Ever made a poor business decision? Silly question, eh. But when you read this you won’t feel so bad about your decision…

Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank have transformed a few ragtag stores in Atlanta into the nationwide profit-making empire known as Home Depot.

In Built From Scratch, published by Random House, they tell how Ross Perot blew a chance to invest $2 million in 1978 for a 70% interest in the company, which would be valued at more than $32 billion today!! (Market cap of Home Depot today is $46 billion, having slumped over the last few years. It’s high was in excess of $80 billion and Perot would have held stock worth $56 billion!)

According to the story, Perot was unwilling to allow Home Depot to assume the lease payment on Marcus’ four-year-old Cadillac.

Marcus walked when Perot balked, exclaiming, “If this guy is going to be bothered by what I’m driving, how much aggravation are we going to get when we have to make really big decisions?”

Would you like to learn more about a powerful wealth-building tool? See: Barter

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under From the Desk of Bob Meyer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.