EP 168: Preventing Problems with TheLawTog® Rachel Brenke

So since today was the first time that I had the opportunity to talk to Rachel face to face and kind of pick her brain about some of the things I had to narrow down like, what am I going to what am I going to ask her to talk about? How are we going to bring the most value to this audience as possible, and she did not disappoint. We ended up deciding to talk about client

education. And although that may not seem on its surface, like a specifically legal issue, I think you're going to really appreciate how she weaves the legal and the practical into creating an amazing client experience. So without further ado, I will cue the music and let Rachel take it away. Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken. And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable

businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. Rachel Brenke It is great to have you on this can't be that hard. How are you today?

this. And we're gonna make it as I always try and do as fun and as actionable and like manageable as possible. And that's one of the things that I love about the way that you teach. And yeah, you've been around you're like a, you're a pillar in the industry because you know your stuff. But just in case people don't know you and haven't heard of you before, I'm gonna hand the mic over to you and have you do a little introduction.

Talking about the big three of like legal business contracts and copyright. Those are the big areas that photographers have questions about and I love it. I absolutely love working with photographers and creatives. It's something you know, we're talking pre roll, and you just met alluded to it is that like with sales and legal, it's not

sexy, it's not fun. But the reality is if you're wanting to be able to continue in business, and you're also wanting to have your business to be a supporting actor to your life, right, as much as we love business, we don't want our life to be business, we got to prevent the issues. And so my approach with legal teaching is not just as an attorney, although that's part

of it. So that we can prevent the issues so that we can be focused on photography, connecting with our clients, not cleaning up issues, and making money and not having to spend it on cleaning up stuff later. So as we go through this, just know that I am one of y'all, I get it, I understand and I hope that you enjoy the tips that we're going to bring

that could happen now? How do I act now to prevent that from happening and a lot of things that are sort of the things that we talk about, about business and setting up your systems and setting up yourself and your business legally, properly, all those kinds of things. That is it's all about like none of us want to think about what if we got sued or what if we found ourselves in position of somebody, you know stealing our work and we're not covered. We don't want to think about what

that would feel like. However, thinking about what that would feel like and taking the steps to prevent that from happening, hopefully means that we never have to be in the position where we are experiencing that it's the same thing. If we also had the one if we were to make this a trifecta, we would have an accountant on this call Then nobody would really listen, ha ha ha! Exactly that, have you set up your, you know, the money piece

of it as well. but But what I was like, oh, Rachel's coming on the show, what do I talk to her about, I wanted to talk about something that I have certainly spent a fair amount of time talking about, but that I think you will bring so much more context and richness to the conversation is about client education. So we're really taking it to that, like, how do we set ourselves up for success? How do we prevent the problems

that we all know? I mean, we've certainly experienced some of them, but like, we're seeing it in Facebook groups, or seen it in Facebook groups. Absolutely. Oh, gosh, they're just full of them. But But education is, it doesn't seem like, it's like I already told my client this or like I say this in 100 different places. And yet still, our clients don't hear things, or they get mad about something. And we can point to our contract and be like, no, no, you signed

this contract. But if they're mad at us, and they leave a crummy Google review, it doesn't. Like where does that leave us? Right? So I want to talk today about how you think about client education, and how that goes. So I would love for you to kind of kick us off with a little bit of the importance of client education and what that means to you.

But a lot of creatives or just business people in general, don't know what they don't know. So we have to start with our own education. And that's why the LawTog exists and your podcast. That's why these educators are out there, because we've been through it. I've been through it as a photographer, I've also been through it on the side of doing prevention as a lawyer with you guys, but also cleaning up messes. I've been in court, I've stood there, whether it's been copyright or breach of

contract stuff. So when going into this, I think it's important that we need to commit to education for ourselves, because I think oftentimes there is a disconnect, and we want to educate our clients, right? But like you just kind of mentioned we kind of throw it into a contract, kind of let the contract do the heavy lifting, which Yeah, you should have

contracts. But we as the business owners, we as the photographer that's leading our clients, in order to be able to educate them and educate them confidently, we have to know the things and not even just the legal things. But also what do we want for our business, because everyone runs photography business

differently. I mean, there's like a bell curve, I can generally speak out the main business models that photographers are approaching, but everyone's offerings are different, the people you're serving are different, your you know, unique serving physician, all of that is completely

different in the market. And so we need to remember, first nail that down for ourselves what we want, and what's important, because that's going to equip us not just with the knowledge to be able to educate our clients, but the confidence in order to be able to educate our clients. And it's funny, again, the legal and sales is an area that many business owner, again, not exclusive to photographers, is people are a little gun shy. We don't learn about this in school necessarily, like how do we

approach tough conversations? Or how do we sell? So that's my little soapbox on that. But I want to encourage you if you're thinking oh, yeah, client education, I already know I have to do that. Do Are you really adequately doing it though?

Like, are you really equipped to sit down and be able to answer any questions about your contract, etc. And I think what's really good and one of the ways that I teach, and especially become to me at the law firm, you may show me your contract, but I'll say we need to stop and look, what are your business processes? What are your offerings, like? Explain all of this to me, so that

you're able to explain it. And we're able to educate with that because no matter if your clients are repeat clients, right, you may have changed offerings. You may change your business model every single time you go to write marketing, your sales, talk to your client, whether it's getting them booked or they're already booked or

trying to resolve an issue. We have to start from a place of assuming that they've never heard of us before that they've never heard, you know, never worked with us before and educate them not not saying sit there and read them like a PowerPoint on everything. Eat, and then go into client education, equipped, confident and also have the mindset that this client or you know, whoever's on the other side of the table that we're talking to

knows nothing. And I'm not saying that in a disparaging way, but have that in me, you know, it's funny, it's as you were talking, I was thinking about, I have a tendency to do this as well is that I'll go and speak at conferences, and I have to remind myself, probably a good chunk of the people in the room don't know who I am, they've never heard me talk about contracts before. So I gotta at least do a little brief

introduction of the basics. And kind of like I did when you asked for me to talk about the law talk, like what the three topics are that I hit on a lot of talk, it's just a little quick introduction, you don't have to be big, long and drawn out many ways. So my point with that, again, is client education, incredibly important. But you have to get these portions that we just talked about under control in order to for prevention, and figure out what tools to create and how to

create them. Oftentimes, I will see, and I love that you guys are inspired to make a Frequently Asked Questions page or get a contract, etc. But that's almost like step two, three or four, you have to equip yourself, you got to get the confidence and you have to know how you want to run your business and enter into creating or finding tools that start from the ground up.

may be. I feel like that client journey, if you have never done this, or if you haven't done in a while to sit down and bullet out like first this happens, then this happens, then this happens as granular as you can possibly make it. Is that something that you would agree with or like, encourage people to do?

automated processes. That structure you just talked about is like the foundation for almost all the actions that we're going to take in business because and I get it like I'm not sitting here in some ivory tower of like, we do it better. But and I understand when you get into the business, you're overwhelmed. There's all these educators, there's all these people telling you things, there's all these tools. And so you're just looking to see which

is good. It's good market research to see what other people are doing. But I think that's where you get distracted, you start looking and see what is this person's what to wear guy look like what is this person's frequently asked questions or templated email pack looks like. And we really need to take a step back and think about and this goes back a little bit to what we mentioned in the very beginning of the episode is what how do I really picture my business but also had

I really Picture My Life. And you know, I kind of alluded to it for myself a little bit, that when I was doing photography during law school, actually, I was doing weddings, going into law school, I had to change away from weddings, just from the mere fact that my season of life had changed, right? And he was having to redo that whole process and apply much of what you were just talking about, what is the journey going to look like for me does it fit

into what I'm doing? It's whole was the saying the square peg, round hole type of deal. And I think oftentimes, in not, I do the students sometimes as well, but we're really fear based. And so we're looking at what everyone else is doing. And we're not sitting back. And so but the other side of that is you may sit and write out your whole client journey, like you're talking about as granular as possible. The great thing about being a business owner is we have the power to change

that. So if you get into it, like it's just a process, it's just a decision. If you get in and you see friction points, clients, pushback, or you just don't like it, you get to change it. And I think that's what's so incredible. And if you have a structure, you have a lot more clarity to be able to create the tools, educate the clients, but also decide what you're going to do and change things in the future if you want for your business.

time. And when you write out or when one of the questions that I get a lot about my system is somebody will be like thinking about implementing it in their business and they're like, Okay, I like this. I like this, but I don't like this one part because it doesn't work for me. And my response is always Yeah, okay, great. You're in business for

yourself. I'm not your Last, like I'm showing you a system that works really well for me, and I can tell you why this piece is important the way it is and why this piece is important the way it is. However, if you try that out, or if you know, because you've been in business for a while, or whatever that like this part isn't going to work for your people or your life or whatever, great, change it. And I feel like that, like I would extrapolate that to all parts of the business that

you're running. That's not to say, especially if you're new, or if your business isn't working well for you. And you're like, well, what's the problem, like maybe that's a good time to turn and listen to people who have experience with that. You don't have, you don't have to recreate the wheel for sure. But you know, those friction points

are different for everybody. And so being able to build a business and adjust a business and finesse a business over time, as you've learned what doesn't doesn't work for you, is super important.

But the other side of that is mirrors exactly what you were just saying is that as your business grows, as your services, change, your offering change, maybe who you're serving changes, right, we're going to have whether they're little changes, or massive Quantum Leap changes, you're going to also want to adjust your contract. And you know, we saw this actually during pandemic is that a lot of people realize there were great inefficiencies in

their contract. Well, I don't want you guys waiting for another worldwide pandemic to try to fix. I don't want

big issue. So a lot of like you just said, and I try to implement this in my own businesses and do this with my clients. And I encourage this to the law tog keep like a running list of like the top questions with the big friction points that you're having with your

clients. So once you've created the tools, right, and I guess we kind of jumped over the tools, we can talk about them, obviously contracts is going to be one what you know, to educate your clients, but but fine tuning them based on the top questions, you get the friction points, because a you want to have the the contractual legal protections for you. But also be all of like client education helps to build buyer's

confidence. And I always, not always, but I often hear people say, Oh, I'm not getting booked because of my pricing or the markets too saturated, like those are the two excuses. And I often try to push back and say, Are you building the buyers confidence and it's always like this quizzical look. And it's like, well, if I the client has to, you know, if I have to question how to get booked with you, if I have to, if I don't know what the process is going to look like, or I have to chase

you to give you money. If I have to constantly follow up, then every time a client customer has to do that It's eroding the buyers confidence. And also, most legal issues aren't one major thing. It's a bunch of little things until you know, the straw breaks the camel's back. But it's often not major

issues. And so keep having these tools, client education in place, making sure has enough client education, but also fine tuning it so that you can you know, prevent, because that's the whole name of the game is preventing the issues, educating the clients to get them booked to get them happy with you can keep your business going and not having to be playing clean up

all the time. Because one of the top things that I see when people come to me at the law firm when they have a problem, as they're stressed out which I get it right, talking to a lawyer is typically no fun, all right. But it's time, money and energy, you're taken away from your business, in most of the stuff I can't, most of the stuff

could be prevented. And but it's just really about this process you and I are talking about is like getting the tools in place, you know, starting with the granular process of what you want, and then fine tuning it. You know, you can't contract away everything, you're not going to prevent all issues, but a good bulk of them could be prevented just with the client education and proper tools.

education. Talk to me about Your the ways that you like to educate your clients how you teach your, the photographer's that you work with how to educate their clients, what's that process look like to you.

And I'm not saying use a contract to beat your clients over the head with it's just to give us that legal foundation. So then we can determine, you know, what we want to do next, what boundary doing, etc, how client focused and we want to be. So contract is one of the main ways that I do this. And other one is going to be through your website, if you're

outlining the process. Or if you're someone that doesn't include any sort of like booking process or information like that, on the website, whatever that guide that you utilize, some people use like an interactive guide on websites and use PDFs, etc. So just some sort of central tool outside of the contract, right, because the contracts, not necessarily going to talk about how to pick the clothes and things like that, you know, or poses etc. This is, this tool is probably going to

bridge a little bit of what the contract talks about, but it's going to flesh out a bit more about non contractual things. But that needs to build the client's confidence and educate them on what to be prepared about. And then the third, which I think is incredibly important, it's just the communications you have with your client. Let me

give you an example of this. One of the top things that I always see complained about in Facebook groups is clients are on the horn, ask them where their photos are, like right after this session. Okay, so we definitely want to set the expectation in our guide, whatever method you're using of how long until they're either going to receive the gallery for download, scheduled the proofing session, whatever your specific business sales model looks like, also want to have that in the

contract as well. You know, it's that's an obligation that photographers setting and committing to in the contract. But the third tool of that would be in your communication. So this would be things like what you verbally tell the client, which I always recommend in, you just mentioned phone call, whenever I give, say some verbally or important verbally to client to follow up that up

in tax, right? So in this context of this example, at the end of your session, all right, Johnny, that was a wonderful session, you know, these photographs are going to be ready in approximately three weeks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and probably follow that up with an email, you can either pick or choose the communication method. But by having these three tools in place, we've at least conveyed the truly

important things. And if you notice with this question, not only is it reinforcing the legal expectation and obligation that you have, but it's preventing, hopefully, a client sitting at home going, oh, where's my photos? Oh, no, that photographer is not that great, then that opens the door for does she get all the poses? Or no, wait, maybe maybe I don't like the editing. And I like what someone else does, it starts to open the door for all these other negative thoughts.

So at least three tools to utilize. And those are the key ones that I always look to. And the other side of it too is if there's ever a legal issue, we don't just look at contract, we're looking at communications between client and what other education tools that you're using.

working with you. So let's say that it's two weeks, or let's say two months before their session, and then it's two more weeks before they get their images. And then it's another week before you start to hear about a problem. So we're talking about like a three month span of time, that person isn't going to have perfect recall of what was in your contract. So if you I always like to break this down into what are the most important things that someone needs to know about working with

me? And then also what are the things that they need to know now in the process, like your timing of that education, it's like the contract may have all the big important parts, but like to your point, at the end of the session, the next step is well, when are we going to get our photos, that's the time to re educate them about that. And I love that you point out like in verbally and in writing, I'm all about like, let's get on the phone with a prospective client.

But the second I hang up the phone with them, I'm sending them and I tell them this at the beginning I'm like Hey, you can take notes if you want. But like, don't worry about it. Because right after we get off the phone, I'm gonna send you all these points and probably more because I'm sure I'm gonna forget something and it's all going to be spelled out. So you know, you will have the chance to look at that in writing. No,

I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, no, I was just gonna say I love that because it creates not only is it better, because people learn in different ways, right? Like this whole client education thing, we have to assume that some people are good listeners. Some people like to see things with their eyeballs, other people will actually read the contract point by point every once in a while. But we want to like kind of check all of those

boxes. And that's incumbent upon us as the business owner, I, you know, one of the things that I think a lot of photographers deal with, is they send off a gallery or like they send their photos and they don't hear back immediately from a client. And you know, you are talking about the client, if we haven't educated them properly. Once we the session is over, they're like, Well, I hope everything went well. Did I you know, if we

don't reach out to them. And maybe if you know, if sending like a sneak peek images, your thing or just sending that email to be like, your photos look amazing. I'm looking at them on my computer that will buy you so much goodwill and time. Like, I'll be in touch in two weeks with your with your edits. But we experienced that on the flip side, when we send off a gallery and we don't hear anything. And we immediately are like, Oh, no, they hate the photos. Everything is Terrible. The world is

burning down. And then, you know, two weeks later, they come back and they're like, great, we were on vacation. So we weren't able to look at them. But oh my God, we love them so much. We're buying your top collection, or whatever the case may be. So the things that give us pain, like think about that, and how you can prevent that for your client. I think that those are such was so important in every possible way.

socials and website. And I'm like, What is going on here? And I don't think it's nefarious. I don't think it's uncaring photographers, I simply think it's a lack of process, or even a fear of trying to follow up. So for example, what you were just saying of sending the gallery and not hearing back,

right? That is when I think look at your workflow, you feel this little fear, yeah, they might have real world stuff going on, but maybe just nudging them because some clients just aren't going to think, oh, I need to confirm receipt, I need to send a testimonial that's on us. And you said a little bit ago, I don't know what phrasing you use. But in my brain, what landed was it's incumbent upon us as the business owner to lead

that way. And actually, if you view this I mentally picture especially when we're talking about the communications in the emails, I mentally picture us handling our client almost like stepping stones in a garden or across the street from one stone to the next. And that's what your contract does if it's drafted properly by lawyer. So your guide does that you may not realize it, you know, in your communications should be doing

that as well. And so in and I think what's important to with what you do, and I do is that we're not sitting here trying to sell them anything they don't want, they inquire to us. On the legal side, we're not really offering anything to them or forcing them into anything that they don't want. They also want protection. They're paying money, they're spending time that they're carving out of their lives, coming to do a session during the session, etc. So we are actually serving them.

So I would encourage if you're listening and you're like, oh my gosh, this is a lot more than I thought on the back end, I just want to photograph well. You're in a services based industry. So serve and these are ways that you can serve and also prevent issues at the same time.

Everyone else sees that you show up with like a well thought out list of policies and a contract and all that sort of thing. And they you are earning their trust with that because they're saying, Oh, she's taking her business seriously. She's going to take my family or my wedding or whatever. Seriously as well. She's not gonna ghost me. She's not gonna flake on me. I think all of that's really important. Okay.

incredibly important. I will say a lawyer is not a lawyer is not a lawyer, right? Like they're aware, I represent lawyers, because they're don't do contracts. They don't know IP, but they're running medical malpractice showrooms, and they need help. So finding a lawyer that knows business, knows intellectual property, but also can draft contracts that are readily able to be understood.

So when we go to law school, we just learned about contract principles, we don't actually learn like a checklist of you have to have paragraphs with titles and numbers, it really is an art form funny enough for

years. And but the way that I have found being in this industry for almost say, how many years or reveal my age, for quite a long time now, is that I the way that I dropped my contracts that helps to do all the things that we're talking about here and working and building the client competence is having an in chronological order. That's what we said earlier, what is your workflow? Because what's the very first thing? How do you get booked? Right? Yep. And then what happens? You know, how do you

schedule the session? Where will the sketch session be? What happens at the session? What happens after the session, and when it's done in such a way in plain language, you don't need these? You don't need stone tablets with goat's blood, like written letter, you know, and I think sometimes people think that it has to be the scary words, or is going to be scary words, in order to be legal, and it doesn't have to be right. And I do love that the legal industry is shifting greatly.

Like we're really moving away from Shall's into must, right? shall seem so like Shakespearean, right. Whereas Shall and Must mean the same thing. There are an obligation in a contract, whereas you would have a May, which is optional, don't necessarily have to do it. So I just share that to say, like, if you have a contract, and you're like, oh, I don't

think my clients like it. I disagree with what y'all said on the podcast, you evaluate it to make sure that it is in chronological fashion, that mirrors your workflow, that can readily be understood in plain language, and also that you can adequately explain it so that you can guess. And this is another point. I don't know if we were gonna get to this. Oftentimes, I think people are afraid when clients ask questions. I mean, maybe it's because I see this in the

longtime Facebook group. Yeah. My client asked this question about, you know, something in the contract, I would rather a client, and I want to encourage you all, have the clients ask questions about the contracts before they execute before you start expending any time, money and energy on this client. Because you want to know, think of it almost like dating and meeting someone at a bar. You want to know the red flags before y'all go home together.

client. So way harder conversation to have after you've already taken a bunch of pictures. So, um, I was gonna say, before, I have a lawyer on the podcast, I have to ask, because I know, one of the questions that comes up a lot when it comes to legal stuff, is this question of, okay...

checklist of this? These are the things or how do you how do you advise people I mean, obviously, the advice is, hire a lawyer but but but when they're thinking about like contract versus, you know, prep guide versus phone call, whatever, like what goes in the contract.

our client on? This is going to be a really probably fun, funny, stupid example. But I probably not going to stick in there. Please don't all wear buffalo plaid shirts, right? Right. That's all something or not I'm actually gonna go sue my client side. And that's such a stupid example. But it's what came to mind. Mostly my laundry sitting over here, and I can see my son's

being asked of me. And so, you know, and I think it is a balance, it is a dance, you know, and this is one of the things that it's so funny, I was just in a group yesterday, because I love to, I love to look at what you guys are asking and discussing, because it allows for me to create things for the law talk and articles and all of that. And someone's like, you have to put in there that it's tick season, you don't

have Lyme disease. And then I was thinking, you'd be opening the door of having to put Lyme disease and snake bite and like you, you can't contract away everything. And that's what we have like General Liability language, you know, and you also partner that with liability insurance and stuff like that.

So, but yeah, to your point and my long winded fashion, are you actually going to pursue the client legally, or if they do not follow that and you know that direction, or that language isn't going to greatly impact your ability at all to deliver the services, or at least the level that you want to deliver?

for payments. So maybe you take like initial non refundable payment, you allow them to pay different balances later, you amazed with the checklist that I just gave you, you might think I'm never going to pursue a client in court over a late fee or a late payment, etc. But I would encourage you to also look through the lens hahaha, through the lens of I'm corny, so corny aren't even same? That's why we

get along? Well, yeah. No, but look through the lens of what if you have a client, that you're bound to them by contract, and you're having to spend all this admin time, I mean, I guess maybe that would fall under point two, would this impact my ability to deliver services that could impact your ability to be able to deliver services to other people, if you're having to chase this one client for painting, and not having like a penalty, or a late fee, in order to compensate you for your time

and set a boundary for them, it could impact other areas of your business. So that's, that's actually the common example I give of stick something in there or just something that sounds so blase, but like have that in your contract, so that it's as a safeguard if you need to enforce it. But guess what, we can waive things in our contract. So if a client misses a payment, because their dad died, you can hold them to it if you wanted to. But you also don't have to, you can

offer customer service. And so I think looking at your contract and get those three main points, I guess, that we talked about now is like, what was the first one? Oh, would we pursue the client in court? Will it greatly impact services? And kind of like what other safeguards do I want to

very rarely enforce. But they're there. If I need them, I can lean on them.

a non lawyer or a lawyer. That's never litigated because there are contract shops that are run by lawyers who have never litigated because you don't have to write there's no requirement but they won't include attorneys fees, language in there in majority of states, if not all, were you use you think from watching TV that if you end up in court, like either your clients Sue sue them, whoever wins is going to get their attorneys paid for by the loser and that's not true, not when

it's like a pure breach of contract claim has to be in the contract. I just had this conversation with photographer yesterday through the law firm. She was done dirty. And but the contract that she had, there were some questionable things. And there was no attorneys fees. And so we had to have the conversation of girl, you're in the right, you have a legal right. But now you and I don't have to have a conversation of are you going to spend $10,000 to get $10,000 You know what I

mean? Or like is even worth the cash outlay. Anyways. So that's I just don't want that for you all. And I know it's really easy to fall into this idea of, well, I don't make a lot of money, I don't have high profit, or I'll never happen to me. Just because you'll never pursue a client doesn't mean that that you won't get because we can talk about prevention. We can talk about contracts, what is the one variable we can't control? Other people? Yeah. And so you just don't know what'll happen.

all the top questions. So I would strongly encourage if you're someone that is doesn't have a contract, you're or you're newer in business, and you're just totally freaked out. We're not as scary as it sounds. And we are more than happy to help you figure out like the best way to get into it, especially for budget conscious, I get that like in the beginning. It's very difficult. You know, you need somebody may not have the cash. We run promos a lot. We try to help and we do

a lot of giveaways. So just hit us up and we'll see what we can do.