I would never in a million years do that so I was unprepared that that happens all the time.
I've come up with ideas believe it or not that were illegal. You'll even have sometimes your
competitors putting things negative about you on the internet to kind of tear you down.
You're talking about problems that- big mistakes, mistakes you made when you were kind of a newbie
to all this. Yeah so like everybody else, I made tons of mistakes. I feel like I made every mistake
that you possibly could make when having a business like, I would get refunds and you
know no customer service person and you know you just really kind of get started in something and
you just go because that's kind of my attitude as you can kind of see. I'm always like just go for it
you know I have this idea my mentor always told me done is better than perfect
and so I loved that saying and I always was about that saying just get it done. And so of course when
you just get it done sometimes in your business, you are going to run across a lot of issues, you're
going to come across maybe a customer that's not satisfied and you have no plan whatsoever
as to how you handle that. Yeah, you know what I mean and it was just as problems rose up. I
was able to create solutions but I don't think that they were mistaken, it was not lack of
preparation because I don't feel like you could prepare for every single mistake that you have
however, starting to think about you know what is your policy on refunds, do you give refunds,
you know what I mean? How long, how many days, how many months you know things of that nature.
Accepting credit cards, this was a huge one that I did not know about and hopefully most people
can learn about an easier way than I did. So for example if you accept credit cards in your
business and someone disputes that charge because they don't want to pay you now, you know what I
mean and I didn't even know that was really such a thing because I never did that. I never
bought something and then disputed the charge on my credit card. I would never in a million years do
that so I was unprepared that that happens all the time in a business where there are unscrupulous
people that they got your product, they got your service and now they don't want to pay for it
and creating policies around that, you know what I mean? Planning for the worst. So if someone disputes
a charge for example even if they're absolutely wrong, you know. They got your- they ate
your hamburger, you know what I mean? They ate it and it's delicious and now they go to their credit
card a day later and they said no, I didn't charge, that was not me, that wasn't me,
that still reflects poorly on you as a business owner. One, if you don't respond
so that was a thing that every time someone disputes a credit card charge, you must respond
to it, you have to have a policy, you have to hey this is what they ate, here's what
they did, here's the receipt and just a lot of those nuances that really trip me up because
if you don't respond to those things, you won't be able to accept credit cards. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, that's a big deal. Did you have to incorporate or at this point do you
have legal counsel that works for you? I mean obviously they would just be yeah you know
you're a client but I mean at a certain point in your business, you said I've got to have lawyers
at a certain point. I think I should have done that earlier. So we're talking about a big mistake.
I didn't think I needed an attorney until someone sued me. You know that was the thing and
that was wrong thinking. I really- it was your next drug deal. Exactly you know you get pictures,
exactly, now you need a lawyer. Those are the things when I thought you needed a lawyer but no you need
a lawyer to help you draw up a lot of the things that you're going to do, a lot of your
policies, even to advise you. I've come up with ideas believe it or not that were illegal.
Can you give us any examples? Do you remember anything. I'll give you an example. I was telling
my lawyer one of the policies with the refunds just talking about as an example and I have no
refunds, you only can get stock in my business or something like that or something like that is what
I was saying like instead of your money back to your card, I'll give you some type of stock or
something that was like a store credit, something I came up with. Totally not legal, not allowed, bad
so it was just an idea that you had suggested. I did, this will work you know instead of because
I didn't have a store to do a store credit. You know now I have books and a few other things so
you can give a store credit but before you have those things, you can only just give them their
money back. You can't necessarily rectify it and so those are some of the ideas that I need to help
with with an attorney like if someone's not happy, if someone is making a false claim against your
business, you know the internet is real. You got to protect your reputation, you'll even have sometimes
your competitors putting things negative about you on the internet to kind of tear you down. So just
little things like that. Yeah, you definitely should seek legal counsel and an accountant
a lot earlier than I did. Were you ever able to avail yourself of like boilerplate
documents that are just out there in the public domain or did you google
legal docs? In the beginning, I used a lot of those documents that were out there like if
you googled you know a contract for example. I did. I used a lot of that stuff for many years
and it does work and again, I'm not an attorney so I
don't advise people to do that but at the same time, it's what I did and it worked and then as
you grow, when you get more money in your business, then you can get an attorney to draft your own
contracts. You know things that I have now but in the beginning, I totally googled contracts. I
totally you know recommendation of attorney, I did, I edited contracts and kind of did them myself and
it worked for a while and then as you get to a certain point, if you're making three, four
hundred thousand dollars a year, you know even those numbers you got to start
investing into. Is your attorney a family member? No, definitely not. Definitely
not. What about your accountant? Definitely also not a family member. Definitely referrals from
more successful people too. You know that was another great piece of advice is get attorneys
that you can't afford. Get accountants that you can't afford. You know don't think that oh okay,
I only have $50 so I have to get this guy. You can get someone better and maybe just pay him $50 and
then that's what he takes each month you know what I mean so that you can get a better quality
of attorney, a better quality of accountant because you're going somewhere. You know what I mean? I feel
like if you have a vision of where you're going, you should also pick lawyers, accountants, people
around you that are to that level, not just where you are. Wow, that was an amazing episode.
If you want my new book, you can get it absolutely free at noellesfreebook.com. Get my new book
Real Estate Millionaire Secrets absolutely free, you just cover the shipping and handling.
Go to noellesfreebook.com, that's n-o-e-l-l-e with an s, noellesfreebook.com. I have poured my heart
into this book and I am teaching you all about real estate, how I started with bankruptcy, bad
credit, no money and how you can do the exact same thing too. Check out my new book because I want to
make sure that you have all of the resources, all of the tools and all of the knowledge that
you need to be successful. This is Noelle, to your success. That was building in me and I really
had to get into my faith. Everything's still good. I still feel connected. Yeah, I have love in my life.