolutions. Again then, Cuban and his small workforce had been surviving on a decent finances, making each greenback rely.
He recollects the second he received a name from the financial institution that might ship chills down any entrepreneur’s backbone. The receptionist at MicroSolutions, Renee Hardy, had a reasonably simple job: put together the seller funds, seal them in envelopes, and drop them on the put up workplace.
Nevertheless, she had different plans. As an alternative of sending the funds to their rightful locations, she used a trick as previous as time — Wite-Out. She lined up the payees’ names and wrote her personal, taking these checks straight to the financial institution.
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“I received a name from the financial institution saying, ‘Sir, this girl simply got here by the drive-thru and the checks had been whited out,’” Cuban stated, nonetheless amazed by the reminiscence. He requested if that they had cashed them, and the response made his coronary heart sink: “After all we did, we’re a financial institution, sir.” Similar to that, she had drained $82,000 — virtually all the things MicroSolutions had on the time.
“We had been flat broke,” Cuban stated. Cuban confronted a disaster that may have completely shut down the corporate, with simply $2,000 remaining within the financial institution and vendor funds already bouncing. He needed to give every vendor a name, lay out the circumstances, and implore them to cooperate together with his firm.