Episode 018: Q&A 8

On this episode, I answer the question "I'm looking at contracts right now, and leaning towards purchasing a template. Thoughts?"

I’ll all about templates! I even have them for you to download on my site. Back in episode 16, I shared about my favorite way to manage contracts (Get a CRM like Honeybook),

I noted in the episode that if you want to grab one of the contract templates on my site, you can get one for 40% through December 4th with code YAYCONTRACTS.

If you get a template and sign-up for Honeybook, you can reach out at my law firm and book a free consultation with me to get your contract setup in your new Honeybook account.

Episode Transcript

Braden: (00:00)
Hello and welcome to episode 18 of the unfuck your vis podcast. My name is Braden and I am your host. If you are a regular listener, welcome back. I am super happy that you're sticking around to listen to more episodes and if you are branded to the podcast then I am also super excited to have you. So all of my regular listeners know how this goes. I always give a brief rundown at the beginning to let people know how this operates. I do release two episodes a week. Each Tuesday I do shorter form episodes where I tackle questions that are posted in my Facebook group intake forum. So the way that works is if you go to join my group, you'll be prompted to answer a few questions. One of those questions is to let me know a legal or tax question or issue that you would like help with and your business.

Braden: (00:52)
And then I take those questions and answer them here on the podcast every Tuesday. That's kind of the rundown. That's how that works. So the question that we're going to be tackling today is, and I quote, Oh my gosh, where do I even start? I think a lot of people can probably relate to this. So far. No, seriously, where do I start? I'm just getting the stream business of mine going and I don't know what I don't know. I'm looking at contracts right now and leaning towards purchasing a template. What are your thoughts? Love this question because I have talked with enough business owners to know how relatable this question probably is to a lot of you, especially if you're a new business owner. A lot of us don't know obviously what we don't know, so it's hard to have an idea of where to get started and I will kind of Pat myself on the back here and plug my own podcast.

Braden: (01:45)
If you're listening, then you found a great place to start because I'm going to continue to give you content on stuff that you need to know about when it comes to the legal and tax side of your businesses. So that's my answer to the first question. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast so you can get all of the information and then join the Facebook group. Between those two things, you will probably at least be exposed to all of the issues you needed to be aware of and then you can decide where you need more help, whether it's one on one, a course, all that kind of stuff. Digging specifically into the contract part, again, this person asked, I'm looking into contract templates. What are your thoughts? I am actually a big fan of templates. If you've been following me for awhile, you know that I actually have a contract store on my website so I'm obviously a fan.

Braden: (02:35)
I strapped them and sell them. At first I actually had a lot of imposter syndrome allowing building out my contract store. I dragged my feet on it probably at least six months before I started and then it took me four months to like get my first ones up. And the reason why is because I just thought, you know there are attorneys who have been practicing for 30 years to draft contracts. Like, maybe people should go talk to them, like who am I to be selling these contract templates? And then I realized two things. First of all, those experienced attorneys had no clue how online businesses operate. They don't understand creative business fields, they don't know anything about floral design businesses, graphic design artists, none of that. They don't get it. They don't understand and memberships and courses and you know, like working from home and running everything online, they just don't understand it.

Braden: (03:32)
I reviewed a few contracts that were actually drafted by some very experienced attorneys. I had clients who paid me to look at those and I thought, you know what? This is good. It's perfectly legal, but it has a lot of unnecessary legalees. It's written frankly very old school and you'd have a hard time understanding what it says and it can be streamlined a lot for clients. So for a lot of online business owners and creatives, I actually don't recommend that you go to a big law firm to get your contract drafted. It's probably going to be over the top, for lack of a better word, for what you need. And then I also had clients who came to me with templates that they'd purchased through now, competitors of mine, other online sources, and I looked at them and thought, you know what? I feel like I can actually do better to be perfectly honest than this, so that helped me a lot in getting my contract template store up and running, so this is why I'm a big fan of contract templates because a lot of people are not going to pay an attorney $1,000 to draft a custom contract.

Braden: (04:39)
They're just not going to. If you want to do that and you have the money to do it, then I say go for it. It's great to get custom templates drafted for your specific needs, but if that's just out of your budget and not something that you want to do than paying for a solid template is going to be better than piecemealing together a contract based on all of the resources you've pulled from the internet and from your friends. That is just not a great solution. What happens is when you get a contract from your friend and then you supplement it with some provisions you find on a rocket lawyer and then you use the one that's in HoneyBook and at one from another friend and you try to piece it all together. Each one of those have different defined terms in them, so they'll define clump.

Braden: (05:23)
Maybe they'll say client in one contract customer at another one they're going to have payment date and one due date and another one. And then you have contradictory terms and terminology and all of those paragraphs that you're piecing together. And as someone who's not an expert in contracts, you're probably not knowing what to look for in order to make them all work cohesively and now you actually have a contract that contradicts itself and is going to get tossed out in a court of law. If you ever do have an issue and if it doesn't hold up in court, then it's really doing its job. I was share with my clients and my students that the two primary purposes of a contract are to one, protect you and hold up in court and then two, to prevent issues before they happen. Cause that's really kind of like your policy book between you and your client.

Braden: (06:12)
So if your client knows they're gonna owe a late fee when they read the contract, then they are going to pay you on time. That helps prevent problems and set expectations and the communication. So really to bring this full circle templates can help with both of those issues because if the whole document is drafted by one person, it should not be contradictory. You're not going to have those issues. And then also most, I would say most a more modern attorneys, for lack of a better term, are going to draft contracts in a way that don't involve a lot of legalees and are overly complex. So that is why I'm a fan of templates. So to answer this person's question, yes, I think that's a great idea when not to use a template. If you're dealing with high dollar contracts, let's say you're doing, you know, $20,000 custom web design and web development, then at that point that it's getting pretty serious and just due to the like to the money that's at stake, I would probably hire a one-on-one attorney.

Braden: (07:13)
If you're dealing with any complicated industries, complicated areas of the law, then you want to work with a one-on-one attorney. But typically my clients and my audience, most of you listening to this podcast would not fall into those groups. So that's my general answer. I also wanted to share with you all, I mentioned this last week on the podcast, but I am running a contract promotion. It will be ending a end of day tomorrow. So if you want to go check out my contract templates on my website, you can grab uh, any of the client contracts for 40% off using code. Yay contracts, super exciting. So check those out. Let me know if you have any questions and as always you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. I would love that. Quickly before I go, I guess I should know what my website is. In case you don't know, it is unfuck your biz.com you can go to this episode in the show notes and I'll have all this information that I shared with you there. So thanks again for tuning in and I hope you have a great day.