What's up everyone?
Welcome back to my channel.
In today's video, I really want to share with you some mistakes that I've made while building
my business.
These are mistakes I'm a little bit embarrassed to share, but I also feel can save you some
headaches, some embarrassment, some time, and some money.
So if you really want to learn about my journey and my mistakes so that you can avoid making
the same ones, then keep on watching.
By now you probably know my style, so let's just dive right into the video.
The first mistake that I made is probably one of the most embarrassing cringeworthy
mistakes ever, and that is me stealing someone else's terms and conditions.
Yep, you heard it right.
Even me saying it out loud on my YouTube channel just makes me feel so small.
But it's true, I stole someone's terms and conditions.
And when I was starting out building my website, I didn't really know much about anything at
all other than the fact that you need to have a terms and conditions, privacy policy, all
of that in order to make sure that your website is legit.
So for me at the time, I had no money.
I really was super ignorant, and I didn't really know what I was doing.
And what I heard from a lot of people to do is to just take someone else's terms and conditions,
so that's what I did.
I took another person's terms and conditions and their privacy policy.
I copied and pasted it, tweaked it a little bit, and then I put it on my website.
And honestly, I did this without a second thought, and that just really proves my ignorance.
Essentially, I had it there and then a month later I got an email from that person's team,
and my heart just dropped.
It was such a scary moment for me, and I'll never forget it because I was like, oh my
goodness, my career's over.
This person's going to sue me.
This person is going to, I don't know, expose me.
I had just started my coaching business and it was just such a horrible feeling.
After that experience of realizing I had indeed stolen someone's property and put it on my
website, that gave me a sense of urgency to take everything that I've ever made and put
it towards my own contracts and creating my own terms and conditions, privacy policy,
earnings disclaimer, all of that, all of these contracts I've mentioned in this video right
here.
But I had spent $3,000 on making these contracts and so through that process, what I realized
I had done is I had essentially stolen someone else's property, and when you are taking someone
else's contracts, copy and pasting it, you're essentially taking someone's money.
They had paid thousands and thousands to work with lawyers to create those for their business.
And for you to rip that off is stealing.
It's copyright infringement.
Luckily for me, that person's team just let me go.
Not that they were super nice about it, but they didn't say anything after I took it down
right away.
But having that experience alone was truly a blessing in disguise because now I'm super
careful.
I make sure I credit people.
I make sure that I'm protecting my own business and I make sure that I'm also teaching others
about being careful about copying other people because the line between inspiration and copyright
infringement is very thin.
I almost pretty much got a heart attack overtaking someone's terms and conditions.
Imagine if it was something that was even more grave and I think that a lot of new content
creators, we have a tendency of taking inspiration from other people but not realizing that it's
actually straight up copyright infringement.
So I really want to share this really big mistake that I made with you guys so that
you guys don't make the same mistake, don't get that same email because you could really
lose everything in that one day and I'm really lucky that no legal action was taken on my
end.
Speaking of legal issues, the second mistake that I made in my business was going to a
lawyer before going to an accountant.
Now, for a lot of us new entrepreneurs who are starting out, a really big question that
we ask ourselves is how do we actually make our business official?
Do we do LLC?
Do we do incorporation, sole proprietorship, business license, whatever country you're
in it's a different term.
But that is a major question that a lot of us have.
Now, a mistake that I made is I did so much research on the Internet and I came to the
conclusion myself to incorporate my business.
And then the first person that I went to was a lawyer and I had paid $1,200 or 1,250 or
something like that to get my incorporation documents done.
Now, obviously I felt like a pro and I was like, yay, I got incorporated with a lawyer.
But months later when I actually hired my accountant, I realized that I should have
gone to the accountant first.
The reason for this is because an accountant is the person that's going to be able to look
at your personal taxes, look at all of your income, look at your goals, and really give
you their advice and their counseling on which type of corporation or which type of business
you should do.
Should you be a sole proprietorship based on your personal tax issues, based on your
employment history, should you be in incorporation, should you have an LLC, should you be an escort?
Whatever it is, an accountant is the one that's going to be able to advise you best.
And then what happens is that that accountant will then connect you with a lawyer and how
it's supposed to happen is that a lawyer and an accountant should be working together to
formulate those documents for you.
And the reason why those documents are really important is because those documents are going
to dictate the structure of your business.
Now, the mistake that I made is because I went to a lawyer first when I gave the documents
to my accountant and when I told her about my goals and everything that I wanted to do
in my business, she told me that there were actually some mistakes that were made in my
documents.
And the consequence of that is I had to pay a little bit more to actually get some of
my documents corrected.
That could have easily been avoided if I had went to an accountant first.
So I really want to share this piece of advice for you because a lot of us, we really underestimate
the power of accountants and we straight up go to the lawyers without really doing our
own due diligence and doing our own research with an accountant, with experts to get the
best advice possible on how you want to structure your company.
Now, jumping out of all of the legal topics, let's talk about mistake number three.
And mistake number three has something to do with pricing.
Now, really big mistake that I made in the beginning of my coaching business when working
with clients is that I would always forget to charge more for my payment plan.
For those of you who aren't familiar, generally when you work with a client, they either have
the option to number one, pay in full or you give them the option to split the payment
into payment plans so they pay you monthly.
Now for me, a bad habit that I would always do is I would always forget to charge more
for my payment plans.
So for example, if my entire service costs $1,500 and a client wanted to actually choose
the payment plan, then I would tell them, okay great, I'll invoice you $500 for three
months.
The issue with this is that when you are splitting up the payments, you're going to have more
transactional fees, there's going to be more admin fees to it.
So you're actually losing money if you're charging the exact amount and splitting it
by the exact time frame without charging a little bit more.
Best practice tells you that you should probably charge about 10 to 15% more for your payment
plans to account for all the additional fees that you might incur by splitting up those
payments in the first place.
Not only this, if you don't increase the price of your payment plans, it doesn't really give
a client a good incentive to pay you everything in full at once.
For majority of us that are in the service based industry, we prefer having people pay
us in full versus hoping that they're going to pay us month by month because it increases
your risk.
That client might default on their payments.
That client might not pay the invoice.
So if you actually increase the amount that you charge for a payment plan, at least you
have that extra security every month.
That's a big mistake that I made when I was first starting out my business.
I kept on forgetting to charge more for my payment plans.
So I definitely want to make sure that you guys knew about that.
Speaking of clients, the fourth mistake that I made early on in my business was taking
too many sales calls.
Now, obviously to a lot of you, you're probably thinking what?
Having too many sales calls, that's a perfect problem.
But what you don't realize is that not all sales calls are really worth it.
What I mean by this is that earlier on in my business, I was constantly saying yes to
all of these applicants to my one on one coaching business.
And what I would do is I would hop on so many sales calls to the point where my entire day
it was gone and just dedicated hopping on call to call to call with potential clients.
To be honest, when I really reflect back on this, on why I was hopping on so many sales
calls is because of two reasons.
The first was, I was running off of a scarcity mindset.
I was worried about, oh my gosh, what if this is a fluke, what if I'll never get clients
next month?
I have to hop on this call.
I have to, and that was a really bad mindset to have.
The second thing is that I simply didn't really have the guts to say no.
I didn't like to reject people.
I wanted to give them a chance just to hop on that call to see if we were really the
right fit.
Even though when I was looking at the application, sometimes they really weren't a good fit for
my business and oftentimes they might've even said that they actually can't afford my service.
And in the beginning, I was still choosing to hop on calls with these people.
As a consequence to this, my entire day would be wasted just hopping on these calls with
people that truly weren't a good fit to my program.
It really got to the point where sometimes I would hope that these people would cancel
their sales calls with me just so that I didn't have to hop on.
That's when I realized that I had a huge issue on my hands because if I already know I don't
want to work with them, why would I waste my time on a sales call with them when I could
actually use that time to do something else?
So a big problem that I had is I spent way too much time talking to prospects versus
spending that time actually growing my business.
Not only this, I realized it was really hard at the time to say no to people who literally
told me, hey, I have the money and I want to work with you.
But at the end of the day, what I realized is that just because someone can pay for your
service doesn't mean that they're an ideal client.
With that being said, if you are a newer entrepreneur who works with clients, I completely understand
feeling the need to want to hop on every sales call, but really understand that this is your
business at the end of the day and your time is really valuable.
Don't fall victim to having a scarcity mindset like I did because the more people that you
take in onto the sales calls, the more that you're actually blocking space for potential
clients that are ideal for your business because what's going to happen is that you're going
to be fully booked up with all these sales calls, with your non ideal clients and therefore
your ideal clients who have rockstar applications are going to have to wait weeks before they
can even talk to you and you're just essentially wasting your time and you're wasting the client's
time.
So I highly recommend that you increase your standards in terms of the people that you
want to hop on these sales calls with.
Because at the end of the day, like I said, your time becomes even more valuable as you
grow in business.
Not only this, what I also have to quickly add is again, just because someone has money
does not mean that they are an ideal client.
If a client or potential client is lazy, not an action taker, has a bad attitude, it doesn't
matter if they're willing to pay me 10,000, 20,000, 50,000.
Your experience as a service provider, as an entrepreneur, as a freelancer or whoever
you want to call yourself, is more important than the money.
You don't want to have clients that are going to treat you like crap and just don't fall
victim into just thinking that it's all about the money because your experience of owning
your business is also very sacred and you need to be very, very picky about who you
let into your space.
Now, the next mistake that I made in my business is poor bookkeeping.
Now, when I was first starting my business, I was using DIY bookkeeping/accounting apps
like QuickBooks, FreshBooks and Wave.
Wave is actually the one I recommend if you are someone who's on a budget, wants to do
bookkeeping and wants to do invoicing.
FYI, I'll leave the link in the description box below.
But anyways, when I was using these tools, I realized that I had no time or desire to
actually do proper bookkeeping and therefore I had no visibility in terms of what was coming
into my business and what was coming out.
Not only this, I also wasn't categorizing my expenses properly, so I really was just
a financial mess.
Not only this, because I had very little visibility in terms of my monthly expenses.
It was really hard for me to actually plan for my future in my business and also plan
for my taxes as well.
Because what you need to realize is that when tax season rolls around for corporate taxes,
taxes are applied to your net profit, not your revenue.
In order for you to really think about how much money you want to set aside for taxes,
you should technically have a good idea of what your expenses are so that you can understand
your profit.
For me, because I had such poor bookkeeping habits and I really was so lazy on keeping
it organized, I really had no idea about what my profit could look like for the year and
therefore it was really hard for me to understand how much money I really need to put aside
for taxes so that I don't end up going bankrupt when tax season comes.
That's why for me, knowing the fact that I'm not on top of my bookkeeping and I personally
have no desire to do it, I actually outsourced it to a company called Bench Accounting.
Now, I am not paid by Bench to mention them, I actually pay for the service myself.
But essentially what bench accounting is is that it is real bookkeepers that are actually
helping me do my bookkeeping.
I get added to this piece of software and I'm able to track all of my expenses.
All I have to do is actually hop on a call with them once a month and they advise me
and they give me a really good picture of what my finances are like.
Now, if you want to use Bench Accounting or you want to try it out, definitely check out
the link in the description box below to get 20% off your first six months.
And again, this is not sponsored by Bench, I actually asked them to be an affiliate just
because I love their service so much and I think that it is awesome and it is very handsfree,
especially if you want to go next level in your business.
Not only this, Bench Accounting also works with your accountants to make sure that everything
is all right and it's just been such a pleasure having them and I'm so, so grateful for them
honestly.
Now, regardless if you decide to use something like Bench Accounting or you want to do it
the DIY route and do it yourself, at the end of the day, good bookkeeping is essential.
You really need to understand your expenses.
The moment that I actually shaped up my bookkeeping, I was able to see how much money I was actually
spending in certain areas of my business, which actually allowed me to cut down on some
of my expenses, change softwares, and actually save some money.
For example, after cleaning up my books, I realized that every month I was paying over
$500 for my email marketing software where I could have easily switched to another email
marketing platform and pay a lot less, pretty much half the price for the same amount of
subscribers.
And that was just through better bookkeeping.
So I highly, highly recommend that you do not make the same mistake I did and actually
start early when it comes to having better bookkeeping habits.
Now, so far in this video we talked a lot about business mistakes.
Now, make sure you hit the notification bell because in the next video I'm going to tell
you all about the skills that you need to have in order to be a successful entrepreneur
in business.
So make sure you hit the notification bell so you do not miss it.
In the meantime, while you wait for that video, if you want to learn more about social media,
business, and life in general, make sure that you also check out these two videos right
here.
As always, guys, I hope you guys have a great day, a great week, and a great life, and I'll
see you in the next one.
Bye guys.