Episode 481: Agency Chat With Ryan Waterbury – Contracts and Your TOS

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns and Ryan Waterbuy talk about Contacts and TOS.

Show Highlights:

1. Why contracts matter.

2. Why agencies need to enforce there TOS.

3. How these help protect your agency.

Show Notes

Rob Cairns here and today I have my monthly agency chat with Ryan Waterbury Hey, Ryan.

How you doing today?

I’m doing good, good, good it is and pronto. But Sunny sort of cloudy now. Like, would you like some?

We’re overcast and and rainy, so yes, I would like some sun.

Yeah, you would, I’m sure. Last month we talked about dealing with bad clients for the second time and. Both of us have been in this space a long. And today we were having a conversation a couple hours ago and we thought we talked about terms and conditions, contracts, project management and all that wonderful stuff. And I think one of the problems. Agency owners get off to rails is. They have clients sign a contract and then they don’t enforce that contract, and that’s a problemo. What do you think?

I I am finding myself way out on on timelines and. I was looking for the source of my frustration why I’ve been working 10 to 12 hour days 6 plus days a week and I realized that. It’s not clients not abiding by timelines, even very generous ones. Petty things that have violated terms and conditions that I let slide and my and a lot of. It’s my own fault and that’s why, you know, when we were talking earlier, I thought this would be a good topic because we’re not the only ones that run into this and you know, small agency owners.

MHM.

Especially ones that care and work on. Projects that are near and dear to their hearts often let things slide too long in.

Right.

Yeah, and I find every time I do, and I shared this with and I’ll share this with the audience. I shoot myself in the foot. And I say at the end of the day, what the hell? Yeah, I can use that word as my podcast. Did I do that? Because it always gets me into trouble every time I try and be nice to somebody. Every time I try and. Show I care. Every time I get into that I end up down the rabbit hole. I don’t want to be in and I went through it this week where I had to read the write that book. I know I really like and say, you know, guys, you’ve had this song, they get going on your. On your content. Let’s go here or I’m going to start invoking clauses and they kind of looked at me and said you’re gonna invoke those. They said you did sign them, didn’t you, like, come on, guys. And that’s where we’re kind of going. What do you think?

I I think that’s yeah, reasonable. And I have really started to sit back and. Think of myself as a business because we are running a business and we’re not. First and foremost, we’re people. And because we’re small, we can be agile and lend our own rules when we need to. The problem comes in when you bend them too often and then client expectations. Become the norm that they expect you to do things that are outside your contract. And when we do that for not just one person, it slides to, you know, 234 and then just it’s everyone and you find yourself in a mess. Like I said, I’ve been scrambling for time. Paul is when I like to take my vacations. I haven’t done it for two falls in a row. And it really came down to. Client issues that became mine and. I was. On a. Call last night for a board that I used to serve on for current client and I had a hole in my schedule earlier this year from May June. I had some time and they needed some things done and they asked for some specific things done. They wanted to reinstall their e-commerce. Or update their donation process and. Do some very particular things in relation to. Dogs that were in foster homes. And so it’s a lot. It’s a lot of custom work. And I said, great, I’ve got these two months, get me the information and I’d be happy to take care of it. What do you think happened?

They didn’t do.

That’s it. Silence. There was nothing. One board member got her stuff done and no one else stepped up. And now I had. And. And this happens with, you know, nonprofit clients. It’s not their their their day job and, you know, it’s kind of par for the course. We’ve talked about that before. There I think you and I are stepping away from doing the work in that segment, but we still have some. Yeah, but we still have those legacy.

I don’t do anymore.

Client and I I was yelled at and during the board meeting. Why didn’t I do these things and I politely sat there and said I gave you a very generous 2 month window. You didn’t provide me the information that I needed and now as I stated in writing, you are at the back of the line behind other projects which are running late. So and it and it hurts when you know clients take out their frustrations on you, but.

It’s.

At the end of the day, it’s not my problem and you have to really step back and think about it and not take the. I need to remind myself that I can’t take things as personal as I used to because.

Yes.

You have a life. I have a life. We we need to be, you know, healthy and and how we run our our work life balance or else there’s not going to be work life balance. We’ll be doing something else soon.

Yeah, that’s that’s so cool. I I hate to say it. It is so true. And I think what we need to do is look at. You know, scheduling and that whole mess and it’s it’s just really hard some days. And I mean I get it. I have a standard policy that on the weekends I don’t do any work. I try to avoid it. If I do work, it’s because I want to or I want to catch up not because I have to. And I will actually tell clients by the way, if you bug me on the weekend, your contract says I can charge you three times with a normally charge. No, I have a few exceptions to that. I have a couple of political clients that are in the middle. Writing nominations. It’s a little different now, but but these people who say ohh I didn’t get to it because it’s. Not my problem. Well, that’s your problem. It’s not my problem that your scheduling is bad. There’s a cost to paying for bad scheduling.

Exactly. And you know, that really came into play again this morning on another call where I have a project that’s grossly behind and I’ve asked for three things starting in August. One, we need tax compliance because this customer is selling nationwide.

OK.

And that takes a little bit of time to because they wholesale and retail. I’ve partnered with Avalara and their process takes what it takes and. They’re also in, you know, a restricted market, so they need to do age verification. That hasn’t been done. Now this today was actually their original push back launch day. It’s not going to happen. They want to launch next week. Not going to happen because they haven’t set up the accounts that I’ve asked for for months.

Yep.

Avalara was nice and this is what actually prompted, you know, our discussion, they said, well, since you. Didn’t get on the ball. We have an expedited charge to help you out. And that just reminded me that we are businesses ourselves and we should charge appropriately for our time if we get a crunch. The clients problems become our problems, but then we should also build them appropriately for expedited schedules.

You know there there’s a lot of that or or not meeting deadlines like one of the rules I have with Web dev projects is there are deadlines in my contracts and if the clients don’t meet the deadlines, there’s a restart fee. And as you know, I am like the master at charging restart fees. I just say forget it, I’ve got and I got the next client. Who wants me to restore his website? And I said I can do it, but here’s and I’ve voted him some exorbitant cost cause. You know you wasted my time. So here you go and somebody would say that’s unethical. Well, he can go get somebody else to do it for. But the what the odds are, he’s not going to because he doesn’t get it.

Right. Oh, absolutely. Now you know when somebody ends their service. There’s no reason for me to keep their site around on storage. I do. You know, I come from the print and design world classical where there are laws that say you keep materials for 18 months after you finish the job, and that’s that’s just a generally, I don’t know if it’s legal or if it was just a generally accepted piece from the graphic arts. Technical foundation. So I typically keep. Material digital material around for that long. But then when clients come back at the end of that term or later and they want it restored and you throw out that number, that seems high. It may include the full amount that they would have been paying for term to service during that time. Frame.

Yep.

And so it’s not unreasonable. What clients will come back and say, well, why? Why are you charging me this? I have to pay for the disk storage or cloud storage and you didn’t. So now you’re coming to me after your your term has ended and asking for something that I’m not legally bound to keep. Here’s the charge for it. And this is what a lot of agency. Owners. Do they get in a crunch and they don’t enforce their terms? And then they’re broke or frustrated and over. Worked. So what I’ve been trying to do and be better for my own mental health and insanity, is actually enforcing terms and conditions. I’ve fired a couple of clients recently because they violated terms and conditions and they were not very happy until I showed them specifically in the terms and conditions that. Hey you caused a problem and it actually caused problems for my other clients and they’re mad at me. So 1, you know, this kind of strings on to our last talk that a bad client can ruin relationships with the other clients so. Ohh. And keeping you know. And that goes along with good project management, good project management, a lot of times it’s just good client management and it’s a skill and it’s something you can. Learn some people. Are just born with it. You know being able to handle people, but it it’s something that you need to do, otherwise you’re going to be. Grossly unhappy and what you’re doing. And at the end of the day, you will start to lose the joy for something that you got into because you were good at it and enjoyed it.

Yeah, it’s so true. And I I think a lot of it is we just gotta sometimes stick to our guns and maybe it makes people unhappy. But I know when I go into, say, a print shop and I ask for a rush job, I’m gonna pay a premium if I want same day. Photo Printing is a good example. If you send to, say, Walmart. Photos are don’t want to next day I pay more than if I say I want them in seven days. That’s. Just the way it is. And so why are we, why are we any different now? That all said, I think it’s important to have the terms and conditions you and I have spent way too much time uploading ours lately.

Exactly.

And updating them because we’ve both been through crap and lots of crap. I redid mine out of. My last pile of crap. And I’ve redone mine again and mine are published on my website. And if clients don’t want to read it, that’s not my problem anymore. I I’m there, you’ve redone yours. We, you, you and I have multiple discussions in a week to bounce ideas off each other. And I think we keep feeding. Each other. What kinds of silly stuff to put in there because we’re both done.

Exactly. There are things that you’ve encountered that I’m like, holy crap, I’m not covered in my TNC. If that ever happened. I would just have to eat it and you know I I think that’s the other important piece is. You don’t have to make the mistakes. You can learn from your peers and colleagues, and it’s it’s important to compare notes. I you know, we’re in the same industry, but I do we compete on work? No, I I think we I think it’s important to also understand what’s acceptable. And network with other web developers, designers, security professionals out there to understand. And by doing that, it helps you improve your terms and conditions. It helps you improve your processes and. And improve your project management and your client handling. A lot of that. The last part is experience because until you run into it, you don’t know.

No, I I I I agree.

But. Yep, I. But at the end of the day, it’s all about, you know, improvement and we want to provide good service for our clients. So building good, good terms and conditions and. Letting your clients know what is reasonably acceptable. Is the foundational baseline and. When they step over the line, you need to be ready to enforce those those T&C’s, otherwise you’re going to be unhappy at the end of the day.

And I don’t think we need to start compromising what those teen sees are all the time because many become known as a discounter and it gets out there that you’re prepared to compromise. So everybody expects you to come. And frankly, it’s one thing off for specials. I mean, I did in the month of November, as you know, you choose not to. We all get that. But it’s another thing to do it all the time. And frankly, I’m at the point of view where I don’t want to do it anymore because it just causes grief. And when you become known as the discount, are the only ones that should. Be known as discount are are companies like Dollarama Dollar Tree because that’s their business. The rest of the world doesn’t need to be because before it gets around, you compromise your TNC. People will say Oh well, I expected you to compromise because I hurt you and then your your rules are. You’re you’re ruling by exception, not by the rule and. That’s the problem too.

Exactly. You get. You know, you hit the nail on the head with pricing. If you’re running a sale all the time that the regular price isn’t the price your sale price is the price. And you know you what you allow is what will continue so. You know one enforcing your TNC’s and you know also. Pricing. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t bend the rules, and that is also the other thing I compare. I compared, you know, my business, they said, what would Comcast do? Would they let you continue to host your your site for free? Absolutely not. And you know, we have to realize we’re also not Comcast. Where? Somebody lands in the hospital and you know they aren’t able to, you know, fulfill their part of the bargain. There are exceptions to these rules, and I I don’t want to come off as a hard liner ******* that you know.

We need.

That just says, hey, this is that we’re done and you know, these are the. Rules. That that’s not it at all. You need to be reasonable and and be human and understanding because we’re partners with our I sell myself as a a partner to my clients and my one of my leanest. Uh. New clients that onboarded one of the biggest sales and projects that I’ve had for my agency. They signed on with me because they liked the fact that I was partnering with them and the other pitches they had were.

There.

Grossly different in cost. I came in the middle and it was reasonable, but I also sold myself as someone that they could partner with and when I hand off their website and their project, I’m still there to help them grow. And they appreciated that. So you need to realize that you’re a partner for the businesses that you’re serving. But you need to protect yourself if things change and go off the rails.

No, I agree with it. Is there anything else you want to touch on, Ryan? And amongst dealing with the contract to US, is there more?

Not at all. It just it it kind of sparked after our last conversation about, you know, bad clients and how we get there. And I I thought that this conversation would be a more more proactive and that when you see the warning signs early. Take care of them, but have a heart. Cause everybody’s human at the end of the day.

I agree with you. Thanks very much. Ryan. Jump on over to one dogs footings. The office team in Ryan’s life is very quiet today. I wonder what’s going on.

It’s a cold, gloomy day outside, so there’s no activity. They are bored.

No, no, that’s not a good thing. Thank you, Sir. You have a wonderful day, my friend.

You too.