The Making of a Home-Based Franchise – Part IV
Tags: Business, Franchise, Home-Based, The Work at Home Woman, Well Styled, Work at Home
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By Michelle Rodriguez
You would think that finding a Small Business Attorney would be as easy as putting out an email to your business referral groups and have 3-4 emails back with a:
“…call so and so, she helped me out tremendously, and wouldn’t go to anyone else!”
Nope, not the case at all. In fact, I had to send out the email request twice before I received a response. And by “a” response I’m being quite literal, I received ONE email reply to my request. Which made me feel 1) concerned that no one can refer me to a Small Business Attorney, and 2) intimidated that this was my first road block toward expansion of Well Styled. The experience didn’t get any better from there, because from that one email with three Small Business Attorney recommendations, my experience went as follows:
Attorney #1 – Called, left 3 messages, never heard from her.
Attorney #2 – Check out her website which had a ton of fantastic information regarding her knowledge, background, even had a couple of tips. I had a good feeling about it, as it seemed that she discussed the warnings and do’s and dont’s of creating developmental software (which at the time I was, but more on that later), trademarks, licensing, etc. All of the things I had questions on. Went to the attorney’s “Contact Us” page, sent her an email explaining my scenario and asked if she could meet with me. The email response went along the lines of …
if you want to meet with me, I charge $325 per hour for legal work and charge a minimum of one hour for the first consult. If you want to schedule an appointment please send available dates and times for next week.
While I did appreciate her no-fluff response, my heart and budget nearly went into schock when I learned of the hourly cost. Is this what I should expect of all Small Business Attorneys? How many hours will this process take me, and when it’s all said and done, how will I possibly pay for these legal fees?! Needless to say, at this point, I was getting very discouraged. So discouraged, that I didn’t want to continue with the last attorney recommended to me…but, fortunately, I did.
Attorney #3 – I was a little hesitant to contact the last attorney recommended to me because of my previous experiences and also confused as to why there was only a phone number to contact him. No email. No fancy website. Who doesn’t have a website these days? Called, left a message, and within the hour received a call back from Kent Scott. I spoke to Kent for about 20 minutes on the phone, explained my scenario, and immediately felt at ease with his questions for me. Kent even gave me a couple of scenarios to learn if he was the right match for me and not the other way around. So far, so good, but the magic question and answer was yet to come…how much for your services? “Look, Michelle, I understand that you are a small business owner and I want to be able to help you out and will charge what is fair for both of us…I charge $195 per hour. “ That was on track in order for me to move forward with this process. The following are points discussed during that meeting, which I feel are good to share with anyone else curious in expanding their business through Independent Contractors.
- Business Model Confirmation – It was definitely confirmed through my legal expert, Kent Scott, that Well Styled would work best in an Independent Contractor model vs. Franchising. Mainly due to costs and legal fees that came with setting up a business as a franchise through the Federal Trade Commission.
- Legal Docs – When moving forward with an Independent Contractor model, there are a couple of items needed which a Small Business Attorney can be of tremendous help with, such as: Non-Compete contract which basically outlines the items you want or don’t want the Independent Contractor to do with your company…your baby, i.e. use of logo/brand; non-solicitation; what I will train and for how long I will do that training for; what tangible items the Independent Contractor will get for their money spent. Basically, anything that a business owner does or does not want, you discuss this with your Small Business Attorney and she will do her legal “magic” to make it official looking and sounding.
- Copyrights, Trademarks, etc. – As much as I want to say I understand the area of legal protection marks, I always seem to be confused with the whole thing. When you meet with your small business attorney, talk to her about all of the dynamics going on with your company and ask how much of it truly needs to be protected by these. For the Well Styled scenario, Kent recommended that we look into protecting any developmental “tools” that are business specific to the customer/business model of my particular business. Further, since I was going to be selling this model to others, it was highly recommended that I protect the brand, logo, name that I was going to specifically going to state on the do’s and dont’s of its use.
- Sole Proprietor vs. LLC – Another area that can be kooky. However, on this one, I do feel pretty good. Kent recommends that when expanding you convert to an LLC. Kent explained that he provides a general fee for converting a company into an LLC, which includes the following: application submission; submission of your company in a ton of name and surname combinations to make certain that you are in-the-clear of duplication; changes all business accounts into the proper LLC format. There are other legal items that cross-checks to make sure it’s all done correctly. Again, to make sure that one’s name and company is legally in-line. NOTE: This is a process that doesn’t require an attorney’s help. In fact, many of my fellow entrepreneur pals have done this process successfully on their own. For me, I prefer to have a legal professional handle it. I already have enough on my plate to think about and worry if I’ve done something legally correct. Just the thought of me taking that route gives me a bit of anxiety. :)
- Policies Manual / Handbook – Here it was again, the Policies Manual/Handbook which was first mentioned and recommended as a must by my business consultant – Mike Pagani, and now being reinforced by a legal expert. During this meeting, it really sunk in that it was imperative that before I moved on with any legal documentation, I have a Policies Manual and Handbook. Which makes sense, as this would be the road map toward creating the Do’s and Dont’s of any legal contracts between me and the Well Styled Independent Contractor.
- Live vs. Online – During this process of finding a legal expert, I was VERY tempted to leave it all in the hands of an online service. I mean, how wonderful would it be to send your information to the land of “web” and POOF, like magic, have a legal document ready to go in your InBox. After meeting with Kent, I learned that while that solution does sound like a wonderful one, every state has it’s specific legal rules and highly recommends that a business owner meet with a live attorney in their state at least once to make sure the online solution is the best one for your particular business.
- Fees – Toward the end of my meeting with Kent, I felt very much at ease with the way Kent explained each answer to all my questions and had made my decision to move forward with him as the Well Styled legal expert. In order for Kent to move forward on any documentation/legal process he required a retainer fee of $1,000 from which he would pull from toward his services. Once my account was at the $250 level, Kent would then ask me to fill it up again. For me, this method seemed fair and it worked with my personal budget model. Every attorney is different, so make certain that you understand the fee structure of the attorney you meet with.
After my meeting with Kent Scott, you may assume that I quickly hopped on my laptop and began on my Policies Manual/Handbook and provided Kent with a $1,000 check. Although that seems very Michelle-esque, the honest answer is that NOTHING HAPPENED. I had gone from go, go, go let’s get this thing off-the-ground NOW to, wait a minute, stop everything, I need to think about this decision…this BIG decision before me. If I move forward with this Independent Contractor model how will this 1) affect my family time, 2) how “crazy” will this project make me? Can I handle this “crazy” right now? 3) how will this change what I’m currently doing with my client base? 4) what changes will need to take place to my branding/website/tag line, etc. to make this work? 5) how much will this cost?
I needed to take a brake, take the information before me and incubate, and incubate I did.
Have you missed part of our series? Catch up now:
The Making of a Home-Based Franchise Part III
The Making of a Home-Based Franchise Part II
Franchising via a Non-franchiser: Am I Being Punked? Part I
Learn more about Michelle and Well Styled
3 Responses to “The Making of a Home-Based Franchise – Part IV”
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November 28th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
What an excellent testimonial about Kent. He is portrayed as a lawyer who cares about his client.
There is nothing better than this kind of recommendation.
.-= Dee´s last blog ..Lawyers Looking for Jobs =-.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
This is such a great post, thanks for the great info. and I am so excited to read more
February 5th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Thanks for sharing. I might look into the independent contractor thing one day. Interesting…