What to Do When Customers Don't PayProtect yourself.

Mitchell Compton II'ssuccesswas starting to freak him out. He cofounded the San Diego-basedCoconut Beach, which sells a line of coconut chips and drinks, and debuted the products at a natural-foods trade show in March 2015. Orders came in rapidly; he soon got up to $1 million in sales. But then he started wondering: How reliable are some of these people? "We had to figure out how to mitigate our worry over not getting paid in a timely manner, or at all," Compton says.

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