Can your contract be only 500 words? Listen to my next guest and find out.
Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions Podcast. I am so glad to have my friend Sarah Foxx on from 500 words. How you doing, Sarah?
I'm doing great. Thank you very
much. Alan. Well, thank you for joining me.
Cause we met at the, uh, PSA UKI, which is the professional speakers association at the UK and Ireland, uh, where I actually was presenting and, and you presented as well and in just chatting. And I love the hallways and I love the, you know, the meals and stuff, chatting and finding out what you do and you are a recovering lawyer.
Is that correct?
Yeah. That's how I, that's how I badge myself.
So what, what does it mean to be a recovering lawyer? It means
that I've spent 15 years, um, in a large corporate law firm. I've done all the legal training. I'm technically on the role of solicitors, but I don't refer to myself as a solicitor.
And I don't keep all the, I don't run a law firm anymore. So, um, whilst I do a little bit of legal work, I, um, yeah, call myself a recovering lawyer. So people don't get confused.
So what does 500 words, where did that come from?
Oh, so I'm a, I'm a qualified trainer as well as a qualified lawyer. Um, and I was training people on contracts and I just more and more, I realized that nobody understood what they were looking at.
They couldn't read it, I couldn't give them examples, they were all too long. You know, I couldn't just say, I'll tell you what, just read that for five minutes and then we'll talk about it because there was nothing short enough to do. So I wanted to introduce a tool that allowed us to talk through the principles of what we needed in a contract and they could, you know, they could say what they like, what they didn't like, that kind of thing.
So my sister challenged me to write one in 500 words and I went away because I like a dare. So I went away and wrote one. And started to use it as a training tool and it kind of snowballed because when people read it, they went, Hey, I like this. Can we have? And I was like, no, no, no, no. You can't.
Obviously it's, it's not designed for what you've, you know, it wasn't designed to be a serious piece of business. If you see what I mean. Um, but you know, it's turned into that.
So. Uh, other than the, the, the details, right? We're talking about more of the, the, the, the legalese contract stuff can be 500 words.
Obviously you need, they're going to have details because we have people listening that are caterers and they're going to have to have the food there and other things like it. So, so what we're talking about is the contractual terms, uh, of the agreement. Not including the details of what you're going to do, the specific things there.
So what are some of the things that, uh, you, you took out the legalese and that we can make a lot simpler?
Oh, well, you can take, make almost everything a lot simpler. So the problem is over the years, you know, we've had, you know, formal contracts for about 150 years. When we started writing them down and court started reinforcing them or enforcing them in the UK.
So that we've had a long time to just kind of get a bit [00:03:00] long winded. Um, certainly when lawyers were first appointed, they were kind of paid by the length. So long contracts made them more money. Um, people thought they were more sophisticated. So, you know, it was in their interest to pad a little and then the the invention of copy and paste And you know microsoft word made it even easier to just pad things out and make it longer Without actually adding any value because fundamentally we've got away from Contracts as a tool to help you do business.
And that's essentially what we all want to do. We want to do business. We want to do what we love, whether a caterer, a photographer, a lawyer, you know, podcast host, whatever. We don't want a lot of side stuff. You know, it's not, it's, it's not that we like the sound of our own voice, although as a speaker, you and I both like the sound of our own voice in some respects.
But, but it's really important that we focus on what's important to other people. And the framework is about saying who's doing it, how they're doing it, you know, how that might change. What happens if things start to go wrong? You know, that kind of thing. It's not about what might happen when it does go wrong.
It's about how you work together to make it go right. You know, what does it, what does right look like? What does success look like on this project? And often when we write the things like scope and payment, we're good at that. We don't actually think of it from the client's perspective or the buyer's perspective.
So it's also about kind of talking in the language of both parties. So it, the way I always look to contracts is it's to protect both of us. Right. So that we understand we're clear, uh, you know, like, you know, we say good fences make good neighbors. Well, good, clear contract terms make good, uh, customer relationships.
So all of the legal terminology is not required by law, correct?
Under English law. Um, in fact, under. You know, American laws and different state laws, you don't need to have particular formulas of wording. Now, a lot of lawyers will say, well, we have to use that word because it's been tried and tested. Now, um, that's lawyer speak for failed once because it's gone to court.
Um, now I don't know about you, but if people kept giving me something because it's failed once, um, but come through, okay. That's not necessarily as a positive statement about something as we might like it to be. So there's nothing that says we have to kind of turn into some sort of robotic geek speak or chat GPT version of a lawyer in order to write our deals.
We don't need that. You don't need it. I don't need it. Clients don't need it. Buyers don't need it. Nobody likes it. Um, but we've become used to it. Um, and people really struggle when you change, um, and move away from the norm. But, you know, we don't write books the way Chaucer or Dickens or Twain wrote them anymore.
We write them in different language so we can do the same with our contracts. We can go 21st century with our contract words as well as in other places.
And the other thing I, I see is we shouldn't be punishing the masses for the ills of a few. So just because something did go wrong once, uh, doesn't mean we have to write it in as clause number 83 item D because it might happen again.
Um, realistically. Everybody's goal is to make their customers happy, satisfies them, do that, and if something goes wrong, make them happy and there you go. So what would be the, the advice you have for people that their contracts have become like your attic or your garage where stuff goes in but it never comes out?
What are some of the things where we can start? You know, crossing out and saying, okay, we don't need this. We don't need this. What else? What do you see? What are some of the common things that you see that are just like, it's not necessary.
Um, so there's a whole lot of stuff in the back, which is called boilerplate and it might have titles like severance or discharge or, you know, waiver, all that kind of stuff.
If you don't understand the title, you probably don't understand the content. But fundamentally, when I talk to people about how they're like reading and negotiating contracts is you ask yourself, what is this meant do? Not what does it mean, but what is it meant to do? Does it change behaviour? Does it reinforce behaviour we want?
Or is it just word soup. If it's word soup, we can get rid of it. You know, the lawyers will tell us there's a very, you know, there's, there might be a risk in getting rid of it or it may protect us in, you know, one out of a million cases, whatever. Um, but fundamentally we need to focus on the key things about, um, creating understanding.
As you said, one of my important purposes for a contract is to. Manage the client's expectations, so we both understand we're singing from the same sheet. So we're in harmony with each other. We're not trying to sing, uh, one set of lyrics to another set of music that doesn't really fit. So we need to ask, what is it meant to do?
What does this, fundamentally, what is this clause in there for? Is it because it made someone's ego feel better? Is it because we were running out of space on the page or is it because we just wanted to earn some, build some more money? Um, if it doesn't do anything and you don't really understand it, you can ask, do I really need it?
Um, and a lot of the time, the answer to that is a simple. No, not really. Yeah, right. Because we know such a very, very, very, very small, tiny, tiny percentage of contracts ever get to a serious dispute where lawyers get involved. We don't need to write it for that very small percentage that the lawyers get involved.
But the other thing you were talking about is, um, Uh, having reflected all the things that have ever gone wrong in your business in the past and trying to clamp it down and stop it happening again. And one of my mentors used to say that you could tell the extent of a business person's paranoia by the length of their contract.
And we've all read contracts. I mean, I read contracts, but if you have read contracts, yes, you may spot what's happened in the past because there's a clause in it about it. You know, I was, I have a tandem. Me and my husband have a tandem. Um, and we do a lot of cycling, and we had it refurbished just before lockdown in 2019.
Um, and the, uh, contract with the people who were doing it, you could tell what had happened in the past, because there was a clause bitching about this client, that clause, and they didn't name them, but you could feel the visceral reaction they'd had to all these things that had gone wrong. But it's like, well, hang on, I'm not Mr.
Bloggs, or Ms. Smith, or, you know. Joe, who, you know, treated you badly, who was a terrible client, I'm me and I want you to start off trusting me because if you don't trust me, I don't kind of know whether we should be doing business at all.
Right. So I, I, I think some of the big things, certainly what came up during COVID, um, force majeure was something that was on so many people's boilerplate contracts that they never knew.
And to find out that. A, they didn't know it was there. B, it wasn't there. C, it was there, but it had limitations to what it covered and things like that. Um, I think this is one of those situations where, should we be worried about that happening again? Um, or should it just be, here's what we're going to do, here's what you're going to do, if we can't I mean, is it, do we need force majeure or just, no, okay.
So there's a couple of ways of dealing with it. I would say that if you've got a really good change mechanism that basically says, if either of us wants to change this deal, then we'll just have a grown up conversation about it. Then that's a good way because that, it doesn't, that doesn't say when you can change it or why you want to change it.
So that covers everything from war and sanctions and force majeure and pandemics and restrictions and government rules and all this kind of stuff. The other thing you can just, instead of talking about force majeure, which in English law doesn't even exist, it's a French law concept. So, you know, great.
Um, uh, but you can just talk about circumstances beyond our control. Right. So you can have a clause that deals with change that's really nice and wide because really if you want to work with someone, you want to work with them so that you're both happy. If you're not both happy, you may need to change it.
I don't think that's a problem. Right. Um, you just need to talk about it like grownups. Then you might have a circumstances beyond our control clause that says, you know, if this happens and we can't perform, then we'll have another grownup conversation about it. Um, and then the third thing is to have some sort of termination or cancellation provision which basically says if the whole thing becomes completely impossible, or for whatever reason we don't want to continue with this, let's work out how we split up amicably.
Um, and I think You can get really prescriptive. You can say, Oh no, we can, we let's put terms in that says we have to change it like this, this, this, this, this. And if, if, you know, if there's force majeure, if there's government restrictions, then we'll do X, Y, and Z. But we don't know what the next pandemic is going to be in terms of the way it will disrupt contracts.
So why are we trying to guess now? what the future's going to hold. Why don't we just say, if the future looks really weird and unprecedented, and all the words that we use during the 2020, we'll just have a grown up conversation because, you know, we will be different people because we'll have been through that, or we'll be in that.
We can't predict what's needed. And I know that's been really difficult for the events industry where lots of things are. cancelled at the last minute and they didn't have contacts to talk to. They were losing money and then they've come back a bit tentatively. So it is a difficult decision to kind of say, I'm not going to be too prescriptive in my contract because that feels like a risk.
But I think actually it's probably the 21st century way of doing business is to reflect that we can't control everything. We just have to have really good grownup conversations.
Right. And we should say that this is not direct legal advice and you should talk to your lawyer who's probably not going to like the fact that your contract is going to get cut down because they might have written it.
There you go. But I think, I think we should worry less about the pandemic type of force majeure things than the things that might actually happen more often, which is somebody books you for a wedding and then they call off the wedding. Now what happens? Right. So I think those types of things I would still maybe leave in to say.
Right. If you need to cancel, they're not because of, you know, these other things. Um, this is what's going to happen so that it's clear and that's not punishing the masses for the ills of a few. It's saying this is more likely to happen. So let's write it in there versus the stuff that's less likely to happen, like war and pandemic.
Volcanic eruptions, all kinds of stuff. And I think you don't have to say why they want to cancel. If they want to cancel, they don't want you anymore. Right. You're not just hanging around like a gooseberry. Right. Right. What you, it's like being told a party's off, but turning up anyway, cause it's booked in.
We don't want to do that in business any more than we want to do that in our personal lives. Right. But if you said, you know, if you want to cancel, well, I've suffered some costs. I've had that date in my diary. I've turned away work. So it's cost me some money. So I'd like to be compensated. And you can agree what those terms are.
And, you know, people come to me and say, well, what should I write in my contract? It's like, whatever makes you happy, because if it makes you happy. Then you'll be a better person and you'll be a better supplier if you're contracting on terms that you like. Don't wait for somebody else to tell you how to live your life and run your business and everything else.
You can decide. And then if the client doesn't like it or if the supplier doesn't like it, you can negotiate, but at least know what your baseline is. You know, where would you really like to be at the end of that conversation with a new client or a new supplier? You know, build that in from the beginning and build it in when you're not in a hurry.
When you're not trying to do the last minute, Oh my God, we've got something happening in December and I haven't actually got that written down yet. Oops. Um, do it in January, you know, make a clean, clean sweep of it and just think about what you would like it to say so that it reflects your business, your values, your personality, you know, all the things, reasons you went into business can go into your contract.
There's no reason why you can't have personality in your contract, why you can't have nice tone of voice in your contract, why you can't have a little bit of humor. Even in your contract, there's no law against humor in legal documents. It's just that lawyers aren't great pretending to be humorous on behalf of someone else, shall we say?
Well, you know, I, I've seen that in very few, unfortunately, agreements where there is personality in there and it's talking just as if it's speaking to you and saying, here's what it is. Uh, something else that I see coming up is, uh, suppliers complaining that, uh, the, uh, customer didn't do something or wanted something different, but the contract said, right.
And they're going back to what the contract, and my first question is, is the contract clear? Is it the boiler plate language? Is it all these things? Uh, that's the first thing. And the second thing is the customer's always right. So can we just do what the customer wants? Is there any reason not to? Uh, one of my favorite phrases, I use it in my speaking, Mika Solomon said this on Forbes.
The answer is yes. Now, what was the question? Yeah. And so we're trying to make the customers happy. Um, one thing that I've recommended to people is if there are things that you need them to know, don't assume that in the fine print on the back of the agreement on page four and you know, line 102 that they're going to read it because we all just kind of scan and sign and we do those things is to separate that into 10 things you need to know.
And these are the things that actually happen, such as your bridal party can't bring their own alcohol. You know, to the venue, right? Yeah. Things like that. Because, um, you know, telling them, we know what, you know, I know that it's not accurate, but we remember 40 percent of what we hear and 60 percent of what we read and 38 percent of all statistics are made up.
So, you know, we know that. So telling them that when they signed up and then a year from now expecting them to remember that. It, it, you're, you're, you're at fault. You're at fault with this. So can you go to them and say, here's the seven things that you need to know and get that to them sooner? Get that on a separate piece of paper, get that on a separate thing.
I said it to them a week before and a month before, you know, we've just applied for a visa to go to France and they, you know, we turned up and they said, have you got this piece of paper? It's like, It's not on your checklist. Oh, but it's obvious. No, I've never done this before. So it's not obvious to me.
We have loads of people turning up without that piece of paper, in which case your process is at fault, not the client, not the customer. It's your process. So think through every time something goes slightly awry at an event, think, Oh, how can I stop that happening again? One of the things that I do in my contracts is always make sure the first page is basically a summary.
So, you know, for a wedding, it would be who's getting married. You know, You know, where are they getting married? What time does it start? What time am I needed? What time do I, does it finish? What time I am needed till? Those are not always the same question. You know, how much are you paying me? What are you expecting me to provide?
That kind of stuff. And then the next things are what I will do. And what you will do in list form so they've got it and it's the first thing they read because it kind of means if they get bored of reading your contract and with 500 words ish they don't get that bored to be quite honest but if they read nothing they read the stuff that you need them to know first.
That's the way that we write press articles, journal articles, the important stuff first. But contracts, we just scatter it anywhere under some random heading that the lawyers have chosen as a topic that makes sense to them. But it doesn't make sense to clients. So I'm with you. Make it really simple. And if you've got a checklist for your happy couple that you want them to do, send it to them.
And if you're really good, you'll collaborate with all the other suppliers and you'll have one single checklist for all the suppliers. That makes it clear exactly what that happy couple have to do before their event, to make sure that everyone gets the bits of information and the bits of the pie that they need on the day.
I mean, it's not part of wedding day. It's always cake, isn't it? But you know, well, you can have whatever you want. It could be cupcakes. It could be, it could be donuts. Uh, but so what you're describing is what I typically do in an email, which is, I literally put a heading. It says. Here's what I'm going to do.
And then there were bullet points. And then here's what you're going to do, right? And what they're going to do includes how much they're paying, when the deposit is, when the other payment or payments are due. And then at the bottom I put, uh, cause it's in an email, uh, is there anything on here that you would like me to adjust or should we move forward?
And if they come back and say let's move forward and I send them a link to the deposit and they pay the deposit, that's a deal. Ka ching. That, that's a deal. Yeah. I, I don't, I don't feel that a signature changes anything because they responded and they said, okay. Right. So the, the idea of signatures, which again, to this day, still people are sending me things I need to print out.
Oh. Sign.
Blind scan and return. No, no, no. I've said to people for, you know, before the pandemic, actually, it was really interesting because in the pandemic, it did change the way lawyers thought about getting stuff signed. Right. I just said, you know, if somebody, if it's simple enough, put it in the body's email and just say, hit reply with a hell yes.
You know, if that's your personality or else, yes, if it's, you know, but you know, if that's, that's good enough, you know, we don't need signatures. And actually a lot of the legal jurisdictions are now saying if you reply to an email with a yes or a hell yes, um, and that's an agreement, then that's good enough.
That is a signature for all practical purposes and all legal purposes. So, you know, let's stop this print, sign, scan and return. The more barriers we put. In a way, the less likely they are to say yes.
And the money, if they've paid the deposit and they've said, hell yes, there's a good enough deal there. So, so, so let's just recap what you're saying here.
Page one, the major details, right? The date, the time, the customer's name and contact information. When, when you're going to be there or not, what, what your deliverables are from a, at least from a higher level, right? We can get into the, the words, right? Like the caterers, you don't need the food, the menu on that page.
You need to, you need to have those things. You'll have that.
So they can tell that you're the caterer, not the photographer or the flowers or whatever on the
first page. Yeah. Right. So the first page really can be. Almost the same for everybody. It's just a couple little heading details that are going to change that and then getting into the weeds into those other things.
But then even the, I'm going to do the quotes here, air quotes, legalese, for those of you who are just listening, it doesn't have to be legalese. It just be headings that say, uh, what happened? What about cancellation? What about this? What about that? And I love to use questions because the number one way people search on Google and YouTube is questions anyway.
So why not ask the question and answer the question? It's almost like you see your contract. There's almost FAQs.
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that really annoys me because I do a lot of contract simplification for big corporates and often they have kind of data under loads of different clauses.
They have intellectual property clauses and they have confidentiality clauses and they have data protection clauses. It's like, well, how about we just have one title that says how we will share and use data? And people go, Oh yeah, well, we could do that. It's like, okay. So let's think about somebody reading this because one of the principles of plain language is that you can understand it when you read it and that's first time.
So you don't need to go back. You don't need to reread it. You don't need to have a cold, a hot coffee or a hot drink or whatever. Or a legal dictionary. Yeah. Or a legal dictionary. You can read it a first time, but also you can find what you need. easily and finding what you need means really good titles that just make sense to the person using it, not to lawyers who've been to law school and read the manual style of contract drafting or whatever, you know, they, you know, it needs to be useful to me, to you, to all the people involved and to people who are.
Time poor, busy and stressed and we know that on a wedding day and before a wedding day there's a lot of decisions to make, a lot of people to meet, a lot of contracts to sign. You want to make it easy as possible. Make their lives easy. This is a really celebratory occasion and I've yet to see a contract for a celebratory occasion that makes me go, yes!
Oh, I am so excited for this. They've made me feel like most contracts do. Oh, oh wow, yeah. Okay!
So, so, part of transparency, we know transparency breeds trust. Just imagine as a customer, if someone handed you a contract that you could actually read and they were happy to go through those titles with you and say, if you have any questions, here's what happens with this.
Here's what happens with that. If you'd like it, like some time to read it, that's fine. And if they're like, no, it's right there, there you go. And then they can sign off on it or sign off on it or however they're going to do that. Imagine how much better they're going to feel about you in this whole transaction.
The fact that. Thinking about weddings and events, you know, they don't happen tomorrow. They happen months, a year or more down the line. The trust factor in I'm giving you money. I'm signing this now while I feel even better about you now, instead of you handed me four pages of boilerplate, which I would imagine that.
A good percentage of people listening got their agreement from someone else, got a contract from someone else, download the boilerplate agreement or something like that, which is just perpetuating this whole, well, it it's in there. It must be good. I saw it on the internet. It must be true.
Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly. So. Just be clear, make it easy, let them read it the first time and say, yes, this is exactly, I understand exactly what this is, legal work, legalese is not necessary, and then don't punish the masses for the ills of a few, everything doesn't have to be in there, and Just make your customers happy.
And then when it goes South, make that customer happy. There's another episode I did, Sarah, which is, uh, what would you pay to make it go away? And it's about, you know, the negative review or not getting the negative review because you avoided that because you did something and how I've spoken about this and, uh, many times, yes, you need to give them something more than what you feel is necessary, but then the bad review doesn't happen.
The bad reputation doesn't happen. All those things don't happen. But, you know, be generous when things are going about to go right and be generous when things have just gone a little bit pear shaped. But, you know, one of the things you were saying is, you know, if you give it over to your client, you should be proud of what you're giving them.
Because you're proud of your business. If you're embarrassed by it, it reflects on your business. But if you don't understand what you've given them because you copied and pasted it off the internet, yadda yadda yadda, Then if they ask you a question, what are you going to say? Oh, well, I don't really understand, but you know, it's in there.
Is that a good enough reason to put something in? You know, that's not how we do anything else. That's like making a cake and go, well, somebody said kippers. Um, I don't know why, but I copied it off the internet. It seems to, you know, everybody else has got kippers in their cake. It's like, really? That doesn't make sense to anybody.
I think there may be a typo somewhere along the line. And then it just keeps, and it just keeps going.
And perpetuates, and I remember there's a joke about a woman who, um, when she was cooking a fish, she always used to cut, she cut the heads and, um, tail off it and cook the fish in the pan. And she said, well, why do you do that?
I said, oh, well, my mum used to do it. So she asked her mum, she said, well, you know, why do you do it? She goes, well, granny used to do it. And she turned around to say, to granny and said, you know, why do you do it? She said, well, my pan wasn't big enough. Perpetuating something never, never understood. Just because, and just because it's not good enough in the 21st century for make, building trust, building transparency, building decent
relationships.
Yeah, I heard a similar one. There was a, uh, a bench at a military base and there was somebody standing guard at the bench and he asked his supervisor, you know, why, why do I need to stand guard? He said, well, you know, when I was a grunt like you, I had to stand guard and we've always had some, well, why? And then it goes back and it goes back and it goes up three generations and they find this hundred year old general and, and you know, why we have somebody standing guard, he goes, is the paint still wet?
Yeah, same thing. We don't understand why. And that's it. And when I send someone an email that has all the things laid out and they say, can you send me an official agreement? I'm like, there it is. That's it. Like there it is. But their legal department or thing I've twice now been asked for my. liability insurance when someone is going to an event at another place, not my place, another place, and they want my liability insurance as if I was coming into their, their venue.
I'm like, I'm not coming to your place. Well, no, our, our, our people need that. It's like, fine, here it is. But yeah.
So sometimes we do have to reflect that other buyers have a tick list of things they want to see to feel comfortable or in order to get you on their supplier list. And sometimes we have to play the game.
Um, and it's not great because it doesn't make sense sometimes for some of those questions to be asked. And yeah, I've had the same. Um, but you know, we know that that's a small proportion of the people we do business with and we just have to say, okay, I'll play the game for that small proportion, but for everyone else.
Let's do it in a way which is fun and celebratory and just positive. I'm really I'm such a fan of positivity in contracts and I did an A to Z of contracts, which was all positive adjectives about them being magnanimous or joyful or kind or whatever. Because I think there's too much negativity associated with what is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
It might be a business relationship, but fundamentally, it should be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Right.
All right. Last question. Occasionally, uh, people tell me, and this used to happen to me when I was in the corporate world, is the customer's lawyer, or the customer is a lawyer, and they start redlining things in your contract terms.
So the redlining, meaning they go in and they cross out, there are things that they're not going to agree to. What would you say?
Well, I'd always ask them why. Because sometimes it's a style issue. They don't like the way you've written it, but most often it's not reflecting the commercial transaction. And I've been in negotiations where the lawyers didn't get the full picture from the client and they went in and the client, the suppliers are going, well, that's not what we agreed.
And that's not what we agreed. And that's a really awkward conversation. So sometimes it's about the commercial deal and sometimes it's just lawyers being lawyers. Well, the lawyers being lawyers, but you can kick into the long grass and go, I'm not playing that game. Let's just do a The commercial stuff, then that's, that's them changing the deal.
That's where you want to go. Well, hang on, that's not the deal I've agreed. This is a deal I've agreed and you've not reflected it correctly in this contract. Don't redline it because that's what I've written in. So, you know, there are different nuances to why, um, redlining happens. Some of it is just a power play.
Um, but it's a power play on clauses which you know aren't that important. Then you can concede, which is good. But the problem is if you've actually been through this process of drafting a decent contract, there is nothing in there that was not important because you've already made those decisions. Okay.
That that's where I wanted to get to. So if it's just the power play stuff and it's not a big deal, let them have it. Just half of it. If it's on page one, that's what you're agreeing with the customer. That's different. That's not a lawyer redlining it. Now that's just changing the terms and you need to have a discussion with the customer.
If, if it's, um, uh, other things again in the, again, it's not the legalese anymore, but it's the, let's call it page two and beyond things like that. You make a judgment call, you know, um, you know, do you need to power play back to them or you can, or can you say, you know what? Okay. That's fine. Not a big deal.
Let's move forward. Cause they're right. Some human nature things that say some people just need to get something back. They can't accept it the way it is. They need to get something back. I have this when I talk about discounting and negotiating. There are certain cultures where it doesn't matter about affordability.
If they didn't get something back, they don't feel like they got a deal. So always have something if that's the world that you play in. But okay, so redlining, if it's not a big deal, let them have it. If it. Again, not legal advice here. Talk to your lawyers, but use your judgment on this. Um, and if it's actually affecting it in a way that would harm you, you can say no.
You can say no, because I'm not saying power play back, but it's your, listen, it's your sandbox and your toys. And if they want to play in it, they have to play by your rules. I'll never, ever accept the explanation that all the other people have signed up to this. Because I don't care what other people sign up to, because it's not about them.
This is a two way deal between two parties. If the two parties aren't interested, we don't have to do the deal. We can learn to walk away from the really terrible deals, because that will give us the time, the energy, and the enthusiasm for the really positive deals. But you know what? If they want to, if they want to play that game, well, sometimes I'm out.
Right. Right. That's something we need to walk away. So Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. 500 words. Where would people find out more about you?
So I'm on LinkedIn. I have a website, 500 words. co. uk. Um, and I have books, but they're really relevant to people in the construction sector, which is my specialist expertise.
Okay. But if they did want to follow you on LinkedIn, they can find you there. We'll have all that in the show notes. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom with us and your humor. Thank you so much.
You're welcome, Alan. It's been a pleasure.
I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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