In 1999, my wife Heejin started a mortgage company (long before we were married) – and everything went wrong. She went all in too – large office, new furniture, office equipment, dozens of new hires, elaborate phone system, expensive CRM, etc. Not long after she started, though: (1) the dotcom crash hit, stalling the purchase market and wiping out much of Heejin’s own stock portfolio; (2) one of her loan officers started to steal her leads, and sell them to other firms; (3) another loan officer stole her entire database outright and aggressively pursued all of her clients; (4) an employee/family member sued her for nonsensical issues that went nowhere but cost Heejin a ton in attorney’s fees; (4) a basement flood wiped out her phone system, costing her $60,000 and putting her out of business temporarily; and (5) an overzealous district attorney fined her $300,000 for not including the correct fine print on a mailer. And when she finally started to cash flow, a competing mortgage company began to lure her top-producing loan officers away with large cash bonus offers. It was an amazing spectacle of perseverance and resilience (and a great reminder of what a lot of startups go through – especially in the mortgage industry).Read More