Introduction

Welcome to the Simplifying Legal podcast, brought to you by Businessese. I’m your host, Danielle Liss.

Many years ago, someone told me I was the least lawyer-y lawyer she’d ever met because I helped make legal easier to understand. To this day, it’s one of the best compliments I’ve received in my professional life.

If you’ve ever felt legal was too scary, too overwhelming, too complicated, or just plain incomprehensible, you’re not alone. The Simplifying Legal podcast was created to help. 

In each episode, we’ll do a deep dive into a legal topic and give you concrete next steps so you can apply it to your business. 

My goal is for you to walk away from each episode thinking, oh, that was easier than I thought it would be.

Let’s get started. 

Episode Content

Hey there, I’m Danielle. Welcome to episode 27 of Simplifying Legal for Small Business Owners. Today, we’re talking about how to protect yourself when adding a new service. 

Disclaimer: As always, before we get into today’s topic, a quick disclaimer. This podcast is meant to provide you with legal information only. It’s not legal advice and does not create any type of attorney-client relationship between us. Please don’t take any action without consulting your lawyer first. 

Now, let’s get started with today’s discussion. 

Many of the service based business owners that I work with offer packages of similar services. For example, a graphic designer may offer a package for Instagram graphics and another package for YouTube Thumbnails. They may have a package that brings together a number of different social channels. 

Usually, this means that their business is relatively set around a certain model. Even though the packages might change, they are likely able to use a very similar client agreement for everything, just swapping out those packages. 

But what happens when you want to add a new service to your business? Something that might not align exactly with your other services. 

In this episode, I’ll review four steps that you can use when you are adding a new service to help you ensure that you are protecting the legal side of your business in light of the new offer. 

Identifying Differences in Your Services

The first step is pretty easy, but it’s also critical since the other steps will build on it. You need to identify how this service differs from your other services. 

This may seem very basic, but it’s important to consider how the new service is different and what has changed. Think of this as a miny audit of the services. Once you’ve completed this step, it makes the others much easier. 

Consider   

• How are the services alike? 
• How do they differ? 

I’ll dive into most of these in the contract section, but some of the most common differences come up are: 

• First, different types of payment structures
• Next, a different location for the services. For example, moving from in-person to virtual. 
• Next, if you did 1:1 services in the past and you are now adding a group option. 
• Next, adding a course type of element. For example, if you are a coach and you move to group programs, you may also give access to some modules, which you didn’t do in your 1:1 services. 
• Next, adding team members and moving away from personally serving your clients. 
• Last, and probably most obvious, a brand new type of service that you haven’t offered before. To go back to the graphic designer above, if they are now offering video editing, that might be quite a bit different than the work they did creating graphics. 

Updating Your Client Agreement

After you identify the differences in the services, it’s time to move to Step 2: Make the necessary changes to your client agreement. 

If you have a client agreement in place, you will want to ensure that it is still going to work for the new service. In this step, I’m going to review some of the most common areas that you may need to change. 

First, look at your payment section. This is always one of the most important parts of any service agreement. Is there a new payment structure that goes with the new service? 

• For example, if you are moving from a project-based model with a one-time fee that is paid in full prior to starting the services to an ongoing retainer model, how does that impact the payments? What period of time will the client prepay? Will the client pay on the same day of each month? 
• If you are adding a higher-priced service, do you offer payment plans? Be very specific about the terms of your payment plan. 

Next, look at your termination provision. Does it still work for your new service? Some things to consider are whether or not you have minimum time commitments, such as a 90 day period where the client cannot cancel. Or, do you require a different notice period? 

Next, are you adding any type of newly recorded content or a membership component along with the new service? For example, if you are adding a new group program that will have access to modules and handouts through a service like Kajabi, you should add something in your agreement. Advise clients that they will be responsible for creating an account and that will be the location for accessing certain parts of the services.

Next, consider your intellectual property. Will the new service give your clients access to any of your intellectual property, like a course component? If so, be sure to add information on how they can use that content. For example, should it say that they can only use the handouts or modules for their personal use only or are they allowed to share it? 

Along the same lines, when it comes to intellectual property, if you are creating content for your clients, what will their ownership of that content be? If it differs from your past contract, make sure you consider how it should be addressed since ownership of content can be a heavily negotiated contract component. 

Of course, you will also want to review your scope of work to ensure that you are providing all the details of the new service. As always, make sure those deliverables are clearly stated. 

Next, consider whether any of the logistics are changing. 

• If you work with clients directly, where are you working with them? Is it changing from local to remote visits? If so, this may be a big piece to address. You may shift your agreement from office policies to discussing technology platforms, like zoom. 
• If you are changing your packages to offer something with more 1:1 meetings, do you need to add a cancellation policy and procedure? 

Next, is anything changing in your communication policies? Can they still reach you in the same way? Are the business hours the same? For example, if you are adding Voxer support and you haven’t done that in the past, make sure you consider what you want that to look like so you can properly address it in your agreement. 

Next, with the new service, are there any boundaries that you need to set with your clients? For example, will there be different turnaround times? Think through what could come up in the new service that differs from your existing agreement and make sure you address it. 

Next, one of the bigger changes to your client agreement would be changing from a one-on-one client relationship to a group program. There, you will want to address not only your relationship with the client, but also the relationship with the group members. How can they interact and what are your policies? This can be incredibly important if you have a facebook group or forum where the group members will interact. For more information on group program agreements, check out episode 19. 

When updating your client agreement, it’s really important to go back to step 1 and look at all the ways you identified that the services will differ. Then, you can make sure that they are all addressed in your contract. 

If you want more information on client agreements, check out episode 18 on client agreements for service business owners. 

Reviewing Your Website Policy

Now, we’re ready to talk about Step 3, which is to review your website policies to see if you should change anything. 

As you consider adding the new service, also consider if any of your website policies need to change. Depending on the service that you are adding and the way you have your business structured, you may not have any changes here, but it’s an important step to consider, just in case. 

Terms & Conditions

If your services are governed by website terms and conditions, rather than a separate client agreement, you will likely need to consider how this will impact your terms and if you need to make updates. In this case, you can use the questions I reviewed in Step 2 to review what may need to be changed. 

Privacy Policy

Next, will the new service impact your privacy policy? Your privacy policy lets your website visitors know what information you collect, how you use it, and how that information may be shared. 

For an example of when you might need to change your privacy policy, I’ll go back to the example I gave earlier about adding a new group program and using something like Kajabi to include modules. If you are sharing information with a new third-party provider, then you should update your privacy policy to disclose this. 

Disclaimer

Additionally, in some cases, you may want to update your disclaimer language. Your disclaimer helps you protect your business for liability based upon how people use your content. Think of any health related website you’ve visited and they will always say something like the content on this website is for informational purposes and is not meant to be medical advice. 

If you have a disclaimer on your site, consider whether or not the new service will impact the information you’ve outlined there. 

Here’s an example of when this may come up. In this case, the business is owned by a registered dietitian who currently works one-on-one with people providing individualized medical nutrition therapy or nutrition counseling. If there is a new service for a nutrition education program, you may want to add something to your disclaimer. In this example, it may be a simple change that states in the group program, you will be serving as a coach, rather than as a registered dietitian providing individualized nutrition advice, and then they may need to talk to a licensed professional if they need further assistance. 

For more information on website policies, check out episode 4, which discusses how to protect your website. If you use website terms instead of a separate client agreement, you may also want to check out episode 5, which focuses on how to protect your ecommerce site. 

Protecting Intellectual Property

Step 4: Determine if there is any intellectual property that you need to protect. 

Whenever you are adding a service, consider if you need to do anything to protect your intellectual property. I have a number of episodes on intellectual property coming soon, but I’ve talked about some aspects in Episode 22, which discussed protecting your content. 

First and foremost, if you are giving your new service or program a distinctive name, please please please do at least a cursory search of registered trademarks. If you go to uspto.gov, then click on trademarks, you will see the option to search trademarks. Do a review to make sure that your new name isn’t going to infringe on someone else’s trademark. If you want a more thorough search, which I do recommend, then it may be time to talk to a lawyer. 

If the new service is a distinctive name, consider whether or not you want to get a trademark on that name. This helps you to protect your brand and prevents other marks that may cause a likelihood of confusion. As I said, I’ll be doing a deep dive into trademarks in an upcoming episode so there will be a lot more to discuss about this topic. 

As I mentioned earlier, if you are sharing any of your intellectual property with your clients, please ensure that you are addressing how they can use it in your client agreement. 

I love when businesses are able to diversify and add new services. Before you launch, it’s important to consider these steps, but please don’t view them as a hurdle. For many service based business owners, their existing client agreement is sufficient or may only need a few changes to be ready for the new programming. 

Action Steps

Now let’s shift and talk about today’s action steps. Since this episode is set out in steps, I’ll list them again as a recap. 

1. Step one: identify how your new service differs from your new offering. 
2. Step two: based on the differences, what needs to be updated in your client agreement? 
3. Step three: do you need to make any updates to your website policies? 
4. Step four: next, consider how you will protect your intellectual property. 
5. Last, as always, if you have questions on how to modify your client agreement for a new service, please talk to a lawyer. This is something I work on regularly with my legal clients, so I’d love to chat with you to see if Liss Legal would be a good fit to help you with your contracts. Visit lisslegal.com for more information. 

Thanks for joining me for today’s episode. 

I’d love to connect with you outside of the show. Visit Businessese at businessese.com. To find show notes for today’s episode, visit businessese.com/podcast.

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