8 Tips to Get Your Podcast Legit - 014

This is episode 14 of Law and Wit: 8 Tips to Get Your Podcast Legit. Welcome to Law and Wit, creative counsel for entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Brittany Rettell, mother of 4, entrepreneur, naptime lawyer, and attorney for creative entrepreneurs. I'm here to share inspiration and action so that you can tackle your business blocks and confidently own your business in every sense of the word. Thank you so much for being here. Hey there and welcome back. Thanks for your patience. I know I took a little bit of a break. I'd like to mostly put the blame squarely on my sister's shoulders, who, she got married in Hawaii, which was amazing, by the way. I highly recommend that if you can do a destination wedding in Hawaii, that you do it. You get married there, you go and celebrate there, you do all the things there. But anyway, I had kind of a crazy time getting ready for that because it was gonna be a kid-free trip, so there was a lot of things to arrange beforehand and a lot of work to tidy up, and then had obviously a great, fabulous time, week in Hawaii, and then have come back and of course have been swamped getting caught up because vacations are wonderful, but they require a lot of work for the on-ramp and then the exit ramp. Not that I'm expecting anyone to feel bad for me. I know you won't because at the end of the day, I got to go to Hawaii, which was fabulous, but just as a general FYI. Okay, before I jump into today's episode, which is gonna be to be excellent. I want to give my little disclaimer out there. While I am a licensed attorney here in Utah, I'm not your attorney unless you want me to be, in which case let's chat, let's parlay, let's— how about you give me some money? That's normally how that works. No, but seriously, if you want to work together, hop on over to my website, sign up for a consultation block on my calendar, and then we can chat about your business. You can tell me about what's keeping you up at night, what's bothering you, questions, concerns you might have, and I can give you some options and what the pricing would be for me to help you take care of some of those things. So that's what that would look like if you want to work with me. But anything we talk about today will just be for informational purposes only, and it is not attorney-client official legal advice. So if you have any questions about it, please consult with an attorney in your jurisdiction. We're going to be talking about US law, and which applies to obviously anyone within our country's fair borders, or anyone who is doing business in the US, which probably everybody. So there you go. And with that, let's, let's jump in because today we're talking about what I'm doing right here and what I've kind of learned a lot about as a process as I've launched this podcast and gotten going and had the chance to talk about podcasting to other people who are in my community and have asked me about it. And we're talking about how to make your podcast legit because podcasting is a really great tool to put your content out there, to be able to reach your audience, to get that, you know, intimate connection. You get to be in people's people's ear while you're folding laundry and doing dishes and running your kids around. That's when I listen to a lot of my podcasts. Um, I have one AirPod in and one, uh, ear to the ground to make sure I can separate any WWF fights that are going on amongst my littles. Um, but it's a great way to learn and connect with people. So I probably don't have to preach to you because you're listening to podcasts, which is why you're here. But if you are interested in setting up your own podcast, or if you already have one and want to know a little bit more and want some tips to kind of frame what that will look like in terms of making it legit and making sure that you've covered your butt and don't have any, um, surprises undone, um, here are some tips for you. Um, the first is number 1: treat it like a business. Um, even if you're a hobbyist podcast, even if it's something that you want to do just because you like talking about hairless cats, um, you know, it's— you're still producing media, um, and you're still sending it out over the, you know, the airwaves, over the interwebs, as we like to joke to my parents about. Um, you— so you want to be professional about it, okay? Um, so keep some records of what you're doing. You know, any— have some contracts with anybody who's producing any work for you, anything that's tied to your podcast, because you are creating content and sending out into the world. Um, and so you do have some responsibility there just to make sure that you're being thoughtful about it, about where are you getting your content, where are you sending it out, um, and what happens once it gets released basically into the wild. So be legit, treat it like a business, keep some records, um, be thoughtful about it. Okay, that's the kind of overarching number one. Number 2 is just so that you're aware, as soon as you create a podcast, you're going to have some copyright protection for it. So sometimes I get a question about, do I need to put a notice somewhere? And I don't know if you really need to worry about having the C with the little circle. That's the, you know, the official copyright notice. Because as soon as you create anything under US law, that's an original creative work in a fixed medium, meaning as soon as it comes out of your brainwaves and it's actually put on something, even if it's just on a napkin, that actually is entitled to copyright protection. So as soon as I create this podcast right here, just with my microphone on my desktop, I have copyright protection in this. Now, you know, and then I certainly have it once I publish it and it goes out on the airwaves. So now, is it a good idea on your website to always have a copyright notice at the bottom with, you know, an updated year of when you published or updated it and whatever entity is claiming copyrights, whether it's you personally or your LLC? Yeah, I think so, because it will defeat the ignorant excuse that some might people might try to lob at you of like, well, I didn't know, I didn't know that this was your work and that you weren't okay with me stealing with it, as if anybody's okay with people stealing their stuff ever, like in the history of anything online. So it's a good idea to have it on there. So it's not— I mean, if you want to throw it on your show notes, not a huge deal, but I don't think it needs to be like in your show description or certainly not in your title or any of your other, you know, sacred podcast title real estate. So, but in that vein, just as you have to be aware of your copyright and what you're doing with it, you also have to be aware of other people's, which leads us to number 3. What if you want to use someone else's copyrighted material in your podcast, like music or clips from a show or a movie or a speech or something else? Here's what I want to talk about about that. Music, commercial music is probably, you know it, you know, if you want to play You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC, Good luck. I mean, you know, I hate to be like the attorney who comes around and bursts your bubble, but sometimes I got to wear that hat. So I'll wear that hat. But like, I don't think it's going to happen. First of all, if you wanted to do that, you would need to contact all of the rights holders to that music, which for a commercial piece of music like that, that's 3 probably separate entities. There's probably a person who owns the right to the musical composition, who actually wrote the music to it and the lyrics. There's someone who has probably the right to perform that and broadcast that, which is what you'll be doing if you're playing on your podcast. And there's a right to the actual sound recording, which is usually owned by the record studio who owns the master. So, and sometimes, yeah, those are all 3 different entities. Maybe the band owns one and the recording studio owns another, and maybe a big clearinghouse or something owns the last, the right to perform. So good luck coordinating with all of those people, paying all the fees, and still making it worth your while. So in lieu of that, if you want use music on your podcast, if that's really important to you, go look into getting some stock music, some royalty-free music. Basically, royalty-free means you don't have to pay a royalty or a fee every time you use it. So, but make sure that you know what you're getting for. If you're signing up for a service like this, or buying just one track or a subscription, make sure you read the fine print on this and that you're really clear as to what your license is giving you. Is it okay for you to be using this for a commercial purpose? That's that's probably what your podcast is, is a commercial purpose. Even if you're not monetizing yet, if you don't have ads on it, it's likely that it's part of your business or it's somehow supporting your business, so it could be construed as commercial. Um, if you are coming across some music website that claims to be royalty-free or stock music and it all seems good to be— too good to be true in terms of the music copyrights that you're getting, the licenses, and how cheap it is, then it probably is. It could be a scam website or one of these awful scraping websites that goes and scrape stuff off the internet and then tries to go turn around and resell it as stock when it's not. It actually is just being stolen from the rightful copyright holder. So be careful about that. If something sounds too good to be true and smells fishy, then it probably is. Don't use it and check up on the credentials of it. So I highly recommend a service that I'm familiar with because they're actually a client of mine, Pleasant Pictures Music Club, and they provide really awesome stock music that's, you know, it's edgy, it's modern. They have all different kinds of really well-titled categories that they've put together. So if you're interested in something like that, and they have some other special licensing packages that are for kind of smaller players, like if you want to use something, just a single track and buy it, or if you just want to use something on social media. So anyway, check them out if you're interested in getting some more access to stock music, if that's certainly a big part of what you want to do in your podcast. So okay, number 4 is if you are doing an interview style podcast where you're having guests I suggest that you use guest contracts or guest releases. Um, and this can be, it's a pretty simple form. Um, I have one that I use from when I have my guests on here and it's kind of part of my onboarding process where as I'm trying to set up a date of when we're going to meet and interview with someone and I'm sending them some questions to kind of frame our discussion and asking for a headshot, I include a link to this contract in the email. And that way someone can just go on and they sign it electronically. It's really easy. No one has to print stuff off and get out like their John Hancock pen and sign it and scan it back. Like, ain't nobody got time for that. So, um, you can make it super easy. But the reason why you want to use a model release is because you are asking to use someone's name, their likeness, um, if you're using any kind of headshot, basically. So like their face, you're— if you want to put that and promote that through social media. And, um, you know, you're using their content that they're producing with you, that then you are going to want to have rights to do whatever you want with it, because you might need to edit it You're going to put it on your platform and publish it. And maybe down the road you might even do something else with it. You know, what if you wanted to put together some big library download of all of your podcast episodes or a greatest hits? What if you're going to transcribe the episode and turn that content into something else? It's good just to give yourself flexibility that like you went through the hassle of getting this guest on, especially if it's someone who's really important to you and it was kind of a big win. Make sure that you're being just clear with them and setting clear expectations about what they're handing over when they do this interview with you, that they're okay with it, that you're okay with it. And then that way you're giving yourself the flexibility to grow and do what you want with this content as you— and recycle it as you might see fit. This might be useful for you. So the other thing you want to— I kind of want to put a little bee in your bonnet of be careful about guests— is that if you are going to be talking about anything controversial, um, like if your guest is going to be name, you know, calling people out on the carpet, using names or companies and making claims or allegations or telling maybe controversial or sensitive stories, you just want to be a little careful about defamation, libel, slander, which is basically when you are saying something that can be construed as negative against someone else. And, you know, I won't get into the media law, you know, nuances of this, But basically, the law is different whether someone's a public figure versus a private figure. We have a different standard. You know, you can say anything you want pretty much about President Trump because he's a public figure. And we say, like, he's got a thick enough skin, or at least he should— eye roll— to take criticism. But, you know, if you're talking about your neighbor that, you know, whose dog pooped on your lawn, well, that's a little, you know, to be calling them out on a podcast or a radio show or a news story and say something that, like, oh, I think this person is, you know, purposely giving laxative to their dog so that they'll poop on my yard. Well, that's kind of a bold claim to make. And, you know, if it's really important that you— something like this comes up in an interview and you want to keep it, the way you can kind of protect yourself and do a little CYA here is just to maybe do a disclaimer at the front saying, look, we're talking about some controversial stuff today. Anything that's discussed is merely opinion, and we are not saying, you know, presenting it as the truth. So that's something that you can do to protect that. So you can also, of course, edit that out, which is why you want to make sure that you are reserving that power in your contract, that if you want to edit it out and it's not going to serve you, whatever your purpose is of your podcast, then go ahead and give that the royal scissors. So, okay, number 5 is trademark. And this is a good thing to think about in terms of if you've spent a lot of time and energy in putting a creative name on your podcast and want to build it as part of your brand or be a big a bigger part of, you know, a new brand, um, is that you might want to think about trademarking your podcast name. Because until you've taken steps to register that, you essentially— someone else could use the same name, and then it would be a battle of use. But anyone who registers it is going to have priority over you. So if it would make you sad, if you've had big crocodile tears, if someone else started a podcast with a very similar or exact name as yours, then I would go ahead and trademark it. That's telling you that that's a big enough deal to you and your business and what you've built around it that you should probably make that happen. And you certainly want to do that if you think that you plan on using this brand and growing this podcast to be part of other things. You know, maybe you're going to roll this into a book or an in-person event, or you're going to do webinars or speaking or have some sort of online course or something. If these are all things that are, you know, kind of business dreams, part of your growth Plan that you'd love to scale and build. Okay, well, let's take steps to protect that name right now so that it can grow with you and that you're not super peeved when someone steals it. Okay, so, and trademarks are a little tricky. I do recommend that you probably consult with a trademark attorney for that. I do do trademarks, total, you know, shameless promotion. Copyright's a little easier to do on your own, but trademarks, it really, for you to get the value of it, you really need to do a good search. And it's unlikely that you're going to be able to do the kind of good search that you need to without chatting with a professional and someone who knows where to look and how to look and how to check for spelling and phonetic and, you know, audio things that might sound similar, similar, and all of that. So, okay, um, our next tip, number 6, is if you have a co-host, if it's not just a one-woman or one-man podcast, but if you have someone that you're co-hosting with I would recommend having some sort of documentation and ownership or partnership agreement about who does what on the podcast and who owns what. And, you know, do— especially who owns the IP in the show. You know, if you guys break up, if someone decides to leave the podcast, who owns the rights to all the content in that? What are you going to do with previous archived episodes? What are you going to do moving forward? You know, do a little business prenup work. You know, as I've said before in my Instagram Lives that I do on Monday nights. Anytime that you are putting together a business with someone else, it's like getting married, except sometimes it's even more complicated because there's even more money on the table. So, you know, be smart, have a little prenup unless you both plan on doing the podcast forever and never having any problems, which, you know, good for you for being Mr. Positive Thinker, but let's be real here. You know, people change, life circumstances change, businesses change, so let's just be smart, plan ahead, have that conversation. I'm not saying that you have to, you know, hire an attorney to memorialize that, although that wouldn't be a bad idea. I wouldn't call you a fool for doing that. But at least have something written down with your partner in terms of, hey, if one of us wants to be done with the podcast, what is that gonna look like? Or how do you think we should handle that? And then just talk it out. Talk it out, write it out. Okay, number 7, podcast artwork. If you are using anyone else to help you with this, meaning if you are not the person getting on Adobe Illustrator and creating something, or Canva, and making it happen. And especially if you're using Canva and you're using any of their license or images, make sure you check the terms of that license that you're purchasing. But especially if you're hiring someone else, make sure that you either have a work-for-hire agreement or an IP assignment or a transfer from whatever designer you're helping with your podcast artwork. Otherwise, without something written to the contrary, they own whatever they created, and you do not own that, um, which will be weird and awkward when you splash it all over the place, including in iTunes and promoting it online. And maybe when it gets to be a big deal, um, because that's what happens, guys. This is never a big deal until it is a big deal, until you've hit success and this artwork is everywhere and being used as a cornerstone of your business. And then your designer comes back and is like, actually, I thought our agreement was I was just licensing it to you just to use for this very narrow, limited purpose because you only paid me peanuts because that's what you could afford at the time, and now I'm gonna hold you hostage and, you know, try to basically extort other money from you. No, not throwing any shade on my designers. I love my designers. But anyway, I'm just saying, if you haven't talked about it, that's what could happen. So talk about it. Make sure you, again, get a written contract or something if you haven't already taken steps to do that. So Number 8 is if you get into monetization of your podcast. This is basically where it starts to make, you know, direct money from you, not as just some part of supporting your business, but actually bringing you dollar bills through ads or sponsors. Make sure that if you are walking down this path, I would suggest you have some sort of written agreement with your sponsors or people who are advertising, that you set out exactly what are they getting, how many spots When are those spots going to be in your podcast? Do they get control over what the copy is going to be like, or are you going to have control over that? What happens if your podcast gets canceled? What happens if they want to pull out of their contract? What happens if there's some controversy that happens to your podcast, you know, if something blows up? And what happens if they, you know, they signed up for a 6-month or a year-long ad agreement? Do they have any remedies to back out, or do you have any remedies? Are you just left in the lurch? So make sure that you're disclosing what those ads are and that it's very clear to your listeners when you are presenting an ad. Some people do this by having different music in the background, or they do a clean break, like, hey, let's have a word from our sponsors, you know, classic radio style voice. Overarching principle here is to be truthful. This hopefully shouldn't be news to you guys in business, but it's just a good business legal ethical principle to be truthful. So don't claim to be an expert on something on your podcast, or especially if you're talking about a product from a sponsor or an advertiser, don't claim to be an expert on it. If, you know, if you're— if it's a legal podcast and you say, I as a doctor, I have always trusted these supplements and they will solve all of you, you know, that you will never get cancer, well, that's probably a really dumb thing to say, okay? Because you're not a doctor. And that's a pretty outrageous claim to make for a supplement, and you're really opening yourself up to an FTC lawsuit, basically, for false and misleading advertising. So, which any of those violations can have an $11,000 per violation. So if you're using that ad over and over again, you do the math. So don't make claims you can't back up, okay? If you're talking about a personal experience with a product, make sure that you actually have personal experience with that product. So if it's something that's really outside your wheelhouse that you don't feel comfortable personally talking about, then, you know, work with your sponsor or advertiser, whether that's— it wants to be in their voice or their words or claims that they can make. But make sure that you're being true to yourself. And if something feels weird, you feel like it's gonna go over really awkwardly with your audience, then, then tweak that to get it right, because it's not worth it if you're gonna isolate people who are listening to you and trusting you, which is probably the whole reason why you have this in the first place. So just be smart about that. Don't be blinded by, by the dollar bills, okay? By all the dollar bills, peeps. Okay, so that's number 8. That's our last one. So hopefully this has been helpful for you guys as you look to build podcasts. I'm gonna remind you with this tip, which is something I talked about when I spoke at Snap Creative Conference this week. I actually opened and ended my presentation with this slide, which I think has become a new part of my business because I do get this response so often from people. And the mantra that I want you to say— you don't have to say it out loud if you don't want to, if that's going to be super weird, but please just remind yourself in your mind— is that these words are true with all of this stuff that we talk about on Law and Wit. I will not be overwhelmed by this. I simply know more than I did before. Okay, because that's the truth with anything that we learn, especially anything that we're growing for, for any really any mistakes that we make. Because guess what, guys? We're all human. We all have a lot of humanness in us and we make mistakes every day. And that business is no exception to that. So, and I've learned as, you know, an entrepreneur, as someone who's been running my little business basically in this space and promoting myself for a year now in doing kind of small business online for creatives, I've learned a ton. And And I've made a ton of mistakes, and that's totally okay. And you will too. But what's important is that we move forward, we're not afraid or embarrassed or ashamed to learn, to grow, to say, "Shoot, you know, I got that wrong," or, "That wasn't the best way to do that, but now I know more, and so now I know more, I'm gonna do more, I'm gonna do better." Because we're all just trying to handle this the best way that we know how. So give yourself grace, give yourself others' grace, But make sure that you're taking care of what you can, guys, and make sure that you are treating yourself like a true business owner. So own your business, be a business owner. And with that, I'll sign off and remind you, if you haven't left a review on the podcast, I would love that. I have just a few. I do read every single one. They're really important to me, even though I know it's a kind of a total vanity metric. Totally, I will totally agree to that. But they are really important for people when they're searching for any of the keywords and topics that I talk about on my podcast if I don't have a lot of reviews, then people won't think that my podcast is legit. So it really helps if you can leave a review in iTunes to help present this information to more people who probably need this in their business, their creative business. So if you don't subscribe to my newsletter, you can do so at brittanyratel.com/newsletter. I'll throw in a free legal checklist if you do that. That will kind of give you an overview of some similar things that we talked about today, but just kind of a bird's-eye view. If you are a business owner and are needing to know what questions do I even know to ask, okay, if you are looking at, you know, what we've talked about today, what I've talked about in other episodes, and are like, Brittany, you're, you're amazing and I love you, but I, I still just don't— I'm trying to wrap my head around this. This seems overwhelming. This seems expensive and scary. I don't even know if any of this applies to me, or how to get going. How do I get started? Um, go get on my newsletter, okay? Get that checklist. Just save it, use it, start to make some notes, start to just get the juices flowing of thinking, okay, what can I tackle this week? What can I add to my planner to do this week or this quarter? Okay, whatever you can do, just, just start. Just start and make one bite at a time, okay? Because that's how we build a better mousetrap. That's how we build a better business. Okay, all right, enough preaching for today. Thank you guys so, so much for being here. Um, if you weren't here, it would just me, you know, burning through nap time hours talking to a mic, being a weird girl. So really appreciate all your support and love. The DMs I get from people, screenshots showing me that they're listening to the podcast and finding it useful wherever they're going in their adventures, it really means a lot and it keeps me motivated to keep going and producing this content and keeping it available for you guys to answer your questions so that you can move forward with confidence. So thanks so much and catch you on the flip side.