Christopher James Dahse - Don't Let This Happen To You

This happened to me. It could easily happen to YOU!

What you need to know to prevent it from happening...

Please Read This...

In a few moments, I am going to tell you about a situation that happened to me. This is NOT some lame attempt to scare you. It involves potentially legal issues regarding your online (or offline) business. And what I am about to discuss with you has the potential to destroy you, your business, and your finances, if you don't take what I am saying VERY SERIOUSLY.

It does not matter how honest you run your business, how many satisfied customers you have, how many people love your products, how great your products work, how much value you give to your customers, how quickly you handle unsatisfied customers, etc.

All of the things I just mentioned are things that you should ALREADY be doing anyway, if you want to have a successful business. But what I am talking about here could... cause everything you have worked so hard to achieve, disappear in an instant.

Not knowing about these issues is no excuse. The government regulators do not care. Not using an attorney with the right type of expertise is no excuse. Once again, they do not care about that either.

If you are reading this page, then it is a good chance that you arrived at this page after reading my "About Me" page at www.resultsmarketer.com/about . On this page, I talked about a disastrous situation that could have destroyed by business.

Here is exactly what happened to me...

It was the year 1999. My business was really starting to gain momentum. I had already had a string of successful books I had written and self-published. Life was good.

A year or so before this, I had also discovered a way to produce extra revenue by generating and profiting from inquiry leads. It was a neat little mail order process that provided me with a substantial source of additional revenue, for doing very little extra work. It was really simple. And I had developed my own system for doing this that made the process even simpler. So, I decided to write another book telling other people how to do what I was already doing myself very successfully.

This info product was selling very nicely when disaster struck (at least it was disaster in my mind).

One day, I received a cease and desist letter from a state agency requesting that I stop promoting this particular offer in their state. Now, this may not seem like a big deal to you. In fact, some of the offline marketers I spoke to about this told me it was no big deal.

After all, this state agency was not asking me to send them any money, or anything else at this point. They were just telling me they did not want me to promote my offer in their state (at least not without making changes to it).

My marketer friends told me to either find out what changes they wanted me to make to my offer and do them... or, just not promote in that state any longer. There were plenty of other states that had no problems with my offer.

If I had chosen to simply accept the terms of the letter they sent to me, I would have not needed to do anything else. I would have not needed to respond to the letter. I would have not needed to send them any money. Nothing.

Therefore, no big deal... right?

WRONG.

This whole situation really bothered me. I admit it.

Why did it bother me so much?

Because... I had spent the previous four years of my life building up a very successful business. And I had done this by putting my customers first. I had always prided myself in operating my business honestly and ethically.

This has been probably the biggest reason for my success for so many years.

Any time a customer has expressed dissatisfaction with any of the products or services I have ever offered, I have always been willing to do whatever is necessary to make that customer happy. If the customer wants a refund, I always issue it immediately. If they want something else, I always try to do whatever I can to accommodate them.

The point is... if someone is unhappy, I don't want his or her money. I have seen it happen over and over again where someone who requests a refund for one product, will then order other products from me latter because they liked the way I took care of them. Putting your customers first is the only smart way to do business.

This is the way I have ALWAYS operated by businesses.

And this is exactly the reason I was so upset.

If I had just accepted the terms of the letter they sent me by default, I would have been making a statement to the world that I was operating by business in an unethical way. At least, that's the way I felt.

Hence, I elected to get to the bottom of this.

I started by calling this agency and asking them exactly what they wanted me to change in my advertisement. I told them I would be happy to do it. All they needed to do was tell me what I needed to change. I also asked them whether one of my customers had complained about this offer. And if so, I asked them to provide me with the name of the person; and I would be happy to call him or her and do everything I could to make them a satisfied customer.

To my surprise, they were not providing me with the exact things they wanted me to change in my offer. And they never told me if one of my customers had complained about my offer. Instead, they asked me to send them a list of all my customers, and other specific company records first.

I quickly realized that I needed to hire an attorney.

In the past, I had used an attorney to advise me on some of my advertisements. He told me basically that from what he could tell, everything seemed fine with the way I was advertising. So, I felt I had a good sense of what I could say and not say in all my advertisements.

This brings me to my first mistake... "NEVER USE AN ATTORNEY WHO DOES NOT HAVE SPECIFIC EXPERTISE IN DIRECT RESPONSE MARKETING!" This was the problem with my first attorney.

If you are promoting your products through mail order, then the attorney you hire should have plenty of experience with mail order products. If you are promoting via the Internet, your attorney should have TONS of experience dealing with the constantly changing laws of the Internet.

Your attorney should also have experience with the specific TYPE of offers you are promoting. For example, if you are promoting nutritional supplements, your attorney needs to have experience dealing with all the numerous laws related to nutritional supplements. If you are promoting any type of product that shows people how they can earn additional income, you need to use an attorney that has plenty of experience in that area. And so forth.

So when I decided to pick my new attorney, I thought I knew what I needed to look for.

I researched for a week or so, and then picked an attorney who seemed to have the experience I needed. I paid him a $1,000 retainer fee, and thought I was well on my way to having the situation taken care of.

Unfortunately, this brings me to my next mistake... "NEVER USE AN ATTORNEY WHO IS NOT GOING TO TREAT YOUR CASE AS A PRIORITY AND BE WILLING TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU ON A REGULAR BASIS."

The attorney I chose this time was more qualified on paper than the attorney who had reviewed my advertisements the first time. But he never seemed to treat my case as important to him. To me, this situation was a big deal. But to him, he never seemed to be doing much about it. It always appeared as though he had much bigger cases he was handling that took precedence over mine.

Every time I called him, it was very difficult to be able to speak with him. And when I did get to speak with him, nothing seemed to be getting accomplished.

This went on for several months. At the end of that time, I was not much, if any, farther along than I was before. I did not even know much more about what the heck was going on than I did before.

To this day, I still do not know what I got for my $1,000. Nevertheless, I decided to cut my losses and look for another attorney.

My goal this time was to find an attorney who was not only right for my case, but who was right for me.

After taking my time, I finally found the right person.

My new attorney had decades of experience dealing with direct response marketing (even more so than my previous attorney). But equally important, he treated my case with significance.

I know he had handled much bigger cases, with much more riding on them. But he knew this case was important to me. And he treated it that way.

Whenever I called him, he spoke with me, or returned my call right away. He would tell me what progress was being made. I was aware of where everything stood at all times. I feel these are important traits to look for when choosing an attorney.

Back to why this all happened...

This agency placed my case under their business opportunity act... basically because I did not register my product in their state before I began selling it. The problem was that I was not offering a business opportunity. I was actually offering an information product.

Books and other information products are protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And if they had classified it as just an information product, I would not have been required to register it.

The problem arose because, in their opinion, I did not make it completely clear that I was just offering an information product.

How could this have been avoided?

My attorney concluded there was nothing wrong with the product I was offering. A few well-placed disclaimers in my advertisement, and some slightly different wording in a few places, would have most likely avoided this whole situation.

Yep, that's right. A few proper disclaimers, along with some slightly different wording, and this situation would have probably never happened. That was a little hard to swallow at first. But at this point, I just wanted to get everything resolved.

My attorney felt that if we requested a hearing we stood at least a solid chance of having all the charges dismissed. The problem was the hearing had to be in that state. And my attorney and I were located in two other completely different states.

The expenses for proceeding with a hearing would have most likely been enormous. I would have had to pay for my airline travel back and forth (an unknown number of times). I would have also had to pay for the air travel of my attorney (or hire another attorney from that local area). Plus, all the court costs, etc., etc. I estimated that I could have spent as much as $50,000, or possibly even more.

So, I did the next best thing.

I reached a consent order agreement with them, without my attorney or I ever needing to fly to their state. As I mentioned before, this whole thing started in 1999. And we finally reached a mutually acceptable agreement with them at the end of 2001.

In the end, I agreed to reimburse them $500 for their investigative costs (which I thought was a pretty fair price, considering we had drug this out for two years). And I got the thing I wanted most... This statement saying, "Respondents neither admit nor deny the Tentative Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law as set forth below." The key words being "neither admit nor deny". Essentially what this statement meant was that neither side was admitting any wrongdoing. It was a good way to meet in the middle.

Am I a fool for going through all this for that simple statement?

Remember, if had just not responded to the original order they sent to me... I would have accepted the terms of that order by default. And I would have not had to pay them anything. Not one cent. And I would have not had to pay all those fees to my attorney, either.

Regardless, I'm glad I did it. Here's why...

Nothing is ever going to go smoothly all the time. This applies to your business, as well as your personal life. There will always be bumps and challenges along the way. It is just a part of life. It is not important how many challenges you face. What matters is how you deal with each of those challenges.

If you just stick your head in the sand and hope all your problems will go away, it will eventually catch up with you. The ONLY way to tackle situations is head-on. I have ALWAYS found this to be the best route to take.

If I had accepted the terms of the original order they sent me, I would have been admitting guilt by default (by not responding).

This just did not sit right with me.

I had worked so hard to build a business I was proud of. I did not feel comfortable choosing that path.

Therefore, in the end, I'm glad I took the route I did... even if it did cost me a lot more money and headaches.

Am I angry at this particular state agency for making me go through this whole ordeal?

No, I'm not. Even though I didn't agree with their decision to pursue this, they were just doing what they felt was their job.

They had no way of knowing about my track record, my everyday business practices, or the way I have always strived to provide my customers with complete satisfaction.

The only thing they had to go by was my advertisement.

And this is probably the biggest point I am trying to make here. If you don't have all your "i's dotted and t's crossed" some government agency out there could get the wrong impression about your business. Your website and other advertisements are your business cards to the world. So have all your bases covered 100%.

Am I glad this happened to me?

Well… that is another story. The answer is NO AND YES.

No, I wish I did not have to go through all this hassle. However, I AM glad that I was made aware of the importance of these issues... without it costing me a lot more money, or worse.

Here are some examples of well-known companies and marketers whose situations were MUCH more drastic than mine:

Hershey's Chocolate was fined $80,000 just for not having a proper privacy policy on their website. Mrs. Fields Cookies was fined $100,000 for a similar offense. A very well known marketer, that I have a huge amount of respect for, had his personal and business assets seized, and then had to forfeit over $240,000 in earnings. And a family-run computer company in the Midwest had to pay $5,000,000 as a result of their advertising. What all these businesses have in common is that their situations could have been avoided somewhat easily.

The four examples above are just the tip of the iceberg. In my research I discovered hundreds of other companies that had been charged anywhere from a few thousand dollars, to millions of dollars in penalties. Many of these companies are very well respected companies that offer fantastic products and services. The bottom line is that it can happen to anyone... if the right precautions are not taken.

I am guessing you are asking yourself now...

"How can I protect my business without spending a small fortune in attorney fees?"

I am asked that question often. The product I recommend is AutoWebLawPro. AutoWebLawPro is a simple fill in the blanks software developed by Attorney Bruce Safran (who specializes in Internet, copyright and contract law). All you do is type in the few lines of info about your business that it asks for, press the button, and it automatically creates the necessary forms to put on your website. AutoWebLawPro contains 40+ legal forms for just about any type of online business.

If you were to have an attorney custom produce these same forms for your website you could easily spend $2,000, or more. AutoWebLawPro costs just a small fraction of that, less than $100.

I haven't found an easier, faster, or less expensive way to get the forms you need... especially ones that were designed by a legal expert such as Bruce.
To get more details, just go to AutoWebLawPro.

The link to AutoWebLawPro above contains my affiliate link. I just wanted to make you aware of that. If you don't feel I should earn a referral fee for sending you to their website, you are welcome to not order through my link. However, if you order through my affiliate link or not, either way the price you pay will be the same.

Whether you use AutoWebLawPro or not, please do SOMETHING. If you hire an attorney, be sure to use one that has the right type of expertise for your business (as I described earlier on this page). In fact, even if you use AutoWebLawPro, I still recommend that you use an attorney to review your website from time-to-time. This will help make sure you are always in total compliance.

Whatever your decision, please just take action to protect yourself!

Christopher James Dahse

All my very best,
Christopher James Dahse

P.S. - If you have not done so already… Be sure to join my email list at www.ResultsMarketer.com . It will be well worth it!

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT... I am not an attorney. NOTHING I have written on this page, or any part of this website, should be considered legal advice. If you need legal advice, or any other form of professional advice, you should seek the services of a qualified professional person, not us.

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