More Than Just a Handshake
EPISODE 4:
Managing and negotiating contracts can be one of the most challenging bits of freelance work, so this week Wudan sits down with KJ Yossman, a longform writer who was previously a lawyer with expertise in contacts. KJ talks us through red flags to watch for when signing a contract, including rights and indemnity clauses; how to make sure you get paid for your work in a timely manner; whether or not you even need an official paper contract; how to go about negotiating if you do need to change something; and much more.
If you're a Writers' Co-op All-Access member on Patreon, you'll also receive a tip sheet with boilerplate language to use during contract negotiations, a checklist of red flags to look for when signing a contract, and a bonus clip with a few extra tips from KJ and Wudan.
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Full Transcript Below:
W- Welcome to The Writer’s Co-op, a business podcast for freelance writers everywhere! We’re your co-hosts! I am Wudan Yan
J- And I’m Jenni Gritters
W- This week on the podcast, we are going to dig into contracts!
J- By now, we’ve talked about how to make the move to freelance, and where to find assignments.
W- But now, to finalize the assignment… what do you do?
J- Sign a contract!
W- Well, hopefully. Contracts are super important because they represent an agreement between you and the publication, and it makes both of you accountable. But contracts can also be really confusing. What makes for a good contract or a bad one? What do you do if a contract is bad? And what if a publication doesn’t even have a contract?
J- This feels like one of the hardest parts of freelancing to me. I’m still pretty confused by contracts, but this episode has been really helpful to me-- and hopefully it’ll be helpful for you all too.
W- I wonder if it would be helpful to share why contracts are important by telling a story about how we’ve been screwed over by contracts, or lack thereof! Jenni, want to share a story from the wild west of freelancing?
J- Oh god, I have a good one. I was working with a publication I’d worked with before, this time on a big story. The first few assignments had been news pieces, so I just signed a contract without really looking at it too closely. (Never do this.) Then I got to a big assignment, which was investigating a major essential oil company. It turned out that they were doing some shady stuff-- and that they were pretty lawsuit prone. I realized this about halfway through reporting, so I thought I should look at my contract in case the company did try to sue me. Would I be liable?
Turns out, I was 100% liable for any kind of lawsuit, even though the company 100% owned the story I was writing. Pretty terrible. When I brought this issue to the editor, he felt terrible and was very receptive to changing it. However, the legal team wouldn't change the contract so ultimately I ended up having to pull the story. I lost probably 20 hours of paid work. I’ll likely place the story somewhere else later, at a place where the indemnity clause would hold me liable ONLY if i made factual errors in my reporting, but I haven’t done that yet. It was such a bad situation, and the story was a good one. I learned my lesson.
W- Ugggggggggh. That makes me mad. It’s so exploitative to realize that the publisher will own the story but won’t take on any liability.
J- Totally. Wudan, what about you?
W- The first story I ever traveled and hired a translator for, I got a contract from my editor as I was heading out the door to catch my flight. I signed it willy nilly without reading the fine print. It didn’t have a kill fee in the contract. I reported / wrote / filed the story. The editor sat on it, for quite a while, and after giving it a pass back, he decided to kill it. But I had no kill fee protecting me, so I ended up probably accepting way less than I should have, if I knew how to negotiate.
J- Woof. That’s no good. Especially because stories for travel require so much more of an investment.
W- I know. That I learned the hard way. That’s why today we’re going to discuss how to protect ourselves by negotiating our contracts. And to do that, we’ve brought KJ Yossman onto the show.
W- So KJ Yossman is a longform writer with bylines at the New York Times, Marie Claire, Rollingstone.com and the Times of London. Before journalism, she qualified as a lawyer with experience in contracts in media law. And I would just add, this is in my experience at least kind of a rare background to come into journalism with. Today, KJ and I will be talking about things that we want to consider when signing a contract. Why do we even need a contract? Sometimes I run into a situation where publications won’t even have a contract on file and they want you to just start working. Is that a situation you want to avoid?
KJ Yossman- I think that sometimes for freelancers not having a contract can actually be better because of the power imbalance between freelancers and publications. Sometimes when they do make you sign a contract you end up signing over all the rights, which is actually a situation you want to avoid. The main thing I think for freelancers to know, and I see this a lot on forums, is you can have a contract via email. You can have a contract via Twitter dm. You can have a contract via telephone. You don’t need a piece of paper saying “contract”. What you need to have a contract is three things, and that’s: offer, acceptance and consideration. So that means when you email a pitch and they accept that pitch and then there’s even an expectation or certainly a discussion of fee, you have a contract. And actually as a freelancer sometimes it can be safer to have just an email contract. Obviously an oral contract via telephone is rare. That’s a bit more difficult because you’d have trouble proving it. But sending via email or Twitter DM, you have what you need to get paid. That’s the main thing.
Beyond that, depending on what kind of content you’re writing and who for, that’s when you start to get into other rights and other responsibilities, and that’s where you need to be quite careful.
W- That’s super interesting when you said sometimes if there’s no formal email, the interpretation is that if there’s nothing else to agree on, all we have is the commission for the story and the fee and the deadline, right? You can’t sign away your rights because you didn’t agree to any.
KJ- Exactly. And actually in some ways it’s safer. That’s why we see especially big name publications will make you sign a contract of some sort. I’m sure we’ll talk about how you should negotiate that shortly. But yeah, I personally think — lawyers obviously wouldn’t necessarily agree, but that’s the commercial reality — and that’s why I think my experience both as a journalist and a lawyer of understanding what you’re signing but also the commercial reality that I’ve experienced as well of trying to negotiate with big publications. You can’t always do it in the most tidy way legally. So if all you have is “I promise to write you this article and you’re going to pay me $100, or hopefully more, then if you deliver that article on time, at the word count, and to be honest it doesn’t even necessarily have to be of reasonable quality because that’s not a contractual term, the only contractual terms are the promise to deliver the work and their promise, or their implied promise that they’re going to pay you for it. And that at least means that you can get paid.
W- That makes sense. So, KJ, in a situation where the contract isn’t great – like the payment terms like you get paid at publication and not acceptance, or there’s no kill fee — how can somebody start negotiating contracts? I can see a situation where it’s scary to get back to your editor with questions, especially when you need the work. So how can you negotiate for better contract terms without the publisher scrapping the deal?
KJ- I wish I could answer it. I mean, it’s the kind of dilemma facing every freelancer and even with my legal background I have had publishers scrap deals or certainly threaten to deny me future work even when they really like what I’ve delivered, because I won’t sign their contract. There was a big publisher I had that situation with. And I’m still in touch with the editor and we still talk about me possibly doing more work for them but nothing I’ve pitched since has made it, so I can’t help but wonder whether they’re holding true. Also, even if I do write for them again, I probably will have to end up signing that contract because now I know what it is they want me to sign. Previously it was given to me after I’d already done the article. So yeah, I mean, it’s a really really tough situation. And I was recently speaking to a lawyer who said that even if he went to bat for me himself, if they won’t budge, there’s not much he can do. So sometimes hiring a lawyer isn’t even going to help you. It’s a really really tough call and it goes to show just how vulnerable we are as freelancers. Having said that, you can start to negotiate and it ultimately comes down to things like “is this a topic that you want to write about again?” “Is this a topic that you could see yourself writing a book about or being turned into tv or film?” “Is it a topic that’s quite risky for you to write about?” So that’s when we get into indemnity clauses, which I’m sure we’ll discuss shortly. So it kind of depends. You know, if it’s a little 200 word piece about a new fashion line that’s come out for a fashion website and they want you to sign something quite punitive, I think it’s probably better to keep the relationship in that situation, depending on what exactly it is they want you to sign. Whereas the riskier pieces are the ones that have more potential in different formats, that’s where you have to be very careful about what you’re signing because you can’t sign a contract and think “they’ll never hold me to it” because the point is if you’re signing it then they may. They wouldn’t always necessarily because, again, that’s the commercial reality of it. Is a big publication going to sue a freelancer and risk that bad publicity and all that kind of thing? Probably not. But you’re signing a contract. It’s a real document an you can well be held to it.
W- Right, it’s a real document and it’s a legal document too.
KJ- Exactly.
W- Do you have a formula that you follow when you get a contract with an editor that you’re working with for the first or second time, depending on that publication’s process, and how do you negotiate a contract? What is it that you actually write in your email?
KJ- Well firstly, I just want to say that even as someone with a legal background my heart beats very fast when I send those emails. Sometimes I then avoid checking my email for the rest of the day because it is terrifying. That’s normal. But I think that the more that you do it, the more you become used to doing it and the more you’ll see the value in doing it. Sometimes I’ll mark it up. So if they send it to me I can write a few notes or go through the clauses and add a few notes that I wanted to raise, if it’s possible to please change these. I start off quite softly, so I am sort of quite polite and sort of meek and subtle that way and then you can ramp it up a bit. Another trick is that you can blame it on a mythical legal advisor. So you can say “you know, I just had a friend or someone look at this” or “I had a legal advisor look at this and they suggested, if possible, to change the following clauses.” So that can sometimes feel like you’re taking the weight off yourself, like you’re not the one causing the problems.
W- Yeah I think everyone has a different strategy. Mine is very direct and I just copu and paste what the contract says and then I add changes in italics or bold for stuff that I want added or deleted, because I think sometimes publishers appreciate that because the editor doesn’t have to write that legalese. My editor didn’t write that contract. It’s the publisher’s legal department.
KJ- Absolutely, and that’s what I do as well of course. I say “would it be possible to make the following changes?” and then I go through “clause 1.3, can we please add this word in here? Clause 5.6 can we please remove it entirely?” It doesn’t hurt to go in with every single change that you want because they may negotiate you down and you may have to make a decision about which ones are more crucial if they aren’t going to give you all of them. The other thing is it’s usually, and quite often it’s not the editors who are going to be looking at it. They’ll pass it to their business or contracts department. So certainly making life as easy as possible for them is… The thing is, most editors are quite understanding, actually, and they will just pass it onto the relevant person. They won’t negotiate themselves. And I don’t think they’ll think badly of you for negotiating. It just depends on how difficult their business department are going to be about it, because sometimes they can be.
W- For sure. I’ve seen that myself too. When you get a contract, what are the main parts and components that you really scrutinize?
KJ- The indemnification clause can be very punitive and really is absurd. So the indemnification clause is basically you are promising to make good any losses that the company may incur as a result of what may or may not be your failing. So I have seen an indemnity clause that was so broad that they’re supposed to be fact-checking it and they have lawyers in-house who are looking at everything that is published, so if I delivered it to the best of my ability and they’re okaying it legally, then it’s absurd that the onus should be on me to indemnify them if someone decides to sue them. And they can include things like you have to pay their legal costs. You can imagine paying for a big New York publisher’s legal costs. It’s going to b pretty damaging to both people’s finances. So that’s definitely a big one and the first protocol is to try to get it removed, and often they won’t. And then the only thing you can do is try to soften it as much as possible. Often it will be linked to warranties. So that’s the other thing. Your warranties are your promises. So usually it will be like you’re promising that it’s not plagiarized. You’re promising that it’s original work. You’re promising you have delivered truthful work. So things like that. That you haven’t infringed anyone’s copyright. And then the indemnification clause might be linked to that so that if you have breached one of those warranties you could be potentially held liable for any lawsuit that results. But they can tuck anything in those warranties. So you should be looking at the warranties as well. One thing that I got put into one contract, I added the line “to the best of my knowledge” because I was a lawyer, but I’m not a lawyer anymore, and they have lawyers who are meant to be looking at all of this stuff and deciding whether it’s fit for publication, and I shouldn’t be held responsible if they have legaled something and said that it’s ok to publish and then it turns out it wasn’t. But obviously to the best of my knowledge I have delivered something that is truthful, that isn’t plagiarized, and that doesn’t infringe on somebody else’s copyright. So warranties, indemnification clause, kill fee. I know that you’ve that. Try to get it bumped up. Again, this is where not having a contract can be more beneficial. If you don’t have a contract and they kill the article and you’re waiting for your money, you can invoice them for the whole amount. You don’t have to invoice them for 20% or 50%. The contract is that you deliver the work and they pay you. What they choose to do with that work is up to them. If they don’t want to publish that work, that’s on them. But obviously once it’s written into a contract they will usually try to lowball you, so I do try to get that raise. Again, it depends on the kind of article you’re looking at. Is it a 500 word, pretty easy to put together in an hour? Is it worth burning a bridge to get the kill fee raised by 25%? If it’s a longform print piece that involves thousands of words and a lot of interviews, the idea of walking away with 25% of what you’re going to get is quite painful. So that’s another thing to look out for.
And then, of course, your rights. And that’s film, T.V., and potentially if you want to write a book as well about it. It’s very very hard to negotiate those now because of the way the media landscape is. So you can try, but it’s very hard to either get the rights to revert back to you. I think the best you can hope for is some kind of fee-splitting. But again, most people when they are writing an article are not really thinking that this could be a film or T.V. show. So you really have to look at your article and think “could it?”
W- With regard to the rights, let’s talk about that some more. How can somebody know if they’re signing away all their rights? What would that legalese possibly look like?
KJ- Things like “they remain the sole and exclusive property of the publishing company” and also will usually say that it’s a “work made for hire.” And that where you have to be careful. There’s two types of contract, and it won’t always say clearly which one it is. Whether it’s a work for hire, where you’re effectively handing over your intellectual property, or a license. A license will usually mean they get the benefit of your intellectual property for a period of time and then it reverts back to you. It will say things like “they have the sole and exclusive right to use it and to develop it in any and all media and formats and technologies throughout the universe,” etc. So it’s very very strong language. But if you read it carefully, you’ll see that you’re handing over to them in perpetuity, because it may also say that.
W- So those are some things to look for. And then I know some contracts will say that the publisher will have exclusive rights for 30, 60, or 90 days. What is standard and at what point is it possibly worth pushing back on?
KJ- I think an exclusive right for 90 days actually in the current mean landscape seems pretty good. I rarely see that. I often see much more stringent than that. So if it is reverting back to you at some point then already you’re onto a winner. But it depends on what you want to do with that. So if you see something within 90 days that you want to do with it then you might want to push back. But as long as it’s reverting back to you at some point within 6 months then I think that’s pretty good going.
W- I didn’t know that time frame. That’s good to hear from you.
KJ- I say that as someone not necessarily with expertise in the time frame. It’s more of a commercial point of view. Because after 6 months, if it does revert back to you and you can do whatever you want with it then that’s fine, really. Once it’s been published you’re not really going to publish it again in 6 months. It’s really just thinking about what you might want to do with it or what they could do with it. So just to add another clause to the count for syndication rights. That’s when they can sell the article. This tends to be a thing newspapers do. They sell the article to different countries, different publications. Make sure that you get a fee if they do sell it again.
W- I need to ask for that. KJ, another question we had is something that I’ve run into and I think a lot of freelancers have is scope creep: when an assignment balloons beyond what was initially discusses, like a writer has more rounds of edits suddenly, the editor asks the writer for more information and that balloons the word count above what was originally agreed upon or the scope of work or contract, what are some things in a contract that freelancers can negotiate to protect themselves against scope creep?
KJ- It’s a really difficult one because this is where you are coming into direct contact with an editor’s authority and we delivered and they had a different idea and they want to add all this detail in. And I’ve absolutely had articles balloon from three and a half hours to 7000 words. It’s a really difficult one because the way that you would protect yourself in a contract would be very onerous. I’ve never done it and I couldn’t see doing it in a way that isn’t going to make it feel like you’re stepping on an editor’s toes. The most simple way is to say if it’s over 20% more word count than was initially proposed then you’re going to get however much more money. And you can scale it. If you could have that kind of scale, that could be very simple. But it is a difficult one when, let’s say, you hand it in and they had just a slightly different idea for it. They want you to go back and do more work. If you do the more work, it balloons, and then they cut it back down. So ultimately what they publish is still not that much more than the original wordcount. It is difficult to plan for that and protect yourself and I think it’s one of the things that, rather than having in an actual contract, which becomes binding… the problem with putting it in a contract is it sort of gives this sense that you’re not going to deliver what they want. It almost slightly undermines your professionalism, in a way. They may think “why are we going to go back and forth on this 500 times?” Of course that might not be the writers fault at all, but putting it in a contract I think gives the wrong message. It’s one thing to be more dynamic about where you start to see it happen and step in and say “this has ballooned to double what we originally discussed. Can I check if you have budget to increase my fee to reflect this?” Or “I see that the story is creeping up in word count. Will this be reflected in my fee? Can we discuss that?” I think, again, it takes some courage sometimes to be able to interrupt that very fast, frantic process of editing and talk about it. But if you can, you should. Again, I need to practice what I preach a bit more because sometimes it’s hard to interrupt that process to talk about money. I think it’s probably something better done via email as you see it start to happen.
W- That’s super interesting to hear you say that because, well, two points: sometimes it’s easy to protect yourself against scope creep if you’re getting paid by the word. For me it’s a simple “The creator, the writer, the contractor will be paid $1/word per published or per assigned word — whichever is higher.” That’s the language I choose to use. The other thing I think is interesting is that some publishers will call contracts “Scope of Work,” so if my story creeps beyond what was proposed in that original Scope of Work I think that gives a writer some more leverage to be like “hey, I revisited the contract and I know the story’s going in a different direction. Can we revise it? Or can you send me a different Scope of Work? I think that’s just interesting terminology for what’s happening, right?
KJ- Yeah, and I think the line that you used about “whichever is higher,” I think that’s excellent language. So whoever is listening to this should definitely write that down. But again it’s just that difficulty of sometimes these things move so fast, raising it in any sense is a good thing because if you have an argument about it later you can show that you’ve raised it. The problem i’ve recounted is that sometimes when I say “It’s starting to creep beyond what we initially discussed,” I’ve had editors say “no it isn’t.” And then what do you do? That’s what I mean about stepping on your editors toes because at that point do you want to jeopardize this relationship? It’s very difficult. But I think where you feel you’ve been taken for a ride, listen to your gut instinct. Even if it says “scope of work” and you feel it’s gone beyond that, it’s being able to prove that. Especially when you pitch a story or sometimes when you are assigned a story, the story doesn’t always go the way you think it’s going to go once you start reporting it. I think that’s one of the difficulties of it. So I think be nimble about it and be brave and raise it via email and you see what your editor comes back with it, but sometimes it’s one of those that you have to swallow, unfortunately, if you think that ultimately it’s going to be a relatively fair rate and the benefit of being published in this publication is going to be good for your future career. That can influence your decision.
W- Yeah, it’s a very delicate balance. One thing that writers listening would probably want to hear about is payment — especially late payment. What can you put in your contract to prevent against late payment and is there any recourse if a publication doesn’t pay on time but their publication says that they have to?
KJ- Yeah, actually I think you’re probably an expert in this with your excellent piece about late payments. I think that’s a starting point. But I think you can input the language in yourself and some contracts have it in already. And I think it’s again just a matter of being brave and being very matter-or-fact about it and acting as your own attorney or your own business manager. Sometimes you just tack it on and see what they come back with. But it’s another difficult balance. I thought your piece demonstrated that very clearly. Some of the responses you got were very almost outraged that you were asking for this when you’re absolutely entitled to it both in state law and contractually. So when you’re faced with an attitude like that from people who have the safety of continuous employment, unlike freelancers, it can be very difficult to negotiate and go to bat for yourself. So I think there are laws — depending on where you are, there’s actually laws in the UK as well on late payment of contracts. New York has one. If you google the state you’re in or even the state the publication is in — again these things tend to be a little bit unclear — but usually most contracts will say which jurisdiction they believe to be under. So that’s a good starting point. You can google and see which states or jurisdictions have laws that protect you. And you can refer to those in your invoice, even if they’re not in the contract, because they’re implied in the contract. They supersede the contract.
W- That’s really good information too. OK, last question for you, KJ. What are things in contracts you should never sign? What are the red flags that you warn other freelancers about that we haven’t yet discussed?
KJ- I think I am very careful about my warranties, actually, which we have discussed. But I’m very careful about what I’m promising contractually and also breaches. So when they start talking about breaches, where they can not pay you for breaching something — usually breaching your warranties — what I usually try to insert is the word “material breach” rather than any breach. Because you can have a really minor breach like if you deliver a day late, that’s a breach, but it’s not a material breach because they haven’t had to print a blank page or something. So material breach means something that’s really really egregious like you literally plagiarized an entire article. So that’s one thing that I always look out for. What are they making me warrant for and what are they holding me to, in terms of the breach. And then sometimes I think just anything that seems off to you.
The thing I’ve seen that I’ve been shocked, really, since becoming a freelance journalist, is how many contracts are either not written by lawyers, even at big publishing companies, or they are repurposed contracts. I was given one contract that was clearly meant for photographers. It made absolutely no sense. It had been written for photographers and made no sense for me to sign. One of the things that they wanted , and I had sort of a big fight with them about this, was they wanted me to sign my likeness, my social media handle, and my name, in perpetuity throughout the universe. So when you see those words, start to look exactly what they want. And it wasn’t even in connection with the article. It was for anything really. I said “This is absurd. You can’t expect me to sign that.” So weird things like that.
And also always think about timing and jurisdiction. For example, one clause that you should be careful of is a non-compete. And it won’t say “non-compete” but it will say something like “You can’t write about this topic ever again.” Or “You can’t write about this topic for a year,” or whatever. And again, one of the companies wasn’t very happy but that was an article that I’d written about the anniversary of a building and the language said something like “You can’t write about a similar topic again,” and I said “well, what’s similar? A building? The same building?” It wasn’t defined in any way. So something you want to look for as well is definitions. Because it wasn’t defined in any way, that made it potentially very broad. And there was no time limit to this clause. So it didn’t say “You can’t write about a similar topic for 6 months or a year, which you can understand for a magazine they want to be the only ones to write about this for a certain period of time. But if there’s no time limit, you’re effectively agreeing that you’ll never write about that topic again, which is absurd. Especially if you have a beat.
So be careful. Look for time limits. If there isn’t one, ask for one. Look for words that are vague; are they defined anywhere? So, I can’t write about something similar — what does similar mean? Can we define it? That’s quite a gentle negotiation: can we at least define what this means? Just read through it carefully and try to break it down as much as possible and translate it almost for yourself. What is it asking you to do and does it make sense? So, me never writing about a building again doesn’t make any sense. I can’t agree to that.
W- Yeah, I feel like our conversation is a testament to the fact that we should be reading our contracts and spending time wading through the legalese. And, if not negotiating, at least asking questions, because what are we really signing away?
KJ- Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s the main thing to impart. These are real documents and you don’t know that they’re aren’t unforeseen consequences — sometimes negatives. Whether you’re signing away your rights and it turns out this is a new brilliant idea and they want to make a film about it, or that you have indemnified them and someone sues you for, let’s say, liable or something, and you’ve agreed to indemnify the company and pay their legal costs. I mean, that’s crazy. So I think you have to be really careful with what you’re signing. And if we can try to all negotiate as much as possible, maybe they will start to include some fairer terms. I think some of the stuff I see that I negotiate or that I refuse to sign, I can only imagine there are other people signing those contracts because they trust the company or they think it really doesn’t matter or they just don’t want to deal with it, which I totally get. But maybe if more of us start fighting back a little bit then the already very unfair power imbalance will at least shift a bit more to middle ground.
W- Yeah, I think that’s a really good point to end. Thank you so much, KJ, for talking with us on The Writer’s Co-op.
KJ- My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
J- That was so good-- and there was so much good information in there. But we know that the legaleese can feel complicated, so we’ll be sending you a tips sheet if you’re an All Access Writers’ Co-op member on Patreon. It’ll contain everything Wudan talked about with KJ, plus a little card to stick on your desktop or bulletin board to remind you the most important bits about dealing with contracts.
We’re also going to send you some language you can use if you do decide to negotiate your contracts. Wudan sent me some of this language a while back and it has been a total game changer for me, in terms of keeping me confident when I’m trying to get a better deal. After that hellish story with the indemnity clause, I have new language that I suggest to publications-- and it usually works!
W - One thing I want to add is like, okay, if we are writing a fun short story and the contract gets to us and we see a bad indemnity clause for example, do we negotiate it?
J- I feel like the answer is yes. Because that was my problem! One bad contract in the beginning came back to bite me when things got more complicated.
W- Yes! Also, negotiating for better terms helps not only us, but our colleagues. I have a few publications I’ve contributed to that have changed their legal language on contracts because of wording I’ve proposed.
J- That’s amazing. In my experience, editors are often just as in the dark about contract language as freelancers, and they’re just handing you something the legal team has handed to them. The good, empathetic editors out there are going to be able to help you get a set up that protects you and your work. But I think you’re right that we kind of all owe it to each other to hold publications to higher standards, when it comes to contracts.
W- It’s also worth saying that sometimes negotiating won’t work. And then you have to decide if it’s worth your time and risk to continue working with that client. What if they don’t pay you? Or they kill your assignment? Is it worth the potential for a byline?
J- In my experience, pubs that have bad contracts are typically not fantastic to work with in the long run. The contract is the early sign that the relationship might not be one to invest in.
W- Exactly. But again, that’s up to you. It’s a privilege to say no to work.
J- Totally. I do think this comes back to that abundance mindset we talked about before-- the belief that more work will come. There’s enough work. And also the belief that you deserve to be treated well. Because you do!
J- Also, there’s so much more to contracts that we probably were able to cover in one episode. If you are listening and have a question you want to see addressed, sign up to support us on Patreon and you’ll be able to send us notes about anything else you’re wondering about.
W- We’re planning a fun Q&A episode next time around, so please send us all your questions!!! and we’ll do our best to get to all your additional burning questions then. But that’s it for today. We will see you next time. Bye, Jenni!
J- Bye Wudan!
