176. Legal Agreements: Integrating Your Values and Creating Consent with Autumn Witt Boyd
Expanding the Context of Consent
Most of us understand the concept of consent when it comes to bodily autonomy and permission. We know what it means to agree to or decline physical interaction.
But consent has implications in many areas of our lives and businesses, and it can become confusing to consider how a broader definition of consent impacts the actions we take in relationship to each other.
We encounter questions of consent in the legal sphere of our lives more frequently than we might recognize, from checking terms and conditions boxes to signing contracts, with impacts to our businesses from initial sales conversations to client satisfaction.
Autumn Witt Boyd joins guest host India Jackson for a discussion of how consent applies to legal agreements and contracts that we make in our businesses and how approaching your agreements through the lens of consent impacts your relationships with your clients for the better.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How the cultural conversation about consent has increased and expanded
Why getting informed consent for your agreements improves your client relationships
Why it’s key to get consent and set expectations through values-forward community and group agreements
How to handle an agreement you didn’t consent to
Where to begin auditing your contracts and agreements for values and consent
Building Solid Legal Foundations for Entrepreneurs
Autumn Witt Boyd graduated in the top 10% of her class from Vanderbilt University Law School (a Top 20 law school) before ultimately landing as a senior associate at the premier copyright litigation law firm for photographers and stock photography agencies.
After spending the first 10 years of her career battling over copyrights and business issues in courtrooms across the U.S., Autumn left BigLaw behind to start the AWB Firm in 2015 so she could spend her days helping entrepreneurs build, protect, and scale their businesses the right way, instead of fighting with other lawyers.
When it comes to intellectual property and business strategies, Autumn is known as a thought leader in the online business community, working with influencers like Amy Porterfield, Chalene Johnson, Corinne Crabtree, and many more, to help them avoid costly legal mistakes while scaling their businesses. She’s also passionate about making sure solopreneurs and side hustlers who may just be getting started have access to the type of protection they need to build their business on a solid legal foundation with customizable contract templates.
Autumn is mom to twin boys, Sam and Tyson, and daughter Vivian. Her husband David is also an entrepreneur — he runs a construction estimating company, Quantify, LLC, and invests in real estate development projects. She definitely knows a thing or two about juggling!
Autumn loves to socialize (over coffee, or better yet, a glass of champagne!), read a good novel, monogram and put glitter on anything that sits still long enough, travel to new places, finish half marathons, and spend time outdoors.
Autumn is licensed to practice in Tennessee.
Disclosure and Disclaimer
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, guest host India Jackson (she/her) begins with the disclosure that guest Autumn Witt Boyd (she/her) is the legal service provider for Pause on the Play® and its brands (Erica Courdae, LLC and Flaunt Your Fire®) , and that they have an affiliate relationship with the AWB firm.
She also emphasizes that nothing mentioned in this episode constitutes legal advice.
Autumn agrees and says that if you are in need of legal advice, she strongly recommends reaching out to your own lawyer, so you’re getting the best advice for your specific circumstances.
Increasing the Discussion of Consent
Autumn says that as the parent of three young children, she thinks about bodily autonomy and consent a lot and is using resources like the book Consent (for Kids!): Boundaries, Respect, and Being in Charge of You to teach her kids those concepts.
But like a lot of people, she hadn’t really considered what consent means in other aspects of life until India and Erica approached her about having a discussion of consent in the legal aspects of doing business.
She notes that there has been an increasing amount of discussion of consent in marketing, in terms of consenting to a sales conversation or expectations after giving an email address in exchange for a freebie.
And she says consent certainly applies when you’re at a contract stage and someone is paying for goods or services.
India adds that in her experience a conversation around consent of any kind didn’t exist in her childhood, and many people who are roughly in her age group have said the same thing.
Autumn agrees that it wasn’t part of the conversation in her childhood either, and she thinks the cultural shift began to happen in the 90s with highly-publicized sexual harassment cases and the way laws began to change around sexual harassment and assault at that time, when she was a young teen. She also recalls reading teen magazines at around that time that were beginning to discuss things like unwanted touching without explicitly using terms like consent.
Now, she says she witnesses frequent discussion of bodily autonomy and consent, particularly when it comes to children, but she also acknowledges that there is an element of self-selection in terms of whom she follows and listens to.
Check Boxes and Contracts
In terms of how we interact with consent in the legal sphere, Autumn says it’s likely most frequent that consent comes into play with contracts and agreements, and even checking off the “I’ve agreed to these terms and conditions” box on forms.
India notes that so often, while that does constitute a legal agreement, most of us don’t actually read those terms and conditions.
Autumn says to fulfill the legal obligation of consent a copy of the terms should be provided, either with a link or a scroll box, and it’s up to the consumer to read it or not. For lower-priced items or services, she thinks it’s generally acceptable to leave that responsibility on the consumer through a check box.
With her clients who may be selling higher-priced items like coaching packages or commissions for artwork, she does discuss guiding their clients through the agreement in some fashion, whether as part of a call or in writing, to ensure that they get informed consent for the agreement or contract.
“As a service provider or a seller of services or products, part of doing a good job and making sure that you are giving good customer service from the very beginning, is making sure that the other person actually understands all of your rules or how you work with people.”
Autumn says that people may neglect the process of getting informed consent because they just want to close the sale, but in her experience, many issues that come up with customers later can be traced back to ensuring that the program or service was actually a good fit.
“Slowing down feels bad, you might sell less, but you’re probably gonna do a better job and have happier customers and much less problems on the back end.”
Products where Autumn says the checkbox is acceptable are things where the risk to both seller and purchaser is low, which would be items like ebooks, self-guided digital products, templates, etc where the purchase price and likelihood of issues with the product itself are lower.
She is always an advocate of providing some kind of agreement or terms as a matter of protecting your intellectual property.Creating transparency in the purchasing process doesn’t have to mean putting up major barriers to sales.
Autumn says at her firm, they have used automations to begin the client education process so that they come into initial meetings with some level of understanding of the process. She says that they found, after some trial and error, that including a short video outlining their process, in addition to the written version, was helpful to that effort. They also use a short slide presentation in their sales calls.
They’ve added these different versions of education to make it easier for clients of different learning styles to engage with the outline so they can decide if it’s a good fit or not.
“By the time you start working with [us], you have had the opportunity to learn about this process like six different times…You almost have to bang people over the head with it a little bit. But I think, again, you’re getting real informed consent. People are going to come in knowing what they’re signing up for. It’s not gonna be unclear.”
Infusing Your Agreements with Your Values
As we continue to experience significant cultural shifts, particularly with conversations about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Autumn says that as an ethics-forward firm, AWB Firm has been fortunate not to have their clients really regress to their old practices after making a show of addressing DEI.
“Once you update your contracts to reflect different values, I’m not seeing people going back and putting harmful things back in.”
And from her side, Autumn says she has become more outspoken with her clients. “In the past I might have [said], of course the client is the boss…Now, if I see someone doing things, something that I think is unethical or is kind of pushing that boundary, I will say, you know, at the end of the day, it’s your decision, but I really think you need to do X, Y, Z.”
And the firm has ended relationships with clients who are not in alignment with their values.
Autumn has also updated the language of the contract templates she offers to reflect her values, in collaboration with Erica and India.
One template in particular that they worked on was creating a diversity rider for speaking engagements, which Autumn noticed people asking for but she couldn’t find an existing document.
India says one of the reasons she was excited to work on that project was that she was witnessing people declining speaking engagements for lack of diversity, getting verbal promises from event organizers that they would update their rosters, agreeing to speak, then being unable to cancel their appearance when nothing actually changed.
Autumn adds, “We wanted to put some teeth into those verbal agreements.”
Values in Community Agreements and Codes of Conduct
India says they also collaborated on ways to include diversity and values elements to community and group program agreements and codes of conduct and making those expectations as explicit as possible.
Autumn also notes that they created terms around coaches and mastermind leaders creating separate spaces for certain subgroups in order to hold space for issues that affect groups differently. She says this issue started coming up particularly in summer 2020, with people who were not included in those separate spaces complaining about special treatment.
Creating specific agreements around offering different things to different groups within a container allowed coaches and leaders to say, “you can get upset about it, but you can’t get a refund, or you don’t get any additional services special services just because some other group did…I just was really appreciative of seeing that real life example and being able to then put it in the contract where we’re just not going to have that be a big question marker. We’re gonna put it in the contract so it’s very clear.”
Autumn says it’s also true that so many more businesses are being much more forward and transparent with their values, which makes it much easier as a consumer to engage with businesses that are in alignment with your own values.
“I know if I’m gonna join a community space, I wanna get a feel for what the vibe is gonna be and who else is gonna be in there, and what their policies and procedures are going to be. And just so that I know, am I okay with that? Is that a kind of space that I wanna be in? So having those things in your contract that people can review beforehand is one way that people can kind of see what kind of space is this going to be?”
Another aspect of legal agreements that Autumn says she has witnessed evolving in recent years is the use of non-disparagement clauses. These clauses used to be routine and typically prevent people from speaking ill of the person or business they contracted with.
“But now people are talking about what a damaging effect they can have on people giving true and accurate accounts of what they experienced with different businesses or in different programs.”
There are instances where Autumn still uses them, but she typically advises against them in places like affiliate contracts. And she notes that they are illegal in customer contracts, because under federal law, customers have to be able to give accurate reviews of your business.
“I think there are a lot of these ‘business as usual’ things that once you know, you can do better.”
Handling an Agreement You Didn’t Consent To
In an instance where you found yourself in an agreement that you didn’t consent to, Autumn says the first thing to do is go back and reread the contract.
Then she would take a deep breath and try to put her emotions to the side, and probably call in a trusted friend to help review the agreement.
“When you do find yourself in one of these sticky situations…you’re basically in a negotiation. So I would probably try and think about, what do I really want? At the end of the day, how do I want this to end? Is this a relationship I value? Is there a lot of money at stake? Is my reputation on the line? Kind of think big picture. Because I might take a different approach depending on all those things.”
She says it’s necessary to understand that you’re probably not going to get the exact resolution you want. “You’re probably both gonna have to give a little bit…So, figuring out what I’m willing to let go of, what I can give that’s not gonna hurt too much, to end up getting, hopefully, a result that I can live with.”
And she says, it’s always less expensive and less traumatic to be as proactive as possible when it comes to the legal workings of your business. The unexpected will happen, but you can put yourself in a better position to deal with those things.
“Making sure that you are living into your values and having people that you can talk with and lean on to help you get through them, I think is absolutely critical.”
Review Your Agreements
Autumn suggests that the first place to take action on bringing your values and consent into your legal agreements is to review your main revenue stream and begin with that agreement.
Does it have a non-disparagement clause?
Is your refund policy in alignment with your values?
Do you have consent to use customer feedback as a testimonial?
If you have a community, what are your guidelines?
Does your contract specify how to end the relationship?
She recommends reviewing those key areas and to “make sure it still lines up with your values…We’re all always changing and growing and moving things around in our businesses. Life changed, the world changed. So take a look at your contract and just make sure that it is still in alignment with your values.
Ready to Dive Deeper?
Expanding our concepts of consent is part of the journey of an Imperfect Ally®. If you’re looking for support and community for your journey, Pause on the Play® The Community has resources, conversations, office hours, live Q&As with Erica and India, live workshops, and recordings.
Members also have evergreen access to the replay of a workshop on consent facilitated by community members Shannon Collins and Stacie Lampkin.
Learn more at pauseontheplay.com/community