Suzanne Chadwick 0:00
Hey, they're lovely hope you are doing well hope that life is good hope that you're having a great week, whatever is happening. I am gonna do a really short intro because we've got a big juicy episode for you with the amazing Verity from checklists legal. I wanted to have already on she was recently at our speakers and thought leaders retreat. And she just speaks about contracts in such a easy way is how I would describe it. And so I wanted to have her on the podcast because I really think that it's important for us to be thinking about how we protect our business. And so she's been an amazing resource for me as well. And so today's episode, she's going to be able to go through different stages of your business, and what kind of legal thinking and contracts and things that you need. Can you tell like my technical speak the thing is, have you got that thing? lucidly. Verity makes it really simple. So I'm looking forward to sharing this episode with you. Let's dive in. Let's get started. If you enjoyed it, and I hope that you get a lot out of it lready Verity, welcome to the brand builders lab Podcast

Verity White 1:52
I'm stoked to be here. Thank you so much for having me along.

Suzanne Chadwick 1:56
You're so stoked. It's such a don't love it. What am I supposed to say? Stoked is a great word I love stoked

Verity White 2:10
to check out Instagram and see what flex mommy's saying and try and be cool. She is she's like, Oh my gosh.

Suzanne Chadwick 2:16
So good. Listen, I am excited to have you on the podcast today. Because we're talking legals, which I know that a lot of people are like, Oh, no, just because they don't know how to think about it, what to do, what's relevant. So that's what we're talking about today. How we can make legals easier for small businesses. But before we dive in and hear your story and everything, I know that you've got a little fun disclaimer, maybe I'll do some elevator music, we've

Verity White 2:51
got to have a disclaimer, right? I wouldn't be much of a lawyer if I didn't have a disclaimer. And normally when I'm presenting to groups, I'll have a beautiful picture of my King Charles Cavalier Brinkley, the prince of L word tough everyone to look at, because it's super cute. But you know, this is general information. It's not tailored for you or your circumstances. So speak to an accountant speak to your own legal advisor to make sure whether or not this is right for you. And that's it. That was

Suzanne Chadwick 3:16
no easy. And obviously, if you need more help, and then you should contact Vertity as well. So yes, I know. That was very good interview. Okay, fantastic. So very before we kick off, how did you get here?

Verity White 3:30
Oh, my goodness.

Suzanne Chadwick 3:32
You were like three or five? Were you like when there's gonna be a maya?

Yeah, I was just sketching out contracts. In exchange for pocket money, no, I so I actually came to the law later in life as a mature age student, I think I was like 24, or something when I kicked off. It's it's not that old. But it felt really old at the time. And so I've done a whole bunch of different things. I've done some marketing, I've done some radio, I've done some publishing a bit of travel, I was a carny for a little while traveling, I know that a whole bunch of different things. And then I probably honestly should have just done law straight out. But I think that having that background and actually have worked in a business worked in an office gave me a real insight when I was a, you know, formally a professional lawyer. And so worked for 10 years in, in house. So that's like, we're not a private practice lawyer, but for a company. So working for lots of different or a few different telecommunications companies. So that gave me a real practical insight into the law and contracts. And I just started to notice when I was in charge of this is back when you had to, I suppose some people still do scan contracts. Yeah. And like get them signed and like tab them up and make sure people sign them with a pen and you know, all of that stuff. I was like, This is ridiculous. There's got to be a better way than like scanning all these contracts. interacting. And so it got me interested in electronic contracting, that got me interested in kind of contract design and the way that we can redesign information to make it clearer and faster. And And initially, it was all about productivity, like I just wanted to be really quick because I wanted to work on other stuff. But then I started exploring things like plain language and conscious contracting, and just the impact that it can have relational contracting values lead contracting. And so that's kind of got me to where I am now, it started off as a blog, and I have turned it into a law firm, basically. So I get to the up to my elbows in contracts all day, every day, and I love it.

I was just about to say, I think that would be some people's worst nightmare. What is it about it that you love? Why, like, Why do you love it? Because it is a very detail orientated, very document heavy, obviously, type of job. What do you love about it?

Verity White 5:58
Yeah. And I think it's when you understand how you can businesses or relationships, it's all about just like, everywhere you turn, there's a relationship. And in a lot of ways, that's what contracts are. They're agreements that it's relationships that you have. And you know, Brene, brown talks about clear is kind, if you've got clear contracts, and you've got client contracts, if you've got clear relationships, then you've got really strong relationships, I think, and it just, it's that transparency that I love. So I feel like it's something in there a sense of fairness, that I really like things to be fair and balanced. But yeah, I just really liked the idea that you can use contracts as an extension of yourself. It's like an extra set of hands in your business. It's nice for your clients to help them understand things. It's great for your team, because they can answer questions like I just say it as a real multiply like a superpower in your business, if you can get them right. If you understand your contracts, it means you basically understand your business. So yeah, I think they're really powerful. And like almost a secret weapon in a lot of ways.

Suzanne Chadwick 7:06
If you can understand your contracts, you understand your business.

Verity White 7:10
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so if you don't understand your contracts, it means that there's something in your, you know, something under the hood that maybe you don't quite understand. Or maybe there's something that in a template, or that someone created for you, or that you copied and pasted from someone else's website, where you're like, actually, I don't even know what that means. And if you don't know what it means your clients don't know what it means the team doesn't know what it means. And so it's slowing your business down.

Suzanne Chadwick 7:34
Awesome. And so a couple of things that I picked up on. So one of the things that you said was value based or value lead, yes. contracts. What does that mean?

Verity White 7:45
So, we all know about corporate values, the big kind of companies have them, they put them on about page, often small businesses have them as well, we talk about our values that we have as a business, then for some reason, when it comes to contracts, they kind of go out the door, around negotiations, or around positions that you take that might be really one sided, a values led contract actually looks at your business relationships and the documents that kind of capture those relationships from that values lens. So that if you say you put clients first in your as your values, and then all of your positions in your contract are all one sided, and like puts all the blame and risk onto your client. That's not really that's quite jarring. If you're really brand led business, and you're really focused on that, and then you've got this ugly times new roman slabs of text in your contracts that you don't understand, but you expect your clients to just sign and be happy with that is kind of against your values of having that that seamless client experience. So when you can look at your, I've actually started putting my values into contracts and working on that with clients as well putting their values into contracts, like literally putting them in there. And using those as as almost a bit of a lens for other parts of the contract. So it's both physically putting them in your documents, but then also having that balanced approach to your contracts and not just being like, oh, that's the legals that's not really part of my business that just kind of has to be this gross position or thing that I don't really understand. It's actually part of your business. It's part of your values as a as a business and a business owner.

Suzanne Chadwick 9:26
I love that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It does make sense. And I also think, because we do talk about values so much at the moment, where we want to be values aligned, like we want to have clients who feel aligned with our values, we want to be, you know, share our values externally so that we're really clear about how we want to be in our business and how we want to run our business as well. It totally makes sense that our contracts also then embody that because as you said, it is how we're how we're conducting our relationships in a more formal way. So no, I love that. And I don't know, if you just set it or it's it's a question that I just had, but just around, you know, plain language. I think you said it earlier, like plain language, plain English, whatever it is. How does that work? As far as you know, I guess there's certain legal things that are in your contracts. Do they have to be set in a certain way? Or is there a lot of leeway around how you say it in a in a more everyday language way?

Verity White 10:30
Yeah. And and classic lawyer answer it depends. So. So there's some things that you might want to say in a particular way. There's some things that you could say in a particular way, but then have almost like a little explainer underneath to explain what it means. And there's some things that you can take them and do almost what you will with them, because contracts are your private your private law, that's the law that you're setting up with your clients with your suppliers. There's obviously the wider laws that apply. You can't just say like, Oh, it's okay to like not pay for things or whatever. Then you can set up a lot of the the language that you want to have. There's certain types of words that lawyers like to use. indemnify is a good one that's kind of one that trips people up a lot. indemnity, your indemnifying us for this, what it really means is pay for. So you can simplify some of the language lawyers might argue that, well, there's some there's a meaningless, you know, a secret special meaning to the word indemnify. And that means and all lawyers know what it means. So potentially, that could be the case. But but depending on how you're setting up that relationship, if you say pay for, it's actually more clear what you're doing. So that that way you can potentially rely on it more easily. It also means that, hopefully, it's less likely to be needed to be relied on, because you're like, Oh, I can't do that. Because if I do, I have to pay for that thing. As opposed to I have to indemnify for that thing where so I think it's a lot of legal lawyers would like to say that there's some special magic, legal potions like, you know, pacificus totalis, or something that's gonna like do stuff. There is a little bit in there that it's quite an art and a science, because there's a lot of history that comes with the way that certain words are put together. You just have to have a look at things like best efforts and reasonable efforts and best commercial efforts and all these different things that people look at what does all these all these slight differences mean? So that's why speaking in plain language, if you're clear, you're less likely to need to go to court in order to get a judge to tell you what that particular word means. So if it's clear, and it's understood what it means, then you're less likely to have a dispute over it anyway. That's what I believe.

Suzanne Chadwick 12:52
Yeah, fantastic. And it makes total sense, because you want to be able to read your contracts and understand what it is that it's saying and what what you're agreeing to as well. So I think one of the biggest things for small businesses is not knowing where to start show, it feels like ah, like not now, maybe when my business is bigger, maybe when I'm making more money, maybe when I get an employee, like there's all these caveats of not now, maybe later. So when should we start thinking about legal documents in our business?

Verity White 13:28
Yeah, and I totally get it too, because I'm a small business owner. And you do have to balance those different costs and the things that you need to get in place. One thing I would say is if you can find the right lawyer, or you know, accountant, or anyone to work with, they will help you get your business set up for success. And often, most lawyers will have chats, you know, free chats that you can have with them, so that you can get a sense of what they're like and kind of understand them. So you'll you'll know what you'll be what you'll be getting out of the relationship. So in terms of when should you start thinking about it, there's a few things that you want to lock in which we'll kind of talk about those legal add many things, I think at a base level, if you're just getting started, and you've got a low risk business, so low risk, meaning you're not necessarily kind of be dealing with, you know, like giving or looking after children or building bridges or anything, anything where you're you're you're not kind of in a high risk situation. If it's kind of that low to medium risk, then you might not necessarily need to talk to a lawyer straightaway. You might not need to go over the top with it with contracts straightaway. There's lots of good you know, DIY templates. I think there's a difference between putting your head in the sand and doing nothing versus actually being really engaged in and Reese doing your own research. You don't necessarily need to spend mega bucks in order to be engaged and understand what your rights and obligations are. I think The classic saying is if you think it's expensive to use a lawyer now wait till you have to use them to help fix up things if you didn't get the trademark that you wanted if you didn't get the domain name that you wanted if you didn't have the protections in your contracts you want. So when should you start thinking about legal docs in business? I think as soon as you have a big client, if you have a, if you're starting to look at, you know, co founding relationships, there's certain triggers that would, you know, kind of tip you over to start thinking about, I need some professional advice in this area. But yeah, I would, I would say, have a chat, it's there's often, you know, often chances to have a free chat to just run through those those core little items that you need to cover off just when you're getting started. As a rambling long answer to your simple question.

Suzanne Chadwick 15:55
It all made sense, I totally get it as well. And are there different stages where we have different levels and levels of protection that we need as well. So I think there's just like I was saying before, and I know that we're going to go through some of these Yes. Contracts, which I'm excited to go through. Because when we talked about this, I thought that's such a great way to think about the contracts that we need. But do you have like, is there? Is there $1 amount? Or is it really just depending on the relationships that you want to you, you have at that time in your business?

Verity White 16:29
Yeah, so I think most most businesses will start off as a sole trader, you know, you're just starting, you're like, I'm excited, I'm gonna do this thing. People keep telling me to help them with this thing, and I'm going to charge money for it. Awesome. There's nothing wrong with getting started at that stage. If you are thinking about CO founding with someone else, I think it's important, even if you are just starting out, it's important to think about, even if it's just together, getting some of those stock points down and thinking about what will the structure of this look and feel like, then as you start to earn more money, then that's when you can start to hit some certain thresholds. So getting registered for GST, which is if you start earning revenue over $75,000, that's often a trigger for people to think about, oh, maybe I need to change my structure around, if you are wanting to build a business to sell if you're wanting to build an asset, if you're wanting to protect your own assets. So there's some differences between the way that a sole trader is set up, that's just you, it's not a different entity, whereas the Proprietary Limited Company setup, that's a separate entity. So that provides you different types of there's different risks associated with being a director of a Proprietary Limited Company. But it does give your assets some protection in different ways, because people would sue the Proprietary Limited Company, not you personally. So when you're starting to build up assets, build up business starting to take on maybe potentially bigger clients. That's the kind of triggers that I think about where, you know, I started my law firm was sole trader originally, and then moving into Proprietary Limited, so it's kind of you just kind of move along, when you're ready, and when when the time is right and take advice from accountants and different other advisors. But those are the main stages, I would say, Getting Started getting to GST, and then thinking about building an asset, I've got something that I think is quite valuable here. I want to build it into an entity so that it's not just in my name, necessarily.

Suzanne Chadwick 18:35
I love that so good. And so when we were talking about this episode as well, we were sort of talking about, like, what, how can we categorize different contracts that are relevant to the main elements that small businesses kind of focus on. So we're going to be talking about like, revenue generating contracts or documents, marketing, legal, supplier structure. So I'm looking forward to going through these because I felt like that was a easier way for us to understand what sort of contracts we might need, if we're doing this particular thing. So when it comes to revenue generation, or marketing, what are the documents? What are the contracts that we're considering? So let's dive into that.

Verity White 19:23
Okay. So I think revenue generating is probably the most exciting, because that's what probably the first thing when you when you're like, Hey, I've actually got a business, I can't believe people are letting me drive this business. So if you're earning money, and you're starting to have those conversations with clients, obviously client contracts, I think a good often people will just start off by putting kind of a package together that they might have on their website, and then they'll agree something via email. So yes, that's a good start. But you might actually want to start thinking about answering client questions within your client tracts getting that scope really clear so that that way you don't get that scope creep. And then you're like, oh, I don't know did I was I not clear when I said it would only be like two rounds of revisions, I guess I'll do 10 revisions for them. And that also can, if you've got a product based business, then that could be having returns policies and, and starting to formalize gift certificate policies and things like that, where you're starting to build out those legal documents, so client contracts. And often that includes getting a formal proposal Scope of Work project brief, people have different names for similar documents, looking at website terms, looking at your product terms, which is kind of how you describe the package on your website or in your checkout sequence. It can also be your checkout sequence. Also, website terms, when you've got your website, it will depend on whether or not you're selling things from your website on the different, you know, if you've just got a pretty basic website with nothing really to buy or do on there, that's different than if you're selling digital downloads or selling products from your website and the terms that might be different. Other things to think about would be if you start to get more advanced in your business, and you've got some content that you're wanting to license, say for example, if someone wants to have you speak at a conference, or if someone wants to take some of them, and take some of that content, and then repurpose it somewhere else, that there's lots of different ways that you might be thinking about revenue generation there. And of course, if you want to sell your business that can regenerate revenue as well, which is maybe down the track a bit more advanced. But it's something that I'm seeing cropping up a little bit more, where it's quite a process to go through. If you're wanting to sell your business, there's some statutory like legal requirements that you have to have and disclosures you have to make. So if that's kind of iffy, like, maybe I want to sell my business in six to 12 months, then you can start thinking about getting your house in order. It's almost like selling your house, right, you've got to clean everything up and like make it look nice. And you've got to disclose any of the things in the foundation's.

Suzanne Chadwick 22:10
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Yeah, I mean, just around client contracts. I mean, I think, you know, especially if you're a web designer, web developer, copywriter, designer, all of those anything where you're doing a done for your product, then that definitely comes into play. And it's, I think, it just kind of makes it look a bit more professional as well, when you're, you know, when you're being on boarded by somebody, and they've got those documents that are clear, and, you know, help you to understand what each person is agreeing to, and all of that sort of thing. So I do think that it does lend itself to having that kind of professional look and feel about it, too. Yeah,

Verity White 22:57
exactly. Especially if the clients are booked in with you. And then the service doesn't happen for a little while. And then they kind of they're like, I don't know, like, I've got an email, what's going to happen? Do I own the intellectual property in this? Do they own it? What's going on? So there's lots of questions that clients often will have, that you can answer in contracts that you can, you know, if you word them nice and easy to read. So yeah, I think they're a really powerful way to show clients that you that you care, and that you understand what they're looking for in contracts, and that your that your values and your business is reflected in that relationship, that they'll have the formal relationship.

Suzanne Chadwick 23:34
Yeah, I think the interesting and interesting one as well already, because we do work in a global market now. So majority of my clients are Australian, and we've got Australian, obviously got contracts that were drawn up here. But working with international clients, I found that really interesting. So I've part of a program in the US where there's no refunds. So like, like, because that's, that's how it is. Whereas in Australia, you have to have sort of a refund policy around around, you know, whatever it is your programs, etc. So I just find that a really interesting one around international agreements and how that works.

Verity White 24:20
Yeah. And I think you can pick, you know, it's kind of a bit of a technical thing, when you've got an agreement, you can specify what the governing law is or the jurisdiction. So you will often say, Victoria as the governing law, if you're based in Victoria, and that's kind of the laws that you want to apply. So if you, you're you're providing services to someone else overseas, then you're still saying that the law that applies is in Victoria. So yeah, we've got we're pretty, I mean, in lots of ways, we're very lucky in Australia because we do have lots of consumer protections that also apply to small businesses. That's kind of what you're alluding to with no refunds, kind of, if you see a no refund sign, it's technically not allowed, because there's always the opportunity to refund if a product or service doesn't meet those statutory guarantees the legal guarantees of the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law. So yeah, is it

Suzanne Chadwick 25:20
in overseas product? And their contracts are in there?

Verity White 25:26
For if so, your if it's, say, in America, I can service selling over here and there that but they would probably say their governing law is, you know, Delaware or wherever there.

Suzanne Chadwick 25:40
Yeah, yeah. And so obviously, that's, that doesn't

Verity White 25:44
necessarily apply here. I mean, it's a bit tricky to try to try and cover every situation. But, you know, I've, I've, I mean, I do like, I mean, I might be a lawyer. So I do like writing those angry letters every now and then they've got like a bit of business or authority you can try similar to our I triple C, the Australian Competition, consumer authority. So they've got a few different commission, sorry, they've got a few different ways that you can approach things. But yeah, if you? Yep, most of that's fine.

Suzanne Chadwick 26:16
I don't want to retry. And I just thought it was really interesting that it was very overt that that's like, basically, when you sign the contract, and you commit to it, you're all in like, we don't we don't accept refunds, which is interesting, because obviously, in Australia, here we do. And it was a discussion that we had, where it depends on where you are. But I guess my point is, when you are dealing with international companies, or you know, products, really important to read the terms, and make sure that you don't assume that just because we do things a certain way here in Australia, that that's how it works overseas. And so that was that was a surprise to me. And it was a very overt conversation. But I was also like, well, I'm aware of that in signing this contract. So yeah, I think it's just important when we when we work in a global market for us as consumers, as well as business owners, just to be diligent with those things.

Verity White 27:18
And it's also important, so for people who might be just starting out, and they're like, oh, that person in America does the same services as me, I'm just gonna copy and paste their terms and conditions, or I've got Kajabi or Shopify, and that comes with a privacy policy with it in it. But those policies are to protect Shopify and Kajabi. It's not aimed at protecting your business. It's not it's not aimed at Australian legal requirements. So just being careful if you're taking inspiration from other people's or other businesses, terms and conditions. I've seen people say that they'll comply with the California Privacy Act, and that they'll comply with GDPR. And that they've, I've even seen people who haven't bothered to change the ABN, or the business number of the business that they've copied these terms from. So yeah, it's, there's some lazy copying. Definitely. So it's always good to get those things double checked, to make sure you understand the impact of what you're putting out there as your agreement.

Suzanne Chadwick 28:25
Yeah, for sure. Oh, good. Okay, great. So that was revenue generation Doc's? Yes. Think about, what about marketing,

Verity White 28:32
marketing. Now, I've spent a lot of time reviewing a lot of marketing, I've looked at a lot of ads over the time. So when it comes to marketing, or there's, there's kind of the legal documents, but it's also really, about the way you present. So that yes, there's the contract side of things. But it's also about making sure you're not being tricky. In your marketing, you can be clever, but you can't be misleading. You can't kind of have one, you know, free and then actually it's not really free, like so you've got to just make sure that you're being you know, be true to your integrity and make sure that you hopefully you've got integrity, I'm sure I'm sure your listeners to be clear and transparent with your clients because it's never it's never a good look anyway. But so when it comes to marketing and sales, and things like you know, getting your mailing list set up, whether you meet the Small Business exemption from the Privacy Act in Australia, it's always great to have a privacy policy, so that it's really clear on how you will manage that information so that you're aware so that your clients are aware and just so that you're across can be handling people's personal information. I think it's really good. I've been told that it's also quite good for SEO as well to have a privacy policy on your website. So if that if the actual legal side of things Oh, doesn't doesn't help. the SEO side of things is always good. I've kind of touched on advertising and marketing and having clear disclaimers. So that might be if the if you are offering You know, money, you know, 14 day trial guaranteed making it really clear what the requirements are for, for clients to be able to claim that guarantee, and then sticking to it. If you're doing for marketing, if you've got sales pages, making sure that the promotional terms are really clear, and you might have some in your head, get someone else who doesn't know that promotion to double check it to make sure it makes sense, and see if there's anything that they're like, oh, but can I do this and still win? Or can I do that? And kind of just I think that's, I mean, it's not necessarily a legal thing, but just double checking that it makes sense is always handy. And it's not misleading. And then I know that there's a lot of, you know, collaboration is the new kind of buzzword, I suppose it's not that new anymore, but affiliate links and sponsorship and collaboration. There's obviously a lot of social media requirements with under the social media, advertising an influencer code. That's, that's come up in the last couple of years. So making sure you're clear when if you've got if you're doing a promotion, that it's a promotion. The requirements if you're working with an influencer, influencer, if you're an influencer? What is it that you need to deliver? What What's the copyright arrangements? What's the intellectual property arrangements? You know, is there a posting schedule? Is it critical is time critical in terms of getting something out to meet up with a campaign, and just getting all those those kind of details clear of how you manage that marketing campaign? So those are kind of the marketing things,

Suzanne Chadwick 31:36
the Mark Yeah, and obviously, just on like, it's so important, especially if you are doing any posts on social media, and that to understand all their terms, because obviously, you have to say that it's a paid partnership. And, like, there's other things that you have to do. So I think that yeah, it's, it's just important, if that's what something you want to do to really make yourself aware of what your requirements are, as well, just so that you don't get yourself into trouble.

Verity White 32:02
And often those depending on if you if affiliate, is what you're doing. And that's kind of a large part of your business, then that's when you might want to get advice, like formal advice and develop your own version. Whereas if it's just a tiny little part of your business, just want to make sure you're clearly disclosing it. And maybe you can just get a DIY template. So it's kind of looking at what kind of how big will this promotion be. So if you're paying for if you've got a huge digital spend, or if you're gonna put an ad in a newspaper or whatever, if people put ads in. Here, if you're gonna have a big spend on something, then you're gonna want to get it double checked and think about it. Whereas if it's just a, you know, just a once off pose that you can delete doesn't necessarily mean that you, you're not potentially going to have some issues with it. But it just means that it's less of a risk. So just kind of weighing up the level of advice that you might need given the situation.

Suzanne Chadwick 33:00
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I do think it's really interesting, because even it's kind of like, I feel like legals and insurance and accounting, like they kind of fit really well. Even Even for me, like cool kids, right? Everybody wants to stick with you guys. Yeah. That'll be stoked, stoked to sit with you. But yeah, even like insurance as well. So for me, you know, professional, professional, indemnity, and liability and all the rest of it. And so just understanding how that all fits together to so with your contracts and your insurance, your terms and conditions, I do think I do think you know, especially if you have been in business for a little while, it is really important just to have the conversation so that you are knowledgeable about what you need and what you don't. And even if you have the conversation, and the conversation turns out, actually you're fine. Like you don't really need it, where you're at or for what you do, then at least you did the check. And yeah, and you know, rather than not knowing that, I think that's important.

Verity White 34:09
Yeah, definitely, definitely important to do those checks.

Suzanne Chadwick 34:13
Which leads us perfectly into legal admin. It does. And I wasn't even planning that we just flowed

Verity White 34:23
it. Well. Yeah. So in terms of legal admin, you've touched on a great one insurance is really important to think about if you've got an often there's a couple of different types of professional indemnity insurance is more service based business delivering services, public and products liability is more if you've got physical products, or you have a store or you're running events where people are coming to. So those are kind of the key differences and finding, you know what you need that suits where you're at. Obviously, it's something that you buy that you hope you never have to use. That's like insurance is one those things that are always important to have a look at, then I like to kind of run through those naming things. So you've got your business name, you register your business name that you know that you are legally required to register. If you're trading in a different name other than your own. From there, that doesn't actually give you the ownership right? In that business name, you need the trademark to have a proprietary like an ownership right in your business name. And trademarks are often pretty straightforward. They just need to be distinctive, you can do a check to see. So before you go on to the website, and like get all your custom custom mugs made up, make sure that you have got you own that trademark, you own that name. And also, domain names really important. Often, it's probably the first thing that people will do is is lock in at least one domain name. There's lots of changes kind of coming in that space all the time. The one that's out at the moment is that we've got you know, we've had the.com.au domain name for a while, they've now got just a.au domain name. So if you have the.com.au domain name, your product, you've got like a priority ticket to register the.au name that run that priority ticket runs out in on the 20th of September 2022. So if you haven't already, if you've got a.com delay you and you don't have the.au Get onto it, because otherwise it means someone else can register the data you. Okay, and they'll pull it out from India. tootsies.

Suzanne Chadwick 36:40
So do you think do you think that it's important to own all of those domains?

Verity White 36:45
I mean, I think so because, and maybe I'm a control freak, but the idea of someone else having checklists, legal.net.au really irritates me. I don't want so I've got a bunch of domain names. I don't think they're that expensive. I mean, not not for checklists, legal. And they all point back to check the seagull.com. So I've got the.au I've got the.com.au I, it's almost like I'm a bit of a hoarder. When it comes to domain names. If I have an idea, I'll read the domain name. And it'll just they just don't point back to check the seagull.com or create contracts clients love.com. And you know, that's, I just think it's it's a relatively cheap way to kind of stake out your little space of the internet.

Suzanne Chadwick 37:34
Yeah, it's so interesting, because I've got the dot coms of all of my like, my book, my podcast, my trading name, as well as Suzanne Chadwick are the rest of it. So yeah, so it's interesting. I've only focused really more on the.com.

Verity White 37:49
And I think for a lot of businesses that are global, they might be like, Oh, maybe I don't need the.com.au I don't need dot Melbourne or anything like that.

Suzanne Chadwick 37:59
So many now there's like so many these dots, or

Verity White 38:04
just kind of annoying, right? If you've got the AWS virtual icon now I have to like think about dot Melbourne and dot whatever. So, yeah, it's, I mean, it's good from a there's so many websites, right? It's the same as license plates, how they had to start to they like start putting a number somewhere where there wasn't a number before. So because there must have been running out. So yeah, I think it's it's good to be able to differentiate yourself and and say, like, if you are local, if I'm Suzanne Chadwick Melbourne, in Melbourne, then you can differentiate yourself that way. So it's important, probably more important if you're local, local, local, but I like it because I don't want anyone else to have that basically, anywhere. Anywhere

Suzanne Chadwick 38:44
in Australia, maybe not maybe not all 20 dot whatever it is. But yeah, it'd be like, three or four of the main ones.

Verity White 38:51
Yeah, get the main ones. I mean, you don't have to go to town again. It's about like, I'm imagining that Nike has got every single one. I sure know what I mean. Kester Black has probably got every single one. There's kind of brands that are getting bigger and bigger. Would be covering it. And but there's other there's probably other people who are domain squatting, who've got it and waiting to get it bought off them. But yeah, it's kind of what you feel comfortable with. Don't Don't don't get too stressed if you don't have it all. But yeah, it's just I think it's just a nice way to

Suzanne Chadwick 39:23
cover it. Yeah. Very good. I love it. Okay, cool. What else are we doing in legal admin,

Verity White 39:28
legal admin. So yes, we've done our business names. We've got our domain names. We've got our trademarks. And we've talked about insurance. I think those are the main ones to think through. But then things like if you don't have an accountant or a bookkeeper is one of the best things that I have. I mean, I've never really done too much of my own accounting. I look over it and I understand the numbers, but I think getting getting that advice or getting someone to help you. As you start earning more as you start having to do GST. Yes, you Technically, probably could do it yourself, do you have to is it better to kind of outsource that. So they can also hopefully give you lots of tips and ideas around different things that are going on. There's a grant, there's always grants on at the moment as well. So your financial advisors can really help you with that, and getting all of that sorted out, so that you don't trip yourself up and end up in trouble down the track. And then in terms of systems, this kind of admin of cybersecurity thing to think about, if you're handling a lot of customer information, if you're working with particularly sensitive information, then more and more businesses are getting targeted, especially if you're a brand lead business, if you put yourself out there as the CEO, and you've got your email address publicly available. There's lots of potential risks with that. So having some systems both internally, having physical, actual, you know, thinking about it as being secure, I have a privacy, you can't see it, I don't know if you'll be able to see this, I have a privacy screen on my laptop screen. That just means that only you can only see what I'm looking at, you know, if anyone's straight ahead, you know, looking at it straight out from the side, you can't see it, just little things that you might want to think about protecting information, not you know, if you're working at a coffee shop, not talking about client things really loudly, not leaving things lying around and changing your passwords, LastPass, Password Manager, all that kind of technical things that may be a bit boring on the admin.

Suzanne Chadwick 41:35
But they're important. Yeah, and I do like LastPass, which is a yes password management system that I've only I was using something else before. And I've just started using them a while ago, like this year. But even like they flag when you've got the same password. Danger. Yeah. So it's good to have something I've just does, especially when our whole business for a lot of us is all online. I just think it's so important for us to protect ourselves like and to make sure that we're we've got what we need in place to protect us protect our customers. Yeah. Yeah, I just think it's, it's not something that should be an afterthought.

Verity White 42:19
Yes. And it's, especially as you start to grow, if you have any team members, employees, contractors, there's lots of scams, where people will send say, Hey, I've just changed my bank account details. Can you pay to this now? And if you don't have a process in place with your accounts team, or if that's you as your accounts team on Fridays, then, you know, double checking those things, calling people up? Is this the right thing? You know, that it can be quite tricky. Don't don't think that it only happens to like big businesses. It's happening more and more to smaller businesses. So not to freak anyone out. But just to be aware of it and kind of think about the different processes that you can have in place.

Suzanne Chadwick 43:02
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm just thinking, I've got somebody who's created a fake account, and copied everything from me on Instagram, and then is mess Oh, yes. And then he's messaging my followers as me, but it's a different name. It's got like, Yeah, a couple of extra k's and see in the surname about cryptocurrency. And I'm like, Ah, it's just so annoying. I mean, that is so used to is you're always on about crypto. I feel really bad. I get people that messaged me. And they were like, I was so excited that you were messaging me. And then you started asking me about crypto currency. And I figured it wasn't you. And I'm like, oh, sorry. That's so. And it's really

Verity White 43:45
hard because all you can do is tell you know that you can tell your friends and followers to report it to them and do all of that. But it's it's frustrating. I don't know if they'll come up with a better way to help with that. Or it must be working because I guess they kept doing it.

Suzanne Chadwick 44:03
Yeah, anyway, so a PS if you get a message from me about cryptocurrency, it's not me. Can you go if you get one from

Verity White 44:11
me, it's definitely make real. I'm a real crypto crypto bras. No, I'm definitely not I wish I was that cool.

Suzanne Chadwick 44:22
Cool. All right. So what else do we need? There's two other things that we're gonna go through. What What's the next one?

Verity White 44:29
Yes. So if we start thinking about you know, we've got our marketing is going well, we've got our revenue coming in. We've got our basically got admin sorted. So we might start thinking about kind of that growing of the business and what we might do as we start to kind of scale and that's when you might have a look at. We've touched on like Do you have an exit strategy? What are you building this business for? What are you kind of getting? What do you love? What's the endgame here? It's okay if you don't have it figured out yet, but you If you are thinking about an exit strategy, or if you've started to build the business, and you've done that, especially with a co founder or partner, and you don't have anything written down on what that relationship is, that's when you might want to talk, turn to more things like Foundation, structural documents, shareholders agreement, partnership agreement, company constitution, looking at your employment agreements, if you have started hiring people, or if you just got them on board, we'd like a email and a high five, and then they discuss started working away and you started paying them, looking at employment agreements and getting those set up. So there's lots of those structural kind of team based documents, as you start to grow, that can be important to just turn your mind to the earlier you get onto those, the better because they can cause a few problems. If you haven't looked into them down the track. I've heard some I'm sure you've heard some two series of cofounder problems that potentially could have been resolved with some stuff up front. And yeah,

Suzanne Chadwick 46:06
yeah, for sure. Yeah. And even, you know, even having a VA and those sorts of things, I think it's really important. One of the things I remember in the early days, and I can't remember how it came about, but it was basically like, Does my VA have a cyber, like insurance, basically, because if they have got access to all of my stuff, and then they get hacked, so really, so it's even looking at the people that you work with, do they have the things in place to protect you 100%,

Verity White 46:39
a guy moves us to our next bucket of supplier door,

Suzanne Chadwick 46:42
the garage is,

Verity White 46:44
which is kind of those contractor arrangements. So you might end up you know, when you first start out, and if you are hiring a VA, you just, I don't know, maybe you sign it without reading it. You might have a bit of a read, or you might get referrals and think like, everything's fine, there are big business. But yeah, having a look and understanding it. If you're big enough, and you feel confident enough in what you want from your business, then you might want to have your own contractor arrangement so that even if the VA has their own agreement, you say, Well, I would like you to sign mine. And here's the scope of work. And this has got the risk profile that I'm comfortable with. It means that I know I own all the copyright. I know, you know how I can end the relationship and you kind of understand the different bits and pieces in there. For the people that you work with 100% I'm always has been quite jealously guarded. And of my clients, I don't really want anyone to have access to the client base material. Whereas I'll open up the kimono on like headshots severity, like sure, like what's the worst you can kind of do with that. So if you've got segmenting off don't just open up the whole share drive to people make sure it's quite clear last pass and as we talked about, only sharing with last pass only so that they can enemy makes things a bit clunky sometimes, but at least it's not just emailing them passwords backwards and forwards. So you might want to think about at least reading the contractors agreements that come across your desk getting your own setup, having a look at if you're dealing a lot with graphic designers with copywriters or with you know, specific kind of copyright element of artistic works or anything like that. Getting a copyright assignment agreement in there if you're buying things from people and you want to be able to use it in your business or own it. If you know for example, if you wanted to make this amazing podcast into audio book and relicense and work it then you'd need some you want some assurances from me that I'm not going to chase you down later. Confidentiality Agreements and non disclosure agreements can be really good if you're working with larger corporate clients or even talking about a pre emptive collaboration agreement. The classic example of that is Mark Zuckerberg and the the twins I always forget the names that the Facebook yes there's something the W twins anyway. Yeah, we

Suzanne Chadwick 49:06
call we call home. Yeah.

Verity White 49:10
So they had the idea of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg did the coding and the work of it, but there was no agreement in place there was no confidentiality agreement in place no scope of works in place. No independent contractor agreement in place. No copyright assignment, all of this stuff. So So yeah, if you don't have those agreements in place, if it's just a handshake and a smile, then then you could lose Facebook basically.

Suzanne Chadwick 49:37
lose face. Yeah, I also think that it's, you know, it is worth thinking about because it can feel like oh, so exciting. Let's do something together. Let's go into collaboration and all the rest of it. And you know, I've had people that have asked it to do certain projects, but I've just thought it that it can get a bit complicated. When you do that, and I don't really want to go down that path, so for me, I'll do the project and then I'll invite them in as a speaker or this or that and pay them for that. So that I don't have to go into the well, who gets what, and how does it work and all of that sort of thing. But if you are going to do something with somebody else, that it's so worth, from the beginning, being really clear, because I think that in the excitement of doing things, like a lot of important detail can get lost.

Verity White 50:31
Yeah. And it doesn't have to be I mean, just I'm not saying like, Oh, my gosh, you need to like hire a lawyer. And

Suzanne Chadwick 50:36
they feel like 100 page contract. Yeah, exactly.

Verity White 50:39
It can often just be having the discussions, sketching out the dot points, and just, you know, what's that old? The old five, five W's, of who, what, where, and how, like, those kinds of approach of what what the actual thing is, and making it clear on what how you'll be collaborating? Who's going to pay for what is it? Okay, if I buy this thing? Well, we split the costs and kind of some of those fun, you know, going back to share house days of how you're going to divide everything and, and, yeah, and reading contracts, I think, yeah, just having having a little bit of a think about things like that.

Suzanne Chadwick 51:13
So question are writing contracts, if you get a contract, and you don't understand it? What do you do? Don't panic,

Verity White 51:21
do not panic. Okay, check. So a lot of contracts are ridiculous. And even lawyers don't understand them. So that's probably something lawyers don't, lots of lawyers don't like writing contracts, they're often not intended to be read or understood by anyone. in lots of ways, like, that's often how they're written, they're written with someone who's kind of sitting there and is trying to be vague, or they're trying to cover as many circumstances as possible. So if you don't understand it, first of all, don't panic, don't feel bad, you're not stupid, the contract is stupid. So don't stress. If you can't understand it, then that just means just ask a question, you know, kind of make notes out about it. And then you can also the flip side of that is, before you start reading the contract, you might have sketched out some dot points of, well, what am I kind of questions about this relationship? What am I what am I want, kind of wanting to find out by reading this document? And often it will be those who, what, where, when, how. And it will be? How much is it going to cost? Can I get out of this if I need to or want to? What am I actually buying? Or what am I going to be getting? What do I have to deliver? And so it's those key things that you look for? Whether or not you just make notes. There's nothing wrong with asking people. Hey, I didn't understand this bit this bit in this bit. Can you explain that to me? And just pointing out to people, this bit doesn't make sense to me. You're not stupid. The contract is stupid. Yeah.

Suzanne Chadwick 52:52
Yeah, I think that's like the big takeaway from today. You're not stupid. The contract is stupid. That's right.

Verity White 52:57
You have to be it doesn't have to be. Yeah.

Suzanne Chadwick 53:01
I love it. I love it. So good. And so I think that we've covered so much, and I wanted to be I wanted it to be really practical, because I think sometimes when we feel that something is hard, and difficult to understand, we stay away from it. But it's really important for us to have some knowledge so that we can make informed decisions and ask great questions so that you can understand these things more.

Verity White 53:33
It's such, I don't know, I just feel like it's such a flex if you can be like I read this contract. And here's things I didn't like about it. Like, I think it's really powerful as a business owner, if you I've just seen it with my clients how confident they are, you can make decisions faster. Your team can make decisions faster, because they know the answers are your clients. There's questions that don't even get asked because it's in the contract. Your contracts can have the kind of a little bit more of a bossy mean voice and what you do and you can always be nice and then your contract if you want. So like it there's lots that that knowing and understanding these legal things can really help you in your business. So yeah, I would definitely encourage people to kind of shift that mindset of like legals yak or you know, businessy things Yak, it's actually can be a real power play.

Suzanne Chadwick 54:24
Hmm, yeah. And I even referred to a contract yesterday, because I was like, Oh, what did we say in that? And so I think just just having that, you know, one source of truth that everybody agreed to where you can go kind of go back and go, Oh, yep. Okay, cool. Like, I remember that, because, yeah, we do things like a year ago, and can't really remember exactly what the agreement was. So I think just having that organized in your business as well like knowing where to find those agreements, and yeah, I'm kind of one for a bit of an organized Dropbox where You know, I've got all of my either my legals and my insurance and my branding and all of that so that I know where to go when I need to find that information is also really important just to having having that organized as well.

Verity White 55:14
That's a great point. Yeah, you've got to be able to sign the contract, and you've got to be able to find it, right?

Suzanne Chadwick 55:20
Yeah, I've actually got I've actually got a folder as well, where, like, that's where all legal contracts go, that as well. So that I've got the emails that that came with the contract, and then the contract is downloaded and saved to illegals folder, as well. I know I like to be organized various areas. I love that because otherwise, I'm like, Where was that thing? What was Yeah, hold? How do I find it? So I've probably learned from losing something to do. Yeah.

Verity White 55:50
Yeah. I love that. I think it's such a good approach. And I think, you know, if you're setting up your own contracts, having the same the key deliverables on your sales sales page, if that goes into your proposal, or into your contract, and then on your invoice, and you just know that it's all the same all the way through. There's no, kind of No, that's, that's clearly what it was. That's so yeah,

Suzanne Chadwick 56:15
yeah. And just using the tech that's available. So we use I think we use Hello sign. But once again, just it's not expensive to use all of our contracts sit in the one place, we've got our templates, like once again, this can be easy. It doesn't have to be yes. A difficult thing as well. Like,

Verity White 56:34
No, that's right. And often it's just a little bit with Mike most of these just a little bit of setup. Yeah. Then you kind of got it until the next week, you want to make two visits and little, little adjustments. Yeah, absolutely.

Suzanne Chadwick 56:45
So good. Verity, thank you so much. I think that you made it really, like applicable and really easy to understand. And so I know that I've got lots of service and product based businesses, small SMEs, sometimes even corporates that listen, every now and again. So where is the best place to find you? Either on socials and obviously website, we'll have all of your links in the show notes too. But for those walking the dog, how can they find you? Checklists legal

Verity White 57:14
on Instagram, you can find me very white on LinkedIn, if you're a linked inner. Pretty much if you just anything with Veridian contracts will probably come up with me googling but yeah, I would love to yeah, definitely reach out. I always always up for a chat, especially about contracts.

Suzanne Chadwick 57:38
I know many people that are like get as excited about contracts as you do. So yeah. If you are looking for some help, but definitely connected Verity. I think that you make it easy to understand.

Verity White 57:51
Ah, thanks. So it's that's what that's the aim, right? That's kind of the business aim. And that's what we built. The B Corp certification is all around all around empowering, empowering women in business in the law to have a greater impact from and kind of being confident in their contracts.

Suzanne Chadwick 58:09
Yeah, I love it. You should just have the line making contracts easy to understand.

Verity White 58:13
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's all I know. I need to I know I need to work on it. I've got to work on it.

Suzanne Chadwick 58:21
I love it. So good. But thanks so much for it. And yeah, so appreciate your time today.

Verity White 58:27
Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me.

Suzanne Chadwick 58:32
Well, that's it for another week. It has been amazing to have you here as always, and remember to follow me on all socials at Sue's Chadwick. But thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, then I would love you to leave a review so that others can find the podcast and come and hang out with us every week. Until next time, have an awesome week and make sure you keep playing big and branding bold.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai