🌟 Learn from My Mistakes: We're Talking Contracts 📜

Here's the story of my last time getting burned without a contract!

If you’ve been in or around the field of entrepreneurship, you’ve heard someone talking about the fact that you should never work without a contract. When I first got started, I’d read tons of articles and Facebook posts where people talked about how they had been screwed over by friends, family, service providers and even business partners. When I was a little greener and a lot more stubborn, I ignored that advice. Here’s a story of how that turned out and the lessons I learnt.

Spoiler Alert: It didn’t end well.

In the middle of 2017, I went to a cosplay event to visit a friend that was working there. He had been working with a team of people who worked together as a small digital media agency. He introduced me to the team leader and we started up a conversation. He seemed truly interested in my journey trying to start a business in Social Media Management. He explained that he was the owner of this small digital media agency, which shall remain nameless, and that they were actually looking to expand further into the social media realm and that I would be a perfect fit.

The day was busy so we agreed to have some more conversations and work out an arrangement that would benefit both parties. We met about a month later to discuss what he envisioned for his team and how I would possibly fit in. From his descriptions, my skillset fit perfectly with their goals for the future. We discussed what my responsibilities would be, the hierarchy of the organisation and settled on a reasonable monthly figure. The plan was that my business would operate as a subcontractor to this agency and I would invoice at the end of each month.

Now, with the excitement of this new opportunity and being young, naive and entirely too stubborn for my own good, I disregarded the advice I’d read about contracts and started working. These were good people, supportive of a young woman trying to make her way in the world, I had no reason to think so negatively, or at least that’s what I thought. I started working with them in December 2017 and at first, everything seemed amazing. I had my independence as a business owner, I set my own hours, I was working with amazing people who were there to support me every step of the way, I was getting paid and it was awesome. I was living the dream.

Fast forward some, I sent out an invoice for February and continued working as normal, not expecting that there would be any problems. Normally I would have been paid by the end of the first week of the following month and when I hadn’t been, I took it up with the business owner, who was now a person I considered a friendly colleague. He assured me that nothing was wrong and told me it’d be taken care of. Just a ‘blip’ in the accounting. Seemed reasonable enough. The second week of February goes by and still nothing. I brought it up again and again I was assured that things were fine and that my payment would be arranged. A third week goes by and I bring it up again and suddenly the story seemed to change. Apparently, the customer had not paid the agency and I wouldn’t be paid until the agency was paid. Something about the sudden change in reasons didn’t add up to me so I sent a message to my friend who had made the original introduction to ask his opinion of the situation. It was at that point, he explained that it was not abnormal for this person to leave their people without pay for extended periods of time.

The dream had become a nightmare!

I tried running down that money but remember that spoiler earlier? I failed. It is now 6 years later and I still haven’t seen a cent of that lost money. The story isn’t all bad… I’m now a little older and I've learned a bit more about the world. Still stubborn but now I use that to my advantage. Since then, I wrote contracts for my photography and my social media businesses that will help protect me from situations like this one.

It’s a shame that I needed to experience it first-hand to learn, but I really want my story to help you avoid my mistakes. Have you been through something similar? Let’s share some misery over on Instagram! We’re talking all about this on stories today and I’d to have you as part of that conversation.

You can find me on Instagram right here 👇🏼

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Quick Question: I’ve built out a number of contracts for my business over the last 5+ years that might be helpful in yours.