Every single week I answer questions about business and property on my YouTube channel. This week, I answered a lot of very good questions from my audience. If you have a pressing question for me, drop it in the comments section of this week’s video and I will do my very best to answer it in the next Q&A video I do. Also, please remember to subscribe to my channel or you might miss my answer to your question.
Listen, you can either learn from other people's mistakes or you can learn from your own mistakes. Why would anybody in their right mind learn from their own mistakes when you can learn from somebody else's? Sometimes it is my mistakes, sometimes it is my viewers mistakes. This week I thought it would be a good idea to highlight a horrific story from one of my audience. I think a lot of people make the mistake he did and this shows the devastating consequences of doing so. Here is his story.
Perry Rumble says…
I had 10 HMOs in 12 months…hooray and during Covid; but my life time friend… who is no longer a friend, pushed me out of the company when I travelled to Thailand during the pandemic to get married. Lesson learned… never trust anyone in business until you sign a contract, which I foolishly didn't do because he was my friend. Please, everyone sign contracts. I'm now back to square one. I'm currently studying You Tube until I earn enough money to start again.
My reply…
Perry – first man, I want to say my heart breaks for you. I'm so sorry that you basically got robbed and stolen from. I've seen this happen time and time again where people build a company, and they don't bother to structure it properly and don't have contracts.
Maybe it was better to be in his name for whatever reason. Maybe he just put the company in his name and said ‘yeah, we are doing it together’ and you just thought ‘oh it's fine’ and then you got screwed.
So, I think the lesson is, number one, always have a contract. Number two is understand the law. I'm studying law right now online. I'm doing online courses and I'm studying and learning law; contract law; corporate law; commercial law and property law, not because I want to be a lawyer, but because it's so important to understand how to read contracts.
So my heart breaks for you, and I'm sure as annoying as it was, I'm sure that you will take that lesson. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of pounds that might have cost you; it's heartbreaking. But go and be a stronger, richer, wiser property investor as a result.
If there's anything I can do to help, then let me know and I hope to see you rebuild better and stronger with better foundations. Screw that guy. So let that be a lesson to everybody else, you know, I always say if you're gonna hit the rocks at least be a lighthouse to other people.
P.S. If you are in this situation, seek independent legal advice. Agreements that haven’t been formulated into formal documents can be considered contracts in law in some circumstances. Explore your options with a qualified professional.