#177 Five things you should know about me before we work together
When it comes to topics I talk about regularly, I often assume that everyone has already heard me say it. There are insights and ideas I speak on often not just with my clients, but also on the podcast.
However, the truth is, when we’re sharing content, not everyone catches every piece.
So today, I’m thrilled to share five key things you should know about me before we work together.
Whether you're a new client curious about my process or someone who's followed me for a while but wants to understand more deeply, this is for you. I address some of the most frequent questions I get from clients and clarify my working style and values:
1. I Get Involved
First things first, I want you to know that when we work together, I get involved. My approach is collaborative; I'm not the lawyer for you if you're looking for someone to simply draft documents without any input from you. To create truly effective legal documents, I need to understand the intricacies of your business. We’ll have conversations, and I’ll ask you lots of questions to make sure your documents are tailor-made for your specific needs.
2. I Don’t Haggle on Fees
The second key point is that I don't haggle on fees. My pricing is based on the value I provide and is structured in a way that’s transparent and predictable. You’ll always know upfront what you're paying for; there are no surprise invoices. I believe in a value-based fee structure because it aligns with the integrity and quality of service I aim to offer. I don't think small business owners should undervalue their services, and I follow the same principle.
3. No Templates
Thirdly, I will not sell you a template. I strongly believe that DIY templates don't belong in legal matters. Each business is unique, and cookie-cutter solutions won't provide the protection or functionality you need. Instead, I'll work with you to create documents that are customised for your business. This ensures they're robust and tailored specifically to what you need.
4. I Treat Your Legals Like My Own
Next on the list, I will treat your legal documents as if they were my own. This means I take the time and effort to ensure they are absolutely perfect. I don’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach. I’ll get to know you and your business deeply to create stellar documents that serve you well.
5. I Build Long-Term Client Relationships
Finally, I rarely work with clients as a one-off engagement. I genuinely love what I do and care deeply about the businesses I work with. This often results in long-term relationships where clients feel comfortable calling me for advice as their businesses evolve. My goal is to be a trusted advisor who enriches your business journey and helps you avoid potential pitfalls.
I hope this episode is helpful if you’re thinking of reaching out to or working with me, and that you now have a better understanding of who it is that I am. I encourage you to come visit me over at Instagram if you have any questions about what we spoke about today.
Happy listening!
Full Transcript:
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Tracey: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is such a fun episode for me to be recording. And it's come about because you know when you do something over and over again, and you talk about something so often and you think that everybody's listening and so therefore everybody knows it?
But in fact, they don't because they don't hear everything that you share and they don't see all of your content. So sometimes what you think is obvious to people, they might be hearing it for the first time. I find myself repeating some of what I'm going to share [00:01:00] with you today weekly, multiple times a week with new clients that reach out to me, new discovery calls that I'm taking, inquiries, whatever the case may be.
What I'm going to share with you today is something that I just find myself sharing over and over again, but you may not have heard it. We may not have spoken. You may not follow me on Instagram. You may not read my fortnightly briefing notes to my email list, and you may not be familiar with the resources over on the website.
So if that's you, you'll be hearing some of these things for the very first time. That's great. That's the point of this episode, because what I want to share with you today are five things that you should know about me before we work together. People ask me questions about these things all the time.
So it's important information obviously, because it's asked a lot. So here we go. Let's dive in. The first thing I would love you to know about me before we work together is that I like to get involved. I do [00:02:00] get involved. I'm not the lawyer to reach out to if you don't want to be a part of the process.
If you want to work with a lawyer that you can call and say, Hey, give me the documents. Thanks very much. See you later. That's not me. I'm the lawyer who wants to collaborate with you to get really outstanding results with your documents. That's the only way. It can happen. I know what I know. I'm good at what I do.
And I've got loads of experience and expertise when it comes to contracts and agreements that work and how to reduce your risk. But no two businesses are the same. So I don't know the ins and outs of your particular business. I need you to tell me we need to talk.
I need you to be able to answer my questions. I need an opportunity to get your thoughts on things. You need an opportunity to ask me questions. So the way I work is very collaborative. I will, of course, draft documents for you that I know work, [00:03:00] but I want to nuance those documents to make sure they are tailored for your business and how you operate in your business.
Like I said, there's no two businesses the same, so whilst I can come close to drafting terms for you, for your business, based on my experience with particular industries and particular small business niches, I still need an opportunity if I'm going to deliver really stellar documents for you, to ask you questions about how do you do this and how does this feel for you?
What do you do in these circumstances? Those types of things. In addition to that, when I say I like to get involved is we talk about implementation and this is one of the key things that sets me apart from the way most lawyers approach this type of work. And that I know from experience. But one of the keys to making your documents work for you is to talk about implementation, [00:04:00] sequencing, how you use them.
What order do you do things? I get involved in that. I ask you questions. You share with me your current processes. And if I can add value and share with you a better way, I absolutely will. I like to get involved because I like to make sure that what I'm delivering for you will actually work and serve to protect you.
So that's the first thing I want you to know. I get involved. The second thing that you should know about me before we work together is that I don't haggle on fees. This is not a horse trading exercise to me. My pricing is value based. It has a value based fee structure.
And so what that means is, I know the value I deliver and my fees are structured accordingly. My fee model is fixed fee pricing, so I will always give you a fee proposal in advance so you will know exactly what it is you'll be paying.
We talk about what you need. I put a tailored proposal [00:05:00] together for you, designed to meet you where you're at in business to do the things that you need. We talk about that. But I package my fees for you so that you know exactly what it is you'll be paying for that work that we'll do together.
I don't send you invoices for phone calls. I don't send you invoices for perusing an email or a common one that I still see on some legal firm invoices is sundries. You know, the very old school sundries for photocopying, phone bill charges and document storage. Oh, it kills me to see that. It kills me that lawyers still charge like that.
I don't do that. So you won't see those things on an invoice for me. You will never receive a surprise invoice from me. You will always know in advance if you're going to be paying for something. To me, because of the value based fee structure that I have in my business, there is no integrity in me being willing to haggle on fees [00:06:00] with some clients so that ultimately some business owners will pay less and others will pay more for the same value output. That to me is not an integrity. It is not aligned for me. I don't do it.
We have different payment options. I'm always happy to talk to business owners around where they're at and what we can do to accommodate payment terms. I appreciate the reality of small business. All my clients are small business owners, but if someone comes along and says to me, Oh, but I'm only a small business.
Is there any flexibility on your price? I don't feel that's in alignment because all of my clients are small businesses. I do not subscribe to the dialogue around I'm only a small business or I'm just a small business. Small business is outstanding. Small business is awesome. So you're not just a small business.
You are a small business, something to be proud of. And I don't think that being a small business owner gives cause [00:07:00] to haggle on price.
My clients value their services. They respect their businesses and they want to reduce their risk. So in turn, they value what I bring to them. And value based fee pricing, it is not the whole conversation. There's so much more to it. So that's the second thing I want you to know is that I don't haggle on fees. The third thing that you should know about me before we work together is that I will not sell you a template. This is one of the things that I talk about so often on my social media and over on the resources page on the website.
I genuinely believe that DIY is for Bunnings, not for your legals. I don't think that templates have any place whatsoever when it comes to your legals. Templates can be great for things like your cashflow analysis or other spreadsheets that you've got, correspondences, canned emails, things like that, but not for your legals.
My [00:08:00] view is that no two businesses are the same. So using a template that you've got a hold of, whether you've purchased it or whether a friend or a colleague has given you theirs doesn't serve you because we don't know what we don't know. And you don't know if that document that you've got your hands on does all the things it needs to.
And chances are, you're not going to know until you need to rely on them later when something's gone awry and truth is, by then, it's all too late, and if they fall short, which in my experience most templates tend to do, it's too late and your business is left exposed. So, I won't sell you a template, but I will work with you to design documents for your business that will work, that will set your business up for success, and that will protect you on your business journey moving forward.
The fourth thing you should know about me before we work together is that when I'm developing your legals for you, I will treat them like they're my own. I [00:09:00] don't take a cookie cutter approach. I don't roll the arm over and send you a document and say, there you go. She'll be right. Good luck. See you later.
I don't do that. So, like I said at the beginning, I like to get involved and that's because I know the value your legals can bring and I am determined to ensure that by the time we are finished working together, that you have the most outstanding set of legal documents that you could possibly have, that they are branded for your business, that you're comfortable with them, that you understand them, that you're confident and really super proud every time you issue those documents, because I know the difference between ordinary, run of the mill mediocre documents.
I've seen them and I know what stellar tailored branded documents look like and I know what they can do. Because of that, I know how important it is to spend the time to get them right. And I'll do that for [00:10:00] you. I will absolutely do that for you as if they were my own. So when it comes to nuancing, to address your pain points, to address what's important for you, to address what you want to achieve, that is why I do what I do.
I get to know you as the business owner. I take the time to understand the business so that I can design legal documents that are going to work for the business and that are going to give that peace of mind that you absolutely deserve in business. My view is that your legals, when created properly, can be one of the most important tools in a business.
And because that's my view, I know what impact they can have. And aside from what I've just shared with you, I also know the impact that legals can have when converting prospects to paying clients. And if your legals are tailored properly for you, that is what they will do. This I know, and this is why [00:11:00] I'm so committed to working with you to getting involved and to developing these legals for you so that they achieve all of those things for your business.
And the fifth thing that I really want you to know about me before we work together is that I rarely work with a client as a one off. You can tell from just listening to this episode, I'm sure, not to mention everything else I talk about on the podcast and the things that I share over on my Instagram account, but you can tell I'm passionate about this.
I genuinely love what I do and creating documents that work for businesses fills my heart with joy. It absolutely does. And because of that, when I take the time to get to know a business owner and get to know the business, and I understand what's important for them and what the pain points are and what drives them and what they want to achieve, it just so happens then that I integrate into that business's team of trusted advisors.
It's very easy then for a business owner to call me later with a [00:12:00] question or to call me when things change or to call me to discuss an opportunity, whatever it might be, because we've worked together to develop the documents, I know so much and I feel like I'm a part of the team for just about all of my clients.
Either they phone me on my mobile and I do answer my phone. I'm one of those people that will answer the phone. I return calls. I respond to emails because that's the collaborative approach. And that's me being able to enrich the journey of my clients. And it might sound cliche, but trust me, it's not.
This is hand on heart one of the reasons I started this business is to enrich lives. And I know the value I bring and the impact that I have when we work together and how that enriches the business journey and it enriches lives of my clients.
I've talked about it on here so often and over on Instagram, the earlier part of my career was spent in litigation and dispute resolution. So when it [00:13:00] comes to what can go wrong in business, there is nothing I haven't seen. So having the opportunity to work with clients at the front end to set them up properly and to develop and design documents that work to reduce their risk is magical for me because what it means is I know that I'm helping those business owners avoid the pitfalls of everything that I saw earlier in my career.
I know that I'm enriching that business journey to set that business up for success to avoid so much of what I saw go wrong when I was working as a litigator.
There is so much to the client relationship and for that reason, it's very rare that I work with a client as a one off. But what I just want to say before I finish up on the tail end of that is I am not the lawyer for everyone. I won't say yes to taking on a client unless I know I can add value. And enrich their journey.
And that means I don't say yes to everybody because not everybody's after this level of [00:14:00] support. And that's okay.
Not everybody wants to talk to their lawyer. Not everybody wants to spend time having their legals designed for them. That's okay. There's lawyers out there for those types of business owners. That's not me. So those are the things I wanted to share with you in this really fun episode.
The five things that you should know about me before we work together. So I'll just quickly recap. First is I get involved. The second is I don't haggle on fees. Number three, I will not sell you a template. Number four, I will treat your legals like they're my own. And number five, I rarely work with a client as a one off.
I've loved sharing this episode with you. Thank you so much for listening.
If you're a long time listener, or even if this is your first episode and you have found this episode to be of value, I would be ever so grateful if you'd take a moment to leave a review on Apple podcasts, because together that is how we will get the podcast into the ears of even more business owners.
As [00:15:00] always, thanks for your time. I'll catch you next week.
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