#156 4 Ways I Can Save You Time & Money
Running a business can be overwhelming. With a never-ending to-do list and the need to wear multiple hats, it's easy to feel stretched thin. I understand these challenges, which is why I want to share four ways I work with clients to streamline their processes, alleviate stress, and save them time and money. Let’s dive in!
1. Your Client Service Agreement:
A well-crafted client agreement is critical to ensure legal compliance and protection, but it can also save you time and money. By clearly outlining what services you will provide, how much you charge, and when payment is due, you can eliminate misunderstandings and reduce the need for constant follow-ups. Additionally, a professionally tailored agreement enhances your brand image and helps clients understand your unique way of working. This leads to higher client satisfaction and fewer disputes.
2. Setting Up Solid Processes and Systems:
Having your legal documents in place is crucial, but it’s not enough on its own, you need to know how to effectively use them. I’ve seen so many business owners struggling when they forget to include their terms and conditions in proposals or lack the systems to manage variations and scope creep. Investing time to set up efficient processes will make sure you can deliver on your promises, manage expectations, and maintain a healthy cash flow.
3. Website Documents Matter:
In this digital age, your website is crucial for engaging your audience and making sales. Spending time on your website documents, including terms and conditions, refund policies, and cancellation policies, allows you to clearly communicate what your customers can expect. By addressing potential issues upfront, you minimise customer issues and equip your team to deal with any issues that do arise.
4. Trademark Clarity:
When launching a new product or service, you need to make sure that the chosen name doesn't infringe on existing trademarks. If you aren’t proactive here, and there is a trademark issue, you’ll have to throw out your work and invest more time and money to completely rebrand. A legal professional can walk you through this process, and provide you with peace of mind. They’ll also be able to determine whether you even need exclusive use of a name or phrase. Sometimes you don’t, and you can save yourself unnecessary expenses on the trademark application process.
As a business owner, time and money are precious resources. Taking the time to align your processes with your legal documents can save you both. I’ve seen firsthand the difference these four strategies can make, so I hope this episode inspires you to take these steps in your business.
Remember, prevention is better than cure. Invest in your legal foundation and set yourself up for long-term success.
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156 - 4 Ways I Can Save You Time & Money
Tracey: [00:00:00] Okay, everyone, let's get really practical. When it comes to running a business, I get the reality of wearing all the hats and the never ending to do list and bordering on overwhelm. Trust me, I get it. If you're a long time listener to this podcast, you will have heard me talk time and time again about your legal documents, the importance of your legal documents, what legal documents you need, why you need them, all the things.
In today's episode of the podcast, I'm going to share with you four ways that I work with clients to help save them time and money.
Let's dive in. First one, number one, your client service agreement. It's the document that you use when you're engaging a client. Having that set up properly for your business saves you time and money. Yes, it's compliant and it protects you legally. And it does all that, but it saves you time and money.
And here's how, when you have properly tailored client service agreements or business T's and C's or whatever you want to call it, it doesn't matter. When you've got these drafted properly and set up in your business, you are managing your client expectations from the outset. You are sharing with your clients what you're going to do, what you're not going to do, what you're going to charge, when you expect to be paid, how you're going to deal with scope creep, how you're going to deal with variations.
You set it all out. front and center. Now, if they're done properly, they'll be on brand. So they'll look like you, they'll sound like you, you will be super comfortable and really confident. Each time you send these out to a client, your client can read them. Fantastic. I now know how [00:02:00] I'm going to work with this person.
I know what I'm getting. I know when to expect it, all the things. So how does this save you time and money? Well, because the expectations are managed right from the very beginning, it saves you. Having to deal with clients to chase them up for information that you need, because they've missed appointments, because they haven't paid their deposit, because they haven't paid their invoice, because they need to schedule something, they haven't gotten back to you with revisions, whatever it might be.
It saves you all of that angst of trying to softly, softly, please, I need this. Come on, we've got to keep going. You're then potentially delayed. It means sometimes you need to reshuffle your other workflow commitments or your other clients. you all know what I'm talking about to some extent.
When you've got your client service terms and conditions or your client service agreement set up. Your client knows exactly how you roll, exactly how you operate, exactly what to expect from you. So, when they receive an invoice from you or a payment request, they're expecting it. No worries, here you go.
When they want to make a variation or change to the scope of the project, no worries, they expect you to send them a quote for the additional works, or they expect to be invoiced. You're not having to chase those invoices, you're not having to go back and forward with a disgruntled client because they thought they were getting something else at this presentation or at this reveal.
You're not having to go back and forward and go back through your emails and trawl back through and think gosh But I think I said that they've said I didn't and all the things you are clearly managing expectations from the outset which sets you up for success and a big part of that success is managing your time and your cashflow,
Number two, setting up solid processes and systems that work for your business. Tracy, this sounds obvious. Doesn't everyone do this? No, my friend, they do not. Having your business documents or your business legals is one thing, but setting them [00:04:00] up properly and knowing how to use them.
is another. And I've seen time and time again, business owners fall over when they forgot to issue their terms and conditions with their proposal, or when they forgot to issue their invoices in accordance with what their terms and conditions outlined. And they're chasing payment. They're chasing clients.
I have seen time and time again, business owners who don't have processes in place to deal with variations and scope creep. And they get to the end and they've issued their final invoice and the client won't pay it. And the client's expectations weren't managed, so they say to the business owner, I didn't think I had to pay for that, you didn't tell me, this is not what I expected.
That costs time in itself, just dealing with it, and then you're at risk of your invoice not being paid. Time and money. So, when you set up your processes and systems to make sure they are in sync, so beautifully aligned with your client engagement letter or your client service agreement, when they work hand in hand, you are set up for success because you are streamlining your processes.
You are making sure that you are doing the things that you say you're going to do and your client service T's and C's. Your client knows what to expect and guess what? You execute in accordance with what you say. Expectations managed. Client satisfaction rates high. Invoices paid. Cash flow smooth. It's a big one.
The third way I work with clients to save time and money is by really diving in deep to website documents, probably not something you were expecting to hear on this episode, but the website documents are important. When we spend time to work out what you're doing on your website, and we tailor your website terms and conditions and your documents accordingly, what that means is we are setting out for people who are buying your course.
Or subscribing to your membership or entering your [00:06:00] mastermind, we are setting out for them exactly what is expected of them in terms of what they're getting, how long their access is for, and what they're paying. Now the most impact I have working with clients here is when we spend time properly dealing with refund policies.
cancellation policies and how to deal with payment plans. Now, depending on what you're offering on your website, a payment plan will be very different to a subscription where people can cancel on 30 days notice. What happens a lot, and I've seen it too many times is participants come along and they think they're signing up to a subscription where they can cancel any time when actually they're signing up to a payment plan.
for a business's membership and they're paying it over a 12 month period. You can't cancel a payment plan because you don't like the content. But you need to set that out properly in your documents. Think of it like Afterpay, you go and buy a pair of jeans from David Jones and you pay on after pay.
You've worn the jeans twice. You really don't like them, so you don't ring up Afterpay and say, Hey, I don't like the jeans. I'm not paying. That is the exact same thing with an online business who's selling a course or a program, and you're offering a payment plan as a payment option. It's not a subscription that you can cancel on 30 days notice.
It is a payment plan. Now, the way I work with clients to save time and money here is by really, really, really drilling in and outlining carefully what it is you're paying for and how you're paying. And if it's a payment plan, we set out what's to happen. If you default, what's to happen. If you change your mind, what's to happen.
If you want to leave early, what's to happen. At the end of the program or course term, we set all of that out. So what that means is if participants reach out and say, Hey, it's not for me. I don't like [00:08:00] it. I want out. the business owner themselves don't need to be the one dealing with those correspondences.
We've got the processes and systems set up and the team can just simply use their canned emails, refer to the particular terms and conditions that we've drafted and say, Hey, this is our response. This is how it works. These are your options. It's really easy because your team are confident they know what to do.
Saving you time and money and they can deal really seamlessly with the clients or the participants who are reaching out with these queries. And then if someone defaults or someone does the wrong thing, again, your team know what they're doing. It's beautiful when you see this working properly, trust me, this is one of the reasons I love what I do so much because when a plan comes together, there is nothing like it.
This means the business owner can keep their eye on the ball, engaging in revenue generating activity, growing the business, doing all the things without getting caught up in this itty gritty of people not paying or misunderstanding what it is they signed up to. so spending time on your website documents to get them right in the context of what you're offering on your website can be a real game changer.
let's talk about number four. This is so interesting. And I'm going to talk to you about two ways I work with my clients to get crystal clear clarity on whether or not a trademark is something the business even needs to explore.
First thing when you're about to launch something new and you podcast a course or whatever it might be, no, whether or not you can use the name or phrase, the tagline that you've chosen.
If you don't spend some time with your legal team, getting it right. and being crystal clear and confident that you are able to use this name or phrase, you can launch your new thing only to be met with a cease and desist letter that comes from somebody saying, Hey, you are infringing my trademark. If this happens, that business owner has just wasted their time and their money [00:10:00] on all of their branding and launching their new thing.
Because they have to can it now and start again because they're infringing a trademark. So taking the time to get this right, right at the very beginning before you launch your brand new thing into the world can save so much money and so much time and heartache. Because trust me, I've seen it too many times when business owners come to me with that cease and desist letter in hand.
It's like, Oh my gosh, Tracy, I've just spent all this money on branding. I've launched this new thing and now I've got this letter. Is there anything I can do? If there is, there is. But if there's not, there's not, there's nothing you can do. You have to just scrap it and start again. Waste of time and money.
Don't do that. the second way I work with my clients to save money when it comes to trademarking is getting absolute clarity. on whether or not a trademark is needed for this new thing. So for example, if we're talking a new course name and a client comes along and says, this is the name I want, and we've satisfied ourselves, you can use it.
We then need to explore whether or not it's important to the client to have exclusive use. Over that name or that phrase over that course name or a tagline if exclusivity is not actually important here And there's a ton of reasons why it wouldn't be but if it's not you don't need to spend any money at all on the Trademark application process.
You don't need it. You don't need to spend the time or the money because it's not important to you I'll give you a great example Let's take the profit Academy This one's come across my desk several times. The Profit Academy cannot be trademarked because it's very generic and so many people use it in their day to day within their businesses.
You've probably, you're nodding along thinking, yep, I've seen someone who's got something like that or has got that. The reason it's not trademarked is because it's not specific, it's general in nature, it's not unique to a business owner's offering. So if someone wants to use it, They can't apply to trademark it.
It means a dozen people can use it. No one's infringing anyone's [00:12:00] trademark, but if you're going to use that name, you need to be really clear that exclusive use of the name is not important to you. That's okay, but there is no point you going down the path of applying for this trademark for the profit Academy, because you can't trademark it.
So you'll be wasting your money. And you'll be wasting your time. So taking the time to get really clear at the outset, when it comes to names and branding and taglines, taking the time to get clear on one, whether you can use it in the first place and two, Whether exclusivity is important to you. And then if it is, we need to make sure you've got something trademarkable that can save so much time and heartache and yet absolutely money down the track.
Spending the time to get this right at the outset is what I do. So you've heard me say on here so many times prevention is better than cure when it comes to business. There's no substitute for preparation and I've just given you a little insight into one of the many reasons why I say that. So there you go, that's what I wanted to share with you in today's episode.
So I'm going to recap. First of all, I work with clients to save time and money by making sure their client service terms and conditions or their client service agreements are set up and tailored properly for their business. So much time, headaches and cashflow challenges down the track. Number two, making sure that clients have solid processes and systems set up around their legal documents.
Having your legals is one thing, but knowing how to use them properly is another. The third way I work with clients to save time and money is by making sure we've got the website documents bang on. What are you offering? What are you selling?
What are you doing on your website? We make sure we've got all the documents you need. tailored to you in the right place to protect you later. And the fourth point that we talked about is the trademarks. If you're going to launch something new into the world, if you've got a name or a tagline that you're going to use, make sure you can use it.
And secondly, be [00:14:00] clear on whether you need exclusivity over it. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't, and either is okay. But those are the four main ways. I work with my clients to save time and money. It sounds good, doesn't it? We all need more time and cashflow is king when it comes to small business.
We all know that. So money and cashflow is really important. I really hope you have found this helpful and that this has shone a light on other ways that your legal documents and working with your lawyer can be so damn important when you're running a small business. If you need help with any of these things or you want to chat or bounce about anything that I've talked about here or on the podcast more generally.
Reach out, I'm really active on Instagram. So send me a DM. We can jump over to the website and send me a message and we can connect that way. As always, thank you so much for listening. I'll catch you next time.
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