52 – 5-Minute Mentoring: Do You Need A Contract To Sell Art or Art Commissions?

In this episode of the 5-Minute Mentor, I answer the question about whether or not you need a contract when selling art or commissions to your clients. A big thanks to Dawn Paul for submitting this week’s question.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Have you ever wondered whether you need a contractor or not to do commission work or even sell your artwork? It can be really confusing for folks, but I'm going to jump in to a lot of those details today on 5-Minute Mentoring. Have you ever wanted to have someone in your life who you could ask real questions about your art, your business, and even your walk with the Lord? Well, that's exactly what we do every Friday here on Five Minute Mentoring, where I answer one question from one of my awesome podcast listeners in order to help you start really thriving as the artist you know God created you to be. Well, hey, everybody. Happy Friday and welcome to 5-Minute Mentoring. Listen, I know you might be a little nervous, but we're jumping into the whole thing of contracts. And do I need one? Do I not? Do you have to call the contractor? Can you call it something else? And is it binding? All those sort of things. So I want to jump into this just with a little bit of a disclaimer. First of all, realize I'm not an attorney, so this is not legal advice. And it's always good, whatever you decide to do, any kind of form, contract, letter of understanding, run it by a local attorney. Let them look at it and make sure that you're covered in everything that you do. But all that being said, I'm going to let you know some of the things that I do today that have proven over the years to be pretty good practice for me. And again, you can use those as the basis for something that you're developing for your own business in concert with your attorney, just to make sure that you're covered in your county, state, country, local area, wherever you may be. Now, Dawn Paul, one of our podcast listeners and also who's a part of the Created to Thrive mentoring program, has the question today. So here's Dawn.

SPEAKER_00: 1:46

Hi, Matt. It's Dawn Paul from dmpaul.com here. I was curious about art contracts. Do you have your clients sign them? If so, what goes in an artist contract? And is it awkward signing? to have your clients sign them. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08

Well, thanks, Don. That was an awesome question. I know a lot of people are probably wondering about, you know, do they need contracts or not? And I started using something years ago. Actually, a business coach of mine gave me the terminology for it. And instead of a contract, I call it a letter of understanding. First of all, it kind of softens the blow, if you will. It kind of lets people know that, you know, we're just trying to get on the same page here as opposed to this is a contract. You know, you have to follow the rules. And if you don't, I'm going to take you to court and all that kind of stuff. It just kind of lets everybody know that, hey, I'm a responsible business owner. I want to make sure that I can serve you well. And so I want to put everything in writing so that we can make sure that we're on the same page. On my letter of understanding, and again, I'm probably a little more casual than some people would want to be, a little more formal than others would want to be. So you have to kind of find your space in that. But in my letter of understanding, typically what I do with my commission work, which is, again, primarily where I'm going to a contract or a letter of understanding. What I'll do is I'll have an initial conversation with a client. Typically, I've gone out to their house. We've talked about the project and that sort of thing. And I come back and do a drawing for that project so that I can get just a beginning sketch of what it's going to look like. That gives me the ability to understand how complicated is the project? What's it going to take? I kind of get a budget in my head. I get a description material all of that. So that lets me get everything that I need together in my mind. And I put that together in a narrative format, all right, that goes to the client as an email. And I don't even call it a letter of understanding. I just send an email, all right, to the client after we've met initially. And I'm usually like, hey, Ms. So-and-so and Mr. So-and-so, I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to come out to your house and talk to you about the project that we discussed. I've had some time to think about it and do a sketch and I'll attach that drawing. And then I'll say, here's what I was thinking or here's what I'd like to propose. And then I do a series of bullet points. Now, the first bullet point that I do is always the description for the project. And that's just, again, here's what I'm going to do. Here's the materials I'm going to use, you know, the different accent colors or anything that we talked about specifically that the client's looking for. The second thing that I do is talk about the time frame all right based on what we've talked about i'll say this project will take six weeks eight weeks usually i'll say approximately and um and i'll give them a firm date for the deadline always always always always give yourself plenty of time plenty of wiggle room in there so that if something comes up family emergency another project takes longer you've got some time it's listen nobody ever complains about getting anything early but people will lose their lunch if it's late. So you always want to, you know, under promise, over deliver. But I give them a firm time frame for the project. And then I also give them a price, but I don't call it the price. I say your investment. And I say, you know, your investment for this project will be, you know, X dollars. If you would like to get started with this project, I request a deposit, a 50% deposit in the amount of blah, blah, blah. And I put that there with tax and everything. All right. And then. With that, that gives them the ability to know what the full price is. And I tell them then, if you want to move forward with the project, please print out a copy of this email, sign it at the bottom as your approval, and then enclose a deposit check for the amount that I said in there. That then, usually what happens is somebody's going to look at that and they'll either have some questions they'll get back to me with, or they'll just send the check and then i've got a check a signature a full description of what's going on and that is as much of a letter of understanding as i ever do now a few other things that i always put in there um Are you going to deliver it or are you going to ship it? All right. You got to know that. Is the shipping going to be the responsibility of the client or are you going to cover that? Typically, I would say the client covers that. Most of the time, if something's local or even within a couple of hours, I would say always deliver the work. But just because, you know, that That gives you the opportunity to really connect with the client, take pictures of the piece in the home, that sort of thing, which is really what continues to build your brand and build referral possibilities. The other things that you want to really think about, especially if you're doing a lot of 2D work like painting or photography or anything like that, really anything, clay, jewelry, fiber, whatever, you want to have in there how many revisions are included in this price. All right? Like, you know, I'll do three revisions based on your feedback after I get through the project. Or... You also want to let them know, or probably and, not or, what are the cancellation terms? Do you have a non-refundable deposit or is your deposit refundable? If somebody wants to pull out in the middle of the project, what do you do? You need to spell that out in the letter of understanding. And typically, I would say that your deposit would be non-refundable, that you do a maximum of three revisions and anything else would be negotiated beyond that. because it would be additional work. All right. Again, that just puts everybody on the same terms so that you know what's going on. Then the other thing I would recommend, and again, all of this, you want to run by your attorney to make sure that you're covered legally in the area that you're in. But you also want to put something in there that makes sure that, you know, you retain the copyright to your work. That way, if you want to make prints, you want to put the photographs in a book, you want to do something like that. It's very clear that you have the right to do that as the person that creates the artwork, okay? But listen, contracts and letters of understanding, they don't have to be complicated. Just think about it as... you know, the old adage, good fences make good neighbors. You know, you're just trying to get everything on one page so that it's really easy for people to understand. And 99% of the time, people will just sign it and move on. That's been my experience at least. And, you know, when you treat that as the normal part of how you do business and don't get all freaked out and nervous about it, but you just say, yeah, to get started, I'll just draft a letter of understanding to make sure we're on the same page. If you'll just sign that, it's Send it back with a deposit. We'll get started. It just becomes part of how you do business. And listen, it makes you look like a really great artist that knows what you're doing. All right. Well, Don, thank you so much for that question. And listen, if you're listening today and you're like, man, I'd love to have Matt answer my question. All you have to do is go to matttommymentoring.com forward slash podcast, and you can record a voicemail question for me right there. We get these all the time. We go through them and try to pick out the best questions that have the most impact and applicability for everybody that's listening. So we would love to have your question featured. So go do that today and send us a voicemail and I'll definitely, I'll listen to it. And who knows, maybe you might be featured on one of the Friday podcasts. Also, please, please, please go to iTunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and make sure that you subscribe and also review the podcast. It really helps when the podcast's software, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, whatever. When they see people reviewing it and liking it and subscribing, they share it with more people and it really helps us get the word out about what God's doing here on the Thriving Christian Artist podcast.