My friend Oscar and I contemplate what we would do if we had a million pounds to play around with...what would you do and does our conversation change your mind?

How life changes. A year ago I told you about a lady I admired. She built her business from nothing to over £2 million in revenue per year.

Now, what do you do when your business is doing so well? 

Get your husband to quit his job and join the business, of course!

Alas, if only she’d known.

I do agree, in principle, that if you’re making that kind of money it’s great to get the family involved and keep as much of it in the family as possible.

Why should your husband slog away at a regular, dull job if he can add value to your cash cow of a business?

Anyhow, I digress. She made her husband The Business Development and Operations Manager. He was in charge of all the bank accounts and any strategic development of the business.

Little did she know her husband had taken up gambling; he was secretly using business proceeds to cover his losses. 

She was shocked to find they couldn’t make payroll one month. She rushed to the bank and it was indeed completely empty.

They had to take a bank loan to pay their staff.

She was obviously very upset but things were about to get worse.  A week later she discovered that her agency could no longer supply nurses to the National Health Service because the Government was clamping down on exorbitant agency fees. They had sent out a circular asking existing suppliers to make an application so that they could be ring-fenced when the new legislation came into force.

Her husband had indeed received the circular but he hadn’t got round to dealing with it and missed the deadline. 

Not only was their fortune gone, the source of that fortune had now also been pulled from right under their feet. 

​They are still trying to find their way around this situation.
 
Gambling is as addictive as class A drugs. Once a person is hooked they’re no longer the same – they lie and do many things that would not normally do. This is essentially what happened here.
 
They went from “balling” to struggling virtually overnight. After a 4 year period during which money was no object, it’s now a real struggle.
 
It is such an upsetting story. I’m still holding out for a happy ending but for now, let’s not lose the lessons from this experience:

• Success requires continued work. Success is very much like getting a grade A in school. It’s easy to get an A once but to keep getting an A you need to keep working hard.
• Check your financial position weekly, at least. As a small business, never stop checking your business bank accounts – whoever is in charge of accounts should give you a daily or weekly report.
• Your hard work can be completely erased by a deceitful partner. It’s impossible to keep tabs on every move your partner makes so if you run a business together, work out your different responsibilities and have a system of checks to ensure you’re regularly updated on each other’s progress in the business.

 
I hope this helps. Please share your story, do you know anyone who’s been pulled down by a gambling partner? Have you? What happened and what was the resolution?