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Self billing agreement template for Public Relations

hi guys so you always hear me talk about how to legally protect your business and we often talk about website legal Pages Ada website legal compliance uh coaching contracts and so forth right but today I want to focus on my freelancer friends right the people who really help grow our business and so if you are a freelancer or if you're a client who's looking to hire freelancer to help grow your business then this video is for you because we're going to cover everything from what exactly is a freelance contract why it's so important the three big legal issues that it helps prevent some stories and also my own dad's um story where he got sued by a freelancer and then I'm going to share how you can create a freelance contract template that actually protects you and your business legally so real quick what exactly is a freelance contract so anytime the that you're going to offer any kind of freelance Services it means that you're not an actual employee you're working as an independent contractor for the client for a specific project for example you could be getting paid to write blog posts for them you could be offering freelance writing services graphic designs social media marketing anything else that you're doing SEO work again you're all you're operating in a freelance capacity if you're not the employee of the client so in all of these different scenarios you would use what's called a freelance contract it's also called an independent contractor agreement and this is the contract that ensures both you and your client are on the same page for the work that you're performing for them right as far as the compensation and then we're going to go into some of the key things that you must include in the contract to protect yourself but in a nutshell that's exactly what a freelancer contract is now the best way that I can demonstrate that how crucial or how important this contract is for you as a client as well as as a freelancer offering your own Services is by sharing my own dad's experience so many of you know my story before I became a lawyer I watched my own dad's business get sued by a freelancer that he had hired to help grow his business my dad was only in his second year of business it's not that he was making a lot of money he was still a fairly new entrepreneur but then we got hit with this massive lawsuit that was ninety thousand dollars so you can imagine the you know everything stopped for us as a family because you know it was humble beginnings and I had to also drop things and just kind of help Dad navigate through the lawsuit work with his lawyers and it was devastating to say the least but this could have been all avoided if my dad had used a freelance contract with this person that he had hired he just didn't have any contract in place so that goes to show that why it's so important to have a contract because otherwise it just leads to misunderstandings you know the freelancer may think that you hired them to do this and then the client may think I expected this and then there is no meeting of the minds right then another example I also had recently one of my customers who booked a coaching call or a consult with me online and she had similar issue where from a freelancer's point of view now so she did all this work for her client and spent you know hours and weeks and then didn't get the full payment so she only gave got like half payment because now the client says that they didn't do the work as per their agreement and there was no agreement in place uh it was all a verbal you know communication um over the phone that they agreed upon but still the client is now refusing to make the payment and she did not use a contract either so again both of these situations whether you're a freelancer or whether you're a client you both have an obligation to each other to protect yourself right and to make sure that both parties are on the same page and you do that with the help of a freelance contract now let's briefly talk about the three big issues that by working as a lawyer for over a decade that I have seen uh Freelancers and clients face number one issue is always about the scope of work the services that you're providing right like the client may think that you agreed to do x amount of work and you as a freelancer may think that you've delivered everything that you both agreed upon but because there is not an actual contract specifying and outlining what you two agreed upon it just results into these ugly back and forth disputes and things get nasty and nobody wants that relationship to go sour and the business to suffer but that is what ends up happening the second issue always comes up about compensation right so a freelancer may be waiting on a client to pay and the client is just like taking their sweet little time or they're just refusing to make full payment and and again payment ends up being another big issue so you want to always make sure that in your contract you're very clear about the payment terms whether you're going to accept upfront payment 50 or not whatever the method of payment is again you want to always clarify so that both you and your client are on the same page and then the third issue that also comes up which a lot of times uh Freelancers don't think about or clients don't think about until after the fact has to do with the ownership of the intellectual property so you know just because you as the freelancer created this uh this beautiful work or piece of work for the client um does that mean now you're the owner or does that mean that just because you did the work for the client the client is now the legal owner of that work again this is a very important legal provision that we see all kinds of lawsuits and disputes over so you want to very clearly have that conversation with the client if the client says that hey I'm paying you for uh for example writing a book for me but I want to have the legal rights right to be able to publish the book and I want to be able to sell and it's my legal book it's not yours just because you wrote it so again you need to clarify that in the freelance contract to transfer the legal rights and I give you all of these legal provisions and we're gonna dive into them a little bit more but I give you everything I give you like 25 plus legal Clauses in my freelance contract template that I put together so that you don't have to waste your valuable time trying to figure out like oh what should my contract include you don't even have to worry about how to put together the contract everything is done for you all you do is simply fill in the highlighted blanks off the template as instructed and within 15 minutes you have a contract that is comprehensive that actually protects you and you can begin using it confidently with your client or if you are the client then with your freelancer now every once in a while I will have a freelancer that reaches out to me they just started their freelance business and so they're a little bit intimidated by the concept of contracts right they think that oh if I use a contract it's going to scare my client away or it's going to intimidate them or overwhelm them and they may not want to work with me well that's not the right mindset um but before I give you another solution or work around and that's something that they asked me they asked me like well is it okay for me to just use email and before I answer that if you are enjoying this video please give it a like And subscribe to my channel so that we can help more people alright so if you're one of those uh people that are a little bit intimidated by contracts because you haven't gotten into the habit of using them yet then why don't you get your feet wet by using what's called a letter of agreement so I give you this letter of agreement absolutely free as a bonus it's 150 value so if you hire any lawyer to put it together for you it's going to cost you like 500 you know that so you get it absolutely free as one of my bonuses in this legal bundle that I put together for Freelancers and clients so if you are a freelancer and you're a client you get three legal templates um you get a confidentiality agreement you get a freelance contract and you get another contract and you also get five additional bonuses and as part of those five bonuses you get this letter of agreement now what exactly is it a lot of agreement is basically an informal contract so it's not as detailed as let's say a freelance contract would be but it still is an agreement but it's an informal uh way of as a letter right so in other words let's say you and your client hop on a zoom call or a phone call and you guys agreed upon whatever the work and the payment and everything that you agreed upon so all those essential terms you would just plug into this letter template that I put together and send it over to the client for agreement and signature electronic signature and you're good to go so it's not as lengthy it's not as long it's short but it is still in agreement it's still a contract it's still binding but at least it will solve that issue of like oh I don't want to scare off my client but it will still protect you and your clients so this way you still have a clear agreement of what you both agreed upon does that make sense if you have any questions please please comment below I would be happy to help you and also everything that we're sharing today in this video the the Freelancers legal bundle as well as just the uh freelance contract if you don't want the bundle deal although the bundle deal is a steal because you get three legal templates five bonuses plus this letter of agreement which is not available to purchase separately you get all of that in the Freelancers legal bundle and it's all discounted so all of those links will be in the description of this video so that you can uh take advantage of them all right so now let's talk about like the eight really important uh legal Provisions that you must have in your freelance contract or even in your letter of agreement right so number one has to do with the services that you're providing it's obvious uh you want to clearly Define the scope of work so that way there is no misunderstanding no disputes between you and the client the number two has to do with your compensation right the the payment schedule like whether you're accepting uh 50 upfront or later or if there's a retainer based whatever the fee Arrangement is between you and the client you need to clearly specify that and even take it a step further and clarify as to the method of payment right what are the different ways that you uh can accept payment and then the third thing from a client's perspective this is very important is that original content so let's say I am paying you to write a book for me or write a blog post for me obviously I want to make sure that the content that I'm paying you to write for me is original right you're not just plagiarizing or copying someone else so that's another important clarification that you need to add as part of the scope of work or services to be provided now the fourth thing that you should also include is a late payment fee so this is just another added incentive for the client to make the payment on time so otherwise they know that they're going to incur our late fee so the fifth thing that you have to include is a cancellation or a refund policy so what happens if you both are not happy working with each other and you want to be able to terminate the contract in between so again you need to clarify all of that in the contracts as to what will happen to the payment that the client already paid you is there a refund policy is there not number six is super important so if a client is paying you to create any kind of content for them obviously um they want to be able to have legal rights to them sometimes they may not care but other times they will for example if they are paying you to write a book or create a logo or some sort of anything else graphic design right they might want to be able to have full ownership of that design or full ownership of that book that you wrote for them so that they can freely do whatever it is that they want to do with that content but you being the creator meaning they've hired you but it's still you're being the Creator you have the original copyright to that content and in order to trans for it over to the client you need to have those legal Provisions in the freelance contract so this way later on there's no dispute as to hey who owns the um ownership of this content that you technically put together now number seven uh that you always have to include from especially from a client's perspective so whenever I am hiring Freelancers and I hire so many Freelancers all the time whether it's virtual assistants graphic designers blog post writers you always want to make sure that you are including confidentiality Provisions because what happened I'll give you an example so what happened to one of my customers is that he hired a virtual assistant and obviously he trusted this person and he ended up giving her access to all the things behind the scenes and his customer data and so forth so this virtual assistant um basically ended up stealing my clients business and ended up becoming a competitor so because there was no confidentiality agreement there was no agreement whatsoever again there was no legal leg to stand on for this customer who lost thousands of dollars this way so you always want to make sure that you are not just protecting your business secrets with that confidentiality agreement but also your customer data and your client data because we have strict privacy laws around you know maintaining customer data and so many companies get into legal trouble if they are not securing and if they don't have protocols and procedures in place to protect their customers data so if you want to learn more about privacy policies and what you need for your website definitely check out this video where I walk you through the three legal pages that you need to have but now going back to the eighth thing that I want you to include in a freelance contract now this one is very important for my freelancer friends because if you are new to freelancing then obviously you want to build your business and you want to be able to display the deliverables for the client on your website in your portfolio so you need to have a legal provision that allows you to do that legally because the client may not be happy with you showing their work to all to the whole public right so in order for you to get those legal rights you need to have what's called a portfolio use and rights to display language or paragraph built into the contract which freely gives you the ability to be able to Showcase your work that you're doing for clients in order to get new clients does it make sense if you have any questions again comment below and let me know if you have a proper freelance contract that you are using if not then once again I encourage you to definitely look into my freelance contract template we only covered honestly eight of those important legal Provisions out of the 25 plus that I give you um in a properly drafted legal contract put together by a lawyer so definitely take a look at that grab the template it's going to I promise you it's going to really really make things super simple for you easy fast and you won't have to worry about like not having legal Provisions to protect you and your client and if you would like to save more money then I encourage you to look into my Freelancers legal bundle because once again that's a much better value for the money and it gives you not just one but it gives you three essential illegal contracts that Freelancers and clients need and I personally use them as well as well in my business and you also get five incredible bonuses so it's a steal I will link to everything Below in the description and if you haven't yet subscribed to my Channel please do so thank you so much for uh watching my video and if you have any questions let me know and I will see you guys next time foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]