10 must-know contract terms for creatives - 013

This is Law and Wit Episode 13: 10 Must-Know Contract Terms for Creatives. Welcome to Law and Wit: Creative Counsel for Entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Brittany Rettell, mother of 4, entrepreneur, naptime lawyer, and attorney for creative entrepreneurs. I'm here to share inspiration and action so that you can tackle your business blocks and confidently own your business in every sense of the word. Thank you so much for being here. Hello and welcome back, everybody. Thanks for being here. We've got a great episode today and we're talking all about contracts. Woo! Cue— I mean, cue the sexy music and you don't have to calm yourself because I know that hearing the word contract, I mean, it's exciting. I know, I know it's exciting. Okay. I know, I know that very much, guys, that it's not exciting. Okay. But here's the deal. I'm going to give you my quick sell right here before we get into the content is that This is stuff that if you don't try to at least understand, you know, walk with me here, just come along with me, you know, for a few minutes and try to wrap your head around this stuff. If you decide not to, that you just want to continue living your life and growing your business without knowing this and thinking that it won't impact you, then you, you know, I don't like to operate out of fear, but I'm just saying you are giving power away. Okay, so let's talk about operating from a place of power. Of confidence, of building up your own business. And you can't do that unless you know what you're dealing with, unless you know how to negotiate, um, and what you are agreeing with when you agree to do work with somebody, which is what a contract is, okay? It's when you are working with someone else, which we all do on our own businesses in a variety of different ways, all kinds of creative businesses, and that happens. And so we need to have a way of managing that and making sure that we're all on the same page here. And that's why contracts are so helpful. So let's get started on 10 really important contract terms for creatives to know. OK? All right. So the first one to know is that, first of all, email can be enforceable as contracts. And I know what some of you are thinking, like, sweet! Hands up in the air. OK. Like Brittany's been saying, you guys need to have contracts, or I need to pay someone for contracts, or heaven forbid, buy them from Brittany. Who's been giving me this all free information, and now you're saying I don't need to do that, I can just send someone an email. You can, but here's what I'm gonna tell you why that might not be a great idea. But I wanna make you aware that some courts in the US, and increasingly it's more and more courts, are saying that email can be enforceable. The deal is that sometimes people write things in emails and they don't think of it as a contract. So they make what's called an offer or they do what's called an acceptance. They even use some of those terms, the business language. And then maybe someone gets the email on the other side and agrees that that's the deal and we're moving forward. But maybe they don't. Things happen, guys. Things go to spam filters. Things get read by different people than maybe the people who are in charge, who are the decision makers, who are the actual agents responsible, or the people who actually hold the keys to the purse strings. So it's really important that we know that if you want to use email as a contract, which is fine, then know what you're doing and just be aware of that. And know that electronic signatures are acceptable in all 50 states now in the US. So if you're worried that you have to have like an actual ink, as in like you were Thomas Jefferson or something, on a contract, that's ridiculous. So anybody who tries to make you do that, you just send them on their merry way and say, you got to go listen to Brittany. Electronic signatures are totally fine. So use something that's easy like a DocuSign software. I like to use HelloSign. I started out with the free account, but I do so much signatureing and doing that for my clients as part of the done-for-you services that I do that now I have the paid account. But it's fabulous. You upload your things, you point the boxes in terms of I want initials here, I want someone to fill out their name here, I want to date it here. You send it to their email address and that's it. And that way people can sign it from their phone. There's none of this hullabaloo of people having to find their printer paper and attach the printer and print it out and then scan it and then attach it and email it back. Like, what? And like, who's got time for that? No one's got time for that. So don't do it. Okay. The second point is that when you're looking at a contract, you want to pay attention to and you want to make sure this is in your contract. If it's not right now, whatever, kind of work that you're doing, is that you have something that's either called a scope of work or sometimes called deliverables, or sometimes it's referred to as the proposal. And by this, people mean they're referencing something that they've already sent earlier to a client, like a proposal or an RFP, a request for a proposal, which detailed what the work is that we're agreeing to do. And these are so important because this is the meat of the deal, you know, like this is your burger, like this is your nice fatty juicy meat here in the center, and that's basically— this is the work that you are agreeing to do as part of your business relationship. Now, I don't know exactly what your business is, but you do, and so you should be thoughtful about when you put this together and list out in your scope of work or what your deliverables are. Sometimes this is in the contract. Again, sometimes it's what's called an exhibit, which is something that's at the back of the contract. Sometimes it's in a separate document or email like a proposal, and you're just referencing it. But this is really important for it to be specific, and the more specific it is, the better it's going to be for you. Because most of the time, most issues that people have when working with others and when doing client work of any and all types is that there's some disagreement about what's the work being done, and usually payment or actually the creative substantive work. And so the more specific you can be, you know, don't just say, hey, we're going to partner on a campaign, um, you know, and we're going to promote your baby bows. Okay, like, but what, what does that mean, partner on a campaign? Are you going to write a post? Are you going to create original artwork or graphics? Are you going to design a website? What's that going to look like? How, when is it going to be done? How is it going to be hosted? Who's going to pay for that? You see where I'm going with this? You want to be specific. And the more specific you are, the more professional you'll look. You'll look like you've got your stuff together and that you've done this before. You know, you don't need to advertise the fact that you might be new at your game. That's fine. Everyone has to start somewhere. Um, but make sure that you've covered those bases and that if at all possible, you've answered all those questions that your client is going to have about what exactly is the work going to be and how is it going to be performed and what are you agreeing to deliver and when. Really, a timeline is a really helpful part of that, and we'll get into, um, the timeline on the back end on the client and why that's important. Okay, my number 3 is payment. You know, this is, this is all, you know, show me the money. Okay, and a lot of people are more familiar with this. They know to look for words payment like Oh, yes, that's my money. That's important. I should pay attention to those words. But since contract-related disputes almost always come down to money, because that's why people care— if it wasn't about the money, probably people wouldn't care. They'd just go about their business. It's really good to get the section right and to have it very specific in terms of how will you be paid, how will you receive your fees. Is it going to be upfront? Is it going to be at the delivery of certain things? Are there milestones that have to be reached for you to get payment? Are you going to need to invoice the client for that? A lot of corporate clients, if you're working with larger accounts and brands, are set up like this. A lot of people don't know this, but if you do work and you finish the work and say you send off your thing and you shared it and you're like, "Ah, I feel so great, like I finished the work, I really nailed it," and some people sit there twiddling their thumbs and they're like, "Um, where's my money?" And you feel like, "I don't even know how to ask," or, "Is this going to be super awkward?" And sometimes it's— they're not trying to stiff you, but they just assume that you know that you're supposed to invoice them. Okay, people don't just send you money unless you give them a proper invoice. So make sure you know that. Is this going to be a job where you're invoiced? And at one point, some people have invoice net 30, means that you're going to be paid at 30 days after you send the invoice. Sometimes it goes up to like net 60. Okay, if you're talking about a larger client who has just a larger account payable. That's just the way they do their accounting and bookkeeping. So make sure you know that so that you can plan cash flow-wise, so that if you set up some giant website for someone, invested a lot of cost and money, you've paid your people, you part of your team, that you aren't surprised when that money is not coming and is not planning on being coming for a while. The client knows that, but apparently you don't. That's news to you. Okay, on money, you also need to make sure that there's some sort of kill fee in there, okay? And, you know, that means it's a termination or kill. Meaning if someone wants to walk away from this deal, what is that? What do they need to do? And do they need to compensate the other side for work that's already been done? Okay, you know, if someone's gotten started on a logo or done work for you or taken pictures, you know, or started work on, you know, maybe it's a whole creative, you know, maybe you hire someone to do some brand strategy for you. Okay. Well, how much work did they do and at what point can you back out of the contract and what do you need to pay? It's really clear to have that set in stone and that's going to really vary by the type of work that you're doing, the kind of services and the industry you're in. So I can't give you specific language, but if you start thinking about it and talking to people, you'll probably have a good idea of what's reasonable and what would be a good idea depending on what you do. Is there going to be a late fee if your client doesn't pay on time? That's really important to have late penalties in there because Sometimes people don't pay or they won't pay timely unless it hurts, okay? So put that in there so that if you need to, you can collect on that and get those payments to you. And then will you be reimbursed for expenses? If this is a type of work where you are needing to do and that you have expenses because you're buying things for the client and on behalf of whatever work you're doing, who's covering that? Is that just part of your fee or is that going to be billed separately? So, and with this, sometimes in some contracts that I work on, we talk about, you know, if there are expenses that are billed separately, does the client need to have approval over that, or is it just approval over a certain amount? Sometimes the client doesn't want to be bugged if you need to go out and buy some poster board for something. That's, that's no big deal. You just need to do that and take care of it. They don't want an email about that. But maybe they want an email if you're booking travel, um, airfare and hotels for a team of 5 people to go do a video shoot somewhere. Maybe they do want to know about that because that's more expensive. So make sure that you know that, what the limits in the contract will be and what's, um, what's, what's the deal that you have in terms of payment. Okay, that was a big section, but again, super important, so you got to get that right. Okay, the next one, number 4, is assignment of rights. Um, and this sometimes is also labeled as licensing or copyright or intellectual property. Um, but a lot— most, I'd say most of the times that I see it in contracts and that I draft for people, it's usually called an assignment of rights. Assignment, like a school assignment you did in school. Okay, and this is a section that's talking about who owns the work, you know, who owns the actual original creative work that was done under this contract. And so this is also— you'd see language about work for hire being put in here. And, you know, there's, there's a little— there's a lot of misuse of language here. I've seen a lot of bad legal jargon being messed with in contracts, or people throwing out works of like, oh, it's a work for hire, and work for hire actually has a really narrow legal definition, but it's kind of been expanded by people in the creative industry because they think it's a useful tool for explaining like, oh yeah, you hire someone, independent contractor, they're obviously doing a job, they're producing X for you, and when they're done, X now belongs to you. Um, well, maybe, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. That's why this section is also super important. So you— what needs to be answered in here is how can the work be used? Who ultimately owns the rights for it? Um, Is it going to be assigned, meaning all rights are going to be transferred to someone, to the client? Or are you going to hold all the rights and you are just licensing that? That's kind of— licensing is like another term for renting. You're basically, you're renting the use to the client that they can use these photos that you created, for example, for a certain amount of time. Maybe they get to use them for a few months or a year or 2 years, or maybe you're going to limit in what channels or platforms. Maybe they can use it on their social, but they can't use them on their website. Or maybe they can use it in digital for any platforms, but they can't use it in print. Okay, you, you know, you want to, um, think really big picture here. And when I was at Alt, I, um, I got a couple, you know, and this happens when you're a lawyer for creative people and people find out what I do, they of course want to tell me their horror stories of stuff that's happened, of contracts going wrong, which is fine because, um, you I learn more and I get to be better at my job when I know what's going wrong in your guys' world. And I had a couple people talk to me about horror stories of this, of saying, yeah, I signed a contract with someone, a licensing agreement. I was so excited and flattered and thought like, this is amazing, I've arrived. And then they did not understand what they were signing in their contract in terms of they were signing over their likeness, their name, any and all rights to any intellectual property and trademark in perpetuity. That means forever, okay? This is, you know, think of, um, you know, The Sandlot here, okay? This is him saying perpetuity, forever, okay guys? Those are, those are really big, important legal words that carry big, important legal meanings. And if you sign something over in perpetuity, that is gone, you know? That train has left the station and you do not own the rights to that anymore. And if that's your whole body of creative work and your brand that you've built, like you're in trouble. Okay, I don't know what— yeah, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I will, I will tell you, obviously. I'll keep on talking. But, um, but yeah, it's not a great position to be in. So make sure you've got this dialed down. What are you agreeing to? Who gets what? Um, can the client modify the work or make derivatives works? That's another way of saying that, based on what you've done. Say you design a logo, can they now take this logo and change the color? Can they add different fonts? Can they stretch it or change it for other campaigns? Or manipulate it. Um, maybe they can, maybe they can't, but you should know what you've negotiated. And if it's something that's going to be useful for a lot of other different purposes, then, um, yeah, let's make sure that's part of the discussion. Are you going to be paid royalties upon the use or sale of this work? Is this just a flat fee that you're saying for this and one and done, or are you going to get a percentage every time this is used? Um, or maybe a royalties after a certain point. That's sometimes used in contracts where you say, well, a fee up to this, but distribution after this point, or distribution in these channels would get these kinds of royalties. And make sure, last but not least, that you are leaving a carve-out for you as the creator of this content to be able to display the work in your portfolio, because I'm sure it's probably important for you to attract business, to retain business, for you to be able to tell people what you do. This is— I mean, I even have to think about this for me when I work with clients, and it's a little harder because I have you know, really stringent ethical guidelines in terms of disclosing clients that I work with. So I have to make sure I have their clear assent. But you should really follow the same guidelines too, and don't assume that you can post client work unless you've cleared it with them, you know. And that includes for any kind of creative original content, because if you've done one of these options, which is basically assign all the rights to the client, they own all of that content. It's not yours to decide whether you get to put it on your website anymore, okay? So if you want to retain that small little license display in your portfolio, make sure it's in the contract for you to do that and the client understands that and they're not upset. I don't know why they would be. I mean, sometimes clients are just weird, unreasonable, so protect against that— those weird, unreasonable clients that you might have inadvertently snagged. Okay, number 5, we already touched on this a little bit, but make sure that there's a termination clause in there. And again, termination means to end. Okay, think about, you know, channeling your inner Schwarzenegger here. Terminator, you know, you need to know how you can hasta la vista. And in most contracts, there's some kind of boilerplate language in there that talks about if there's a breach in the contract— and I know breach might make you think of like the hull of Titanic— when we're talking about a breach of a contract, it means someone didn't do what they were supposed to do in the contract. So normally, most contracts say, okay, if there was a breach, the other party who, you know, who did the breaching, who maybe made a mistake, should be given an opportunity to try to fix it first. Meaning, at the first sign of trouble, say someone dropped the ball, they were supposed to do 5 posts and the first post was late or there was an error in some way, you know, it's a little unreasonable sometimes for the client to be like throw their hands up and be like, "Oh my gosh, I'm out of here, you know, this is ridiculous. I'm not paying for any of this and I want all my money back." Like, "Okay, simmer down now. Let's figure out what we can do to try to fix this program, fix the problem." And if the breaching party says, "Look, sorry, we did make a mistake with that. We used the wrong photo. Here's what we can do to try to fix it. We're going to do an extra post, or we're going to do this that talks about it," or whatever you guys work out, that should be in the contract in terms of that there is a remedy or an option to try to mitigate the breach or try to fix the breach, but then if that doesn't work, if you guys are just having an unworkable relationship and no one's getting anywhere, then how is that going to end? And just like with personal relationships, breakups are hard, and business breakups are no exception to that. So I know that people don't like to think about that happening with people, especially close business relationships or even friends that you work with, so it's really important to have language in there about how can you end this relationship if it's not working and hopefully both preserve as much dignity and goodwill as possible under the circumstances. Okay, number 6 is client responsibilities. Okay, and I touched on this when we talked about timelines, but ideally, if you have stuff that your client needs to be doing— you know, you're doing the work as the creative entrepreneur and whatever your business is— but if you— if your work is dependent on the client doing certain stuff, you know, if you can't do Y until they do X, then that should be in the contract. Okay, that should be on the scope of work or the exhibit, um, whatever, it should be in there, okay? Meaning that if you need them to give you copy so that you can write the script, if you need them to send you product so that you can shoot the video or photos of the product, then that should be in there, what that timeline is like. Because a lot of times what happens is that people are unclear about this piece, the client is late, or the client gets busy with something else, and then you get delayed. And do you think the client is going to take responsibility for that? No, no, that's all your problem, okay? So don't make it all your problem. Put language in the contract so that you can clearly and nicely tell and professionally tell the client, you know, I'm sorry, but we talked about our timeline here. If that there was a delay of more than a certain number of days, there was going to be an additional charge, or that was going to set the timeline back. And, you know, try to explain just in case people are unreasonable. You know, that's what we're trying to, you know, protect against here is unreasonable people, which Let's face it, they exist. Okay, number 7: liability. And this is, you know, we're getting into the real legalese down here at the end. See, I kind of led you down the silken path. I didn't want to start with this stuff because I knew you guys would just stop listening. I know you, I know you, so I'm not trying to judge, but I know you. Okay, so liability, and this you're probably familiar with, is who's to blame. Okay, so you want to pay attention in your contract, when you see the word liability, when you see something that's all in caps that, you know, talks about parties will disclaim any and all liability and damages in perpetuity, forever and ever and ever, you know, you start to see these clauses that basically say, um, we will never be responsible for any harm that ever happens under any circumstances. And, um, and yeah, as those people's eyes just gloss over and think, oh, this is the standard, I have to sign this. No. No, you do not. Okay, everything in a contract is negotiable, guys. I'm going to repeat that because it's so important. Everything in a contract is negotiable, okay? Including this paragraph right here, even if it's in capitalized. I don't know why lawyers do that, they just do. I don't try to, I don't try to explain that, they're just weird. Um, but for some reason someone started doing it, so everyone else started copying them because that's what we do, copy and paste. But, um, it's really important to understand what you're agreeing to take responsibility for. And in some industries, this is a bigger deal than others if you have more risk. If you are doing live events, this is a big deal, okay? Because we're talking about what happens if someone slips and falls, okay? What happened if there is physical harm to somebody? This is a big deal if you're dealing with intellectual property, big intellectual property. What happens if there's a claim that someone says, "That logo is my logo, and now all of this work has been based on this." And maybe years and years later this is discovered, and when someone's trying to trademark it or has a trademark, you know, copyright infringement suit. So these are the kind of issues that come up. So you want to make sure that you've thought about what are kind of the issues that happen in your industry in terms of liability. Expect the unexpected and the worst to happen. If you're a wedding planner, well, What should happen if a wedding gets canceled? Because guess what? Sometimes weddings get canceled. So who should be taking the risk of that? Do you get paid? Does the client have to refund all the money, or are you going to do half? Is there some arrangement in terms of what the work's been done? You know, let's talk about it, guys. It's crappy, but let's talk about it. Um, are you a website developer? Okay, what happens if the migration goes south? And I'm not talking about geese here, talking about the data that's being moved from one platform to the other. What happens if stuff is lost? What happens if the website's down for some number of days and the client is losing money in sales? Okay, who's going to take on that risk? And maybe it's not even your fault, maybe it's something else that happened, you know, but, you know, crap happens, guys. We know it does. What if it's your graphic designer and the client has a million revisions and puts you behind their timeline, and now you're behind on another client work? Okay, how are you going to rein that in? You should have a provision there and there about revisions and making sure you're covering liability in case something goes wrong. So, and so yeah, this is a really important one. So nail this down. You should have some solid language here and it should be reflective of what you do in your industry. If you don't have a good idea of how things can go wrong, if you've been in the lucky position that your business has always been sunshine and daisies and unicorns and rainbows, then talk to other people who do what you do. Scope out Facebook groups, listen into forums, get some ideas in terms of what are the issues that people are having and how can I maybe start to protect against that. Okay, number 8 is kind of closely related to that, which is look out for language that says indemnify or hold harmless, because this is basically when someone is transferring the responsibility to pay for litigation and to defend claims against a third party. So it's closely related to what we just talked about, number 7, of liability. But this is against other people. So, you know, we have, you know, us working. Say we have a client and a designer. Those are the two parties to the contract. But we also need to think about what if there is a third party out there who, like, you say we have our trademark infringement lawsuit, who says, look, you, you know, designer designed a logo, client ran with it, loved it, put it all over their crap, you know, shilled it all over the internet and all over the world. And then years later you know, it's discovered that designer copied that from someone else. It wasn't original work. They were strapped for time, whatever. Whatever they did, it was bad. And now they're going to have to— and now that third party is suing and saying, look, that is my work. That's all over the place. You've diluted. You've, you know, lost all this brand imagery and goodwill and yada yada yada. And now we have a full-blown infringement lawsuit. Who's going to pay for that? Well, hopefully you have a good contract that says something like, um, the client is responsible. Or if you're the client, hopefully you have something that says the designer is responsible for their work, um, and that you can— then they have to indemnify you for the claims that might be against you. Because people might go after who looks like they have the bigger pockets, um, and you want to be able to shift that risk to whoever you think should be the one mitigating that risk. Whoever should be the one who should know better, that's who you want to be having taken the risk. In the chance of a creative dispute, this should be whoever is creating the work. They're the ones who are supposed to be looking out and making sure they're doing a good job and they're doing good work. Anyway, I could go on a whole other podcast about that. I won't because I can already feel you guys' eyes glazing over, so we'll move on. Just know that that's really important language. Are looking at that and not understand what you're reading, please raise a hand, you know, go get some help. Talk to an attorney who practices in small business law, business transaction, and, you know, hopefully knows something about your industry so they can help. Okay, number 9 is talking about integration and merger clauses, and this is a fancy way of saying, is this the whole agreement? And ideally, your contract should say something like that. It's probably going to be at the very end. It's going to say something like, "This agreement, you know, is a fully integrated agreement, meaning this is the whole enchilada. If we've had other agreements by telephone or email or talking in person, those are great and lovely, but they do not supersede what we have agreed here on paper." And this is really important so that someone can't come back and say like, "Oh, but you also promised me that you would do this and this and this and this," and you're like, "Uh, I don't—" I don't think so. I don't remember that happening. And yet, if it's not there, then it's hard for you to say that because you don't have a clause that said, like we talked about, emails can be enforceable as contracts. So, you know, it's really important if you want the contract to be the end-all, be-all for the relationship, which I would advise you do because you've been thoughtful about the contract and we've talked about all the things that you should be thoughtful about, then make sure that that clause is in there. And the last one, 10, is how to amend a contract. Meaning, if you do want to amend a contract as part of the working relationship, how is that going to happen? Is email okay? Does it have to be, you know, by mail? That's probably unworkable, so email is probably how you're going to do it. But maybe make sure that you're saying who is going to be on the emails. Maybe put in there, it's going to be just the parties that are signing it, or are there other authorized representatives that could also bind the parties? Because maybe you're dealing with someone who has a large team or an executive assistant who's the one who handles all that. That should be spelled out so that you know an email from this person is or is not a way that you can actually amend the contract. Okay, all right, okay, that's a little bit longer than I wanted to go, but I didn't want to skip over all this stuff because it's so, so important, guys. So thanks so much for, for hanging with me with all this. I really hope this has been helpful as you've thought about your business and why contracts are important. I could say besides people not starting an LLC, besides not incorporating or registering their business, it's all called the same thing, which was episode number 6. So if you haven't listened to that, please listen to that. This is probably the next biggest issue, is everything I've talked about today, is that people are not using contracts when they should be. And the reason why this is a problem is because of all the fallout that I've talked about, is that it costs you time, it costs you money, and which is really time is money, so it's all money, guys. You know, you lose money when you do too much work than you should have done for an agreement. You lose money when you can't get out of a bad deal because you don't have a contract about it, when you have a crappy client who's having you do too much work. You lose money when crappy stuff happens and you don't have a way to cover those extra expenses that you didn't plan on. Okay, you lose money if you can't show your work to other people and get good business, okay? You lose money if you can't get your expenses covered like you should be, okay? So I don't want you to lose money. I want you to make money. I want you to be a confident business owner. So I don't want you to approach all this stuff from a place of fear, okay? That's not my, that's not my jam here. I know it's kind of hard, and I'm in a hard position to talk about legal stuff and not come from a place of fear because so much of traditional legal marketing really hammers into that. I don't want to do that because I think that you guys deserve better and that that's not how you operate and that's not how you want to live and run your businesses. I believe in action and moving forward and I totally think that you should do that for your business. I just want you to be thoughtful and intentional and I mean that in a really pedantic hashtaggy way. No, I'm just kidding. But please have contracts. Please have contracts. Okay, and if you have questions or would like me to draft a contract for you, I do that. I have a giant bank of contracts that I have that I've done for clients and a lot of different templates. I'm working on my contract shop right now. I'm really hoping it will be open in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for more details about that. And that will allow you to log on and just pay and shop for whatever contract you want and buy a template, and it's going to come with instructions on how to use it. So, and that's going to allow me really to let you guys buy stuff at a reasonable rate, have a solid contract that's going to expand and protect your business in the way it should be. And that way we don't, you know, have to engage in a lot of other work that you don't, you don't need to pay me for, okay? Because a lot of this work is, you know, is very, very similar and you guys have a lot of similar needs. So anyway, that's what I'm working on right now. Probably too much information up front, but just know that that's coming down the pipeline. So But in the meantime, if you need a contract right away, send me an email, hello@brittanyrotell.com, and I can give you some pricing details about what that would be. And, and then we can go from there and we can make sure that you've got your bases covered, okay? That we've got your assets covered. You know what I'm talking about, for all of your different business needs. So thanks so much for joining me here. If you're not subscribed to my newsletter, I put in tips like that we've talked about today. I summarize some of the stuff, the tips that I give on Instagram, which maybe you follow me there and you see my stuff, but maybe you don't because, you know, algorithms don't sometimes reward legal text from Instagram. I know, shocker. But I don't have cute puppies or peeing used to offer you, so sometimes my stuff does not get seen. So sign up for my newsletter at brittanyratel.com/newsletter. You'll see I've got a legal checklist to give you away there if you sign up. Will be some show notes for this episode, which will be brittanyratel.com 13, as in episode 13. So check that out, and I will have a little downloadable handout as a little bonus for just my listeners of the podcast. Okay, I'm not gonna tell anyone else about this. I'm just telling you people. So if you have listened to this podcast, have been subscribing, telling your friends about it, I'm really, really thankful for your support and love. So please go to brittanyburtell.com/13 and get this handout so that you can remember all of these terms that we've talked about today the next time that you see a contract. And you are negotiating and thinking about and trying to be a professional businesswoman. You know, put your little invisible blazer on, channel your inner Elle Woods, and do what you can to make sure that you get your business locked down and moving forward the way you want to. So thanks so much for joining me today, and I'll see you next week, guys.