Legal Q & A for Creative Entrepreneurs - Brittany Ratelle - Live IG replay - October 30, 2017

Brittany Ratelle of BrittanyRatelle.com, and I'm an attorney for creatives, small business owners, entrepreneurs, all kinds of people who are hustling online and offline. And I do these live Q&As on Instagram. I try to get on here every Monday midday to answer your small business questions. So I'll give it a few minutes and let people jump on. But while I am a licensed attorney here in Utah where I practice, I am not your attorney unless you decide that you want me to be your attorney. So anything we talk about today is just for general informational purposes. It will obviously be kind of on a broad basis because I don't know the particular facts of your circumstances. So anything today is just for information only. There's no attorney-client relationship. Apparently that— I thought that was strong enough to stick, but it wasn't. Oh well. Dang, I love those 3M things, but apparently that was not strong enough to hold that. Sorry. And that— so no, you So yeah, like I said, no attorney-client relationship. And if you have any questions about something that I talk about today as it relates to your specific set of circumstances, please talk to an attorney licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. Hi, Haley. Haley, where are you joining us from? If you wanna put in your comments where you're at, I always like to see where people are from, how local they are or not. And then we'll give it a few more minutes. So I know this is a busy week, especially if you've got kids or Halloweeny stuff to do. I just dropped off my littlest, or my middle, my 5-year-old at preschool, and she's Harley Quinn, so she's all Harley Quinned out with the lulus and everything, pigtails. And I have a date with my hot glue gun because I'm still not done with my costume or my husband's costume yet. So I get that it's a, it's a busy week for people who are making memories, making the magic happen for themselves and their family. So I wanted to get started with one question that I know that I got actually from my sister earlier today who was talking because she is, she's actually a professional opera singer, so she definitely falls into the creative side of the business spectrum that I talk to. But she lives out in DC right now, but she was wondering because she just, she has a website, so because obviously what her business is that she sings for people. She does competitions, she does concerts, and then now she's working with a specific opera. But she does have a website to promote her services and herself and her singing. And she was asking, what do I need to have on my website legally? So, and really, I mean, just about everyone has a website nowadays. I mean, I don't know of any company that doesn't have a website. Amy told me to follow you just in time. Perfect. Okay. If you have any questions, go ahead and put them in the comment box. I'm going to talk quickly about— because I just did a post on this— about the 5 legal documents that every website needs. So if you want this in a written form, if that's the way that you learn and remember stuff better, make sure to hop on my website, BrittanyRatelle.com, and you'll see on the bottom of the homepage a link to this post. So the first thing is if you collect any kind of information from people, you need a privacy policy. This policy will outline what you collect and what you do with it. And the biggest thing here is please don't make promises that you can't keep. So if you plan on ever using people's email addresses and will share them, will sell them, will collaborate with someone else and you maybe guys will both send out stuff to your email list which— because I know a lot of people are like, "No spam, I'm honest, I'm authentic, I'm here for you people." And that's all well and good but let's not forget that at the end of the day, you probably want to make money and you might not even realize right now long-term what you might want to do. To do with your email list or where that might be, the long-term vision. All I'm saying is don't handcuff yourself by making promises that you can't keep because that's really the only time I see people getting in trouble on the privacy policy and where people were really— they're actually getting prosecuted by the Federal Trade Commission is by making promises and then not upholding them. Don't make promises you can't keep. For most people, that just means that you're not— just be— what are you doing with people's information? Disclose if you're using Google Analytics or any kind of other analytics to analyze where people are coming from demographically on your website or where they're going and how they're using it. Disclose that you're using Google Analytics, not a big deal. So, if you are more specific into the ad world in terms of you're using affiliate links, if you are doing demographic, you know, retargeting ads. If you don't understand any of this, that's okay. But you know those freaky ads that like you're looking at a green purse and then suddenly as you're going, you know, you're shopping around the internet, you see and you see the green purse follow you. Those are retargeted ads and those are because the internet knows and is tracking you and you specifically what you're browsing at and then what you're looking at. So if you are using those kind of advanced advertising techniques, then you want to make sure that you're disclosing that. So the next thing you want is you want terms and conditions. So and this is your— if you're selling a product, this would be your refund policy, the policy in terms of who can copyright and what they can do with that. If you have any image credits or credits you need to give for anyone else in terms of what's on your website, that's where you would put it, is in the, the terms and services. And that's also where you would kind of outline if anyone is going to be using your information, you want to detail how and when they can use that information and just making it very clear. So that's not to say that you don't automatically hold those rights in default, but the clearer you make it to whoever wanders on your website what the terms and conditions of your website are, the easier it is for you to enforce those things if you ever need to. So the first is privacy, second is terms and conditions, the third is a disclaimer. So, and this really applies to more if you're in the health and wellness field, it's not a bad idea to have it if you have any kind of overlap. You know, if you're offering financial budgeting advice, I would probably have a disclaimer that says, hey, by the way, I'm not a financial planner, I'm not certified this to sell this or to do this. So it's if you're ever kind of, you know, crossing over into those quasi-professional or licensed fields,. If you are teaching about massage techniques or you're kind of giving mental health life, life coaching kind of soft science kind of thing, I would probably really want it. I would recommend having a disclaimer that says, I am not a licensed mental health counselor, or I'm not a licensed physician. If you're especially in fitness is where I see this a lot. If you're in fitness and health and wellness, if you're schlepping supplements and workout routines and anything else in that field, please disclose what your credentials are and what they're not so that someone can't come back and say, hey, why this person representing themselves as knowing what they were doing and I did this and, you know, I broke my neck. So you don't want that to happen to you. So the third is a disclaimer. The fourth is that you want to make sure that you have everything on your website is complied with the ADA. So, and that's the American Disabilities Act. So this is more specific in terms of when you're working with a designer. So if you have like a custom website, you know, really fancy in terms of template and what the features are and usability, and you just want to make sure that your designer is at least familiar with those guidelines and that they've done stuff like in every image that you have there's alternate text so that if someone can't view that image they're still able to get that information the other way because that means it can read it out loud. So it kind of goes into the usability. The added benefit for this is that doing this stuff and going through this process in terms of optimizing your website for ADA purposes is actually good for search engine optimization too, because it means that you are packing your content and that if you are showing a picture of a cool cupcake because you sell cupcakes, then cupcake is probably one of the search engine terms, one of the SEO terms that you're trying to keyword anyway. So it's a good idea to have it there. So okay, so we privacy policy, terms and conditions, disclaimer, ADA guidelines, and oh, the other one's a copyright notice. So this is usually put at the footer. Again, I talked about copyright, I think last week, week before. I talk about it a lot. You don't have to put this on there. You actually, as soon as you put it on your website, it is copyrighted. But to put people on notice and for people who don't understand for copyright work, I really recommend that you put in the C symbol with the circle, so the copyright symbol, the year that you first published it or the majority of what you published it, and all rights reserved and whatever entity is the one owning the copyright. If you are a sole proprietor, that's probably your name or the name of your company. If you registered as an LLC, then you should probably put your LLC name on there. So that's the copyright notice that you want to have and that just have in your footer and again that text, all rights reserved, and that way you put people on notice that, hey, I've done, I've copywritten this and then what a lot of bloggers and influencer content creators do is they'll actually periodically update and re-register that copyright and registering with the Copyright Office is fairly cheap. It's like $60 and it actually could give you some benefits of enforcing that easier because you can prove statutory damages. You don't have to prove actual damages. So if someone rips off your stuff, you can say, "Look, he broke the law. I deserve damages." You don't actually have to prove that someone was confused and went to their website and bought their stuff because they thought it was yours. That's sometimes really hard to prove. It's costly to prove because you have to get experts. You have to get that kind of analysis. So anyway, sometimes it's worth registering your copyright with the USPTO office and then just updating it on a yearly or quarterly basis, however however much you publish and however much you rely on the originality of the stuff that's in your website for you to be you. So if that's a big part of your business, then I would say it's probably worth going through the copyright process. So sorry, my face is like down here in the comments. Okay, alright, so if you missed that, if you jumped right on, I explained the 5 legal things that your website needs, so go make sure to watch the beginning of the video if you missed that. So any other questions from people today? I see Chris jumping on. Chris is my brother-in-law. That's really nice. And he's also an entrepreneur, so happy to have you. Frolic and Dash, hi! Hi girls. I met them last week when I spoke at the Braid Seminar, which is a Provo female entrepreneurship lecture series kind of institute that I spoke at. So I'm open for any other questions that people wanna shoot at me on this lovely Monday, Halloween Eve, day. So because I'm avoiding, um, doing— working on costumes. So that's what I should be doing right now is I should be hot gluing my corset. So not something you hear from your attorney every day, but you know, their loss honestly. So just, just trying to hustle and get my Halloween costume finished. So anyone else have any other questions that they want to post up in? Um, I did want to mention I posted about it in my stories and on my Instagram today my good friend The Allison Show, Allison Faulkner, who's, um, thanks Sexy Laura, who's an amazing brand strategist, event planner, dancing queen extraordinaire, podcaster. She does it all. She's amazing. If you haven't heard of her or listened to her or come across her stuff, she launched some audio courses today about working with brands and then how brands can work with influencers. So kind of both sides of that influencer marketing coin there. And if so, if you're interested in that space, if you want to be working with more brands to grow your influence, to grow your business portfolio, or vice versa on the other side, um, I'd highly recommend looking into her courses. I think they're on special price now until November 17th, and then they go up. But everything Allison does is just way over the top in the best way. She, she is very thoughtful and very self-aware in terms of she does not like wasting people's time and For someone who can be really, you know, fun and outgoing and kind of crazy, she actually takes her business stuff really seriously and always wants to have good content for people. So she doesn't, she doesn't want to waste anyone's time and she definitely doesn't want to disappoint. So she takes that kind of personally, even more, even more than she really should. So take a look at that if you're at all interested in that space. So I added one of her bonus interviews I did with her a few weeks ago and we talked all about the legal side of doing influencer marketing. So And I put together a little sample contract for people who want to work, influencers who want to work with sponsored content, want to work with a brand. Okay, do we have any other questions? If not, then I'm going to get to my lunch. Because I went and treated myself through the Knitter's Line. Anything else you can put in the comments? "Do you have any advice on patent law?" No. I don't do patents other than get someone who is familiar with whatever industry. There's basically two types. There's like classic invention patents and there's design patents. That's really the two that they do. I mean, patent attorneys, they're like the nerdiest of attorneys. That's saying something. So, yeah, I don't do patents, but if you need a name of someone, I know some people who do them, and I'm sure they do a great job. So, yeah, that's what I can tell you, yeah. Will you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you got into this work? Sure. So, I'm an attorney, and I studied communications and business in my undergrad, and then I went to law school, and I kind of did some marketing for a law firm in between. And I've been working the last few years, I've done a lot more, I've done some family law work and some estate planning, But I've also had a fair number of business clients, kind of creatives, influencers. I have a lot of friends who are working in kind of this online space, who have built their businesses, you know, started out as hobbies and have now grown these into real businesses that they're making money from. And I've gotten the chance and opportunity to be involved with a bunch of their projects. And so this year I've kind of tried to, you know, put myself out there and, let people know that I do this kind of work. And I just, I see that there's a huge gap, a knowledge gap in this industry in terms of how you should be building your business, in terms of using legal and business foundations to build your business. So, 'cause I think what the classic path that a lot of people do is they start out with a hobby, they have an Etsy shop on the side or a little family blog that kind of turns into a lifestyle blog or maybe they sell something, they're even a distributor for something. And then that's great. And, you know, they kind of think it is a hobby or a little side hustle. And then hopefully it gets to be a little bit bigger of a deal. And then maybe they're actually helping people and they're hiring people to help and they're making some real money and partnering with other people and doing a little bit of event planning and doing some contracts and working with vendors. And suddenly, I mean, you know, you're a business owner, like, congrats, you are running a business, you are doing the thing. And yet they haven't quite set themselves up as a business yet. You know, I see a lot of friends who are doing those kinds of activities and they haven't set up an LLC yet, and so their business and their personal assets are all mixed together. So if something happens, all that stuff is mixed together and is subject to someone taking it or you losing it in a lawsuit. I see people who haven't set up contracts with those that they work with, and they haven't set them up with their clients and people, their customers, and they also haven't set them up with their partners or collaborators. And what can be, you know, while I understand that you want to trust the people you work with and the relationships are really important, Because of that, I really think contracts are really important for setting out clear expectations. Because even if you trust someone implicitly with the details and with the logistics of a business or an event or a collaboration or something that you're doing together, even having just written down and hashing out, you know, what is our timeline going to look like and how are we going to handle costs and what about create any, you know, creative content that we have, you know, who's going to own the photographs, Who's going to own the props afterwards if we get props or we commission work? So who's going to be the one who gets to post about it first? Are we going to share email addresses or are we going to tag each other? All those little details kind of need to be worked out because there's a lot of assumptions that can be made and miscommunication that can really help and jeopardize relationships when people haven't taken care of the business stuff in the relationship. So, and then I see a lot of problems with copyright stuff, people stealing other people's stuff. And then other people not respecting what copyright law is and your own stuff getting taken and then people thinking that if you do a Google image search that you can use whatever you find. That's not true. That's not in the public domain and that's not okay for you to put into your own content or slap on your own website. Because I keep on seeing these same issues again and again, I'm here to really try to be a resource to help people. I take clients one-on-one for work when they're in the spot in their business where they're ready to hire me and we're ready to help get them some contracts or to trademark some of their work, to incorporate as an LLC and get some of that stuff taken care of. But I also have some free guides on my website for people who aren't in that position and are just trying to learn and figure out what questions do they need to be asking? 'Cause that's honestly where I see a lot of people is, you know, Brit, I get that that stuff's important. Like I'm not fighting with you on that, but I honestly, I don't even know what I need to know. And that's what I'm trying to be here for, is to try to let you know what you need to know and where you should start. If I were you, which I am, you know, this is still a new venture for me in terms of being in, doing the marketing side of this business stuff. I've been working in this space for a couple years now, but in terms of actually marketing these services and using, you know, our new digital economy and the way that people market goods and services, it's, you know, this is a new frontier way of doing business. And there's still a lot of things that are changing between FTC marketing disclosures and how we do affiliates and podcasting and the realities of blogging and content creation. It's a, it's a bold new world, and honestly, a lot of traditional business transaction attorneys are just kind of ill-equipped to answer your questions and to give you the resources you need. So I've had friends who said that they've met with attorneys and sat down and have had to take the entire time to just explain what they do for a living because they didn't get it. You know, they're like, what, you, you take pictures? You know, what's a flat lay? Um, and no one should have to waste time with someone who doesn't get what you do, you know, who doesn't get what an infopreneur is, who don't know what online courses are, um, who doesn't understand that people are making money in influencer marketing and online services. Um, and that if you're making money too, then let's make sure that you're keeping your money and that you're protecting your stuff, all the stuff that you've built and worked hard for. So anyway, thanks for that. But anyway, that's why I'm here and that's what I'm doing. So I'll give one more opportunity because a couple people jumped on. If anyone else wants to leave, have any questions that they have about their business, small business, online business, creative business, go ahead and leave it in the comment box. Otherwise, I'll sign off for today and go on my merry way. "So helpful, thank you." Yeah, you're welcome, Haley. Thanks so much for joining me. So I try to get on here every Monday, so come join me next Monday and we'll, if you have any questions, tag a friend, let someone know if you have someone else who are like, "Oh, you know what, they've been working on their business too," or they've been building their business and maybe got to the point where they're starting to get some stuff in order and to protect their biz, then let them know that I'm here and that, that I'm a resource for them, so. Okay, if that's not it, I'll let everyone know before I sign off that if you're not on my email newsletter list, I send those out every Wednesday and they include usually a recap of this, 'cause I'll put this on YouTube, this video, if you missed it. So I send out a link to that. I also usually kind of summarize any of my Instagram posts or tips that I gave out for the week, because we all know with the modern algorithm, sometimes you see stuff and sometimes you don't. Instagram's like a little magician. So I don't want you to miss out on stuff. You know, if you are thinking about podcasting and you want to learn the legal tips on podcasting, then make sure you're on my list because I talked about that last week because I'm actually working on a podcast. So I want you to have as much opportunity to learn about this stuff as I'm giving it to you. So I have a link to my newsletter to sign up. It's on my website, BrittanyRatelle.com, or I have a link in my little profile Linktree that's attached to my profile. So With that, I'll sign off. I hope everyone has a fabulous Halloween tomorrow. Be safe, have fun, and I'll see you next week. Thanks, bye!