The 6 Legal Areas that Impact Your Risk & Profit

What is the legal stuff, anyway? When it comes to starting and running an online business, your to-do list is always a mile long. And “take care of legal” is often left to the bottom, because, what does that even mean? It's a mystery you’d rather not solve. In this episode, we’ll dive into the 6 legal areas that impact your risk and your profit in business 

Key Takeaways

I started my business to make the legal aspects of online business accessible to everyone. But most people don't know where to start when it comes to the "legal stuff". After working with hundreds of business owners, I've realized it comes down to 6 key legal areas. These key areas, if taken care of properly, can reduce your risk and increase your profit in your business.

Here are the 6 key legal areas in business:

1. Your Business Entity - your LLC is key for separating your personal assets from the risks of doing business 
2. Financial & Accounting - your money habits can strengthen or destroy the legal wall your LLC builds around your personal money
3. Client & Student Relationships - your relationships determine what contracts you need, and your contracts help protect your boundaries and your freedom
4. Team - the way you handle your team can catapult your growth or add to your risk
5. Marketing & Website - marketing is crucial to the success of your business, but did you know there are laws about what you can and can't say in your marketing?
6. Intellectual Property - a.k.a., your content and your branding. Protecting your ideas is key to protecting your course content, social content, branding, and everything that makes your business unique

Resources & Links

• Watch the free masterclass
• Follow Amy on Instagram @artfulcontracts

Next Steps

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Episode Transcript

What is the legal stuff anyway? When it comes to starting and running an online business, your to-do list is already a mile long. And take care of legal is often left to the bottom because what does it even mean? Where do you start? In this episode, we'll dive into the six legal areas that impact your risk and your profit in business.

Hey, I'm Amy Nesheim, licensed attorney for online business owners and founder of my own business, Artful Contracts. You're listening to Legal Made Easy, the show that makes the legal aspects of online business easy to understand and implement so you can grow your business with confidence knowing you've got it all covered. Let's dive in.

Welcome to the very first episode of Legal Made Easy. I'm Amy, and as you just heard, the goal of this podcast is to make the legal aspects of online business easy to understand and implement. But what are those legal aspects of business anyway? That's what I want to dive into in this episode.

Over my years of working with online business owners, I've realized that the legal stuff really falls into one of six categories. And those categories make up the basis of everything I teach, all of my content, my course content, and that's going to be the basis of the content for this podcast. But before we get into what those areas actually are, I want to back up a little bit and give you some background info on who I am and how I got here and how I learned all this stuff.

I went to law school because I wanted to help people. I got to the end of college with a psychology degree and no clear idea of what I wanted to do on a daily basis, but I knew I wanted to be in a position to make an impact. And I know that might sound a little bit cliche, but it's true. I was not one of those people in law school who had known that they wanted to be a lawyer since they were a little kid. I had classmates who did that who, you know, grew up thinking this is what I want to do. I want to be a lawyer. That was not me. But the one common theme in my life, as long as I can remember, I knew that I wanted to help people. I wanted to be in a position where I could change things, where I could look at the inequalities that I saw in the world and actually do something about it. And that is something that has been true for me since I was a little kid. And I chose psychology in college because I wanted to be able to understand how people's brains work and why they make the choices that they make and maybe make some difference in that way. But I got to the end of college and I did not want to be a therapist. I didn't want to be a researcher. I didn't really feel like going to grad school for either of those things, but I knew I wanted to make an impact in some way. And I figured a law degree would give me leverage, a position of authority, a leg up or a bit of power to be able to actually make some change. So I went to law school.

And after law school, reality kind of set in and I took the pretty typical path. I started working at a local law firm. Law school does not actually prepare you to be a lawyer, it teaches you the basics of what the laws are and how to read a contract and how to interpret the laws, but not the ins and outs of daily work of actually helping clients and being a lawyer and putting all that into practice. So the best way to get that info, that knowledge is to work at a law firm under other attorneys who know what they're doing. So that's what I did. And I worked on commercial real estate deals and I helped local small business owners with business formations and contracts.

And after working with a bunch of business owners, I started to notice a pattern. None of our clients were new business owners. Most of them were 10, 15, 30 years into business. They were multiple business owners, they were people who were really experienced with business and often owned multiple companies at that point. And very rarely did we get someone who is maybe five years in. Most of the businesses I helped with contracts, especially those maybe five years in people, they had been using something that they had put together themselves for years because it was too expensive to come in during that startup phase. They could not afford the two or $300 an hour legal fees to get something custom, so they found something on the internet or you know, scrambled something together themselves and crossed their fingers until they made it big enough to actually come in and hire a lawyer to help them.

I find that completely unacceptable. I decided that that had to change. I have a deep heart for accessibility. It is one of the core values in my business. And if you've been following along with me at all, you've probably heard me say or seen written somewhere on one of my sites that I believe that all business owners, no matter the size of the business or how successful, deserve access to high-quality legal resources. That is the basis of my business.

There was this huge gap that I saw between, you know, a business owner starting out and not being able to access a lawyer at all and the business owner five years down the line paying us two or three hundred dollars an hour for custom work. That's a gap I wanted to fill. I finally saw the opportunity to take this degree that I had and leverage it to change something. So that's what I chose to change.

But on the other hand, of course, this business is my livelihood. I quit that law firm job with zero backup plan, much to the dismay of my parents. And then I started this business. I started selling contract templates and legal trainings. And yes, that provides the in-between option. I'm able to make a template or create a training, and it can serve hundreds or thousands of online business owners. At this point, I've reached over 4,000 business owners with my paid packages, and I know it's made a huge impact on a lot of them. And of course, I also understand the value of getting something custom. If you can afford it, it's a really great option because it can really take into account the nuances of your particular business, and that's great if you can afford it. And of course, because it takes, you know, the time, the expertise, the dedicated attention of, you know, all of that training behind being a lawyer, those years of school, the licensing, all of that. I know that it costs a lot and it's definitely worth a lot. Your legal protection is worth a lot. But that in between of templates and trainings is really important when you're just starting out.

I wanted to make something accessible for people. But I also know that $400 for a template or a bundle of templates is still out of reach for a lot of people. Especially if you're bootstrapping your business, you're still working your nine to five, or you're trying to just squeeze in a side hustle. $400 is a lot. And I was honestly really struggling with even that disparity, with that gap. I wanted to be able to reach people no matter what. And I felt this tension between my pricing and my value of accessibility.

And so that's why I started this podcast. I want to provide something for free that will still provide enormous value for those who just aren't ready to invest yet. And it's also a way for my loyal customers, my loyal audience, even if you haven't bought from me yet, or if you're inside my signature program, to get even more value from me and maybe go more in-depth on a topic or just hear something from a different angle. Sometimes you have to hear something more than once for it to sink in. So this gives that other perspective, that a little bit of additional content.

My goal for this podcast is to give you the information that you need to make informed decisions in your business. As a business owner, especially as a solopreneur, or even if you have a small team, you are the legal department for your business. No one else is gonna figure this stuff out for you. No one else cares to figure this stuff out for you. If you're like me or a lot of the other business owners I've talked to, your business gives you freedom. Maybe you started it to have a little extra side money to go on a vacation or even just buy the fancy groceries. Or maybe you started the business so that you could eventually get out of that nine to five, or you're there. Maybe you've reached that dream, you're out of your nine to five. You don't have to go into the office anymore, you don't have to work on somebody else's schedule. That's my story.

That's the other reason that I started this business is I I hated working at that law firm. I hated the grind, the hourly expectations, going into the office every day, working for other people and doing things the way they wanted. So my business gives me freedom. And the legal stuff, your LLC, your contracts, your trademarks, that stuff protects your freedom.

The first thing I did when I decided to form a business was get my LLC because I knew that I wanted this thing to be safe and secure as possible. It was a risk to start it, but I wanted that risk to be as minimized as possible. So I formed my LLC like a month before I even did anything else because I knew that this business would give me freedom and I wanted to protect that freedom. That freedom matters to you, but it probably doesn't matter as much to anyone else. You're the one who has to take responsibility for it. And that is another one of my company values, personal responsibility, knowing that you are the person who is in charge of your decisions and your actions. And the decision to ignore the legal stuff or not learn about the legal stuff, that is a decision that has consequences. And no one else is gonna do it, no one else is gonna take the actions or face the consequences for you. But taking responsibility for those choices, taking responsibility for taking care of the legal stuff, that doesn't mean that you have to do it alone. I want to be here to help you make those decisions. But at a minimum, you have to know enough to be able to make good choices in your business. And to make the choices that are right for your business.

You know your business, the ins and outs of your business, better than anyone else, better than I do, better than some lawyer sitting at a desk who doesn't understand online business at all does. So I want to give you the context and say, okay, if you're this, then you'd make this choice. If you're this other thing, you make that other choice. And then you can decide because you understand it, you can choose what's best for your business. And that all starts with understanding what the legal stuff even means in the first place.

So that brings me to the real meat of this episode, those six legal areas that increase your profit and lower your risk. Like I said before, working at that law firm and helping thousands of business owners in the years since then, I've realized that it really all boils down to six areas that have a big impact on your risk and your profit. They can reduce your risk or increase it if you ignore them. And vice versa, they can increase your profit or reduce it if you ignore them. And everything we talk about on this podcast, all of the content will relate back to these six areas. So here they are.

I'm going to list them all out first and then give you a little bit more detail on each one. I'm not going to dive into necessarily the how or the execution of each of these because that is what the entire rest of the podcast is for, but I wanted to give you a little taste of where we're going.

Number one is your business entity. Number two is financial and accounting. Number three is client and student relationships. Number four is team. Number five is marketing and website. And number six is intellectual property. All right, now a little bit more on each of those.

Number one is your business entity. Business entity is just a fancy way of saying the legal structure of your business. And usually this is going to be either an LLC or a sole proprietorship. Your business entity is important because if you have an LLC, it can separate your personal assets from the risks of doing business. It builds a legal wall in between everything that you own personally, your house, your savings, your retirement, from your risks that you have in business, things like lawsuits and debt in your business. And I'm going to do a whole other episode on different types of business entities and how to choose the right one for you. So that is coming up in a few weeks. But for now, I'll just say that one of the important legal areas in your business is your business entity.

Number two is the financial and accounting aspects of your business. I know this doesn't sound like legal, but it is super important to support that legal wall that you build with your LLC. If you don't treat your money right, then the court can come in and say that your LLC doesn't exist. So to make sure you maintain that legal protection, you have to manage your money, do your accounting, do your bookkeeping. And if you're a sole proprietor, it's still really important because if you don't keep good track of your income and your expenses, you can end up with an expensive hobby instead of a profitable business.

Number three is client and student relationships. Now, if you were listening when I laid out that list, you might have noticed that I didn't say contracts as one of the six areas. And that's because contracts fall in here. Because contracts are just the rules and expectations of your relationships in writing, written down. And the way that you figure out what contracts you need is by figuring out what relationships you have in your business. So your contracts are dependent on your relationships, and your contracts support your relationships and make them easier, reduce conflict, more profitable, and support those client and student relationships on an ongoing basis.

Number four is team. Now, to be fair, this could totally fall under number three, also. It is a type of relationship, but it's a different kind of relationship. It's not, you know, it's not money coming in, it's money going out, right? So it it does have a little bit of a different legal element to it. And the way that you treat your team can really impact your growth because the whole point of your team is to make your growth easier, right? And when I say team, I don't just mean employees and I don't just mean people who work exclusively for you. This could also include contractors. And, you know, for most people starting out, they're gonna hire contractors before they hire employees. And the way that you work with any of those people, with anyone who's working with you, can have a huge impact on the trajectory of your business and on the risks in your business.

Number five is marketing and website. And so this is all the things that you put out there to attract people to your business. And this is a huge area of risk that most people completely ignore or don't even realize is like a legal thing. But there are laws around how you behave in your marketing, and there are laws around what you do on your website and on social media. And so it's important to be aware of those, know what they are, and make sure that you're not accidentally breaking the law with your marketing. Because again, it's a really big area where like your marketing is super important for getting sales, for getting clients, for making money, and that is the point of the business, right? So if you get in trouble for your marketing, it not only like you could not only face fines, but then you have to take it all down, right? And then you don't have that source of income anymore. So it's important. I'm also really big on the ethics of marketing because our industry, the online course industry, the coaching industry, they're new and they're not super highly regulated. And so ethics is even more important when there are places where the laws aren't necessarily super clear yet, ethics comes into play. So I'm definitely going to be talking about that a little bit.

And last but certainly not least is number six, intellectual property. What I'm talking about here is copyrights and trademarks, and that is just the way that you protect your content and your branding. Copyrights are for your content and trademarks are for your branding. As online business owners, as coaches, as service providers, as course creators, the product of our imagination, our knowledge, our thoughts and ideas, those things are what we sell. And intellectual property is the way that you protect those things. So this is super important because all we have that we're selling is our ideas and products of our brain. And so we really want to protect that.

That wraps up this very first episode of Legal Made Easy. We also have three more episodes live today with this first one, and that is going to be a little mini-series going through the nine steps to legally protect your online business. I wanted to give you a little bit of extra content to sink your teeth into right at the beginning of this podcast so that it's super valuable for you right from day one.

So if you enjoyed this episode, if you're enjoying the podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. And if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts, I would so appreciate that. It really helps us as a new podcast to continue bringing you these episodes. All right, I'll see you next time.