291 - Easy as That - How to Create Your Contract
On today's episode of the podcast, I sit down with Haley Johnson to create her contract for one-on-one marketing services and explain how you can use the Contract Club to do the same for your business.
Get your copy of the Contract Club and pay just $30 for lifetime access to all the contract templates you need. Check it out at notavglaw.com/club
Check out Haley on Episode 250 of the podcast where we dig into her profit & loss statement and talk about her income breakdown.
Haley offers one-on-one marketing strategy and marketing copy for other service providers. She recently had an issue where a client did not like her contract and wanted Haley to use their contract instead. Ultimately Haley said no and they didn’t do the project, but she felt like it was time for her to feel more confident in her contracts so she didn’t have to do so much back and forth with clients.
For this contract, Haley is looking to create a project-based contract (as opposed to a retainer-based contract or hourly contract). To follow along visually with this contract creation, check out the video at bit.ly/ContractClubTutorial
Haley currently owns the Contract Club and used it to create her contract. She feels confident in it, but when a client asks her a question she starts to feel like maybe she fucked it up. For the purpose of the podcast, we are going to recreate Haley’s contract from scratch.
To get started, we log into the Contract Club and start with Module 1A, service-based client contracts. Part one of the contract is the intro where you’ll watch my quick nine minute tutorial and get the intro terms to copy/paste into your contract. For Haley, we’re using Option #2 because it is not an event-based contract. This contract is for marketing strategy services between the company (Haley E Johnson LLC) and the client.
For Part 2, we grab our scope of services. For Haley, she sometimes gives both a proposal in an email and then the scope of services in the contract. We select Option 2 where we enter in the scope of services. In the Contract Club, you’ll go ahead and delete all the blue text from my template.
For payment, Haley typically sends a Thrivecart link where they can pay in full, 50/50 or set up a payment plan. This can make the contract tough because you want your contract to be specific to how the client is paying. Personally, for my Thrivecart checkouts I have a different contract at the checkout for each payment method and I clone the contract and edit the relevant text. In the Contract Club you’ll find 11 pages of payment terms so you can choose what best aligns with how you charge. You want to specify the methods in which the client can pay. In Haley’s case, since they’re paying on Thrivecart, you’d say credit or debit card (this way Haley doesn’t have to fuck around with cash or checks).
Moving on to a cancellation agreement, if Haley’s client cancels, they don’t get the first 50% down payment back for any reason. Haley wants to add a project restart fee because often what happens is she has a client start date and then the client ghosts in the middle so she isn’t able to keep to the tight turnaround and it throws off Haley’s schedule to work with other client. What I recommend is outlining the project timeline, which needs to be tweaked client to client, and say that if the client is non-responsive for X days, then we have a restart fee of $X.
Looking at the Additionals section of the Contract Club, Haley should add the additional services section which states that should the client ask for any additional services not included, she will provide them a quote. If you send a quote and they want to add to their project, you can either send them a new contract for a new scope of service, or you can send them a new contract that cancels the previous contract.
Now we’re in Module 1, Part 6 of the Contract Club, Industry Specials. This is where you’ll find contract terms that are specific to you such as photo editing for photographers or age requirements for boudouir photographers.
In Part 7 are the legalese maybes that maybe you do need or maybe you don’t and they go at the end of the contract before the legalese must-haves that I cover in Part 8. It’s important to watch all of the Contract Club videos that go along with these so you get all the details and understand what you need to add to your contract.
For Haley, the legalese maybes about copyright ownership and permitted use are terms that she always gets questions on from clients before they sign the contract. In Haley’s instance, I (and several others) would object to Haley owning the copyright to what is created and it’s reasonable for clients to question that. That legalese maybe would be mainly added into contracts for photographers, they want to own the copyright to the photos and give the client the license to use them. When I hire a copywriter to write my sales page content, I want to own the copyright, I don’t want them to be able to go use that copy other places. Haley had been setting the copyright ownership as hers because she wanted to be able to use the content as portfolio work, and I have a different provision for that. Haley also doesn’t want the coaches she works with to be able to use the marketing materials she creates for them as a resource in their program and selling them.
We’re talking about multiple things here - the copyright of the stuff that you write for the client versus the copyright of resources and materials you provide to them that supplement the project. For example, if you join Unf*ck Your Biz and we draft your contract, I’m not going to say I own the copyright of that contract because you need to be able to go send it out but I would have a separate paragraph saying that I do own the copyright to any of the videos, guides, and everything inside Unf*ck Your Biz. For Haley, she should pull the copyright language from the course creator section of the Contract Club.
When Haley creates a quiz for real estate agents, she wants to make sure they use it as a lead generator and don’t turn around and sell it as a quiz template for other real estate agents. To avoid this, Haley should grant the client a license right to use that quiz in the purpose it is intended to be used and include the language that they don’t have the right to create derivative works off of that quiz and resell it. I don’t typically encourage anyone to get too creative with copyright language via the Contract Club because there’s a lot of loaded legal jargon. If you have a lot of copyright concerns, I recommend you work with us one-on-one in my $200/month in our legal subscription.
Get in Touch with Our Guest
Haley Johnson, Customer Journey Strategist
Connect with Haley on LinkedIn
Listen to Haley's podcast, Messy in the Middle
Follow Haley on Instagram @haleyejohnson
Work with Haley at haleyejohnson.com
