How do you guys manage direct UGC deals outside of marketplaces?

I'm curious how other UGC creators handle the operational side of working with brands independently.

Let's say you find a brand yourself through Instagram, email, outreach, referrals, etc. and you don't want to go through a marketplace or agency.

It seems like the workflow can end up being spread across a bunch of different tools:

• discussing the deal through email/DM
• agreeing on deliverables and revisions
• contracts/usage rights
• asking for an upfront payment/deposit
• invoicing
• watermarking previews
• sending content for review
• getting feedback and managing revisions
• collecting the final payment
• delivering the unwatermarked files
• keeping track of usage rights / licenses

From what I've seen, a lot of people seem to use some combination of Google Drive, Dropbox, Stripe, PayPal, Wise, invoicing tools, contracts, spreadsheets, etc.

I've recently experienced a very unfortunate deal with a brand that removed the watermark (I guess with AI), and started to use the content on their social. This and brands ghosting does not happened to me before, but it feels less and less safe to share my work before being fully paid because of that.

I'm wondering how you personally manage all of this once you start doing more direct deals.

Do you have a workflow or stack that you're happy with?

Or does anyone know of a tool that actually centralizes most of this in one place: ideally without being another marketplace that takes a commission or requires you to find clients through the platform?

I'd be really interested to hear what you use.