Yesterday my partner and I discovered that our third partner had stolen 29k from our company over the weekend. Luckily we were able to recover most of the money, but she still made off with 5k. 

When confronted about it, her first response was that she “thought it was her money” that she had “worked so hard for,” when in reality she had done very little to nothing for the business, while my partner and I did all the heavy lifting. Furthermore, she copped an attitude when I told her that this was stealing, saying that all I had to do was “ask nicely” and she would literally fly back the next day from Minnesota and restore the funds. Oh- and in all this, she thought it was cool to simply not let anyone know she waltzed into a bank and withdrew the money. That was somehow ok in her mind, as she thought the money was rightfully hers. 

The story then started to shift to “it was an honest mistake.” She realized that she was about to lose her stake in the business- but her realization came too late. 

The appropriate honest response should have been right at the beginning: “oh really?! I’m so sorry, was that not the account I had rightful control over? Let me reverse it right away- so sorry about that.” And even then it would be suspect. 

This is the first time in my life I have had to dissolve a company due to duplicity and bad business. It’s been a learning experience, and I’m very thankful that this was only 29k instead of a million dollars in the future. Now, this diabolical partner is on her way out, and my other partner and I are going through the process of restarting the company without her. It was a true shame because we were just starting to scale and grow, but now she will not be a part of this. 

This is the kind of thing that can happen when you do business with asinine partners who have ridiculous egos. And this is the fate of the kind of people who would operate like this. I’ve had this experience before, where people who didn’t know much or actually did much in the business thought they had control due to their inflated egos. They all didn’t last long, at least not with me. In business, humility and hard work is what gets the dollars flowing. Ideas, great. Capital, even better. Discipline and execution only come from the humility of not knowing where your next meal comes from. You get shit DONE when you know this in your heart. 

When you have a big ego, you sit back, disappear to a different part of the country, suggest business ideas for others to execute for you, are lazy, get knocked up (in this particular case), shoot off your mouth when you don’t know the first thing about what it truly takes, and then show up and steal 29k from under your partner’s noses as if they wouldn’t miss it. 

I’m learning how to rectify a difficult situation with the booting of our useless partner, so it’s interesting for me. Another lesson learned: trust your instinct about the people you work with. I had a bad sense about this girl from even before we started, but put up with it because my partner felt obligated to her for past favors. Trust your gut. My gut told me that this girl was unstable and crazy, but as long as she stayed out of the way, we could run things fine. Little did we know the scheme she would pull later on. 

Again, thankful yet for the early discovery of this duplicitous partner, and now we move forward without her. Onward ho!!!