So you might have found a free contract online and jazzed it up a bit to suit your brand and now you’re away booking clients, using your very basic contract and hoping for the best. You don’t really know if the contract actually has everything in there to protect you and your business. Hey – as long as it covers the payment terms and your deliverables – you should be fine right?!
Sound familiar?
That was me… 3 businesses and many years ago.
And I realised really quickly that things can go wrong. Despite all your best efforts and always going above and beyond for your clients, every now and then you’ll get a lemon. Someone who really tests you and makes you wonder why you even started your business in the first place.
After I some how managed to attract the worlds worst client you could ever imagine and then ignore all the red flags because I felt like they would be ok once they see the amazing job I’m going to do for them.
But no! ðŸ«
They complain about everything, nothing is good enough, they don’t understand the process, they don’t read the emails and they certainly didn’t read your very basic contract.
And now you’re down a few thousands dollars to deliver this service they signed up for and you haven’t yet received a dollar from them because they are being the worlds most difficult client.
You realise that your contract has a lot of holes and at this point in time you can’t refer to your contract to get out of this difficult situation and to make your client pay what they owe you. So you cut your losses and cut your client. You never see a dollar and you are out of pocket several thousand.
I don’t know why I’m still talking third person because you know that person was me!! 😂
And since then I’ve realised that contracts are gold. And without a good one you can leave yourself open to a lot of potential problems.
And this goes far beyond just your client contract. There are a lot of areas in your business that benefit from having legal documents to protect you – this can be a game changer for your business.
You might be thinking where do I find these amazing legal documents without spending a small fortune?
WELL I’d love to introduce you to the one stop shop for every legal template you could possibly need in your online creative business – FOUNDD LEGAL.
I have personally purchased their legal templates and honestly after paying solicitors in the past to create legal documents for me – the legal templates Foundd Legal produce are absolutely incredible. Easy to understand and navigate without all the jargon. They are also very easy to customise for your business.
I’ve recently purchased the event terms and conditions for our Conference and I did actually have to refer to it on one occasion which made me very glad I had it.
They have a quick quiz on their website that will help you understand what legal templates you might need for your business. Check it out here.
After doing the quiz and seeing the 20+ legal documents they recommended for me, I realised there was even more room for us to up our legal game! I plan to purchase all the event templates for sponsorship and speaker contracts and the podcast guest release form (but there is many more that we could benefit from investing in too).
I’d love to encourage you to check this out for your small business, especially as your business grows. Being protected legally is a must!
Oh and a little bonus!! You can get 15% off their templates with code GOLDENBRANDSCO