Contracts 101 for Freelancers with Mariam Tsaturyan-EP094

12/30/19 • 42 min

TL:DR: You need legal contract templates and disclaimers. Mariam did the work for you. Check out her store here.

So you know you need a contract with most of your freelance clients. But you get tripped up when the client provides you with their contract. I know you may be concerned about having to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars working with a business attorney to create a template you can use now and in the future.

Here’s the good news. Just listen to this episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast with my amazing guest. She has a background as a freelancer and as a practicing attorney. And she has templates that are available for you to download and easily customize to your freelance business.

But even if you're not yet ready to purchase the template, you're going to learn a lot from her about what to look for in contracts, what things can be negotiated, and what terms and contracts should never be taken out. No matter what, today's guest is Mariam Tsaturyan, a licensed and practicing attorney in the United States. She also blogs full time. And she realized that there was a real need for legal guidance for bloggers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs.

Why Do Freelancers Even Need Contracts?

Mariam loves helping out others to avoid mistakes, especially when it comes to legal matters because many people ignore just how important it is until it's too late. And she's created several products to help freelancers and entrepreneurs stay legally compliant. You can find information about her store in the show notes for this episode, which will be at betterbizacademy.com/podcast.

Mariam goes into a great amount of detail into common mistakes that freelancers make with contracts, ones that you can't afford to make, and some of the other legally required materials you need to have if you're using a website. So that's important. It's often overlooked. But you can bundle a lot of those templates in together to get website disclaimers and other relevant policies in addition to contract templates you can use again and again that are perfect for your freelance business.

I hope you love this episode of the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast. This is probably one of the most requested topics. And something that I get the most questions about with the freelancers that I work with one on one. It's also a sticking point for new freelancers who are just getting started and are either being provided contracts by their clients or get stuck on this whole idea of ”I don't have a contract I'm not making money yet should I pay an attorney to create one when I don't have any revenue.”

So my guest today is Miriam and I am so excited to talk to her because she's got expertise in the freelance world and with contracts. We're going to talk a little bit about what you should know about contracts and how to avoid some of the common pitfalls.

How did Mariam’s shop come about?

By profession, Mariam is an attorney. So she was just a regular practicing attorney initially. And then some family issues came up. She has a son. And she had to make a decision to stay home and raise him. And they didn't have anybody helping them at that time. So that is how the whole idea of starting the blog and starting the shop was created. She actually started as a freelancer.

So what kind of freelance work were you doing when you first got started? Was it legal or something?

She started off as a freelance writer and was doing legal freelance writing for other attorneys. That was her way of making money initially as a way to contribute to the family finances since She was home now and she wasn't working anymore.

This is so cool! Because that's 99% of what I write for my clients and I very rarely come across anyone who has done legal writing for other attorneys. It is not an over-saturated niche, which is kind of good when you're doing it. But it's definitely not something that everybody wants to do.

But she obviously has the perfect background to be speaking about contracts. She’s worn that hat as a freelancer and she’s an attorney. So this is something that just trips a lot of people up this whole idea of presenting contracts to a client or what to look for when a client gives you a contract that they want you to sign.

Why do you think most people get confused over contracts with freelance work?

Mariam says that this is true for any profession, not necessarily freelance writers. But for some reason when they hear the word contract, whether it's the person hiring you or it's the actual freelance writer, they get booked.

She thinks they don't understand that the contract is there to protect both sides. When they hear contract, they think it's going to be favoring on...

TL:DR: You need legal contract templates and disclaimers. Mariam did the work for you. Check out her store here.

Why Do Freelancers Even Need Contracts?

How did Mariam’s shop come about?

So what kind of freelance work were you doing when you first got started? Was it legal or something?

Why do you think most people get confused over contracts with freelance work?

She thinks they don't understand that the contract is there to protect both sides. When they hear contract, they think it's going to be favoring on...

Previous Episode

Working Remotely with Expert Maryellen Stockton-EP093

One of these questions I see coming up all the time for people who are just thinking about making the leap into working from home is whether working remotely and freelancing are the same thing. It can get really confusing because plenty of freelancers do work remotely. But that's not necessarily the same as someone who's working on an hourly, part time, or salaried, full time basis as a remote worker.

In this episode, I was so happy to be able to invite my guest Maryellen Stockton to chat about what it means to work remotely, successfully. We talked about a lot of things including how to be successful with a remote job interviews and tips that can help you be successful and effective with potential clients and employers in this digital world we live in today.

About Maryellen Stockton

Maryellen Stockton is the co-founder and CEO of Work Well Wherever. She is a People Operations Consultant who has worked for 15 years encouraging individuals to achieve positive work/life experiences and helping companies create inspired work cultures. Six years ago, she began working remotely for a virtual staffing firm and quickly became an expert in company culture, employee engagement, and building teams outside the traditional office.

She lives in Atlanta with her husband Matt and her two kids, George and Winnie. The things that make her happy usually include coffee, people she loves, and mountains. And to that, I say I feel the same!

I hope you will find this episode helpful for learning more about why remote work has become so popular.

We're living in an amazing time as freelancers or as remote employees where companies are finally opening up to the idea that they can have very effective, efficient, and great teams with excellent communication in locations all over the country or even the world. So use that to your advantage. Make sure you file away the tips in this episode and avoid some of the pitfalls we discuss that are costing people remote work opportunities.

I was thrilled to be able to chat with Maryellen because I think she has such a unique background with remote work. She is also, in a sense, like a consultant herself running her own business. So she has this really unique blend of both of those backgrounds.

I'd love to kick things off by talking a little bit about the difference between remote work and freelancing.

Sometimes we're talking about the same things. But increasingly, these words are getting their own definition. So I really wanted to hear her perspective on what that difference is.

Maryellen’s thoughts on on freelance work is that you are usually not working full time for one employer. You are usually working full time maybe for multiple employers or maybe you're working part time for multiple companies or on multiple projects. And you are not necessarily like a part of a team.

With remote work, and especially with the growth of this full time, remote work, the difference is that you're usually devoted to one company or organization. And it is a company that is either distributed where they have offices all over or they have teams that are. Everyone works from home or maybe it's a combination of both.

Maryellen shared that you are seeing increasingly more and more companies hiring freelancers to do certain projects and also they have remote teams. That actually worked for the organization. And that's increasingly more common.

I totally agree with that. I think that the confusion for a lot of people is because most freelancers today are working remotely. Now, that's not true for everyone. There are definitely some freelancers who still go into the office and things like that. But most of them are working remotely.

So when someone is thinking about getting started working from home, it's actually quite different working for one company, or maybe two companies that you're working remotely for part time versus running a freelance business where you may have multiple clients at the same time. And there's not always that expectation that it's ongoing. Like if you take a full time, or part time remote work job, unless the person has told you that this is temporary, there's that expectation that it's like a traditional form of employment. It's expected to go on unless there's a reason for either party to decide to end the relationship. Whereas, freelance work is so much more flexible. It might literally be that someone needs you to do something this week and then never again. I still have some of my clients from years ago. So it's all over the board.

One of the things that's cool about the time period that we live in is that remote work is becoming more and more accepted by companies of all sizes. Employees are wanting it. So it’s a great time to be either a remote worker, an aspiring remote employee or a freelance. Because this whole idea of working with people who are not in your office is so much more accepted.<...

Next Episode

Burnout and Your Freelance Business: Part 1-EP095

Welcome back to another episode of the Advanced Freelancing podcast. As you're listening to this, it is already 2020. It's a great opportunity to reflect back on all the things you've done over the past year as a freelancer or moving towards starting your freelance business.

Freelancing and Avoiding Overwork/Burnout

These are the freelancers who've been working for quite a long time, have a steady client base, and usually tend to be a little bit of those workaholics. So you might be bringing some of those workaholic tendencies over into your freelance business.

Now, this doesn't mean that someone who's relatively new to freelancing won't benefit from thinking about the concept of overwork. In fact, I think that the more you have in the back of your mind the dangers of overwork before you get started as a freelancer, the easier it will be for you to really grow and scale your business happily and successfully.

Everyone can be affected by burnout

This is actually something that's been spreading across traditional employees and the American workforce as well. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics information shows that the average American works approximately 44 hours a week, which is just under nine hours per day. The United States is also one of the most overworked countries in the world. So weekdays average over eight hours and average weekend days average over five and a half hours. That means we're clocking a tremendous amount of time doing work.

Burnout can be really detrimental to your mental and physical health.

All too often, I end up working with freelancers one on one after they’re way too long down that path. They've already been facing some of these major challenges of feeling overworked and burned out. They're stressed out. And they're not eating well. They're dreading working on client work, etc. So those are some of the very early indicators of burnout.

Many of us freelancers are very experienced, but how do we ignore those signs and symptoms and keep working anyways? In this episode, we'll talk a little bit more about burnout/overwork, what it looks like, how you can fight against it, and what to do if you believe that you're already overworking.

One of the things about burnout that I find really interesting is that we all know what it is once we've experienced it, but usually, we're so deep into the situation by the time we've experienced it, that hindsight is 2020.

You're looking back and going, “Oh, I should have known. I was really tired for two or three months. I had 12 clients instead of the eight that I've said my maximum would be.” But burnout has actually become a medical condition. This was one of the biggest news pieces of 2019. It's a formal medical diagnosis specifically in relation to work related stress.

It formally became recognized by the World Health Organization and is under the code for problems associated with employment or unemployment. But recognizing burnout, even though it's been classified as an actual condition, is still a big challenge for a lot of people. We know it when we see it. And we hear other people talk about it. But what it looks like for you might be different than what it looks like for someone else.

So let's talk about some of the general categories under these health guidelines of what burnout can look like and remember that not all of these might apply to your situation.

You might be feeling that one or a couple of them are more influential than others. That doesn't mean that you don't have burnout if you don't have every single symptom here. Burnout is categorized by reduced effectiveness in your professional capacity, an increased feeling of mental distance from your job, or feelings of cynicism and negativity in relation to your job, a general feeling of exhaustion or energy depletion.

Americans are working longer and harder than ever before. And that's been backed up by plenty of different sources, including the American Institute of Stress. Multiple studies have backed up that this work stress is a major source of anxiety, depression, and burnout for American adults.

One common question that freelancers have is, “Well, I operate under stressful conditions quite a bit. I run my own business. I'm the head of every department in my business. How do I know if this is stress or if it is burnout?” There is a difference between stress and burnout. But it's very hard for a lot of people to tell which one you're dealing with. And it requires taking that big step back to look at the overall picture of your work life. So the feeling that achievement is slipping can go from stress into more of a burnout situation. Particularly if you're in a work environment that is very grinding.

What’s the difference between stress and burnout?

Stress is something that shows up typically around certain situations. Maybe you have a new supervisor at work and you're getting used to them. You may...