Unlock the Potential of eSignature Legality for Freelance Contracts in Australia

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Freelance Contract in Australia

so ladies and gentlemen welcome back to another video in today's video i want to talk about do you need contracts for your agency and just tell you uh and really just give you a bit of insight as to how in some cases contracts can be super just futile and a lot of times they really just don't hold up and i'm gonna give you some very tangible examples of that now it's funny because contracts are this thing that uh especially a lot of beginners just really stress over and also i think a lot of beginners and really people who haven't been in the world of business full stop think that a contract is this binding thing and no matter what if you have a contract with a client that means that they will 100 pay and then and then a contract locks things into place for both parties when you need to realize that uh i said a lot of time that's not the case so that's what we'll be delving into in this video now the caveat to this is you should have a contract because in my opinion it's well well you should have a contract because you should have a contract wow it's a professional if i was working with a service-based business and they didn't have a contract with me i would be i would wonder why not at the end of the day there are just certain things you have to do to maintain that level of professionalism as a business to business service provider and not only that i mean look at the other day if you're gonna have a contract you might as well make sure that it's bulletproof so friend you guys an agency incubator i actually give you guys two contracts i give you guys my old contract that i use for two plus years and then i give you guys my latest one that my lower draft up last basically this time last year i got them to draft up 12 different agreements and contracts for you guys so you guys wouldn't have to spend the thousands and thousands in in billable hours i don't know if any of you guys have experience with lawyers um they suck like lawyers just suck but anyways for those of you guys in agency incubator just use the one i give you guys in the program that thing is seven pages of the most bulletproof writing uh you could ever come across but apart from that contract using and processing payments through stripe gives you another layer of security because look i've never had it for the agency before but i know that some agency owners out there have had uh clients of theirs um you know because then they like not every single client can be uh rainbows and butterflies there will inevitably some client be some clients you come to a disagreement with and that disagreement can't be uh solved amicably and yeah some clients are just i don't know some clients are just unreasonable and um there there are definitely stories of agency owners who have had clients of theirs dispute their payment now if you do just a regular uh wire transfer and they dispute the payment then there's gonna be a whole host of issues or credit card stuff with stripe they are the middlemen you you know they will dispute um it will get retracted from your um balance like they'll take that out of your account but you also have the ability to appeal and then obviously you'll be redeposited once you win the appeal which if you have a bulletproof contract you have that seven page behemoth that i give you guys an agency incubator you will never not win a dispute in fact actually happened to one of our students um he posted in the group this this situation that happened where a client uh wanted a refund even though he provided the services he provided great services as well um and the client ended up disputing and you know i saw this and i really felt for him so i just gave him a quick call on facebook and uh and basically i ran them through exactly what to say on the dispute i said it's never happened to me at the agency but at the education we have a 0.4 0.5 uh dispute rate which comes with doing business no matter what business you're in you're going to have a dispute rate and for industry standard that's actually very very low so i'm familiar with sort of the ecosystem and you know how our team handles it and stuff like that so i ran him through exactly what to do and as i said because uh he did have a contract in place there and because obviously he had proof and evidence of him delivering the services he then won the dispute with stripe you know the client but the student had his money redeposited back into the account and um i think that's a that's a place where a contract is important i think that is the only place where a client is a contract is important in my place or it serves a actual functional purpose which is if a client ever tries to dispute a payment you have that bulletproof contract in place there what i really want a lot of people to understand is that a contract is not a guarantee okay and i'm speaking from experience like i've had uh to give you a perfect example like i had a client last year around march and that was a 7200 i think 7 200 pound a month retainer so 9 600 a month retainer and it was so annoying it was so annoying because the client signed on and the client was actually in the process of moving to dubai and something along you know somewhere along those lines and we had written the ad copy we were getting ready to go all that stuff uh his business manager got shut down his personal ad access got shut down all this stuff and it was we didn't even get a chance to run the ads it wasn't uh anything based on what we were running plus you know uh having a agency that uh serves info product businesses exclusive well 80 percent of our rosters for the past two years you end up um getting very good at being compliant so yeah with this client uh obviously we had a three-month minimum as i do with all my clients and the client you know tentatively he asked he's like look um i understand that we have a three month minimum and i understand that you could run youtube ad because we do facebook and google for our clients he's like look i understand that you could run exclusively youtube ads but to be very honest with you i kind of came to you guys with the intention and really looking for you guys to run my facebook ads like that's really what was more important to me not so much the youtube side of things um do you mind if we find an arrangement or another contract and i was like yes of course like not only did i rip up the contract i actually refunded him that first month even though we wrote the coffee it was 30 days and then we you know we worked on his behalf trying to get his business manager ad account back trying to shift it over to a new uh business manager but yeah anyways my point is in a scenario like that yes contractually he had to pay for three months but just as a human like just as a uh business owner that cares about his reputation i'm not going to uh with an iron fist enforce that contract there have been other examples there have been um one example that i can think of um this is the only time where someone has like wanted to leave early we had one client and they wanted to break after two months rather than after three months um they made up some you know once again it was very amicable they weren't like you know this is like we were getting that i guess that was the frustrating thing because we were getting them such good results um it was a business owner that i think was just um there are certain people that are just a little harder to please um he was one of them that's for sure um and yeah he wanted to bring it in-house uh and to be honest like we didn't mind we didn't really care to be honest uh because as i said they were a little more of a they were only four thousand pounds a month uh they were a little bit more one or more or difficult um clients to say the least uh in terms of in terms of you know just uh first of all just being happy about the incredible results we were bringing them uh you know saying thank you to my team uh et cetera et cetera so um once again in that scenario yes we had a three-month contract the client wanted it to end it after two months uh we actually wanted to end it after two months so in that instance you just void the contract like you just it doesn't do anything and you need to understand that in that instance with the client that wants to leave after two months if i had been like no you're not leaving after two months because our contract states that that you could only leave after three months he just could have been like all right cool you i'm out and and this happens like for example once again in the community there are people where um they get their clients incredible results and after two months they want to leave because they want to bring it in-house because they think that they're going to save money by bringing it in-house there's one example i can think of specifically where like this this this person his billables were you know uh over well well over five figures a month um in performance fee but like he basically didn't even charge a base he was only performance so you know yes you're ending uh you're are you paying this guy multiple five figures a month but you're also making a crap ton of money but at the end of the day you can't enforce the contract like yes what are you gonna do take him to take him to court it's just not worth the hassle and the headache so yes everyone should sign a contract because it legitimizes the relationship together and it also sets this underlying president it all it sends this uh it sets this underlying uh understanding that this is a binding thing you know and even subconsciously that has some merit um to it so yes you should always always sign a contract and have a contract in place with your clients and a contract will you know really save your ass if a client ever disputes which as i said it's like it's very very uncommon in the agency space but every once in a while every blue moon it happens but you need to understand that if a client wants to leave and a client wants to walk away then at the end of the day a contract isn't going to stop you and plus i guess maybe that's just the way i like to do business like whether we have a contract or not uh if you don't want to continue the agreement i'm not gonna make i'm not gonna force you you know i i if a client asked for a refund on services already rendered that's where i draw the line like yeah no no and once again i've never had a client ask for a refund on services renter but in that instance where i told you i haven't had a client want to leave at the two-month mark rather than the three-month mark where we stipulate it and as i said for me it just comes down to what do i want my reputation to be like as a business owner and if someone genuinely does not want to work with me and work with our agency anymore then i'm not going to force them to stay whether we have a contract in place or not to be very honest so yeah ladies and gentlemen as i said you also want to have contracts in place with uh for ndas uh with your with your contractors you want to have contracts in place for i mean to be honest the 10 plus uh legal agreements that i give you guys in agency incubator because at the end of the day it's it's a small thing and at least it will uh in some rare instances save your ass but contracts are also way less important than people realize and very very simple whenever someone is signing a contract you or the other party just use hello sign i use hello sign personally and and that's how you go about things but as i said always in your mind just have it there that look other than it's never guaranteed so ladies and gentlemen i hope you guys have gotten a better understanding of kind of the real purpose that contracts serve uh as an agency that you should have contracts but you should never rely on your contracts i hope you guys enjoyed this video if you haven't already we would love to speak with you here at gradiency.com i'm going to go ahead and leave a link down below to book in a call with caden who's our student integration manager may see his entire role at the company is to make sure that new students are integrating well into agency incubator and also look for people who might be a good potential fit to join the program so if you've ever had any questions about how we get such ridiculous student results you know all those student interviews you've seen uh all the you know about 400 plus reviews uh on our website if you want to know about the philosophy that i have when it comes to running an agency i said what uh myself and our students are doing to get such ridiculous results and kind of what it's like to be part of a real community both offline and online for all the events that i do go ahead book in a call with cain it's a super chill conversation super laid back and yeah we'd love to speak with you so ladies and gentlemen that's all from me today go ahead book in that call with kaden and hopefully see inside of agency incubator soon you