Hey it's chris you're back at fly. Ride we're gon na do a different kind of video. Today i wan na tell you about some things that i have made mistakes on and how that has affected me running my custom lighting business. We're gon na jump into it right now, so one of the biggest things that i see happen where people shortchange themselves is they do things that are maybe trying to appease a customer or trying to just say yes to everything and they put themselves in a bad Situation in today's video, i'm gon na give you a little story about myself and how i have done that time and time again and how that actually compounds and snowballs into bigger problems for your business.

So this is actually going to go way back to three years ago. Actually, while i was at the second to last shop that i had - and i was temporarily for the first time in four walls of my own, my rent was high. It was all new to me. I was solo.

I was just getting serious about youtube and i was trying to do too many things at once and because of that, i wasn't paying attention to all the little details that can stack up and come bite you in the ass later. So, on one occasion i was working with the car that i had done repeated jobs on over and over again i actually knew the second owner. I knew the first owner. I had done a lot of work on this specific gtr and i had an opportunity.

Come up, but i wasn't specific, i didn't clarify and over communicate with my customer. You can take anything from this video. It's you need to over communicate with the people that you do business with, specifically, if you're gon na put yourself out on a limb which actually don't don't put yourself out on a limb, make it very clear to somebody what they need to do so that you Don't have to go out on a limb, so you don't have to trust anything that you just know that you're secure. I did a bad job at explaining to somebody that i had some really cool headlights and i needed a deposit from them if they wanted to have those cool headlights.

But what ended up happening was i didn't clarify that they needed to spend more than twice as much money as that deposit and it ended up where i never got paid for years. So imagine this. You build some super dope lights, they're really expensive. They cost thousands of dollars new and you're gon na package, those things up and build all these extra functions in and custom paint.

This you got to pay the painter you're going to put in a bunch of parts. You got to pay your suppliers for those parts and then you're going to spend hours and hours modifying things and packing them into one unit. But when you go to get paid, the customer wasn't clear. They were gon na have to pay for all that stuff.

They were thinking that it was just gon na be that initial little deposit price guess whose fault that is: that's not the customer's fault. That's on me! That's because i didn't communicate enough with my guy about why they were gon na get something that was too good to be true. Apparently i left that impression. Here's something that's too good to be true.

It only cost two thousand dollars when in reality it was like five thousand dollars. It was a big thing and i kept waiting and waiting and i never got paid until. Finally, recently i had the opportunity to get those lights back, so i actually went back to the car. I gave my customer his money back and said: here's the deposit that you gave me three years ago.

We removed these super cool lights off the car. I got him stocked out because he's selling it he doesn't want to have super expensive lights or pay the three thousand dollars that i should have told him he owed me years ago. He doesn't want to do that. Piece wants to sell the car be done with it.

Move on. He just wants to play with his new toys. Guys got a dodge demon he's not trying to pay three thousand dollars for something that he got three years ago and didn't know what he signed up for. So again, that's on me and i'm taking this situation.

That's bad! I'm spinning it into something else. I'm taking the lemons and turning it into lemonade, and i'm telling you about my mistakes right now, so that you do not make them make sure you are extremely clear with your people with the people that are buying your custom, work or they're buying used parts or They're buying anything from you over communicate to the customer what they're getting what they're not getting, what they agree to, what they don't agree to, don't be afraid to tell them the truth, because, if you are that should make you question. Is this something that you should even do? I hope this helps? I know this was a short video. I just wanted to show this awesome car and know that it all turned out for the best, and i wanted to end it by making this video for you.

So that you can win out there as you're building super cool custom lights for other people, all right guys, i'm chris, i'm out of here.