Serious question: if your leg was broken, would you try to fix it with a Youtube tutorial? What about if you got in a fender bender, would you break out your cutest pair of welding goggles? I think not! Why, when it comes to our businesses, do we try to DIY so much? We’re wasting time typing things into search bars and thinking Google University can help us piecemeal a plan together as an entrepreneur. The truth is, there are five HUGE reasons you don’t want to overlook the power of templates when it comes to the legal side of your business. Templates are like… my favorite, so let’s dive in!
Buying the right template is like outsourcing, only cheaper.
Wish you had a personal assistant? Like the kind the Kardashians have that seem to anticipate every need before it’s an actual need? Yeah, thought so. It’s no secret I am obsessed with outsourcing. But I get it, a lot of you are concerned that you can’t afford to hire yet, or you tell yourself that you’ll do it once you’ve created your own systems… I hear ya, in fact, I told myself those same little lies. Templates are a great middle step from 100% DIY to the hundreds/thousands you’d likely spend outsourcing a task to someone else.
Think of a template as a stepping stone towards the life you’ve been envisioning! With a template, you’re not taking a course to learn how to do all the things, then spending time applying the knowledge– that tends to work great for something ongoing like Instagram or Pinterest.
But when it comes to something you just need to be DONE once and for all (like making sure your business is covered legally), you either don’t want to create it, aren’t sure how to do it, or aren’t ready to hire someone who can do it for you. Templates can be the best solution. You can download, customize and check on them every once and a while to make sure they’re current and still accurate.
There are great resources already created.
A home cooked, seven-course dinner tastes great, but there’s a reason most families only go all out like that once or twice a year– it’s a lot of work! We come from a school of thought that done for us is easier… and it is. I know there’s more than a few of you out there who find yourselves grabbing a burrito from Chipotle more often than you find yourself in an apron with two oven mitts deep into cooking a meal.
If you’d rather cook, er, do business smarter, not harder when it comes to legally protecting your business, I’m right there with you! Check out The Contract Shop® for all the legal templates you could ever need from client contracts to website terms and conditions, independent contractor agreements and disclaimers. We use templates daily in my business whether it’s through the form of contracts and invoices or through more branded pieces like pricing guides or proposals!
And the best part? They’re not very expensive.
Custom design, contracts, and other professional services cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars for relatively simple projects. For example, the average hourly rate of an attorney is just under $300, according to Lawyer’s Mutual Inc. So if you went out and got a contract drafted just for you, you’d probably be looking at at least $1,000 or more… trust me, I’ve paid that much before.
A few years ago, I paid a lawyer to review my contracts… it took a lot of time and cost a lot of money. For just about the same price as ONE HOUR of an attorney’s work, you could pick up a contract to-go from The Contract Shop® (my personal attorney created these contracts!) that’s ready the same day and that you can get using immediately. Try getting that from a law firm, eeeek!
Templates are the most effective solution on a reliable basis.
Let’s say you need a contract and instead of buying a template, you go hire a lawyer. First of all, who knows if this lawyer is even any good? Alright, let’s just pretend this lawyer rocks to keep things simple. Even if she’s the greatest thing ever, she’s gonna charge you $3k? $4k? Somewhere around there for a custom contract. The worst part about that is that when you’re done, literally no one else will have your contract. “Huh? I thought this was a good thing?”
Wellllll, not really. You see, when tons of other people are all using the same contract, a template, they can each describe their experience using it and suggest improvements, which is exactly what has happened with The Contract Shop®’s templates. They’ve been used and improved by 1000’s of people by this point.
Your custom contract? Multiplied by the power of one. If it’s a situation you haven’t faced yet, you don’t know if it’s a good contract or not. But when 1000’s of people have had the chance to write in with feedback, the product improves substantially. Long story short, my first recommendation for contract templates is not a lawyer… It’s these templates instead!
Templates save you tons of time.
Templates are something to implement in every place of your business. If you’re doing something more than once, you should create a template. From emails to pricing guides, social media captions to legal documents. Apply this template theory to all areas of your business and imagine how this could transform your business.
I use templates across the board because they save me time, give my team the resources they need to execute, ensure every client gets the same, branded experience and they uplevel my business for a fraction of the cost of hiring a professional one on one. Have you tried templates in your own business? How have you liked them? What were your favorite things to “outsource” to templates? I want to know, comment below!
