In this instructional YouTube video, attorney Brittany Ratelle walks creators through the essential elements of brand collaboration contracts to protect their revenue and rights. She begins by emphasizing the importance of correctly naming the contracting parties and using the appropriate business entity (LLC, S‑corp) to maintain asset protection. She then details how to craft clear payment terms, including invoicing procedures, net payment periods, and the necessity of late‑fee clauses, attorney‑fee and collection‑agency provisions, and chargeback reporting. Ratelle warns against overly long net terms (e.g., net‑90) that can cripple cash flow. Next, she explains how to handle exclusivity clauses, urging creators to define the scope, name competitors, and adjust pricing accordingly. The bulk of the talk focuses on intellectual property: identifying who owns the content, negotiating media‑rights, boosting, whitelisting, and licensing duration (often in 30‑day blocks) and ensuring creators are compensated for these uses. She then stresses the need for tightly defined deliverables—number of reels, length, platform, and approval workflow—to avoid endless revisions. Finally, Ratelle shares her “secret weapon”: creators can proactively provide a contract to brands, pitch themselves as knowledgeable partners, and target local businesses that have yet to adopt influencer marketing. She directs viewers to a downloadable, attorney‑drafted contract template in the video description.
Chapters
I am attorney Brittany Ratelle, and I'm so excited to be here today to talk about contracts. You got it. Really fun, sexy stuff. As a reminder, I am a licensed attorney, but I'm not your attorney. This is not official legal advice, but I do hope it's helpful to navigate what can you do to make sure that you get paid on those deals and collabs. Make sure you stick around for the end, cuz I'm going to give you my secret weapon for how even as a small creator, you can pitch brands and deliver a deal that will be a win for them, a win for you, and a win for your bank account. Let's get into it. Number 1, you wanna look at correct party names. These should be in the header or the top paragraph on your contract, making sure the other side is named correctly and that you are named correctly. If you've set up a business entity like an LLC or an S corp, that should be the correct title in that heading. Don't operate your business in your own name if you've done asset protection, because you could be undermining your ability to show that this was a business contract and not a personal contract that you entered into. Make sure the party names are correct. Make sure that it's headquartered in the right state and all of that matches up. Tip number 2. Make sure that you have really clear terms on payment. Obviously everyone cares about money and we want to make sure that we're being really clear. What are you getting paid for doing what you are promising to do? If I need to send an invoice, which by the way, a lot of larger companies will not pay you unless you send them an invoice, that'd be good information for you to know. So you want to know where am I supposed to send an invoice and how long do they have to pay me? That's what's known as net payment terms. You could see anywhere from net 3, net 5, net 30, net 60. That's how many days they have to pay you out.. If you see something that says net 90, I want you to redline that. That means they have 90 days from when you invoice them. If you're doing the math, you're realizing that celebrity marriages have lasted a shorter time than the time it's going to take them to pay out on this contract. Don't put yourself in that cash flow poor situation. The other thing to watch about payment is you want to make sure there's really clear language on late fees. Make sure that there's a really good incentive for them to pay you on time and for not the check to get lost in the mail. I've seen a lot of creators getting stiffed by brands, and it can make you feel pretty scary, right? If you've put forward all this effort, you've maybe had to put production costs outside to pay a photographer, videographer, props, production, editing, wardrobe, and you're waiting for that check, and now you're starting to wonder, gosh, what could I really do if they don't pay me? Your options get a lot more crystal clear if you can start charging them money for every day or every week that they're late. Also make sure that you can collect attorney's fees or collection agency fees if you need to make good on that contract and actually enforce the terms of that. And last but not least, make sure that you can report a chargeback or a dispute to a credit agency. This is a lot more important in like consumer goods situations or in an e-commerce situation, but it happens a lot for my digital good clients as well. Number 3, we want to check on exclusivity. And by this I mean, are one or both of you promising to be exclusive? It's going back to like high school DTR, right? Defining the relationship. You want to make sure you're on the same page. There's nothing brooding like drama if you think you're exclusive and the other person doesn't think you're exclusive. If the expectation is that you are going to post and there is going to be exclusivity. Be like, uh, if you are looking for that, that's going to change my pricing. And if they give you really broad exclusivity, narrow it down. Have them name competitors. Number 4, we got to talk about intellectual property. If your business is the business of content, this is your moneymaker. So we have to be really clear on what are you doing and who owns it. In this section, you would also try to look for language that talks about intellectual property, media rights, usage, copyright, any of these terms. You're going to have to be a little cagey and looking for other ways that this could be described. I really want you to be watching out for language that talks about what media rights the other side have. This is especially true if you are a creator. You want to make sure, do they have the right to boost this content, meaning they are putting ad money behind this content and they can run ads on it? That's fine, but you should get paid for that. Same with whitelisting, means that they can actually go on to your account, usually through a third-party tool, then they will look like they were from you to your audience. This could be a significant value for the brand that you're doing business with, but it can also hurt your engagement. You should definitely be charging for boosting and for whitelisting. Also make it really clear that if they get some license to use the content, where do they get to use it and for how long? It's really normal in a lot of influencer or brand deals for it to be limits of 30 days, meaning they get increments of 30-day blocks to use the content, and then they gotta pay the fee to use it for another 30 days. I would advise if you think the content might do really well, either negotiate a really high rate for that or shorten the time period. You are in control. You're the boss here because you are not only the creator, you are the creative team and the producer. Now You get to be the distributor and you get to go back and decide how you want to negotiate all those rights and make sure it's worth your while. And last but not least, let's talk about the ask. What are you doing? What are the deliverables? What is the scope of work? And this we want to have really, really tight, okay? Austin Powers tight like a tiger, because we want to make sure that you are not signing up for endless rounds of revision if the brand doesn't like it. Don't put yourselves at the whimsy of some creative committee on the other side that you don't want to be beholden to. Make sure it's really clear on deliverables, especially if you're a creator. This look like you saying, I am going to do this many Reels and they will be this long. I will do this kind of integration on YouTube. It will be a 60-second YouTube integration. Whatever the asks are, make sure it's clear what channel, what's the length, and how are approval rights going to work. A lot of brands and agencies nowadays want the rights to see what you're going to post, and that way they can review it with their team, sometimes their lawyers, before they post. Make sure that you have that built into your editorial calendar, making sure that you've got your homework done, can send it off to their team, they can okay it, and that you can post when you want it to And here's my final secret weapon for you. You can be the one that can actually provide the contract to a brand. You could go out and pitch someone and say, hey, maybe you haven't had a chance to work with an influencer or a creator before. Maybe you're curious about what that process looks like and what I can deliver to you through the use of my audience. And you can walk them through what the process would look like. What are the deliverables they can get from you? What kind of report will come after the campaign? And you can stay in the driver's seat and that opens up the field and really think outside the box here. Think about. In your location, in your small town, are there brands and businesses who have not jumped into influencer marketing, who are ready to move that money from static advertising that's not working and instead to bet that money on you. You want to position yourself as an expert, as someone who understands what they're doing. And regardless of whether you think you have the metrics that you know what steps to take next, including what needs to be talked about before and then negotiated and outlined in a secure contract. If you don't have an agreement like this, make sure you check out the links in the comments where you can get your hands on my attorney's Brittany Ratelle drafted an industry-tested brand collaboration deal. Thanks so much for being here. Make sure you like and subscribe so you don't miss any of these great tips.
