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- I'm Justin Moore. Welcome to Creator Wizard, you're step by step guide to the business of being a creator. (upbeat music) I've been a creator for close to 10 years along with my wife April, we have over 1.5 million followers across all of our family's social platforms. I also run an agency that helps bring brand deals to family friendly creators. I personally worked on over 500 brand deals and through my agency, paid out over $2 million to creators to date. So today I wanted to help educate creators about what to look for when signing a contract with a brand. So we're gonna talk about something called exclusivity or competitive protection. So first of all, I am not a lawyer and I implore you to please consult legal counsel before entering into any agreement. Sometimes it's challenging though especially if the deal isn't for a ton of money maybe a couple of hundred bucks. And if you had to hire a lawyer to review it, maybe you'd be losing money and overall, right. So what is exclusivity? So it's an agreement that you make with a brand that you won't talk about a competitive brand for a certain time period. So the types of exclusivity are paid only so that means you won't forge another paid partnership with the brand in the same category and there's also organic exclusivity. So that means that you won't even mention them in organic content. So let's say you forge a partnership with Target and they say that you can't even mention or show yourself going to, let's say Walmart. So you really want to avoid that, right? I mean, especially if you're like a lifestyle or a family creator, you're going around, you're doing all those types of things. It's very difficult to like ensure that you're not, you are in the background or the video, like catching a competitive brands, logo or something back there. So you really do want to avoid that at all costs. So the next thing is the category of exclusivity. So let's say you're a tech reviewer and your partnering with Samsung TVs, you need to make sure that the category of exclusivity is TV's right and or maybe consumer electronics or something and not just any competitor to Samsung in any category because they make of lots of things, right? Now let's say LG, two months down the line wanting to send you a refrigerator. You may not be able to partner with them because Samsung also makes fridges, right? You also want to try to get them to list specific competitive brands in the agreement. So you want to ask them to list out those brands that they consider competitive so that it's very clear who you can and can't work with. Oftentimes they'll use language like including but not limited to these specific brands. And that's okay, just get that list ahead of time into the contract so that you're able to come to an agreement about what you're committing to. So let's talk about the duration of exclusivity. So the rule of thumb is that you should always try and limit it to as short as you can, right. If you're partnering with a brand for a long period of time, like a year long ambassadorship, it's common for them to want you to be exclusive to them for that time period. And that's okay, as long as they pay you for that, right. However, if it's just a one off post, more common is like two weeks before and after the post or maybe 30 days, maybe 90 days, all of those are pretty reasonable, I mean, plus let's be fair, it's in your interest to not post about a direct competitor shortly thereafter, because it's gonna damage your credibility to your audience, right. And honestly, get creative, exclusivity is one of those terms that is typically negotiable. So if they're asking for six months or something, typically you can say that you want to confine it to 90 days or to two months or 30 days or something like that, some brands may want to partner with you for multiple times throughout the year and they do want some degree of exclusivity but they understand that it's prohibitive to prevent you from posting about all competitors for that time. So maybe you suggest that it's just two weeks before and after each post and maybe you're posting every three months or something. So just suggest that to them and see if they go for it. So what do you do if you're unsure? So if you're unsure if a brand that you wanna work with is competitive to a brand, you already worked with just ask the first brand, right. Before you commit to this new deal, that seems like it may be a little questionable about whether it can flicks, just ask the original brand. I guarantee you that they will really appreciate it and try to work with you. So what happens if you don't adhere to the exclusivity? So this does happen and the most common reason I've seen that people violate these competitive clauses is that they're not organized. They don't know what they're agreeing to in the contracts, they didn't realize that they agreed to exclusivity until they actually make the post with the competitor and the original brand that you partnered when sees it and they freak out, right. Most brands build out clauses into the contract and typically the consequences will range from asking you to take down the posts with the competitor and dissolving that partnership, they could reduce your pay, they could refuse to pay you all together or in some rare instances, if it's in the contract and you refuse to dissolve the new partnership, they could come after you legally, right. I mean, honestly in summary, just don't do it, always ask the brand for approval ahead of time in writing if you're unsure and just stay organized, that's the best way to prevent this. So let's talk about opportunity costs. So one of the most important things to consider here is that you need to ensure you're building into your rate, the opportunity cost of being exclusive to this brand. So opportunity cost means that by agreeing to this exclusivity in the short term, you are foregoing certain unknown partnerships in the future, right. So you have to be comfortable with what the brand is offering you or whatever you're charging them and that if a deal comes through a day after you signed the contract, that that's just the way it goes. So just be sure that you price that opportunity cost in. So please leave a comment down below if I can answer any questions about exclusivity or the business side of being a creator. If you have not subscribed, please click that subscribe button and the notification bell so you can be alerted every time I make a new video and you are one step closer to becoming a creator wizard. (upbeat music)